A few thoughts on Blazin' Billy

[klaiggeb]

1-Lifetime OBP .298.

That is freaking awful!

2-4 full seasons and 19 at bats, 243 stolen bases- that's an average of 61 bases/year.

That is incredible!

3-.248 life time hitter.

THAT sucks!

If Matty Alou and Freddy Patek and others with speed can learn to get on, why can't this putz?

4-422 career K's at the plate.

That's average 100k's/year.

That's ridiculous!

What the freakin' heck is with this guy? He isn't and never will be a HR hitter. Guess he hasn't gotten that memo yet.

5-113 total extra base hits in 4 years.

That's an average of 28/season.

That wouldn't be so bad IF he was getting on base more often.

6-On a team that scores a fair amount of runs, he's scored: 56, 69 and 85 runs in the last three years.

That's what happens when you have an OBP of .298


As boagie pointed out, defensively, he's an upgrade from Span in CF, but at the plate?

He's a giant step backwards.



So the questions are, IF we really are pursuing Blazin' Billy, which I can't believe is true:

1-As some has suggested, WILL he really have better numbers in a big park where balls will fall in more often than in Cincinnati's cracker box?

2-Will his stolen bases out weigh his offensive ineptness?

3-Will his defense make up for what he can't do on offense by saving runs?

4-Will his defense allow us to get a power bat with Burrell-like range, by covering ground to cover that guy's fanny?


On the surface... I don't know what to think.

Still, IF we aren't giving up much, which I KNOW isn't true, he's probably worth the risk for 1 year.

boly

[rog]

Baseball-Reference rates Billy at 8.0 WAR over his four seasons. Fan Graphs rates him at 10.6. That's the level of an average to above-average starter. 4.0 WAR is considered an All-Star level. I believe it's 6.0 WAR where MVP consideration begins according to WAR theory. Something like 8.0 WAR should win the MVP or be very close.

Baseball-Reference rated Giancarlo Stanton at 7.6 WAS this past season, while Fan Graphs had him at 6.9 WAR. Baseball-Reference had Joey Votto at 7.5 WAR, while Fan Graphs had him at 6.6 WAR.

Using Baseball-Reference, one can see how great Mike Trout has been. In his full seasons, he has gone 8.6, 10.0, 8.7, 8.9, 9.9 and even 7.4 this past season even though he played in only 114 games. Trout hasn't played long enough, but he's played well enough to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. So far, he's been one of the greatest players of all time. And he turned only 26 last season.

Think he'll get a big contract when he's eligible for free agency in a year? Half a billion for a dozen years might even be a possibility, although I doubt it will go quite that high. $400,000 should be close to a slam dunk though. If he stays healthy, he'll quite possibly be worth the half billion or even more.

Half a billion will likely buy about 50 or 55 wins over that time -- maybe even fewer. If healthy and with normal aging, Trout shouldn't have any problem. Willie Mays picked up 116 wins from this point on in his illustrious career. Even Mickey Mantle, who was plagued by injuries and whose career was cut short by drinking and carousing, earned 49 from this point on.

If Trout earns that many, he would pretty much earn a half billion contract.

[rog]

Maybe I was too harsh in my evaluation of Giancarlo Stanton's contract.

[klaiggeb]

I don't understand WAR, Rog, but there is no way on God's green earth that he gets ranked higher than Stanton in ANY category NOT involving speed.

[rog]

I don't understand WAR, Rog, but there is no way on God's green earth that he gets ranked higher than Stanton in ANY category NOT involving speed.


Rog -- I see where I threw you off, Boly. I wrote that Billy was rated at 8.0 WAR -- but that was over four seasons. In other words, Billy's WAR average 2.0 per season, while Stanton's was 7.6 last year alone.

What WAR is is an attempt to estimate how many wins a player is worth compared to a replacement player, which is basically a Four A player, the type of player a team could call up to replace an injured player. Hence, a replacement player.

The value is based on hitting, fielding and base running. Babe Ruth was ranked as best ever at 184 Wins Above Replacement (WAR). Among position players, two Giants ranked 2nd and 3rd. Barry Bonds was rated at 162 WAR, and Willie Mays at 156 WAR. Both those players were, of course, excellent at hitting, fielding and base running.

What the WAR I misled you with says is that Billy at 2.0 WAR per season over the past four years is worth about a quarter as much as Giancarlo Stanton was last year alone.

As with other measures, WAR isn't perfect. But it's good enough to be used by GM's as one of their evaluation tools. Fan Graphs estimates that a win is worth about $8 million dollars, meaning that over the past four seasons, Billy has been worth about $64 million.

That doesn't, by the way, mean that as a free agent he would get a contract averaging $16 million per season. The price a team is willing to pay for a free agent includes a discount for the possibility of injury, and for an older player, the chance he will be going through his decline phase.

One reason too that some teams are willing to pay more for a free agent that other teams is that the player is worth more to their TEAM than to other teams. Last season, for instance, left field was pretty much a black hole for the Giants. I'm guessing the players who played the position for them were worth something like a NEGATIVE two WAR. If the Giants instead had an average major league left fielder (which is evaluated at around 2.0 WAR per season) they would have improved from NEGATIVE two WAR to POSITIVE two WAR, meaning an improvement of about four games. That would have put the Giants in the high 60's in wins instead of the low to mid 90's.

I'm going off the top of my head here, but I'm guessing that had the Giants had average starters last season in the outfield and at third base, they would have won at around 75 games. If the Giants had solved their outfield problem in particular, and their other players had more normal years to their careers, the Giants might have challenged for a playoff spot. That's why we pointed so harshly to the Giants' outfield as a potential problem as last season began.

By WAR, Billy Hamilton has been about an average starter over the past four seasons. Clearly he's a poor hitter, but he's done his damage in the field and on the bases.

Give the Giants an average season from say Hamilton and Todd Frazier and average seasons from the existing team, and the Giants would likely at least approach .500. They likely need at least another decent outfielder on top of that in order to make a serious run.

As we saw last season, teams have up seasons and down seasons. I would think the object would be to have at least a team that with average seasons from each of its players would be highly competitive for a playoff position. Ideally the team would be good enough to compete even with a bit of a down season.

Very few teams could have been competitive last season with their players almost all having down years. But many of them would have won more than 64 games.




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