from Amazon
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
From Replacement Level to League Average
When Guzman signed his 4/16.8 deal in 2005, I called that the worst deal of the year.
His 6 years with the Twins gave us a total of 4.5 WAR (according to Chone) in the equivalent of 5 full seasons, or an average of less than 1 WAR per season. The perfect player to sign to a one or two year deal. In 2005, he was -1.8 WAR (which is hard to be that bad), and in 2006 he didn’t play. As far as I was concerned, this was a vindication for me. He would be out of baseball, and I was glad that Willie Bloomquist was around to make life easy for me to find the worst player in baseball.
Then, Guzman comes back from his injury in 2007 to post a +1.7 WAR, and follows that up for a +4.3 WAR! Fangraphs has those two seasons as +1.4 and +2.9 WAR. And this year, he’s still at it.
According to Fangraphs, he’s provided $15.7MM in value from 2005-2008 (including 0 for his injury season), thereby justifying the investment of $16.8MM! He could have been signed for alot less (which is why I thought it was a bad deal), but he end up delivering on the Nats expectations.
Guzman is, today, around a league average ballplayer. And he apparently did this transformation while he was injured.
Guzman baffles me. I don’t understand how he’s gone from being terrible, to a legitimate, useful major league player. Late prime? Something about Minnesota that wasn’t good for his skill set? Is the NL really that bad?