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Monday, June 16, 2008
How much should a smart organization pay for a replacement-level name player?
I’m talking about the Rays and Junior. We’ve already talked about Griffey before, and I said:
Marcel has him with a wOBA of .349 coming into 2008, with 560 PA. That makes him +0.5 wins above average as a hitter. He gets +1.5 wins for what 560 average PA represents over replacement (in the NL). Fielding+position has a lower boundary of -2 wins (because anyone worse than that would simply move to DH). A poor fielding 1B (-1.0 wins relative to the average 1B, and another -1.0 wins for the average 1B relative to the average player at an average position) would be -2.0… hmmm… I guess the best we can expect of Junior is to be -1.5 in fielding+position. So, at best, Junior is +0.5 WAR (+0.5, +1.5, -1.5). And if he’s that bad, he shouldn’t be getting 560 PA. Yowza… Junior IS a near-replacement level player. How about that… His last year in MLB should be 2009, if not sooner.
There’s something to being given a budget and be forced to spend to certain limits. Otherwise, you end up doing what Glen Sather did. Anyway, in order for the Rays to take on Griffey, the Rays should offer the Reds their most overpaid player, whoever that is (if they even have one). If they don’t, they should offer the Reds their worst minor league player, whoever that is.
A team like the Rays, that did what they did with Upton, Shields, and Longoria (clock-watching), to then trade for Junior would go against a certain philosophy. I’ll be very surprised if Junior makes it on the Rays. However, we will really not even know what it means if he makes it on the team or not. After all, random variation will swamp whatever effect Junior may or may not have, and will and will not have. That’s the reason a team can make a bad move now and then, and we won’t know.
I hate to say this, but as a Reds fan, I can only sit and hope that TB does this. But, like you, I doubt they will. It would be hard to find a worse value in baseball than Griffey. I’m sure there must be other players out there that are as bad of a value (maybe Schilling this year?), but his combination of terrible defense and declining offensive skills makes him hard to beat.
If the Reds aren’t able to trade him this season, I do expect them to let him walk. Problem is, they have to eat a $4 million buyout to do that. But paying $4 million + $400k for a replacement player is better than paying $16.5 million for a replacement player.
-j