Beyond the Box Score: An SB Nation Community

Navigation: Jump to content areas:


Pro Quality. Fan Perspective.
Login-facebook
New Blog: The Nova Blog for Villanova Fans!

Hardy for Gomez: A Defensive Win-Win

The hot stove just keeps a'burning, as news has come out that the Milwaukee Brewers have dealt shortstop J.J. Hardy to the Minnesota Twins for center fielder Carlos Gomez.

What does this trade mean for the teams involved? First off, it shows teams are very interested in defensive prowess in their players, as both Hardy and Gomez are well renowned for their gloves. But what about their overall value? The Trade Value Calculator has the (approximate) answer!

Star-divide

The Players

From the Milwaukee Brewers, we have the embattled J.J. Hardy. Hardy went through a torturous season in which he saw his wOBA drop from a career best in 2007, to league average mark in 2008, down all the way to a horrendous .292 this season, all according to FanGraphs. Partly as a result of his poor offensive production, the Brewers demoted him in late August, sparking the controversial claims that Hardy was demoted in order to manipulate his service time and allow the Brewers (or another would-be suitor for Hardy's services) to gain an extra year of team control before sending him off to free agency.

At the time, I spoke about Hardy's struggles with BABIP, Hardy's power numbers also suffered a drop, a result of a significantly lowered home run rate. Still, as I mentioned back in the linked article, Hardy was hitting average marks in pretty much every category except BABIP, so one could suspect that a bounce back season is in order for Hardy.

Doing a simple Marcel projection on his offensive numbers, then regressing to the mean of .330 yields a projected wOBA of .328. For this quick estimate, using Hardy's career UZR/150 of 11 runs seems fair. Based on the playing time Hardy saw in 2007 and 2008, projecting 150 games on him does not seem to be a stretch. At that kind of playing time (630 PA), here's what the Calculator says we should expect.

Hardyval_medium

Hardy over the next two years, if we use the 40/60/80% market salary scale for an estimation of arbitration, could be expected to yield $10.5M in surplus value, not including any free agent compensation picks.

What about his counterpart in the deal? Carlos Gomez was once the prize of the Johan Santana trade from the Twins to the New York Mets, though most analysts say that neither the crown jewel or the entire bundle was worth Santana. Gomez began playing full time in center field last season for the Twin and was up and down. On the one hand, Gomez's defense was stellar. UZR measured Gomez at around 16 runs above average in 154 defensive games at the position, an absolutely stellar mark. This year, he continued the trend, posting around seven runs above average in 108 defensive games, splitting time with the plethora of Twins outfielders.

This would have all been well and good, if not for the other aspect that position players often have to do, the hitting. Gomez proved to be a terrible offensive player last year, posting a .294 wOBA according to FanGraphs. And he did no better in 349 PA this year, recording a .277 wOBA. Gomez walked less than the average player (career BB% 5.0%) and had no pop in his bat (career adjusted ISO .088). Furthermore, he's shown a tendency to strike out far more than a no-patience contact hitter ever should (career K% 21.9%)

For Gomez, I did a similar Marcels projection for his offense and on his UZR defense, regressing 100 defensive games to a mean of 0. For offense, I have Gomez projected at a .290 wOBA. After doing the projection/regression of his defense, Gomez comes out to a +10 runs / 150 defensive games. Giving Gomez the type of playing time he received in 2008 as a starter (approximately 4 PA per game, like a 7th hitter in the NL) and projecting him at 150 games and 600 PA, the calculator shows this.

Gomezval_medium

That value does drastically underestimate his defense from 2008, when he was a 2.3 WAR player according to FanGraphs.

Conclusion

Even at the reduced level of production that Gomez is projected at, the years of control give him a slight edge in terms of value over J.J. Hardy. The time Hardy spent in the minors this year is going to help Minnesota recuperate some of the value lost by sending a decent piece to the Brewers. Overall, I think both teams will end up happy with the players they have acquired. I am almost certain that the Brewers' and Twins' pitchers will approve.

1 recs  |  Comment 13 comments |

Story-email Email Printer Print

Comments

Display:

Why the 1.2 WAR for Gomez in 2010 and 1.7 in the other years?

People should remember that while they have the right to their opinion, they are not entitled to be taken seriously. -- Bruce Bartlett

by berselius on Nov 6, 2009 2:38 PM EST reply actions   0 recs

Hardys expected salary

I like the 40/60/80 quite a bit but it just isn’t going to be close to accurate for Hardy this coming year. He made $4.65 last year and coming off a poor year for him there is no way he approaches a salary of $10 million this year. It will probably be ~$5 million imo.

Also I know the 40/60/80 model works well for players that have 3 years of arbitration but what about players that are Super 2s?

Also there is some talk about Gomez being a Super 2 and being arb eligible this offseason.

by Silencio on Nov 6, 2009 3:01 PM EST reply actions   0 recs

I was worried about that as well. It's likely that Hardy will make a lot more surplus value

Thanks for the heads up for Super 2 on Gomez. That may definitely be true and would definitely affect his value.

by SFiercex4 on Nov 6, 2009 3:49 PM EST up reply actions   0 recs

I was a huge Gomez fan

but it’s nice to have Hardy aboard. Obviously I wish we could have traded Young instead since Gomez is so good defensively, but oh well.

I also need to change my avatar now. Sad day.

http://twinkietalk.com
http://thecollegehockeyblog.com

by fetch9 on Nov 6, 2009 4:15 PM EST reply actions   0 recs

It looks to me like your surplus value estimates are quite conservative for both of these players.

For Gomez, I think it would be more reasonable to project him to get closer to his 2008 value. Coming off his age-23 season, there should be some offensive growth in Gomez’s future. A more reasonable WAR path of 1.5, 1.8, 2.0, 2.1 would kick his surplus value up to $17.5M. Of course, if he did get Super-2 status that could knock his value right back down, so hopefully that isn’t the case.

For Hardy, as was noted above, your salary estimates seem way high. I think $6M and $9M are pretty generous for him, and that would nearly double his surplus value to the Twins to $20M.

It seems a pretty reasonable trade to me. I project Hardy to be slightly more valuable than Gomez, but Hardy has more downside and Gomez has more upside.

by RedRobot8 on Nov 6, 2009 7:57 PM EST reply actions   0 recs

Points taken

I had to do this one due to my own time constraints, but for future ones I’ll probably try to guess at any players’ arbitration salary values rather than use the scale.

by SFiercex4 on Nov 6, 2009 8:03 PM EST up reply actions   0 recs

Caption

What’s he doing more of in the future, bunting or playing against the Astros?

E: George 4 (5, throw, throw, throw, throw).

by Jordan M on Nov 6, 2009 8:50 PM EST reply actions   0 recs

Just that there's the AL/NL thing,

but our manager is Ken Macha, and the Twins are pretty well known for their advocacy of bunting. So I think the Astros thing is a better bet.

E: George 4 (5, throw, throw, throw, throw).

by Jordan M on Nov 7, 2009 1:26 AM EST up reply actions   0 recs

Comments For This Post Are Closed


User Tools

We use numbers and stuff.
Community Guidelines
Why be a member?
Start posting on Beyond the Box Score »

Join SB Nation and dive into communities focused on all your favorite teams.

Connect_with_facebook

Cbs_fantasy_baseball_promo

FanPosts

Community blog posts and discussion.

Recommended FanPosts

Picture-2_small
Advanced Graphing Techniques Part 4 - Cluster Analysis in R
770insig_small
BoaB Billy Butler Division - Draft Rounds 20 to 25

Recent FanPosts

Patrick_willis_small
WAR Fantasy draft
Small
Is It No Longer Sonny In Tampa?
Limes_125_small
Help With 32 Questions Contest
Otto_-_image_adjusted_small
Good reasons for getting past the divided leagues era
Small
Nathan's Replacement
Rays_small
Chasing the Grail, Part Two
Rays_small
Chasing Sabermetric’s Holy Grail or, Another Stab at Estimating Catcher Defense
Loper_sports_small
Sabermetrics in Wikipedia Articles
Beanser-logo_small
H2H 30 Team Dynasty League needs owners

+ New FanPost All FanPosts >

FanShots

Quick hits of video, photos, quotes, chats, links and lists that you find around the web.

Recent FanShots

Dave Allen did this with home runs. I thought this might look cool for certain pitchers who had pinpoint command.
Irish Ballplayers -- Seems appropriate for today
Simpson's Paradox, Bert vs. Jack, and more sweet B-Ref splits

I've played fantasy baseball for many years. (My first team's rotation featured rookies Jason Bere and Aaron Sele.  Jay Buhner and Mo Vaughn anchored my lineup.) But I haven't played it well since 2003 or 2004.  My excuse?  Kids.

No, it's not that I fill my rosters with unproven youngsters.  It's that my wife and I have too many.  Too many to allow me the time necessary to have success in a competitive fantasy baseball league.

I've thought about hanging up my fantasy spikes but I really like playing it -not to win necessarily- but really just to keep an eye on good and great players from around baseball.  Players  like Adrian Gonzalez or Josh Johnson who of course come up on the each team's schedule sporadically throughout the summer but then seemingly disappear.  I like knowing about those guys and I like being able to talk to other baseball fans about those guys.  So I play fantasy baseball.  And I'm gonna continue to play.

...As long as at least two or three of you folks wanna join the rest of us in my new league: S(a.N.D)B.O.K.X. Fantasy Baseball.

The SAND is the tautologically redundant part of the acronym: Simple (and Not Difficult)

The BOKX explains just how simple (and not difficult) this league's scoring system will be: Based Only on Ks (strikeouts) and Xs (extra base hits).

* * * This league's scoring system has two only statistics: strikeouts and extra-base hits.* * *

Hopefully, this keeps things simple (and not difficult) and will thus require only a few minutes each week to seek out good hitters and good pitchers to replace not-quite-as-good pitchers and not-quite-as-good hitters.  (And hopefully, I'll have Ryan Howard on my team.)

We'll probably use only players from the National League and  unless things change for some reason, it'll be a points league. It's gonna be on Yahoo! so it'll be free and unless things change for some reason, we'll just be playing for bragging rights (and something to do).

I've had some help from Red Reporter's sabermetric higher-ups and I think I know how to weight things so that the NL's good, better and best strikeout pitchers are going to be worth roughly what the NL's good, better and best sluggers will be worth on draft day.  But I've never seen or heard of a league like this so I don't know quite what to expect and if anybody can think of any reason that this format might go beyond just being quirky and we'll like end up ripping a hole in the space/time continuum, help us out, eh?

So, if you wanna play and/or if you have any questions, let me know below.

We had the draft set for Wednesday, March 31st at 8:30pm EST.  But I'm almost certain that we're going to change that date. I think we'll need to settle on a date and a time and I think we'll need to do it sooner rather than later so as soon as we can get our ninth and tenth owners we'll restart that conversation.

I'm gonna go ahead and post an email address so that if there are any lurkers who wanna play they don't necessarily have to create an SBNation account in order to do so.  Just let me know what you're thinking: SANDBOKX.at.Gmail
Why Nathan's loss won't kill the Twins - ESPN TMI Blog
The Book -- Predicting the HR leader board
Spring Training Pitch FX Data
The All-CHONE Team
Think like a statistician – without the math
New "Sabermetrics Library" Feature: Free Online Course

+ New FanShot All FanShots >

BtB on Twitter

Main Feed: @BtBScore

Jeff: @jeffwzimmerman
Steve: @steve_sommer
Sky: @BtB_Sky
Dan: @dturkenk
Harry: @harrypav
Jinaz: @jinazreds
Jack: @jh_moore
Erik: @Erik_Manning
Tommy R: @trancel
Justin: @justinbopp

Subscribe to BtB via Email

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

BtB Goes Social

SBNation.com Recent Stories

Colorado Rockies Carlos Gonzalez, center, is congratulated by coaches and Troy Tulowitzki, right, after he scored in the third inning of a spring baseball game against the Chicago Cubs in Tucson, Ariz., on Monday, March 15, 2010. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski)

SB Nation's 2010 MLB Previews: Colorado Rockies, It Starts With The Arms

Texas Rangers manager Ron Washington, left, jokes with Kansas City Royals manager Trey Hillman before a spring training baseball game, Saturday, March 6, 2010, in Surprise, Ariz. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall) +2 updates

Rangers' Ron Washington Tested Positive For Cocaine, Players Rally Around Him

Members of the Arizona  Diamondbacks and Seattle Mariners benches rush onto the field during the altercation between Diamondbacks' Chris Synder  and Mariners' pitcher Cliff Lee during the third inning of a spring baseball game at Tucson Electric Park on  Monday, March 15, 2010 in Tucson, Ariz.   Lee was ejected for throwing at Snyder. (AP Photo/Arizona Daily Star, Jill Torrance) +6 updates

Spring Training News & Notes, 3/17: Catching Up With Everyone

More from SBNation.com >


Managers

Wbc_029_small Jeff Sullivan

Editors

Rawlings_baseball_bigger_small Dan Turkenkopf

Limes_125_small Sky Kalkman

770insig_small Jeff Zimmerman (TucsonRoyal)

Aviles_small Justin Bopp

Paige_small Satchel Price

Authors

Jinaz-reds-avatar_small JinAZ

Face_small Harry Pavlidis

Newavatar_small Matt Klaassen

1753738656_110919ebe9_o_small vivaelpujols

Ozzie_small erik

Big_pun--300x300_small Tommy Rancel

Adam_small adarowski

Redcap_small SFiercex4

St_louis_cardinals_ce1141_003263_small stevesommer05

Julio_teheran_2_small PWHjort

Cclogo_small Daniel Moroz