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Yeah if it's a move to bring in something big, certainly interesting. Or maybe it would be to replace 2b with Franklin or Ackley (both?) going out... I'd like that maybe a little better.
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Peralta rumors were received in Seattle about as well as a Stephen Pryor rib injury. As you know, Dr. D lives to serve. He likes to search for those light bulbs that the blog-o-sphere does not yet have on.
Apparently it does not yet have on the light bulb that says "Jhonny Peralta has as many WAR, the last three years, as does Giancarlo Stanton." And Joe Mauer, and Justin Upton, and a lot of guys like that.
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PRO
- Career batting line = 270/335/425 = American League slash line, exactly
- At shortstop, that's quite good, so ...
- ... WAR is 3.7 per year, last three years
- Hits lefties very well (.460 SLG career, and ... wait for it ... .560 SLG last year)
- Has upside at the plate ... a .300/.350/.500 season is perfectly feasible
- Probably will be relatively cheap (tops out at 3/$30M according to MLBTR)
- Would replace Brad Miller* or Kyle Seager
- Has "star power"
- Defensive metrics are solid lately
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CON
- BABIP has varied crazily, and more towards luck than not luck
- Could conceivably be placed in LF, which would cause Dr. D to run out screaming into the night
- Defense gets questioned
- Subtract anything at all from 270/335/425, and at 3B, that's a lousy player
- Brad Miller is (probably) already as good a hitter as Peralta ... or better
- Entering age 32
- Would replace Brad Miller* or Kyle Seager
- etc
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BaseballHQ
How does Dr. D organize his thinking about this player? Ron Shandler nailed this one. Before the 2013 season, Ron said, lightly paraphrased:
- AVG in 2011 (and 2013 - drd) was aided by BABIP, but then 2012 was zapped by BABIP ... xAVG shows the truth (= only .254 - drd)
- Power production has been suppressed at times by fly ball % and hr/f, which bounce back to normal...
- Regression to the mean (from 2012's bad luck - drd) will bump up his performance in 2013.
- He's a solid, if unspectacular, player at a scarce position.
In other words, Peralta's AVG has been deceptively high at times, but his HR's and 2B's have been deceptively low at times. He's a money hitter, not a great one, but a good one, and at shortstop that's got a lot of value.
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Aging: Peralta is actually young for a free agent.
Dr. D would not dismiss lightly his chances to hit the wall. His EYE is ticking down and his platoon splits are going up. That could be noise, or it could be what happens to a lot of 32-year-old shortstops.
Let's table that one for a bit...
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Dr's R/X
My own regard for Jhonny Peralta, as a Seattle Mariner, would depend on his playing SS or 3B.
In 2013, Zduriencik was obviously electro-shocked into aversion by the M's vulnerability to LHP's. If Peralta is being brought in to OPS+ 100, in left field, SSI would call that a panic reaction to the M's lefthandedness. If you can't find a 100 OPS+ out of your system to play corner outfield, you got bigger problems than we can solve. Whatever the M's fancy-pants internal numbers, there is nothing there that could justify Peralta in LF to me.
3B isn't as weird as it sounds. Peralta has real good hands, questionable range, and could be a Gold Glover at 3B. He could easily be a 3-4 WAR player there, as he could at SS.
The proprietary info we do NOT have: what is the trade market for Miller and Seager? If one of them brings back Cliff Lee or David Price or Giancarlo Stanton or similar, and you replace with Peralta, then ... I'm down.
BABVA,
Dr D
Comments
2
Actually an equally pertinent question is if you would trade Nick Franklin for him (and whoever Franklin brought in return). Bump Seager to 2B, where his bat increases in value, and stick Peralta at 3rd. What do Franklin and ERam get you, then?
I'm not in on any of this, unless we've got a Price coming our way, BTW. But a Franklin swap seems more likely than Seager....and as likely as Miller.
Thinking about it, I'm not sure we need Peralta (and the $10M cost), even in a Franklin/ERam (or some such pitcher) trade. The odds are probably better than 50/50 that one of Ackley/Romero/Taylor is a better hitter than Peralta next year, anyway. We've got options abounding.
Spend the 10-large on something more valuable. Something we don't have.
moe
3
Olney says the Peralta is looking for "huge" money. "Much" more than 3 years, $45 million. Ouch.
4
Signing Peralta is the opposite of handing Dustin Ackley and Justin Smok starting jobs for 2-3 years with no backup plan. Build depth, create competition, rest guys with no dropoff. As much as we love Miller and Franklin, neither are super established. What happens if one crashes and burns ala Ackley next year? Would love some insurance in that case. If everybody tears it up, GREAT! Now you have 4 to make 3. Seager could use a day off now and again. One of the 4 should be able to play 20 or 30 games at 1B if Smoak is still there.
Let's try the "too many good players, not enough positions" game for a change.
Again, look at the Seahawks:
Fan: "Well we have Rice, Tate, Baldwin, Kearse at WR. That's a good young group. If Tate and Kearse take another step up we're set!......"
John Schneider: (taps chin)..... "Right........ Let's add Percy Harvin to the mix."
Fan: --- speechless, eyes wide with excitement -----
No, I'm not saying Peralta is as good at baseball as Harvin is at football. I'm saying signing him or a similar infielder would create competition and depth somewhere that appears thin, to me, in 2014, 2015. Not counting on Ackley, Romero, Taylor.
5
. . . boy, that hurts! Peralta is only good as a chess move - a step toward moving somebody else to get somebody great. And he only works for 3B. I think he's a disaster with the glove at short, and not a special bat in LF. But he's defintely a hotterish kinda guy.