M's Still In on Jason Bay?
Q. With Cliff Lee and Brandon League, right now this ballclub has everything except ... what?
A: A cleanup hitter.
This club has:
- Two aces
- Talented BOR starters
- Lockdown relieving
- Great defense
- Two All-Star table-setters
- A lefty number 3 hitter
- Every position covered except LF
- Interesting hitters at the bottom of the lineup (Guti, Lopez, 1B, Griff)
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As you know, my preferred debating position is the one in which I'm right and everybody else is wrong. ;- )
Cyber-Seattle as an entity, amazingly, continues to root against the Mariners acquiring Bay to hit #4 in our lineup. Yes, I (and the Mariners) realize that Bay's defense is questionable, and that he hits right-handed. A couple of other things about him:
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The last five years -- excluding 2007 -- Bay has hit for +39 runs per season above average. Above replacement, that's +61 runs. Per season, kiddies. 10 runs is one win.
Back up the Hubble telescope, take a breath, and consider 60 runs above a good AAA hitter.
Here we are rooting against 30-60 runs, 3-5 wins in the AL West next year, because we'd feel terrible if somebody else got a better bargain than we did.
Is Bay going to cost the M's some other player they could otherwise afford? They have all their other players.
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After applying positional adjustments and (questionable) defensive adjustments, then Bay has been a 4.1 WAR player in 2005, 06, 08, and 09.
Last year, it was 3.5 after defensive penalties -- which Bill James, onsite for Boston, pronounced inaccurate. Cut the speedy* Bay's defensive penalty from -13 runs to -8 runs and you have a 4-WAR outfielder, hard on the barrelhead.
Disregard the defensive penalty and he's a 5-win player. But you can still give this guy a full -8 on defense and he's at 4 wins.
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You'd rather have a 1-win rookie out there, than a 4-5 win cleanup hitter, unless the guy takes $11m instead of $14m?
What is $3m to you? The M's payroll flexes to fit their vision. We're getting caught up wayyyyyy to much in $/WAR. We don't have hard-and-fast $260 budgets. Supposing you had $260 to spend on a roto roster, but I said you could have $270 if you rostered Jason Bay?
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=== SSI Bay Index ===
Jason Bay Update -- Bay lives in Bellevue and would love to play here. That means not only a value contract (be reasonable!) but even more clubhouse chemistry.
Jason Bay's lifetime OPS+ is 131. Them's the big leagues. And he gets hard RBI.
Jason Bay Thread -- Bay is very comparable to a faster Jay Buhner. He's righthand in Safeco, but you have to have a key righthand bat your lineup someplace. According to Shandler, Bay retains .320/.400/.600 upside.
Average and Correct Are Not Synonyms -- keep in perspective what it means to say, "on average, teams have been paying $14m for free agents with Jason Bay's production." Sometimes you pay more for a house than market 90-day sales averages, and sometimes you pay less. Neither is "correct" or "incorrect."
Jason Bay, This 'n That -- Bay's spectacular numbers against filthy-rich Yankees pitchers. In the Red Sox-Yankee rumbles, Bay was the first man front-and-center with an 18-inch chain.
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It's not clear to me why, "$3m more a year, we're hosed, $3m less a year, we're golden." That $3m is power lost in the gears anyway. The payroll is a variable, not a constant.
As Bill James said, I'm all for the players making some money, as opposed to the owners keeping it all. If Jason Bay doesn't come here, and the M's simply run a lower payroll, haven't we kind of lost sight of the point?
With Cliff Lee and Brandon League now, this team has absolutely everything except a cleanup hitter.