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Monday, February 25, 2008

Looking Ahead to 2008 - Alex Rodriguez

Alex Rodriguez opted out of his contract with the Yankees during the World Series. For a few weeks it looked like his time with the Yankees was over and the team would have a huge hole to fill at third base.

What happened after that is open to several interpretations. The market seemingly did not bear what Rodriguez's agent Scott Boras had promised him, so he initiated contact with the Yankees who had made bold proclamations that if Rodriguez had opted out, they would not re-sign him. From there the Yankees and Rodriguez negotiated, allegedly without Boras and Rodriguez was brought back on a ten year contract.

It is my opinion that Rodriguez put the blame on Boras to help him get some of the egg off his face after what was a PR disaster. Boras works for Rodriguez, it's not the other way around.

Frankly, none of that really matters in the big picture. Business is business, and I have no problems with Rodriguez using the opt-out clause that was negotiated into his contract, although I will admit I was pretty pissed when he first opted out.

The Yankees are a much better team with Rodriguez than without him. If Rodriguez performs well, all this contract stuff should end up being a non-issue although it's doubtful the media will let it go away if at all possible. We've reset the A-Rod cover counter for 2008, but for 2007 Rodriguez made the front or back page of the NY Post and NY Daily News 137 separate times. Let's see if he can top that in 2008.

2007
By just about any objective measure, Rodriguez was the best player in baseball last season. How good was Rodriguez? His lowest OPS at any point in the season was .976, which was his OPS after three games. That was the only day that his OPS was under 1, and the last day of the season that his OPS was under 1.022.

Here's how Rodriguez performed compared to his projections going into 2007.

2007	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	HBP	AVG	OBP	SLG	BR/650
Avg Projection	650	557	107	162	26	1	34	110	15	4	81	127	10	.292	.390	.529	108
Actual	708	583	143	183	31	0	54	156	24	4	95	120	21	.314	.422	.645	136
% Diff	9%	5%	22%	3%	8%	-100%	45%	31%	46%	-3%	7%	-14%	102%	8%	8%	22%	26%

The percentage differences for everything except PA and AB are on a rate basis. Rodriguez was disgraceful, hitting no triples despite being projected to hit one in what was clearly a disappointing season.

I kid of course. Rodriguez blew away his projections. He hit 22 pts higher than projected on batting average, hit 45% more HRs on a rate basis, walked 7% more frequently and struck out 14% less frequently (this was key IMO). He stole more bases than expected, and he provided 26% more offense according to linear weights on a rate basis. Rodriguez illustrates one of the major limitations with projection systems, they just aren't designed to handle the outliers.

Rodriguez was also able to get the "unclutch" monkey off his back, by hitting several key game-winning HRs in the ninth inning.
April 7 vs. Chris Ray
April 19 vs. Joe Borowski
June 3 vs. Jon Papelbon

Rodriguez hit .318/.448/.776 with runners in scoring position and two outs. He hit .357/.439/.686 in Late & Close situations (PA in the 7th or later with the batting team tied, ahead by one, or the tying run at least on deck.). His worst split? When the margin of the game was greater than four runs (.218/.375/.540).

Unfortunately, Rodriguez had another disappointing post-season as the Yankees were eliminated in four games by Cleveland in the ALDS. He didn't hit particularly poorly overall thanks to a two hit game in Game 4 including a HR, but he got some grief regardless. Anyone that says that losing the ALDS was Rodriguez's fault is being foolish, but he didn't help as much as he could have.

Offense
2007 is over and done, so what can we look for in 2008? Thanks to last season, all the projection systems expect better from Rodriguez at age 32 than they did in heading into his age 31 season.

Projection	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	HBP	AVG	OBP	SLG	BRAA	BRAR
chone	653	551	124	167	25	1	47	123	16	4	88	122	14	.303	.412	.608	51	67
marcel	621	525	108	157	26	1	36	116	17	4	79	118	12	.299	.399	.558	39	54
pecota	684	572	120	169	34	2	36	116	23	4	94	130	11	.294	.401	.550	43	59
zips	698	590	127	180	30	1	44	151	16	3	93	132	15	.305	.413	.583	51	68
cairo	689	581	123	174	27	1	43	129	19	4	90	128	14	.299	.403	.570	46	63
average	669	564	121	169	28	1	41	127	18	4	89	126	13	.300	.406	.574	46	62

For more information on the projections being used here, you can look at the first entry in this series.

Rodriguez projects to be somewhere between 5 to 7 wins better than a replacement level 3B in 2008, on average around 6 wins better. CAIRO lines up fairly well with the other projections, sort of in the middle. Here's how CAIRO sees Rodriguez's range of projections.

CAIRO %	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	HBP	AVG	OBP	SLG	BRAA	BRAR
80%	689	581	135	187	33	2	49	140	24	2	99	117	18	.322	.442	.639	68	85
65%	689	581	129	181	30	1	46	134	21	3	95	122	16	.311	.422	.604	57	74
Baseline	689	581	123	174	27	1	43	129	19	4	90	128	14	.299	.403	.570	46	63
35%	689	581	118	167	25	0	39	123	17	5	85	134	12	.288	.384	.536	35	51
20%	689	581	112	161	22	0	36	117	15	6	80	139	10	.277	.365	.501	24	40

Rodriguez is so good that even the 80% projection doesn't seem that unrealistic. His 20% projection would be considered disappointing but it would STILL be 4 wins better than a replacement level 3B. This is a great player, and he's going to be a Yankee for the next ten years, so for the vocal minority that still dislikes him, WTF is wrong with you? To quote the great Ric Flair:

Whether you like it, or you don't like it, learn to love it, because it's the best thing going today.

The sooner the Yankee fans who dislike Rodriguez embrace him, the sooner they'll get to enjoy the play of the best player on the team.

Defense
Lost in the monstrous season by Rodriguez offensively was the fact that he played much better defense as well. He ended the season a smidgen above average by zone rating, but he was actually pretty solidly above average most of the season. On July 23 Rodriguez's zone rating was .821 compared to the AL average of .765 and he had made around 14 plays more than an average AL 3B, which was roughly equivalent to saving 11 runs above average to that point and 19 runs over 162 games. Over the remaining 57 games Rodriguez's zone rating was only .669 and he made somewhere around 11 plays fewer than average. To my eyes he didn't seem to play any worse in the second half although he made 7 errors over 130 chances as opposed to 6 errors over his first 240 chances, so he may have just faced harder opportunities. Still, overall it was a nice rebound after a couple of pretty bad defensive seasons.

Year	Pos	GP	Innings	PO	A	E	DP	PM	CH	ZR	PMAA	RSAA	RSAA/162
2004	3B	155	1364	100	262	13	25	286	364	.786	14	11	12
2005	3B	161	1385	115	288	12	26	321	436	.736	-15	-12	-13
2006	3B	151	1288	96	262	24	24	289	390	.741	-10	-8	-9
2007	3B	154	1330	106	251	13	30	283	370	.765	2	1	1
Projection		155	1334	104	262	16	27	292	387	.755	-4	-3	-4

Between his below average play in 2005 and 2006 and the fact that he's going to be another year older, I project Rodriguez to be about 3-4 runs below average in 2008. I think his bat can carry that though...

Baserunning
Not only can Rodriguez hit well and field passably, he's an outstanding baserunner too. By Lee Panas's bases gained above average, Rodriguez gained 11.8 bases above average on hits, 2.7 on grounders, 2.5 on fly outs, and another 11.1 on other situations. Good for 28.1 total BGAA, which ranked sixth in the AL. I'd regress that some for 2008 and say a conservative projection would be something like +15.

Value
Well, Rodriguez has the biggest contract in baseball history. Is he worth it?

Value	Runs	Wins
Offense	62	6.2
Defense	-3	-0.3
Baserunning	4	0.4
Overall Value	63	6.3
2008 Value (in millions)		27.2
2008 Salary (in millions)		27.0
Difference		0.2

At least for 2008, Rodriguez's compensation is in line with his projection of being 6.3 wins above replacement level overall. His contract is going to start looking worse as he gets older and further away from his peak, although inflation will help to mitigate that at least partially. I also tend to think that a linear look at value penalizes a star player like Rodriguez. What I mean by that is in theory a pair of three win players are as valuable as one six win player on paper, but the fact that Rodriguez only takes up one roster spot to get you those six wins has some inherent value as well, especially for a large revenue team.

Conclusion
As a fan, I really looked forward to Rodriguez's at-bats last season. It's hard to put it in words, but there was something cool about the anticipation watching the people in front of Rodriguez doing whatever they could to get on base to set up the big guy in the cleanup spot to do his magic, and he did it all year. This is a Hall of Famer who may have just had the best season of his career at age 31 and he should continue to be the best player on the team for the next few years. More than any player on the team, Rodriguez will be the difference between the Yankees making or missing the playoffs. Let's hope he can stay healthy, and let's hope the rest of the team can contribute to get them to the playoffs. From there, maybe Rodriguez will have the postseason that he probably needs to have to FINALLY get accepted as a Yankee.

Plug Time
Francis Gasparini, bka fgasparini in the comments section here pointed me to his podcast called Widely Ranging Interests, which can be accessed at widelyranginginterests.com. It's not about baseball, but there is more to life than baseball, isn't there?