Overpaid?
Posted by SBG on Monday, January 29th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
The other day I was perusing the Baseball Prospectus PECOTA cards and I happened across Torii Hunter's card. The PECOTA cards have a statistic called MORP, which is Marginal Value Above Replacement Player. As first introduced here with an hilarious mea culpa on the Cristian Guzman signing by the Nats, MORP is a market value assigned to a player based on their Wins Above Replacment Player value or WARP in view of the going rate.
In 2007, MORP is calculated as 1,200,000*(WARP^1.5) + 380,000. Guess what Torii Hunter's MORP is.
Give up?
Hunter's MORP is $12,550,000 for 2007. In other words, according to BP, Torii Hunter will be slightly underpaid in 2007. Torii Hunter lovers, your buddy is a small bargain. And when I say small, I mean small.
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Torii is just a risky investment as veterans go. I don't know that much about foot injuries, but it seems within the realm of possibility that Hunter could basically come back at full health--whatever you might have expected from the 2005 model, but two years older and without injuries. Looking at Torii's card, PECOTA thinks anywhere from about 350 to 600 PA is possible, and that seems reasonable to me. If Hunter stays healthy, and he's as fast as he thinks he is out there, he's a tremendous asset to the team. If he gets hurt, or struggles to play through injury, then there's a large chunk of the payroll giving us basically nothing in return.
There's also the contract year effect (which I think exists, but is fairly small.) It wouldn't shock me if Hunter hit .290/.340/.500 next year. Given that Gardenhire is filling out the lineup card, we're likely looking at a Castillo/Punto/Mauer/Cuddyer/Morneau/Hunter/Kubel/White/Bartlett lineup. I could see White/Hunter flip-flopping depending on who is healthy or the flavor of the month. Also, with JB hitting 9th, I guess it could go Hunter/White/Kubel at the end, and Kubel would still be surrounded by righties, so I suppose that's probably slightly more likely. Anyway, I'll take .290/.340/.500 from the sixth spot in the order, especially when it's coming from a CF with plus defense. That is a fairly optimistic projection on Hunter, but there's a non-zero chance of this thing going right.
Call me crazy, but right now I'd say that the starting nine's offense is a strength of this team. What's likely to be the biggest drag on the offense is that it has almost zero depth. If White, Kubel, Cuddyer, or Hunter gets injured, we're looking at a lot of Jason Tyner and Lew Ford. Obviously, the drop-off if Mauer or Morneau gets injured is gigantic. If Castillo, Punto, or Bartlett gets injured, we're looking at a lot of Jeff Cirillo or maybe some combo of Alejandro Machado and/or Luis Rodriguez.
Here's to hoping the trainer gets very bored this season.
Ubelmann rules.
I can live with a lot of Jeff Cirillo if LNP breaks his wrist sliding head-first into first. Or if LNP has to move to second because Castillo blows his head gasket and has to be towed in for repairs. But the threat of Ken Man-at-Arms or the CrawDaddy at first base is downright frightening. Hide the women and children in that event!
(Obviously?) Cirillo ought to be taking over at first base if there's an injury there. Somehow the folks at BP thought it would be appropriate to forecast him at DH. There's a head scratcher. I really don't know how they decide what position to forecast guys at sometimes. Cirillo is pretty much the first guy off the bench in the case of any injury. If JB goes down, Punto goes to SS, and Cirillo goes to 3B. If Castillo goes down, Punto goes to 2B and Cirillo goes to 3B (or maybe he can play some 2B?). If Morneau or Punto go down, he subs in directly for them.
Anyway, the thought of Ken Harvey getting 100+ AB for the Twins this year is truly frightening.
Ok, I've got issues. "MORP"? How does Marginal Value Above Replacement Player == "MORP". MVARP, baby!
I hear you brother.
They needed it to rhyme with VORP for branding purposes.
And WARP.
Now you say that Hunter will be slightly underpaid this season, but is that only in terms of this offseason's market? Because if that's the case, then he's probably getting paid twice what he's worth.
That was kind of my point. But, I've decided to let the whole Hunter thing go with one last "see, he really is being paid too much money"
I thought you're pointing out that he is getting paid fair market value for this season, although it's still not in the Twins' best interest to pay fair market value for a player like Torii Hunter at this point. Now I feel like I'm missing something.