There was a real honest-to-goodness thunderstorm in Seattle last night. This pretty much never happens in Seattle, and the low rumble of that thunder was music to this Midwestern boy's ears. I should have expected something major was changing...
To cut to the chase, I think that swapping Carlos Gomez for J.J. Hardy is perfectly reasonable in and of itself, but I can't stand what this means about Delmon Young's place on the team.
First off, J.J. Hardy vs. Carlos Gomez. Both are up-the-middle players, so at least Bill Smith didn't totally hose us again by ditching up-the-middle talent for some corner players. And playing league-average SS is actually worth about 5 runs more than league-average CF over a full season (say 150 games and 600 PA.)
I don't know that either player is really more likely to miss time due to injury than the other, so I'll estimate their team-controlled playing time as follows:
2010 - 145G/550PA
2011 - 140G/525PA
2012 - 135G/500PA (just Gomez, Hardy is a FA in 2012)
2013 - 130G/475PA (just Gomez, Hardy is a FA in 2012)
Those are rough, but right-now-at-this-very-moment, we have to figure their expected playing time to drop off because each next season makes it more likely that they've developed a chronic injury or had a freak catastrophic injury in the past.
Defensively, by UZR, Gomez has been worth +14 runs/150G in his career and Hardy has been worth +11 runs/150G in his career. Both have likely peaked defensively*, so I figure their future performance might be something like:
Gomez:
2010 - +13 R/150G
2011 - +12 R/150G
2012 - +11 R/150G
2013 - +10 R/150G
Hardy:
2010 - +10 R/150G
2011 - +9 R/150G
*Defense tends to peak a lot earlier than hitting does.
That's mostly guesswork, since I don't know much work done on defensive aging, but it's generally difficult to get around regression to the mean. If anything, I would guess that both players should probably be projected to regress more towards the mean.
Now, how are they going to hit? Well, here are some career numbers:
.286 wOBA, -39.4 wRAA, 1102 PA, -21.5 wRAA/600PA -- Carlos Gomez
.325 wOBA, -6.6 wRAA, 2298 PA, -1.7 wRAA/600PA -- J.J. Hardy
So Hardy has been a much, much, much better hitter than Gomez. 2 wins/year on offense is nothing to sneeze at. I'm inclined to give Gomez the benefit of the doubt to some degree, because he seems to have good bat speed and is no less lost at the plate than Hunter was at his age. If someone got him to totally ignore the bunt game, I think it's not unreasonable that Gomez could eventually evolve into a .260/.300/.410 hitter. That ain't great, but it's only a touch worse than Hardy has been. Of course, I see that more as Gomez's ceiling and a reason to believe that he could improve greatly, not that he will improve.
I tend to think that Hardy has more or less shown us what he can do at the plate and is equally likely to do better or worse than his career numbers over the next couple of years. Was last year an awful sign? Well, let's look at his PrOPS line (which adjusts a hitter's line based on his batted ball types--line drives, pop ups, etc.--to see what he "should" have hit) from last year against his actual line and his career line:
.229/.302/.357 -- Hardy, 2009
.251/.321/.394 -- Hardy, 2009 PrOPS
.262/.323/.428 -- Hardy, career
I look at those numbers and more or less figure that Hardy was kind of unlucky on his batted-ball outcomes last year and is pretty likely to bounce back to his career hitting numbers, especially since he's 2-3 years away from age 30.
So my rough hitting estimations for these two guys go like:
Gomez:
2010 -- -20 wRAA/600PA
2011 -- -18 wRAA/600PA
2012 -- -16 wRAA/600PA
2013 -- -15 wRAA/600PA
Hardy:
2010 -- -2 wRAA/600PA
2011 -- -2 wRAA/600PA
We'll put replacement level at 20 runs per 150 games, SS at +7.5 runs per 150 games and CF at +2.5 runs per 150 games. Throw it all in a blender and we get the following:
| Gomez | ||||||
| Year | Fielding | Hitting | Positional | Replacement | Total | WAR |
| 2010 | 12.6 | -18.3 | 2.4 | 19.3 | 16 | 1.6 |
| 2011 | 11.2 | -15.8 | 2.3 | 18.7 | 16 | 1.6 |
| 2012 | 9.9 | -13.3 | 2.3 | 18.0 | 17 | 1.7 |
| 2013 | 8.7 | -11.9 | 2.2 | 17.3 | 16 | 1.6 |
| Hardy | ||||||
| Year | Fielding | Hitting | Positional | Replacement | Total | WAR |
| 2010 | 9.7 | -1.8 | 7.3 | 19.3 | 34 | 3.4 |
| 2011 | 8.4 | -1.8 | 7.0 | 18.7 | 32 | 3.2 |
That gives us 6.5 WAR for Gomez over the next four years and 6.6 WAR for Hardy over the next four years. Of course, Hardy's projection kills Gomez's in yearly value, 3.3 WAR/year to 1.6 WAR/year.
Now we need to talk dollars and cents, because as we were unkindly reminded (again) this year, the Twins operate with a finite budget. Projecting future salaries, I figure roughly:
Gomez $$$ (based somewhat on what Cuddyer's made so far):
2010 -- $0.5M
2011 -- $1.0M
2012 -- $3.0M
2013 -- $5.0M
Hardy $$$:
2010 -- $7M
2011 -- $10M
At $4M/win*, 6.5 wins is worth $26M. So in net value while under team control we have:
Net Value -- Dude
+$16.5M -- Gomez
+$9.5M -- Hardy
*It has been more like $4.5-5M/win on the free agent market lately, but I expect the recession to reduce the total number of dollars chasing a fixed number of free agent wins.
In terms of net value per year, we have:
2010: +$6.0M -- Gomez, +$6.5M -- Hardy
2011: +$5.5M -- Gomez, +$3.0M -- Hardy
2012: +$3.5M -- Gomez
2013: +$1.5M -- Gomez
Now, maximizing wins/dollar isn't everything. It's really important, but if you're going to win a championship, at some point you're going to need some above-average players. J.J. Hardy is above average and Carlos Gomez is not. The Twins have essentially invested $7M in concentrating 6-7 wins over two years instead of four. That strikes me as a reasonable sum to spend on that trade-off, although it would be a lot harder to justify if the Twins had any kind of depth at all in the middle infield. As it stands, the Twins now have two middle infielders above replacement level: J.J. Hardy and Nick Punto. So I think that this is a fair deal for the Twins, but I'm not exactly doing cartwheels in the street, either.
Personally, I thought that having Gomez around made the game a little more fun than it should have been, so I'm going to miss that, but at some point it seems that the Twins kind of gave up on his odds of improving at the plate, so I'm happy to see him move to an organization where they'll hopefully give him a full-time job to improve as a hitter.
Of course, a big part of the reason I'm not doing cartwheels in the street is because we have committed to playing this guy in LF for the foreseeable future:
Just realized we just got my youngest son a Carlos Gomez T-shirt last month. It's red, his favorite color. I'm not sure how he's going to react when he finds out about the trade, which hopefully won't be until next spring. I don't have the heart to tell him.
Excellent piece; sums up my (mixed) feelings perfectly. Hardy is a worthwhile player-and certainly helps strengthen a weakness for the Twins. The real concern now is the outfield defense, which is so limited in range with Young and Cuddyer flanking Span. Not going to be helpful for guys like Slowey and Baker.
I can't say I'm unhappy about this deal, though. Gotta try to win when you can, and Hardy should be better over the next two seasons than Gomez. Hopefully, the purse strings remain loosened.
The worst part is with Baker having no heart and Slowey no out pitch, those fly balls will be dropping in all over the place.
In all seriousness, I'm right there with everyone on the mixed feelings. I do feel better about having Hardy at short than pretty much anyone else they've tried recently. Strangely, this trade will enable me to see Gomez play even more. (provided he plays.)
I see two sides to this, the "what if I was baseball dictator" perspective and the "assume Gardy and Bill Smith are who they are" one. In the latter view, the Twins have turned a half-time defensive specialist and Orlando Cabrera into JJ Hardy. One guy didn't figure to play his way into a full-time starting role and the other would have been a full-time starting liability on both sides of the ball (though more so defensively). If Gomez is only playing half the innings in CF because Gardy doesn't value his glove enough, then the likely value from his defensive contribution is significantly less than the theoretical value.
So, in the "realistic things the Twins might have done" category, I think this is a pretty good move.
In the "baseball dictator" category, I would have preferred trading Perkins + someone for him.
You might as well just come clean and admit it was "Perkins + elm'n".
I'm going to repeat what I've already said. Player's of near Gomez's caliber are readily available. Defensive CF's that can't hit. Joey Gathright, DeWayne Wise, Felix Pie. If you believe Gomez was going to turn a corner, then this might come out even. If you think he won't ever figure things out than the Twins did a great job.
Player's of Hardy's caliber are much harder to come by.
FWIW, Gomez was 14th in the majors in UZR/150 among CFers with 350+ innings in 2009, at 10.0. Nyjer Morgan, anyone? (as long as we are dreaming) :-)
350 innings is an awfully small sample size for UZR. Of those 13 players ahead of him, only 4 have a better career UZR/150G. And three of those have less than a full season of data. Really, the only CF who seems clearly better than Gomez right now is Franklin Gutierrez.
Players of Hardy's caliber are harder to come by, but that's also why we're taking on salary in this deal and getting fewer years out of Hardy. And +1.6-win players aren't that easy to find. There were only 5.8 such players per team last year.
Joey Gathright, DeWayne Wise, Felix Pie.
Gathright's going to be worse than Gomez offensively and defensively next year.
Wise will be worse offensively and defensively than Gomez.
Pie took two players for the Orioles to acquire--he's not free talent.
Pie took two BAD players to acquire. Garret Olson and H. Williamson. This would have been the equivalent to Philip Humber and Billy Bullock. Not really much of a cost. Gomez-types are out there.
For what the Twins were going to use him, Gomez had little value.
In trades, it doesn't matter whether you think the players are good, it matters whether the other team thinks that the players are good. The Cubs certainly saw something in Olson and Williamson that made them take a look.
Hendry's an idiot for having made that deal, but just demonstrates that it didn't take much to get Pie.
And I think Pie last offseason and Gomez now are good comps.
There's also the matter of projection, and I think that Gomez seems a lot more likely to add power than essentially any of the players you've listed. I'm not holding my breath, but it's not out of the question. He seems more likely than a lot of the no-hit candidates to potentially turn into a hitter like Hunter, Soriano, or Beltre--someone with an absolutely terrible approach and a low OBP who manages a decent average and good power. Not that useful if you're bad at defense, but pretty darn good if you can play defense. So in that sense, Gomez is a high risk, high reward player (because of the defense), whereas a lot of the no-hit, all-glove players clearly have no future as a hitter and are generally very limited.
Fair enough. The Twins (and I) don't believe he will reach that potential. The Brewers believe he might.
I know you were all wondering about this, and the answer is yes: J.J. Ballgame did make an appearance on The Young and the Restless.
And yes, this does make me feel better about the trade. Ubes, I hope it makes you feel better too.
Sadly, it doesn't make me feel much better about the trade. Although I suppose it does mean that we might be able to make soap-opera related jabs about Hardy during the season, which could provide as much as 1/20th the comedic value we get out of Gomez each year. So that's a start.
Only fair since I harped on the defense, here's the rough defensive difference because of the trade:
SS -5.5 to ~10 for +15
CF +4.3 to ~-3 for -7
LF -10.8 to ~-15 for -5
That's a +3, so essentially even. I don't know where Punto is going to play though. I assume at 2B now, where I estimate he's a +3 defender. Last year the Twins got -11.1 from 2B, so there's a +14 on top of the estimated +3 overall net gain. So, there's a decent possibility of improvement.
I forgot to add that I'm assuming the subs are average defenders. Not the case mostly, so I guess knock off five runs for the subs being bad.
I tend to think that, based on Punto's UZR data, he's probably closer to a +10 SS and a +10 2B than he is to being a +18 SS and +4 2B. From a scouting perspective, I can't think of any reason that Punto would be worse at 2B than SS.
I agree, just was going by the data. Others have posited that 3B ~= 2B and he's a +15-20 for his career there. Maybe having a set position will help him post better numbers.
I wonder if UZR adjust for ball-hogging. Punto might look worse at 2B if the SS is calling him off on pop-ups. Also, how many pop-ups did he get at 3B because Santana was pitching to a RHB? Part of the disparity could be that Twins pitching could have been somewhat more effective against RHB than LHB while Punto was on the diamond, but that's kind of tough to say.
A bit (PDF). There are problems with how it does it though.
it depends on who the 4th OF becomes. I still see Gardy doing the late inning Delmon substitutions frequently.
I was talking about the infield mostly, since the Twins still have bench infielders while I don't know who the 4th/5th OF will be. Kubel is probably the "4th" OF, and he's terrible in the field. That leaves.. Pridie? Absolutely no idea how he's going to do, so assuming average seems acceptable. So maybe the -5 was too optimistic.
I want to bring attention to your arbitration figures for a second. I think you may have both under shot Gomez and over shot Hardy. Which we are talking small amounts, but since much of your conclusion is based on net value I thought I would raise my concers. Looking at last year's super twos I think Gomez is going to get in the neighborhood of $1M. If this is the case, then his arb progression will probably be something more like 1-2.5-4-6.5, totaling 14M vs the 9.5 you've listed.
Regarding Hardy, your arbitration figures may be fairly accurate, but I will take the under on compensation over the next two years. If only by 1.5 M.
Also, much of the reason the Twins felt they could do this deal is because of their OF prospects. Two years from now, Ben Revere may be the CF going into Spring Training. At least they think he may. I'm much less than confident.
I had completely forgotten that the Brewers had just traded away their own Gomez (this is now what I'm referring to ++ glove, -- bat players). In fact they traded a 26 year old Gomez, Tony Gwynn Jr for 31 year old Gomez, Jody Gerut.
Jody Gerut has a career wOBA of .330. He's done well in SSS in CF, but I'm skeptical since he's been average-ish in the corners. Sort of the opposite of Gomez.
Tony Gwynn Jr is closer to Gomez's skillset, a .298 wOBA and a 8.4 UZR/150 in CF. Again SSS for CF, though.
Gomez has, in a larger SS, a much better UZR/150. Finding good glove, no hit players isn't that hard, yes. Finding elite glove and no hit is a bit trickier. Gomez has been the second best CFer the last two years. That isn't fungible. Looking over the list, There aren't many comparables to Gomez. Adam Jones maybe? Similar ages, but Gomez is the better fielder. Maybe Cameron circa 1997-8, but he was the better hitter in 1997.
Two years ago, when we signed Adam Everett, I told people who complained to me about it that there is a difference between Nick Punto at shortstop and Adam Everett at shortstop - one is good and the other is elite. Of course, in that case Everett's shoulder was still tattered so we didn't benefit from that eliteness, but the theory is the same here. Gomez is a different level defensively from every other crappy outfielder that Milt seems to think is his equal - Gwynn, Gathright, Wise, they're all worse. Good glove, no hit players are out there, but elite glove players of Gomez's level are not.
People are tossing around UZR projections like it's a consistent, predictable value, and I'm not buying that. Defensive measurements often do fluctuate wildly from year to year; look at Torii Hunter or Mike Cameron for just a pair of examples of heralded defensive CF's whose UZR numbers are anything but consistent. Or Vernon Wells! Do yourself a favor, and LOOK at Vernon Wells' UZR history. I can accept the measurements as an indication of past performance, but that's it.
I agree with Milt that good-glove/no-stick CF's are relatively easy to get at little cost; and even rangy CF's who actually can contribute at the plate don't seem quite like a rare, exotic species, either--just sometimes more expensive, if you have to buy from the FA market. Fortunately, the Twins have a qualified replacement for Gomez, already on the roster. But if Smith needs to find a rangy utility OF as backup, it shouldn't be a big deal.
I expect that Span will do fine as the regular CF. And if Young needs to be replaced, finding a decent LF is supposedly one of the most common commodities around, isn't it?
If Smith wants to replace DY this winter, fine by me; Young has had a couple years, and has only regressed. But if the club wants to give him one last chance in the first half of next season, OK with me as well. Living with a problem in LF for another 2-3 months to start next season isn't the worst thing imaginable. I'm not going to get too worked up about the Delmon Young issue unless he's just sucked for another year and the club still shows no inclination to fix the problem for 2011.
Meanwhile, I'd say that Smith killed two birds with one stone today: he upgraded the middle infield, and all he had to do to make it happen was give up one of the worst players on the team. Huzzah!
Offensive projections often do fluctuate wildly from year-to-year. That's why we look at a hitter's entire body of work and not just a season or two. When I did my predictions, I looked at each player's entire defensive history.
Or Vernon Wells! Do yourself a favor, and LOOK at Vernon Wells' UZR history.
Or Nick Punto! Do yourself a favor and LOOK at Nick Punto's wRAA history. What a worthless statistic! He has wild, unpredictable shifts of 15-30 runs per year! Offense is totally unknowable!!!!!!! WE HAVE NO IDEA!!!!!
Wells' history isn't even that crazy. Look at his 3-year UZR/150G averages:
-5.1
-1.1
+7.8
+3.3
-5.7
-14.6
Yeah, it fluctuates around some. Welcome to life. Defense fluctuates just like everything else in baseball. And Wells has played a lot of innings on turf, so it shouldn't be especially surprising that his performance is slipping.
all he had to do to make it happen was give up one of the worst players on the team
Just like Franklin Gutierrez was one of the worst players for the Indians in 2008? After all, he wasn't that hot at the plate, struck out a lot, and was good in the field. Dime a dozen.
Players worse than Gomez in 2009:
Jose Morales
Orlando Cabrera
Brian Buscher
Mike Redmond
Matt Tolbert
Brendan Harris
Delmon Young
Alexi Casilla
Jose Mijares
Matt Guerrier
Jesse Crain
Bobby Keppel
Jeff Manship
Ron Mahay
Luis Ayala
Anthony Swarzak
Kevin Mulvey
Philip Humber
Armando Gabino
Juan Morillo
R.A. Dickey
Sean Henn
Craig Breslow
So yeah, Gomez was definitely one of the worst players on the team.
let's get back to the core of FW's comment, please. What do we know about the stability of UZR/150 (for example) compared to offensive metrics? Is there a fielding forecaster comparable to Zips (or other offensive forecasters), and how well do they in fact perform?
I think those are very fair questions.
Like many others, I liked and dreaded Go-Go. He's exciting, talented and frustrating as hell. I'm not convinced that his supposedly "elite" glove in CF actually makes much difference, but that's due to ignorance more than analysis on my part.
finally, let's keep our eyes on the prize. The millstone of _elm_n is still around our necks. I think we can all agree that that is less than optimal.
I think those are very fair questions.
Your questions are fair questions. What is not fair is pointing at one or two sets of data in a sea of thousands of players saying "LOOK! LOOK! Let's draw a conclusion from this anecdote!"
The number that everyone points at is that the average UZR over the last three years correlates to the next year's UZR about as well as a year of, say, OPS correlates to the next year's OPS. It's useful data and should be ignored at one's own peril.
Also, I don't generally like using correlation coefficient to compare the reliability of the two stats. I could be mistaken on this (I haven't sat down to work it out for sure), but it seems that since there is a smaller spread in UZR than there is in, say, wRAA, you could have the same year-to-year RMS error in each but have UZR give you a worse correlation coefficient. But as forecasters, I think that we should be mainly concerned with the RMS error.
Some googling has turned up RMS errors of ZiPS projections in wOBA at about 0.012, which corresponds to an RMS error of about 6.3 runs year-to-year in wRAA if you assume 600 PA.
Looking at OF UZR/150G for qualified players this year, there is a standard deviation of about 13 runs in the distribution. So even if we knew nothing and guessed +0 UZR/150G for everyone, we'd be at around 13 runs year-to-year RMS error in defensive projection. If you take three-year averages, I'd bet you'd get pretty close to a 6-run RMS error.
Comparing Everett and Gomez defensively isn't really fair. Adam Everett from 2003-2007 was 76! runs above average. Gomez has been 31 runs above average in his career.
I believe the crappy outfielders that I named, Gathright, Wise, Pie, Andruw Jones, will be as good as, or just slightly worse players in 2010 than Carlos Gomez. Slightly worse being within 1 WAR. (If they were given the playing time of Carlos Gomez)
2003-2007 = 5 years. 76/5 = 15.2
Gomez's career has been essentially two years. 31/2 = 15.5.
Darn you poking holes in my argument. I concede that.
You're allowing yourself some pretty substantial leeway there. "Within 1 WAR" is a pretty large gap when you're talking about players with this skillset and the potential cost of acquisition.
but the cost of acquisition for the guys I named isn't (or wasn't in the case of Pie) substantial. Wise and Gathright will get minor league deals. Andruw Jones might get 1.5 Million.
Using the zips projections and assuming Gomez is a +15/150 defense and Wise is a +10/150, the expected difference in production comes out to about .5 runs in a 4 OF role or 2 runs in a full time role. Like Ubelmann said, Gomez at least has the possibility to get better, namely adding power, but for this coming year, and perhaps even 2011, there are Gomez's out there to be had.
This is why this was a very good trade for the Twins. Milt gives it an A-
Uh, the Brewers didn't acquire Gomez to be a 4th OF.
I'm aware, but that's what his role became on the Twins. Not that it was right, but it was what it was.
Well, if he's so easily replaceable, then why trade J.J. Hardy when one can simply offer Wise et al. a minor league contract, particularly when your team needs pitching far worse than an "easily replaceable" center fielder?
The Twins had a far superior offensive player also capable of playing a good CF and felt compelled to put _elm_n out in LF to save face, which explains Gomez's role on the team. The Brewers don't have either of those issues, and since they're not bringing Cameron back, it's pretty clear how they see Gomez fitting into their club. Therefore, you can't judge him as a 4th or 5th OF until his new team has used him like that, particularly since they didn't pay going rate for that kind of player.
Also, Andruw Jones hasn't played more than 66 games in any OF position since 2007, and has only . I wouldn't be so quick to pencil him in at a +10/150 level. Gathright is only +8.5/150 in 2436.2 career innings in center. Patterson (who you brought up yesterday) is only +8.8/150 in 7585.1 innings in center. Tony Gwynn Jr. is +8.4/150 in 1141 CF innings. As a CF Willy Taveras is +8.4/150 in 4922.2 innings. Michael Bourn is only +6.9/150 in 2391.2 CF innings. Felix Pie (another example you've raised) is only +8.3/150 in 933.1 innings.
There are certainly players out there that fit the same general profile as Gomez, but none of them really approach how good he is in the field, and none of these players currently without starting jobs approach Gomez's potential. I wouldn't be so quick to call Gomez easily replaceable.
In a full-time role, the defensive difference would be 5 runs. The /150G is what a player would do in a full season. So in a half-time role (~650 innings, less than what Gomez had in 2009), the difference would be about 2.5 runs. You may have been talking about offensive plus defensive difference, but Wise is even worse offensively.
His Zips projection is actually BETTER than Gomez's.
Carlos Gomez .249/.303/.359
DeWayne Wise .243/.292/.398
also
Jason Pridie .253/.286/.362
Wise's wOBA = .3273
Gomez's wOBA = .3217
That's very similar. Over 600 PAs, it's a three run difference in Wise's favor.
I think you may have messed the conversion to wOBA a bit (I would have loved gomez with a .323) but the point remains the same. The O's are about the same and the defense are both good, gomez better (probably) but in 600 innings that value is marginalized.
From The Book, page 31:
Remember, these are projections. I said above that Wise was worse offensively, which was judged from his career wOBA of .278 versus Gomez's career wOBA of .286. His projection being higher is probably from having better (and more) seasons in AAA.
Also, I said in 600 PAs, which is pretty much a full season. That would be ~1200 innings of defense, assuming someone PH for him late in the game occasionally. So, that's maximizing his defensive potential.
It obviously doesn't estimate it very well. No offense. But those lines are similar to Gomez's 08 where his wOBA was .294. I went about it a bit differently (converting it onto the scale of GPA and then converting to to Avg .330 rather than ~.260)
I think it's reasonable to expect Wise to hit at a similar level to Gomez. Looking at his minor league numbers and his batted ball numbers. His Major league equivalency from his last three years at AAA comes out as .244/.293/.426 and these which I already cited.
LD/GB/FB/K%/BB%
Gogo: .178/.444/.378/5.1/23.7
Wise: .183/.445/.372/4.1/18.7
These suggest that he's been unlucky with a .240 Babip
But then again, we're at the same conclusion. From the Brewers' perspective, Gomez can be projected to be 2 runs better than DeWayne Wise in full time play in 2010. This is, unless you believe for some reason Wise will significantly under perform his ZIPS, Gomez will significantly out perform his ZIPS, Gomez is better than a +15 fielder, Wise is worse than a +10 fielder. Etc.
I wish Gomez walked 23.7% of the time.
I redid the wOBA conversion (I guess it breaks down at the extremes, not surprised and should've known better). The offensive run difference doesn't change much, up to 3.5.
I think you're overestimating Wise's defensive abilities. The Fan Scouting report gives 4.37 for Gomez, 4.13 for Span, and 3.74 for Wise. The average is 3.94. He isn't close to +10. 2008 agrees with the difference.
So I always here average hitting, average fielding corner outfielders are easy to come by. It'd be nice to get one of those, a righty, to platoon with Kubel and be both a defensive replacement and pinch hitter for Punto late in games. Who's available? Or is this just a pipe dream?
*hear
Hinske
Austin Kearns
That description fits somebody like Xavier Nady or Rocco Baldelli, but I wouldn't think they'd come all that cheaply. Randy Winn would be a pipe dream, and he's on the wrong side of 35.
Here's a comprehensive list of 2010 free agents, via MLBTR.
Baldelli is a free agent. I bet he would come pretty cheap. I've always wanted a mitochondrial disorder on the roster.
Baldelli got a mention in a post I scheduled for Monday. I think that kind of a skill set would be a good fit as either the backup CF (which we'll need at least one of now) or a second backup outfielder to push Delmon to DH against LHP and take over for Delmon as a defensive replacement late in games.