While doing further digging on Gomez/Hardy, I found this:
.278/.339/.399 -- Carlos Gomez, minors age 18-21
.271/.332/.405 -- J.J. Hardy, minors age 18-21 (plus 74 PA this year)
.248/.293/.352 -- Carlos Gomez, majors age 22-23
.246/.319/.388 -- J.J. Hardy, majors age 22-23
Yes, Gomez has the worse age 22-23 line by a bit, but that's not what I would consider a significant difference over two seasons. (Especially since Hardy's age 23 season was pretty incomplete.)
The Brewers likely view this trade as trading 27-year-old J.J. Hardy for 24-year-old J.J. Hardy. Both Gomez and Hardy are good defenders up-the-middle, and Hardy's .751 career OPS doesn't really seem all that unattainable for Gomez if you figure that Gomez managed a .738 at a very young age in the minors and a lot of players who are rushed through the minors like that wind up hitting about the same in their major-league career.
Anyway, this still seems like a pretty even deal to me, with the Twins taking on more payroll but reducing their risk and the Brewers doing the opposite.
Well, that's a 50 OPS swing at 22-23. And I suspect the K/BB ratios aren't close. I haven't researched them, but I have trouble believing we will ever see a 800 OPS over 500 AB from Gogo. Or do you think that's feasible?
It is true that Gomez strikes out a lot more than Hardy. But I think it's definitely possible that Gomez could be a comparable hitter when everything is said and done.
Or do you think that's feasible?
I absolutely believe it is feasible. Power is the last tool to develop and Gomez's potential is to be an all-or-nothing hitter who doesn't walk much, strikes out a lot, but can put the ball out of the ballpark. What is the difference between Carlos Gomez and Alfonso Soriano at the same age? They have the exact same approach at the plate and Gomez has the bat speed and size to do it. You could also look at Jacque Jones as another example of a guy who had no clue at the plate, barely walked, but managed a career .776 OPS. I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that Gomez could do that. And if he could average that, one year or two he could luck into an .800 OPS.
There is every chance in the world that Gomez could never improve. That's why the Twins dealt him--they wanted what they consider to be a more certain commodity. But the next four years of Gomez could still be worth more than the next two years of Hardy, especially when you factor in the money. Based on some of the comments you made at your blog, I think you are reading way too much into two years of performance. Gomez is by no means doomed to repeat what he's done the last two years. He could, but he's not locked in to that just yet.
When you're a small budget team, sometimes you have to roll the dice on guys like Gomez. Sometimes you hit the jackpot (like, say, Joe Nathan, who no one could have predicted would be this good) and sometimes you roll snake eyes. But taking that chance is cheaper than trying to acquire players with more distinguished resumes, and you're often stuck taking those chances when you can't spent $120M+.
I hear ya...
Gomez could be a similar hitter. Not sure that I like this trade (if they gave up Perkins for Hardy I would have been ecstatic, btw...)
if they gave up Perkins for Hardy I would have been ecstatic, btw...
You and everyone else but the Brewers. They refused Michael Bowden I guess, who is a whole lot better.
I'm sure the Twins' Blogfather isn't willing to give up believing he'll ever see Delmon OPS over .800 (as a corner OF, I should really say .850 here, but personally I'll stick with .800) over 500 at-bats.
Since no one else has posted them yet, here are their minor league K and BB rates.
Hardy:
K%: 11.42
BB%: 8.74
Gomez:
K%: 19.05
BB%: 5.31
Yep, Gomez definitely struck out more, but that usually makes a player a little bit more all-or-nothing. You can go the way of Alfonso Soriano (remarkably similar major league K% to Gomez, I believe) or you could go the way of Corey Patterson. There's not a whole lot of in between when you swing hard like that.
I wouldn't be so mean to corey patterson. Between him and gomez, one of these players showd the ability to hit major league pitching at 23. (hintK its not Gomez). Honestly though, I'll take the under on a .160 iso for gomezs next four seasons.
Too bad for Corey Patterson that he forgot how to hit major league pitching by the time he was 25. And he had forgotten how to be an elite defender by that time too.
He did hit .258/.300/.411 in that four year span. I think that's a good goal for Gomez.
What four-year span is that? Since and including his age-25 season, he's been .241/.277/.378. I'm of the belief that even Gomez will be able to do better than that as he gets older.
age 24-27, what Gomez would be during his team controlled years. Plus during those four years he was 44 runs above average in center according to UZR.
Patterson has a career .694 OPS. Luis Rivas has a career .681 OPS. I think Patterson is a completely reasonable example of a guy who didn't live up to expectations.
But it's not unreasonable to expect Gomez to hit a lot like (if not worse than) Corey Patterson over the next four years. It was a throw away from you, meant as a disaster result from Gomez, when in actuality it's 8 times more likely to occur than Alfonso Soriano at this point.
And that's really IF he adds the power you are expecting.
Of course Gomez is less likely to become an .800 OPS hitter than a .700 OPS hitter. But he could become a .750-.800 OPS hitter. My point is that we don't know what he's going to be, but that the potential is there. I don't know what the odds are exactly, but the Brewers think they are good enough to take Gomez for Hardy. It's a gamble, and one I think was reasonable for them to make. (Just like it was reasonable for the Twins to gamble that Hardy's not somehow all washed up after last year.)
I hate the word potential. Any talk of potential is really just talking about his age and height. As a hitter, Gomez has shown no skills that suggest he could at one point become a .800 OPS guy, save for a combination of fluke BABIP and HR/FB that inflate his stats.
Any talk of potential is really just talking about his age and height.
Not true. Please reference the original post. Gomez hit for a .738 OPS in the minors. He could do that in the majors.
Plus, if you just outright dismiss the concept of potential, you'll allow all the other teams to get the diamonds in the rough, which would put your club at a significant disadvantage. (For instance, Span would have been gone long ago, and Nathan/Bonser/Liriano would never have donned Twins uniforms.) Potential matters.
Of course, in Denard's case, past performance did a really lousy job of predicting the future. He had a 715 OPS in the minors, including a full-season 689 in AA in 2006 and a full-season 678 in AAA in 2007 (at age 23).
that said, I'm with you on the general point. "Potential" is the somehow-weighted total of past performance and "informed" guesses about developmental path.
Right, the point is that there exist guys like Span who can improve as they get older. Past performance matters in terms of projecting future performance, but it's not everything and subjective scouting information can help us project even better. And even beyond that, we have to accept that we just don't know what the future will hold for any players, so we have to project how likely various future outcomes are rather than go forward as if the mean (or median or mode) projection is the only one that matters.
(Also, regarding Span, there's something of a SSS caveat still in place. 1000 PA seems like a lot, but there's still a chance he could end up as a lower-than .800 OPS player for the next few yers.) Torii Hunter is another guy who has seen a better major league OPS than minor league OPS. If the Twins had traded Hunter after 2000 (coming off of 73 and 80 OPS+ seasons), they would have missed out on a ton of value.
potential = L-A-S-I-K
Rhu_Ru:
We'd better hope that LASIK wasn't the real reason for Span's improvement, since it's not uncommon for eyesight to regress after LASIK.
It's not uncommon for ANY eyesight to degrade over time.
It just seems to me that the timing of his eye surgery too closely matches his big improvement in his minor league performance. I think past performance in DSPAN's case isn't necessarily meaningful because of this.
Span started showing improvement in August of his 2007 season. I remember the big thing over the offseason was if it was sustainable.
Cuddyer also got LASIK in the previous offseason. I wonder if there's been any research about the effects for a player.
Well, I'm probably biased because I know people who are back to wearing glasses 2-3 years after their surgery, but I don't think it's so easy as "get LASIK, hit better." I recall reading about how the results were pretty mixed when you look at all baseball players who have had it, but that was a couple of seasons ago, and I can't find the link at the moment. Surely, though, LASIK did wonders for Jason Kendall in 2008. Jhonny Peralta apparently had the surgery in the '06-'07 offseason. He had a good '07 and '08 before going back to his '06 performance in '09.
I tend to think that there are lots of factors in Span's improvement. The LASIK probably helped some, but I think it's getting way too much credit for his improvement. And he doesn't even have two full seasons under his belt, so even if the LASIK did help, he could have been over his head the last couple of years, too. His PrOPS this year was just .751, so there's at least some indication that he's been a little lucky to this point.
I saw DSPAN in 2005 in AA and he was a completely different player. The Twins minor league instruction had clearly drilled into his head that for a guy with his speed, his job was to slap at the ball and beat out choppers for infield hits. He didn't take one swing that would have produced a line drive in 5PA's in that game.
(and being the cool cat that he is, he was eating a sandwich in the OF)
Isn't potential how we ended up with _elm_n? Two sides to that coin.
I've still got a glimmer of hope in Delmon because he showed a skill in the minors that hasn't come around in the majors. Power. But to really get that I suppose he would have to not hit all of his balls into the dirt.
There was a sign this year though. He had career best FB rate and HR/FB rates. Of course, once that does come around, he's then as valuable as Gomez. Le Sigh.
From where I sit, the problem with acquiring the risk in Delmon was the price that we paid for it. Here, the Brewers acquire risk but free up payroll space. When the Twins acquired Gomez, they also freed up payroll space in exchange for taking on that risk. Maybe still not worth it depending on how you felt about all the moving parts, but at least we got something for taking additional risk. That's more or less why I liked the Santana trade better than the Garza/Bartlett trade all along.
Delmon could improve at the plate just like Gomez could improve (though scouting-wise, I'm more convinced about Gomez's bat speed than Delmon's bat speed.) What sucked about that trade was that we took on all of the risk, didn't free up any payroll, and gave up two good players for one guy who was really, really, really far from his potential. Gomez at least has the fielding part of his potential taken care of, Delmon hasn't really filled any part of his potential.