Al Zarilla said:
How will you differentiate him losing his swing because of playing Hanley from him simply not being a good hitter and suffering from reversion to the mean?
Hanley ,The Monster, and LF: It's a "work in progress"
- Thread starter jimbobim
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How will you differentiate him losing his swing because of playing Hanley from him simply not being a good hitter and suffering from reversion to the mean?
alwyn96 said:
I think the arm piece has quite a bit to do with it. Sox LFers last year had an "Arm" rating of +6.1, which was mostly a product of having Cespedes in left for a third of a season. This year the rating is -7.0, which would project out to about -9. So that's a swing of 15 runs. The total swing in projected UZR is only about 20, so apparently most of the difference between this year and last is throwing. (Cespedes, Gomes, Nava and Sizemore could look pretty ugly going after batted balls out there too, if you recall.)
Tim Britton just posted this article and it is pretty much where I am.
http://www.providencejournal.com/article/20150818/SPORTS/150819329/14009
Executive Summary: Damn we are pretty much screwed no matter what we do with him.
http://www.providencejournal.com/article/20150818/SPORTS/150819329/14009
Executive Summary: Damn we are pretty much screwed no matter what we do with him.
Savin Hillbilly said:
It might not be throwing. The "arm" metric measures outfield assists, but also the number of bases taken by opposing baserunners. Hanley throws well — he has a shortstop's arm. But people are taking all kinds of bases on him, because he's pretty bad out there in other respects.
He may have made only 8 fewer putouts than an average LF (per alwyn96), but this arm metric is where all of the balls bouncing away from him off the wall as the Indians circle the bases shows up in the numbers.
Personally I think he should go the Manny route. Play shallow enough so plays at the base of the wall are going to be out of your zone. Steal some short hit balls you otherwise wouldn't get and learn to play the carom because anything over your head that isn't out is coming back. He looks horrible when he's approaching the wall. Just play shallow, take the wall out of your zone and run down anything you can.
Rasputin said:
I guess I'm surprised that even compared to 2014 Red Sox LF, Ramirez doesn't seem that different. Comparing to last year's Red Sox LF should control for those park effects. Given how terrible he's looked to my lyin' eyes, I thought he'd be much worse than Nava/Gomes/Sizemore/Cespedes, who played in the same conditions.
Zone ratings
Red Sox LF / Lg Avg LF:
2004 .577 .620
2005 .522 .630
2006 .684 .634
2007 .790 .861
2008 .860 .867
2009 .871 .884
2010 .800 .894
2011 .874 .871
2012 .884 .904
2013 .873 .897
2014 .820 .884
2015 .821 .892
I'm pretty sure in the 2004-2006 data there were some issues with balls hitting walls being considered playable, and the BIS data isn't available on fangraphs much further back than that. But yeah, Red Sox LF have rarely looked particularly good in this metric, although Ellsbury had an amazing .932 in 2008 and it was one of the few things Carl Crawford was good at while wearing a Red Sox uniform.
PaulinMyrBch said:
He's incredibly uncomfortable going backwards though - basically anything that requires him to turn and run away from the infield he's failed to catch. That's why he plays so deep - he's vastly more comfortable coming in on the ball.
alwyn96 said:
absintheofmalaise said:
These two posts get at my question, which is, essentially, as bad as Hanley's been - and I'm not trying to say that he has been anything besides terrible - how much damage can he do? For that matter, how much damage can any single bad defender do? Good, successful teams carry terrible defenders all the time - sometimes more than one. Derek Jeter was, by the numbers, one of the worst-defending shortstops of all time, yet the Yankees never suffered in the standings because of it. The Red Sox won two World Series with a historically terrible left fielder also coincidentally named "Ramirez." The White Sox won a World Series with Jermaine Dye. The Cardinals won one and made another with Matt Holliday. The Tigers made a World Series and an ALCS with Miguel Cabrera playing third base. Those awesome 90s Cleveland teams had Albert Belle; those awesome 90s Mariners teams had Jay Buhner. Pick a successful team, and you're fairly likely to find a player or two who was miserable with the glove - and yes, I'm talking about people who were consistently below replacement level rather than just looking at individual seasons (I know - they take three seasons to stabilize).
The point is, while defense is important, having a bad glove or two is not necessarily a backbreaker for a team, and I think we're all way overstating the impact of having Hanley out there. For instance, he misplayed some balls in yesterday's game. But would the Red Sox have won that if he had fielded them cleanly given the way Barnes was pitching?
The bigger issue to me, is that Hanley is hitting poorly, or at least not up to his capabilities, to go with his poor defense. My belief all year has been that the shoulder injury from back in May should have sent him to the DL, and I think it is still affecting him now.
Curing that is taking a LOT of flyballs over and over. Which he cannot do for more than 15 minutes a day apparently due to injury concerns / blowing him out.jscola85 said:
So instead he is restricted to learning on the 4-5 times a ball is hit to him during live play in games. This is far from ideal.
Danny_Darwin said:
None of those guys have been anywhere near as bad as Hanley has been in left, save for Jermaine Dye. All those guys mentioned were also elite or at least very good hitters. And Holliday/Jeter are not even awful defenders - Jeter was not a GG guy but he was no butcher either, and Holliday is a league-average defender for a corner outfielder.
Hanley, meanwhile, is awful. As bad as the worst of the last 10 years - Adam Dunn, Brad Hawpe territory. And unlike Dunn and Hawpe, who posted 125-140 wRC+ seasons regularly at the plate, Hanley is not producing anywhere near that. Even if he were, those guys were 1-2.5 win players even with the great bat because they were butchers.
Can you win a World Series with a replacement level player starting for you? Yes, the Giants won it all with Ryan Theriot as their starting 2B. It's a lot harder to do it though when that replacement level player is taking up 10%+ of your payroll though.
Danny_Darwin said:
We actually do have some idea of how much a truly wretched defender can hurt a team. There is a lot of argument about advanced defensive metrics generally and how well they account for Fenway specifically, but if you believe the major systems, they say that a guy like Hanley, if he's as bad as he looks, needs to put up something like 115-120 wRC+ just to be replacement level, which, coincidentally, was roughly the consensus projection for him based on ZiPS, Steamer and Depth Charts going into 2015. Of course you can always go into game-by-game questions like "how much does it matter if he muffs one in LF if Barnes is giving up rockets all over the place," but most of what has worked in Boston over the last decade-plus is getting away from that kind of thinking and understanding that we can quantify most things to a reasonable degree of certainty and then make decisions based on risk management, efficiency, etc.
It's very hard to go in and make a statistical case that Hanley will be a starting caliber LF for the Red Sox. You basically have to assume that 1) he will bounce back well beyond what his consensus 2015 offensive projections were, even though he's a year older and has a bad 2015 under his belt, 2) the metrics are wrong about his defense and/or he will be something like 10-12 runs better on defense next year, and 3) he will somehow stay healthy.
You can at least begin to make a case for Hanley as a passable 1B / DH type, though it also requires some optimism about his defense. But the pessimism about Hanley at 1B being a bigger liability due to impacting so many more plays rings a bit hollow to me, because the vast majority of those plays are incredibly routine. If you look at the spread in UZR/150 or other defensive metrics of your choice for regular and semi-regular MLB 1B, it's a much narrower range than for OF or other IF positions. It's hard to be really, really awful at 1B (although there may be some selection issues with that given that it's the position of last resort within the defensive spectrum). I concede that Hanley's particular tendency towards lack of focus and his apparent inability to adapt are potentially big problems for a transition to 1B, but I also buy the possibility, at least, that he's one of those guys who has been in the infield so long that he has IF type skills and could learn 1B more easily. Short answer - while he's no slam dunk at 1B, it's the only position where one can project him having any value without getting high as shit beforehand. So at least try him there... hell he might have a hot month and you can convince someone to take him off your hands.
Here's a thought. Hanley as fourth OF and DH against some lefties. It's obviously not optimizing our spent cash, but if he can't learn 1B and is still viewed as a real asset from 2017-2019 as the post-Papi DH, then make him our Carl Crawford (LA edition).
DD seems smitten with Betts, Bradley, Rusney as he mentioned them by name already. I don't doubt he listens on all of 'em, and I don't doubt he shops Hanley hard.
But teams throw away $20M all the time (hurt players), so in this pickle I don't see subsidizing Hanley to the tune of like $9M a year for four years in the AL if we could just choke down 2016 with him as a glorified bench bat and then get some real value from him afterward at DH.
This is, of course, presuming you explore trade and transition options first.
DD seems smitten with Betts, Bradley, Rusney as he mentioned them by name already. I don't doubt he listens on all of 'em, and I don't doubt he shops Hanley hard.
But teams throw away $20M all the time (hurt players), so in this pickle I don't see subsidizing Hanley to the tune of like $9M a year for four years in the AL if we could just choke down 2016 with him as a glorified bench bat and then get some real value from him afterward at DH.
This is, of course, presuming you explore trade and transition options first.
I think that is a possibility, but Hanley might not like the role of fourth OF and part time player and thus the Red Sox would risk having a disgruntled player on their hands. At the end of the day, trading Hanley and a boatload of money might be a better option. The Red Sox can trade Hanley if they pay off enough of the contract and expect no talent in return. Ultimately, this will be Henry's call since it will involve a large exchange of cash.
BTW, on the subject of Hanley, I read a piece by Ian York on Matt Barnes' first start:
http://sonsofsamhorn.com/baseball/teams/al-east/boston-red-sox/red-sox-pitcher-matt-barnes-made-his-first-mlb-start/
York states:
I didn't see Barnes' start and am curious. Can anyone elaborate on Ramirez's fielding during this game. Multiple hideous plays in LF or just one?
BTW, on the subject of Hanley, I read a piece by Ian York on Matt Barnes' first start:
http://sonsofsamhorn.com/baseball/teams/al-east/boston-red-sox/red-sox-pitcher-matt-barnes-made-his-first-mlb-start/
York states:
I didn't see Barnes' start and am curious. Can anyone elaborate on Ramirez's fielding during this game. Multiple hideous plays in LF or just one?
FanSinceBoggs said:
There was one routine fly ball that ended up costing Barnes 3 runs. It was pretty ugly.
gryoung said:
This really depends on what you mean by "normally" - obviously the average is skewed by those 'generational talents' that usually go 1, but on average there is still a rather large drop-off between picks 1-5 and picks 6-10, and another drop-off after 10, in terms of career-long value. Some years (Matt Bush) there won't be a difference between 1 and 6, but on the whole, it's big game.
I think the major difference between MLB tanking and NBA tanking is that, with 5 players and much less reliance on luck to determine the outcome, tanking in the NBA is remarkably easier to do effectively. However, there does seem to be coherence between "let's put guys out there to improve" (indicating they aren't that good - i.e. need improvement) and "let's maximize draft value."
Thanks for the info and video. Hanley has to catch that ball. He gets such terrible reads. I hope Barnes is getting another start. It is worth noting that guys like Barnes and Kelly will have an advantage going into next season in terms of winning a rotation spot--DD is on record for preferring hard throwers.
The problem is that even an 800 OPS and average defense in LF isn't worth $22 million a year. At SS, it is. Ben signed what should have been expected to be a two-tool LF and paid him as if he was still a 5-tool SS. Hindsight for a message board poster who thinks about these things in his couple hours of spare time a day? Yup, guilty. Does that mean a professional GM whose full-time job it is to think about this should get a pass on getting it wrong? Nope.ALiveH said:
Plympton91 said:
I think you have a valid point here, but I also think your value multiplier may be behind the times. If, as many people have been saying, the cost of a win on the market is now $7M and still going up, then a $22M guy is a 3-win player. And an .800 OPS (translation: 120 wRC+) left fielder with average defense who plays a more or less full season is at least a 3-win player. The problem is that Hanley has done none of those things. It wasn't an entirely irrational contract, but it was an aggressively optimistic contract to give to a 31-year-old moving to a new position. A lot of things had to go right for it to work, and so far none of them have.
So what does Dombrowski do now? Let's assume that Hanley's bat bounces back next year and he's a 120 wRC+ -ish hitter. Let's further assume that if he plays defense, it will be at 1B. And let's assume that he has one of his occasional healthy years and plays 150 games/600 PA. Here's his approximate value in three scenarios:
A. plays 1B with average defense: 2.9 fWAR (20 off. runs + 0 def. runs -11.5 positional runs + 20 replacement runs = 29 )
B. plays 1B with -10 run defense: 1.9 fWAR (same as A -10 def. runs)
C. plays as a DH: 2.4 fWAR (same as A but -16 positional runs)
Those are pretty much best-case scenarios. If he's a DH, he's worth, at most, about $16-17M a year. If he's a 1B, he's worth somewhere between roughly $13M and $20M depending on his defense. And all those numbers assume he stays healthy all year and bounces back to solid offense.
So here's the dilemma for Dombrowski: If the Sox trade Hanley this winter, their trade partner is taking a wild-ass gamble. If they have a DH slot for him--and as we've seen, only a few teams do--then the subsidy conversation starts at about $15-20M, and if it stops there, the Sox will get very little in return.
If the trade partner doesn't have a DH slot for him, they're taking a double gamble--that the offense bounces back and that Hanley can play whatever position they slot him in--so the subsidy would have to be massive, getting into the neighborhood of 50%, for a deal to make any kind of sense, and the Sox would still get fairly little in return.
OTOH, if the Sox slot Hanley at first next year, he fields the position respectably, and his bat bounces back, then all of a sudden the contract seems semi-reasonable, and they could hope to swing a deadline deal with a minor subsidy and a real return, or no subsidy and a modest return. Or maybe, in that scenario, they decide not to deal him at all.
OTOOH, if they keep him, slot him at first, and a train wreck occurs--shitty defense, continued offensive decline, and clubhouse tension--then he becomes pretty close to untradeable.
So, if you're Dombrowski, what do you do? Stand pat and hope the asset appreciates, or cash in now for what's pretty certain to be an embarrassingly meager return?
I am probably in the extreme minority, but I still think 3B is the best fit for Sandoval. Obviously that means finding a new home for Hanley, but even if he's a slightly subpar defender and an 800 OPS hitter at 3rd, that's still probably a 2.5-3 win player as well. Moving to 3rd is by far the most natural transition for a shortstop and Hanley has some experience there, albeit two years ago. Maybe he can't play there 150 games but giving him 100 games there and either 30-40 more in left (for road games I'd assume) seems like a better option than having him try to learn 1B.
Savin Hillbilly said:
I'd add a "high upside" prospect along with Hanley, who I think won't significantly impact the fortunes of the MLB club to lose (e.g. Margot, Ball, Chavis), and try to get a decent return and increased salary relief based on someone else biting on Hanley's past and the prospect's future.
From the tiny sample pretty much insignificant data that we have available, Pablo has played 500 innings of fringe-average 1B and Hanley has played nearly 1,000 innings of sub-par-but-not-holy-shit-cover-your-eyes defense at 3B. Maybe with Shaw backing up both corners, it's that simple?
The throws from the sub-par-but-not-holy-shit-cover-your-eyes-guy to the fringe-average guy would have us suffering from cirrhosis by the end of April. And most of Sandoval's time at first base dates from when he could see his feet. Hard to know what he'd be like at this point.ehaz said:
How is 120 wRC+ the best case scenario for Hanley? He was at 135 last year and 191 in a half healthy year before that. The best case scenario is that he plays whatever defensive position he happens to get put in much better than he did this year and hits like he did the previous two years, which is how he ended up signing the contract that he did in the first place.
Why move Sandoval to 1B when there is no reason to think he wouldn't be a substantially better 3B defensively than Hanley? I mean, he's been a better 3B his whole career than Hanley before he bulked up this past off-season and got a few years older since his 3B sample was relevant.ehaz said:
I think you've got the right three guys, but the Sox should minimize disruption and put Hanley at 1B. It is an easier position that requires less range and if they both show even moderate bounce back Hanley's bat plays far better at 1B than Sandoval's, giving both more market value in a trade following such a season.
Hanley to 1B, find a slugger to man LF, then spend all other assets on pitching.
Because we know that Pablo can actually play 1B. But you're right, the ideal scenario is Hanley at first. I don't think that it's a sound move to trade Hanley/Pablo. They're already sunk costs, and unless you're swapping bad contracts, we may as well let them rebuild part of their value.Drek717 said:
Max Power said:
A fair question. My answers:
1) He'll be 32 next year.
2) He'll probably finish under 110 this year.
3) He's in a new league, and arguably a tougher one, so this year's numbers need to be taken seriously, especially by AL trade partners (and keep in mind that his career tOPS+ in interleague play is 87).
You're still right that "best case scenario" is overstating the case; how about if we say that a 120 wRC+ over the remaining three years of the contract (ages 32-34) probably represents the upper limit of rational optimism?
I think he'll bounce back fairly strongly because of that .261 BABIP this year combined with his typical ISO, However, this is his 4th outlier type year he's had (wRC+' of 97, 106 (the year he was traded), 191 in the half year and now this year). He's more Buchholz than Buchholz and really is one of the more confounding players they've ever had.Savin Hillbilly said:
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned is the organizational philosophy shift of moving away from passive plate appearances. His walk percentage has halved which has really hurt his .obp. It could be a combination of that, plus possibly pressing (O-Swing% is up 3%) to make up for his subpar year in one home run.
Either way, I want nothing to do with him and his square peg shape anymore.
Hanley has one full season over 120 wRC+ in the last five - which came in a contract year. Three of his last five (assuming he doesn't murder everything in September) are going to be under 110. I'd say 120 represents probably like 80th percentile performance for him next year if he's playing defense full time, if not better. Way down the bell curve. It won't shock me at all if it happens, but you certainly don't bank on it.
