What?
You don't see the logical flaw in an argument that says we shouldn't remove him from the roster because no one on the roster is better, when a key barrier to there being anyone on the roster to replace him is Sandoval's very presence on it?
Which type of plate discipline is eating Panda?
- Thread starter Corleone
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You don't see the logical flaw in an argument that says we shouldn't remove him from the roster because no one on the roster is better, when a key barrier to there being anyone on the roster to replace him is Sandoval's very presence on it?
I wasn't a huge fan of the original deal, but I can see Panda bouncing back to a league average player really easily. He'll work harder, he may lose some weight, he's had a year to adjust to Boston. He's still in the prime of his career. He isn't Mike Lowell circa 2010. I don't see last year as total catastrophic failure.
Not to mention the Sox have already tried to move him. I mean, if they know the contract was a mistake, can't we think the same thing?
I think that a big part of the fight over Sandoval is that even if his decline over the last few years was minimal before last year, he hasn't been very good for even longer than that. He was a 2-3 win player since 2011, before being a -2 win player last year (by fWAR). Even if you are assuming a bounce back year (and I am), it's about what he is likely to bounce back to, since the trend over the last 3-5 years suggests he won't be bouncing back to the 3-5 win player he once was. I think that even with a moderate bounce, he is most likely going to end up in the 0-2 fWAR range, which is still a big improvement over last year, but not an especially valuable player in a broader context and certainly not worth his contract, so I think that there is room to think he will bounce back and still not earn his money in a $/WAR sense.
Of course, between the no context and huge context is the Red Sox context, in which, he is likely to provide more value at 3B than the next available guy on the roster regardless of cost, and there is no FA 3B who is likely to provide more value at any price, so we would need to trade for one, and it's likely that the cost in prospect value would more than outweigh the difference between Panda's likely performance and contract. If he ends up being a slightly overpaid 1.5-2 WAR player next season, then he certainly won't be to blame if the Sox fail to make the playoffs again.
edit: should have looked first, but Steamer projects 1.8 WAR, which would be fine with me.
Of course, between the no context and huge context is the Red Sox context, in which, he is likely to provide more value at 3B than the next available guy on the roster regardless of cost, and there is no FA 3B who is likely to provide more value at any price, so we would need to trade for one, and it's likely that the cost in prospect value would more than outweigh the difference between Panda's likely performance and contract. If he ends up being a slightly overpaid 1.5-2 WAR player next season, then he certainly won't be to blame if the Sox fail to make the playoffs again.
edit: should have looked first, but Steamer projects 1.8 WAR, which would be fine with me.
I think he's saying that there's no one obviously on the market who looks to be better than Sandoval. Which...I don't know. Murphy and Freese and Kelly Johnson are out there. Maybe you could get Prado for not much. They aren't particularly good, but the degree to which you think those guys could be replacements depends on how bad you think Sandoval is going to be and the degree to which Shields might be an improvement on Kelly (or whoever).
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We can think that's what he's saying, but it's not what he said. If we argue it's a fixed market and there is no possible upgrade then the theoretical discussion on whether we should try to get rid of Sandoval or not is completely different.
That's a greater argument as to the value of Sandoval and one worth discussing in the relevant Sandoval thread; but the argument that he's better than everything else we have misses the entire point that he's a clear reason we haven't introduced anything better but if he wasn't here then we could try to do so.
That's a greater argument as to the value of Sandoval and one worth discussing in the relevant Sandoval thread; but the argument that he's better than everything else we have misses the entire point that he's a clear reason we haven't introduced anything better but if he wasn't here then we could try to do so.
If somewhere were willing to take on his contract, I'd gladly roll the dice with Brock. 3B might be his weakest position defensively, but I fully believe he could total out to be an average (if not slightly better) player there overall, and replacing his spot on the bench with a utility infielder wouldn't cost much in resources. That's saying nothing of Shaw.
Granted, nobody's taking on Pablo's contract, so it's only a discussion in hypotheticals.
Not only was he the worst player (by WAR) in the majors last year, he was paid like one of the best. I understand that you believe that he might bounce back but Pablo's 2015 season was pretty inarguably a catastrophic failure.
This is exactly what I'm saying. Steamer projects Pablo (1.8 fWAR) right below Murphy (2.1) and Prado (2.0), and well above Freese (1.2) and Johnson (0.2). That's hardly gospel, but it's something.
David Freese is an interesting comparison, in that he had a reputation established by a single career year and some standout postseason performances, followed by a negative value age-30 season, and then two unexciting, okay seasons. Pablo's highs have been higher, but his lows have also been lower.
I don't think it's credible to move Sandoval without picking up a lot of dead money or otherwise bleeding value out of the organization, so I'd rather roll the dice on the projection systems and hope for an overpaid decent player until Moncada and/or Devers motivate us to move him.
If you're making that argument in this thread (and that's accepting that you have literally covered the spread on who we could possibly replace him with, which I don't but will for the sake of) then why aren't you comparing the similar benefits of having James Shields comped to the starter he'd be replacing, like Joe Kelly or Owens?
Small point of order, 18 mil for a FA isn't anything close to being paid like one of the best, not in 2015. But yes, he was not worth his salary and of course the Red Sox dump him if they could.
Turning into a Sandoval thread here, but, how does Steamer assume he bounces back that much? Have they followed up on the reports that he is taking off pounds? Do they go that far? I admit I don't know how they, Fangraphs, come up with their projections. Further, what if he has a good April and May and then eats himself into a ton again? He did that with the Giants (gained it all back and more) at least twice. I also don't think San Diego would touch Sandoval with a ten foot pole.
Well, usually the caveat for actual WAR is that there is enough error that you shouldn't declare a guy with .3 war "better" than another guy. I would think projections add even more error to that. So that would put Pablo in a group with Murphy and Prado, with Freese and Johnson below them. Murphy turned down a 15.8 Mil qualifying offer, so you'd think he'd be expecting multiple years at something around there. Say 3/42? I don't know what the consensus is on his contract worth, but that's not much less than Sandoval, and he's not clearly that much better.
If it was like the NFL, and you could cut Sandoval without owing him a thing, I might do that and sign Murphy, but other than that I don't see how you get rid of Sandoval cheaply enough to make the expected value of that swap worth it. Just to put some vague numbers on things.
Sorry if this was a hijack. I responded to Moondog's question.
As for Shields, Steamer prefers him pretty strongly over Kelly in the WAR column, but that primarily reflects opportunities. Shields is projected to 203 IP of 3.69 FIP (in San Diego —
(It would be clearer to say that we're comparing a projection of one pitcher playing in a pitcher's park in the NL West to one playing in a hitter's park in the NL East.)
Owens still has plenty to prove in AAA IMO, but I don't know why one would necessarily prefer Shields over Kelly for that rotation slot given their contracts and ages.
The case for Shields is that a) he's always thrown a lot of innings, and that's valuable, and b) that his recent increased walk and HR rates are likely to revert to his career norms. The case against Shields is that a pitcher of his age moving to an extreme pitcher's park and doubling his HR/FB ratio is an ominous sign.
(A straight up Panda-Shields swap would be fine, but I don't think that's what a realistic deal would look like.)
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As of today, Sandoval's salary ranks him 42nd in MLB.
Just as a small point of order.
Where you rank on the salary list is a partially a function of how good you are, partially function of when you hit free agency. That he's only 42nd underscores my point.
Agreed. And if someone would promise that Pablo, Hanley, Porcello and Castillo would each be about 2 WAR players, I'd take it.
In 2015 Sandoval had the 42nd highest salary in baseball. That may not be Clayton Kershaw level, but in a league with 750 roster slots it puts him among the highest paid players in the league. Only two third basemen -Beltre and Wright- were paid more. Maybe it's semantics, but I think being paid a top-50 salary in the league could be reasonably described as "being paid like one of the best".
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He's in the top 5% in the game in terms of annual salary. This is true. But the salary structure in MLB is extremely inefficient, meaning the best players aren't always paid the best salaries and the worst players aren't always paid the least, therefore it's a bit of a fallacy to equate salary directly to skill. The two league MVPs this year made a combined $6.8M. In an efficient marketplace where salary correlated exactly with skill, they'd be the two highest paid players in the game.
To be fair I think a healthy Hanley at 1B probably is a 2 WAR. I've always operated under the assumption that his play back in May hurt him worse than he let on. The rest is a coin flip. But they certainly can't be worse than last year. I think Castillo breaks out this year if we are going off of predictions. He gets a full year in the bigs with hopefully no interruption.
Sandoval's 2015 campaign, represents the opposite end of that inefficiency: the worst player in the league getting paid the 42nd highest salary. Of course, in part, that is because of the inherent high cost of free agent contracts, but obviously Sandoval's complete disaster of a season is a big part of this discrepancy. As a point of comparison, Sandoval's 2015 (-2 WAR/ $17.6M) was both more expensive and significantly less productive than Carl Crawford's famously disastrous 2011 (-.1 WAR/ $14M) campaign.
The notion that Sandoval is a solid bounce back candidate is only based on how terribly he did last year.
He's 2-time All Star who hasn't had an OPS over .800 since 2011. He will never live up to his contract, because when he was signed I think the Sox were hoping he'd end up back OPS'ing around .800, which I don't think he can do. If he hits .750 moving forward and plays acceptable D then I think we have to be OK with that
He's 2-time All Star who hasn't had an OPS over .800 since 2011. He will never live up to his contract, because when he was signed I think the Sox were hoping he'd end up back OPS'ing around .800, which I don't think he can do. If he hits .750 moving forward and plays acceptable D then I think we have to be OK with that
I also don't get it, as if a good major league ballplayer never had a bad season, or never had a bounce-back season. Think about it, if it were up to some:
- Sandoval would be gone and Shaw(!) would be playing full time 3B (and I guess Superholt is the backup), losing money in the exchange
- Castillo would be gone and (?) would be playing left field in his stead...(?) being an athletic RHH with a good arm and, per scouts, a high upside (no, you don't dump Castillo and then pay for Gordon while losing a draft pick)
- Ramirez would be gone and Shaw would be playing full time 1B with Superholt as a backup, unless the team decided to try Napoli again on a short term contract...adding that cost to whatever they had to send along with Ramirez...and the Red Sox pick up a good DH in 2017 and add that cost to the cost of dumping Hanley.
Maybe Holt and Shaw can play 3B, 1B and LF at the same time. Think of all the money saved.
I agree that it costs nothing right now to see how Pablo and Hanley come out of the gate. It's not as if their value is going to decrease (it can only go up) and there is more than a good chance one or both will bounce back. Let's see what happens before money-losing deals or poor exchanges are made.
(EDIT: Looks like a lot of people are saying the same thing on page 2, which I didn't look at)
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The Next Great Problem for the Red Sox, now that we have our Proven Ace and our Post-Koji Closer, will be replacing Ortiz's bat in the middle of the lineup after 2016. Ditching Ramirez and/or Sandoval without making a plan to replace the offense that even a moderate bounce-back would mean from each of them is insanity, especially when your plan to ditch them doesn't involve getting out from under their contracts.
If Sandoval were OPSing .800 with average defense he'd be around a 3-4 WAR player. Around .750 with mediocre defense is probably around 2-3 WAR, which is about the rate at which he's getting paid. It's still early to say, but free agent WAR may be getting up around $8M this year. If he's a 3-WAR player, he's a comparative bargain.
It's funny, I doubt we'd be having this conversation about dumping Sandoval if he weren't fat. That's like 99% of the reason people think a 29-year old player who'd previously been around 2-4 WAR per year is done now, right?
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Sandoval was awful last year, but it's still not hard to envision some level of bounceback to the point of being a somewhat useful player. I guess I don't see the point of trading him now, of all times. His value's dead low, and smart GMs know that it's a bad idea to trade an asset when their value is at its lowest. I think it's more likely than not that Pablo's trade value increases over the next season -- either because he performs better than he did in 2015 (it would be hard for him not to), or at the very least because the longer we keep him, the less dead money ties down his trade value.
Same applies to Hanley, for that matter. Unless someone offers to take one of them unsubsidized, and I don't see that happening, the upside is still there. If we have to pay for them either way, might as well keep him on the roster and give them a chance to improve. It's not like we have immediate star prospects banging on the door who are being blocked by these guys.
Same applies to Hanley, for that matter. Unless someone offers to take one of them unsubsidized, and I don't see that happening, the upside is still there. If we have to pay for them either way, might as well keep him on the roster and give them a chance to improve. It's not like we have immediate star prospects banging on the door who are being blocked by these guys.
Well, I'm not sure any scouts would describe Chris Young as having a "high upside" at this point in his career, and he's not as "athletic" as he used to be, but I'm just bringing him up to remind people that it's not like we have no LF depth. A Young/Holt LF platoon or semi-platoon, with Marrero replacing Castillo on the 25-man, would be a workable option.
Castillo is highly tradeable. He's probably capable of playing average-ish CF. (Well, average-ish under normal circumstances, anyway....the bar is so high in the AL right now that it's hard to talk in those terms anymore.) And he's worth roughly a whole win more as a CF than a LF. For a guy who's tied up for the next five years at a salary that's equivalent to about 1.25 WAR, that one-win swing is pretty huge. For that reason, it seems almost like a no-brainer for the Sox to be, if not actively shopping Castillo, at least keeping their antennae tuned for good offers for him. If they could turn him and Buchholz into a #2 upgrade, I think that would make all kinds of sense. I just don't think Shields is that kind of upgrade.
I think so. Until he demonstrates that he can and will take care of his body, concerns about a rapid decline are going to hang over his head. Even more so as be approaches age 30 and beyond.
So we should look at in an a vacuum? "Oh, his career has been trending down hill for the past 4 years, but whatever he's thin so we CAN expect him to rebound!" You don't think that being about 20-30 pounds (ish) heavier than what a 3B "should" be at is alarming? Guys signs a $95M contract and shows up the next season heavier than he's ever been and has the worst season of his career shouldn't be alarming or at least a cause of discussion?
Oh, and if Buchholz just stayed healthy every year we wouldn't have people screaming about trading him.
It would be more accurate to say that the notion that Sandoval is a solid bounce back candidate is only based on how terribly he did last year relative to his established level of performance. He had a terrible year last year and while it's always possible that there's something we don't know about that means his drop in performance will be permanent, there's not really any reason to think there is. Folks around here have been saying that he's on a clear downward trajectory. Here are the differences between seasons in OPS+. -7 from 2012 to 2013, -5 from 2013 to 2014, and -35 from 2014 to 2015. He's not 35, he's 28.
I think what we can expect from Sandoval going forward is slightly above average offense, defense that is good enough, and a frustrating insistence on swinging at shit he can't possibly hit. He'll be overpaid, but calling the contract a disaster as some have is needlessly hyperbolic.
Exactly. Treating "bounceback candidate" and "All-Star" as synonyms is...well, if there's such a thing as the inverse of a false dichotomy, it's that. We're all still getting our brains around this, but $19M a year doesn't buy an All-Star anymore. It buys a solid-average player. Sandoval has been that, and there's reason to hope he can be that, or close to it, again.
I don't really disagree with this approach; probably the Sox are best off keeping Pablo (in the hope that he'll improve). That said, it's not true that his trade value can't go down. If Pablo puts up another negative WAR season in 2016, he will rapidly become a more expensive/overweight version of Allen Craig: in other words, absolutely untradeable for any amount of salary relief. Currently there is likely some team out there who would see him as a buy-low candidate, and the Sox could probably free themselves from 1/3rd of his remaining salary if they were willing to subsidize the rest. That option disappears after one more bad season.
Btw, the idea that he is primed for a bounce back is not evidenced in his second half (significantly worse than his first half) or September (worst month of the year) performance
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I'm glad we have DD driving our free agent signings now, because signing solid, avg players (and overweight as Evil Empire rightly pointed out) in the free agent market and paying them $19MM/per for 5yrs is an utter waste of capital/budget.
I'd rather play our only All Star from last season there (w/help from Marrero) and pay him league minimum. And yes I'd take the chance of playing Brock Holt everyday at 3rd, he hasn't had enough games at the position to deem him a horrible defensive downgrade from Pablo.
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The problem is that even those of us who supported the signing acknowledged the facts that he was a decent player who was overweight, that his bat could't play at 1b or DH, and that the back end of his contract would probably be bad. The fact that he was horrible in year 1, including that he could not play his position even adequately, is a big problem. His contract isnt stopping them from spending other money, but it does guarantee him a spot on the team and probably in the lineup even if he continues to be terrible for the next few years. There probably aren't 10 worse contacts in baseball right now.
I believe the term disaster was used to describe his 2015 season - and you can argue that it was an understatement. Sandoval was considerably worse than Crawford in 2011, begging the question of whether or not his 2015 performance (disincluding players who never played due to injury) was actually the worst performance ever by a major free agent signing in his first year with his new team*. I think you could even argue that if he had had a season-ending injury in spring training that he would have been more valuable to the Sox. Sadly, another possible answer to that question is also a member of this team: Hanley Ramirez.
But yes, we'll have to wait a few more years before we can determine if the contract as a whole is a disaster. That said, as Pilgrim rightly points out, the back end of free agent deals are usually less valuable, and the first season is the one most likely to be valuable. So outside of suffering a career threatening injury, this contract probably couldn't have started worse.
*Looking at the history of free agent busts it's actually hard to find any that have had negative WAR in their first seasons with their new teams. Remarkably, of the four I discovered, three are recent Red Sox signings: Sandoval (-2. WAR), Ramirez (-1.8 WAR), and Carl Crawford (2011, -.1 WAR). The one that wasn't is Andruw Jones in 2008 (-1.1 WAR). Surprisingly,even Vernon Wells was able to put up a +.3 WAR in his diastrous 2011 campaign. What would be truly remarkable (and go far in explaining the Red Sox last place finish in 2015) is if Hanley and Panda really did have the two worst years ever (based on WAR) of any free agent signings in the first year of their free agent contracts.
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That's more than remarkable. It's amazing and depressing. Two of the worst 1st-year free agent busts ever on the same team in the same year. Team paid for 5 WAR; got -3.8 WAR.
Aside from some speculation found in one of Nick Carfado's steaming piles last summer, was there any other indication that the Sox FO has actively been trying to 'dump' Sandoval?
I thought about that while posting - but was really just going off of memory and hoped collectively someone would remember specifics. I think Edes had something about the Red Sox trying to move one of those two contracts during the deadline.
I'm not "bullish" on Sandoval, per se, but I doubt he's going to be as much of a disaster going forward.
Sandoval's splits tell the story: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?id=sandopa01&year=2015&t=b
He lost the ability to hit lefties from the right side. Also, he was injured a few times during the season. I'm sure it would help if he were slimmer, and he's going to have to justify his weight if he continues to perform poorly.
However, I don't think we should be drawing conclusions just yet. As of July 1 (completely cherry picking here) his OPS was .714. Had he finished with that, I don't think people would have the pitchforks out.
Sandoval's splits tell the story: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?id=sandopa01&year=2015&t=b
He lost the ability to hit lefties from the right side. Also, he was injured a few times during the season. I'm sure it would help if he were slimmer, and he's going to have to justify his weight if he continues to perform poorly.
However, I don't think we should be drawing conclusions just yet. As of July 1 (completely cherry picking here) his OPS was .714. Had he finished with that, I don't think people would have the pitchforks out.
On the other hand, I think we're entitled to judge him based on the full season. That's the body of work that he put up.
And it's not unreasonable to think that his decline in the second half was tied to his poor conditioning. And that his injuries will continue unless he gets himself into much better shape and even if he does, that an aging player will continue to get hurt.
I know that Panda has always been large. But many worried that being large would become a bigger challenge as he aged and I think it's quite possible that we saw that unfold last year. Why it will get better this season without a real change in his conditioning is unclear to me.
I don't disagree with this at all. He produced as he did, and the weight will always be tied to any injury issues. And yes, there were a number of people who identified all sorts of yellow flags before the signing.
My point is just that there are very reasonable explanations as to why Sandoval was so bad, and that he very well may produce at a level that justifies his contract going forward.
That said, if the Sox can find anyone who is willing to trade for him now where he's valued on a "best case bounce-back" basis, they'd be fools not to do it, given the very real concerns about his conditioning and future volatility. But they'd probably also be fools to DFA him, instead of seeing if he reclaims at least some of his value, allowing them to keep him, or trade him for 20 to 80 cents on the dollar in the future.
Agreed, but at this point in time we don't know if there will be a real change in his conditioning or not. Per the link somewhere in this forum that I can't find now, the Sox are monitoring Pablo and are pleased. That hardly means his future will be a well-conditioned Pablo, but it's a start.
He's done it before. After the season he was benched for the world series and we were treated to these
He turned into this for the 2011 season, or at least the start of it. Actually, he looks good in the sundae picture. Problem has been, he hasn't been able to keep the excess weight off.
Wow, I'm not sure where you got any of that wave of snark and sarcasm. That's not what I was saying at all. And who the heck is "screaming" about Buccholz? What an obnoxious sports world you seem to come from.
I was actually interested in the discussion and thought it might be interesting to examine our assumptions about how much overweightness might actually effect a player. It might be a lot, it might be barely at all. Seems like there are plenty of examples of overweight players aging pretty well (your Tony Gwynns, your Babe Ruths, your Kirby Pucketts), and certainly many have aged poorly (your John Kruks, your Mo Vaughns), just as many non-overweight players have aged poorly. It's hard to imagine being overweight not having some kind of deleterious effect on playing ability, but it seems like even among the fattest and most poorly conditioned of the fat players in MLB's history, almost none were just done as even a replacement level player as early as 29. I mean who knows, Sandoval might be the exception, but I would guess he has at least one or two more decent seasons left in him. I do think that fatness can be overstated as a cause of fluctuations in player performance when there's already a ton of year-to-year fluctuation in a lot of player's performances.
Pablo is pretty big, though. He seems to carry it (and probably more of it?) a lot differently than Ortiz, which may make a difference.
I think we can agree the range of his past performances has been extraordinary, and the error bar on his future is high. Reasonable people can disagree on where his future is likely to go.
I think there is also a lot of people in the past tying his down periods with his weight. Which may just be that people pay attention to his weight when he is performing poorly and connect the two without real evidence. Is he really chubbier when he's awful, or were there good performing chubby periods where no one ever cared to analyze his waistline? You tend to forget about the negatives when things are going well.
Also, thank you Al for the cake .gif. I couldn't stop watching it, completely captivating. And thank you to whoever gave me a new avatar picture, because that just shows you care.
Kruk and Vaughn played well through their age 32 seasons. I'd take that from Sandoval, headed into age 29 season (30 in August).
I've seen no commentary at all about Sandoval's switch hitting prospect in 2016. Will he give it another try?