Fire Gardy

So the Twins have come to an agreement with Guerrier, avoiding arbitration.

First, let’s go ahead and assess the value of the deal. They met in the midpoint of their posted salaries, and Guerrier will be paid $1.475M in 2009. Will he be worth that?

Well, in 2008 he was worth -0.4 wins above replacement (ie, we would have been better off murdering him and having an average AA pitcher take over his innings … ouch). In dollar terms, that was -$1.9M. Certainly less that what we’re paying for in 2009. In 2007, however, he had the best season of his career, worth +0.9 wins, or $3.7M. (+1 win is extremely good for a middle reliever — it almost never happens.)

In 2006, he was worth +0.1 wins, which was $0.5M on the free market. According to FanGraphs, his projected FIP and IP will be right in line with his 2006 season (well below 2007, but well above 2008). They’re essentially saying Guerrier will be about replacement level in 2009. Which means we absolutely shouldn’t be paying him $1.475M; except that he only has to be worth +0.3 wins for us to get what we paid for, and that’s not a huge jump from his projection. I’d say this deal is roughly market value, and that the Twins are probably expecting Guerrier to bounce back to around his 2006 level of performance. Guerrier was probably expecting to get paid for his 2007 level of performance, and hopefully he isn’t too miffed that it didn’t happen.

Okay … now I want to say something about the fact that the Twins actually struck a deal before going to arbitration. This was a case they probably could have won if they wanted to, given how terrible Guerrier was last year. But winning or losing in arbitration isn’t really as important as going there in the first place. In arbitration, teams make a case about why a player sucks and is worthless, to an impartial arbitrator, and the player has to sit there and listen. It’s not exactly good for relations between the player and the team.

Well, the Twins are one of the organizations that likes to avoid that for players it considers part of the organizational family, if you will. They gave Morneau a contract last year to avoid arbitration, meanwhile they didn’t stop negotiating a longer term deal; basically, they just didn’t want to take him to arbitration because he’s part of the team’s future. The same is true for most players. Kyle Lohse, for example, went to arbitration every year he was eligible for it. Surely, Matt Garza would have also. 

If the Twins don’t like you, they’ll take you to arbitration and tell you how much they don’t want you around and how little they think you’re worth. If they do like you, they’ll make sure they get you signed before that happens.

So I think the act of signing Guerrier is more important than the actual dollar amount. It means the Twins think he can bounce back and be useful, and that they probably want him to stick around once he hits free agency.

We’ll see if he’s still got an arm by then.