The Twins White Elephant Contract?
I can’t believe I missed this, but a little while back Fangraphs posted an article about a White Elephant Contract Party … and I think it’s worth a visit. A mental visit, that is. Feel free to click the link and make it an internet visit too, I don’t care.
Here’s the concept: Every team has a bad contract, right? And every GM takes flak for that bad contract. So every GM takes their bad contract and they go into a room and put all those contracts into a big pile. They then begin pulling contracts out, one at a time, in some order. Each GM that pulls a contract either has to take that contract or attempt to trade it — if another GM is willing to make a trade.
Setting aside, for a moment, the fact that the only GM in the league that would agree to something like that is JP Ricciardi,* let’s imagine what it’d be like if it actually happened.
* What do you mean, he’s not a GM any more? How long have I been gone?
Firstly, let’s go through a mental exercise. Who’s got the worst contract on the Twins? I figure there are a couple ways to look at this: Who has the biggest contract (which are the ones you least want)? versus Who is the worst player (which are the ones you least want)?
Biggest contracts:
- Morneau
- Mauer
- Nathan
- Cuddyer
- Kubel
- Punto
Worst players:
- Casilla
- Young
- Harris
- Tolbert
- Redmond
- Buscher
Okay. Well, that really didn’t help. The players with the biggest contracts are (almost) all of our best players; if we put any of those contracts into the middle of the table, our reward would be watching one of the other GMs doing an extended — and presumably obnoxious — happy dance. And the crappiest players on the team all have small contracts; Redmond and Buscher are already as good as gone, and Young is the only one remaining on the list that makes more than the minimum.
Before the 2009 season, I’m sure a lot of people would have said that Cuddyer’s contract would definitely be the Twins’ white elephant contract; in fact, I had to defend Cuddyer and his contract earlier this year when it was singled out as one of the worst in the game. I don’t think many people are clamoring to get rid of Cuddyer at any cost after his 130 OPS+ season.
Similarly, I’m sure Punto would get some support for worst contract. How can Punto be making more money than Kubel? How can $4M for Nick Punto not be a bad contract, when so often he comes up to the plate and fails, and his presence continues to encourage Gardy to make bad decisions … it’s a bad contract, right? Well, I think by now everyone knows my feelings about Punto. He’s not a very good baseball player, but his versatility has value. His versatility probably has more value than we’re paying for.* It’s not a bad contract. Plus, someone with an $8M total contract, in the walk year, can’t really be considered a terrible contract.
* I think it’s worth pointing out that the Twins have never overpaid Punto based on his contributions. Even in his down years (like 2005, 2007, and 2009), he produces more value than we’re paying him. 2009 was close, in that he was worth $5.5M vs his $4M salary, but if you’re getting more than you’re paying for you really don’t have all that much to complain about. Right?
Reusse and his fans* would probably say that Nathan’s is a bad contract; after all, he blew a save in the postseason when Alex Rodriguez, one of the greatest hitters of all time happened to come up while he was in a “god damn it I’m hitting .500 with power right now, what are you going to do about it?” hot streak, hit a home run. Also, Nathan wasn’t completely dominant this season … if you’re not Mariano Rivera, you’re nobody. I mean, Rivera-like dominance is available everywhere on the cheap, that’s why every team’s closer is perfect every year except Shitty Joe Nathan.
* Wait, does Reusse have any fans? Does he even have anyone who agrees with him, ever? Seriously, I want to know. Someone please point me to a pro-Reusse blog, or something.
Okay, so that probably wasn’t all that necessary. But suffice it to say that a lot of teams would probably love to be able to pay Joe Nathan $24M over the next two seasons. If we’re going to unload that contract, we’re going to be getting something in return, not just dropping it. It’s a market value contract for an elite player playing at an elite level. We might not be able to afford many of those, but it’s not a disaster to have one.
I’m just going to go ahead and assume nobody wants to just drop Mauer, Morneau, or Kubel for nothing. If that’s not okay, let me know.
So it seems none of the Twins’ big contracts are bad ones. What about the bad players?
Casilla was awful this year, one of the worst players in the AL. I’ve been a big pro-Casilla guy for the past few years, and he only briefly looked like the player I’d hoped he could become. I’ve begun to think that his ceiling is much, much lower than I previously thought it was; he’s still young, with time to grow and get better, but his performance is so bad, and his demeanor still so immature, that it might not be worth waiting around for.
Delmon Young was one of the worst players in the AL too, until he got hot over the last few weeks of the season and showed some of the hitting talent that we thought he had when we got him. It seems like he’s Gardy’s fourth-favorite outfielder, and is getting squeezed out of the outfield situation; if he’s going to play, he’s going to have to really hit the ball. He hasn’t yet, and he looks terrible at the plate, and I’m this close to wanting to give up on him. But I can’t just yet. Can you?
Tolbert sucks, and is useless to a team with Punto already on it; but I have the feeling that if Bill Smith showed up at the party with the minimum contract of a second-string utility man, he’d be kicked out (and possibly beaten) by the people lugging in the contracts of Vernon Wells, Alex Rios, Barry Zito, etc. Maybe that’s not a bad thing.
Alright. Either I’m totally missing the boat on something, or the Twins simply have no bad contracts. If you’re a mid-payroll team, the only way to contend regularly is to develop your own players and avoid bad deals; obviously, the Twins have been able to do that and have reaped the rewards for it.
Now we get to see if this success continues once they move into the new stadium and have some more money to spend.
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You are right, they don’t have any bad contracts. I fear, however, they will have two, shortly.
Cruddy, as they extend him for 3 years at roughly 9 mil a year
OC, if they sign him for 2 years, it’s a mistake.
I really hope they don’t extend Cabrera, and we still have control of Cuddyer for two more years; no reason to worry about his extension just yet.
Funny, I covered this topic at my blog as well. http://weareoffthemark.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/one-persons-trash-is-another-persons-well-trash/
How many 8 or 9 hitters make $4 mil a year? How many .230 hitters make $4 mil a year? How many sub-40 RBI guys make $4 mil a year? How many guys with a .973 FP (20th among 2B) make $4 mil a year? Yeah, he can field a few positions adequately, but so can hundreds of minor leaguers. The Punto contract is awful.
I’m not really in the mood to rehash the old Punto argument again. But I recommend you check this out and take a look at the bottom of the page, in Punto’s value section. Look at the amount he’s been worth against what he’s been paid. For example, in 2009 (a down year for Punto), he was paid $4M and produced $5.8M worth of on-the-field value. In 2008 (a good year for Punto), he was paid $2.4M and was worth $11.5M … nothing wrong with that.
I don’t know how many players like that there are in the league, and how much they all make. But if they’re free agents, they probably make at least as much as Punto does.
You don’t get production for free. Punto’s a 1-3 win player getting paid like a 1 win player. Nothing about that says “awful contract.” It says “good job of talent evaluation and contract negotiation,” and maybe it says “you guys could probably use better players, but then you’d have to spend a lot more money and would have to sacrifice a lot of versatility.”
Except for the top section, that page is incomprehensible. I have no idea what I’m looking at, what the numbers mean, how they are derived, etc. So I can’t comment on those stats. But compare Punto with Brendan Harris. Harris is a better hitter than Punto, a slightly lesser fielder, and plays multiple infield positions. Good hitting is harder to come by than good fielding. So why is Punto more “valuable” than Harris? About 4x more valuable according to salary?
I’m going to ignore the “I don’t understand new things, therefore they must be incorrect” argument. I hope you don’t mind.
Let’s see … Harris is 0.4 runs WORSE than Punto at hitting, and is 14 runs WORSE in the field. He got 1.5 runs LESS of a positional adjustment because he spent much less time in the middle infield than Punto did. (IE, Harris is worse at 3B than Punto is at 3B or 2B or SS.)
Harris was worth -1.1 wins in 2009, against a REPLACEMENT level player. IE, every team should have access to guys in AA and AAA who are better baseball players than Brendan Harris. (At least in 2009. He’s not actually as bad as he played this year.)
The thing is, there should not be an argument about “whether Harris or Punto is a better player,” ever. If that’s what’s happening, the Twins have made a mistake. They need to get rid of Harris, who isn’t good enough to be a starter and isn’t versatile enough to be a utility guy. They need to sign at least one, preferably two infielders who are actually average-to-good baseball players. Then they need to put Punto on the bench and have him fill in 2-4 times a week to give the other guys a rest.
But IF you only have Punto and Harris and you have to pick one, you’d be well served to pick Punto. Did you know that since 2004 (Harris’ first year), Punto has been worth 9 wins, while Harris has been worth 2.5 wins? That’s a huge difference.
I can’t believe I got suckered into defending Punto again.
I hope nobody minds if I just stop right now.
As long as we agree that Punto (or Harris) can not continue to start for this team then I’ll stop too.