Looking at Free Agent Shortstops Because I have Nothing Better to Do

Let’s take a look at short stops because nothing takes your mind off your team not being in the playoffs like playing pretend GM.

We can break them into 3 different categories: Ain’t Happening, People I would like, People I don’t want to ever see.

First up the guys that the Giants have no chance to sign, the Ain’t Happenings:

Jose Reyes and Marco Scutaro

These guys have put up the best numbers of any of the potential free agent short stops over the last 3 years with Reyes putting up 9.9 fWAR and Scutaro nearly matching that with 9.8 fWAR.

Reyes is a pipe dream because I would be incredibly shocked if the Giants were players in signing him. The money is just too large with their budget and honestly the risk that will come with his long term deal kind of scares me with his injury history. He may be the catnip of sports radio callers but he isn’t going to be a Giant. Them just the facts.

Scutaro has both a club option and a player option and I have a feeling barring a drastic change in philosophy in Boston with a new GM that he is coming back. At one year $6 million the Red Sox have a nice bargain here that is too good to let go for nothing.

So before we get into who I would like to see in a uniform next year here are the guys I wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot poll.

Alex Gonzalez: He is on the boarder line between something I could deal with but the allergy to walks .281 OBP the last 3 years! Plus the reliance on defense for value while pushing into the mid 30’s isn’t all that appetizing. I mean if he were to work for cheap sure but not for the going rate for free agents.

Edgar Renteria: There is no need to ruin the last image of Renteria but signing him again. Just not worth it even if he could be a passable backup option but that isn’t what the Giants are in the market for.

Ronny Cedeno: A career 67 wRC+! Career .286 OBP! Only averageish defense but hey he is only 29. I think I will pass.

Jack Wilson: He had the same wRC+ of Orlando Cabrera last season (at least his defense is average to maybe a little bit better. If the team is going to go with a glove first guy who can’t hit might as well go with the cheap in house option.

Orlando Cabrera: Ha ha ha.

John McDonald: He is a backup who will get a job as a defensive sub because the guy really can’t hit much at all.

Cesar Izturis: Pros he is a good fielder, cons he is one of the worst hitters in baseball with a career -185.6 batting runs below average. Again if the team goes with a glove only guy cheap out with the in house option.

Yuniesky Betancourt: I have nothing good to say so I will just say that he isn’t horrible at base running everything else not so much.

Finally we come to the guys that I would be okay with wearing a Giant uniform next season.

Jimmy Rollins: Rollins is the most Sabean type player of all the guys available. He is a former MVP with a track record of success. He has some nice RBI and Runs scored numbers. He doesn’t strikeout much (but he actually takes a decent amount of walks) and he is a good contact guy. He certainly comes with his risks seeing as that he is approaching his mid 30’s where defense starts to slip and he has a history of injuries.

On top of everything it has been reported that he wants a 5 year deal which I really don’t think would be prudent. 2 years $20-25 million would be perfect, 3 years $30-35 million would be acceptable anything more and I am nervous.

Rafael Furcal: When healthy he is a very good player except for this season where he has had some unfortunate luck (his batted ball data is very similar to his career norms but his BABIP is 70 points below his career average) the problem is staying healthy. His injury outlook is not great but he would be a high risk, high reward signing and there is the possibility his somewhat poor 2011 could mean he could be had at a discount.

A 1 year deal with incentives for playing time would be excellent because if healthy he can be a 2-3 WAR player pretty easily (he accumulated 0.9 fWAR in just 50 games with the Cardinals this season over 150 games).

Nick Punto: Average to above average defense. Average to slightly below average hitting. Above average walk rate. When you add all of that up you get a decent role player. He won’t get people excited but he shouldn’t kill a team either. Taking all that into account he is the perfect third choice for guys I would like.

If he gets a short term 2 year say $12 million deal I would be pretty happy with the stop gap measure until the farm system produces someone who can take over for the future (I am not going to hold my breath but I am going to hope).

Jamey Carroll: Pros: the guy can take a walk, he plays adequate defense, he puts the ball in play, he is a “gamer”. Cons: he is 37, he has almost no power, he is more of a utility type player than a true short stop.

Carroll would be a perfect guy to have as a backup/roving infielder that gave guys days off while playing 3 times a week or so. I am not sure you would want him to be an everyday player but he is probably a better option in giving overall value than the Giants in house options and he shouldn’t command a big paycheck.

Clint Barmes: I should just copy and paste what I wrote above for Jamey Carroll except he is a five years younger.

Carroll Barmes would be a perfect guy to have as a backup/roving infielder that gave guys days off while playing 3 times a week or so. I am not sure you would want him to be an everyday player but he is probably a better option in giving overall value than the Giants in house options and he shouldn’t command a big paycheck.

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More Jose Reyes Trade Thoughts

Last week, I wrote about the cost benefit analysis of the possible trade of Jose Reyes and my rough calculation was that Reyes is worth about $25 million to the Giants and the Giants top pitching prospect was worth about the same.

After I wrote that, Julian from Splashing Pumpkins left a link to some tools to help analyze trades and value of prospects. I wanted to try to use these tools to get a better idea of what this trade would mean for the Giants.

First up; what the Giants would get. Jose Reyes has already accumulated 2.9 WAR and the first go round I simply extrapolated that for the rest of the season. This probably overstated his value so this time I used the ZIPS rest of the season projections as the baseline for determining his rest of the season WAR.

This gave us a 3.9 WAR for a value of $18 million. The remainder on his contract is about $7.8 million and I assumed that he will be a Type A Free Agent so that is added in at the bottom as well. In addition, I also gave him a bonus for the bump in expected revenue for making the playoffs with him on the team.

Jose Reyes
Year	Sal (M)	WAR	Val (M)	Net (M)
2011	$7.8	3.9	$18.0	$10.2
FA Picks			$5.0
Playoff Revenue			$2.3
Total	$7.8	3.9	$25.2	$17.4

The final net value for Reyes ended up at $17.4 million for the rest of the season.

I did the something similar for Zach Wheeler but with a number of assumptions. First, I assumed that he would make the majors in 2013 and once he made the majors, he would have an expected WAR of 1.575. I came to that number by assuming the following probabilities for his future performance:

WAR	Probability	xWAR
0	0.25	0
5	0.0375	0.1875
4	0.075	0.3
3	0.1125	0.3375
2	0.225	0.45
1	0.3	0.3
		1.575

Then, I took this number and plugged it into the same calculator as the one used in the Reyes analysis. For his team controlled years, I put in a league minimum salary of $400k and estimated his arbitration salary at 40%, 60%, and 80% of FA value in their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd years, respectively.

After that, I also put everything into present value terms using a discount rate of 10%, which is seen in the column NPV.

Zach Wheeler
Year	Sal (M)	xWAR	Val (M)	Net (M)	NPV
2011	$0.0	0.0	$0.0	$0.0	$0.0
2012	$0.0	0.0	$0.0	$0.0	$0.0
2013	$0.4	1.6	$7.5	$7.1	$5.3
2014	$0.4	1.6	$7.5	$7.1	$4.9
2015	$0.4	1.6	$7.5	$7.1	$4.4
2016	$3.0	1.6	$7.5	$4.5	$2.5
2017	$4.5	1.6	$7.5	$3.0	$1.5
2018	$6.0	1.6	$7.6	$1.6	$0.8
FA Picks			$0.0
Total	$4.2	9.5	$45.0	$40.8	$19.4

With this tool, Wheeler's net present value to the Giants is $19.4 million, which is still $2 million more than what Reyes would be worth to the team.

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Cost Benefit Analysis of a Jose Reyes Trade

With the struggles of Miguel Tejada this season, many Giants fans are looking for an alternative at shortstop. I have to say that I am in the same place because a .220/.241/.280 line was not what people were expecting when he signed his one year deal. His current line is worse than what I expected even in my worst case scenario in my 2011 projection for him.

The ZIPS updated projections expects that things will get better, but not that much better. The rest of the way projection has him hitting .260/.287/.357, which would still be below average offensive projection from a shortstop and his defense doesn't help his value at all.

The player that is in everyone's dreams to replace Tejada is the Mets Jose Reyes. Reyes is having a very nice season and appears to be back to the level of production that made him one of the best young players in the league before the injury bug bit him. The Mets are not expected to be contending and should be sellers of some of their veterans as they attempt to rebuild. Reyes should be available to teams that are willing to pay the price.

The price, which is expected to be fairly high, is the only thing holding the Giants back from going hard after him. The starting point for any trade talks is a top prospect and maybe some lesser guys as well. For the Giants, that means Brandon Belt or Zach Wheeler would have to be included. For the following analysis, I will use Wheeler because I imagine that Belt is pretty much untouchable at the moment.

Cost Benefit Analysis

To break this down first we need to figure out how much Wheeler is worth. This will be a very rough, back of the envelope calculation, but it should work for this purpose.

First, lets assume that there is a 75% chance he makes the majors. Top 10 picks make the majors about 73% of the time and Wheeler has shown he has potential in the low minors, so I think this is pretty fair. Next, lets make some assumptions on his value if he gets to the majors.

His talent ceiling is a number one or two starter, which would be about five WAR a season. Lets say that has a 20% chance of becoming true if he makes the majors. Lets say there is a 40% chance that instead of becoming an ace, he is a number two or three starter that is worth three WAR a season. Finally, lets say there is a 40% chance he becomes a number four or five starter or maybe switches to the bullpen and is worth one WAR a season.

If we take all of these assumptions and say three years of accumulating WAR in the majors, that gives us an expected total WAR of 5.85 over three years. If we assume one WAR is worth $5.5 million and that we must discount that value because it takes him a couple years to make the big leagues, that gives him a present value to the Giants of around $25 million.

Now that we have an estimate of what Wheeler is worth, we should figure out what Reyes is worth. So far this season, he has produced 2.4 fWAR over 47 games for the Mets. If we do a straight extrapolation of these numbers over 155 games, that would give him a 7.9 WAR season and about 5.5 WAR the rest of the way. This is probably a high estimate but lets go with it.

Reyes' contract pays him $11 million this season and as of today, that leaves about $7.8 million remaining to be paid. If he does produce 5.5 WAR and it is valued at $5.5 million per year, that gives him a value of $30.25 for the rest of the season and a surplus value of $22.45 million.

As of right now, Wheeler is more valuable to the Giants than Reyes, but adding Reyes also has the value of increasing the Giants chances of winning and making the playoffs. Making the playoffs is a big payday; lets say that brings in an extra $30 million to the team. Right now, Baseball Prospectus gives the Giants a 87.5% chance of making the playoffs. Lets assume that with Reyes, they become a virtual lock at 95%.

The expected playoff revenue increases with Reyes from $26.25 million to $28.5 million, so if we add $2.25 million to Reyes, his value to the Giants is now $24.7 million or virtually the same as what Wheeler is worth to the Giants.

Conclusion

As of this moment with the above assumptions, the Giants going after Reyes is about an even trade value wise. I see a number of assumptions that could easily change that complicate this deal.

First is that Reyes doesn't keep up his current rate of production. Right now, he is on pace for a career year and I would say there is a good possibility he slows down some along the course of the season. That would make him less valuable to the Giants.

There is also the chance that Reyes could become a Type A free agent, which means if the Giants fail to sign him to a extension, it could net a couple of draft picks. The extra draft picks would be nice to help restock the farm system and could help offset some of the loss of Wheeler.

Another possibility is the Giants have a different expectation of the future talent of Wheeler than I do. If they expect more, that obviously makes him more valuable to the team. The other thing that isn't taken into account is Wheeler is the only high caliber pitching prospect in the system and with the current pitchers running out of team control, that could making having a cost controlled player even more valuable.

With all of this taken into account, I would have to say that it would only make sense for the Giants to make this trade if they can do it soon because waiting until the end of July, the numbers don't add up. Even if the Mets were willing to do the deal now, it just seems like the Giants would be giving up quite a bit and don't have a lot of depth at pitching in the minor leagues to fall back on.

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