Guillen. Sigh.
Posted: September 19th, 2008 | Filed under: Baseball | 32 Comments »
This quote, from Royals general manager Dayton Moore, troubles me a touch. Only a touch. The quote is about Jose Guillen and it appears in this blog post by Star colleague Jeff Flanagan:
“On the field, his performance has been right about what we expected,” general manager Dayton Moore said. “He has played to his level.”
Now, I will readily admit that this quote would bother me a lot, except for this: I do not believe it. I fully expect a general manager like Dayton to stand up for his player, especially a sensitive player who has two years left on his hefty contract. And Moore does use the quote as a launching pad to talk about how the club needs to work with Guillen on his off-the field issues. So I see the value of a public statement.
Still … I hope, hope, hope that Dayton Moore does not believe that Jose Guillen actually has played up to expectation. Guillen has 40 doubles, 20 homers and 95 RBIs, which looks decent enough to make someone with a lot less guile than the Royals general manager satisfied with the production of the season.
But really, you don’t have to look too hard to see a Wile E Coyote fall off the cliff for Guillen.
His batting average is down 27 points from 2007.
His on-base percentage is down 55 points.
His slugging percentage is down 15 points.
His walks have been cut in half. His sac flies are down, he has grounded into a couple more double plays, and he’s not even getting hit by as many pitches as usual.
He has been a terrible fielder in right or left. His Dewan plus/minus number is -9 plays in left field and -8 plays in right field — staggeringly bad numbers considering he doesn’t have 500 innings at either position.
His OPS+ is down from 116 to 92. That’s a drop from a good player to a dramatically subpar one. A 92 OPS+ for a corner outfielder whose only real value is his bat … well, it’s not good.
I was adamantly against the Royals signing Guillen, but it was not because of his brushes with authority or the HGH package that he apparently had delivered the stadium or anything personal. I kind of like the guy personally. Yes, Guillen has been more disruptive than I expected, and he did show up to camp out of shape, and generally speaking you don’t need a guy saying ‘Bleep the fans’ or acting like he will go after a fan in the stands … not when your fan base is pretty small and shrinking to be begin with.
But for me the bottom line was always that at 32 years old I figured his production was about to take a precipitous fall. He had a hot streak for the ages in mid-season, and he has been hitting about .390 the last three weeks or so, and even so he is at the moment tied for 45th among Major League outfielders OPS+ (only 54 outfielders have enough at-bats to qualify) and 52nd in on-base percentage (ahead only of Jeff Francoeur, who I predict will be a Royal soon, and Carlos Gomez, who is 22 and at least plays a mean center field).
The Royals paid $12 million for that. They will pay $12 million more next year. They will pay $12 million more the year after that. I don’t see how this gets better.
So in the end, I hope Dayton does not REALLY think Guillen’s on-field performance was about what he expected. I hope he’s just saying to inspire his player and bring peace to the world. Or even more, I hope he’s planning to trade Guillen back to the Mariners. Apparently some people there really want him.
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UPDATE: It occurred to me after I wrote this that Guillen has a chance to drive in 100 RBIs with a sub-.300 on-base percentage, and I figured that had to be pretty rare. It has happened nine times, three by the ever-popular Joe Carter:
Joe Carter, 1989: .292 OBP, 105 RBIs (35 homers)
Joe Carter, 1990: .290 OBP, 115 RBIs (24 homers)
Joe Carter, 1997: .284 OBP, 102 RBIs (21 homers)
Tony Armas, 1983: .254 OBP (!!), 107 RBIs (36 homers)
Tony Batista, 2004: .272 OBP, 110 RBIs (32 homers)
Jeff Francouer, 2006: .293 OBP, 103 RBIs (29 homers)
Joe Pepitone, 1964: .281 OBP , 100 RBIs (28 homers)
George Bell, 1992: .294 OBP, 112 RBIs (25 homers)
Ruben Sierra, 1993: .288 OBP, 101 RBIs (22 homers)
So this is not unique. Still, it IS pretty rare. I figured with Guillen this had to be because he is hitting extraordinarily well with runners in scoring position. It isn’t. He’s hitting .279/.324/.413 in those situations. The guy just has come up a lot in RBI situations.
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UPDATE 2: Comment from Brilliant Reader Aaron:
Here is Guillen’s 162 game average for his career from Baseball Reference, the 2nd line is this year in 144 games:
AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG *OPS+ TB SH SF IBB HBP GDP
579 76 158 31 3 21 88 3 3 30 107 .273 .322 .447 100 259 2 4 3 14 17
562 62 148 40 1 20 95 2 1 21 100 .263 .298 .445 92 250 0 3 2 8 20
He’s down 14 runs, up 9 doubles (career high), about normal in HRs, 7 RBIs above avg, 9 walks below (he never did walk much), 7 strikeouts below, 10 points low in BA, 24 points low in OBP, and right on in slugging. I’d argue we did get what we paid for. It’s just I can’t figure out why the hell we paid $12 million for him. What did you expect out of him? A career year? He’s only had 100 RBIs ONCE in his career, and for his career he is a 100 OPS+ guy, dead average. At least he did better than Emil Brown, but the marginal cost of Guillen’s extra production was ridiculously high.
Sigh. Can we have a moratorium against posting 162-game averages from a little while? Yes. Aaron’s point is right, Guillen’s numbers are only down moderately from his career 162-game average (though that 24-point drop in on-base percentage is a doozy). However, those 162-game averages include the young Jose Guillen who was released FOUR TIMES by Major League teams. I would hope the Royals were not paying $12 million expecting Jose Guillen to return back to those days when he spent more time on the wire than Jimmy McNulty.
Here are Guillen’s 162-game averages for the five years before the Royals signed him:
600 ABs, 89 runs, 32 doubles, 2 triples, 28 homers, 100 RBIs, 37 walks, 113 Ks, .286/.343/.489.
And this year’s 162-game average:
632 ABs, 70 runs, 45 doubles, 1 triples, 22 homers, 107 RBIs, 24 walks, 113 Ks, .263/.298/.445
Down 23 points in batting average, 45 points in on-base percentage, 44 points in slugging. It doesn’t seem a positive trend.
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They’re the Bizarro Mariners out there now in Seattle. Or, West Pittsburgh.
I agree, it was a bit troubling to read Moore’s comment about Guillen, and I certainly hope it was done primarily for PR reasons. That strikes me as a genuine possibility, and I’ll cut Moore that much slack.
More disturbing to me was that Flanagan – supposedly an unbiased professional sports columnist – not only didn’t point out any of the facts about Guillen’s subpar performance that Joe did, but he actually seems to agree that Guillen has been worth his money this year. Other than a brief mention about the hot streak that inflated his numbers, Flanagan seems to think that Guillen earned his keep, going so far as to cite his numbers as being “worthy of a cleanup hitter for a small-market team”, and “just about what you’d expect for his salary level.”
Really? Let’s take a look at some low-payroll cleanup hitters:
Kansas City – Jose Guillen, .263/.298/.445, $12 million
Tampa Bay – Evan Longoria, .281/.353/.544, $500K
Minnesota – Justin Morneau, .311/.383/.519, $8.4 million
Cleveland – Jhonny Peralta, .276/.326/.475, $2.5 million
Florida – Mike Jacobs, .250/.298/.524, $395K
Milwaukee – Prince Fielder, .272/.371/.502, $670K
Cincinnati – Brandon Phillips, .261/.312/.442, $2.9 million
Pittsburgh – Ryan Doumit, .321/.361/.502, $412K
Oakland – Jack Cust, .228/.369/.460, $410K
Arizona – Conor Jackson, .296/.378/.449, $420K
Colorado – Garrett Atkins, .287/.331/.451, $4.4 million
San Diego – Adrian Gonzalez, .277/.359/.506, $875K
Well, obviously Flanagan’s statement is an outright falsehood. There are any number of small market teams fielding cleanup hitters who are as good or much better than Guillen, and for a fraction of the cost.
I guess I shouldn’t have expected anything else. Flanagan is to sports columnists for small-market newpapers what Guillen is to cleanup hitters for small-market ballclubs.
Paul – I agree Flanagan is silly, but i think to be fair, you’d have to only compare Guillen to those guys above that have hit free agency. I don’t think Evan Longoria is a fair comparison since his salary is determined soley by the club.
Wait a second, you read Jeffrey Flanagan? I thought he got a blog as a courtesy for years of service to the Star or something. I’ve been reading the Star for about 23 years now and I didn’t know anyone actually read his drivel.
Top o’ the Mornin’ to ya!
Actually, Longoria’s salary is part of a six-year (plus three option years) contract extension he signed earlier this season. But if you want to limit it to just guys who’ve reached free agency, that’s fine.
Jack Cust was a minor league free agent, so that’s a fair comp. He’s outperforming Guillen for roughly 1/35th the price.
How about Aubrey Huff? He makes about $4 million as a free agent signed by Baltimore, and he’s hitting .313/.374/.574.
How about Carlos Pena? He makes $6 million for the Rays and is hitting .246/.374/.495.
Cliff Floyd and Eric Hinske were both signed by Tampa and have combined to hit 29 homers, drive in 92 runs, bat roughly .255/.340/.464 and make only $3.5 million between them.
The Rangers pay just $5.2 million for Milton Bradley’s .324/.442/.577 line.
Jorge Cantu was release outright by the Reds this past off-season, signed by the Marlins for just $500K and he’s hit .277/.326/.482 for them with 28 hoers and 91 RBI.
I could go on, but you get the point by now.
Flanny…sigh.
Love ya buddy. I only read Flanny for nice human-interest pieces, or a wacky prediction predicated on, well, absolutely no facts whatsoever.
I was talking once to an anonymous former member of the Royals front office when I mentioned Flanny. His reaction was something along the lines of:
“Geez…I’ve been quoted about a dozen times by that guy, and none of them have been right. Honestly, I don’t think that guy rolls out of bed before noon.”
Now, obviously I don’t think this is true, and I don’t share his disposition (I really do enjoy reading Flanny), but I thought that was funny…
Wow, I had temporarily forgotten how much I hated Ruben Sierra; thanks for refreshing my memory on that.
There’s a good lesson here in just how far we’ve come in baseball analysis in the past 15-20 years. Think about this: as recently as 1992, almost everyone in baseball thought Ruben Sierra was *almost as good as Jose Canseco in his prime.* The mind boggles.
One tiny thing. Fat Tony Batista’s season was 2004. After that magical campaign, he left for the bright lights of Japan, then was lured back to “play 3B” for the Twins.
Here is Guillen’s 162 game average for his career from Baseball Reference, the 2nd line is this year in 144 games:
AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG *OPS+ TB SH SF IBB HBP GDP
579 76 158 31 3 21 88 3 3 30 107 .273 .322 .447 100 259 2 4 3 14 17
562 62 148 40 1 20 95 2 1 21 100 .263 .298 .445 92 250 0 3 2 8 20
He’s down 14 runs, up 9 doubles (career high), about normal in HRs, 7 RBIs above avg, 9 walks below (he never did walk much), 7 strikeouts below, 10 points low in BA, 24 points low in OBP, and right on in slugging. I’d argue we did get what we paid for. It’s just I can’t figure out why the hell we paid $12 million for him. What did you expect out of him? A career year? He’s only had 100 RBIs ONCE in his career, and for his career he is a 100 OPS+ guy, dead average. At least he did better than Emil Brown, but the marginal cost of Guillen’s extra production was ridiculously high.
Emil Brown: .244/.297/.386 for an OPS+ of 85 in about 400 at bats. But more exciting is the fact that his baseball reference page is without a sponsor. If you’re looking to burn some of that Sports Illustrated money, here’s a good place to start: http://www.baseball-reference.com/b/brownem01.shtml
It’s time to put something to rest. Yes, Moore made a bad decision in giving Guillen a 3 yr deal at 12M per. They will never get it back. Yes, you told them so. Bully for you. Now, let’s move on to what’s best for the Royals going forward.
No one is going to trade us anything of value or probably even accept the majority of Guillen’s salary. So, the only way we will get Guillen to go away is to essentially PAY HIM TO GO AWAY. And given the fact that we have no ML ready OF in AAA or really anyone besides DeJesus in the entire organization who can be a contributer on a contending team, we can’t go paying guys who could be to go away.
The best bet for the Royals is to put their efforts into making sure Guillen is in shape for spring training and stays healthy throughout the season. The majority of the “droppoff” sited occurred either at the beginning of the season or while he was playing hurt.
In addition to keeping Guillen, they need to sign another FA OF (maybe 2) so that WHEN guys get hur they don’t have to continue to play them. Guys like Hinske (see TB success) are out there for relatively cheap and we need to find them. We need guys with some pop, maybe even play them in platoon situations. Get rid of the 17 middle infielders we have and bring in some useful peices.
Joaldo,
What about Moore’s comment in Flanagan’s column on Thursday: “But a very wise baseball man once told me, ‘believe what you see, not whatyou think’, So we have to evaluate wht we see.”
He was talking about Shealy, but more than that, do you think this means Moore doesn’t pay much attention to the new baseball statistics? Maybe he really is okay with Guillen’s production. What do you think?
Seattle can have him back. Joe said it perfectly, he has a low average with runners in scoring position but gets RBI because he is in the situation a lot. Think about how many more runs/wins we would have if Guillen could actually hit! I was against him before, and I’m against him now.
What is the deal with Shealy fever? I’m I the only one who remembers him hitting like this in Sept 2006 only to fall flat on his face in 2007? Don’t get me wrong, I hope he is the real deal, but from what I have seen I have my doubts.
Guillen could sacrifice goats in centerfield at the K and I could live with it, as long as his production was up. Unfortunately, his hot streaks are too brief and his cooling periods tend to come during stretches known in some circles as “the month of August and half of July.”
****
Another vote for Joe to sponser Emil Brown’s BR page.
I would be more than willing to chip in a few quarters to make this happen.
Any other takers??
****
I’ve been posting this stuff for a whle elsewhere, but I just want to add more to Joe’s point(s).
On defense: Guillen has been awful for a while. I saw a post elsewhere that pointed out that in 2007, either his Dewan’s or UZR was as bad as universally-acknowledged-joke-in-the-field Raul Ibanez (who is a few years older than JoGui and has been a better hitter since 2005).
On his good 2007: he numbers are good, and Safeco is tough on right-handed sluggers, as OPS_ recognizes. However, his BABIP was .300. The quick and dirty xBABIP formula (LD% +.12) shows that his xBABIP was .280 (based on a 16.0 LD%). So even his 2007 was lucky. 2006 was a disaster. If it was due to injuries — well, that’s an excuse Guillen fans have been using all this year, so either he sucks now or he’s injury-prone. I’m thinking it’s a lot from column A and a bit from column B.
It gets better. This year he’s has a .967 OPS against lefties, and a .653 OPS against righties. Is this a one-year thing? Well, in 2006 he was bad all year around. In 2007? Another bit 1.049 against lefties… and .741 against righties. This isn’t a young guy liek Butler or Gordon adjusting to the big leagues. Guillen’s career numbers are actually about equal. But he hasn’t had decent numbers against righties since 2005. He’s losing it.
So the Royals got a guy who’s one been of the worst defenders at his position, who hasn’t hit right-handed pitching since 2005, who’s one good year since 2005 was heavily influenced by lucky on balls in play.
I’m with Joe — he actually seems like an decent guy, personally, but given how management treats him with kid loves when he screws up, and that he’s not exactly Manny or Barry Bonds with the bat, I can understand why the younger players would be angry.
Joe’s main point is right: Moore should be sticking up for his player. But I really hope that Moore doesn’t mean what he’s saying. Guillen has been bad by any standards, and a disaster when his contract is taken into account.
Two more thoughts:
1) Aaron: Interesting point, but you realize that those career numbers include 1997-2002, when he never OPS+ed higher than 89, right? That was before his peak of 2003-2005 (hhmmmm… what do those years correspond with?).
2) If the Royals don’t want to put a bunch of money, or get outbid on Dunn or Burrell this offseason, I understand, But they’d better not use “bad defense” as an excuse, given Guillen’s performance on those occassions when he wasn’t putting Butler on the bench because the Royals needed his awesome .750 OPS in the DH spot.
Here is Jose Guillen’s 2008 ZiPS Projection, prorated to the 562 AB’s thatt he has.
[pre]
[b] R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO BA OBP SLG [/b]
ZiPS 82 152 28 1 21 89 37 102 .269 .335 .438
Act. 62 148 40 1 20 95 21 100 .263 .298 .445
[/pre]
His walks are disappointing, but that aside he’s fairly close to what one would reasonably project. His projection just isn’t very good.
…All this plus his teammates’ perpetual exasperation with his diva-esque antics, yet the real issue continues to be his likely production going forward as a 33-year-old next year. As I see it, the Royals have no choice: Trade old and get young. That’s it. They should have traded Grud. They should have traded Mahay. They should have benched/traded Gload. They should trade Guillen.
Even when productive, these players haven’t and won’t produce the magical “leadership” that management keeps wishing upon a star for. Not even if they click their heels three times. Instead, let’s actually create a productive farm system that keeps replenishing the major league club. We hear this talked about, but we still cling to older players that clearly have not produced a strong clubhouse atmosphere, not reduced the on-field circus flops of an unfocused team, and not produced winning seasons.
Does Guillen really have two good years left in him? One? Who cares? A good year for him isn’t all that good anyway and he represents something far more valuable: trade bait for young prospects.
Sorry… I mean a BABIP of .330 in 2007 above. His xBABIP was .280.
Baggio, by chance are you a White Sox fan?
Sorry I should have told you why I was asking. I used to converse daily on a White Sox message board with a commenter who called himself Baggio back in 2001 or so.
No and how dare he take my name.
The Royals need to make a run at Gardy.
I hope they Seattle guy who wrote that link on Guillen has the pull to have the guy sent back to the Puget Sound area. What a colossal pain in the neck. – TL
First, lets neutralize Guillen’s stats. Holy crapola! Neutralized, he goes from OPS of .828 to 2007 to .711 in 2008. How the heck did that happen?
Then lets talk about what Guillen is doing well. You think he isn’t doing something well? Last year, he played in a pretty good offense with a superb leadoff hitter and some good run protection for him. Ibanez, Sexson, and Beltre all had 20+ homers in addition to Ichiro doing great as a leadoff hitter (.351 BA, .396 OBP, 37/8 SB/CS). This year the Royals have nobody (aside from Guillen) with more than 14 homers, and with ten games left of so, that’s relevant. And the team as a whole is 18 points worse in OBP, 31 worse in SP, doesn’t even steal as often or as efficiently. So for Guillen to have as many RBI as he does means that he’s either really really lucky or he’s actually performing better in those fewer clutch situations he’s had.
Now until recently I was mostly not a fan of context sensitive offensive numbers. I mean, a good hitter’s a good hitter. And then the Dodgers traded for Manny, who is a great hitter, not a good one. And they put Jeff Kent third, who only batted something like .355 with Manny behind him. Then Kent got hurt and they put Ethier in front of Manny, and Ethier’s batting average went through the roof (IIRC, over .400 batting in front of Manny). Not that Kent and Ethier are that similar, but both hitters are (for the Dodgers) fairly patient, not first ball swingers like Nomar and Kemp and Loney. And Torre, smart man that he is, decided to go to a topheavy OBP lineup with Martin, who doesn’t steal nearly as well as Kemp or Pierre (or Furcal) leading off, because Martin has a .380 OBP, best on the team aside from Furcal (hurt) and Manny. Ethier’s .364 is second best. So those guys get more fastballs, and give Manny more opportunities to hit with men on base when he’s harder to pitch around, and that’s why one player (plus good managing) improves the whole team more than just that one player’s improvement should show.
Why this is relevant to Guillen should be clear. He has never had much plate discipline. When pitchers had to throw him more strikes because he was hitting with men on base and because he also had good hitters behind him, then he swung at more strikes and hit better. In KC’s lineup, where only three players have an OPS+ of 100 (average) and one of those has fewer than 400 at bats at that, there’s no reason to throw the one legitimate power hitter on the team anything too good. In Seattle 2007, with 6 guys above average, Guillen saw better pitches. Same as Kent and now Ethier in front of Manny.
Yes, Guillen is overpaid. But his last four healthy years (skipping 2006) his OPS+ was 116, 116, 121, and 142, with 23-31 homers each year. He was going to get $10M+ from somebody with those numbers. You want to see overpaid? Look at Andruw Jones, who gave significant signs of being in a diminishment phase of his career, is getting $36M in two years instead of three, and looks like a retired linebacker instead of a gold glover in center field. Jones has an OPS+ of 32, following an OPS+ year of 88 with a pretty good hitting Braves team last year. So I’d say the Royals didn’t do so badly with getting Guillen. They could have done worse. I hope that Jones truly was just an artifact of the sore knee getting him out of shape and affecting his hitting, and now that it’s fixed, he can return to form next year. But I don’t know that he cares enough to work back into shape. Once you’re set for life, you need to really love what you’re doing to put in that hard work.
+1 for the mcnulty reference
“Last four healthy years.” That’s being generous. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to check out JoGui’s BABIP-xBABIP rates for 2007. Also his left-right splits from 2006-2008. Check statistical studies on the “effectiveness” of lineup protection. Also look up how his defense is rated. It might also be interesting, for the sake of speculation, think about what other factors might have aided his 2003-2005 peak — what else might correspond with that time period that would be useful to factor in?
@Richard Aronson:
Less situations for Guillen? That’s just flat out not true.
He’s had 214 runners in scoring position this year. Of those 214 he has knocked in 65 (65 does not include himself on HRs or other runners not in scoring position during homers). That is 30.4% of RISP that he knocks in. He’s had 188 plate appearances with RISP, and has .279/.324/.413 in those situations. So he is better, but only marginally as he has his BA at .265/.299/.445. He hit 12 homers with bases empty and 4 with a runner on first. Only 4 of his 20 came with people on base.
With Seattle last year he drove in 69 of 231 for 29.9%, so he really hasn’t changed much. He had 187 PAs with RISP, so he had 17 more runners last year, in 1 less appearance. That’s not much of a change, it’s 1 more runner for every 11 PA’s with RISP. He batted .283/.364/.384 with RISP last year.
He has done for us pretty much what he did last year. Now if he could take those slow streaks and make them into something passable around a .250 BA w/ some power, he would have himself his best season ever or come close to it (2003-142 OPS+).
Aaron:
I think it’s pretty much true for every somewhat decent hitter than if they could take their slumps and make them “passable”, that they would be very, very good. That’s like saying “all Alex Gordon has to do is hit lefties as well as he hits righties, and he’d be almost as good as Longoria!”
Well, sure… is that _all_?
Nice, a Wire reference! Anyone else fired up for David Simon’s new show about pot-Katrina New Orleans? I know I am…
Well Devil Fingers, I kind of figure those slumps were because he was out of shape to start the season, and he was hurt in the middle. Now if that doesn’t happen, he doesn’t look like crap on a stick and maybe doesn’t slump to the levels of Tony Pena Jr.
“… when he spent more time on the wire than Jimmy McNulty.”
Really though, Lester Freamon did the yeoman’s work on the wires.