Saturday, November 26, 2011

How much is Yonder Alonso worth?

The rumor mill states that the Reds are shopping Yonder Alonso around for pitching help. Alonso has a career WAR of .5 in 127 PA, a 2.36 WAR when adjusted to 600 PA. This is easily worth the 1 million dollars he will make in 2012 (even the .5 would be worth the million dollars). Defensively, at all 3 positions he has played, he is below average according to Range Factor. Offensively, some of his numbers are pretty impressive, such as his .354 OBP, 124 OPS +, and 1.961 O4S. However, his Secondary Average is very unimpressive at .265. Despite this, his Offensive Winning Percentage is .653 and has a 6.3 Runs Created per Game. He has homered nearly 4% of the time, which is very good, but has walked slightly below average at 7.9%. He is also below average at seeing pitches, with a 3.73 Pit/PA, giving him about an about average PPS of 90.9. However, we have to put these statistics in the context of a .370 BABIP. With that high of a BABIP, and such a small sample size, his Major League statistics are basically worthless. He did play 192 games in AAA Louisville, an International League team. There, he had a .364 OBP, 1.29 PPG, 2.5 PAPP, and 2.89 Simple WAR. According to our international league metric, he should have a 1.4 yearly WAR, .318 OBP, 3.07 PAPP, and .89 PPG. So his minor league numbers show that his Major League success is fluky. Players that put up the statistics that he is projected to put up are really common and not worth a whole lot. He will have more value that the 1 million he will be paid next year, so in that sense he will be undervalued. However, as far as a trade chip, he is clearly overvalued, especially if some people are saying there could be a straight up trade for him and James Shields. That is absurd.

No comments:

Post a Comment