Monday, March 29, 2004
Mets get Gutierrez
Finally, the "Who Gets Danny Garcia's Job?" contest has come to an end. Your winner, Ricky Gutierrez, now formerly of the Cleveland Indians. For their role in this, the Indians will receive a player to be named later and the responsibility of paying a large portion of Gutierrez's salary to play for the New York Mets.
Jim Duquette was on WFAN this morning talking up Gutierrez's career .340 on base percentage to get across the point that he was brought in for his bat rather than his glove. While I'm glad Duquette didn't try to sell Gutierrez on his leather, the addition of a man who'll soon be 34 years old and is coming off of WWE-style neck surgery that limited him to only 115 major and minor league at bats last year doesn't exactly bolster my confidence in this sorry excuse for a bench. That .340 OBP is accompanied by a .353 career slugging percentage and the last time Gutierrez put up anything resembling a valuable offensive season was 2001 when he hit .290/.345/.402 for the Cubs. And the previous year, when he hit .276/.375/.401, was the only year in which his offensive production cracked the lofty heights of "league average" with his career-best OPS+ of 105. In comparison, noted offensive sinkhole Joe McEwing posted an OPS+ of 108 in his "career year" of 2001. Now, Gutierrez has been less consistently awful than McEwing and has always done a better job of getting on base as "Super" Joe's career .308 OBP will attest. But Gutierrez is more than two years older than McEwing and trying to play his first full season after a serious injury and medical procedure in 2002. Gutierrez would have to rebound pretty dramatically to be of much offensive use to the Mets off the bench this year and that seems fairly unlikely. Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA system projects nearly identical seasons for Gutierrez and McEwing with the only real difference between their adjusted rate stats--.269/.330/.371 and .252/.313/.374, respectively--being a slight edge in OBP for Gutierrez.
With the Indians apparently taking on a large portion of his ungodly $4.6 million salary, the Mets won't be giving up much in the way of talent or cash for Gutierrez's services. But he'll be just another weak bat on an awful bench. The Mets could have gotten similar production out of Danny Garcia, without having to give up any kind of player or any real money, and maybe learned something about a player who might be useful in the future. Instead, they've gone with yet another veteran who won't be around for the next contending Mets team. ¶ joe | 12:37 AM |
Finally, the "Who Gets Danny Garcia's Job?" contest has come to an end. Your winner, Ricky Gutierrez, now formerly of the Cleveland Indians. For their role in this, the Indians will receive a player to be named later and the responsibility of paying a large portion of Gutierrez's salary to play for the New York Mets.
Jim Duquette was on WFAN this morning talking up Gutierrez's career .340 on base percentage to get across the point that he was brought in for his bat rather than his glove. While I'm glad Duquette didn't try to sell Gutierrez on his leather, the addition of a man who'll soon be 34 years old and is coming off of WWE-style neck surgery that limited him to only 115 major and minor league at bats last year doesn't exactly bolster my confidence in this sorry excuse for a bench. That .340 OBP is accompanied by a .353 career slugging percentage and the last time Gutierrez put up anything resembling a valuable offensive season was 2001 when he hit .290/.345/.402 for the Cubs. And the previous year, when he hit .276/.375/.401, was the only year in which his offensive production cracked the lofty heights of "league average" with his career-best OPS+ of 105. In comparison, noted offensive sinkhole Joe McEwing posted an OPS+ of 108 in his "career year" of 2001. Now, Gutierrez has been less consistently awful than McEwing and has always done a better job of getting on base as "Super" Joe's career .308 OBP will attest. But Gutierrez is more than two years older than McEwing and trying to play his first full season after a serious injury and medical procedure in 2002. Gutierrez would have to rebound pretty dramatically to be of much offensive use to the Mets off the bench this year and that seems fairly unlikely. Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA system projects nearly identical seasons for Gutierrez and McEwing with the only real difference between their adjusted rate stats--.269/.330/.371 and .252/.313/.374, respectively--being a slight edge in OBP for Gutierrez.
With the Indians apparently taking on a large portion of his ungodly $4.6 million salary, the Mets won't be giving up much in the way of talent or cash for Gutierrez's services. But he'll be just another weak bat on an awful bench. The Mets could have gotten similar production out of Danny Garcia, without having to give up any kind of player or any real money, and maybe learned something about a player who might be useful in the future. Instead, they've gone with yet another veteran who won't be around for the next contending Mets team. ¶ joe | 12:37 AM |
