Khalil Greene’s 2008 season is a good example of why I am always pretty weary of any prediction that anybody (or anything!) makes, especially me. You really couldn’t have saw that coming. Sure, you can get a good idea about a player by looking at his past numbers, but there’s always a chance that something like that happens. Still, past performance is a good enough predictor of future performance (and what else do we have, really?), so let’s take a look at what we expect out of Greene in 2009 … keeping in mind that it could blow up in our face.

Offense 

Here are Greene’s wOBAs for his career, year by year:

03: .238
04: .338
05: .313
06: .326
07: .322
08: .264

As you can see, before last year, Greene was a pretty consistent player. For ‘09 Marcel has him at .301. That is like .314, park adjusted. To get wins above average: (.314-.334)/(1.15)*(700)/10.5 = -1.2 WAA. To position-adjust for short, we add on +.75 wins. Now we’re at -.45 WAA.

Fielding: Rally has Greene at +5 runs in the field, per 162 games.

Now, we’ve got -.45 wins above average plus .5 = +.05 WAA/per 162. Khalil’s about an average player, per 162 games, according to this crude analysis. Now we have to factor in replacement level, which is 2 wins below average — so Greene is at 2.05 wins above replacement level. Marcel expects him to play about 68% of the time: 2.05 * 68% = 1.4 WAR.

That’s pretty low; lower than I expected. But I don’t think you can underestimate how bad last year was for Khalil, and obviously when you’re weighting it heavily, it’s going to have a big impact.

Contract

If we use the standard $4.84 million per win over replacement level, Khalil is valued at approximately $6.8 million next year. He’ll make about $6.5 mill this year. So, if you trust this analysis at all (and I’m not saying you should), the Cardinals aren’t necessarily stealing Khalil here. The debate surrounding the trade, without even considering the players the Pads are getting back, will revolve around how valuable Khalil actually is  (hello, captain obvious : ). 1.4 WAR is just a rough estimate. If Khalil is better than that for St. Louis., and he could be for multiply reasons, some of which we’ll discuss in a second, then they may have made a really good deal. Okay, it’s been a second, let’s get to a couple of the possible factors that may allow Greene to “outperform” his projection.

Playing time — I’m using a very conservative estimate for Greene’s playing time … that he’ll play about 68% of the time in 2009. I got this by taking marcels projected PA and dividing it by 700 (477/700=68%). Again, to me anyway, this is a very low projection for an everyday player (well, when he’s not hurt). Let’s take a look at Greene’s track record. Here are his PAs by year:

04: 554 (79%)
05: 476 (68%)
06: 460 (66%)
07: 659 (94%)
08: 423 (60%)

In parenthesis is percentage of playing time, assuming 700 PA is the max. Anyway, if we ignore 2003, he’s played about 73.5% of the time. If we weight the last three years 5-4-3, we get 73%. Factoring in 2004 and 2005 at a smaller weight isn’t going to make much of a difference. So, we’re around 73%. Whether you want to believe Khalil is going to “regress to the mean” and play more games than that going forward or decline (and play less games) as he gets older is up to you. I’m really not sure. My gut tells me that a decent estimate, given this information only, would be something like 75% for next year, 70% for 2010, 65% for 2011, 60% for 2012 … and so on. If we bump him up to 75% for ‘09, that puts him at 1.54 WAR. That’s about a value of $7.5 million on the open market, or a surplus value of like $1M. Even bumping Khalil’s playing time projection up a bit does not make this a *great* value for the Cards, but it does help.

Parks

One of the theories bouncing around the Pads’ blogosphere was that Petco hurt Greene more than it hurt the average player. Why? Well, the main reason was due to his splits: he hit .270/.318/.484 on the road in his career and .225/.289/.369 at home. That’s a relatively large difference, especially in the power department, even after you consider the normal effects of Petco. Now, whether it’s statistically significant and outside the realm of randomness, luck, or whatever you want to call it, is another story. I’m not sure if it is or isn’t, but it’s noteworthy nonetheless. If Khalil could put up his Padre road numbers all the time with the Cards, he’ll be much more valuable. If we assume nothing will change on the road, the question boils down to, “Will moving from Petco to St. Louis help Khalil more than it would help the average player?”

Who knows. To the Padres, since they do play half their games in Petco, it doesn’t really matter much. The Cards, however, could get a better than advertised player, if baseballs that would die at the track in San Diego start flying over the fences (beyond what we’d expect after factoring in the usual park factors). This is all more speculation than anything, but it’s something to consider as Khalil laces up for the Cards.

There was a trade, right?

I have a notion that like every word after 500 in a post is marginally less “important” than the last … or, like, long posts suck. With that in mind, I better quickly comment on the player(s) coming our way in the deal. The Pads got Mark Worrell, a minor league reliever, and a player to be named later. Worrells’ 25 and his minor league numbers look like this: 282 innings, 331 k, 108 bb, 24 hr, 2.94 era. Honestly, I’m not too sure of his prospect status. Future Redbirds has a good profile and they seem to be pretty high on him.

I think it is hard, if not impossible, to say who “won” this trade. It’s hard enough to evaluate one player, but once you add another guy, a minor leaguer at that, and a ptbnl, it gets really messy. Not to mention, there are numerous other factors, one being the Padres chances this year. If they didn’t think they could win and didn’t plan on bringing Greene back after his contract expired, then there’s probably a higher incentive to deal him. There are surely other factors you could get into …

So, there you have it. 1000+ words and no nice, tidy conclusion. What else did you expect?

edit: added a bunch more links, mostly Padres ones; check the comments for another.

I’ve mentioned a time or two here that this blog is far from a new source, and considering the deal happened last night, this post isn’t really much different. But I figured I’d toss out a few links on the Greene trade — I’ll (hopefully) have my own “analysis” up within the next few days. Here are the links:

Pads blogs

• There are Better Deals in August
• Gaslamp Ball
• Ducksnorts
• MadFriars
• Paul DePodesta
• Union Tribune

Cards blogs

• Viva El Birdos
• Future Redbirds (the post is about Mark Worrell, not the trade specifically)

Saber blogs

• Beyond The Boxscore (post written before trade actually happened; they’ve got more comin’)

Okay, I thought I’d find more … I’ll add them as I find them. Feel free to discuss the deal here, if you’d like.

Apparently, it is official. Greene signed a 2 year, $11 million deal with the Padres, avoiding his final two years of arbitration. The article says that Greene could also make more through performance bonuses. It also says that the Padres wanted to negotiate a longer deal with Greene, but the shortstop was not willing to take it past two years.

Anyway, I’ve already attempted to calculate Greene’s value right here. I’ve got him at about 3 wins above replacement, which includes offense, fielding, and a positional adjustment. It’s merely a rough approximation, but it should be relatively close to his actual value, depending on what fieldig metric you use and how you regress to the mean. (of course, more detailed projections could do a better job)

Now that we have his value down, we have to estimate what type of contract he should get. We can’t look at what he “should” get a s a free agent, because he isn’t one. Arbitration eligible players obviously don’t make their full free agent value. For that, we’ll use Tango’s numbers for estimating a pre-free agent deal. Greene’s in his final two years of arbitration, so he should make about 60% of his free agent value this year and about 80% next year.

We can now jump to Tango’s salary scale and try to estimate what a “fair” deal would be. 3 WAR = 13.2 million (it assumes 4.4m per marginal win). We have to take 60% of that, so we get 7.92 for this year. Now, let’s call Greene a 2.5 WAR player in 09, because his fielding takes a rather big hit (or whatever). We also have to account for inflation, so now we’re at $4.84 million per marginal win. Based on these assumptions, he should make $12.1m in 2009 as a free agent — 80% of $12.1m is 9.68. Add up year one and year two and we get ~$17.6 million.

Based on this quick analysis, the Padres are underpaying Greene by about 6 or 7 million. Even if we call Greene a 2.5 WAR player this year and a 2 WAR player in 09, I still get an estimated contract of $14.3 million. Anyway, there could certainly be a problem with something along the way (my estimate of his value, the arbitration percentages, etc.), but it appears the Padres are making out pretty well here. Greene and his agent may not be fully accounting for a number of factors, namely Petco, Greene’s fielding, or his position. Or maybe Greene is just not worried about getting every dollar that he’s worth. I don’t know. Also, remember that he could get some performance bonuses, so that could account for some of the discrepancy.

Anyway, I’m glad that they signed the deal, as it appears to be for well below market value. That being said, I don’t think this guarantees that he’ll be here for the next two years. The Padres could still turn around and deal him. It also certainly doesn’t mean he’ll be here past 2009, as he was apparently unwilling to sign a long term deal at this point. Either way, it appears the Padres have made a solid financial move and now they have a couple of years to think about Greene and his future.

From my trusty sources over at espn, we get this:

The two sides spoke Saturday and were closing in on a two-year deal worth roughly $11 million, according to a person familiar with the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal hasn’t been finalized.

It just buys out his last two arbitration years, so it’s not a major deal or anything. It probably means he’ll stay in SD at least two more years, but I also see no reason why the Pads couldn’t still deal him if they choose. Anyway, my “analysis” if/when this becomes official.

This is not a good study (if you will even call it that). I debated whether or not to even post it, but I decided that since most of my stuff is crap anyway, I may as well go ahead. Anyway, the theory goes something like this: The large outfield in Petco is a major reason why Greene struggles more at home than expected (or, perhaps, it isn’t). Either way, I figured we should forget about Petco and look at how he does at road parks of various sizes (like Phantom suggests). The question then arises: how do we estimate the size of an outfield? MGL used the scales on this site and a computer tracing program to do just that. I’ll do what he did and classify outfields with 106,000 square feet or under as small, and ones with 116,000 or over as large.

For large parks (that, in his career, Greene’s played in) we get Arizona, Colorado, Detroit, and Washington. That’s a total of a whopping 328 PA’s. In small parks (Chicago — NL, Cincinnati, Florida, Houston, Boston, Philly), Greene has racked up a measly 292 PA’s. How has he hit in each?

Small parks: .223/.277/.318
Large parks: .330/.393/.625

Before you start listing the problems, here they are:

• The sample size is ridiculously small — somewhere around half a season in both cases. The variation could just be all, or mostly, randomness.
• Parks have changed. MGL’s calculations were for parks in 2007. Greene’s career numbers are used here.
• Obviously, a large outfield does not equal a pitcher’s park. Colorado and Arizona are two of the best hitters parks in the NL, and they’re also the largest. There are numerous other important factors like weather and air density.
• It could be other factors like pitchers/defenses faced causing much of the disparity (if it isn’t simply random variation).

I’m sure there are many more … again, please don’t take this one seriously at all (not that you will). Anyway, the point is (I think) that a large outfield does not mean Greene will struggle in that park. It is obviously more than that. When Greene hits the ball in the air, his subsequent success is probably determined by multiple factors, including outfield size, weather, air density, and so on.

Petco, by the way, is the 4th largest outfield that he’s played in. Of course, he hits just .230/.292/.377 there. What’s the main difference between Colorado/Arizona and San Diego’s parks: altitude and weather conditions.

Further (er, better) research is clearly needed.

Yesterday’s post received some interesting comments. I figured I’d try to address some of them here (okay, there were only 3 not counting my own) and ramble on about some similar topics.

Here’s what Kevin (from Padres Nation) said in comment #1:

Petco suppresses all players, or at least the theory goes. That’s always been the theory of park effects as I understood. If you had the road stats of all of the league’s shorstops, that would be a good, although not perfect way, of judging them.

I think the point that Petco suppresses offense for all players is right on (not that this is surprising). There may be a rare player or two who would benefit from Petco, but by and large, it hurts offense of all forms. However, my point was that Greene is hurt above and beyond the average player (who is still hurt) because of how he puts the ball in play (or something else, perhaps). Let’s look at some numbers. I don’t have shortstop data, but I loaded every team’s stats into a speadsheet (from baseball reference) and then took out the Padres.

NL players not in Petco (in 07): .268/.336/.427
NL players in Petco: ………….. .232/.294/.354

So, on the road they get a 15.5% boost in average/14% boost in OBP/21% boost in SLG.

Now let’s look at Khalil’s career (note there are a few PA’s from Qualcomm that I didn’t take out):

Greene on the road (career): .280/.335/.515
Greene in Petco (career): .228/.288/.370

On the road: 23% boost in BA/16% boost in OBP/39% boost in SLG.

Greene is hurt more by Petco (or helped more on the road) than the average player, especially in slugging percentage. I am not really trying to prove anything by these numbers. It’s only a 1 year sample for the league. For Greene, it’s his career, but it’s split in half. There’s still a large margin for error and it’s not like there are any tests for significance or anything here. Consider this just for illustration and bear with me if you can.

From this small exercise we can conclude, at least by these numbers, that (with the note from above in mind):

• Hitters are, on average, a lot worse in Petco than in other parks (Yeah, I think we knew that)
• Greene is worse at home, relative to his road stats, than other players (the margin is wider).

The question then becomes: in what ways is Greene hurt?

Enter Didi in comment #6:

He’s still able to hit HR at Petco, with far fewer doubles than on the road. Including 3B, he had 30/63 hits are XBH at Petco, 44/92 on the road. That difference of about 30 hits is what killing his OBP at home since he drew about the same number of walks.

I wonder if he is approaching his ABs differently at home than on the road. And it’s possible that what would have turned into 2Bs on the road were turning into outs at home due to the size of the OF and the better OF defenses (maybe).

That prompted me to look up Greene’s career numbers on the road and in Petco … but this time we’ll look at singles per ball in play (singles/AB-SO-HR), doubles per BIP, etc.

In Petco:
1b/BIP: .190
2b/BIP: .056
3b/BIP: .010
hr/BIP: .035

On the road
1b/BIP: .184
2b/BIP: .117
3b/BIP: .005
hr/BIP: .060

To make that a little more clear, let’s do it per 550 balls in play, which is about how many Greene had last year.

In Petco
1b/550: 104.5
2b/550: 30.8
3b/550: 5.5
hr/550: 19.25

On the road
1b/550: 101.2
2b/550: 64.35
3b/550: 2.75
hr/550: 33

Plain and simply, he’s been an extra base machine on the road. And that’s the same area where he’s getting hurt in Petco. I don’t think that’s surprising, really. I mean, you don’t hear many people talking about Petco hurting singles. It may increase triples a little, but they just don’t happen enough to be that significant. Again, remember this is just sample data, so don’t make any conclusions based on it. I’m just pointing out what’s happened so far for Greene. Like everyone else, he’s hurt by Petco. It just so happens that he’s hurt a lot more than the average joe.

The next question, I guess, becomes: why is he hurt more than the average player? I’m not sure, but I guess I have a few ideas. He hits a lot of balls that are caught in Petco that would be extra base hits in most other parks. In a more technical sense, Greene could hit balls at a certain angle, bat speed, etc. that work fine on the road, but get caught up in the heavy air in Petco Park. I don’t know how to save it and paste it here, so here’s his hitting chart from mlb.com (you have to customize it … it also won’t let me link it to a customized version). Anyway, I’m really not sure. It’s an issue for another day — or an issue for someone far brighter than I am.

More park factor fun

I’m in park factor mode here lately, as you can see. Geoff Young wrote an article for the Hardball Times on PF’s and, specifically, Petco in 2006. Good read.

The topic of taking advantage of your own park (as a team), which Geoff gets into a little,  is probably yet another topic for another day (among the long list of topics I’ll never get to).

Anyway, here’s my question (that I already asked in the comment section of the last post): If you have unlimited resources (i.e., any kind of data you want), how would you construct park factors? Well, here’s my take. Why can’t we take each ball that a player hits in play and attempt to strip it completely from it’s context.  That is, if we know the angle off the bat, the speed off the bat, and things like that, we can say, to a certain extent, what would happen to this ball in a completely neutral environment (weather, fences, air density, etc.). Then we could take each ball that a hitter put in play and give it some kind of percentage of a hit, based on what usually happens to balls with those parameters. So, for instance, if you hit a ball at an angle, speed, etc. that usually produces a 400 foot fly ball, you could call that a home run, no matter what actually happened to that ball. Of course, I’m just thinking out loud here — this would take tons of work and may not even be practical (or valuable). If there’s anyone who will do it, though, it’s probably Greg Rybarczyk. From the article:

Hit Tracker in its usual form uses observations of hit outcomes (landing point, time of flight) to derive the hit’s initial parameters (Horizontal Launch Angle or HLA, Vertical Launch Angle or VLA, and Speed off Bat or SOB, with spin assumed to be a function of these factors). But, with a few lines of code added, it becomes “Hit Whacker,” using HLA, VLA, SOB and atmospheric inputs to generate a hit’s outcome. With this capability, we can create a procedure for assessing how easy or hard it is to hit homers in any park.

To cover the range of possible batted balls that could become homers, I created a “test set” of trajectories, representing 45 different HLA’s (every two degrees from foul line to foul line), 41 different VLA’s (15 to 55 degrees) and 26 different SOB’s (95 to 120 mph). That’s 47,970 different fly ball paths! I ran this complete test set in each park, in that park’s actual altitude, in the park’s average game time temperature from 2002-06, with no wind (I’ll describe how to account for different winds shortly). The trajectories were evaluated as “home run” or “not home run”, and the results were compiled.

That is essentially along the same lines as what I’m trying to say here. Of course, this is all for component factors, rather than runs based ones.

Anyway, my point of this mini-series, if there is one, is to know what question you’re asking before you go looking for the answer. You may not get there initially (we surely haven’t), but the ride will probably be more valuable.

Or it will just chew up 2,000 words.

Over at Sacrifice Bunt, Melvin wrote a post on Khalil Greene yesterday. That prompted, believe it or not, yet another debate about Greene over at Ducksnorts. As usual, the debate was productive and informative. I’m not going to rehash the whole thing again, but I am going to try to put some of my thoughts into words here, as I’ve been thinking about Greene (again) of late. As always, translating my thoughts into words is always a risky proposition, so correct me if I mess something up or stop reading right now for your own sanity.

Ability vs. Talent

For a great article on this turn to, as usual, Patriot. This is really an issue that I think could possibly clear up a lot of disagreement, or at least allow people to understand what they disagreeing about (and if not … well, I just feel like writing about it).

If you’re trying to measure a player’s ability, you want to remove him from his context completely. That is, you want to remove Greene, at least theoretically, out of Petco and put him in some neutral park. So to actually adjust for this, you want to use component based park factors (like for doubles, hr’s, k’s, etc.), rather than the usual run based factors. What you’re trying to do here, I believe, is estimate the player’s actual ability in a context-neutral situation. So why is this relevant with Khalil Greene?

Well, there’s been a lot of talk lately about Greene and Petco Park. Basically, people are saying things like, “Greene may be hurt by his home park more than any other player.” I’ve said things like that myself, even though I’m not sure if it’s actually true. Here are Greene’s career splits so far (close to 1,100 PA’s at home and on the road):

Home: .228/.288/.370
Road: .280/.335/.515

For a little context, here’s what the Padres did as a team last year:

Home: .235/.310/.378
Road: .265/.333/.440

That is obviously a pretty big split, but it’s no where near Greene’s.

Let’s set randomness aside, and say that Greene really is hurt more by Petco than other players. Let’s say, for example, he has a tendency for hitting long, high fly balls that get hung up in the thick air of San Diego and fall for outs, rather than home runs. A normal hitter, with a more normal distribution of balls in play, will not be hurt as badly by Petco. Note that I’m not really sure this is the case with Greene, I’m just using it to (try to) eventually make my point.

Okay, so about that point … what does this mean? Well, I think it means that if we moved Greene to a completely neutral park, he may very well hit like he’s hit on the road throughout his career. Then, what does that mean? To me, it means that he has more value in a trade than his overall numbers would suggest. Say, if the Braves wanted to deal for him … they don’t care what his line would be for 81 games in Petco and 81 games in road parks. They want to know what it’d be for 81 games in Atlanta and 81 games in road parks.

What does it mean for the Padres? Well, it means that, like I said, they should be able to get more for Greene in, say, a trade because of it. He’s worth more than his numbers, even when park adjusted (with a runs based factor). But, and I think this is the important part, in terms of resigning Greene, they obviously have to consider the context. The fact is, they are going to play half of their games in Petco, and unless they move the fences in where many of Greene’s long flies go, he’s still going to struggle at home.

My point here (and hopefully it’s at least somewhat clear and on the mark) is that although it’s nice to say, for example, that Greene would be a stud in a neutral type park, it really doesn’t matter to the Padres if they decide to keep him. They don’t play in a neutral park. They play in a park that hurts offense a lot, and may just hurt Khalil Greene more than it hurts the average player.

Khalil for MVP

Mr. Greene won the Padres team MVP the other day. I’m not particularly interested in who won the award, but I do like to think a little about the thought process. Anyway,  I’m of the opinion that for things like MVP, something like WPA (that’s Win Probability Added) should be used, although I could certainly be swayed. The question you want to ask is what are you trying to measure? Ability? No, I don’t think so, not for most valuable player. Value? Well, yes, but what kind of value? Stats like VORP and basic linear weights ignore context, at least as far as runners on base and the certain “clutch” nature of an at bat. In many cases this is preferable. Since we know that clutch ability doesn’t really exist, at least to a large degree, then we don’t really want to measure a player’s clutch ability if we’re trying to measure their performance going forward. A double in the first inning with the bases empty is worth just as much as a double in the 9th with the bases load, down by two. A double is a double.

However, if you want to measure value, in a backwards looking way, then I think something like WPA is more appropriate. You could also probably use something like Win Shares, as that also has a clutch component and is a somewhat related stat (and there are other similar stats). But, for simplicity, let’s stick with WPA for now.

Greene was -.51 in WPA last year. He was actually very un-clutch by fan graphs’ clutchiness stat (-1.10). Now, just for completeness, let’s say he was +10 runs defensively and he gets +5 for position. We’ve got him at like 10 runs above average or 30 above replacement (these numbers should be relatively close, but they’re just for illustration only, and definitely not exact).

Now, to make it fun, let’s say pitchers can’t win the award. So Greene’s competition is Adrian Gonzalez. Gonzalez’s WPA was 4.07. His clutchiness was 1.84! That doesn’t matter much going forward (surprise, he was negative in the clutch in 05 and 06), but for something like this, (I think) it should be considered. Just for fun, let’s only give him +3 for fielding and -10 for position. 33 runs above average or about 53 above replacement. By my very crude calculations, it looks like Gonzalez should have ran away with that award.

WPA for fielding

You could of course say that if you’re going to use a WPA approach for offense, then you should use one for defense, as well (for MVP’s). I would say that is correct, but I haven’t seen much discussion or research into this area. I am guessing that’s largely due to the fact that people aren’t that interested in it, and it would probably be a lot of work. But I’m sure there are some players who have clutch fielding years. That is, they make a lot of big plays when the game is on the line (or a lot of runners are on base), and perhaps don’t do as well in less critical spots. None of the fielding stats out there attempt to correct for this because they’re much more interested in a true talent measurement, and things like clutch fielding are probably only going to get into the way. But, yeah, for the MVP I do think that theoretically this would be the way to go.

So, there you have it. A long rambling post about something, I guess. A lot of words. Bad writing. Little substance. That’s the Friar Forecast. Until next time ….

By the way, I’m surprised Derek Jeter fans don’t go to a clutch fielding argument more often. Like … yeah, he sucks in the first inning but he turns it on when it counts … these stupid defensive stats don’t account for that, and therefore they’re intentionally biased toward Jeter. Did you see The Play! WPA fielding, baby!

Justin Inaz over at On Baseball and the Reds (by the way, easily one of my favorite non-Padre team blogs) recently made a neat post about the Reds’ arbitration eligible players. Basically, here’s what you do. Find out how many wins above replacement the player is. Then find out how much players generally make in the arbitration year in question. After that, use Tango’s salary scale to see you should win the case, if it goes that far.

Wins above replacement

A while back, I estimated Greene as a 3 WAR player. I’m going to redo it right here to make sure that’s still reasonable and I didn’t make any typical mistakes. Batting runs has him at +6.6 runs for his career. Per 162 games, I’m just going to call him average (disregarding position).

Fielding: Refer to my previous post above for links: Fans have him at +~14 runs. Dewan’s at about +5 runs. MGL’s UZR has him at about 7 runs per 150. That’s an average of about 9. Let’s keep it at +10 runs as Dewan/UZR aren’t per 162. 

For playing short, he gets a 5 run bonus. Replacement level is about 20 runs below average in the NL per 162. So he gets 20 runs there. Now we just have to adjust by playing time. ZiPS has him projected at 139 games. So add it all up and times it by .86 (139/162) … (+0, +10, +5, +20)*.86 = 30.1. That’s about 3 WAR — or right about what I got last time.

Estimating his contract

Now on the free agent market, he’d be due for a big payday — something like $13 million for one year. However, we have to account for the fact that he isn’t a free agent and arbitration guys don’t make their free agent value. If we assume that, in general, players make 60% of their free agent value in their second year of arbitration, we can see what kind of deal Khalil should get. 60% of $13.2 million is $7.92m. The Padres are offering $4 million and Greene is offering $4.9 million. Based on this (as usual, shoddy look), I’d say that Greene has a good shot to win the case, as long as he has good representation.

Note that there is continuing discussion of things like this over at The Book Blog. There’s some current talk about estimating contracts for arbitration guys and I’ll try to keep my eye on it. If there is a better way to do it, I’ll be sure to make another post about it.

And we’ll save Josh Bard for another day.

No, it’s not stats vs. scouts. No, it’s not “bashers” vs. “gushers” (whatever the hell that is). It’s not about replacement level.

As The Phantom of the Padres blogosphere has declared, it’s the debate between those who love Khalil Greene and those who don’t. Now,  we’ll discount those who love Khalil because his blond locks (not that their opinion doesn’t count!) and try to look at it from a baseball standpoint. For the heck of it, we’ll try to be objective about it, because that’s kinda the whole point (although it’s hard, if not impossible, to be completely objective). Anyway, first a little background on Greene and why this divide may exist amongst hardcore Padres fans.

• He makes a ton of outs. It has been drilled into people’s heads that making outs is terrible. And it really is.
• He plays great defense that is sometimes believed to be overrated.
• He plays shortstop, which is the position furthest right on the defensive spectrum (not counting catcher).
• He has very good power for a shortstop, which sometimes may be overlooked.
• This is not very baseball related, but he has a “strange” personality and may sometimes come of as not caring (I believe that is bs, but this isn’t about me ; ).

Alright, with that out of the way, let’s try to tackle this in three steps. First, let’s estimate his offensive value. Then we’ll try to estimate his defensive value. And finally, we’ll add in a positional adjustment for playing short. After all of that, we’ll check out Tango’s Salary Scale to see approximately how much money he would be worth if he was a free agent.

Offense

For offense I’ll admittedly go the easy route and just use BP’s EqA. I’d prefer using some form of linear weights, but I don’t have that tabulated (although I may sometime soon) and I don’t believe it’s available anywhere. The advantage of EqA is that it’s throws in steals and, more importantly, is park adjusted. Despite being overly complicated, it will work pretty well to estimate his offensive value. According to Tango, you can convert EqA to runs quite easily: PA * (EqA - league avg. EqA):

2005: +0
2006: +1.4
2007: +2.7

Weighting that 5-4-3 it comes out 1.6 runs above average. We’ll call him average on offense (without regarding position).

Defense

The Fans have him rated at 79. The overall average for shortstops is about 59. Assuming .7 runs per point (which is what Tango et al. are assuming, I think), that puts him at about +14 runs on defense this year.

John Dewan’s plus/minus has him at +7 plays this year, which is about 5 runs above average. MGL’s UZR has him at +9 per 150 from 2003-mid2007. We’ll call him +10 runs (0r 1 win) defensively.

Positional adjustment/aging

For position, we’ll tack on the usual +5 for playing short. We don’t need to do much for aging, as Greene is right in his prime at 28.

So, in runs above average (just approximations):

Hitting: +0
Fielding: +10
Position: +5

So, going forward, I think it’s safe to evaluate him as a ~15 runs above average type player. Replacement level is around 20 runs below that for a full season, so he’s about 35 runs above replacement level. Compare that to what JinAz just did, and he’d be about the third best position player on the Reds.

Yet another update: I kind of account for it down below, so it shouldn’t effect the numbers much, but I should mention it … you can’t just add on the 20 runs above replacement, because that’s assuming a full year (I believe). If we project Greene at about 80% of a full season, that means we should add around 16 runs above replacement, instead of the full 20.

Salary Scale

Tango’s Salary Scale attempts to find what a player’s worth on the free agent market. Let’s call Greene a 3.0 WAR player (we’ll take off a little for regression/injuries) just to be conservative. That puts him in line for contracts like these:

1 year/12m
2 years/23m
3 years/33m
4 years/41m

Greene of course is under control until 2010 and will make considerably less than that. Last year, for example, he made about 2.25 mill. 

There are still many things to talk about and discuss with Greene. I mean, for one, saying he isn’t a moneyball player is only based on the idea that moneyball=walks/obp and that is not really true at all. You could argue that his outs certainly impact him negatively as a ball player (they certainly do), but his power/position/fielding make up for it enough to make him into a well above average player.

Still, even acknowledging that, it’s not out of the question that Greene could, at some point, be traded. I don’t think organizations really put anyone out of the question when it comes to trades. If a trade can bring in more value than it gives up, in most all situations the team will probably make the deal. Of course, that’s complicated by many factors such as money, prospects, replacements for the traded player, and so on.

But please don’t mind me and let the debate rage on!

(this was not meant to be a true analysis of Greene — there are many assumptions made, shortcuts taken, etc … just a mere approximation of his value)

Update: Tango has the new Salary Scale up. I was using last year’s, which is based on 4m per marginal win, instead of 4.4m (due to 10% inflation). The numbers are relatively close, but I figured I should let you know, anyway.