Stuck Between Stations

Pinning down exactly what Vernon Wells is and means is, as it turns out, quite difficult. Writing about the Vernon Wells trade without mention money is nearly impossible. Writing about the Vernon Wells trade more than four days after it went down is pretty much impossible.

What possible angle remains uncovered? What flavour of payroll flexibility-tinged glee is as yet unsampled? Is there room to be wistful over a guy who, frankly, no one will actually miss?

Vernon Wells is a lot like this blog post. Two days too late, instantly forgotten. There is no great epiphany coming in the next few paragraphs. Don't read on if you expect some grand analogy and ultimate tribute to one of the greatest compilers of achievements this team has ever known.

Vernon Wells — by virtue of his contract and the era in which he played — is just a rich guy who played baseball in Toronto for a long time. Not once during his tenure as a Blue Jay was he the best player on his team. They might elect him to Ring of Honour one day, but then again who cares. Will you buy a ticket to cheer his accomplishments?

Off the field - he did more than his share. Beyond his admirable charity work he was nice enough to the media guys and respected as a teammate. All things no fans actually give two hot shits about. He made too much money and took too much abuse. He got hurt diving for balls despite constant whining from fans claiming he didn't dive enough.

By signing an insanely lucrative contract, which stands to set his children's children for life, Vernon Wells became a victim. He was a victim in 2007 just as he is now: victim of a guy with way too much money to spend and a pressing need to justify his existence by spending it.

Which births anew Vernon Wells - Opulent Victim. Wells is damaged goods to far too many Angels fans already, though he's yet to pull a Halo "A" low over his eyes.

They'll boo him because the Tony Reagins doesn't wear a uniform. They'll boo him because their team is aging and the manager's a jackass and because Torii Hunter is just too damn smiley. Vernon Wells will hear boos from Seth Cohen and Gwen Stefani's third cousin unless he goes Tuffy Rhodes on Opening Day. Even then, he'll hear it.

Not nearly as loud as he'll inexplicably hear it from Jays fans. Despite serving as a casualty in the ongoing deification of Alex Anthopoulos (pictured above) Vernon Wells will hear many boos on his return to Toronto.

Boos he has heard before. They booed him when he walked with his family on doggie day and they booed him at nearly every turn. All because he agreed to take more money than he may have been worth, then got hurt, then got better but played crappy.

Vernon Wells isn't much different from Roy Halladay or Carlos Delgado. They all presided over middling times for a middling club. Except those two players are better than Vernon Wells. They hit better or pitched better and smiled bigger and became the thing we desperately want athletes to be, each in their own way. Vernon Wells just played and went home.

He did the thing too many people claim to want but actually detest from professional athletes. A certain segment of the fanbase loves railing against hot dogs one minute then bemoaning boring cliche machines the next. Vernon Wells was affable and frank and available and nobody gives a shit because of what he wasn't, not who he was.

Ultimately, I think this town will forget Vernon Wells in a hurry. Despite logging thousands of innings in the middle of Rogers Centre, his legacy will not last. Other insane contracts will shove his from the memory, other affable & well-adjusted athletes will attract our undeserving scorn.

Blue Jays fans will quickly learn 30 home runs for a center fielder is a three year running total, not a baseline for acceptable production. They'll wake up tomorrow and realize Jason Frasor is the longest tenured Blue Jay (and even he's on the outs.) The now-annual New Blue Jays Epoch begins, in earnest, today.

Compare & Contrast

If you can remember all the way back to Wednesday when I mentioned, at the end of the post, my feelings on the various and sundry defensive metrics. This got me thinking about the ongoing disparity between Fangraphs WAR and Baseball Reference aka Rally WAR.

Are the differences really that striking? We often come across examples of disagreement between the two systems, leading to more confusion rather than increased understanding.

To review - Fangraphs version of WAR uses UZR for the defensive component while the batting runs are based on weighted on-base average (wOBA). Rally uses Total Zone for defense and park adjusted batting runs for offense.

How the sausage is made doesn't really matter for the bulk of us, but we like to know where the flavor comes from sometimes. Below are both WARs, broken down into their compents for worthwhile, contributing Blue Jays. Each numbers is displayed at the end of each row to allow for easier comparison. Let's get nerdy!

Name	Batting	Fielding	Replacement	Positional	RAR	fWAR	(rWAR)
Aaron Hill	-13.9	3.7	19.3	1.9	11	1.1	0.8
Adam Lind	-5.9	-2.7	20.4	-14.5	-2.6	-0.3	0.1
Alex Gonzalez	5.7	4.9	11.6	3.8	26	2.7	2.8
Edwin Encarnacion	5.5	-1.5	12.2	1.3	17.6	1.8	1.6
Fred Lewis	4	-6.1	16	-4.9	9	0.9	0.8
John Buck	8.5	-3	14.6	7.6	27.6	2.9	3
John McDonald	-1.6	1.6	5.4	1	6.4	0.7	1.1
Jose Bautista	55.9	-7	22.8	-4.7	66.9	6.9	5.6
Jose Molina	-2.5	3	6.1	3.7	10.3	1.1	0.6
Lyle Overbay	5.5	0.1	20.3	-11.3	14.6	1.5	2.4
Travis Snider	2.7	4.2	10.6	-3.5	14.1	1.5	0.9
Vernon Wells	21.3	-6.4	21.5	1.8	38.3	4	3.4
Yunel Escobar	-1.4	-1.3	8.9	2.7	8.9	0.9	1

Name	Rbat	Rbaser	Rroe	Rdp	Rfield	Rpos	Rrep	RAR	rWAR	(fWAR)
Aaron Hill	-18	0	0	0	3	2	20	8	0.8	1.1
Adam Lind	-9	0	0	0	2	-13	21	1	0.1	-0.3
Alex Gonzalez	4	0	0	0	8	4	12	28	2.8	2.7
Edwin Encarnacion	4	0	0	0	-2	1	12	16	1.6	1.8
Fred Lewis	2	1	0	0	-6	-5	16	8	0.8	0.9
John Buck	8	0	0	0	1	6	15	30	3	2.9
John McDonald	-2	0	0	0	7	1	6	11	1.1	0.7
Jose Bautista	54	1	0	0	-16	-5	23	56	5.6	6.9
Jose Molina	-4	0	0	0	0	3	6	6	0.6	1.1
Lyle Overbay	6	0	0	0	8	-10	21	24	2.4	1.5
Travis Snider	2	0	0	0	0	-4	11	9	0.9	1.5
Vernon Wells	21	-1	0	0	-10	2	22	34	3.4	4.0
Yunel Escobar	-3	0	0	0	2	3	9	10	1	0.9

Poor Jose. While he tells anyone who listens how much more comfortable he is in the outfield, it doesn't seem to matter. He's basically a Tarantino character roaming around with a rifle in place of his right arm. Total Zone rates him twice as harshly as UZR, which already held a low opinion of Bautista in the field. Vernon Wells' strong season takes a slight hit at the hands of Total Zone, while Lyle Overbay and his agent are sending bouquets of flowers to Sean Smith as you read this.

Nothing revealed here is likely to change your overall impression of any of these players. Whether you think Vernon Wells is a 4 Win guy or a 3.5 Win guy doesn't change the fact that he's a slightly above-average performer. WAR is a descriptive stat, it tells us what happened in 2010.

One year of data doesn't mean to suggest Jose Bautista will continue to put up 5 or 7 win seasons in the future. There isn't any great disparity among the position players. It is when we get to the pitchers (tomorrow) that the fussing and feuding gets serious.

Hat tip to Baseball Reference and Fangraphs for the info.

Life Sucks and Then You Die

Yup, that is your Toronto Blue Jays ranking 4th in Beyond the Box Score's mathematically-derived power rankings. Ifs, buts, candy, nuts.

Credit to Alex Anthopoulos and his team for doing their best to avoid the candy & nuts aspects of his job. As he told John Lott (after mentioning that Aaron Cibia will get the bulk of the playing time):

"We want to create depth at premium positions,” he said. “At shortstop and catcher, we feel like we have that now. Even in centre field, although it’s lower down the rungs, there are guys like Gose and Jake Marisnick [a third-round draft pick last year].

“From a position-player standpoint, those seem to be the most difficult positions to either draft or acquire in a trade.”

More than depth, they have ceilings. They have two players who, if they're tools develop into skills, could become high-end major league baseball players.

Which brings me back to the Mop Up Duty piece I linked above. Of course scouting is important, more important than ever as the cost of doing business is now so very high. The biggest driver, in my eyes, of this approach isn't a Scouts versus Stats, Us versus Them battle. It is about the difference between being a good team and a great one.

If you look at the numbers compiled in the aforementioned Beyond the Box Score post; you'll see the Jays are either a good team or an average team playing over its head. The debate could go all night long, but nobody would ever argue the Jays are great. And that is what they need to be to sate the playoff!!!1 lust of this fine city.

The Jays traded up this year, building progressively to improve pieces and solidify the team moving forward. But plugging holes with league average guys like John Buck or Fred Lewis is one thing, the Jays needs are going to change in the next few years. The days of replacement-level scrubs popping up here and there are, or should be, nearly over. Now¹ is the time to write some checks and install high-end players into important places.

And for that, they must pay. Upfront or down the line, the marginal value of a scrap heap finds and somethings for nothings compared to the value of securing top-line talent is the next challenge. Obviously free agency is a fool's errand with far more risk than reward. So it comes to the kids. Gose or Marisnick or the next toolsy kid they find in Cuba or Venezuela or Japan, somebody needs to develop into a 6 win type player.

It is a similar story in the rotation. The common refrain "there isn't a number one in this group" might be tired but there is something to it. With only 25 spots on a big league roster, having two 3 win guys isn't as good as having one 6 win guy. So you have to pay for the privilege. A staff of four 4 win guys is pretty good (damn fine actually) but finding an true stud — and his extra three wins — is the kind of upgrading Alex Anthopoulos stays up nights thinking about.

It isn't that building an 85 win team on a budget is easy, it surely isn't. Building a sustainable 85 win core then building on those extra 6 or 7 wins is the real challenge. I think AA and his team are on the right track but the hard work is still very much ahead of them.

¹ - Now is relative. Not now like today, but now like whenever you plan to make the next step.

Image courtesy of Beyond The Box Score

Buster Onley Tells You What You Already Know about Vernon Wells

ESPN seamhead supreme Buster Olney introduced a new feature yesterday; having three baseball "talent evaluators" offer their scouting reports on a specific player. His first selection is Jays moneyman Vernon Wells.

Thanks to his massive contract; Vernon Wells faces a great deal of a scrutiny from Blue Jays fans and writers everywhere. In the past few weeks ago The Southpaw broke down his big extension by comparing it to other free agent centerfielders and the deals they received. Unsurprisingly, the Wells deal shakes out pretty well. The good men at Mop Up Duty took a look at his frustrating pattern of good year-bad year, a phenomenon that all Jays fans are painfully aware of. I recall L'Homme du Sport mentioning Vernon Wells being completely unsatisfied with his play in 2005 and vowing to get better for 2006. After kick-starting his season at the WBC he did just that. So when Olney kicks off his piece detailing Wells new commitment to fitness, I'm encouraged. But what do the scouts/front office lackeys have to say?

Generally, they say the same stuff you and I say during an average Jays game. He has far too many bad at bats. He seems to lack focus on a consistent basis. He's a highly skilled player but not quite a franchise cornerstone. Sigh. Let's get specific with a few choice quotes:

I can't get over how many at-bats he throws away chasing high fastballs or breaking balls off the plate, even in fastball counts, almost like he occasionally lacks any semblance of patience or ability to slow down the game

That is certainly how it seems, but is it true? As far as patience goes, Vernon Wells was last among Jays regulars with 3.4 pitches per plate appearance, consistent with his career numbers. Wells also has a little bit of Joe Carteritis, falling victim to the slider low and away, but does he really swing at that many bad balls? Yes, yes he does. He swings at approx 27% of balls out of the strike zone. Compare that to other highly paid center fielders like Carlos Beltran (19%), Torii Hunter (28%), Grady Sizemore (19.5%). The most telling part of this quote is the "even in fastball counts" part. Wells is best when he's aggressive, as his 42 career first pitch home runs will attest (most of any count). But when Vernon Wells is ahead 2-0, his career OPS dips to .795. How does that make any damn sense at all?

...when he's not (ed: emphasis mine) playing against some of the tougher teams in the AL. I wonder about his ability to maintain his focus and concentration at the plate

Very interesting. AL teams that hold Vernon Wells to a sub .800 OPS: Anaheim, Cleveland, Detroit, Minnesota, Tampa, Texas. Aside from LAA, hardly the elite of the American League the past 10 years.

Wells could conceivably be a classic change-of-scenery guy who really wakes up when he finds himself in a larger, more pressurized market

Would you like to see me cry? I'll break down, right here and now.

In addition to leading the Jays in home runs in 2008, he also leads the Jays in affability. He seems like a genuine goof, and probably the Jay I'd most like to hang out with. Does this Dude-like demeanor keep him from getting up against the shitballs of the AL? The Indians have killed the Jays for years now, so he's certainly not alone. Does Vernon Wells need to work more on his day to day effort rather than his physical performance? He's got all the tools, what will it take to keep him interested? Being in the thick of a pennant race? His strongest months are May, June, and July, but he's a Toronto Blue Jay so that doesn't tell us jack about pennant races or Meaningful Baseball, does it?