Here is the view of Angels position players (with 100 PA or more) from the sabersphere (i.e. Fangraphs):
A few positive observations. The Angels are on pace to blow away their total "worth" from last year ($78.0M) by almost 50% while keeping salary roughly constant. So far, Juan Rivera was the deal of the offseason for the club, with Abreu deserving an honorable mention. Figgins is almost as "valuable" as Rivera, and even more so than Hunter, and Aybar has earned more than 16 times his salary at short. Surprisingly, Kendrick has earned more than 14 times his salary, most of that coming from his defensive performance, and Napoli and Morales have both exceeded their pay by about 800%. Overall, this is solid performance from a lineup that has been the recipient of much griping, even in spite of some concerns I have about UZR (Fangraphs' defensive metric) undervaluing the Angels defense.
There are some not so positive things, of course. Because of his injury and subsequent ineffectiveness, Vlad has been a big drain. Jeff Mathis is worthless. And Gary Matthews Jr. is, well, even less than worthless. There's not much more to say about GMJ that hasn't already been said. His underperformance, along with Vlad's, almost negates the overperformance of the rest of the outfield. There's still hope that Vlad comes around, but I will continue to dream every night about GMJ being released.
Up next, a similar breakdown of Angels starting pitching.
RAR WAR Worth Paid Value Torii Hunter 27.6 2.8 $12.4 $7.1 $5.3 Chone Figgins 22.8 2.3 $10.3 $2.4 $8.0 Juan Rivera 20.9 2.1 $9.4 $1.3 $8.1 Mike Napoli* 14.3 1.4 $6.4 $0.8 $5.6 Bobby Abreu 10.6 1.1 $4.8 $2.0 $2.8 Kendry Morales 8.4 0.8 $3.8 $0.5 $3.4 Erick Aybar 6.8 0.7 $3.1 $0.2 $2.9 Howie Kendrick 6.0 0.6 $2.7 $0.2 $2.5 Maicer Izturis 1.9 0.2 $0.8 $0.7 $0.2 Vladimir Guerrero* -1.4 -0.1 -$0.6 $6.1 -$6.7 Jeff Mathis* -1.5 -0.1 -$0.7 $0.2 -$0.9 Gary Matthews Jr. -11.8 -1.2 -$5.3 $4.1 -$9.4 ----------------------------- 104.6 10.6 $47.1 $25.5 $21.6 * Figures do not include defense.RAR and WAR, as usual, are runs and wins above replacement level. Ten runs above replacement are worth approximately one win. The column I call "worth" is the dollar equivalent of those wins (in millions of dollars, of course), which is typically taken to be about $5 million per win. The "paid" column is that player's annual salary prorated through 66 games according to Cot's (note: for Kendry, I included a portion of his $3M signing bonus). The column I call "value" is the difference of "worth" and "paid," i.e. how much profit (or loss, ahem, GMJ) the player has yielded for the team. These figures do include defensive performance, except for the Napoli and Mathis (Fangraphs doesn't know how to value catcher defense) and Vlad (most of his PA have come as a DH), and are adjusted for positional value (a left fielder is expected to hit better than a shortstop, for example). The table is sorted according to "worth."
A few positive observations. The Angels are on pace to blow away their total "worth" from last year ($78.0M) by almost 50% while keeping salary roughly constant. So far, Juan Rivera was the deal of the offseason for the club, with Abreu deserving an honorable mention. Figgins is almost as "valuable" as Rivera, and even more so than Hunter, and Aybar has earned more than 16 times his salary at short. Surprisingly, Kendrick has earned more than 14 times his salary, most of that coming from his defensive performance, and Napoli and Morales have both exceeded their pay by about 800%. Overall, this is solid performance from a lineup that has been the recipient of much griping, even in spite of some concerns I have about UZR (Fangraphs' defensive metric) undervaluing the Angels defense.
There are some not so positive things, of course. Because of his injury and subsequent ineffectiveness, Vlad has been a big drain. Jeff Mathis is worthless. And Gary Matthews Jr. is, well, even less than worthless. There's not much more to say about GMJ that hasn't already been said. His underperformance, along with Vlad's, almost negates the overperformance of the rest of the outfield. There's still hope that Vlad comes around, but I will continue to dream every night about GMJ being released.
Up next, a similar breakdown of Angels starting pitching.