Appreciating Adrian Beltre
Looking to re-establish his value following an injury-marred 2009 season, Adrian Beltre signed a one-year, $10 million contract with the Boston Red Sox over the winter. By virtue of fantastic third base defense, Beltre still managed 2.4 WAR in his last season with the Mariners while battling a left shoulder injury requiring surgery to remove bone spurs, among other misfortunes that won’t be spoken of here.
As Beltre’s Seattle tenure came to a close, some characterized the five-year, $64 million pact that the M’s gave the third baseman prior to the 2005 season as a waste of team resources. Beltre, according to the narrative, went bonkers during his last season with the Dodgers, landed stacks-o-cash in free agency and then returned to mediocrity. Unfortunately, the facts get in the way of good copy.
Beltre played six full seasons for the Dodgers. He put up an astonishing 10.1 WAR in 2004, but he was an asset those other years, too. From 1999-2003, Beltre averaged 3.3 WAR per season. And, while uttering Bill Bavasi’s name in Seattle still might produce dirty looks and suggestions of physically impossible acts, Beltre was worth every penny the Mariners gave him.
Safeco Field is a crippling environment for right-handed power hitters. Adjusting for league and park factors, Beltre’s bat was slightly above-average — his wRC+ as a Mariner was 102. That decent lumber was coupled with upper-echelon defense, as Beltre posted UZR/150 marks of +8.8, +19.2, -2.7, +13.4 and +21.2. The former Dodger racked up a combined 16.7 WAR with Seattle, a performance that our Dollars system valued at $67.3 million.
In Boston, Beltre is enjoying his best season since that double-digit WAR total back in ’04. After a four-for-four night against the Rays, he’s batting .349/.387/.561 in 310 trips to the plate, with a .410 wOBA that ranks ninth among qualified major league hitters. He’s flashing the leather again, too, with +12.9 UZR/150. Beltre has already compiled 3.8 WAR this season, trailing only Justin Morneau, Robinson Cano and Carl Crawford among position players. With $15.1 million in Value Dollars, he has already more than justified Boston’s investment.
Beltre won’t keep up this pace at the plate, of course — his batting average on balls in play is .387. By contrast, his expected BABIP is .321, and his rest-of-season ZiPS projects a .327 BABIP. But he’s creaming the ball, with a .211 Isolated Power, and it certainly doesn’t hurt that Beltre moved from a park that decreased run-scoring by six percent over the past three seasons (according to the Bill James Handbook) to Fenway and its inviting Green Monster, which boosted runs by 11 percent over that same period. ZiPS has a .362 rest-of-season wOBA for Beltre, and an overall .387 wOBA for 2010.
Beltre’s deal with the Red Sox included a $5 million player option for the 2011 season, which increases to $10 million if he reaches 640 PA this season. Barring some unforeseen injury, the 31-year-old Scott Boras client will opt out and land himself a lucrative multi-year deal this coming winter, whether that be with Boston or elsewhere.
Adrian Beltre is in the midst of a sublime season that’ll almost certainly go down as his best since that monstrous ’04 campaign. But it’s not as though he has been a bust in between those high marks — this guy has always been good.
Hooray for somebody actually using xBABIP instead of just saying “His BABIP is too high, it’s coming down.”
“..uttering Bill Bavasi’s name in Seattle still might produce…suggestions of physically impossible acts….”
Classic!
“Beltre won’t keep up this pace at the plate, of course — his batting average on balls in play is .387. By contrast, his expected BABIP is .321,”
Again, back to the absolutely ridiculous assumption that BABIP is park independent. It isn’t.
Also, Beltre is hitting 23% line drives. He’s not getting lucky, hes smoking the ball.
xBABIP includes line drive rate. Also, park factors might effect it, but a 20% increase, for half of his games? That’s a stretch. Beltre’s BABIP is identical at home and on the road, so unless he’s totin’ the Monster around with him…
A lot of fellow Boston fans hated the signing. Partly due to Beltre’s rep from Seattle as a waste of money, partly due to loyalty towards Mike Lowell, partly because his plate approach is awful (it is, no one can deny that), and the Sox fan base is pretty used to the Red Sox only spending on guys w/ good plate approaches, and partly because the media succeeded in painting him to be a bane on the offense.
There’s a lot of crow-eating going on in Boston over Beltre. He’s been (arguably) our best player, and at this pace is looking to not only justify his own salary, but balance out the dead-weight money towards Lowell. Who needs walks when you have a guy hitting .330 w/ power, while playing excellent defense?
Weird that you say that. I’m a Red Sox fan and among my circles, people seemed pleased to have picked up Beltre at the price we got him at. The general consensus was that for the low price of 10m over one season, his glove alone would pay for most of the contract. Any offense over that would be gravy.
And what sweet sweet gravy it is.
I should hope there’s some crow-eating. All I heard from Sox fans in the off-season was what a terrible acquisition Beltre was. Just look at some of the comments in the deal thread here — and Fangraphs attracts a generally more sensible crowd than broader sites like ESPN, where the hate was wider and deeper.
I think Beltre has been appreciated – over-appreciated – by this website enough. It’s too bad Beltre decides to show-up to play a full season only once every five years.
Fangraphs is kinda like Fox News Channel when it comes to players like Beltre. Other media tend to underrate such players, so Fangraphs feels a need to overrated them to “balance” things out.
Beltre’s stay in Seattle was a big disappointment. With his level of ability, Beltre should have performed closer to his 2010 far more often. Boras has him thinking he can really cash-in with a great 2010, so Beltre is finally a little motivated. Too bad he couldn’t stay motivated for more than a month at a time during his five years in Seattle.
Apparently you didn’t actually read the article where it analyzed his performance in Seattle and stated that using the dollar value approach that is used on this site, he exceeded his contract value.
As for motivation, this is the guy who ruptured his testicle on a play, and then played the rest of the game.
“Apparently you didn’t actually read the article where it analyzed his performance in Seattle and stated that using the dollar value approach that is used on this site, he exceeded his contract value.”
No. That’s exactly what I was referring to. I’ve read this and other similar sites for years that insisted the guy who was batting .247 and drawing no walks was exceeding his contract. I watched the guy play for five years in Seattle, and he did not exceed his contract. His two best seasons were what I would have expected his two worst seasons to be.
I understand he’s a great defensive 3B, probably the best I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, you have to hit in this game, too, and Beltre never hit consistently enough as a Mariner. What was bothersome about Beltre’s stint in Seattle was knowing he had the ability to do so much more, and watching him under-perform year after year after year Even more maddening was coming to Fangraphs every day and having a bunch of people who obviously don’t watch him play massage his numbers to the point where a .250 hitter with no patience was now really a $20 million player.
“I’ve read this and other similar sites for years that insisted the guy who was batting .247 and drawing no walks was exceeding his contract.”
I’ve generally seen it argued that he’s been worth his contract, not that he exceeded it; but if your experience is different, so be it.
“people who obviously don’t watch him play massage his numbers to the point where a .250 hitter with no patience was now really a $20 million player.”
The implication here is that numbers are massaged for the benefit of Beltre. This is patently false. The way Beltre’s numbers are computed is the same for any other player. Fangraphs’ system simply says that Beltre was paid roughly what he was worth. You can argue with the method (please use actual numbers to back up such arguments); but you really can’t say that Beltre is being favored on purpose.
I’m a Mariners fan who watched Beltre play, so you can’t use the argument “I’m a fan of the team so I know better than you” against me. I suppose I value defense more than you, but that doesn’t automatically make me wrong.
You understand that he’s a great defensive thirdbaseman, maybe the best you’ve ever seen, but you don’t appreciate that that has value? Is it only offense that creates value to a team?
I can understand the general premise of this. While Beltre’s total production was roughly around his contract value, the team was getting the opposite kind of production they signed him for. I remember when Beltre got signed. He had just come off a monster season with the Dodgers, and practically nobody was saying ONE WORD about his defense (which is interesting, considering those were his best defensive seasons it seems). All you’d ever hear about the guy is how he’s underperforming his potential at the plate. So finally, in 2004 he overperformed his potential at the plate and cashed in.
But everybody was expecting him to be a slugger, not a guy whose main value is in his glove. Moreover, the team was built to need him to be a slugger. The Mariners haven’t exactly been bursting with power to spare and they were relying on him for that. Admittedly, this is totally the Mariner’s mistake. Beltre was bound to regress hard after 2004.
So, in a context neutral fashion it’s very fair to say that Beltre performed to his contract. He stayed healthy, put in average hitting, and was great defensively. In the context of the Mariners though, his lack of power and high offensive production was a crippling blow to their already troubled offense.
So it’s actually a somewhat tricky question. If you sign a guy to hit well and provide average defense, but it turns out to be the opposite… did you get your money’s worth? By the linear weights, the answer is yes. By the actual contributions to the Mariner’s areas of need, maybe not. (shrug)
Either way though, it’s hardly Beltre’s fault. The Mariners got the guy they signed. They just completely misunderstood what his value was and didn’t build their team correctly as a result.
First Post… Looking for some UZR clarity.
I’m a Sox fan and was excited to hear about Beltre for two reasons:
#1 Fielding – Having a solid infield with Pedrioa, Youk, and whoever we’d put at SS was important (I was hoping to get A. Gonzalez back…)
#2 Right handed hitting in Fenway – Like Pedrioa, I wanted to see Beltre put some dents in the monster.
Watching him play, I’m happy to see him hitting the ball far beyond what I expected, I’m shocked to read based on I’ve seen that he can be putting up numbers like that put him up in the top 3 third basement in terms of UZR/150.
He’s made a lot of errors. Way more than I’ve thought would happen. I try to comfort myself by telling myself, “well, he’s probably putting himself in better positions to make more plays, and the errors I’m seeing are plays other 3b’s might not even get a glove on.”, but he’s got the most errors in the league (for a 3B)!
Ugh!
Range > errors. It’s that simple. Same reason everybody loved Andrus last year despite all his errors.
To be fair on the errors, Beltre has such range and quickness that he gets to balls that other players don’t come close to. He attempts plays that most other 3B wouldn’t even try to make. This has resulted in a bunch of errors this season. However, on a good deal of those plays, those balls are base-hits – singles or doubles – with almost any other 3B.
Is this a guess or actual info? His errors have come on plays he’s had to range far to get to? What’s the breakdown? How many were ‘routine’ errors vs errors just because Beltre has such good range.
Please quanitfy ‘a good deal of those plays’? 50%? 70%? Many times the official scorer will consider how far a player has had to range even if it’s something like a throwing error (unless the runner gets an extra base)
UZR/150 has Damon near the top of defensive AL left fielders and Russell Branyan (2010) as a substantially better first baseman than both Youkilis and Tex.
I like how stats are developing for defensive and I realize UZR and UZR/150 has a lot of variation built in, but I’m left wondering how accurate the stat is?
For example does it take into account how the ball is hit? A lot easier to range to a ball that his hit a mile high vs a sinking line drive. Or if you have a CF with tremendous range does that deflate the UZR as he’ll call off the corner Of’ers? Especially for first baseman, does it account for handling bad throws? The amount of foul ground?
An experienced first baseman may let a ball hit to his right go so the 2nd baseman can make a routine play, instead of diving or ranging far to the right and having the pitcher cover (like the Cabrera/Galaraga play)
HERE WE GO AGAIN. MORE BSOTON BIAS ON FANGRAPHS!! BELTRE IS NOT AS GOOD AS THESE POEPLE THINK HE IS OK. HE’S A PAWN FOR SCOTT BOR-ASS, ONLY THE RED SOX BOY WONDER THEO EPSTEEN WOULD GET SUCKERED LIKE THIS. THIS GUY WILL LEAD TO NOTHING BUT DISSAPOINTMENT. JUST LOOK AT HIS YEARS IN SEATTLE. HE BATTED .265 LAST YEAR WIH 8 HR LOL. LETS NOT TALK ABOUT HIS ERRORS OK? LOL
Shut up.
Seconded.
Thirded.
Caps lock: unleash the fury.
I can’t tell if this was supposed to be a joke or serious or a four year old taking advantage of daddy going to get some coffee.
THE INTERNET IS SERIOUS BUSINESS.
The internet is just a series of tubes. Nothing too serious. Unless they’re serious tubes.
There’s always debates about whether a guy was worth the contract he was given. For example, I totally believe that JD Drew has been worth the money Boston gave him. OTOH, I’m going to need a LOT more evidence to show that Adrian Beltre was worth the contract he got in Seattle. His defense is exceptional, but the Mariners didn’t give him 5 years, 64 million to be Brooks Robinson. (Heck, that’s not even fair to Brooks’ bat). The Mariners gave that money to Beltre coming off a season in which he led the NL in HRs and expected that power to extend to their lineup.
64 million for a guy who was an average offensive player wasn’t money well spent.
I think there are (at least) two ways of approaching this question. The first, which might be termed the Bavasi method (and this is absolutely not meant as an insult to those who subscribe to it), expected offensive production with a good glove as a bonus. That is, Beltre would contribute to the team by hitting 35-40 homers, batting .320, whatever. The Mariners paid for offensive production, and since Beltre didn’t look as good as he had in his final year in LA, he was a bust.
The other method, the Fangraphs method (SABR method, etc), says that a win is a win, and if Beltre provides wins with the glove, those are as useful as those with the bat (which wasn’t exactly terrible).
I think the former crowd says that Beltre wasn’t worth his contract because he didn’t do what he was signed to do. “His glove’s great,” they say, “but not why we signed him.” It’s not a matter of value, necessarily, but of expectations.
The latter crowd looks at the contract question in starker terms. How many wins did the player generate? How much is a win worth? Is the product of these two numbers greater or less than the amount he was paid?
I find the Fangraphs method to be more sound (unsurprisingly, since I read Fangraphs), because it tends to remove emotion from an area where I don’t think emotion is necessary: evaluating contracts.
From a fan’s perspective, though, I can completely understand the frustration of signing a bat and getting a glove.
The fangraphs perspective misses a crucial piece of objective evidence in this case, however. It assumes all players’ metrics should be additive on a team. So, adding another defensive whiz to a team with 8 defensive whizzes is the same as adding that same player to a team full of laggards. Similarly, it assumes that adding an HR hitter to a team that doesn’t get on base is the same as adding an HR hitter to a team full of high-OBP guys. This *may* be true, but the Bavasi perspective, as you call it, provides an insight that I think is intuitive and more likely to be true: that there are – what statisticians call – interaction effects on a team. This is certainly trivially true in terms of competition for a single stop – adding a 3B is you already have one.
So, a player shouldn’t simply added based on a neutral WAR, but rather expected WAR based on the existing team.
Thing is, interaction effects are MUCH smaller in baseball than, say, basketball (where ‘fit’ is going to be a major selling point as teams try to differentiate themselves from their competition). Given that balls get past even great fielders, overlap is probably minimal at best, and given that lineup construction has been shown to only matter for a couple runs a season, how much additional difference is one hitter going to make on a team full of low-OBP guys than on a team full of high-OBP guys? Those high-OBPers are going to score a lot of runs regardless. I think the biggest synergistic improvement we would see is if we had an extreme type of pitcher (groundball or flyball) and a corresponding part of the defense that was exceptionally good. Other than that though, not so much.
@Kevin
I think you’re still missing a crucial piece of data on this though. Defense is only going to help on balls in play and even then only on some balls in play. The batter is always going to be involved in the outcome of an at bat. And there are 9 defensive players and only one ball. And regardless of the quality of the defense, some balls will always fall fair. So your defensive assets are going to have diminishing gains. It’s pretty much assured. If you had a horrible SS and 3B, then replaced one of them with a great glove- replacing one alone will have a bigger component impact than replacing both positions (due to overlap, etc). The only exception to this might be double play combinations.
Conversely, hitters don’t have to compete for their contributions. Good hitters tend to enhance the value of other hitters by extending the inning, helping everybody’s at bats. This is different than a lineup effect. Lineup effects assume that you have the same players, in a different order. This situation is assuming that you’re improving one hitter in the line up. Statistically, this should improve the WAR of anybody else in the lineup by improving the OBP of any one guy in the line up (by increasing their PA).
Even assuming that things stay OBP-neutral, increasing the slugging at one point in the lineup could be a much bigger benefit than increasing the defense. When it comes down to it, linear weights are bound to be dumb. They don’t know any other way. But we definitely do. The value of defense depends majorly on the # of balls in play. Pitchers who tend towards the 3 true outcomes are going to reduce the impact of your defense on the game.
Similarly, it’s trivial to construct situations where any bump in offense would far outweigh any benefit of defense. In particular, if your run expectancy is very low then you’ll eventually hit a point where no defense no matter how good will be able to win the game for you. There’s a limit on how much you can reduce BABIP through defense, so you’re expected to give up a certain minimum number of runs. If you’re at or close to that benefit-limit on defense, but your scored run expectancy is at or below that limit then you want more offense. If there are only another 0.01% of balls in play that could still be reached, some defensive talents will be wasted. Alternatively, hitting talents are always going to benefit your scoring potential proportionately to their improvement (or in some cases, more than proportionately- of OBP is involved).
So you’re talking about a benefit curve which is a linear or higher polynomial (extra hitting talent) as opposed to one where the unit benefit steadily approaches zero. There’s almost certainly going to be overlap regions where extra slugging or other hitting skills are vastly more important than extra defense.
“Statistically, this should improve the WAR of anybody else in the lineup by improving the OBP of any one guy in the line up (by increasing their PA).”
Except, that doesn’t happen. Its been shown again and again that “protection” doesn’t exist.
@Marc – completely agree and when you see the impact UZR has on WAR, it will make you scratch your head at times.
Personally I think 1B UZR is incredibly flawed… one person’s range (which really helps UZR) is a smarter 1B’s knowing that the second baseman can make a routine play on that groundball. Then of course their is the ability to handle poor throws which may be as important as range. How many infield errors will a good 1B save? A similar but lesser effect can be seen at 3rd depending on your SS’s range… and maybe even corner OF’r if you have a CF’r with range.
I’d also say the type of pitching is not significant in terms of actual defensive value (do you have a heavy grroundball staff, flyball staff, strikeout staff) – sure this will tend to even up but if you look at say the Twins staff… defensive value may be a bit more important.
I also wonder how much UZR takes the difficulty of the play into account (is range viewed as a function of how hard the ball is hit or is that assumed to just even out?). Watching Damon butcher a fairly high ball over his head the other day (that hit on the warning track), has me scratching my head as to how he could be the 3rd best defensive LF’r this year. Had that been a line drive or even a flyball that was not hit so high over his head that landed in the same spot…totally different thing in my view
@BN I also am of the belief that there are tails on the curve where there’s diminishing returns. If you have say 6 really good fielders, that 7th or 8th may not add as much value as if it was the 4th or 5th.
Finally – putting aside the “protection” angle…hitting on a good hitting team will mean more plate appearances, and it will also likely mean you’re hitting against middle reliief pitching a lot more than on a weak hitting team. It’s hard to say the magnitude of this impact, but the benefit of hitting on a good hitting team is not merely about “protection”. (And protection does exist – it’s just a question of how big or small an impact it is)
Considering the ballpark, I said that this was the Sox best signing during last offseason so long as he stayed healthy. He hasn’t had a major injury yet, so this signing just keeps getting better and better, as much as it hurts to commend the Sox (=P. Kidding, of course. I’m not one of those ignorant OMG REDSUX DIE Yankee fans).
The Red Sox may have to cough up 3 or 4 years at about 10-12 mill per come season end. I say they pay it, unless they’ve got a 3rd basemen coming up…actually, didn’t they draft someone for 3rd base or something this year?
Adrian Beltre has never made an All-Star game…crazy.
Besides 2004 (when he was probably on steroids), what other year has Beltre had where he has been anywhere near an All Star?
Brooks Robinson made the All-Star game 15 years in a row, with a career line of .267/.322/.401, and a career zone rating of +14 per season (according to Total Zone). In contrast, Beltre’s career line is .274/.328/.458, and his career zone rating is +8 per season. As an Orioles fan, the difference doesn’t seem too striking to me… over their careers, Beltre has posted 39.5 WAR in 7177 PA, while Robinson has posted 69.1 WAR in 11782 PA. If you extended Beltre’s career to 11782 PA, he’d have… 64.8 WAR. Yet for whatever reason, Beltre doesn’t have the reputation of Robinson (no clever nicknames for one thing).
The offense situation when Brooks was playing is a bit different than the 2000′s… if you’re are going to do an offensive comparison at least look a league average references # as opposed to raw stats from 2 different era’s.
Also according to fangraphs Brooks Robinson had a career 94.6 WAR, roughly double the WAR of Beltre
Beltre had 1 year over 5 WAR (that was his 2004 sesson, though he will likely add 1 this year and may have a few in the future). Brooks had 10years posting >5 WAR, including a string of 6 consecutive years.
Beltre’s a good player but let’s not go crazy… he is not as similar to Brooks as merely comparing a slash line from 2 different eras make it seem.
One thing that surprised me about Beltre (which I just looked up) is his home/road split:
Home: .331/.373/.503, .876 OPS
Away: .371/.404/.629, 1.033 OPS
I had assumed Beltre was taking advantage of Fenway Park, but he’s actually been much better on the road.
Exactly. Plus his HR’s this year are HR’s pretty much everywhere. They are bombs, many of them well over 400 ft.
His road OPS this year is 250 points higher than it was for the Mariners over 5 years. He is also hitting like crazy with 2 strikes. With the Mariners he was an automatic out with 2 strikes.
His last 9 HR have all been to LF, 6 of them on the road. His power with the Mariners seemed more CF or RF-CF, so maybe he has changed his approach.
It could be he is hitting in a lineup that works pitchers much harder than the Mariners, and he sees better pitches with 2 strikes. But something else may be going on. It’s almost like he knows what pitches are coming. Also, he is seeing 20% fewer sliders if the numbers are accurate.
Beware the contract year. Somebody will make Boras a happy man next year, but it probably won’t be the Red Sox.
Also, as for UZR and Beltre. I believe I read MGL on another board admitting that UZR may underestimate the cost of an error.
And as a Red Sox fan I have seen most games and most of his errors were on routine plays, and he had some serious mental lapses that were not counted as errors. He has been good defensively, but not great. His greatest strength is going back on pop ups, unfortunately, he destroys Red Sox LF’ers when he does so.
Also, is it my imagination or does it look like Beltre is about 20 lbs heavier (all muscle) than last year. The guy is a tank.
As for the valuations based on WAR. Chone Figgins was valued at 27 million in a contract year and signed for 9 million and this year is valued at -400K. Bay was valued at 22.6 million and signed
for 15 million and this year is projected to be valued at 11.4 million.
These valuations are certainly not predictive and if a team is paying the same amount as these valuations they are likely overpaying. There has to be a discount for offering multi-year deals as well.
Also, Beltre is listed as 31. But he broke in at the MLB level at 19 and was signed out for the DR before the league and INS got tough about verifying ages. In Beltres case his signing was investigated by MLB, but the focus was on if he was younger than he claimed. He probably is 31, but if not, a 4 year deal could really hurt whomever offers it.
Look at Brooks Robinson’s offensive production between the ages of 26 and 30 (the age range of Beltre’s contract with Seattle). Relative to the era, Robinson was a much more effective offensive player.
I understand Fangraphs “value dollars” system, but I was discussing the contract in terms of “real dollars”. I highly doubt that in the offseason following the 2004 season, defense was valued to the point that a GM would give a player a 5 year deal with an AAV of nearly 13 million expecting an average major league hitter. Beltre’s defense clearly prevented the deal from being a complete bust, but I doubt anyone in Seattle would feel satisfied with his tenure even after reading David’s column.