The Coco Crisp Trade
Batten down the hatches – I’m writing about another Royals trade. Hopefully, this thread goes better than the last one…
According to Sports Radio 810 in Kansas City, the Royals have acquired Coco Crisp from the Red Sox for reliever Ramon Ramirez. Let’s break down both players, win value style.
Crisp has a pretty well established set of skills – He’ll post a BB% around 8%, a K% around 16%, and an ISO around .120. This is the classic groundball/gap power hitter, and not surprisingly, his results are consistent with what we expect from that skillset. He turns 29 in a few weeks, so he’s in his prime, and we shouldn’t expect much of a change going forward.
The Marcel projections has him projected .269/.333/.392 for 2009, good for a .321 wOBA, compared to a league average of .332. This pegs him as a below average hitter, but not a terrible one, worth about ten runs less than an average hitter over a full season. Of course, the Royals aren’t acquiring Crisp for his bat, but for his glove.
The +/- system has Crisp all over the board the last three years: -7 in 2006, +26 in 2007, and -2 in 2008 as a CF. He’s almost certainly not the best defensive center fielder in baseball, but we can’t ignore the fact that he was universally praised as a terrific defensive CF in 2007 and the numbers backed it up. If we just average the three years, we get +5 per year, which makes Crisp an above average CF. I can buy that.
Center fielders also hit worse than league average as a group, so we have to add a positional adjustment of 2.5 runs.
-10 offense, +5 defense, +2.5 position adjustment, +20 replacement level = +17.5 runs, or about 1.75 wins. We probably need to dock Crisp a few runs because of his weak arm (+/- just covers range), so let’s call it +1.5 wins instead. That’s Crisp’s 2009 value, making him a slightly below average player, but still a decently valuable member of a roster.
The Royals didn’t get him for free, however – let’s look at Ramon Ramirez, who was one of the Royals best relief pitchers last year. He posted a 2.84 FIP in 70 innings by racking up a strikeout per inning and, more importantly, not giving up home runs. He only allowed two long balls the whole year. That’s very unlikely to continue going forward (even the best relievers can’t sustain a 3% HR/FB rate), and Marcel projects his HR rate to climb from 0.25 HR/9 to 0.71 HR/9, which is the main reason it projects his FIP at 3.76 going forward.
A 3.76 FIP is great for a starter, but just average for a reliever. You can get a 4.50 FIP from a replacement level reliever, and so over a projected 60 innings, you’re looking at a difference of 5 runs between Ramirez and a replacement level reliever. We have to multiply those five runs by 1.5 to account for the extra leverage of the situations he’ll likely be used in, but even still, that only makes him a +.75 win pitcher.
The Royals clearly got the better player here, turning a decent but not great reliever into an almost league average center fielder. The fact that Crisp is owed $5.75 million for 2009 while Ramirez won’t make much makes this trade less of an outright steal for Kansas City, but Crisp is still more of a value than Ramirez is.
That doesn’t make this a bad trade for Boston, necessarily – they didn’t have a full time job to offer Crisp, and so they turned a superfluous bench player into a solid enough cheap reliever. But this is more of a lateral move for the Red Sox and a pretty decent step up for the Royals.
I give the edge to Kansas City in this one.
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Dave, the only question that comes to my mind is this: is Ramirez an above average ground ball pitcher? If so, it would seem that, even if he’s not likely to enjoy the kind of success keeping the ball in the park that he did in ’08, he might continue to be above average at it going forward. If he is able to keep the ball in the park at an above average rate and continue to strike out a batter an inning (roughly) then the Red Sox have picked up four seasons of an excellent reliever.
Also, if Ramirez replaces Timlin on the roster, that’s a huge upgrade, even if Ramirez is only slightly above league average. Of course they didn’t need to trade Crisp to achieve that, but its worth noting anyway. Thanks for the insightful analysis.
Ramirez posted a slightly above average GB% of 46.0% last year, but for his career, he’s basically neutral. The Marcel projection already suggests that some of his HR prevention might be real, but there’s just no way it stays at 0.25 HR/9.
And, actually, if Ramirez takes Timlin’s spot on the roster, then he won’t help the Red Sox at all. Timlin’s gmLI was just 0.65 last year, as he was used mostly as a mopup guy, pitching in games that were already decided. If you’re up 10-3, the performance of your 8th inning reliever isn’t really important in terms of wins and losses.
I know Timlin wasn’t very good last year, but you’re not going to see much of a real effect by improving the quality of the guy pitching those innings.
Good point about Timlin. I guess the added advantage to having Ramirez over Timlin would be that rather than having to avoid using Timlin in anything approaching a high leverage situation, you could use another reliever in that situation and spread those high leverage innings out more. Also, there were a couple games where, due to using up the entire bullpen, Timlin did end up coming into a close game. Those situations, few though they may be, could be avoided entirely with Ramirez on the roster instead.
Game 2 of the Playoffs vs. TB disagrees (which Timlin blew in extra innings).
Dan Szymborski brings up a good point that while it may be another good value-for-value deal for Dayton, it doesn’t necessarily make sense in context if it pushes DeJesus off CF for good. Thoughts?
I have a lot of respect for Dan, who does really good work, but I disagree with that entire assertion. DeJesus’ defensive value doesn’t go away in left field – it’s slightly marginalized due to the incremental decrease in opportunities, but it’s not a big deal overall.
As a Sox fan, while I certainly wasn’t blown away by this deal, I’m overall pretty pleased with this deal for mostly organizational reasons (i.e. beyond just looking at the straight value of each player). I think there are a few other potential sources of value for the Red Sox here that could be explored:
1. More PAs for a hopefully improving Jacoby Ellsbury- I haven’t looked at the numbers from last year, but I’d imagine value generated by PAs for Ellsbury vs. PAs for Crisp was largely a wash. Crisp at 29 is unlikely to improve, while I would like to think Ellsbury would in the coming season. Thus, some of Crisp’s PAs will likely be replaced in the upcoming season with a more productive Ellsbury. This also depends on who ends up replacing the remainder of those PAs as our new 4th OF.
2. More IP for Justin Masterson- With Ramon Ramirez possibly filling the role as the 2nd RH setup man (behind Delcarmen), it allows more flexibility to move Masterson back into the rotation as needed. Assuming Masterson can pitch at or above the level he showed last year, this could generate additional value over replacement level for those IPs.
Generally, I imagine we may have been able to get greater value from a pure wins standpoint, but this addressed a very specific organizational need. More to the point, instead of going out on the FA market and paying the open market rate for a RH reliever, we get one who is still pre-arbitration and free up more money to spend elsewhere this offseason.
Also, to counteract the regression in HR/9, I’m hopeful that the tutelage of a far better coaching staff (namely John Farrell) will help Ramon reign in his control and improve on his 3.89 BB/9.
Dave, the thing that marginally swings this deal to the Red Sox for me (and I’m not a Red Sox fan or anything) are the relative long-term contracts of Crisp and Ramirez. Sure, Crisp might be worth about 1 win more than Ramirez. But he also costs $5 million more (the going rate for 1 win).
But then the Red Sox will have Ramirez for 3 more seasons (arbitration) where he will still be paid below-market value. Crisp probably won’t hit enough to bring the Royals any compensation picks and he’ll be gone after 2010 (maybe 2009 if he struggles this year).
Having Ramirez 3 more years swings the trade to the Red Sox for me. Not that it is as weird/bad of a trade as the Jacobs trade, but I think they gave up slightly more value than they received.
In other news, the Royals will be paying Jacobs and Crisp $9+ million this year. I can think of better ways to spend that kind of cash than Jacobs and Crisp, like $9 million dollars worth of chocolate pudding.
Don’t you think that you’re looking into these stats a little too much? Players in Boston and everywhere else are judged on their results, not VORP, BB%, K%, HR/FB%. The only thing I’d be concerned about for Crisp is if he gets on base, scores runs, and plays great center field like he did in Boston. With Ramirez, we’re looking for him to get ground balls when he needs them and not allow homeruns with men on base. I think you’re looking into all of this a little bit much.
Dave,
I am attempting to do my own version of the off-season plans you proposed at USSM for the M’s. I am piecing things together little by little. I am wondering if you could answer a few questions so that I can expedite the process:
*How many wins would a team of 25 replacement level players have? Without knowing this it’s difficult for me to put my wins above replacement calculations into something meaningful.
*What sources should I consider for defense? I was planning to use some combination of PMR and ZR as published at Beyond the Box Score. What did you use?
*What are the offensive and defensive position adjustments as far as wins above replacement?
*What is your rationale for tacking on +20 runs for “replacement” to Coco Crisp’s runs added/prevented?
*I’m projecting total IP for pitchers at about 1480, but am finding projecting the total PA for hitters more problematic – obviously a better hitting team will have more PA. What did you do about this?
*Is there a better statistic than RC/27 to use to project hitting wins?
*Did you account for baserunning at all or fielder’s arm strength/accuracy? If not I will look into it myself.
Feel free to answer all or none of these :-P
Thanks,
Dan
Have you looked at Ramirez numbers against righties. This may be why they got him. A little mop up work and a righty specialist.
I liked the comments from mymybig – if one takes salary into account, you could make a coherent case for Ramirez having more value than Crisp. Better bang for the buck. Plus, you have him for four year as opposed to one. It works well for both teams – Gathright is an atrocious hitter.
Now the Royals have a surplus of OF (DeJesus, Crisp, Teahen, Guillen) and need a 2B. That Teahen to the North Side rumor should pick up steam.
Just a word on Coco’s Plus / Minus ratings — those were not random variation, as each year the subjective impression matched the numbers. One year of just about the best CF play I’ve ever seen in a sandwich between two slightly below average ones. It was all about the jumps: in 2007 he got incredible reads while last year it seemed like he was breaking the wrong way half the time.
One possibility is that the jumps he got in 2007 were the real product of a newly learned skill, one which at last put his CF numbers in the ballpark you’d expect from his tremendous numbers in LF. And that last year’s lack of regular PT prevented him from ever getting in the same sort of groove. If that’s so, he has a chance to be much better than the +5 runs you estimate or the +4 I get from my projection system.
Oh, and a major quibble that tilts your entire analysis: that OBP and SA in Fenway is -7 runs, not -10, and Coco’s averaged +5 runs on the bases the last two years (including SB). So you’re off by about 8 runs on his offensive value.
One other thing I noticed – why is Ramirez measured relative to replacement, while Coco is measured relative to average and then given a bump to adjust for replacement level?
Greg – I’m not sure you have a “far better coaching staff” than the Royals. The Red Sox have far better players. That being said it seems that the Royals pitching coach has done a fairly decent job of turning below average to average pitchers into above average pitchers over the last 2 years. See Gil Meche, Greinke, Ramom Ramirez, Horacio Ramirez, Robinson Tejeda and is working on Kyle Davies. That was just my little bone to pick with a homer.
All in all I think the Red Sox will be pretty happy with Ram-Ram. Seems to get a lot of ground balls and will get his Ks with his nice change. He WILL struggle with his control at times, but I suspect he will still have an ERA under 3.00 with a K an inning.
I agree with Eric’s assessment regarding Crisp’s D. Having watched a lot of Sox games the past few years, he was pretty incredible in ’07 and significantly less so this past year. However, that could largely be a function of regular playing time. You have to wonder if sporadic opportunities to play CF wore on his ability to read fly balls. If so, the Royals can certainly have more hope that they’ll be getting ’07 Crisp so long as they give him the every day CF job.
OK, this right here is a prime example of where sabermetrics and moneyball have replaced simple common sense. This is ridiculous that a 6-8th inning RP gets this much respect. Crisp is a player that has had excellent years and years of injury and platooning in a deep outfield. He has a good chance to contribute very well to the royals and have a real defensives and offensive impacts on an otherwise lethargic team. He gets to go out there everyday while the other guy wouldn’t figure much in many games. The real question the royals fans should ask themselves is what their lineup would look like without Crisp, not what their bullpen would look like. What good is a solid setup man when your team would lose 90 games anyway because the everyday players all sucked. This was a steal for the royals, the Red Sox had been unwilling to trade Crisp for a while because they couldn’t get any good offers, I think they finally just took the first one that at least gave them something they could use because paying 5.75 million for someone that’d have to compete to be the 4th OF is quite a lot. Crisp will have a great season and be traded to a contender for much better players than Ram-Ram before the trading deadline.
Did you actually read the article adam? Dave gives the edge in this trade to the Royals, the team acquiring Coco.