Nelson Cruz Poll
Jeff Sullivan · December 1, 2014 at 4:12 pm · Filed Under Mariners
On the one hand,
On the other hand,
On the mutant third hand,
On the fourth hand??,
I want your overall opinion. Not your opinion on 2015, not your opinion on Nelson Cruz, not your opinion on images of numbers wearing festive birthday hats — I want your overall opinion on the Mariners, today, signing Nelson Cruz for four years and $57 million, and in so doing giving up a draft pick. You by now have had plenty of time to come to terms with whatever your feelings might be! Share said feelings, by clicking a little circle on the internet.
Too old and not quite good enough to give up a fairly large amount of money/time and a draft pick for. But is there actually something better they could be doing with that money? I don’t know, I’m not an expert.
I’m okay with it from the standpoint that it should be fun *this* year and I think it prevents the front office from making a much, much dumber trade that would’ve inevitably been made to fill the RH power slot. I clearly have a lot of confidence in Jack Z.
Why I absolutely despise this signing: http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=0&type=8&season=2014&month=0&season1=2011&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=2434,3035,1945
You can play around with the date ranges all you want, but the wRC+ column (and baserunning) is really all that matters. In that light, it’s hard to get away from the fact that the Mariners have just spent a bunch of money and a draft pick signing a player whose one skill is ruthlessly opposed by their home park. We’ve seen this movie before, and I don’t expect it to begin well, never mind the ending.
I like that we’ve addressed the DH black hole at least for a season or two. There really aren’t a lot of good hitters on the market so I’m glad we at least got one of them instead of doing our usual dumpster dive.
Cruz may be expensive but we paid Cory Hart and Kendrys Morales roughly $15 M last year to be worse than replacement level, so if we spend that annually to get somewhere between 0.5 and 2.5 WAR for a couple seasons and then have to carry some dead weight for a season or two I still feel like it’s a net gain overall.
I “like” it. Don’t love it. But given some of the alternatives, that likely all involved losing Taijuan Walker, I’ll take it.
And Safeco may have a negative effect on him, but it has a negative effect on ALL right handed hitters, so we have to “handicap” the numbers accordingly. He’s only competing against a position that posted a .190 BA and .350ish slugging % for us last season. He will be an improvement on those numbers. And he runs better than Corey Hart or Kendrys Morales, if only moderately.
It’s a good move. It’s not Giancarlo Stanton. But that move wasn’t out there waiting to be made, so adjusted for the “actually plausible” factor, I like this signing.
This is probably Richie Sexson all over again, who was pretty good to start with in years 1-2 of his deal, and was pretty terrible in years 3-4 (and some of the wheels started coming off late in year 2).
The problems are:
– are the M’s going to recognize quickly that Nelson Cruz is done as an everyday player if/when it happens?
– are the M’s going to dump Saunders and go with Cruz as a fulltime OF, as opposed to doing a quasi-rotation where Cruz is mostly a DH, but occasionally plays OF?
I don’t feel all that confident in what the M’s will do about those two questions…
(I voted “OK with it” because this team went into win now mode with the Cano signing. This could get kind of ugly in a couple years if Cano breaks down like middle infielders sometimes do in their mid-30’s. Boone went from pretty good to gone pretty fast.)
I I don’t like it largely because I think he’s going to be in right field as much as he can physically handle, so even if he hits he’s not going to be worth much (and I don’t expect him to hit at all in years 3 and 4).
I know some media folks have stated the Mariners see him as primarily a DH; but given this org doesn’t leak, I don’t believe that’s based on anything. Last year media folks believed Hart and LoMo would pretty exclusively be infielders or DHs…
Um, LoMo WAS mostly an infielder (at 1B when Justin Smoak finally wrote his ticket out of Seattle by being Justin Smoak), and Corey Hart WAS mostly a DH (53 at DH, 18 at other positions). If Cruz spent something like that at DH (110 at DH, 35 in the OF), I’d be fine with it.
I believe in both cases they were used as such basically because they couldn’t physically hack it. Certainly with Hart, at least, McLendon had said early on he wanted him in RF some large number of games, if possible.
I’m not going to give Mac a pass just because Hart basically broke in half and made it impossible to use him the way Mac wanted…
Here’s a story from February. Mac would’ve liked running Hart into the OF 145 games, if possible.
Well now that he is here, I hope he does well.
From that article you linked:
“I’m going to go ahead and get it out of the way immediately: Spring Training quotes are practically meaningless. Lloyd McClendon can say whatever he wants, Jack Zduriencik can say whatever he wants, and Hart can say whatever he wants too, and we should read little into it.”
I like it. Best right-handed power FA bat out there. I’d rather the M’s spend the money than trade the talent.
It’s clearly a move for trying to win this year and next, but it required 4 years to snag him. Worth it, because a lot changes in a couple of years. We have a shot now, so let’s worry about now.
Also, both ESPN Park Factors and Baseball Prospectus Park Factors indicated that in 2014, Orioles Park at Camden Yards was actually less homer-friendly for right-handed bats than Safeco Field. So, those of you who are certain his power will be zapped here, do the research again.
Gee the M’s have made mistakes in the past, so lets do nothing.
So, those of you who are certain his power will be zapped here, do the research again.
His power could easily get zapped by being 34 years old. There is nothing remotely close to a lock for Cruz performing well in 2015, let alone later.
That being said, I still vote “OK with it” simply because nothing is really a lock, and of all the alternatives, this does the least damage to the team in the present, and the team desperately needed a RHB and talent at a corner position (corner OF/DH/1B). Cruz helps the single biggest need in 2015. All told, this isn’t terrible in 2015. We might be singing a different tune by mid-July 2017 if Cruz is hitting .200 with no power and looking every bit like a player who’s over the hill at age 36.
How did we lose .5 WAR from when you posted that? (It’s now at 40.2)?