Signing Delmon Young is a Huge Mistake: the Phillies should Sign Michael Bourn Instead and Get Rid of Delmon Young and Dominic Brown
Like a lot of others, I’ve crunched the numbers on all of the phillies off-season moves, and the bottom line on the Delmon Young signing is that it’s probably a bad mistake. Delmon Young is such a bad fielder that even if he hits well, his most likely WAR contribution will be @ .1, because his bad glove will completely cancel out his offensive contributions. Compare that to Hunter Pence, who had ..7 WAR in 101 G, or on pace to be 1.0 WAR–at least he wasn’t hurting you.
The actual best move for the Phillies would be to sign the still available Mike Bourn, who was first in the NL in Defensive WAR, and had a 6.0 WAR overall, and have him play CF. They should then have Ben Revere play RF fulltime, because Revere is a defensive demon. If Bourn plays CF and Revere plays RF, then we can expect 4.47 WAR from Bourn in CF and 2.90 WAR from Revere in RF, most of that being defensive. It won’t even matter if they hit.
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| Michael Bourn started out as a homegrown Phillie. He was traded for Brad Lidge. Now is the time to bring him back home. If we put him in CF and Ben Revere in RF, we would be able to win the NL East. |
Compare that to 1.3 WAR from Victorino and .7 WAR from Pence in 101 G each last year, and you immediately see a huge upgrade–it would be 7.37 wins in lieu of 2 wins, or an instant improvement of nearly 5.5 wins over last years OF. Then I would probably get rid of Dominic Brown and Delmon Young, who can’t play defense–Dom Brown has a career minus 1.8 WAR in 147 G–and instead play Lance Nix in LF together with Mayberry and Ruf. Mayberry has averaged a win share per 150 games, while Ruf hit 40 HR last year and accumulated .3 WS in just 12 games–that projects to 3.0 win shares in 120 games. If you platooned Nix and Ruf, you might expect to get as many as 1.2 win shares from Nix and 3.0 win shares from Ruf. That would be 4.2 win shares, compared to the 1.9 win shares you got from Juan Pierre. Overall, that’s a better OF. You’d have overall 7 more wins from your OF.
It's difficult to believe that the Phillies have entirely ignored the developments in understanding the contributions of WAR, Defense and Glovework to wins and to marginal wins which have been worked out the past few years. Why sign a guy as good as Ben Revere, and then sign someone as horrible as Delmon Young to play beside him? Delmon Young routinely fields so badly that no matter how well he hits, his defense cancels out his offense, WAR wise. Consequently, it is literally a fruitless exercise to play him anywhere but DH. You would think the Phils would have learned this from the Ty Wigginton exercise last year--watching Wiggington butcher balls at 3B last year was painful. We saw better fielding in college and beer league softball games.
Let's give credit where credit is due. Getting rid of BJ Rosenberg, Lindblom, Qualls, Blanton, Contreras, Stutes and Diekman, as well as Blanton, Victorino, Pence and Schierholz, was a kind of addition by subtraction. We'll miss Juan Pierre a little, but that's life. Mike Adams is a fine pickup, and Ben Revere was a great signing. Mike Young is 100% ballplayer and zero percent BS. Not a great glove either, but he hits a ton--and has a batting title to prove it.
And he doesn't get drunk and hurl racial and anti semitic slurs at folks either. Acquiring a known anti-semite is, one has to think, a bit distasteful for this organization, considering the enormous size, influence, stature, respect, and historic nature of the Philadelphia Jewish-American Comunity, dating back as it does to Haym Solomon and the Revolutionary War. Most of us will have a hard time accepting Delmon Young knowing the kind of things he has said in the past. Hate speech of any kind cannot be tolerated in this society.
It's difficult to believe that the Phillies have entirely ignored the developments in understanding the contributions of WAR, Defense and Glovework to wins and to marginal wins which have been worked out the past few years. Why sign a guy as good as Ben Revere, and then sign someone as horrible as Delmon Young to play beside him? Delmon Young routinely fields so badly that no matter how well he hits, his defense cancels out his offense, WAR wise. Consequently, it is literally a fruitless exercise to play him anywhere but DH. You would think the Phils would have learned this from the Ty Wigginton exercise last year--watching Wiggington butcher balls at 3B last year was painful. We saw better fielding in college and beer league softball games.
Let's give credit where credit is due. Getting rid of BJ Rosenberg, Lindblom, Qualls, Blanton, Contreras, Stutes and Diekman, as well as Blanton, Victorino, Pence and Schierholz, was a kind of addition by subtraction. We'll miss Juan Pierre a little, but that's life. Mike Adams is a fine pickup, and Ben Revere was a great signing. Mike Young is 100% ballplayer and zero percent BS. Not a great glove either, but he hits a ton--and has a batting title to prove it.
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| Michael Young Signs with the Phillies. |
And he doesn't get drunk and hurl racial and anti semitic slurs at folks either. Acquiring a known anti-semite is, one has to think, a bit distasteful for this organization, considering the enormous size, influence, stature, respect, and historic nature of the Philadelphia Jewish-American Comunity, dating back as it does to Haym Solomon and the Revolutionary War. Most of us will have a hard time accepting Delmon Young knowing the kind of things he has said in the past. Hate speech of any kind cannot be tolerated in this society.
On the IF, Ruiz will go down a little, but has an established level of 3.6 WAR. Kratz will double to 2.8 WAR if he gets into 100 G. Howard at 1B should return to @ 1.83 WAR; Utley’s established WAR is 5.8 and he should improve over last seasons 2.9 in 1/2 a season. Rollins will stay round his 2.3 WAR. Polanco and Frandsen’s 1.8 WAR were cancelled by Wigginton’s minus 1.7 WAR for a net .1 WAR. Mike Young has a great bat but a bad glove, but he will give us a net .5 WAR, so we’ll improve there. And, we lose michael martinez and get Freddie Galvis for the whole year, which means Galvis’ glove adds another 1/2 to a whole win share, mainly on defense, assuming he rests Utley, Rollins or Young a fair amount. Overall, the Phils can pick up 10 win shares on offense without Bourn, but can pick up 15 with Bourn.
On the pitching side, getting rid of all the bad bullpen guys will save the Phils 3 WAR on pitching, and Mike Adams gives them 1.3 WAR, so the bullpen will improve 4.1 WAR, plus Papelbon actually has an established level of 2.2, not 1.6 WAR, so the bullpen can go to 4.6 WAR. Hamels and Lee can slightly improve by 1/2 WAR each, Kendrick will be about the same, John Lannan will be better than Blanton or Worley, or at least a wash, and then Halladay has an established WAR of 6.9 WAR, whereas he only gave us .7 last year. His career average dropping high and low is 4.2. Assuming all this, the Pitching Staff should improve by 11 WAR to 12 WAR.
Last year the Phils were 15 WAR batting, 10 WAR pitching; adding 43 to this gave them a predicted wins of 69, whereas they actually won 81.
This analysis without Bourn gives them a 26 WAR batting, 22 WAR pitching, for 48 WAR, which if you add 43, using a WAR to wins conversion formula for 2012, gives them a predicted win total of 91 wins. If you add Bourn to this mix and eliminate Young and Brown, and move Bourn to CF and move Revere to RF and go with the Defensive Package in the OF, then you move to 31 batting and defense, and you eliminate two potential minuses in Brown and Young–moving the Phils to a predicted 96 win season.
At this juncture its safe to say, if the pitching holds up, and here we mean Halladay, the Phils will challenge again for the NL East crown.
Ruben Amaro should pull the trigger on the Michael Bourn signing. Its the key to another NL East crown. It's the one move he hasn't made, that he should make. He can trade Delmon Young and Dominic Brown to the AL, where they can DH, as they should, and obtain future prospects or additional bullpen help. What he should not do is consider playing Dom Brown or Delmon Young in the OF--they are butchers in the field. Nor are they good hitters--Delmon Young doesn't walk, and Dom Brown is just not that good a hitter to justify his dreadful glove.
There's an old saying in baseball--the late Earl Weaver liked it. It was "pitching, power and defense win championships". The Phillies should heed this. They have the power in the INF. The best thing they can do with their OF, is populate it with speedsters who can catch the ball--like the 1980 Phils did with Bake McBride and Garry Maddox. That's what Ben Revere and Michael Bourn would be like in CF and RF for the Phils.
There's an old saying in baseball--the late Earl Weaver liked it. It was "pitching, power and defense win championships". The Phillies should heed this. They have the power in the INF. The best thing they can do with their OF, is populate it with speedsters who can catch the ball--like the 1980 Phils did with Bake McBride and Garry Maddox. That's what Ben Revere and Michael Bourn would be like in CF and RF for the Phils.
Art Kyriazis, Philly
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