Free Agent Watch: Livan Hernandez

Livan Hernandez is rumored to have interest from a couple of teams. This surprised me, and I wasn't going to write an article on Hernandez, because I assumed he was retiring. Either way, Hernandez had a -.1 WAR in 2011, a 3.3 WAR in 2010, and a .2 WAR in 2009. These are quite scattered. One must figure out who Hernandez is, the 2010 version or 2011 version. His 2011 PE was very poor at 3.677, while his 2010 PE was 2.883. His FIP for the two years was basically the same at 3.95 and 3.96 respectively. In 2010, his BABIP was slightly low at .287, and it was slightly high in 2011 at .313. His strikeout ratio was about the same and unimpressive, in fact it was a little higher in 2011. His OBP against was actually lower in 2010 and 2011 than his career average. The big thing one notices is that in 2011 his slugging was much higher, at .434 instead of .393 which was what it was in 2010. He gave up slightly more extra base hits in 2011 at 7.7% (7.1% in 2010). In both 2010 and 2011 he gave up a smaller percentage of home runs than league average. His 2011 TR wasn't great at 8.32, while in 2010 it was slightly better at 8.75. He is a groundball pitcher, which can somewhat make up for the lack of strikeouts. However, his career Skill Independent ERA is 4.72 (4.47 in 2011), hardly very good. He wouldn't be more than a back of the rotation starter and in Washington last year he was pushed all the way out of the starting rotation. I can't imagine giving this guy more than a 1 year about $500,000 deal. If he is willing to play for that, it may be worth it, but nothing more.