Free Agent Watch: Luis Ayala

Rumors are now swirling that teams like the Rays and Red Sox are interested in reliever Luis Ayala, who pitched for the Yankees in 2011. Ayala had a 1.4 WAR in 56 innings, worth 4.2 million dollars according to the Halladay Standard. Even though his 2011 ERA was 2.09, his FIP was 4.19. To give you an idea of how that might affect WAR, his teammate Hector Noesi had the exact same amount of innings pitched (actually 1/3rd of an inning more) with an ERA of 4.47. His WAR was .4, so Ayala's 1.4 WAR has holes in it, but it would still be better than a .4 WAR (FanGraphs gave him just a .2 WAR, but I don't think thats fair, and I trust Baseball Reference more). He didn't even pitch in the Majors in 2010, after a -.7 WAR campaign with the Twins and Marlins in 2009. This was after a horrible 2008 season where he had a -1.3 WAR. This makes projections really tough, but first we should look at his 2011 numbers. He had a solid -.45 PE, but his adjusted PE was 1.65, pretty bad for a reliever. His SIERA was a pretty good 3.77, and his TR was awesome at 10.82. Even in the little bitty Yankee Stadium, he only gave up .8 HR/9IP. He did this by getting groundballs (1.64 GB/FB), and not really by strikeouts (6.27 K/9IP). But what about projections? I find the Bill James' projections interesting, as it has him with an ERA of 4.43 and a PE of 2.47. In short, he won't be very good. It is most probable that he will be vastly overvalued, and probably shouldn't be given much more than minimum salary.