Twins sign Jamey Carroll

According to all the sources that usually report all this stuff, the Twins have signed Jamey Carroll to a contract worth 7 million in 2 years with an option year. Even if this turns out to not be true, like the Madson deal, this article still would be useful (if any of my posts are useful) as an evaluation of how much Carroll should get and his value. First of all, it should be noted that Carroll is 37, and could diminish greatly at any given time. Giving multiple year, multi million dollar contracts can be risky, but can also turn out to be steals because some teams will overvalue the risk. In 2011, he had a 1.8 WAR, worth 5.4 million according to the Halladay Standard (remember, he is making 3.5 million dollars a year under this new deal). Over the past 3 years, Carroll has a 2.13 WAR average, worth 6.4 million according to the Halladay standard. So according to WAR, this is a great deal for the Twins. However, WAR is not predictive, it is just an evaluation of how good the player was. So we must comb through the offensive statistics and see if there are any signs that he will drop off. According to the defensive statistics, there has been a drop-off as Carroll registered a negative D-WAR for the first time in his since 2003 in 2011. On offense the real key statistic is OBP, and Carroll registered a .359 OBP in 2011, slightly better than his career average of .356. His slugging was almost identical to his career norms at .347. In fact, his career runs created per game is 4.6, while his 2011 number was 5. His BABIP was slightly higher, but not enough of a difference to really give you any concern. His ISO was a terrible .058, but his career ISO is only .070. He certainly isn't going to fool anybody into thinking he is a power hitter. In fact, he hasn't hit a homer in 2 years. You would always love a power hitter, but he walks more than average and hits more line drives than average. He is a groundball hitter, and he hit even more groundballs than usual in 2011, and that is concerning. One would think he would be due for a horrible BABIP season. One great thing about him is his ability to take pitches, seeing 4.27 pitches per plate appearance in 2011, giving him a PPS of 104.45. Overall, I think this is a pretty good signing by the Twins, who have made a ton of bad ones recently.