Saturday, November 12, 2011

Chase Headley: Arbitration

Chase Headley had a 2 WAR in 2011 and a 2.03 WAR average over the past 3 years. This is worth around 6 million dollars according to the Halladay Standard. He made about 2.3 million in 2011. Not a good defender, -1.1 D-WAR for his career, but had a 1.5 D-WAR in 2010 (since this is the outlier, we have to basically throw this out). Has a career OBP of .343, .392 Slugging (1.764 O4S, or On Base Percentage time 4 plus slugging, giving OBP the importance over Slugging that Paul Depodesta gives it, an average O4S would be about 1.69, while Prince Fielder would have a 2.1 O4S for his career), and a 97.42 PPS. In 2011, his numbers were even better, with a .374 OBP, .399 Slugging, (1.895 O4S), and 102.14 PPS. So are his better numbers, specifically his better OBP, something we can expect from now on, or are they fluky in any way. Since he has a good OBP and is an under average home run hitter, his BABIP for his career is pretty high at .339. In 2011 it was even higher at .368. He did this despite having a lower ISO than career average at .110, and hitting about the same amount of groundballs and extra base hits. This clearly shows that you cannot count on the BABIP of 2011, and in turn you cannot count on Headley's very good OBP and career high Batting Average (I don't care about Batting Average but other teams do) for 2012. This means that he is probably valued more than he is actually worth. This means that, if all possible, the Padres should trade him. His salary won't get ridiculous in arbitration, so the Padres can decide to keep him if the package isn't there, but it makes a lot of sense (and if the rumors are true, they are at least thinking about it) for the Padres to move Headley and make a team overpay.

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