A Monster at Fenway?
When taking a closer look at Mike Cameron’s profile as a player, it appears that there may be several reasons why the Red Sox front office decided to acquire this 37-year-old outfielder instead of shelling out top dollar to retain Jason Bay.
First, let’s look at the basics. Cameron is known primarily for his glove, as he has been one of the best defensive center fielders in baseball over the past 10 years. Although he is old, he is a tremendous athlete who has yet to experience much of a regression in his performance. Offensively and defensively, he is a typical stat-head favorite. His fairly low batting average and high strikeout totals might become a talking point for the uninformed barstool/WEEI types who dwell on such things, but Cameron has always produced where it counts: creating runs and preventing runs.
Now, let’s dig a little deeper.
Performance against left-handed pitching:
Last season, Cameron hit .271/.420/.534 in 150 plate appearances against lefties (147 OPS+). With Jeremy Hermida’s 103 OPS+ in 370 plate appearances against right-handed pitching, this platoon (should the Sox decide to go that route) would give you a weighted average OPS+ of 116, a performance similar to Bobby Abreu and Nelson Cruz last season.
Targeting the Green Monster:
Cameron hits a lot of long fly balls to left field, and should benefit greatly from the shallow wall. Here is a chart of the home runs he hit in 2009:
If you click on this link, you can see a chart of all of Cameron’s fly ball outs in Milwaukee’s Miller Park last season. There are roughly a dozen outs that would have been doubles or home runs in Fenway.
As of right now, I think this is Boston’s best move of the offseason, in terms of value relative to dollars spent. Cameron’s deal is for roughly $7.25 million per year over two years. Two years seems like an appropriate amount of time to determine whether someone from the OF prospect group (Ryan Kalish, Josh Reddick, Ryan Westmoreland, etc.) will take that big step forward, or if the Sox need to outsource their corner outfield duties once again.
[...] here to read the rest: The House That Dewey Built » A Monster at Fenway? By admin | category: monster | tags: benefit-greatly, discussion-regarding, download-full, [...]
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The comment’s server IP (74.220.207.122) doesn’t match the comment’s URL host IP () and so is spam.
A well-known military analogy is in order. Country A produces weapons that are of average accuracy and average power at a very low cost – they are high-value systems. Country B produces weapons that are of high accuracy and high power at very high cost – they are very low-value systems. In a war, Country As powerful, accurate, and financially wasteful weapons destroy country B. This is a classic example of the value of output over cost-per-unit.
Unless the Sox can take the money not paid to Jason Bay’s inferior replacement, and use it to replace Lowell at third by a player who both improves on Lowell’s production AND makes up for the loss in the outfield, then it’s a net loss. As it is, being more cost-efficient per player alone does not help the team. If so, teams with the smallest payrolls could win the World Series each year. They can’t – production wins over financial efficiency.
Mark, I agree with your overall point that saving money (by itself) does not win games. A team that spends $220 million will always have an inherent advantage over a team that spends $120 million. However, when you factor in the constraint of a fixed budget, that is where cost-efficiency becomes important. Really, there is only one “Country B” in the league. The other 29 teams are “Country A” and try to get by on a little guile wherever they can.
I think you nail it in your second paragraph. Remember, the Sox still need one more corner infielder.
Interestingly, the folks at FanGraphs wrote a column a few weeks ago that actually argues that not only is Cameron a better value than Bay, but he’s a better player: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/bay-vs-cameron
Cool analysis! Let’s simply wait and see for the excitement these changes would bring. Thanks. By the way, Premio Foods is one great company who has free goodies and recipes to cool sports fans out there. Enjoy!