Is A-Gon — The Other One — Really The Solution?
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Adrian Gonzalez, originally uploaded by SD Dirk.
“The one thing the Red Sox must do to bridge the gap between them and the World Series champion Yankees? Acquire Padres first baseman Adrian Gonzalez.
Losing out on Mark Teixeira in the offseason — losing him to the Yankees — seemed to be the biggest difference between the teams. The Yankees piled on with CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, but the Sox had comparables in Josh Beckett and Jon Lester.” — Nick Cafardo, Why the Sox should be going, going . . . going after Gonzalez
There is a school of thought — epitomized by Nick Cafardo above — that says that Adrian Gonzalez is the cure for what ails the Red Sox. That he’s the answer to the Yankee’s Mark Teixeira.
On one level, it’s easy to understand why. Over the last three years, his age 25, 26, and 27 seasons, he’s put up a cumulative .279/.371/.519 line, good for an .891 OPS. Not bad. This past season, he put up a .958 cumulative line, good for sixth in the majors of OPS from the first base position. That’s one spot behind Youk, who checked in at .961 (in sixty odd fewer ABs) and one spot ahead of the aformentioned Teixeira, whose slow start kept him to a .948 line in almost sixty more ABs.
And he did all of the above playing in a park that kills hitters: Petco has a batting park factor of 89 (100 is neutral, > 100 is good for hitters). Contrast that with Youk (BPF of 108) or Tex (BPF of 100).
But for all of the analysis that leads the professionals to conclude that A-Gon is what this team needs, I’ve seen precious little attention to a troubling aspect to his performance: his splits.
Not the home road ones: if you can put up an .859 at Petco, you should be fine pretty much everywhere else, and he is — 1.045 OPS away from home last year. No, the thing I’m surprised no one’s focusing on is his L/R numbers.
Last year, Gonzalez put up a .305/.448/.629 against RHP, which is obscene. But lefties didn’t just contain him, they erased him: .234/.339.431. That comes out to a .770 OPS, which is good for 102nd in the league. To put that in terms we can all understand, from the left hand side, Gonzalez is — offensively — Colorado’s Dexter Fowler or, closer to home, Ellsbury. Presumably without the stolen bases.
He’s so good against RHP that this gets overlooked, but it would presumably matter a lot more when we faced, say, CC at Yankee Stadium.
Elite players in the league will show some platoon split, but typically nothing that drastic. Youk, for example, put up a .953 OPS vs lefties last year, .964 vs righties. Teixeira, a .940/.952. You need to produce against both left and right handed pitching to be counted among the best. Gonzalez, meanwhile, has never shown the ability to do that. 2009 was no fluke; his three year splits are .744/973.
Does this mean that we shouldn’t go after him? No. As mentioned, he’s so productive against right handed pitching that he’s a serious asset at the plate, and with a UZR/150 of 3.4, he’s no slouch with the glove.
But should Theo simply throw prospects at San Diego to get him? No. He’s good. Really good, in fact. He’s just not as perfect as a lot of people seem to think he is.
