About a year ago at this time, fresh off his unlikely all-star appearance, Cristian Guzman got a two-year, $16 million contract extension from Jim Bowden. At the time, it was arguably a good move, if nothing else because the team had no other remotely replacement level options anywhere in the organization.
There were reasons to worry, however, that like Dmitri Young, Austin Kearns and Ron Belliard, Bowden was giving Guzman an overpriced contract at the peak of his value, and that the Nationals would be stuck with a relatively high-priced, declining player.
Those worries are proving well-founded. Because he had such a hot start, a lot of people haven't noticed that for the last two months, Cristian Guzman has been one of the worst offensive players in baseball. Shoot, he even got an indefensible spot on the final round all-star ballot.
On May 9, his OBP sat at .392, and his SLG was .519. Since May 9, his on-base percentage is .290, and his slugging percentage is .363.
He's always been a relentless hacker, but this season his BB-rate has fallen from a career 4.7% to a nearly unwalkable 2.2%. Even more worrisome, his strikeout rate has risen from 9.8% last season to 14.6% this year. When your game is to put the ball in play and pray to the BABIP gods for good luck, that can be the difference between sustainably adequate and sub-replacement.
And guess what, as bad as he's been, he's been incredibly lucky. Despite the two month-long slump, he's still floating on the second-highest BABIP of his career at .345. But he's also 0.2 percentage points away from the lowest line-drive rate of his career at 16.7%. Guess which of these numbers isn't going to stay the same. Last year, he had a career-best line-drive rate of 22.5%, and all that got him was a BABIP of .339.
Meanwhile, his defense is regressing fast, not a shocking development for a 31-year-old shortstop who was never a fielding ace to begin with. On the year, he's on pace to allow 6.7 runs more than the average shortstop, according to UZR.
Taken together, even with his fast start, he's been just a half win better than replacement for the season, not nearly enough to justify his $8 million salary. Of 19 batting title-qualified shortstops, he ranks 16th in overall value, even staring up at our old friend Brendan Harris.
Guzman has had streaky tendencies, and it's possible he'll have a hot month to work his way back near average. But it's more likely that he's going to get even worse. In that case, we could end up paying $16 million to watch the worst starting shortstop in baseball for two seasons.
Friday, July 17, 2009
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7 comments:
Guzman sucks. He has always sucked (as a National). Even when he was hitting .320 or whatever he hit last year, he sucked then. He will always suck. I wanted us to trade Guzman when he was a Title IV "all-star" last year. If we couldn't do that, I wanted us to let him go in the offseason. Now, I'd be happy if we put him on post-Aug. 1 waivers, somebody claimed him, and we said "fine- take him and his $8mill salary!" I'd rather take Jamey Carrol back as our starting SS. Is Carrol still in baseball? If we called, would he be available to back up AG? Do the Nats have some weird obsession with players who share a name with an Attorney General (Alberto Gonzalez and Trevor Holder) What was I talking about in the first place? Oh right- Christian Guzman sucks and I don't like him on my baseball team...
They did promote Ian Desmond to AAA recently. He's finally been healthy and hitting. Perhaps he can shield our eyes from Guzman for a year or so.
well put. i couldn't decide on my rant today whether to aim at Guz or Zim, and i'm glad you read my mind...
I like the idea of Desmond starting next year. then the Nats can be like the Yankees in paying $8 million for backups! Again!
Steven - I'm not sure picking 5/9 is quite fair as a cut date. His BABIP went up month to month from May (.330) to June (.340), per B-R. What is fair to say is that he had an unimaginably, probably unprecedented streak of luck in April, with BABIP .514, and a "payback is a b!tch," 2005-esque month of July (BABIP .222).
his seasonal BABIP of .343 is not that far from last season's .337 and 2007's .359, or even his 2001 line of .343. The working assumption around DC has been health and lasik contributed to the jump, and a reversion to the gap to gap style from the astroturf slap grounders style helped him recover his peak performance levels. The seasonal line drvie % in B-R is 20%, right in line with 07 & 08.
Yes, he's had a bad month, but unless his lasik warranty expired, or (more honestly) he's hiding an injury either to his body or his attittude, then it's not unreasonable to expect him to be what we all thought he is, a .310 - .325 hitter, by the end of the year.
Agreed. They must trade him and eat the salary like with Vidro ASAP.
JCA--Two bad months. I've been holding onto this post for a few weeks waiting for a decent sample size. We'll see. I hope he bounces back.
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