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November 20, 2006

Prospectus Today

At These Prices, Who Can Say No?

by Joe Sheehan

At this rate, there'll be nothing to talk about next month in Orlando.

Free agents have been reaching agreement on contracts at a pace that far surpasses anything we've seen in recent years. Alfonso Soriano is just the biggest and most recent one, the slugger apparently agreeing to terms on an eight-year, $136-million contract to play for the Cubs until Twiki and Dr. Theopolous are running around New Chicago. Smaller deals were reached over the weekend for Mike Stanton, Justin Speier, Orlando Hernandez and Alex Gonzalez, among others.

That last contract caught my eye, because Gonzalez was one of the top names on my list of "stealth" free agents. Carlos Lee, Barry Zito, Jason Schmidt and their ilk will be chased furiously, and compensated wildly when finally caught. In many years, however, the best deals come at the lower end of the market, low-profile contracts signed with low-profile players who return more than they make.

Now, the amount of money floating around will mean that even these deals have a tinge of overpaying to them. The Gonzalez deal is among them; when I added him to my stealth list, I figured he’d come in on a one-year deal, maybe a two-year deal for $3 million or $4 million per. Gonzalez actually agreed to a three-year, $14-million deal with the Reds, per ESPN.com. The length and the money reflect the current market, which has more money available than players.

So what makes Gonzalez a good stealth signing? After all, he has been above a .300 OBP as many times as he's below that mark, and he’s coming off his third straight year with a sub-700 OPS. That anemic bat wouldn’t seem to make him a good choice as any kind of free agent, much less one to praise.

Gonzalez, however, is one of the top defensive shortstops in the game. While his numbers in Clay Davenport's system don't look good, Gonzalez consistently ranks among the top glove men in play-by-play systems or zone-based ones, such as the work of Mitchel Lichtman or Chris Dial. With the PBP systems largely in agreement on his value, I take those numbers more seriously than the Davenport ones. Gonzalez's defensive prowess elevates him from a replacement-level player to a slightly-below-average one, more than worth just shy of $5 million per season. He's one of the few players in the game whose defense really does make up for his offense.