February 05, 2005
Tiger Mag
It looks like Magglio Ordonez will be on the Detroit Tigers early next week. If the contract is being reported correctly, Ordonez is assuming most of the risk. If his injury reoccurs, the Tigers can void the contract after one year.
More on this when I'm over this bout of the flu.
I think this is a good deal for the Tigers, especially if Ordonez has agreed to let them void the deal if he is still hurt.
I wonder if he or Dmitri Young will play in the field... neither is adequate, but my best guess is that they will spell each other, and Higginson will be traded or cut.
I don't think it's a very good deal. Even Maggs during his best season's in a hitter's park isn't worth 15 mil a year. Also, I think the contract should have been more perfromance based, if his knee injury affects his performance (but doesn't re-occur), Tigers are stuck with that contract.
This is a horrible deal for the Tigers. Even if he plays a full season, Magglio isn't worth more than 2 WAA on offense and loses most of that on defense. He's basically a slightly above average player (especially in spacious Comerica). The Tigers should be praying he gets injured.
WAA?
Magglio is a significantly better offensive player then Beltran, and look what contract he got ($17M/yr). No, Mags isn't as good as Beltran in the field, but he's not really much worse. And if you exclude last year for Mags, his OPS+ is MUCH higher then Beltran's.
Sure his numbers will go down at Comerica, but so does everyone else's. You can't not sign good offensive players just because you play in a pitcher's park.
Maggs is 31, Beltran is 27. He is also coming off a rather severe injury.
It's silly to compare Maggs to Beltran. There was no way Beltran was going to sign with the Tigers. Yes signing Maggs is risky, and he's probably not worth it on an objective $/runs created formula but Detroit is still going to have to overpay just to attract talent. 119 losses casts a long shadow.
Hope you're feeling better, dave. Take two aspirin and blog me in the morning!
Larry
If you use BR or LW, or even RC, you'll find that Magglio is worth somewhere between 95-105 runs/600 PA. That's about 15-25 RAA, or 1.5-2.5 WAA. In other words, yes 2 WAA. And his UZR projects to around at best -10, so he's going to lose most of that advantage as well. Like I said, Magglio is a slightly above-average player.
