It's one day later, and I'm not any happier about this than I am yesterday. Baseball Prospectus has a stat called Value Over Replacement Player, or VORP. For whatever reason, it's caught on much better than my own Value Under League-Variable Average, so we'll use VORP. BP defines it as "the number of runs contributed beyond what a replacement-level player would contribute if given the same percentage of team plate appearances." It's a counting stat like RBI or hits (rather than a rate stat like batting average or on-base percentage), so playing time makes a big difference. In 2004, our own Cristian Guzman provided a VORP of 14.8, just trailing Boston's Orlando Cabrera, who checked in at 15.2. Of course, since those are only his Red Sox stats, Cabrera did that in 248 plate appearance, while Guzman had 624 for the Twins. Yes, our shortstop of the future was out-produced by a crappy hitter in under half the playing time. While I agree that Guzman is likely to hit better than Maicer Izturis would have in a full year at short, it's clear that Izturis + $16 million + a draft pick > Cristian Guzman.
There is no shortage of opinion on the signings around the web. Ball Wonk has some hope for young Cristian, provided he puts in some effort. A new one, the Nats Blog, preaches calm. Capitol Punishment has an interesting explanation for why Guzman's defensive stats were so good in 2004 after years of mediocrity. Aaron Gleeman is laughing at us, and it doesn't feel good. The Baseball Wise Guys are dismissive as well.
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