So obviously we need starting pitching this offseason, but I think users here have underrated another need of ours: right-handed hitting. After all, our offense wasn’t exactly first rate this year if you look at the park adjusted stats (100 ops+, exactly league average), and we are losing two of the season’s best hitters to FA in Turner and Duvall — both of them righties. We need to replace that production. We can hope for some of it from young players like Rafaela, Abreu and Valdez, but two of those guys are lefties and I think we need at least one more righty.
The easiest possibility, and perhaps the most likely is to pass on Turner, re-sign Duvall, and move Yoshida to DH. This would improve our defense while giving Masa the rest he needs to preserve that high .800s ops he had mid-season. I’d be fine with this move, but it’s not particularly exciting.
Let’s look at the alternative: signing one of the best right-handed hitters on the market. Unfortunately, there is very little in that department this year — the position player market in general is pretty paltry. Sorting [this list of hitter FAs by lefty/righty](https://www.fangraphs.com/roster-resource/free-agent-tracker?&pos=bat), the best candidates appear to be **Chapman, Garver, our old friend JD, Gurriel Jr., McCutchen, Pham, Teoscar, Gary Sanchez (eww) and our own FAs Turner and Duvall.**
Some of these you can rule out from the beginning: Chapman is the best position player in a bad market and is primed for an overpay, and we don’t need 3B, despite Raffy’s defensive difficulties. Others like Turner, Martinez and McCutchen are DH only, and don’t work with the plan of moving one of our defensive liabilities to DH. Garver is a fun idea, but he’s so injury prone, a team that wants the most out of him is probably going to keep him away from catcher and mainly at DH.
The players on this list that interest me the most are the two former Jays: Gurriel Jr. and Hernandez. Since both are poor defenders and Hernandez is the better hitter, I’ll focus on him.
Let’s look at the two least attractive things about Teoscar before we get into the positive: **poor defense and high K rate**. The defense over the course of his career is pretty bad (-24 OAA to Gurriel’s -21 so they’re similar). But there might be some reason to believe he’s made the turnaround to simply mediocre. His very worst OOA totals are from early in his career. Since the pandemic shortened season his totals are: – 1, -4, and we even have a nice clean, league average 0 for last year! So for the last few years he still hasn’t been great, but he’s hardly a liability. And he has *never* had a season as bad as Yoshida’s -9 mark last year. Putting Hernandez in LF and moving Masa to DH would constitute a modest improvement of our defense.
Hernandez’s K rate across his career is 29.7%, and was 31.1 % last year. That’s pretty bad. But remember, this is most likely an alternative to re-signing Duvall. In his career, Duvall has a 28.8 K%, including 31.2% last year and over 30% each of the last three years. So K% really shouldn’t be a factor if we’re picking between these two. (I’m not going to get into a Duvall vs. Hernandez debate — like I said earlier, I would be fine with re-signing Duvall).
And if we need a right-handed bat to put in between Devers and Casas, Hernandez actually follows what modern lineup construction supports in a #3 hitter quite closely. Unlike tradition, where you put your best hitter in the 3 spot, the modern game favors OBP in 1, 4, 2 and 5 spots (in that order) over 3, because the 3 hitter bats with 2 outs and no one on base more than anyone else, and thus wastes more walks and base-hits. You want your most feast-or-famine hitter there. Devers – Hernandez – Casas is a very analytically sound 2-3-4.
So while Hernandez has some drawbacks, I don’t think they are as crippling as they might appear at first glance. For those of you still moaning about how we let Schwarber walk — Hernandez as a hitter suits our lineup needs more precisely than Schwarber and has very similar career numbers. As a defender, Schwarber makes Teoscar look like Torri Hunter.
If we commit to spending this offseason, I wouldn’t mind seeing us pursue Hernandez. Thoughts?
14 comments
He’s not a starting pitcher.
Look, I’ll admit I didn’t read your post in much depth, but we absolutely don’t need anymore middle-of-the-road players. What you described to what I read appeared to me looking at a potentially modest upgrade. Our entire lineup this year was basically modestly above average hitters amounting to a good offense. We don’t need anymore thrift pickups; we need stars.
I did read your whole post and I do like Teoscar, but boy I can’t get excited about signing another subpar defender. We need pitching, we need defense. Masa is LF/DH so our uniquely massive right field at Fenway would be Teoscar’s only option despite his range being his weakest OF tool. I don’t feel its a good fit.
It really depends on what it’ll take to sign him. If he can be had for a bit more than Duvall would cost—something like 3/54, maybe—I’d be pretty happy with it. But I’ve seen talk that his agents are looking for a deal in the 5/100 range. If that’s what it takes I’m running FAR away. And given how barren the FA market is this year, I think there’s a good chance he gets a lot of attention.
If that’s the “cheap” option, might as well put up what it takes for Soto or Ohtani at that point. Sure, that’s a lefty-heavy middle of the order, but it’s not like Devers/Soto/Casas, for example, is bad against lefties—Soto and Ohtani both had a higher wRC+ against lefties than Teoscar last year, and have comparable numbers for their careers.
The reason to avoid those guys is that the superstar premium adds a lot of poor-value risk. But if the “value” option is Hernández on a big five-year deal, I’m not sure it really mitigates much more than the team’s ceiling.
I like his bat but Teoscar feels a prime example of paying for a guy’s prior peak performance with diminishing returns, especially if he has a QO attached to him. I’d prefer Duvall or buying low on a Tyler O’Neil type.
It concerns me a lot the Team defense! I will address first pitching, defense and then offense! He is a good bat, but if something has been proven in this postseason is that defense matters a lot more than people think!
I really like Teo, but he’s cartoonishly bad defensively.
No thanks. Pitching needs to be the #1 priority this offseason, particularly starting pitching.
I think saying our offense “wasn’t exactly first rate” is unfair. That full season number is heavily dragged down by the last month of the season where the offense essentially gave up, we were hampered by injuries, and we emphasized playing the young guys way more.
If you look at our OPS+ by month it goes
April/March: 111 OPS+
May: 109 OPS+
June: 96 OPS+
July: 119+
August: 111 OPS+
September/October: 77 OPS+
I just don’t think we need another starting outfielder, we need pitching so badly, we shouldn’t really be doing more than supplemental FA signings on hitters imo, if we really wanna acquire big time hitter it should be by trade. As you mentioned, the position player market is *very* dry this year, meaning any position player in FA will likely be a heavy overpay.
Isn’t our defense bad enough?
I don’t mind it. The high k-rate isn’t *too* much of an issue because his quality of contact is so good and he doesn’t miss mistakes. Even this year he was still productive on pitches in the heart of the zone.
I think he’s a capable fielder. Fielding is probably the skill most influenced by sheer effort, and he’s got the speed to be at least average. It’s also volatile year-to-year. And like you said, he’ll be at the very least better than Yoshida.
The plate discipline is concerning because it was already bad, and it got worse this year. K-rate, whiff rate, chase rate are all up. I know it’s just one year, but he’s on the wrong side of 30 now so you wonder if this is the start of a decline.
He’s a good fit. Right-handed pull hitter who lifts the ball. I like him for next year, but anything longer than three years is too long imo. His approach is very feast-or-famine and if this down year turns into a trend it could be ugly.
Honestly, a right-handed bat I’d love is Ke’Bryan Hayes. Obviously a great defender, and I think he’ll break out soon with the bat. Doesn’t look like Devers or Casas are candidates to DH though so a trade isn’t really feasible.
He would be perfect for them, we’ll need a righty bat especially if we either promote Mayer/Teel or get Soto/Ohtani, the latter of which I doubt just because of the logjam at DH and how many lefty hitters are already cemented here
I’d be down for Hernandez being signed here. What about Gurriel Jr? He’s a year younger and might be a tad cheaper since his numbers are a bit lower.
If Duval’s contract was $7 million, why would I pay $14 million for someone that is about the same?
You have Roman Anthony coming soon. Right now there is Duran, Rafaela, and Abreu and while their result is more variant, I think they are a cheap option. There is also Refsnyder and Reyes as a backup.