Random monday news
DMZ · January 15, 2007 at 11:08 am · Filed Under Mariners
Lyle Overbay gets a four year, $24m extension from the Blue Jays. Lyle Overbay!
Josh Bard signed in San Diego
Madson signs with Philly for 1y, $1.1m
Lyle Overbay gets a four year, $24m extension from the Blue Jays. Lyle Overbay!
Josh Bard signed in San Diego
Madson signs with Philly for 1y, $1.1m
I like the extension on Overbay. He put up some pretty good numbers last season, and is the one thing the Jays can’t let get away…a left handed stick. He is a doubles machine, that hits for average.
Overbay did have a great season. SkyDome did great things for his homerun rate, too.
Home: 17 HR
Road: 5 HR
I can think of worse contracts to give to someone with a .293/.372/.467 line. He’ll only be 33 by the end of the deal, too. I don’t know a thing about his defense, though. How’s he in that regard?
The HR difference for home/away is huge, but Overbay hit 23 doubles at both home and away. Other categories did dip a bit on the road, but The Jays stadium is a hitters park where he hit .325.
The Jays lineup should be as good if not better with the addition of Thomas, so there is no reason to see a drop off in production from Overbay who is only 29.
Overbay has good defence at 1b.
I don’t get it. “Lyle Overbay!” Is this saying “wow he got so much” or “wow he’s so good he got very little.” I think the latter would make more sense. It’s not like he’s not hitting in his homepark for the next 4 years anyway…He has the frame for 25-30 homerun power. His minor league numbers were huge. He has been durable. And he had 22 homers, 46 doubles, and good bb and k rates last year.
I would rank his defence as above avg. I am sure there are stats out there that would put him in the range of just above av. with the league.
From a Jays standpoint they brought in Overbay to take over first from Hinske, so watching him at first was not as frustrating as the previous year of the Hinske experiment and an obvious improvement given what he brings offensively as well.
He also hits for a good average, and has a solid career OBP. You can’t just look at homeruns from a 1b…he has the most doubles in the majors since 2004 I believe.
I am deeply in love with Ryan Madson, in spite of his miserable year last year. Not that anyone would care, but seeing as this is probably the first and last time his name will appear on USSM, I am simply taking this opportunity to bare my heart in public. Thank you for said opportunity.
133 doubles since 2003 has led the majors.
The fielding bible awards had Lyle as 10th for 1b in the majors. Pujols, Teixeira, Mientkiewicz, Youklis, Garciaparra, Lee, Helton, Adrian Gonzalez, Berkman were ahead of him, in that order.
Also, watching Overbay last year, he had like 1 or 2 doubles in the first month, or something insanely low. I can see him getting +50 doubles like he did in an earlier year. He had as many extra base hits as Richie Sexson last year (69), I think. Of course his isolated power isn’t as good, as Sexson had over 10 more homeruns. But he K’s a lot less. And 6 AAV is great in this market.
Overbay’s line last year falls roughly somewhere between his 60th and 75th percentile PECOTA projection, so while it’s probably a bit optimistic to expect him to repeat what he did last year, it’s not like last year looks like a huge fluke. If you accept that he’s about a 1-win player on defense, then he’s been about a 5-6 win/year player over the last three years, and he’s been durable. I guess it looks like a pretty reasonable contract to me. Even if he struggles, it’s not going to be a huge anchor of a contract.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/2B_leagues.shtml
I could be wrong. I said since 2004. These are the leaders.
Then Overbay would be considered Top 10. Even better than my above average comment.
It’s all HR rate. He hit two fewer singles at home, one extra triple, and 12 extra homeruns. The total difference in hits (11: 96 to 85) is completely covered by the HR rate.
http://tinyurl.com/ydgx9d
Here’s a play of his.
With Thomas in the lineup, I would consider it fair to think he could put up better numbers if not maintain the ones like he did last year.
What lineup would you put for the middle of the order. One guy considered putting Overbay as clean up.
Reed Johnson (R), Rios (R), Wells (R), Thomas (R), Glaus (R), Overbay (L), Hill (R), Zaun (L), Clayton (R)
OR
Johnson, Rios, Wells, Overbay, Thomas, Glaus, Zaun, Hill, Clayton
He could also bat 2nd because of his good OBP. But he has a -10 for speed by Bill James.
BTW, he’s from Seattle so he loves playing in Seattle when the Jays go there.
Sorry. He’s from Centralia, Washington.
18-He’s no Bloomquist though 😉
I would put him in the 2 or the 5 spot. It’s crazy thinking Glaus or Thomas could be hitting 6th. Not a bad problem to have. Unfortunately I cringe when thinking of the 3/4/5 starter spots.
I still think Rios may be traded, so that would probably assure Overbay of a two spot.
8 – I’m more in love with Ryan Madson than you are. Trust me.
Another guy who rarely gets mentioned here, but who I am a big fan of, is David Ross, who just signed a 2-year, $4.5million contract with the Reds. I’ve always thought he’d kick butt if given the proper opportunity, and now he was given the opportunity, kicked butt, and will have more opportunity to kick more butt in the future. Woohoo!
Deanna, I can hardly believe that! If I make it to another ussmfeed and you’re there, I’ll tell you the story of how I got his autograph.
I have to figure Adam Lind (L) will get a fair amount of playing time in left (probably replacing F-Cat in the platoon with Reed Johnson).
Oh, and Gregg Zaun is a switch-hitter.
I knew overbay from his h.s. basketball days. He was a solid athlete all around, and a pretty good kid.
I had a thought for the Randy Johnson post too, but the comments are off– I think it is an interesting supposition, and on top of that, it would be interesting to point to his Yankee numbers to either affirm or counter the argument given.
geez, guess I have to go take a look at this Madson kid.
Laurie, feel free to send me email with the Madson story if you don’t want to post it here. I’ll probably forget by the next time there’s a feed. He was one of the original inspirations for the “All-Cute Team” last year, anyway.
And the $1.1 million contract is actually pretty good for all parties involved, I think. It’s pretty unlikely the Phillies will need him to be a starter this year, and he’s a great setup guy. Now if only they’d offer extensions to Howard and Utley…
Lyle Overbay! At that price I’d rather have him than any of the guys the M’s signed in the offseason. And I’d also rather have him and his contract at 1B than Sexson and his. Heck, being a white guy from the NW doesn’t he qualify as a 5 tool player as far as M’s management is concerned?
I have no shame… but I can’t find where I wrote the original account, unfortunately. Essentially, I mistook Billy Wagner for a batboy and asked him if Ryan Madson would be coming to the bullpen soon because he’s my favorite baseball player and I wanted his autograph. Billy was visibly offended. Hahaha!
Here’s a picture of it (the autograph) on my blog:
Awesome link of awesomeness here
Lyle Overbay! was my first reaction too. But it looks like he’s a 3-4 win player for $6M/year and that actually appears to be a pretty good contract.
Ooooo, cool.
I was at all three Phillies games when they were in town (for obvious reasons), and I actually did get Billy Wagner to sign something for me (pictured at the bottom here). I thought it was cool because I was still in awe of a guy who’s naturally right-handed but could throw 100 mph left-handed. I also got Bobby Abreu to sign my scorecard from the day where he and Pat Burrell and Jim Thome had back-to-back-to-back homers (which was, crazily enough, the same day Randy Johnson pitched his perfect game, and we watched the 9th inning of that on the big screen at Citizens Bank Park during a late-game brief rain delay). And now neither Abreu nor Wagner are on the Phillies. Go figure.
Come to think of it, though, I took a whole ton of pictures of Ryan Madson warming up in the Phillies bullpen in May of this year when I was back east, but never put them online. I was really happy getting him on my fantasy baseball team this year too, especially considering I was in a Phillies blogger league — but I ended up dropping him twice, and each time I dropped him he suddenly went on a tear, so I set him free for the greater good of the organization.
My fantasy baseball karma came back to haunt me, though, when I dropped Rafael Soriano from my team and a day later he got hit in the head by that line drive off Vlad.
Also, I have absolutely nothing to say about Lyle Overbay.
Only problems with Overbay are the as-usual pronounced home-road splits with Toronto involved, and also a growing lefty-righty pitcher differential. Four years is a lot for someone who isn’t that great outside of SkyDome (my daily fix of CamelCase) and who heading into his early 30s may leave a platoon partner to be desired, although he’s certainly still adequate against lefties right now.
I’d still rather have his contract over Sexson’s though, no contest whatsoever. $6 million a year is a fair deal for Overbay, I only question the length.
2004-2006 (age 27-29 seasons)
Away – .284/.356/.442 = .798 OPS (878 AB)
Home at the Dome – .310/.394/.519 = .913 OPS (819 AB)
vs. Lefties – .284/.321/.452 = .773 OPS (458 AB)
vs. Righties – .301/.393/.489 = .882 OPS (1239 AB)
Yeah, I did the same thing, Deanna – ended up dumping him, unceremoniously, in all my leagues. For the good of the Phillies.
(Overbay who?)
Sorry, I misrepresented, in that 2004-2005 were not in Toronto.
Here is the “growing” lefty-righty split though:
2004
.298/.357/.523 = .880 OPS (151 AB)
.301/.394/.463 = .857 OPS (428 AB)
+.023 vs. lefties
2005
.269/.299/.448 = .747 OPS (145 AB)
.278/.390/.449 = .839 OPS (392 AB)
-.092 vs. lefties
2006
.284/.305/.389 = .694 OPS (162 AB)
.322/.395/.554 = .949 OPS (419 AB)
-.255 vs. lefties
On second thought, 162 AB isn’t a large sample size, but if that keeps up then lefties may be more of a problem right now than I thought at first.
#28– that reminds me of Wagner’s crack about the ’99(?) All Star Game– the first for him and Mike Hampton, and the latched onto RJ and followed him everywhere– Wags said it looked as though Randy had brought his kids…
Billy Wagner is seriously short! I honestly thought he was a batboy. With a chip on his shoulder. That was the night he threw 102 a couple times. I guess short doesn’t matter when it comes to pitch speed.
how can you say that?! why, Billy is 5’11” and just towers over Hampton at 5’10”
I love Baseball Height.
Most doubles last 3 years:
# Todd Helton (Col.): 134
# Lyle Overbay (Tor.): 133
# Brian Roberts (Bal.): 129
# Mike Lowell (Bos.): 127
# Miguel Tejada (Bal.): 127
# Jimmy Rollins (Phi.): 126
# Bobby Abreu (NYY): 125
# Michael Young (Tex.): 125
# Miguel Cabrera (Fla.): 124
# Albert Pujols (StL.): 122
That’s pretty good company.