Adam Dunn gets you to two problems
There’s a lot of chat in the Russell Branyan comments about Adam Dunn. Dunn reminds me of this Jamie Zawinski quote about Perl.
Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I’ll use regular expressions.†Now they have two problems.
There’s a whole class of free agent players like this, and the M’s have made too many of these signings in the past. Dunn’s going to get at least a three year, $30m deal, as Dave noted. It’s likely it’ll be more expensive if not longer as well. In return he’ll produce a nice .250/.380/.510 line next year. Hey, it’s the first year of Richie Sexson’s contract! YAYYYY!! Oh wait.
Say you sign Dunn and put him in left field. He’s maybe and probably not a defensive upgrade on Ibanez when the Mariners need at least a competent glove out there and can get outsized benefits by playing a quality defender. And you get a modest offensive boost over Ibanez. In that first year.
All it costs the team is most or nearly all of what remains of this year’s free agent budget.
Say you DH him instead, and he’s somehow willing to accept the position switch. The average DH hit .256/.339/.435 (and that’s a pretty bad year for DHs, too). That line of Dunn’s would put him in the top tier at his position, and he’s be worth ~30 runs over what the M’s got out of the position all season (actually, more than that, I always forget how wretched Vidro was — 30 runs over what any team should have received by playing a random AAA slugger).
Then the next year, and the next — Dunn’s not fast and doesn’t make contact, and those guys age badly. Maybe you escape the collapse on a short enough deal, but the risk’s going to be there. Just like Richie. We can’t be that far away from that lesson that it’s not on everyone’s mind when you look at Dunn.
At 3y/$30m, maybe you can justify paying him to DH. I don’t think you should, because you can spend that money and get a lot more for it. But you can at least say “we’re going to get one or two wins over an average DH every year, and that’s worth it.”
That’s the minimum it’s going to take to get Dunn. Worse players have in recent years received much better deals, and there’s enough money and interested teams that I can easily see him getting 5/$60m. And that seems low on the money as I look at it. It doesn’t take much to get to 5/$70m. We’ve seen that teams don’t value defense properly — after all, Beltre’s widely regarded as a bust and he might have been the best player on the team last year. Why wouldn’t Dunn’s bat get him something at least that lucrative?
At five years you might as well start thinking about the bread and steak sauce you want on the shit sandwich you’re going to be eating in the last years of that deal.
Meanwhile, think about the M’s long-term situation. We don’t know what’s going to happen with Clement. At the very least the team’s going to need to find a way to get him a lot of at-bats while sharing catching duties. Logistically, that’s a lot easier to work out if he’s getting those plate appearances as DH, though as you’d suspect I’d love to see the team do something a lot more complicated with a multi-headed platoon arrangement (which I’ll spare you). If you don’t know if Clement winds up as a first baseman or DH a year from now and you’re looking out for the long-term, why block another potential position for him with a declining player weighed down with a massive long-term contract?
The Mariners need to be looking to hugely upgrade their defense, and that rules out playing Dunn in the field. If they’re not playing him in the field, they can find a lot more value for their DH and spend that money on other free agents who can help them more.
And moreover, if you think the M’s have a bad clubhouse atmosphere now, and you think it’s important to the rebuild to put together a new winning attitude and cohesive team of positive, hard-working players who work together towards a shared goal, you should not be able to so much as hold the thought “The Mariners should sign Adam Dunn” for long without a matter/anti-matter reaction exploding your skull.
Dunn: your life isn’t worth thinking about it for too long.
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61 Responses to “Adam Dunn gets you to two problems”
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You’re right. Please delete my comment.
I would rather have Big Z go for Abreu or Burrell. But if they don’t want to sign then he really should try for Dunn. He is only 29 and the difference between Sexson and him is the side of the plate he hits from. In the Safe that is a huge difference with the short porch in right built for a lefty power hitter. I can live with the strikeouts from him I just want a 40 HR threat every year again like we had when Junior and A-Rod were here. I think a 3 year 30M contract is perfectly fine, he will be 32 or 33 after those three years so why worry about Dunn aging.
If anything Dunn would be a carbon copy of Ibanez in LF defensively, with a lower avg. and a boost in power.
If anything Dunn would be a carbon copy of Ibanez in LF defensively, with a lower avg. and a boost in power.
So, basically, we’re going to spend considerably more money than last year on a player with similar skills and flaws to the cheaper player (and not a lot of substantial advantages- remember, Dunn plays in a tiny ballpark in the weaker league), as the key to improving a 100 loss team.
But hey, it’s all worth it to see a guy hit 40 HRs! After all, when Richie hit 39 in 2005, and the M’s were still a crappy team, it was worth it, right?
Seriously? We’ve seen this movie before. It still sucks. There’s a reason why Bill Bavasi got fired- he chased after guys like Sexson and Everett and ignored other problems. The fact is Dave’s right- slugging behemoths with bad defense and “old player skills” are the most overpaid and overrated players in MLB. We do not need to start collecting them again, considering we’ve already got boat anchors like Johjima, Silva and Washburn as memories of other past contract mistakes.
If Adam Dunn is league average then why didn’t anyone in the AL hit 40 HR’s? And why did he lead the majors with 122 walks? Maybe it’s just me but for 3 years $30-36M and have him play 1B/DH why not. But I would love to see a young OF that can hit and play D come to the M’s instead.
If Adam Dunn is league average then why didn’t anyone in the AL hit 40 HR’s?
The amount of home runs hit by AL batters has nothing to do with how good Adam Dunn is. Homers are great, but they’re not the only aspect of baseball.
Ryan Howard wasn’t the best player in the NL because he hit the most home runs. Miguel Cabrera wasn’t the best player in the AL because he hit the most home runs.
You’re being overly simple. Everyone here is aware that Adam Dunn hits homers and walks. Those things have value. But you can’t just ignore his awful fielding, his old player skills, his age, his likely salary demands and everything else that goes into projecting performance and gauging value.
If Adam Dunn is league average then why didn’t anyone in the AL hit 40 HR’s?
Because Adam Dunn’s OTHER skills when he’s not walking or hitting home runs aren’t that good. For instance:
.234/.365/.490
.256/.408/.504
.231/.375/.476
.236/.386/.513
Two of those batting lines are full seasons from Adam Dunn. Two are from Jack Cust. Can you pick them out just by looking at them? I sure can’t.
That’s not to say Cust = Dunn (Dunn’s the better player, though because of Cincy being a better hitter’s ballpark than Oakland it’s closer than you think)… but there’s no way you can tell me that the difference between Dunn and Cust is worth 8-10 million dollars a year over the next several years, which is what Dunn will get on the open market over Cust.
We should be concentrating on finding the Custs (players who can provide decent performance for below-market salaries, and who don’t represent huge boat anchor contracts if they flop) as opposed to signing the Dunns (players who provide marginally better performance for much higher salaries, and who turn into boat anchors if anything goes wrong). That was Dave’s point Dave’s point back during the Sexson signing, and it’s his point now.
Maybe it’s just me but for 3 years $30-36M and have him play 1B/DH why not.
It’s not just you: Bavasi looked at Sexson and thought the same thing.
Now that Bavasi’s gone, maybe it really is just you; the rest of us would like to do something different this time.
It’s not just you: Bavasi looked at Sexson and thought the same thing.
Now that Bavasi’s gone, maybe it really is just you; the rest of us would like to do something different this time.
Read the last sentence of my post.
If you really believed that then you wouldn’t have written the first sentences of your post. Or maybe you do, in which case I don’t know what to respond to. Can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Remember, 1B/DH are the easiest positions to fill, and that means you shouldn’t be paying a lot to fill them.
Unless, of course, you have a guy like Pujols. For someone who hits like that (especially since he also plays 1B well), yeah, you pay a lot. Aside from true superstar production, though, forget about it.