the new economics of baseball

[TranaGreg]

Mariners avoided arbitration with SS Brendan Ryan by agreeing to a one-year, $3.25 million contract.
Ryan, who was arbitration-eligible for the final time, is a defensive wizard but is coming off a year where he batted just .194/.277/.278.

wow. :eek:

[Kevin Seitzer]

Playing time in both the platform season and career is a huge input to the arbitration process. What sort of salaries are other position players with similar amounts of games played getting in their first year of arbitration?

[Kevin Seitzer]

It's debatable whether the arbitrators would consider fielding prowess (other than as signified by the amount of playing time club gave a player despite offensive woes) a significant criterion in a hearing.

Obviously, though, fielding prowess is a significant factor in why a club would tender an offer and go to hearing with a player with poor offensive output in the first place. The club's certainly not surprised at the contract amount and would have non-tendered the player in November if they didn't think he had value at that salary.

[cavebird]

He's also widely considered to be the best fielding shortstop in baseball by a pretty decent margin. He garnered almost 2 WAR (1.7) in 2012, for example, despite being an obvious liability at the plate.

Andrelton Simmons has something to say about that. Ryan put up 14.7 UZR in 141 games last year (17.1 UZR/150) while Simmons put up 10.4 in only 49 games (31.6(!!) UZR/150). Small sample size, I know, and UZR isn't good with those, but still....

[cavebird]

I'd take Ryan in a heartbeat for pure defense. He's done it year after year after year. He's the best we've seen in quite some time. Of course, I'd take Simmons as the whole package over Ryan.


Ty Wigginton has a 38.6 UZR/150 at shortstop for his career. Mark Grudzielanek's is 74.2.

That's a little bit different. Simmons is actually a shortstop. Having seen them both, I'd give it to Simmons by a hair, but it is really hard to tell since he hasn't been up too long. They both are vacuum clearners, but Simmons's arm is better---hell the Braves only got him in the second round because we would let him play short and everyone else wanted to draft him as a pitcher. Time, of course, will tell with Simmons. Ryan's pretty much shown it. He's the modern day Mark Belanger.