What to do with my right fielder...

eriqjaffe · 11-24-2004, 11:09 AM

Freddie "Wild Card" Suarez has been my starting right fielder for a couple of seasons now. He was the AL ROY in 2009, hitting .309/24/84, and posting a .955 OPS. Since then, he's been in a steady decline. Now, at the end of July 2011, he's hitting a measly .203 (inflated by a recent 7-for-20 streak). He's only 26, so I don't really want to give up on him, but his rapidly declining numbers scare me.

I do have some options, though. I could move Aubrey Huff into right field full-time, and give Prince Fielder a shot at being the everyday first baseman (which is, eventually, my plan anyway).

I also have a couple of other players who could step in: Salvador "The Beast" Marquez, who is currently on my 25-man roster and being used as a 4th outfielder and Greg "Angel" Benford. I picked up Benford in a pre-season trade, and I kind of envision him as a cornerstone of my outfield in the future. Marquez's future is a little less clear to me...

I'm not sure if I should stick with Suarez for a bit longer and see if he comes back around to his old form, or if I should see if I can deal Suarez and give Fielder a full-time job. Benford will probably be a September call-up, with a good shot at making the 25-man roster next season...

Just wanted to get some ideas.

Gastric ReFlux · 11-24-2004, 11:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eriqjaffe

Freddie "Wild Card" Suarez has been my starting right fielder for a couple of seasons now. He was the AL ROY in 2009, hitting .309/24/84, and posting a .955 OPS. Since then, he's been in a steady decline. Now, at the end of July 2011, he's hitting a measly .203 (inflated by a recent 7-for-20 streak). He's only 26, so I don't really want to give up on him, but his rapidly declining numbers scare me.

I do have some options, though. I could move Aubrey Huff into right field full-time, and give Prince Fielder a shot at being the everyday first baseman (which is, eventually, my plan anyway).

I also have a couple of other players who could step in: Salvador "The Beast" Marquez, who is currently on my 25-man roster and being used as a 4th outfielder and Greg "Angel" Benford. I picked up Benford in a pre-season trade, and I kind of envision him as a cornerstone of my outfield in the future. Marquez's future is a little less clear to me...

I'm not sure if I should stick with Suarez for a bit longer and see if he comes back around to his old form, or if I should see if I can deal Suarez and give Fielder a full-time job. Benford will probably be a September call-up, with a good shot at making the 25-man roster next season...

Just wanted to get some ideas.

I think a ritual sacrifice would have a sweet savor to pleaseth the GM. But that's just me.

eriqjaffe · 11-24-2004, 11:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gastric ReFlux

I think a ritual sacrifice would have a sweet savor to pleaseth the GM. But that's just me.

Nah, I'd have to edit the injury.dat file for that.

ctorg · 11-24-2004, 11:36 AM

That is a tough one. I'd probably give Fielder a shot.

Jayzone · 11-25-2004, 01:31 AM

I will take a shoot here then.

In terms of ratings, they are all pretty close (except Marquez). So, the key thing will be past/current performance.

Freddie Suarez:

Judging by track record, Freddie Suarez seems to have lost it despite the fact that he has pretty good ratings. Looking at his month-by-month stats, his July stats shows signs of revial - signs of rebound, maybe? Seeing him rated as 2.5 stars, he might not bring back too much value via trades at this point. Well, if you can get good returns, it won't be a bad idea trading him. Since he is young and cheap (just becoming arbitration eligible), my suggestion would be to keep him if you think his 2010 perfromance level is acceptable at your RF (I think he should rebound to 2010 level eventually). Plus, he has a pretty good defense in the right and it's nice to have strong arm.

In my league, there is this one guy who usually hit for .270/.280. Suddenly, he only hit for .210 during his age 30 season. All signs show that he is done for, despite the fact his ratings have not degraded much. Seeing that my CF will become expensive free agent at that year, I decided to trade my CF for that guy. Well, he continued to hit .210 for the rest of the season. However, in the next season, he rebounded to hit career .330. Well, this goes to show that it's possible to have a extremely bad season and rebound.

Aubrey Huff:

Huff seems to be a consistent performer. However, he has show slight signs of decline in 2011. If you look at his ability ratings, most of them are higher than talent ratings. This implies future performance decline. It also doesn't help by the fact that he is already 34 and has a 5.5mil contract signed through the age of 36 (another 2 years). Judging from his performance, I would guess that he still has some good trade values. If you want to get younger and cheaper, I would suggest to trade him. It seems to be a lot harder to trade players with age over 34. Maybe now is the time. However, you might miss Huff's good and versatile/flexible defense and his consistent performance.

Prince Fielder:

I think he is already ready 1/2 years ago. Between Huff and Fielder, the only downside on Fielder is his defense. A word of caution, judging from his 2011 number, he might be having a bad year. So, you might not be getting Huff's number this year.

Salvador Marquez:

Even though Marquez has the worse ratings out of them all, he seems to be a good performer. Judging from stats, he is capable of frequently getting on base. An OBP of .350-.370 is probably expected. Coupling with good stealing rating and average speed, he could be a good #2 hitter or even lead-off - if you don't have a good lead-off. The only downside is that you will have to stick him in LF where he excels best defensively.

Greg Benford:

He is ready for the show. His ability ratings are pretty much there and he is currently tearing up the AAA with .336/.414/.720/1.135. Why wait until September? He is obviously ready. Even if he is not ready (which he is), he is obviously having a good year. Call him up now if you can give him regular at-bats.

Oh, one last thing, I am wondering about what do their expected performances look like? Anyway, hope that helps a bit.

eriqjaffe · 12-01-2004, 05:25 PM

As a follow-up to this, just to get it off my chest:

I decided to bench Suarez, play Fielder at 1B and moved Huff to RF. Fielder put together a strong August, hitting .361 with 5 homers and an OPS of 1.127. Huff has been very solid with the bat (he has reached his 10th consecutive season with 20 homers), but his defense in RF hasn't been as good as his ratings would suggest...his .933 fielding percentage (in 44 games) isn't very thrilling. Also, he's been striking out at a somewhat alarming rate...his 120 K's is a career high...Considering he only whiffed 64 times a couple seasons ago, he may be on the decline...

To complicate / enhance matters, Greg Benford learned how to play first base...and he's rated better than Fielder (6/.994 as opposed to Fielder's 4/.985). On August 16, though, Fielder pulled his groin while running the bases and had to spend a couple weeks on the DL.

I decided to call up Benford to see what he can do. Apparently, he can do it all. After 12 games, he's hitting .375 with 10 RBIs an OPS of .986. I've decided to keep him in the every day lineup to see if he can keep it up. Suarez's value is steadily declining. He and Huff may find themselves on the block next season...

edit: I attached the scouting reports that Jayzone's utility provides. I'm not sure why Huff has a contact ability rating of 0, since the game shows him with a 6.

rudel.dietrich · 12-01-2004, 05:44 PM

This is late but...I would of kicked him down to AAA while seeing how the other guys perform. If an opening developed I would of brought him back up to see how he did and if he still did not cut it, I would of traded him.

DerekJeter2 · 12-01-2004, 05:58 PM

Benford is definetly ready. I'd get him a full-time spot if you could. See how he performs. If he performs badly, give him a part-time job with Huff. Then put Sanchez in AAA (like he said), see how he performs, if he is doing badly trade him. Huff should be traded at the age of 34, his talent is going down, his value is going down, so maybe an off-season trade.

Jayzone · 12-01-2004, 06:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eriqjaffe

edit: I attached the scouting reports that Jayzone's utility provides. I'm not sure why Huff has a contact ability rating of 0, since the game shows him with a 6.

Hmm.... crackpott reported a similar problem. Now it looks like I will definitely have to look into this. Eriq, can you send me the CSV source data files (including tranlstion table) via email? Thanks.

Jayzone · 12-01-2004, 06:45 PM

Oh, by the way, the AVG/HR projection looks a bit on the low side. This is just presented as a general commentary. I am curious. Do you use the full-season(previous season) or the season-up-to-this-point translation table? Also, the ability ratings of the players are different than the ability ratings in the HTML player report. I wonder if they are different from the seen-in-game ratings. Very interesting, though the CSV Exporter probably has more to do with the rating discrepancy than the rating translator.

I am glad to hear Benford turns out more than all right in the bigs. As I mentioned in my previous post, I think it's safe to trade Huff now since you have can replace Huff with Benford. Huff is probably at the point where he can bring maximum return now.

eriqjaffe · 12-02-2004, 09:15 AM

Well, the CSV export I ran those reports from is from the end of last season, so it makes sense that the ratings would be different.

Sanoj2000 · 12-02-2004, 01:38 PM

Fellas (and Jayzone, specifically)

I downloaded the ratings translator and, first of all, it is awesome. Secondly, though, a good number of players will have 0 contact after translation. I think this is because the exporter corrupts the CSVs and inserts an extra zero at some point. Looking at the coding you normally will have something like this (Random just means I don't know what the number is coding for)

Random Random Random Contact Power Gap

0 0 0 7 2 6

But what happens is the coding ends up getting bumped over one notch. So it looks like this:

0 0 0 0 7 2

This will also happen with pitchers (because the extra zero effects the whole stream afterwards. Sort of like a DNA mutation, paradigm shift). My guess is this is a short coming of the CSVs and not the translator (or the tRNA of our transcription (God, I'm a dork)). It easy enough to go into the CSV coding and just shift the ratings so they match up with the players reported ratings in the game, but it can get tedious after a while.
All you have to do is delete a zero before the contact ratings (you'll see there is a long stream of 0,0,0. . .before the batting ratings numbers come up. I just delete one of those since they don't effect the translator). If you are wary of these just replace the incorrect numbers with the correct ones in the coding.

Anyways, hope that helps.

eriqjaffe · 12-03-2004, 11:27 AM

End of season update:

Suarez never recovered, and finished up the season with a dismal .205 average.

Huff put together a solid season, although it was his least productive, with the exception of the 2009 season in which he spent some time on the DL. He is clearly on the decline, and will certainly be trade bait in the off-season. Sad thing is, I get attached to my players, and I don't really like trading them away if they've been around a while. Ah, well.

Fielder was alright, but nothing earth-shattering. He may make a serviceable DH next season.

Marquez played very well in a bench capacity. He'll definitely be my fourth outfielder next season, possibly an everyday player.

Benford played terriffic baseball down the stretch. His initial call-up was because an injury kind of forced my hand, and now I'm very glad I did it. His .379 average and 1.051 OPS are making me worry less about next season.

remington · 12-03-2004, 11:45 AM

Try shopping Suarez, Huff, and Fielder. Maybe you can pick up a starter or two to replace them, if you package them right.

You might be able to unload Suarez in a multi-player deal.
You might consider hanging onto him as a backup OF/DH/PH until he retires too. I too get attached to some of my guys and move them into the backup role hoping they retire in a year or two. Of course, when they start complaining about playing time, I usually trade them.

11-24-2004, 11:09 AM	#1
eriqjaffe Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2003 Location: Under The Christmas Fish Posts: 7,485	What to do with my right fielder... Freddie "Wild Card" Suarez has been my starting right fielder for a couple of seasons now. He was the AL ROY in 2009, hitting .309/24/84, and posting a .955 OPS. Since then, he's been in a steady decline. Now, at the end of July 2011, he's hitting a measly .203 (inflated by a recent 7-for-20 streak). He's only 26, so I don't really want to give up on him, but his rapidly declining numbers scare me. I do have some options, though. I could move Aubrey Huff into right field full-time, and give Prince Fielder a shot at being the everyday first baseman (which is, eventually, my plan anyway). I also have a couple of other players who could step in: Salvador "The Beast" Marquez, who is currently on my 25-man roster and being used as a 4th outfielder and Greg "Angel" Benford. I picked up Benford in a pre-season trade, and I kind of envision him as a cornerstone of my outfield in the future. Marquez's future is a little less clear to me... I'm not sure if I should stick with Suarez for a bit longer and see if he comes back around to his old form, or if I should see if I can deal Suarez and give Fielder a full-time job. Benford will probably be a September call-up, with a good shot at making the 25-man roster next season... Just wanted to get some ideas. __________________

11-24-2004, 11:36 AM	#4
ctorg Global Moderator Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Queens, NY Posts: 9,848	That is a tough one. I'd probably give Fielder a shot. __________________ My music "When the trees blow back and forth, that's what makes the wind." - Steven Wright Fjord emena pancreas thorax fornicate marmalade morpheme proteolysis smaxa cabana offal srue vitriol grope hallelujah lentils

12-01-2004, 05:58 PM	#8
DerekJeter2 Minors (Double A) Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Iowa Posts: 144	Benford is definetly ready. I'd get him a full-time spot if you could. See how he performs. If he performs badly, give him a part-time job with Huff. Then put Sanchez in AAA (like he said), see how he performs, if he is doing badly trade him. Huff should be traded at the age of 34, his talent is going down, his value is going down, so maybe an off-season trade. __________________ GM of St. Louis Cardinals (93-69, 109-53, 115-47, 121-41) 2005 World Series Champs Toronto Blue Jays (95-67, 98-64, 114-48, 107-55, 117-45, 34-18) 2007-2011 AL East Champs 2008, 2011 AL Champs 2011 World Series Champs Career OOTP Win%: .613 (2500+ Wins), 14 Division Titles, 10 Best Records, 6 League Championships, 2 World Series Titles

12-02-2004, 09:15 AM	#11
eriqjaffe Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2003 Location: Under The Christmas Fish Posts: 7,485	Well, the CSV export I ran those reports from is from the end of last season, so it makes sense that the ratings would be different. __________________

12-02-2004, 01:38 PM	#12
Sanoj2000 Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 39	Ratings Translator Fellas (and Jayzone, specifically) I downloaded the ratings translator and, first of all, it is awesome. Secondly, though, a good number of players will have 0 contact after translation. I think this is because the exporter corrupts the CSVs and inserts an extra zero at some point. Looking at the coding you normally will have something like this (Random just means I don't know what the number is coding for) Random Random Random Contact Power Gap 0 0 0 7 2 6 But what happens is the coding ends up getting bumped over one notch. So it looks like this: 0 0 0 0 7 2 This will also happen with pitchers (because the extra zero effects the whole stream afterwards. Sort of like a DNA mutation, paradigm shift). My guess is this is a short coming of the CSVs and not the translator (or the tRNA of our transcription (God, I'm a dork)). It easy enough to go into the CSV coding and just shift the ratings so they match up with the players reported ratings in the game, but it can get tedious after a while. All you have to do is delete a zero before the contact ratings (you'll see there is a long stream of 0,0,0. . .before the batting ratings numbers come up. I just delete one of those since they don't effect the translator). If you are wary of these just replace the incorrect numbers with the correct ones in the coding. Anyways, hope that helps.

11-25-2004, 01:31 AM	#5
Jayzone All Star Reserve Join Date: Apr 2004 Posts: 706	I will take a shoot here then. In terms of ratings, they are all pretty close (except Marquez). So, the key thing will be past/current performance. Freddie Suarez: Judging by track record, Freddie Suarez seems to have lost it despite the fact that he has pretty good ratings. Looking at his month-by-month stats, his July stats shows signs of revial - signs of rebound, maybe? Seeing him rated as 2.5 stars, he might not bring back too much value via trades at this point. Well, if you can get good returns, it won't be a bad idea trading him. Since he is young and cheap (just becoming arbitration eligible), my suggestion would be to keep him if you think his 2010 perfromance level is acceptable at your RF (I think he should rebound to 2010 level eventually). Plus, he has a pretty good defense in the right and it's nice to have strong arm. In my league, there is this one guy who usually hit for .270/.280. Suddenly, he only hit for .210 during his age 30 season. All signs show that he is done for, despite the fact his ratings have not degraded much. Seeing that my CF will become expensive free agent at that year, I decided to trade my CF for that guy. Well, he continued to hit .210 for the rest of the season. However, in the next season, he rebounded to hit career .330. Well, this goes to show that it's possible to have a extremely bad season and rebound. Aubrey Huff: Huff seems to be a consistent performer. However, he has show slight signs of decline in 2011. If you look at his ability ratings, most of them are higher than talent ratings. This implies future performance decline. It also doesn't help by the fact that he is already 34 and has a 5.5mil contract signed through the age of 36 (another 2 years). Judging from his performance, I would guess that he still has some good trade values. If you want to get younger and cheaper, I would suggest to trade him. It seems to be a lot harder to trade players with age over 34. Maybe now is the time. However, you might miss Huff's good and versatile/flexible defense and his consistent performance. Prince Fielder: I think he is already ready 1/2 years ago. Between Huff and Fielder, the only downside on Fielder is his defense. A word of caution, judging from his 2011 number, he might be having a bad year. So, you might not be getting Huff's number this year. Salvador Marquez: Even though Marquez has the worse ratings out of them all, he seems to be a good performer. Judging from stats, he is capable of frequently getting on base. An OBP of .350-.370 is probably expected. Coupling with good stealing rating and average speed, he could be a good #2 hitter or even lead-off - if you don't have a good lead-off. The only downside is that you will have to stick him in LF where he excels best defensively. Greg Benford: He is ready for the show. His ability ratings are pretty much there and he is currently tearing up the AAA with .336/.414/.720/1.135. Why wait until September? He is obviously ready. Even if he is not ready (which he is), he is obviously having a good year. Call him up now if you can give him regular at-bats. Oh, one last thing, I am wondering about what do their expected performances look like? Anyway, hope that helps a bit.

12-01-2004, 05:44 PM	#7
rudel.dietrich Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Zürich, Switzerland Posts: 8,608 Infractions: 1/0 (0)	This is late but...I would of kicked him down to AAA while seeing how the other guys perform. If an opening developed I would of brought him back up to see how he did and if he still did not cut it, I would of traded him.

12-01-2004, 06:45 PM	#10
Jayzone All Star Reserve Join Date: Apr 2004 Posts: 706	Oh, by the way, the AVG/HR projection looks a bit on the low side. This is just presented as a general commentary. I am curious. Do you use the full-season(previous season) or the season-up-to-this-point translation table? Also, the ability ratings of the players are different than the ability ratings in the HTML player report. I wonder if they are different from the seen-in-game ratings. Very interesting, though the CSV Exporter probably has more to do with the rating discrepancy than the rating translator. I am glad to hear Benford turns out more than all right in the bigs. As I mentioned in my previous post, I think it's safe to trade Huff now since you have can replace Huff with Benford. Huff is probably at the point where he can bring maximum return now.

12-03-2004, 11:27 AM	#13
eriqjaffe Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2003 Location: Under The Christmas Fish Posts: 7,485	End of season update: Suarez never recovered, and finished up the season with a dismal .205 average. Huff put together a solid season, although it was his least productive, with the exception of the 2009 season in which he spent some time on the DL. He is clearly on the decline, and will certainly be trade bait in the off-season. Sad thing is, I get attached to my players, and I don't really like trading them away if they've been around a while. Ah, well. Fielder was alright, but nothing earth-shattering. He may make a serviceable DH next season. Marquez played very well in a bench capacity. He'll definitely be my fourth outfielder next season, possibly an everyday player. Benford played terriffic baseball down the stretch. His initial call-up was because an injury kind of forced my hand, and now I'm very glad I did it. His .379 average and 1.051 OPS are making me worry less about next season. __________________

12-03-2004, 11:45 AM	#14
remington Minors (Double A) Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Ohio Posts: 186	Try shopping Suarez, Huff, and Fielder. Maybe you can pick up a starter or two to replace them, if you package them right. You might be able to unload Suarez in a multi-player deal. You might consider hanging onto him as a backup OF/DH/PH until he retires too. I too get attached to some of my guys and move them into the backup role hoping they retire in a year or two. Of course, when they start complaining about playing time, I usually trade them. __________________ -Chris TWIB - Commish - Cleveland (1884 - present) MCBL - Commish - 50, 55, 59, 65, & 68 World Champion New York Yankees NTBL - Commish - Chicago Cubs (1918 - present)