Seattle Sports Insider

Orlando Hudson: JUST SAY NO

Posted by

10/26/09

Hudson has been a blog-o-sphere darling for his useful OBP -heavy bat, his well-touted plus defense, and his good clubhouse personality. Now we are hearing that Jack Zduriencik is interested in signing Hudson to play second base for us next year...once again signalling that he's even more interested in trading Jose Lopez. He must have a plan in store for what he wants to get for Lopez, but irrespective of that situation, I'd just like to make the case AGAINST signing O-Dawg.

First...his bat:

While it is true that Hudson has thus far been a very useful top-of-the-order bat, has a good eye for the strike zone and carries a lot of value (to date) for a second baseman, I see several alarms that scream impending Jose Vidro-style middle-infield faceplant.

FIRST: Check out his month by month split the last three seasons:

1st Half: .821 OPS
August: .756
September: .718 in 2009 and injured in both of the previous years

This is a player that's getting winded after about 110 games.

SECOND: Note this disturbing gradual decline in Isolated Power:

2004: .168
2005: .141
2006: .167
2007: .147
1008: .145
2009: .134

Buyer beware on bats attached to small, relatively speedy middle infielders as they pass the age 30 season if you start seeing the power disappear.

THIRD: Check me on this, but...these are his EYE ratios the last four years:

2006: 0.78
2007: 0.80
2008: 0.65
2009: 0.63

And that comes by way of slowly increasing K rate. He's still a good judge of the strikezone, but he's now starting to get beat by fastballs where he used to be a dead red hitter. Check the FB run values:

2006: 16.3
2007: 12.7
2008: 8.7
2009: -0.6

This is not being offset by gains elsewhere...the rest of the data looks noisy and trendless. He's just not hitting cripple pitches well anymore. But wait, there's more...it should be noted that while his LD% hasn't change much, he is starting to leak grounders. He's not getting the fat part of the bat on the ball as well as evidenced by his increasing GB% and GB/FB without an attending increase in BABIP. Also...check the pitch recognition metrics. His O-Sw% has slowly risen over 20% from earlier levels near 16-18% without an increase in O-CT%. His zone contact percentage is also dropping slowly as is his overall contact percentage.

It is very common for players about Hudson's age to start having trouble staying healthy and fit enough to play second for a whole season without consequences to their bats and we're seeing that here.

Now let's deal with the glove, shall we? We'll start with UZR.

2004: 16.9
2005: 8.2
2006: -0.7
2007: 0.5
2008: -7.6
2009: -2.9

Is he really an elite fielder? If it were just the most recent season, I'd understand questioning UZR, but he hasn't been an elite fielder in FOUR YEARS...mostly owing to injuries and fatigue, if the scouting reports are accurate. PCA isn't quite as pessimistic as UZR, FWIW (Year / PCA-BA, .270 being average, .340 being elite):

2004: .371
2005: .339
2006: .306
2007: .271
2008: .259
2009: .274 (all estimates using short-form calculations after 2006)

But I'm still seeing a sharp downward trend leveling off at somethjing more like merely average fielding skill now that he's older. He's not significantly better with the glove than Jose Lopez at this point.

Finally, we come to clubhouse personality. Although it's true that Hudson handled his September demotion to the bench with class this year, I think it says something that a team run by Joe Torre would choose to start the mid-season insurance acquisition (Belliard) over the great clubhouse guy (Hudson) in the post-season. He can't be that overwhelmingly beneficial to a team on the field if he's getting benched in the middle of a tightening pennant race in favor of a guy who's at best a journeyman and no one else on the club is complaining about it, can he? I'm sure he's a great guy...he was a fan favorite in Arizona. But I have major doubts about his ability to make his clubhouse presence a deciding factor in acquiring him.

If he costs anything at all to acquire...he's just not worth it, IMHO. Not unless you're doing this because some club is overpaying you for Jose Lopez (and you're getting pieces that can help you in the immediate future...especially shortstops or lefty sluggers). I just don't like the warning signs.

Just say no.

My 0.02.

Comments

Hudson

I really couldnt agree more with you guys on this one. As a fan, you cant help but not like the guy and wish he was on your team. Realistically however, as you guys mentioned his "elite defender" reputation is certianly no longer justified. The fact of the matter is, according to UZR, Jose Lopez is a BETTER defender at this point in his career than Orlando Hudson(scary though I know). Couple that with the points you guys made regarding his decreases in ISO, BA, and OPS and clearly the alarm starts to go off. I just cant see justifying giving Orlando Hudson a multi year contract worth approximately $8million/year when he is NOT an upgrade over our current second basemen

It is worth noting that

It is worth noting that Hudson had the most out of zone plays (OOZ) among NL 2Bs in 2009 with 40, and ranked middle of the pack in RZR. RZR, OOZ etc are stats that we know Blengino and company use, so when we're trying to figure out why management likes a guy we need to leave the convienence of FanGraphs behind and head over to The Hardball Times.
But I agree with your conclusion for the most part. I see Hudson as a small upgrade over Lopez at best, and would only want Hudson replacing Lopez if, like you said, the Mariners can get another team to pay for Lopez's HR and RBI totals and help them fill another need. 2 years/$16M (as Dave@USSM suggests) is a little steep for me, though. Given his injury history and decline he may have to settle for a lower base salary, but I guess that depends on how many teams are bidding.
I am a huge Hudson fan, but I choose to remember him as the hot shot Toronto ball of energy that was so fun to watch. He's still fun to watch, but he's definitely lost a step or five, which is sad because he's one of the great characters to follow in the game.

Solid stuff by Matt. I'd

Solid stuff by Matt. I'd agree for the most part, though I wouldn't overstate the offensive decline as Hudson is probably still a full-time 2-3 WAR 2B (although defensively hes almost certainly declined).
A one year deal for Polanco seems much more sensible if the Ms are dealing Lopez. Sure hes old, but there aren't any signs of decline yet and hes a more undervalued asset. Hes been a 3+ WAR 2B the past two years and probably won't make more than $4-5mil on a one year deal.
Really though I wonder if the Ms should shop/trade for a 3B and give the 2B position to Tui.

TerRRRIF amigo

I thought that was pro-class, both in analysis and in structure, not that I'm mr. evaluator or anything.
Am probably going to mosh-bounce off that sterling exec sum if iss' ok wit' you.
:golfclap:

Very interesting point about OOZ

Which causes us to think twice re: the simple interpretation that he's losing footspeed.
Good post Jon.

Getting defensive

There was a key phrase above that set off my spidey sense ... "out of zone plays". I'm pretty sure it was Matt who noted that LAST YEAR, when the Ms defense was putrid, that the club was leading a parade of OOZ excellence. When looking at HOME TEAM, the thought was that this "might" be an indication of ridiculously poor positioning of otherwise good defenders. If the theory is good enough for us ... why not Hudson? Maybe, just maybe, Z and company have tapped into OOZ being a 'tell' of positional mismanagement ... (and given the results for Seattle in 2009, I'm thinking the current club is da bomb with positional defense).
Yes, Jack likes defense. And, yes, he went and got a speedy guy for CF. But, he played half the season with a middle infield combo of (from the mass concensus), Laurel and Hardy, (and we ain't talkin' J.J. here). Part of the entire push behind dumping Lopez is that his defense isn't up to snuff. He played for the BEST DEFENSE IN BASEBALL, at the highest traffic position in baseball -- and had a DP partner who was considered even worse.
SOMETHING has gotta give. Given the evidence from 2009, (the best defense in all of baseball), one of these things *HAS* to be true. Either Lopez is a much better fielder than he's given credit for -- OR -- the quality of middle infield defense is irrelevant to having a great team defense -- OR -- the quality of INDIVIDUAL defensive athleticism is largely irrelevant to the question of producing outstanding defensive results.
The good Doc has been skeptical of how "great" Gutierrez is defensively all season. Yet, the club went from 26th to 1st in defense.
None of this is meant to be a recommendation for Hudson. It is just that so many people continue to use individual defensive metrics as evidence, when the truth is we understand so little about defense that doing so is a fool's errand.

I agree that OOZ can be an

I agree that OOZ can be an indicator that a player is playing out of position, or at least paint a skewed picture of a player's defense. Chase Utley racked up the out of zone plays last season, but that was mostly because he was shading over towards 1B to help out Ryan Howard. Of course, Utley is a good defender anyway, so last year he was able to play on the edge of his 'zone' and still cover most of the ground he was expected to. A truly good defender would have great range numbers as well as the out of zone plays, like Utley. Also Franklin Gutierrez, who lead MLB CFs in RZR as well as OOZ.

One bit of warning though.

The zones you're expected to cover in the RZR method depend on the batted ball trajectory...and we've seen significant biases in home field trajectory scoring cropping up from time to time that lead to misleading LD% figures in particular. This can throw off the OOZ numbers sometimes.