2012 Free Agents: Jose Reyes

Regarded as one of the top free agents, Jose Reyes plays at a premium position and is one of the best known players in baseball. Fred Wilpon was completely right when he said that Reyes doesn’t deserve “Crawford money”- Crawford doesn’t either- and Sandy Alderson is smart enough to not give him a deal lasting more than five years. Why? He’s a 28 year old shortstop with a definite injury risk. He also relies on speed and defense, and we can already see that his defense is beginning to decline ever since his injury-plagued 2009 season. I bet that his speed becomes a non-factor in five seasons, and that’s the most he should be getting from anybody. I am hearing that the Brew Crew- how is Yuniesky Betancourt a Type B free agent? Really Elias?- and Nats are the frontrunners in the race of Reyes.  But just how valuable is Reyes and what is the contract that he should be getting?

We can easily deduce that the Brewers are looking for a new sidekick to Ryan Braun, and they are extremely happy to have the aforementioned Betancourt off their hands. The Nationals made one of the most ill-advised moves last season, when they gave that corner outfielder with the beard “CC Sabathia money”. It’s plausible to think that these two teams will overpay, but I’m  not about overpaying; I’m all about assessing Reyes’s current value.

The Sully Erna of shortstops, Reyes was able to get a 6.2 WAR out of 126 games in 2011. One thing to note here is that he had a streak of four seasons with at least 150 games played from 2005-2008, but he has not played in 140 since ’08. That’s not to say that he isn’t a productive player- he had 6 WAR last season after all- but it shows us that he doesn’t quite deserve a seven year contract. No 28 year old player who bases his game on speed deserves that many years at all.

While he did have a solid line drive rate, his season was pretty much entirely BABIP driven. Although his BB% was more than his K% for the first time in his career, a testament to Reyes’s  much-improved plate discipline, I don’t know if he can keep that up. However, JR7 is a pretty disciplined hitter who did post a 149 wRC+ (by far his career high).

Even though Jose Reyes was chasing more than he ever had during his career, his contact rate was also at a career-high. This is an interesting statistical nuance, and it is made even more interesting when you look at a career best K/BB rate that was previously alluded to. It seems as if Reyes’s 2011 might be an anomaly, or it could also be a new career path. We have to see in 2012, but I am inclined to believe the former. The reason being is that he didn’t quite hit his regression due to injury, and every sabermatrician acknowledges and lives by the fact that seasons are arbitrary endpoints.

A very disturbing trend is that Jose Reyes’s defense has been on a consistent decline since his 2009 season. Every advanced metric that deals with defense (DRS, UZR, rPM, and RngR) has him as being a far worse defensive player. This isn’t a case of the stats being wrong, because there are about five metrics pointing to this trend. If this was a defensive player in the corner positions of the diamond, it wouldn’t matter; but shortstop is a position that is based on defense. When you talk about chances and the like, it’s undoubtedly the most important on the diamond.

Now, it’s time for some contract structuring. I believe he has one more 6 WAR season left on him, and will have another 5 WAR season at the age of 30. If he does get a five year deal, I see him posting 4.5, 4, and 3 WAR totals for those seasons. If each win is worth about 4.48 million dollars, Reyes should get 100.8 over those five years (20.2 million per season).

The above projection is friendly for Reyes, but I wouldn’t like the last two seasons of his contract if he was to get a seven year deal. I could easily see him posting underwhelming 2.5 and 2 WAR seasons in his age 34 and 35 campaigns respectively. Jose Reyes would stand to gain 121 million (17.3 million per season) at that rate. Reyes is obviously one of the best free agents on the market and a star talent, but I could easily see a team overpaying for him by giving him a seven year deal. An Alderson-given (or other GM) deal at five years has much less of a chance of being a bust deal. Reyes is a boom-or-bust free agent right now as a speed/defense-built player, but the risk is well worth it if managed correctly. That is, of course, unless your risk management expert is George Costanza.