Did the Minnesota Twins under-value 2B Brian Dozier?

While one AL Central team is failing to make any headway in contract negotiations with a key component of their roster, the Minnesota Twins have locked down second baseman Brian Dozier for the next four years. He will be paid a total of $20 million through the 2018 season, making void his arbitration eligibility years that would have kicked in after this season.

Dozier is coming off his first career 20-20 season in 2014. He turns 28 in mid-May and judging by his spring numbers (.462/.533/.846), the Tupelo, MS native could be primed to surpass last years 5.2 WAR number in 2015.

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No player at Dozier’s position is going to come close to surpassing the average annual salary value of Robinson Cano at $24 million. But in terms of production at the position, the Twins may have found themselves a bargain.

Dozier has steadily improved his at-bats, home runs, RBI, stolen bases and OPS numbers every year since entering the league in 2012. His 2014 WAR ranked fifth at his position. Well ahead of players like Matt Carpenter (3.0) and Jason Kipnis (0.9), two second baseman with relatively the same service time as Dozier. In spite of his superior play to those two names, Dozier will make $5.25 million less in salary over the next two seasons than Carpenter and $5.33 million less than Kipnis.

Have a look at the following table for comparison:

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It’s tough to pinpoint the biggest injustice from the above table. One noticeable point is Alex Guerrero‘s $28 million contract and the fact he earned a base salary of $4 million last season logging 243 at-bats in Triple-A and only 13 with the Dodgers.

Another takeaway is that if Jose Altuve can be anywhere near the player he was in 2014 (.341 BA, 56 SBs, 6.0 WAR) over the next four seasons, the Astros may have the bargain of the decade at second base and leadoff hitter.

Lastly and, the critical point I want to highlight here, is that Dozier is indeed under-valued. He has nearly a full year of less service time than Kipnis and Carpenter, though he’s currently outpacing both of them in lifetime WAR. Dozier also has nearly identical service time to Jedd Gyorko but is set to make a million dollars less than him over the next four years despite a distinctly more impressive WAR.

While the Minnesota Twins are a small market team per se, they currently have a larger payroll than the Padres, Indians and Astros. What’s more, they still owe Joe Mauer $94 million over the next four seasons even though he has been a less productive player than Dozier has since 2012.

We already know his WAR, but Dozier’s average career line since 2012 is .241-72-16-57-15, while Mauer’s is .307-68-8-62-4. And this factors in that Dozier only registered 316 at-bats in 2012, while Mauer logged 545. Mauer’s WAR is only 2.1 points higher than Dozier’s over that stretch.

There’s no sense blaming a player for not living up to his potential after signing an extremely lucrative contract, but it’s clear Mauer is in decline. It’s not like he isn’t trying. But Mauer has hit single digit home runs in three of his last five seasons, never once hitting more than 11 in any of those. He failed to drive in 60 runs in 2013 and 2014 and posted a career low BA of .277 last season.

Brian Dozier appears to be trending upwards and he was likely under-valued at his position due to the financial restrictions of his club and the fact the Minnesota Twins have a lot of ugly money tied up in players like Mauer and Ricky Nolasco. Nolasco is owed $36 million over his next three seasons after going 6-12 with an atrocious 5.38 ERA in 27 starts last season.

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