Projecting the 2009 Cubs: Ryan Theriot

2009 PROJECTIONS Rich Harden | Carlos Zambrano | Ryan Dempster | Ted Lilly | Sean Marshall | Kevin Gregg | Aaron Heilman | Chad Gaudin | Carlos Marmol | Angel Guzman | Neal Cotts | Luis Vizcaino | Kevin Hart | Jeff Samardzija | Geovany Soto | Derrek Lee | Mike Fontenot | Aramis Ramirez | Micah Hoffpauir | Aaron Miles | Reed Johnson | Joey Gathright | Paul Bako | Koyie Hill | Ryan Theriot RYAN THERIOT STATS Fan Graphs | The Hardball Times | ESPN | Baseball Reference | Cubs.com | Baseball Prospectus We give Ryan Theriot a lot of shit around here. Some of it he has earned and some of it is undeserving. I can't speak for the rest of you, but I'm just irritated by how good some Cubs fans think this guy is. We're talking about a fan base that has some rationalized beating up on Sammy Sosa, but hails Ryan Theriot as a great player who plays the game right. If you just check out a few of the blogs around or especially the cubs.com message board you'll read about how Theriot is a winner or how he's a gritty and scrappy player. You'll read pretty much every silly cliche you've ever heard about baseball players if you read what Cubs fans have to say about Ryan Theriot. It's annoying. He looks like a 3 year old trying to field his position, but our eyes often deceive us. This is why numbers are so important in this game. If you check out Theriot's fangraphs page, you'll see that his career UZR (per 150 games) at SS is 3.9. He's played 2142 innings there so that number is rather reliable. The problem, however, is that if we check out his RZR (The Hardball Times link above), it's juts .823. It's not much below average at SS, but it is below average. Also, he made only 36 OOZ (out of zone) plays in 2008. Compare that .823 RZ and 36 OOZ to JJ Hardy who was nearly identical to Theriot in RZR at .826, but Hardy made an incredible 72 plays out of zone. The closest SS to Hardey in OOZ was Yunel Escobar at 61. You have two of the best fielding metrics with a big difference between them. In one he's above average (barely) and the other he's below average (by quite a bit). If you check out John Dewan's +/- (aka Fielding Bible) Theriot is above average. In 2007 Theriot was +5 and ranked 13th among MLB shortstops and in 2008 he was +6 (12th best). The Fielding Bible is nice because it breaks the plays down into air outs, ground outs as well as outs made to the left, right and straight on. In Theriot's career at SS, he's +2 on plays to his right and +5 on plays to his left, but -1 on balls hit straight at him. That's odd. Theriot does not have great range and dives 300 times per games rarely recording an out doing so. You'd think he is only competent at the position because he fields the ones hit straight at him, but that's not the case. I also had the opinion that he was better on balls hit in the air than he was balls hit on the ground, but that too is not true. He's +6 on groundballs in his career and +3 on balls hit in the air. In 2007 he ranked 4th among all SS in turning the double play, but ranked 19th in 2008. Fangraphs UZR includes the double play now so the difference between Theriot's 2007 UZR/150 (9.0) and his 2008 UZR/15 (1.6) probably has more to do with the double play than anything else, but I'm not positive of that. Still, ranking 19th in double plays and still being above average is pretty good. Most people would think Theriot is somewhere between just competent enough to play SS and terrible based on what they've seen. Using one's eyes is fine, but unless you're being paid by a team to do this on a professional basis, you're not good enough at it to know for sure and you need the numbers to help you. What we have here is the 3 best defensive metrics around and 2 of them have Theriot as above average and 1 has him below average. CAIRO's UZR/150 projection for Theriot is 0.0 so we'll go with that for his defense, but I'd guess it's likely to be between 1 and 3. Theriot's defense isn't as bad as I thought and he's at least halfway competent with the bat. He'll never hit for any power, but he does get on base at a reasonable rate (projected at .359). All of this being said, the next time someone wants to bash a player like Soriano or Ramirez or Zambrano while hailing the white scrappiness of Ryan Theriot, I'm going to go off as I have before. The fact that some people can actually argue in any way whatsoever that Theriot is equal to those guys is pathetic, but it happens more often than you think. Ryan Theriot's 2009 projections are below. I could not find the standard stat projections on CBS's projection for Theriot. For some reason they only had the advanced so the 2 numbers in gray were my guesses and not CBS'. Ryan Therot PA HR BB K AVG OBP SLG CAIRO 527 2 51 44 0.29 0.358 0.363 MARCELS 590 5 58 61 0.286 0.36 0.372 ZIPS 548 2 50 50 0.285 0.353 0.352 JAMES 603 2 60 50 0.293 0.366 0.362 CHONE 568 3 53 54 0.282 0.355 0.368 PECOTA 582 1 59 54 0.283 0.359 0.35 CBS 635 2 76 55 0.273 0.362 0.36 THT 572 4 54 62 0.29 0.359 0.375 AVERAGE 580 3 58 54 0.285 0.359 0.363 That's not nearly as good as his line from 2008, but that was most likely a career year. This isn't that bad. It's not great, but Theriot isn't making much money either. He's still easily worth what he's being paid. Per 700 PAs Pos PA OBP SLG Hit BR Pos Fld Rep WAR FA $ WAR Theriot SS 604 .359 .363 -0.28 0.00 0.75 0.00 2.00 2.47 $10.7 2.1 That's better than I thought it would be. 2 WAR is league average for what it's worth and over 700 PA he's worth 2.47 so he's a bit better than average. +/- $WAR: $128.65 million Running total for team projected wins (updated as I do each profile) Replacement level team: 48.6 wins Kevin Gregg: 1.08 WAR Rich Harden: 5.75 WAR Carlos Zambrano: 3.65 WAR Ryan Dempster: 3.42 WAR Ted Lilly: 2.92 WAR Sean Marshall: 1.84 WAR Aaron Heilman: 0.61 WAR Chad Gaudin: 0.52 WAR Carlos Marmol: 1.41 WAR Angel Guzman: 0.11 WAR Neal Cotts: 0.31 WAR Luis Vizcaino: 0.42 WAR Kevin Hart: -0.06 WAR Jeff Samardzija: -0.13 WAR Geovany Soto: 5.3 WAR Derrek Lee: 3.4 WAR Mike Fontenot: 4.0 WAR Aramis Ramirez: 5.1 WAR Micah Hoffpauir: 0.7 WAR Aaron Miles: 0.3 WAR Reed Johnson: 0.8 WAR Joey Gathright: 0.4 WAR Paul Bako: 0.0 WAR Koyie Hill: 0.2 WAR Ryan Theriot: 2.1 WAR TOTAL: 92.5 wins