Is John Buck a Good Trade Target?

The Tigers have had awful production from the catcher position this year as Laird/Avila have combined for a dismal .560 OPS when the American League average is .691. There are some potential upgrades to be had and one some Tigers fans come back to is John Buck.

Buck's been part of the home run barrage going on north of the boarder. He's slugged out 14 already, 4 off of his career high of 18 he set in 2007 with the Kansas City Royals. Is he desirable? Yes. Is he worth over-paying for? Absolutely not.

Buck is currently sporting a 15.2% home run-to fly ball rate which is about 2.5% higher than his career 12.6% rate. This is the main driver of his career high Isolated Power of .231. Let's look at this for a bit. READ MORE...

If you adjust his HR/FB rate down to his career average of 12.6% you knock off 2-3 homers which doesn't seem like much. But if you take out those 8-12 total bases and drop 2-3 hits off of his 75 hit total you knock his isolated power down a substantial amount.
If you take off 2 homers you drop his slugging percentage down to .481 -- a 30 point drop from his .511 slugging percentage.

You also affect his batting average and taking off 2 homers and turning them into outs, his average drops from .280 down to .272. This leaves his Isolated Power at .209. Not quite as good as his actual IsoP but still good.

Now, if you take off 3 homers you drop his slugging to .466 and his batting average down to .269. This leaves his Isolated Power at .197. That's a pretty substantial drop off.

And it's not just related to numbers. The wonderful Hit Tracker Online backs this data up as well. Here's Buck's Hit Tracker Home Run Plot:

Click the image to enlarge. He's clearly hit some mammoth shots, but he's also hit some that hover around the 350 foot mark. Actually he's hit quite a few of them.

Hit Tracker classifies homers as Lucky (L), Just Enough (JE), Plenty (PL), and No Doubt (ND). Buck has hit 4 homer's classified as Just Enough and another as Just Enough/Lucky.

Using the park factors from StatCorner, we can see that Toronto has a HR park factor for right-handed hitters of 112 meaning that the Rogers Centre is 12% easier for a RHB to hit a homer versus the average ball park. Now, all of these just enough homers haven't come at home. In fact, only one has. The rest have come on the road in the following cities:

US Cellular in Chicago (3 times)
Petco Park (1 time)

How easy is it to homer in Petco? Well, Petco has a 92 HR park factor for a RHB (LHB's there are up against a 52 HR PF!!!). So, hey, we'll even give him that one.

Chicago on the other hand is a different story. Right-handed hitters have a home run park factor of 134 (!!) at The Cell. John Buck hits right-handed. I'm not saying that he only hit them because of the ball park, or because of the weather. What I am saying is that there is a lot of evidence that his HR/FB ratio is inflated by some questionable homers and that's driven up everything else about Buck's surface numbers.

I'm not saying that John Buck is a guy to steer clear of -- he's a better trade target than Jhonny Peralta. What I am saying is that there's some major regression built in and if Buck's not getting extra balls going over the fence, he'll likely not be worth what Toronto should and will ask for him. One thing that is working in his favor is the Tigers 119 home run park factor for right-handed hitters.

I'm not opposed to a trade for John Buck. He must come for the right price, however.