Carlos Guillen, his replacements, and their place vs. average SS's

Now that the baseball regular season is finished, I figured it was as good a time as any to take a look at replacement shortstops as it's official that Carlos Guillen will shift to 1st base full time making SS a legit hole that needs to be filled.

This is my first quantitative analysis of a position, so bear with me. But, I feel this should give a good rough estimate of what we could expect from a replacement shortstop.

Names I've heard associated with the Tigers vacancy up the middle are Jack Wilson, Edgar Renteria, Omar Vizquel and I'm going to throw in Miguel Tejada just for fun since he's been in countless trade rumors the last couple of seasons.

So buckle in and hopefully I've been clear enough in my descriptions that you can follow along as this post is quite lengthy. Feel free to take a snack break in the middle. Or, even a nap if you so choose.

I've decided to compare the potential replacements with both the average shortstop in the major leagues over the course of 2004-2007 as well as how Carlos Guillen faired at that position.
So, lets start with the baseline comparison which is the offensive production of an average shortstop in the majors leagues the last 4 years.

To do this, I looked to the wonderful Hardball Times and used their Runs Created numbers to find out the top 100 shortstop performances from 2004-2007 in the major leagues. With this information, I looked to what I think is the best team specific baseball blog on the Internet in the U.S.S. Mariner and a post by Dave about Ichiro's contract extension. He weighted the years (the post was written in July, still about halfway through the baseball season) like this: 10% weight for the 2004 season, 20% for 2005, 35% for 2006 and 35% for 2007. He evened 2007 and 2006 because the season wasn't complete so both had value. I've changed this to 10% for '04, 20% for '03, 30% for '06, and 40% for '07.

Armed with this, I came to the conclusion that the average shortstop would "create" about 67.22 runs a year when weighted for 550 plate appearances, but we'll round it off to just 67. So, the first thing to look at is how each of the potential replacements for Guillen, as well as Guillen himself, fared in comparison to the average shortstops. If you need names to put to this "average" number, guys like Jason Bartlett of Minnesota (in 2007) and Khalil Greene of the Padres (in 2005) both posted RC numbers of 67 for a single season.

So, how has Carlos Guillen fared? Well...

Carlos Guillen:

Offensively, Guillen is usually regarded as one of the best hitting shortstops in baseball, which is largely accurate. To examine his offense we'll use Runs Created which is an accurate assessment of both hitting and baserunning.

2004: 102 Runs Created
2005: 42
2006: 107
2007: 99

So, Carlos Guillen's Weighted Runs Created (WRC) average for the last 4 years is 90.3. But, since that is skewed by his injury plagued 2005 year that limited him to 87 games, I've decided to take his Runs Created per Game average for the 2005 year and extrapolate it out over the course of 132 games (his games played average over the last 4 years). That would have given him about 64 Runs Created for the 2005 season and would change his WRC average.

His new Weighted Runs Created average over the last four years using 102, 64, 107, and 99 is a 94.6 WRC, or rounded up to 95. Offensively that puts him at 28 runs better then the average shortstop is offensively.

So, we know how he rates versus average shortstops, but how does he rank versus his potential replacements?

Well, here are their WRC numbers for the last 4 seasons:

Miguel Tejada - 97 (30 above average)
Edgar Renteria - 85 (18 above average)
Omar Vizquel - 74 (7 above average)
Jack Wilson - 68 (1 above average)

That would place Carlos 2nd on this list offensively overall and in terms of offense above average shortstops.

But, Tigers fans all know that Guillen is good offensively. The reason he's moving is partially because of Sean Casey's lack of production cost him the 1st base job, and because Guillen is bad defensively.

How bad, you ask? Well, Justin Inaz has done a bunch of math and come up with a runs number to put on all of the fielding positions (except catcher and pitcher). Well, with a runs number put onto defense, that fits perfectly into what I'm doing.

His defensive numbers for shortstops are found here, and our subjects we're dissecting rate like this, runs wise, defensively:

Jack Wilson: +15 runs (5th best)
Omar Vizquel: +12.9 (round up to 13, 7th best)
Miguel Tejada: +4.9 (round up to 5, 14th best)
Edgar Renteria: +3.6 (round up to 4, 19th best)
Carlos Guillen: -14.9 (round up to -15, 93rd best)

Yes, Carlos Guillen, according to Inaz's numbers, is costing the Tigers 15 runs this year, while everyone else we're looking at prevents a positive number of runs this year.
(Note: If you would like a breakdown on how these defensive numbers are calculated, he's broken it down here.)

So, we add these defensive runs and offensive runs each guy is worth and get the following totals:

Miguel Tejada - 102 Runs
Edgar Renteria - 89
Omar Vizquel - 87
Jack Wilson - 83
Carlos Guillen - 80

Very interesting results, to say the least. So, to tie this back to the first baseline test, these guys versus the average shortstop (who is a 0.0 defensively on Justin Inaz's defensive numbers) is 67.

Miguel Tejada - 35 Runs better then the average shortstop
Edgar Renteria - 22
Omar Vizquel - 20
Jack Wilson - 16
Carlos Guillen - 13

Borrowing, again, from Dave and that Mariners blog, a lot of people far smarter then I have stated that 10 runs is roughly 1 win. So Tejada is 3.5 Wins, Renteria 2.2 wins, etc etc.
To put a dollar value on each of these, it's widely accepted that each win is worth about $2.5 million which would give you the actual value of each player. Last offseason, teams paid about $4 million per "win" to free agents. So, their Actual Values (AV), Market Values based on last years market (MV), and their actual salaries for the 2008 season (AS) are. . .
(Figures are in Millions)

Miguel Tejada - $8.75 AV, $14 MV, $13 AS
Edgar Renteria - $5.5 AV, $8.8 MV, $9 AS
Omar Vizquel - $5 AV, $8 MV, AS is unknown, he's a free agent. In 2007 he made $4 million
Jack Wilson - $4 AV, $6.4, $6.5 AS
Carlos Guillen - $3.25 AV, $5.2, $12 AS

Yes, I know this is a mind-altering information that many of us Tiger fans will dismiss, but these are the numbers. If you were to re-read this post again and think of the players as Player A, Player B, Player C, Player D, Player E and detach yourself from the names and objectively look, it does start to make sense. Carlos Guillen is downright atrocious defensively, and the numbers (from the 07 season) say that his defense is as much a hindrance at shortstop as his offense was great for the team.

It is worth noting, however, that these dollar figures are based on the total runs (offensive and defensive) and that it's something that should be taken slightly less seriously then the strictly offensive comparison because the defensive numbers are based only on 1 years worth of defense. I'll look around and try to find the +/- numbers defensively (probably will be courtesy the Fielding Bible by John Dewan) which then could be converted to runs and then, ultimately, a dollar amount. However, the metrics on The Hardball Times website show that Guillen has declined defensively at short during the span of 2004-2007. Jack Wilson, in that same time fram, has declined but is still in the upper tier as his range is as good as ever. Miguel Tejada's range has diminished greatly, but still has slightly better range then Guillen. Edgar Renteria's defense has diminished as has his range, but he's still a middle-of-the-2nd tier defenders. And, Omar Vizquel's range has stayed the same or slightly diminished, but he's as sure handed as they come. If he gets to the ball, chances are he'll make a good decision.

So, I guess what I'm saying is that the meat of this are the offensive numbers, the rest is just the fixin's that are interesting to gander at.

I took BIG helps from both Justin Inaz and Dave (who's last name I don't know, I'll update it when I do find it out) and his U.S.S. Mariner blog. Both of those blogs are worth checking out even if you're not a fan of either team but still into statistical evaluation (Justin Inaz is a Reds fan and blogs on them).