Go Bay-B Go....by BC High's Paul Kelly | Red Sox

Jason Bay recently declined the Red Sox offer of “close to 60 million” for 4 years, instead electing to test free agency. Now, Red Sox fans, is where we finally overcome the delusions that we are believing and see that bringing Jason Bay back to Boston would be a sentimental, imprudent, and a poor decision for the franchise.

Now I’m not saying we shouldn't bring back Jason Bay at a reasonable price; if the Sox front office can get Bay for $14M per year for four years compared to $25M for Holliday over 7 years, I’ll take Bay. Anything closer than that and no thanks, Bay is simply not worth it. He's going to be a DH by 2012 and his performance is going to start going downhill after 2011. It's purely logic and not personal.

Jason Bay had a -11.2 UZR/150 last year (UZR/150 is a defensive measurement stat). That’s not a typo, that’s correct—Jason Bay was one of the worst fielders in baseball; in fact, Jason Bay was the fourth worst fielder in all of baseball, behind the likes of Adam Dunn and Ken Griffey Jr. Over the past three seasons, he has a 64.9 runs below average. That is so bad that he was merely a replacement level player in 2007, during an ‘off year’ (replacement level players are fictional ‘AAAA’ players, a team consisting of entirely replacement level players would win 25 games per year).

Bay’s worth the past three years have been as follows: $0.3M (2007), $13.2M (2008), and $15.7M (2009). Compare that with Matt Holliday’s WAR salary of $32.2M (2007), $28.0M (2008), and $25.6M (2009), coupled with a 6.0 UZR/150 last year. Yet even when presented with these facts, people continue to talk about how Matt Holliday is a ‘national league player’ and how he won’t produce in the American League. These are the same people who are conveniently forgetting that Jason Bay was a ‘national league player’ coming off of a horrendous 2007 campaign when we traded for him in 2008.

In addition, prior to trading for Bay in 2008, he was never on an American League ballclub, while Matt Holliday has been on an American League ballclub, and fared well. This year Matt Holliday started with the Oakland Athletics prior to being traded to St. Louis. He has always been a notorious slow starter, and before he was traded to St. Louis he was hitting .286 with an .832 OPS. Oakland is a cavern—one of the less hitter friendly parks in the American League, if not the all of MLB (compared to Fenway, and most of the AL East for that matter, which are hitter-friendly ballparks)--and Holliday had little to no offensive support around him, yet compiled a .286/.832--and people were calling it a down year. That's a fantastic line, considering the circumstances, and it would be a career year for a good two thirds of the players in baseball.

To further assuage people’s concerns about his hitting in the ‘tough’ AL East division, here is a line of Matt Holliday’s performance against the three top teams in the American League East:

BOS: 53 PA: .320/.358/.520
NYY: 38 PA: .333/.421/.485
TBR: 71 PA: .323/.408/.548

Against other AL teams:

.487/.574/.590 against the Tigers
.367/.457/.633 against the Royals
.313/.405/.625 against the Twins
.333/.447/.538 against the Jays
.550 SLG against the Angels
.472 OBP against the Indians
.538 SLG against the A's

Clearly, Matt Holliday is not a ‘national league player’. He is a better player than Jason Bay is, both defensively and offensively and should be pursued aggressively by the Sox front office. Holliday works in two ways. He can and will be part of the short, medium, and long term plan here and signing him will help convince Sox fans that we are serious about contention in 2010 (I don't believe they are but they won't admit it).

Now should the Sox fail to re-sign Bay and fail to sign Holliday, there is another player they should serious consider. Mike Cameron. Since 2002, Mike Cameron has been worth +29.6 wins to his ballclub, or about the same as David Ortiz, Aramis Ramirez, and Jim Thome, while posting a WAR (Wins Above Replacement player) of over 4.0 every year in the past four seasons. He has posted a WAR value of $8.1M (2007), $18.9M (2008), and $19.4 (2009) over the past three seasons. However, he has not gotten the credit he has deserved due to numerous factors including accumulating a large portion of value on defense, spending most of his career in extreme pitchers parks, and posting a low average with a lot of strikeouts (just like Jason Bay). Cameron has never gotten the recognition he deserves.

It is true that Jason Bay is the better hitter of the two. Bay has a career wOBA (weighted on base average—it’s a much more accurate form of OBP) of .384, whilst Mike Cameron has a career wOBA of .347. That 40-point gap is quite significant, and is a large reason for a difference in evaluation of the two players. Bay has produced +28 runs above average per 600 plate appearances since 2002, while Cameron is only at +13 over 600 plate appearances during that same time span. That’s a 15-run difference per season. Again, it’s another reason for the difference in perception of their offensive abilities. Although I would like to attribute it solely to Cameron’s hitting in a pitcher’s park during most of his career, it is not true. Jason Bay is the better hitter of the two, but not by the extreme margin it appears to be.

That’s only the offensive facet of their game. On the defensive side, Cameron is one of the best defensive center fielders in the game (10.6 UZR/150 last year), whilst Bay is one of the worst defensive fielders, never mind outfielders, in the game. You don’t need to believe in sabermetrics such as UZR to concur.

However, should we elect to look at their respective defensive numbers, Mike Cameron has a +6 UZR/150 over the past eight years. Jason Bay? A wince-inducing -8 UZR/150. But this is inaccurate because Bay plays LF and Cameron plays CF, yet they are being compared on the same baseline. The gap in between the average defensive LF (which Bay is not) and an average CF is roughly 10 runs, so the difference in their abilities over the past eight years is really a 24-run difference per season.

But there’s the age issue, the Sox are getting older and Mike Cameron is 37! That is a valid point, however the primary factor in an aging curve is the starting point of said player’s value. Cameron may be older, but he’s also better and has shown no erosion in skills over the past few years. However, at the worst, you could use the age gap to project them to have similar value projections in 2010.

A signing of Jason Bay would be sentiment driven, remembrance of his 2008 playoff performance, of his 2009 Silver Slugger (which means nothing if there’s no defense behind it), and of his easygoing demeanor. The Red Sox front office have proven themselves not to be subject to sentimentality time and time again with Pedro, Damon, Lowe, Nomar, and countless others, so we need to rely on them to once again, place value over sentiment and make the smart baseball decision.

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