This off-season, I fully expect Angels leadoff man Chone Figgins to garner most of the free agent buzz at third base. Figgins, 32, is coming off a career year both at the plate and in the field. He posted a high on-base percentage (.395), dazzled with the glove and ran around the bases like Secretariat at The Belmont.
But another AL West third baseman strikes me as the better play for a club desperately seeking a power infusion and top-notch defense.
His name is Adrian Beltre.
When discussing Beltre the first thing that comes to mind is his glove. For numerous reasons – subjectivity in categorizing hit type (line drive, fly ball, etc), ball speed, defensive positioning – Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), a metric that determines how many runs a fielder saves or costs his team relative to a league average defender at his position, can’t be trusted entirely. But both UZR and the Fielding Bible have reached a pretty strong consensus on Beltre’s defensive ability: he’s tremendous, and somewhere around 12-15 runs above average.
So, if Mike Lowell bounces back and regains some of his range at third, how much of an upgrade does Beltre represent? I’m unaware of the team’s numbers and medical reports, of course, but it wouldn’t shock me one bit to find out Beltre’s a dozen runs better with the glove, probably more, as Lowell ranked dead last in virtually every respected defensive measure (UZR rated him 10 runs below average, while Fielding Bible was equally unkind).
Offensively, aside from his outlier contract year in 2007, Lowell has pretty consistently posted a batting line (.338 OBP/.465 SLG roughly) which translates to 4-5 runs above the average hitter. Beltre, on the other hand, has displayed similar on-base skills and more power while doing his work in a pretty tough hitters’ park, Safeco Field, which massacres right-handed batters. Beltre's park-adjusted runs above average (RAA) numbers typically have rested in the +8-10 area.
His shoulder and groin injuries from this past season aside, Beltre’s three-year splits average out to .327 OBP and .468 SLG, or an OPS+ of 108 – 4 percent higher than Lowell’s output. By performing a crude ballpark adjustment using Baseball Reference’s park averages, we can expect Beltre’s Fenway batting line to reach .339/.488 -- or 10 runs above average – provided his offensive skills haven’t tapered off. Should Beltre fail to realize his three-year splits, he’s still Lowell’s equal with the bat and more than a win better on defense.
If you need further proof, Fangraphs recently conducted a study comparing Beltre’s slugging percentage on fly balls hit at Safeco Field to fly balls hit on the road, as well as the angle of those balls in play. What they found, unsurprisingly, was Beltre hit for more power away from cavernous Safeco. But it was such a significant disparity that, in Dave Allen's words, makes Beltre "in many other ballparks... an above average offensive player. He has the chance to be a solid free agent signing once again.”
As for the direction of his power, it’s mostly concentrated to left-center and hard left-field. After reading their study I couldn’t help but think it should’ve been titled “Why The Red Sox Should Sign Adrian Beltre.”
Using Marcel’s 3-2-1 salary projection system, Beltre would rightly command $13.5 million per season on the free agent market. That takes into account his dismal 2009 season with the bat (.304/.379), when he was still overall a more valuable player than the Red Sox’ incumbent.
While Figgins’ defense is exceptional, the brunt of his offensive value stems from A) his newfound ability to get on base at an elite level (which may or may not be sustainable) and B) his legs. He’s certainly one of the more underrated players in the game, but if the Red Sox front office truly wants to improve its offensive production away from Fenway Park – a problem resulting from drastic home/road splits throughout the lineup, particularly in the power department -- it can ill-afford to supplant Lowell’s bat (.335/.384 on the road) with Figgins’ career .097 ISOp. That doesn’t fix the problem. As past studies suggest, adding a low OBP, high slugging player to an OBP-heavy lineup provides more value than simply signing another high OBP, low slugging guy, like Figgins.
Conclusion: Beltre looks to be a two win upgrade over Lowell. With him and the newly acquired Marco Scutaro manning 3B and SS, respectively, the left-side of the Red Sox' infield will have made significant strides in the run prevention department.
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