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Wednesday, August 01, 2007

The Young and the Motionless

Just wanted to make a quick comment on Joe Sheehan's column on Sunday regarding the Nationals and their signing of Dmitri Young to a two-year $10M contract extension. Joe's analysis is spot-on and this marks the second consecutive year where the Nationals chose to hold on to a veteran having a career year instead of turning him over for prospects - even middling ones - or mediocre major leaguers. This time, however, they made the mistake of continuing to pay the veteran who also happens to play a position that will be occuppied with the return of Nick Johnson.

In any case Joe mentioned Young's negative contributions in areas outside of his direct offense and so I thought I'd quickly document his baserunning "contributions" over the years.


Year Opp EqGAR Opp EqSBR Opp EqAAR Opp EqHAR Total
2007 18 -1.11 0 0.00 20 1.28 30 -0.45 -0.29
2006 11 0.76 9 -0.54 2 -0.37 8 -1.15 -1.30
2005 20 -0.89 1 0.09 15 0.18 25 0.22 -0.40
2004 18 -0.64 1 -0.44 20 0.67 36 -2.94 -3.34
2003 24 -1.09 2 -0.58 31 0.97 38 -2.39 -3.08
2002 11 -0.26 1 0.15 8 0.47 17 0.07 0.43
2001 37 -0.25 13 -2.07 26 0.58 34 -2.75 -4.49
2000 22 -0.10 4 -2.10 19 -0.29 31 -3.26 -5.76

161 -3.58 51 -4.21 121 2.22 219 -12.66 -18.23


Overall, he's at a little more than -18 runs contributed since 2000 which puts him towards the bottom and among the "leaders" in 2000, 2001, 2003, and 2004.

2 comments:

Nate said...

OK Dan, I'll bite. But what if Nick Johnson isn't returning next season?

And employing statistical analysis to demonstrate that Dmitri Young isn't Jose Reyes is a bit of overkill, no?

Dan Agonistes said...

Well of course but isn't that the fun of it? Seriously, I was simply curious as to just how Young rated and so that's the initial reason I went and took a look at the analysis I had already done.

Actually, Nick Johnson is signed through 2009 at $5.5M per. Yes, they might then offer him in a trade and if they get something back of value then that value might be worth swapping the age 29 and 30 seasons of Johnson for the 34 and 35 of Young. Of course the Nats may know something about Johnson's condition that isn't public yet.