March 18, 2009

Albatrocalypse Now

Amazingly, precisely half of my followers took issue with my labeling of Derrek Lee as a contract albatross in the previous post. (Strangely, no one objected to the same categorization for Alfonso Soriano. I mean, anytime you can lock up a non-superstar at a non-premium position at a mere $17 million per season for basically the entire duration of his 30's, that's something you just have to do.) The general perspective is best summed up by loyal reader Matt Armstrong:
Lee's contract might be an albatross only because that wrist injury [in 2006] turned him into Mark Grace. ... If he could play at 80% of that monster year ('05?) that contract would be a steal and he had a sterling injury history up to that point.

By the way, that was sent via text and I had to painstakingly translate it into traditional written English. But enough about my trials and travails -- is Matt right? Coming off the monster 2005 Matt mentions -- a year in which he hit .335/.416/.662 with 46 homers and 50 doubles -- Lee signed a five year, $65 million contract right at the beginning of the 2006 season. However, since the Cubs tore up the remaining $8 million season on his previous contract, from the team's perspective, it was really more of a four-year, $57 million extension, meaning the Cubs agreed to pay $14.25 million per for Lee's age 31-34 seasons. In my opinion, even if Lee had only declined somewhat mildly -- as would be expected as he entered his mid-30s -- the contract would hardly have been a steal.

But that, to me, is the tiniest of potatoes. The real issue is the other part, as at this point I'm not entirely convinced it was Lee's injury in 2006 that "turned him into Mark Grace." (By the way, "Mark Grace" is Matt's shorthand for "a first baseman with little power.") Though he hit 17 homers as a 22-year-old, Lee really didn't establish himself as a big-leaguer until age 24; in three seasons before that, he had a cumulative line of .227/.306/.384. But in his fourth year, Lee upped his OBP to .368 and belted 28 homers. Since that time, he has never hit fewer than 20 home runs in a single full season. And Matt's absolutely right about his injury history before 2006; going into that year, Lee had a six-season streak of playing 155 games or more, and in all but one of those years he played at least 158. So with that backdrop, here are Lee's year-by-year homer totals in lovely graph form:



And this is the typical home run aging curve, courtesy of TangoTiger:



The typical player's power peaks at Age 27; that season is therefore assigned a 1, while the rest of the numbers are all relative to that. To finish off, I've taken Lee's Age 27 homers, normalized them to Tango's aging curve, and then graphed the results against Lee's actual power output:



Ok, shut up. I know you can't hit tenths of homers, but without them, you lose the nuance of the numbers. Nonetheless, I look at the graph and it's obvious that two seasons at least appear to be major outliers: Ages 30 (injuries) and 29 (????). I won't say exactly what I think might've been going on in during that huge year in 2005, but it rhymes with Gurglormance Fendancing Klugs. I mean, it could've been a Davey Johnsonesque fluke. But I'm guessing it's more Brady Anderson, if you know what I mean. Alright, fine. I'm implying that Derrek Lee might have done steroids that season! I know I was remarkably veiled, but there it is. Anyway, that's what I initially thought -- before even graphing the numbers -- and I sent Matt the following (cleaned up) text:
Not certain injuries entirely to blame. ... Homers on perfect career trajectory if you take out those two fluke-and-injury seasons.
As I said, that is what I initially thought. When I was making the graphs it occurred to me that I should really do this with his road homers, what with him going from a pitchers' park in Florida to the generally-power-hitter-friendly-but-sometimes-who-the-hell-knows Wrigley Field before his Age 28 season. And here are those numbers, both raw and predicted by Tango:



Wow. 2005 isn't really an outlier at all. Sorry Derrek. I'm sure you understand by now, I'm suspicious of you all. But don't worry; I'm no anti-PED zealot (more on that to come.) Nevertheless, seeing as how the injury limited Lee to 50 games at age 30 while he played at least 150 at 31 and 32, the true outliers are the last two seasons. And so Matt does have a valid point, that the injury -- it was, and apparently still is, a bum wrist -- is likely to blame for Lee's precipitous power plunge. And yet I stand strong. For regardless of the circumstances, they do not mitigate the fact that Derrek Lee is now, and will always be,* a contract albatross.

* 'Always' defined as 'through 2010'.

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