Rios in the Cell
Alex Rios was claimed off of waivers today and will be a Chicago White Sock shortly. In our look at Scott Rolen and Nick Johnson in their new digs, we established somewhat of a precedent for trying to analyze the effect of a mid-season home park change: look at the park left behind, the new park, and the tendencies of the hitter as well as their history. So let’s take a look at Rios from an offensive standpoint, as the White Sox ponder their $60 million dollar addition.
The team has had historic problems in center field, so in some ways they can’t be blamed for coveting a player that has performed well in center field (12.8 UZR/150). But let this be about his offense, which has been inconsistent at best.
At first glance, his power shouldn’t be too effected by the move. Rogers Centre currently has a 1.152 park factor for home runs, and US Cellular a 1.164 number. However, Rogers had a sub-1.00 park factor for home runs last year, another park pointing at the instability of park factors. Over a three year period, Rogers came in at a 1.20 park factor while the Cell had a slightly more robust 1.293 park factor for home runs.
So far we’re looking at a maximum of a 5% overall power increase for Rios. Like with Rolen and Johnson before, 5% on a player averaging around 20 home runs a year is not a huge increase. Could Rios profile well for US Cellular and receive more of a power boost?
Though I still desire more detailed spray charts for hitters – and would appreciate being put in the right direction by anybody reading this piece – www.hittrackeronline.com can give us his spray charts for home runs.
Rios pulls almost all of his home runs. He’s hit 10 of his 14 this year to left field, as his home run chart shows. This continues a trend – last year he hit 14 of 15 out in left field, and the other was in left-center. 20 of his 24 in 2007 went out to left or left-center.
The Rogers Centre is 328 down the line and 375 in the left-center power alley. US Cellular is 330 down the line and 375 in left-center according to wikipedia. Perhaps it’s the wind that helps the Cell play tougher on pitchers, because the dimensions are practically the same.
The final question, it seems, is if Rios will ever bust out with some real power. A popular answer has been that he won’t because he hits too few fly balls. But his career fly ball rate (37.2%) is weighed down by his first two years in the league when he was a true worm-burner. He’s settled in around 40% now, and there are plenty of other sluggers that hit 40% of their balls in the air (Adrian Gonzalez and Lance Berkman just to name a couple).
What those other sluggers have that Rios doesn’t just happens to show up in their respective home runs per fly ball numbers. Rios (9.5% this year, 8.6% career) just doesn’t measure up to Gonzalez (17.3% career) and Berkman (19.6%). After 3071 plate appearances and a home run per fly ball rate just around the league average, I think it’s safe to say that Rios, in his average season, will display 20-home run power, no matter which of these two fields he calls home.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
I think Rios will settle in comfortably to a mid-20’s power diet, with a steady dose of high-20’s seasons scattered in there. Remember, we’re dealing with a 6’6″ beast of a man that might hit 200lbs if he were soaking wet and carrying John McDonald on his back (or the gnawed pile of discarded Ribs & Wings beside Beckham’s locker.)
Rios has a very solid power/speed combination, and while he’ll never be a 30/30 kind of guy, he should be able to accumulate about 40 total in any given season. 20HR/20 SB, 30 HR/10SB -type of season.
I’m pretty upset that Rios was simply given away, and he should continue his second half surge in Chicago. I’m thinking .850ish OPS the rest of the way for Rios.
They better fire Riccardi for this unbelievably retarded move just dumping Rios with his value at an all time low.
After looking through all of the numbers to throw together a quick and angry piece about J.P., I’m almost certain that this was a salary dump. I can’t think of a scenario where J.P. would put this together by himself, unless he was told to just cut salary.
Every conceivable metric tells us that Rios should respond, yet J.P. decided not to rescind the waiver. Rios has an 805 OPS since the break, so the signs are even there — we’re not just dealing with “theory.”
Unfortunately, the stat geeks always have to rely on imperfect knowledge to make our arguments and criticisms. Maybe Ricciardi knows something — Steroids, Injuries, Whatever.
On the surface, this just screams of stupidity but there HAS to be something else.
Who replaces Rios in Toronto?
Please say Snider.
Not until he loses his super2, about late august.
I’ve been to a lot of Sox games and when it’s hot, and the wind blows, the ball hops out of that park. Rios is going to love hitting there and for the 1st time in memory the Sox have a real CF. Great move for the Sox, too bad for the Blue Jays.
Too bad he will be hitting many worm burners..
MLBTradeRumors.com is reporting that the White Sox have acquired Alex Rios off waivers from the Toronto Blue Jays for nothing in return. This essentially means the White Sox are responsible for Rios’ remaining, prorated contract for 2009 and the roughly $60 million remaining on his contract over the next five seasons. Was it a smart move for a franchise that has been utilizing some combination of DeWayne Wise (.248 wOBA) and Brian Anderson (.283 wOBA) in center? My answer, is a firm no.
Despite all of the hype and brand name recognition (courtesy of Moneyball and Fantasyland) behind Alex Rios, his career has been nothing short of disappointing. While a lifetime .285 hitter who averages 90.3 runs per season and boasts a career 77.2 SB% may appeal to most fantasy baseball players, a player with a career .342 wOBA (league average is .335) and declining range in CF does not.
Since his peak of production 2007 (.368 wOBA, .201 ISO, 7.9 BB%, 9.3 Fielding Runs Above Average), Alex Rios has been on a steady decline. In each season since, Rios has seen his wOBA, ISO, BB%, K%, contact rate and defensive production all trend in the wrong direction. He quickly went from a young and promisingly productive 20/20 leadoff man worth 20.9 Batting Runs Above Average to an overvalued, underproducing asset whose bloated contract was not even the most ridiculous on the team (that honor goes to Vernon Wells, who signed a 7-year, $126 million contract in 2006). If not for the aberration uptick in the quality of defense Rios provided the Blue Jays last season (23.9 runs above average, the highest of a career that averages 11.3 Fielding Runs Above Average per season), Rios’s total Runs Above Average value would reflect his three year skills decline.
So why, knowing all of this, would Kenny Williams allow J.P. Riccardi to dump Alex Rios and his monstrous salary on the White Sox? I am not entirely sure. Of course both DeWayne Wise and Brian Anderson have been below replacement level in terms of their offensive productive for the White Sox this season, but so has Alex Rios, whose season Batting Runs Above Average mark sits at an embarrassingly low -0.5 runs. Furthermore, both DeWayne Wise and Brian Anderson have provided considerably more defensive value for the White Sox than Alex Rios has for the Blue Jays this season. Where the two White Sox centerfielders have a combined 10.1 Fielding Runs Above Average rating over 1561.0 innings of outfield work, Alex Rios has only been worth 0.1 Fielding Runs over 1951.1 innings! That’s approximately one less win of contribution over almost 400 MORE innings of work. So yes, yes, those same two outfielders have cost the White Sox almost two full wins with their poor batting skills, but it’s not like the Alex Rios machine and his slightly below league-average offensive this season are going to help the South Siders very much — especially when you consider his .290 BABIP, declining speed score (5.6 this season) and decreasing line drive rate. At best, Rios has been league average this season. In reality, however, he is an underproducing player who eats up a lot of payroll and a valuable spot on a major league roster.
At Rios’ current pace, the White Sox would have been better off acquiring ANY purely average minor league player and giving him a home in centerfield. It would not only save $60 million over 5 years, but give the White Sox an expendable option come this off-season and allow them to acquire a much better player at a much cheaper cost. Even if Kenny Williams thought this upcoming off-season’s centerfield market was weak, there is no conceivable way to justify taking Alex Rios’s contract off the hands of J.P. Riccardi, even at the cost of no talent (not that the Sox have much minor league talent to fawn over). Williams is paying $11.6 million more per season than he would a random journeyman minor leaguer of average ability and getting the same level of overall production.
Chalk this one up as a big win for J.P. Riccardi. He got the best value any team is going to see from Rios over the last two seasons, largely thanks to an abnormal UZR spike last season. For once, he did something good for the franchise. Kenny Williams, however, well…that’s a different story.
Wow! Incredibly well said. I tried to make this argument in the Rios vs. Wells piece posted a few weeks ago, but was shouted down, so I’m glad to see someone else is with me.
As a Jays fan, I completely agree — the team gave Rios a huge contract after his career year in 2007, thinking that was the start of something great. But it has thus far turned out to ve Rios’ peak, and he’s declined over the past two years.
Most people here in Toronto thought he was an under-performing bum, and there was a fair smattering of boos when he would inevitably pop out in a key situation. (Check out his IFFB percentage this year vs. past years!) I don’t think too many people are sad to see him go.
I hate to see my team be in salary dumping mode — and honestly, Scott Rolen has been one of the few reasons to watch the Jays for the past couple of months, so it’s a shame he’s no longer here — but congrats to JP for actually making two good moves in the aftermath of the Halladay debacle.
One more thing to pile on about Rios’ decline: It might be tempting to use the fact that Rios’ BABIP is 30-40 points below his career average as an indicator that he will rebound.
But if you have actually watched him play, he’s consistently making bad contact. His LD% is down and his IFFB% is way up. But most disturbing is look at his hit chart on MLB.com, foxsports.com or elsewhere. Last season at Rogers Centre, in 77 games, Rios had only four ground ball outs that were fielded by the pitcher or catcher. So far this season, he’s had nine such ground ball outs in only 56 games.
His swing looks slow. He’s just hitting the ball of the end of the bat and not squaring around on pitches. I don’t think that’s going to change in Chicago, unless the White Sox hitting coach can have him make some adjustments (especially to his horrible stance, where he looks way off balance).
@ Jeff-
Riccardi didn’t “dump” Rios on some suckers, in fact the White Sox had previously inquired as to a trade so it would appear JP still found a way to botch this one. Also, it’s Chicago, not KC or SD. In a big city market players like Anderson and Wise were simply intolerable much more often than not. Their Sox careers will forever be defined by the nice catches they made in 2 sentimental victories: the 163rd game over the Twins and Buerhle’s perfecto, respectively. Great memories from probably the 9th-most-talented guy in the field both times. Nothing more.
Regarding your central argument: there’s no question Rios is having a down year (so far) but from 2006-08 he was trending upward as a +3.6, +4.5 and +5.5 WAR outfielder, which compared very favorably to such ESPN darlings Ichiro, Abreu, Josh Hamilton, BJ Upton, Ryan Braun, Curtis Granderson, among others. Obviously Rios’ 2009 screams “outlier!” and should not be cherry picked as primary evidence of what would have to be one of the most abrupt and colossal collapses ever witnessed out of a supremely athletic 28-year old supposedly entering his prime.
Kudos to Kenny Williams for again trusting his scouts, and taking a calculated risk on what should be a real asset to the White Sox franchise now and in the future.
To pick nits, a BRAA of -0.5 for the season makes him a slightly below average hitter, not a below replacement hitter.
“Williams is paying $11.6 million more per season than he would a random journeyman minor leaguer of average ability and getting the same level of overall production.”
I’m going to call bullshit on that one.
And you you at least like you know, put in a link to your full page article? It will make your ad people happy at least.
MLB has spray charts(http://mlb.mlb.com/stats/individual_player_hitting_chart.jsp?c_id=cws&playerID=425567&statType=1) They arn’t that useful, due to being flash, but they are all to the same scale, so you can just take screenshots and superimpose them with an image program(I use Gimp). Still, kind of a pain though.
@Jeff: a bit of a hijack there. Not that I mind a lot, but an entire article in the comments thread was surprising. I had meant to analyze Rios’ power in his new park, but of course it’s a great time for a referendum on the trade.
One criticism I have of your piece is that Rios was great last year (worth $25+ million), and that it doesn’t seem his defense was ‘trending’ downwards, it’s just been crap this year. UZR, though a great measure of defense, is not always stable from year to year.
Look at Carlos Gomez’ defensive stats. He can hardly be trending downwards, but he’s gone from 16 UZR/150 to 6 this year. Mark Teixeira had a 9.3 UZR/150 last year and is negative this year. The number oscillates pretty wildly from year to year, even for players widely considered strong defenders.
On the other hand, Rios has been fairly stable on defense, worth around 9 runs defensively in the three years sandwiched between his great debut and his very good last year. I think it’s safe to say that Rios is above-average on defense, and at 28 should be so for another couple of years. 5 years will be pushing it, for sure.
Jim and AJS: thanks for that. I knew I had seen it before. Perhaps my next article like this will include some superimposed spray charts. I still believe we can expect, at most, a 5% increase in Rios’ slugging numbers. It’s quick and dirty math, but he’s not going to suddenly turn into Grady Sizemore in the Cell.
That’s a hefty contract the Sox are picking up. Dye’s is expiring but they added Peavy’s and won’t be able to keep Danks, Floyd, Quentin, Beckham, Ramirez all happy will they?
It’s not like Rios is replacing Carlos Beltran out there, he’s replacing Wise. This is a wise gamble to make the playoffs, and I think it will work. If you need a CF with above average offensive production who are you going to go to? Who exactly is out there on the market?
If Rios adds a win or two down the stretch, which seems plausible relative to the production of Wise and the departed Anderson, and the Sox get to the postseason, then the revenue generated from not only ticket sales, but divergent streams of revenue like tshirts, posters, TV ect will probably pay Rios’ salary for the next few years. It also signals to free agents that the White Sox are in a “win now” mode which can make it considerably easier to attract players in the offseason.
I still think it’s a great move.
Being able to pick up a player who might be worth a full win over the remainder of a season is a huge deal, and they didn’t give up anything more than the money to pay the contract, which is fairly reasonable.
Seriously, you’re calling a downtrend in BB and K%? Lets say Alex Rios has a true skill level where he walks 7% and Ks 17% of the time. It’s hardly fair to call a downturn when the statistics are less than a percent away from the mean.
Here’s my stand, and I’ll of course stand behind it:
Rios is essentially the same player. I’m willing to admit a slight skill decline, but if you think giving him away to get 6/10/12/12/13 off the books — you’re nuts.
There’s no doubting Rios’ BABIP has declined. A wise man would attribute that to a decreased level of Line Drives. Thankfully, we’re wiser than wise men, and we ask ourselves “Now, why would Alex Rios be hitting more line-drives?”
Well, i tend to think a Mr. Vernon Wells may have something to do with this. Why pitch to Alex Rios when you’ve got big-fat-Wells on Deck? So pitchers are throwing Rios far fewer strikes.. hrmm.. Maybe we’re onto something. Rios isn’t chasing any more than he normally does, and he’s actually cut back — which is a good sign.
I think i’m more angered with the use of the word trending to describe random fluctuation than I am with your idea that the White Sox overspent.
Furthermore, the immeasurables that’ll more than likely contribute to Rios improving in Chicago are off the charts. Playoff Race? Not Canada? Not Hated by All? New City?
Not Canada? What is that cheap shot supposed to mean? There are plenty of players who like it here.
Re Rios and Wells, that’s an argument not supported by any evidence. They only batted 3-4 for the first two months or so of the season. After that, Wells hit 5th and Rios 6th or 7th. And Rios’ best month of the season by OPS is far and away May, when he was still hitting in front of Wells.
I live in the heart of hot and sticky Toronto and I’m loving every second.
As for the Wells thing, I definitely overstepped my bounds. There’s nowhere near enough information for me to make a claim like that.
I think every Blue Jays best month was May, no? They faced some pretty bad clubs.
Kris — BABIP is not just random fluctuation, persay. It is a
Kris — BABIP is not just random fluctuation, persay. It is a very volatile stat that is based on several factors that have all been indicative of a skill decline. The poorer contact rates, the increase in IFFB, etc etc. a .300 BABIP from a guy who hits 18% of his balls for LDs and double digit IFFB rate is not unreasonable at all. He’s not hitting like a Matt Kemp kind of player who boasts +300 BABIP sustainability — at least not this season
Also, a 1 point difference in K% when the league avg rate is 18% is a 5.56% variation. That’s much more hefty than you make it seem
100 PA later, Alex Rios does nothing to prove me wrong. The power outage continues