The Past, Present, and Future of Dee Gordon
Last week, I discovered something unfathomable – the fantasy baseball industry considered Dee Gordon to be a consensus top 50 asset in dynasty leagues. Nobody is as present value-centric as me when it comes to dynasty rankings, and yet I choked on this valuation. We’re talking about a one-dimensional player entering his age 30 campaign. Without some help from iron man Robinson Cano, Gordon is going to lose his useful second base eligibility.
It’s hard to receive between zero and two home runs from a starting outfielder and still contend. Much easier to swallow those numbers from the middle infield spot. And so, amply confused, I asked for your help. Today, I’ll take a closer look at the results of that post, where Gordon may go from here, and why my industry colleagues appear to be so bullish.
Let’s do this chronologically.
Gordon of Christmas Past
Gordon broke out just in time for the 2014 season. Over four years, he’s accrued 2,343 plate appearances with an approximate .304/.328/.377* batting line, nine home runs, and 212 stolen bases. That’s nearly a steal every 10 plate appearances. He also has 341 runs and 127 RBI; paces of roughly 95 runs and 35 RBI per 650 plate appearance season.
Using the Standings Gain Points methodology (SGP), Gordon has consistently produced at a $30 to $35 dollar pace in typical 5×5 leagues. He’s generally worth around $25 to $30 in OBP formats. His value takes a larger hit in the less popular OPS variant.
It’s very clear that Gordon has been an easy top 50 asset over the last four seasons – possibly top 10.
*For ease, I cut some corners calculating OBP and SLG
Gordon of Christmas Present
The speedy second baseman is on the move to the outfield. He’ll quickly gain a useful dual-eligibility for his fantasy owners. Steamer projects Gordon for a .281/.318/.361 batting line with five home runs, 77 runs, 49 RBI, and 45 stolen bases.
Projection systems are built upon the concept of regression to the mean. That’s why he’s expected to post a career best home run total and career worst stolen base rate. Steamer thinks he’ll be a little more like other players next season.
It’s perfectly reasonable if you prefer to expect a .290/.330/.380 triple slash with two home runs, 100 runs, 50 RBI, and 55 stolen bases. Keep in mind, projection systems also account for disaster scenarios. My “adjusted-Steamer” projection looks like a combination of all the sunny scenarios.
Your personal valuation of Gordon will depend heavily on the weights you use for stolen bases. Statistically, one stolen base is worth around two home runs. That means Gordon is kind of like Giancarlo Stanton with a side of Aaron Judge.
However, I prefer to arbitrarily set the relationship at one steal to 1.5 home runs. For me, that produces well-rounded rosters even if it means I’ll never draft Gordon or Billy Hamilton. Bradley Zimmer and Jonathan Villar are extremely selectable at their current ADPs/prices.
Gordon of Christmas Future
Baseball Reference has a similarity scores tool. Scroll down to find Gordon’s list if you want to interact with it. Here’s a picture.
I’ll be honest, I don’t find these very helpful for predicting future production. DJ LeMahieu, for example, may be the least physically Dee Gordon-like second baseman. He’s a 6’5” giant.
I want to know what physically comparable players accomplished. I sorted all player seasons since 2000 by stolen bases to proxy speed. I eliminated players over six feet tall like Carl Crawford, Hanley Ramirez, and Villar. Next, I removed players with very dissimilar batting profiles – Villar again, Hamilton, Jose Reyes (too much power), and Jose Altuve (ditto). Here’s what’s left in no particular order:
Tom Goodwin Sr. (31)
Eric Young Sr. (33)
Roger Cedeno (26)
Michael Bourn (29)
Chone Figgins (32)
Juan Pierre (32)
Scott Podsednik (29)
Luis Castillo (31)
Willy Taveras (26)
I noted the age of each player’s last fantasy-productive season in parenthesis. This is very much the list I expected to find. My gut tells me that Gordon’s skill set will fall off a cliff. These guys all very abruptly disappeared into the aether.
Young was an exception. He never approached Gordon-level speed after age 33, but he did manage streamable numbers through his age 38 campaign. Sabermetricians always whined about how often he played. Podsednik also had a brief late career revival at a lower level of production. Castillo is a bad comp for Gordon. His elite plate discipline allowed him to outlast the waning of his speed. His final Gordon-like season was his age 26 campaign.
Based on recent statistically and physically comparable players, Gordon should be expected to rapidly collapse in zero to three seasons. In last week’s post, I had originally estimated a shelf life of about 3.5 years before he slipped into part-time duty. Now I worry he’ll disappear even faster. Then again, this is a very small and not-entirely-scientific list of comparables.
In Summation
Past: Gordon has produced at a top 10 hitter rate over the past four seasons. Missing part of one season for a PED suspension may push him just outside of the top 10 players for that period.
Present: Although there is some mild bust risk for the upcoming season, we have every reason to expect vintage Gordon in Seattle. The position change does add a small amount of risk. There’s also a small chance he’ll eventually get bumped to ninth in the lineup. Jean Segura and Mitch Haniger are alternative top-of-the-order bats. The risks are massively outweighed by the upside – another 60 steal campaign complemented by over 100 runs and a career high in RBI.
A top 30 valuation make sense, especially if you kick off your draft with an extreme slugger like Stanton or Judge. Gordon perfectly complements those mammoths. He’s worth far less to a team with Mike Trout, Paul Goldschmidt, Trea Turner, Altuve, or similar early round talent.
Future: Here’s where things get scary. My colleagues still rate Gordon as a top 50 dynasty asset. That’s insane. Physically and statistically similar players disappear around age 32. Gordon is entering his age 30 season. He’s still extremely valuable to a win-now roster, but there’s very little reason to believe he’ll remain productive for much longer.
Due to present value greatly exceeding future value, I estimate Gordon is between the 90th and 150th best dynasty asset. Anyone with an eye on the future should only look at Gordon as an arbitrageable asset. Even if you aim to use Gordon as part of a 2018 victory, I recommend selling him mid-season. For emphasis – dynasty owners should not keep Gordon beyond the middle of 2018.
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Plus Dee Gordon typically does not have good SB% rates, which should suppress his real life value.
I’d say I mostly agree with you on the valuation (in that if I was participating in a startup Dynasty league I wouldn’t touch Gordon in the first 50 picks and would probably only look at him around 80-100), but I think if you’re an owner of him in an existing dynasty, it makes sense to hold him until you get a good offer (as plenty of people are still obviously “in” on him), especially since he should be solid in the short term and speed is so scarce. I think this is especially true if you have him and are currently a good, top level team in the league.
No disagreement here. Since his skill set is rare, you should be able to find somebody in a position to benefit while overpaying.
I agree with your take, and this exposes one of my favourite fantasy baseball paradoxes: just because a player is no longer valuable to a team, doesn’t mean that he will not continue to play. If you don’t occasionally account for Managers being inefficient, you’ll always end up writing off players like Dee Gordon far earlier than they should be written off.
In really smart leagues, guys like Hamilton and Gordon are routinely undervalued because everyone operates exactly like you’re operating. So few things have to go wrong for Gordon to be completely useless. Any rational and thoughtful analysis puts Gordon exactly where you’ve put him. That entire analysis is built on the fact that the best players play, though.
Baseball is definitely getting smarter and maybe this’ll come to an end soon. Who knows. But for now, I’ll continue to grab guys like Dee and Billy. It never feels good owning those guys and it’s impossible to trade them because the value they provide is far greater than the value they should be providing.
With that said, Gordon doesn’t feel like he’s 30. I feel like if you’re trying to trade for him, simply telling the other owner that he’s almost thirty would drop his value like 30-50 spots.
I don’t think anyone is saying he’s not valuable to a team. He had over 3 WAR last year. But the fact of the matter is that players of his skill-set tend to decline rapidly, in both real baseball, and especially fantasy. I’m guessing you weren’t the one holding the bag on Carl Crawford in 2011 (age 29) or Jacoby Ellsbury in 2015 (age 31), or any of the players listed in the article who became unplayable for fantasy reasons at or about their 30th birthday.
Whether their managers keep trotting them out there in real life also has no bearing on whether they are playable in fantasy. I’d rather be a year to early in dumping/trading a player (in dynasty, which this article is about) than a year to late. In redraft leagues, he’s less of a risk obviously, especially with 2B eligibility still, but there is still a real risk that his already weak contact skills weaken even further, while he loses a step of speed, leading to a .240-.250 AVG and only 30 SB. That very possible statline, with no power or RBIs is borderline unplayable.
I had him on an expiring Keeper deal (not dynasty) last year, and between him and Trout, I needed no other SB help to win the category. I will not be bidding on his services at the auction this year, because of the above risk. I could easily be wrong and he could again be a top 20 player, but I’m not paying $30+ for that kind of risk, because at some point in the very near future the floor is going to fall out on his value.
When you say “one dimensional player”, clearly you’re referring to his speed. What are the other dimensions? I prefer to think of him as a three category player (SB, Runs, Avg) in a typical 5×5, which I think is plenty useful. I also figure that if Rajai Davis was still running at a decent clip at age 35, maybe Gordon won’t bail as quickly.
That being said, if one is in a dynasty and can start/secure multiple 15+ SB players to compensate the loss of 50+ SB from an aging Gordon, might not be a bad move just to avoid any future issues.
He’s a 2.5 category hitter in my eye – for our readers, I’m pretty sure OBP is nearly as common as AVG (it is for me).
As for the one dimensional quip, I’m referring to his actual physical skill set. He’s entirely slappy speed. When he loses half a step, he’ll go full Revere.
I disagree with your reasoning. Dee Gordon will likely have zero value within three years, because the same can be said of most MLB players who will be playing 2018 as 30 year-olds. In a dynasty, you should be skeptical of anyone past their physical prime – Gordon is not special in that regard. My conclusion from your research is that there are not many meaningful comps. Dee Gordon has a better hit tool than all of those players. Juan Pierre was the only one that really ever hit .300. I would imagine that you are using some kind of compound stat to measure hitting, like woba or rc+, but it is a mistake not look at the individual components, specifically batting average. As much as sabermetricians like to look past batting average, I don’t think real MLB teams do. His ability to hit is going to give him many more chances than most of those comps who were just speed guys praying to get on base. I would imagine that for most of those comps, they got hurt or they simply could not make enough meaningful contact to play every day. I think Gordon has a better chance than the rest of them to stay useful for several years.
As for dynasty value, well… nobody knows how to value that, but value this year is the most important factor for sure and he has that. As of today, there is no reason to think he won’t be valuable next year as well. Even if you are not in win-now mode, the fact that he will have some trade value and name recognition in 2019 is worth something – you could easily flip him for prospects to a contender while also collecting whatever value he provides this year. I am not a huge fan but I think that he is more valuable than you do. Maybe he falls on his face this year… like many of the other top 100 dynasty assets will. Dynasties are risky business!
I’m just going to note that Gordon’s hit tool is only ok. He makes up for his deficiencies by being aggressive. Pitchers also feed him cookies because he has no pop which helps him to cut down on the strikeouts.