Steroids? Nah.
An article recently detailing that Barry Bonds’ brace may be the culprit for the tainted homerun chase has received a lot of press. While Bonds is getting ready to pass Aaron for the all-time home run champ, this article has been popping up all over sports pages I read on the internet. The basic premise of the article is that Barry Bonds’ brace has padded his home run total by “75 to 100 extra home runs” because of certain benefits the brace gives the wearer. The author of the article, Michael Witte, lays out 6 points of why the brace provides Bonds with a mechanical hitting advantage.
While the article is borderline absurd (it’s full of dubious made up claims) it is interesting enough to read over to find out what the latest internet hub-bub is about. The ever-excellent BP posted a special BP Radio on the subject of the brace today. Will Caroll tracks down the actual custom bracemaker for Bonds, Mark Silva, and runs over the 6 points of the original Witte article. The biggest shocker of the Carroll-Silva chat is that Silva claims that since 1995-1996 till present, he has not made any changes to the braces mold. Indicating that Bonds’ arms have not gotten bigger than average in the past decade or so. Interesting stuff.
In other news, the Arizona Diamondbacks have reached a three year extension with OF Eric Byrnes for 30 million dollars. You might be wondering why this made news on a Giants page but I had the sneaking suspicion that the Giants brass might make a run at Byrnes over the offseason. He grew up a Giants fan and has expressed his interest in the past to play for the black and orange.
My problem with Byrnes is that he’s extremely overrated, even if he’s a nice guy, and signing him to a 3 year deal in his age 31 season would be a terrible baseball move. His defense is overrated because he “omg dives for the ball!!” occasionally and makes “WebGem-eqsue” catches. Byrnes has been having a great season for the D-Backs but I don’t like his chances of replicating this season. He’s been worth around 5.4 wins this year for the D-Backs and they’re hoping that he’ll continue to be worth something in this neighborhood for them.
My beef with Byrnes is that he’s overpriced and the Giants already have a Eric Byrnes on their team. I present you Eric Byrnes and Randy Winn’s career numbers.
Byrnes Career – .268/.329/.457 OPS+ 102
Winn Career – .285/.344/.421 OPS+ 100
Randy Winn is also the better defender. Based on runs total, UZR has Byrnes at +2 runs and Winn at +11 runs. Byrnes doesn’t really fit on a Giants team.
And finally, Noah Lowry’s MRI on his forearm came out clean. Bochy indicated that Noah would be skipped at least 1 start. The Giants will call up Russ Ortiz for the battle of the century when he takes on former Giant Matt Morris and the Pittsburgh Pirates on Friday. I’m no Ortiz fan but I hope he sticks it to Morris and the Bucs.
It depends on what you are looking for. Winn is kind of redundant when we already have hitters capable of hitting leadoff and #2 in Roberts and Vizquel/Durham. And we could use more power. But he’s fine in the #2 spot while we bat Vizquel 8th, and #1 when Roberts sits.
Brynes would provide power and SB, but be lacking in defense, but we have been lacking in defense in LF for a few years now. Of course, I don’t know how much of that offense is from his ballpark.
Winn, however, is “only” paid $8M so he provides similar offense at 20% less cost, so that’s a win-winn for us. :^)
If Durham returns to his former form, he provides similar stats to Brynes and at a cheaper cost as well.
So yeah, Winn is just as good as Brynes, but again, it depends on what you are looking for. If I could trade Winn and get Brynes, I think I would. But given that we already have Winn and it’s pretty impossible to trade him and to get Brynes, I think you’re right that given the current situation, Winn is preferable to Brynes and that Brynes is overvalued, but then every player of his ilk appears to be overvalued, Matthews Jr. and Pierre got similar contracts in $/year and I think they are comparable.
Hi Martin,
I thought it would be interesting to compare WARP-1 scores for Eric Byrnes and Randy Winn from 2002-2007. WARP-1 takes into account fielding and hitting into the scores.
WARP-1 Scores 2002-2007
Byrnes
2002 0.6 (only 94 AB’s)
2003 3.2
2004 5.2
2005
-OAK 2.5
-BAL 0.2
-COL -0.3
2006 4.3
2007 5.4
Winn
2002 6.0
2003 4.7
2004 5.3
2005
-SEA 3.3
-SFG 4.9
2006 4.0
2007 3.3
Winn was worth 4 or more wins in 5 of the 7 years. Brynes was worth 4 or more wins in 3 of the 7 years. It’s a little unfair to compare them this way (as Byrnes only had 90-something AB’s in 2002) but it’s a rough sketch at best. They still come out to be pretty much equal players. Winn will hit for a higher BA and have a higher OBP but Byrnes will SLG a little more and he might have more SB’s than Winn because it seems that Winn doesn’t run much anymore.
Byrnes stole 25 bases last year and has stolen 28 so far this year but before that, his previous season high was 17, so I’m not sure how fair it is to say that he’s a base stealer. Winn’s career SB% is pretty bad though. For his career he’s at 67% which is far below the desired 75% success rate. Brynes has a SB% of 86% but he hasn’t ran much in his career until the last couple of years.
I’m not sure I’d swap Byrnes for Winn, mostly because I don’t trust Byrnes season this year. It just screams flukey to me. He’ll turn 32 next season and I just can’t see him continuing to hit like he has this year. He also received a full no trade clause with his deal so he’ll be hard to move if he regresses. Thank goodness that Randy has a partial no-trade next year, so the Giants could always move him if the right deal came along. I also like that Winn plays better D than Byrnes and I think in the spacious AT&T that’s important.
What gets me the most is that I don’t understand why the D-Backs signed Byrnes to a 3 year deal. They have OF Carlos Quentin who has had a great minor league career just waiting to play LF. Quentin did struggle this year but they seem ready to cut ties with him after only 200 AB’s this year. Quentin has had some nagging injuries this year that have hurt him. He was decent in his first cup of coffee for the D-Backs in 2006. I was talking to a friend that’s a D-Backs fan and he was telling me that fans love Byrnes because of his “energy” and other intangibles. It doesn’t make sense to me for a organization like the D-Backs that have a ton of cheap OF talent to lock down a OF position for three years for a guy that’s been merely league average in his career and could likely regress.
Oh, and one more thing I forgot to add. Byrnes numbers this year could take a hit in the 2nd half as he usually crashes in the 2nd half.
Career Splits
1st half – .290/.352/.499
2nd half – .238/.297/.398
He’s done well so far in the 2nd half but there’s still a lot of baseball left.