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.

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.

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.