Reader LynchMob sends us the following:
I’m not an Oscar Salazar fan… can you help me understand how/why he’s going to make the Opening Day roster?
He seems perhaps a good study on the concept of “Replacement Level” players… he seems like he’s got to be below-replacement-level… but if that were true, then the Padres could (and would) replace him, right?
I guess my bottom line is that I’m hoping a player who is at (or above?) “Replacement Level” will come available at the end of ST and Oscar will be replaced by that guy… or that I’m wrong about Oscar.
I’m always making comparisons. It’s how I try to understand the world. If I don’t know what something is, I try to figure out what it might be like. I define things in relation to other things.
Did you ever see that Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where Captain Picard attempts to communicate with a member of another race whose language consists entirely of metaphors? It’s like that, only without space travel and Ashley Judd. (There I go making comparisons again.)
Anyway, once upon a time there was a young right-handed hitter without a real defensive position. His initials were O.S. and he got a brief cup of coffee in his mid-20s before being sent back to the minors for several years, where he put up numbers, forcing an eventual return to the Show. In time, O.S. became a productive member of a big-league bench and enjoyed a nice little career as a role player.
I’m talking about Olmedo Saenz, but the same description may well apply to another player in a few years. Oscar Salazar played eight games with the Detroit Tigers in 2002, then disappeared until 2008, when he resurfaced with the Orioles, for whom he hit .284/.372/.506 in 94 PA.
Salazar got off to a hot start for Baltimore the following year and was traded to the Padres for submarining right-hander Cla Meredith in July. In San Diego, Salazar hit .269/.339/.463 in 121 PA while seeing action at both corner outfield spots, as well as first and second base.
In 271 PA, Salazar owns a career line of .286/.356/.490. Several projection systems like his chances in 2010:
- Bill James: .293/.341/.476
- CHONE: .284/.336/.465
- Marcel: .278/.347/.463
I haven’t compiled IVIE yet, but my personal guess for Salazar is .278/.338/.457, which is more conservative than what many experts predict. Bearing in mind that projections are not the same as reality, and we don’t know how a given player will respond to irregular playing time after having been a starter in the minors, this is a nice skill set.
Salazar can hit. Assuming he adjusts to a bench role, he should be a better version of Edgar Gonzalez. Without knowing off the top of my head what current replacement level values are, I’m pretty confident they’re below what Salazar has accomplished so far at the big-league level and what he is projected to do in the future.
In short, Salazar offers a potent right-handed bat and the ability to play multiple positions, albeit none well enough to merit a full-time job (to say nothing of the fact that it would make no sense for a rebuilding team to let a 31-year-old with minimal big-league experience block younger guys with equally little experience but potentially brighter futures). If the Padres can’t use someone who fits that description, I’ll bet another team could.
Fangraphs says Oscar is a below-average defender, but a good enough hitter to more than make up for it. They say he was worth 6.6 runs more than a replacement-level player last year, and those projections for next year come out to an even better margin over replacement level.
Yeah, I’ve looked at his numbers quite a bit. The guy deserves a shot. There’s lots of reasons why I’m not an MLB manager, but I’d stick him at 2B as the starter. Then again, I wanted to place Scott Hairston at 2B last season too.