Late Innings

CNN’s Jon Heyman is at it again:

11. David Eckstein, Padres infielder: A bargain for 850 grand. Worth it for attitude alone.

Pull up the brakes. The great Heyman lists Eckstein as a great bargain who probably wouldn’t slip through waivers. To paraphrase Seth and Amy, really?!?

Using some nifty data from FanGraphs, we can produce the following chart:

WAR data provided by FanGraphs.com.

Going from the above graph, Eck will hurt you with his glove and with his bat (as evidenced by his .269/.327/.344 line.) However given the fact that he plays shortstop, that keeps his value above water. Eckstein is currently a 1/2 win player, or is worth roughly 2MM this year. If he gets shifted to another position (outside of catcher), his value is shot.

Eckstein is currently making 800K, so as of right now, the Padres have a 1.5MM surplus value in their “scrappy” infielder. Is this solid, maybe? I can think of better bargains out there. How about the recently-traded Cliff Lee? How about Longoria, Lincecum, etc.? I can think of many. They’d sure as hell slip through waivers…

Heyman also speculates in the hit-and-run piece that Alex Rios is over-valued, and as Dave Cameron proves, our fun-loving author is full of shit. Man, what I would give to have Heyman’s job…