Year in Review: Free Agents

Let's do a series of recaps. We'll start off with reviewing last year's Free Agents--that is, the ones we pursued and didn't get, and how they stack up against who we had:

We'll start with the big one, Alfonso Soriano.

Soriano:
EqA.: .286
HR: 33
RBI: 70
OPS+: 123
FRAR: 25

Overall, a fair decline from 2006. Granted, A-Sor spent a good chunk of the season injured, so he did pretty well considering. Now let's compare him to Gary:

Matthews Jr.:
EqA.: .255
HR: 18
RBI: 72
OPS+: 98
FRAR: 21

Aside from his average, Matthews kept up his 2006 performance. Looks like he wound up very inferior to Soriano offensively. Also looks like A-Sor didn't do badly in CF. While Matthews did a fine defensive job--in fact, he likely saved us a win or two through his defense--it seems that we would have benefited more from having Soriano play center.

Now for another one the Cubs got to first: Aramis Ramirez. We didn't even have a chance on this guy, but it's still worth taking a look at.

Ramirez:

EqA: .295
OPS+: 129
HR: 26
RBI: 101
FRAR: 31 (note that this is well above the 22 for an average 3B)
Runs: 72

Figgins:

EqA: .288
OPS+: 123
HR: 3
RBI: 58
FRAR: 1
Runs: 81

I'm not certain that the FRAR on Figgins is correct, as it is so abysmally low. Otherwise, it looks like Figgy and Aramis were pretty comparable this year. However, it also looks like Figgy was better at getting on base and scoring, while Ramirez manufactured/drove in runs more effectively. So it's hard to say which would have been more valuable to the Angels this year. The bottom line is that this offense badly needed power, which Ramirez would have provided very well behind Vladdy, but all the power in the world wouldn't do much good if there was nobody on base. It's a toss-up. That being said, this was really a career year for Figgins, and I think we got quite lucky that he did so well. I'm not confident that he can repeat this performance next year: now might be a good time to trade him in a package for either a ridiculously strong arm, or a big bat. Outfield power would be best.

Come to think of it, that pretty much covers who was available for offense/fielding. I do not think that Mike Piazza is worth looking at, as while it would have been nice to have had his veteran presence, the man spent most of the season on the DL and couldn't produce when he was off of it. In the end he had a comparable performance to Napoli and Mathis--and it's better to give them the experience necessary to someday become catchers of Piazza's magnitude, as opposed to letting Piazza take up those at bats.

Vernon Wells was a rumored trade ready to happen, and I'm glad it didn't. Still, it's likely that he'll (just like Andruw Jones) rebound from his horribly sub-par season to put up monster numbers next year that we could surely use. This is one of those situations where Stoneman gets props for not making the deal ONLY because something unforeseeable happened. If Vernon had mashed this year, this would be a different story, altogether ("It's an entirely different kind of flying...").

From this admittedly small sample size analysis, I think we can give Stoneman a B+ in terms of last offseason's FA moves. We would have done better to sign Soriano, but the fact is that we tried and in the end wound up with a fairly comparable guy. Figgy had a career year to make up for the lack of power at 3B.

The market this year is atrocious, and I do not expect us to land a big bat. I would spend this offseason making smaller, high-impact moves: Trade one of our pitching prospects (or SS prospects) who won't be ready for a while for either a major-league ready or close to it OF masher (i.e., if this were a few years ago, I'd advocate trading for a Milledge or Young)--once Vlad is gone after 2009 (if we don't re-sign him, that is), we have a massive power outage from the OF--I love #77, but having three Reggies run around in the outfield just isn't going to cut it. You could throw Figgins or Aybar into the deal, as it seems that Aybar doesn't have a starting spot with this team going forward, and Figgy's value will almost certainly never be higher. Then I would sign one of the few FA pitchers out there--maybe Carlos Silva--and hope for the best.