More on John Buck and Billy Butler

Rodger took issue with my characterizations of John Buck and Billy Butler in yesterday's
post about possible dump targets for 2008.

I'll start with Billy Butler; since this is an easier topic to address, and might possibly stem more from a misunderstanding than any disagreement.

Billy Butler is the youngest hitter in the majors right now. The only one born in 1986. There are 3 pitchers; Homer Bailey, Yovani Gallardo and Felix Hernandez. Hmmm. I'm buying and holding that stock.

I won't get into a debate about how great Billy Butler could possibly be, because I agree that his ceiling is arguably the highest of any prospect in baseball right now.

However, keep in mind that the point of this exercise was to gauge the value of dump targets for 2008. If I were putting together a list of probable American League All-Stars in 2012, there's an excellent chance Billy Butler would be on that list. In the harsh world of Roto, though, I won't own him in 2012, unless I give him a four-year contract on Freeze Date 2009. Based on his limited major league experience, Billy Butler is a high reward/high risk player to build your team around. He has 84 major league AB. He could break out in 2008. He could also hit .280 with 15 HR and 75 RBI: solid numbers for a 22-year old, but not what I'm looking for if I'm dumping Vlad Guerrero and Joe Mauer for him.

Including Felix Hernandez on the list of young players in the majors makes this very case. If, back in 2005, you threw two top players someone's way to build your 2006 squad around Felix, I'm guessing you probably didn't win in 2006. Or your victory in 2006 wasn't helped as much by Felix as you would have hoped.

On the issue of John Buck, rodger was even more strident.

It is misleading to try to find a downtrend in Buck's numbers by equating a week's worth of July stats with what he's done the rest of the year.

On this point I agree, and it was stupid of me to throw those numbers in there to prove a point. I wavered about including them or not, and decided to do so in order to present as complete a picture as possible. But you're right rodger, less than a week's worth of stats proves nothing. This was a lazy man's way out that I would have taken an expert to task for had I seen it elsewhere.

Through three months of the season his worst month was 777 and his OPS is still excellent at 872. In real baseball, that's very valuable, especially from a catcher.

Buck has real power and he's showing pretty good patience this year. His OPS is certainly not built around an artificially high average (as it was during September '06). He's hitting below .250.

This is where we have to part company and agree to disagree.

First of all, here are the positives on John Buck. His walk total is up, and while I'd still like to see more walks out of Buck, 40-50 walks would be an improvement over his previously terrible high of 26. Second, Buck very well could hit 25-30 HR in 2008. I'm not convinced he will (remember, I said I was skeptical, not completely doubting), but he could.

For the sake of argument, though, let's remove Buck's April and extrapolate his 2007 numbers across a full season:

John Buck projected (May 1 - July 8 stats only)

G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	SB	CS	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
107	371	52	81	16	0	29	55	34	78	0	0	.218	.284	.496	.780

The 29 HR certainly would be great from any position, let alone catcher. The problem here is that these numbers, plugged into Alex Patton's 2006 A.L.-only formula, are worth $9, thanks to the terrible batting average. I'm closer to agreeing with rodger in reality. A 780 OPS from a catcher is solid, and something a lot of major league teams should want, even if the batting average looks ugly. However, most leagues still use batting average and not OBP.

Is it fair to discount John Buck's April?

Of course it isn't fair. Those stats count, for the Royals, the fantasy teams that own Buck, and Buck himself. John Buck's agent is certainly happy that John Buck hit like that in April.

My problem rests with the fact that a .218 major league hitter is going to have a hard time keeping a job, and Buck's May 1 through today are much more in line with his career numbers than his hot April. Before I make a major dump investment in John Buck, he'll have to prove to me he can sustain numbers like that for more than just a month.

I don't think Buck is worthless to a team playing for next year. He probably went for $5 or less in most auctions, and a $9 catcher is going to provide a little profit on your investment. However, my larger point is that you shouldn't look at Buck's stats to date and expect a 30-35 HR hitting catcher. Historically, guys with sub-300 OBPs get exposed, after a while, at the major league level. There are exceptions, but I wouldn't place big bets on those exceptions.