It was mentioned on another site recently that the Cubs should trade Derrek Lee and then sign Adam Dunn. This is probably not possible as Lee has a full no-trade clause and little incentive to waive it. It’s also been reported that he was asked by the Cubs at the end of the season if he would waive it and he said he wouldn’t, but it sounds like a decent possibility. Or does it?
Adam Dunn is very good at hitting baseballs as everybody knows. He takes a lot of walks, hits a lot of home runs, and for good measure he strikes out a ton too. I’ve not been the biggest fan of Derrek Lee, but in order to justify making this kind of deal it would have to improve the Cubs. Let’s assume the dollar figures are a wash—Derrek Lee makes $13 million in 2009 and 2010 and Dunn is likely to get close to that over the next 2 years. So there wouldn’t be any money saved. What would the Cubs get for Lee? Probably not much. Lee is in his 30s, well into his decline, and hasn’t been good enough over the last few years for teams to give up very much and pay his remaining salary.
So basically you’re looking at trading Lee away for a marginal return and not saving any money that could be spend elsewhere. A Dunn vs. Lee comparison would work quite well here. Little else needs to be taken into consideration.
Over the last 3 years on offense, Dunn has been worth 17.8, 33.1 and 28.6 runs. It’s reasonable to expect him to worth about 25 to 27 runs, but let’s go with the average of his last 2 years: 30.85, or 31 batting runs.
During those same years, Lee has been worth 4.6, 33.3, and 16.3 runs. Lee spent most of 2006 on the DL with a broken wrist. As we did with Dunn, let’s take the average of his last 2 years as a number we can expect from him next season: 24.8, or 25 batting runs.
Dunn has a 6 run advantage over Lee as a hitter. That probably surprises some of you. We haven’t even looked at defense and we know Dunn is awful. We also know Derrek Lee is overrated so let’s take a look at each of their projections from Rally, CAIRO and the average of their UZR at 1st base over the last 3 years.
Name: Rally, CAIRO, UZR 3-year average
Lee: 1, 1, 1.7
Dunn: -6, -8, -12.5
If we average those 3 and round to the nearest full run, Lee is worth 1 run on defense and Dunn (at first base) is worth -8 runs. To be honest, that’s probably generous. His UZR the last 3 years as a first baseman (small sample size of course) has been -20.4, -68.6, and -26.1. That’s only a combined 33 games so you obviously can’t expect him to be that bad, but I’m guessing he’d be worse than -8. Let’s just use -8 though.
Name: Batting Runs, Fielding Runs, TOTAL
Lee: 25, 1, 26
Dunn: 31, -8, 23
So you basically have the same player. Lee is a bit better than Dunn, but it’s close enough that it would be fair to call them equal. Dunn does add a left-handed bat that the Cubs currently need, but Dunn also hasn’t played much 1st base so the defense could really be an issue.
I don’t see any reason to entertain this idea. If Dunn was expected to be about 10 runs better then I’d agree, but he’s expected to be 3 runs worse. We haven’t looked at baserunning either. It’s hard to measure, but let’s use BP’s EqBRR, which is the number of runs added in baserunning. Dunn was -0.6 in Arizona and -1.96 in Cincy. Lee was -2.55 so even though Lee was a pretty bad baserunner last year, he was 0.1 runs better than Dunn.
There’s little anyone can do, short of exaggerating their claims as was Dunn by some with regards to Dunn/DeRosa, that will show that Adam Dunn is a better first baseman than Derrek Lee. Considering roughly the same cost for each and how difficult it would be to even trade Lee because of his NTC, there’s no point in doing this. Dunn is not better than Lee and no matter how many times people say he is, it’s not any more true than it was the first time. Derrek Lee has been overrated by Cubs fans, largely because of his ridiculous 2005 season, but he’s also been underrated by many the last couple years as well.
1. Faith Plus One (view all comments) — Jan 05, 2009 @ 01:54 AM
Did your Dungeons and Dragons stats tell you that? (dying laughing)