Analyzing Peter Bourjos

(This is all in light of my previous post.)

Apparently people are speculating that a trade centered around Peter Bourjos moving from the Angels to the Mets and R.A. Dickey moving from the Mets to the Angels. That's a horrible idea; Bourjos is not worth R.A. Dickey. He's not worth Jon Niese. But is he worth having at all?

One might be given pause by the fact that he hit .220/.291/.315 last year in limited usage as a reserve outfielder (195 PA), accumulating just a 73 wRC+ and having been on pace for about -24 runs above average from batting over a full season. He's a spectacular enough defender that he was still worth 1.9 fWAR and 1.1 bWAR last year, but still, the awful hitting gives one pause. Moreover, his genuinely good season of hitting in 2011, when he hit .271/.327/.438 with 12 home runs, 11 triples, and 22 steals, en route to a roughly 4.5 WAR season (when combined with his being a brilliant center fielder) was sustained in large part by a .338 BAbip, which looks unsustainable given his low line drive percentage (14.5% over the course of his career, worst in the majors over that period).

Except... when I plug his numbers into an xBAbip calculator, which projects a batting average on balls in play by the nature of those balls in play, I find that Bourjos if anything under-performs his expectations on balls in play. Using 2012 numbers, in which offense (including BAbip) was way down, his 2012 season should've produced a .300 BAbip, instead of the .274 it did produce. In 2011, sure, he was outperforming slightly; that year should've been a .331 instead of a .338 by 2011 numbers, and would've been just .321 in 2012. Meanwhile, in 2010, his rookie season, Bourjos had just a .228 BAbip but his batted balls should've resulted in more like a .285. So over the course of his young career, Bourjos has had some genuinely bad luck on his balls in play, even considering the trajectories on which he's hit those balls. Why is this true, despite his woeful lack of line drives? Probably because he hits quite few fly balls, which have the worst BAbip of anything; for someone who doesn't hit many home runs, this is a sensible approach.

I think, therefore, that Bourjos would be worth picking up, for a low enough price. (I.e., not for Dickey or Niese!) Even when he's been a lousy hitter, he's been a valuable player because of his speed and defense, and there's reason to think that his offensive results so far have been a floor rather than a ceiling. He'd fill exactly the Mets biggest hole, and with a bit of coaching from Dan Hudgens, might even be able to improve his offensive approach a bit. And when he's good, Bourjos has shown that he's not just good, he's really good, like 4+ WAR good.

The Murphy + McHugh for Bourjos trade I outlined in my previous post would leave the Mets with an offensive cadre of Josh Thole (C), Anthony Recker (C), Ike Davis (1B), Jordany Valdespin (2B), Ruben Tejada (SS), David Wright (3B), Lucas Duda (LF), Peter Bourjos (CF), Kirk Nieuwenhuis (RF), Justin Turner (IF), Zach Lutz (IF), Mike Baxter (OF), and, well, someone else. Not sure who. If they were then to sign Scott Hairston and, perhaps, trade Duda and another one of their non-top-flight pitching prospects to some AL team in exchange for, maybe, a better backup catcher type, that would be a good offensive core. Maybe toss in a backup middle infielder type to make up for the fact that they'd have a Valdespin/Turner combo manning second base. You'd have a lineup that could be Bourjos/Tejada/Wright/Davis/Hairston/Kirk/Turner/Catcher against lefties, and Bourjos/Valdespin/Wright/Davis/Kirk/Baxter/Tejada/Thole against righties, or something.

I can't stress enough how much the Mets shouldn't give up either Dickey or Niese for Bourjos, or even for a package centered around him. But Bourjos for Murphy and McHugh, or something similar on our end, strikes me as eminently fair, and a deal that would improve both teams.