The Stros jumped into the super-charged 2006 free agent market in a big way yesterday by signing former Brewers slugger Carlos Lee and, in a lesser deal, former Padres starter Woody Williams. Although there is always a certain amount of giddiness whenever the hometown club opens up the bank vault to attract a couple of star players who might propel the Stros back into the playoffs, the stark reality is that these two deals are highly risky and do little to solve the Stros’ main problem.
The Lee contract is the bigger of the two deals by far, $100 million spread over 6 seasons with a no-trade clause for the first four, which makes Lee the highest-paid Stro player this side of Roger Clemens. Lee is a 30 year old, 6’2″, 235 lbs Panamanian leftfielder who reached the majors in the White Sox organization at the age of 23 and basically showed little potential during his first three seasons. He had his first good season with Sox in 2002 as a 26 year old, hitting 17 RCAA/.359 OBA/.484 SLG/.843 OPS. After falling off some in 2003, Lee had his best season in the majors in 2004 when he hit 26/.366/.525/.891, including 31 taters. After falling off a bit again in 2005 when he was traded to the Brewers, Lee had another solid season in 2006 with the Brewers and the Rangers, hitting 24/.355/.540/.895, including 37 yaks. His career statistics over eight seasons are 78/.340/.495/.835 with 221 homers, although it should be noted that he has been substantially more productive during his past four seasons than he was in his first three.
Thus, although he becomes the highest-paid Stros hitter, Lee has been nowhere near as productive a hitter over his career as Stros 1B Lance Berkman (353/.420/.621/1.041). Perhaps Lee is a late-bloomer and will continue his productivity surge of the past four seasons over the next six seasons. However, Lee doesn’t walk much, so there is a higher than normal risk that his on-base average will decline as he gets older, and he is neither fast nor a good fielder. Accordingly, the Stros bought high and long on a hitter who has been roughly 20% as productive as Berkman during his career to date. Maybe it works out, but nobody should be deluding themselves that the Stros got a steal.
The two-year, $12.5 million Williams deal is not as risky as the Lee deal, although any type of deal on a 40 year-old pitcher not named Clemens has to be viewed with at least one raised eyebrow. The good news is that Williams has been a consistently productive pitcher over his 14 year career, rarely magnificent but just as rarely bad. He has had only one really good season, from midway thought the 2001 season through midway through the 2002 season when he pitcher 32 RSAA/2.40 ERA, but he was shelved midway through the 2002 season with arm trouble. On the other hand, his only really bad season was in 2004 with the Padres (-19 RSAA/4.85 ERA), but he bounced back last season to post a respectable 9 RSAA/3.65 ERA, which was about the the same as Andy Pettitte posted last season with the Stros. Williams’ career numbers are 41 RSAA/ 4.09 ERA.
So, the Stros clearly strengthen their club with these signings, but the question looms whether they overpaid for what they are likely to receive. I would have preferred J.D. Drew to Lee among free agent sluggers, but Lee is clearly more durable than Drew and there is that whole Scott Boras thing with regard to dealing with Drew. Williams appears to be a reasonable risk, but without Clemens and Pettitte, the Stros are still in need of several of their young pitchers to step up to fill out their starting rotation next season.
But more importantly, neither of these deals addresses the Stros’ main problem, which is having unproductive hitters such as Taveras, Everett, Ausmus and Bidg last season in the Stros’ everyday lineup. If Luke Scott can continue his productive hitting and takeover in right field, then the Stros could take care of one of those problems by repacing Taveras in centerfield with either Chris Burke or a hopefully rebounding Jason Lane. But even with that move, given the Stros’ indulgence of Bidg’s quest for 3,000 hits and Everett’s superlative defense at short, something needs to be done to replace Ausmus at catcher or else the Stros will continue to have three far-below National League-average hitters in their everyday lineup. The Stros got to a World Series in 2005 with such a lineup, but it took one of the best pitching performances by three starting pitchers on one team in Major League Baseball history to accomplish that. Inasmuch as that is not likely to happen again, here’s hoping that the Stros aren’t finished dealing this off-season to plug at least another of those holes in their lineup.
Lee and Williams’ career statistics are below.
A pdf of Lee’s statistics is here and of Williams’ statistics is here. The abbreviations for the hitting stats are defined here and the same for the pitching stats are here.
