Community Projection Review: Ryan Doumit

by Charlie on Oct 8, 2009 12:37 AM EDT Comment 15 comments

Pittsburgh Pirates catcher Ryan Doumit fields a ground ball to force out Atlanta Braves' Brian McCann in the second inning of a baseball game in Pittsburgh, Friday, April 17, 2009. (AP Photo/John Heller)

7 months ago: Pittsburgh Pirates catcher Ryan Doumit fields a ground ball to force out Atlanta Braves' Brian McCann in the second inning of a baseball game in Pittsburgh, Friday, April 17, 2009. (AP Photo/John Heller)

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For those who are new here, we play a game each winter wherein we come up with a "community projection" for each starting player's performance for the upcoming year. Then we look back after the season is over. First up this offseason is Ryan Doumit.

Community: .289/.346/.477

ZiPS: .287/.343/.463

Actual: .250/.299/.414

Bonus: We guessed that Doumit would play in 115 games; actually he played 75 after missing almost three months with a wrist injury.

Most of the projections were pretty similar, and none were terribly close, but Bucdaddy came the closest, betting that Doumit would hit .271/.303/.433.

As bad as Doumit's season felt, the difference between what he did in 2008 and what he did this year mostly just stems from his batting average being 68 points lower, which mostly just shows what a fickle little finger batting average can be. He still hit for good power, and he pounded the ball in September and October, batting .329/.406/.459 over that period. Which will probably be enough to heighten our optimism until next season--or, at least, until he hits the DL in the second week of April.

Doumit may not ever be healthy for any sustained period of time, but he's still an asset as a catcher. As a first baseman or a corner outfielder, not so much. And until Tony Sanchez is ready, if that ends up happening, the Bucs don't have anyone worth moving Doumit around for anyway.

Stlil, this season showed that Jason Jaramillo is a credible second-division starting catcher, and that Robinzon Diaz is a perfectly decent backup. (Jaramillo's defense makes up for his somewhat lackluster hitting.) Also, this didn't get much publicity, but Erik Kratz, who handled a lot of the catching for Indianapolis, showed a decent arm and solid power in his best minor league season yet; he's a marginal player, to be sure, but it actually wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if Kratz, who is already signed to a minor-league deal for 2010, were pressed into big-league backup duty.

So the Bucs have a bunch of vaguely interesting options, and I'd look for them to deal a catcher in the next year or so. Doumit, who's older, less reliable, and more valuable on the trade market than Jaramillo or Diaz, is a likely choice if he gets off to a hot start next year.

Doumit had a mediocre year, and Jaramillo didn't hit after Doumit bumped him back to reserve duty. But the Bucs' catching defense was better overall than it has been in years (certainly it was much better than it was in any year Ronny Paulino was in Pittsburgh) and the Pirates could probably weather a Doumit deal without much of a problem by giving Jaramillo the first crack at the job and turning to Diaz if that doesn't work out. Depth is a nice thing to have.

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Comments

Me? Huh.

See? Pessimism pays off.

by bucdaddy on Oct 8, 2009 9:57 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Pessimism seldom goes unfulfilled for a Pirates fan.

by maguro on Oct 8, 2009 10:46 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

No one ever went broke underestimating the abilities of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

by JRoth95 on Oct 8, 2009 2:16 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Trade him

I’ve been saying it since the Morgan trade. It wouldn’t actually have made sense with his injury and excruciating comeback, but he’s our last valuable position player, and we don’t need him.

I guess the question is – what could we get for him? I’m not interested in more depth, but I don’t need it to be a major leaguer – I’d be happy to get a top AA or solid AAA pitcher for him. Doumit will be gone before we contend anyway, and he’s more likely (IMO) to be worthless in 2012 than to be super-valuable. [I’m also open to offers for Duke, but it would need to be a LOT – say, a good ML starter plus a solid AAA prospect]

Projection:
270/330/470, 110 games (starts).

by JRoth95 on Oct 8, 2009 2:23 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Those sorts of pitchers aren’t typically available for injury prone catchers…now if we had Yuniesky Betancourt that would be a different story.

by MrPedriqueIfYoureNasty on Oct 8, 2009 2:31 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

If a team already had a good ML starter to trade...

…why would they be moving him for Duke? To say nothing of adding in a solid prospect as well.

by Vlad on Oct 8, 2009 6:28 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Not SP – a guy who starts games in the field.

I hate this ambiguity in terminology – I thought about fixing it when I wrote it, but felt like it was clear enough (coming back to it 2 days later, I see that it’s not – my first response was, “why the hell did I write that?”).

Anyway, Duke for a real (not nec. brilliant) 2B plus a real, close-to-the-Majors prospect (I’d be fine with someone in AA who can be expected to see AAA in 2010, or whatever; I just don’t care about another piece down at A, unless he’s a total stud).

by JRoth95 on Oct 9, 2009 6:02 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

People always say he wouldn’t be very valuable if we moved him to 1b or RF, but how many of those have we had recently that could hit .300 and 20hr’s? I would take that from either position. The half season we got that out of Nady, we dealt him for one our top 3 starters, top 3 prospects and some other pitching depth. I’d say that’s pretty valuable. I understand the defense suffers but eventually we will need to score more than 3 rpg in order to win.

I still expect him to get dealt with capps for a good SS prospect and LHRP this offseason though.

by Mr. E on Oct 8, 2009 2:30 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

it's not just defense.

Doumit’s bat would be around league average in RF or at 1B – and you’re right, we’d take that.

It’s just that you can get a league average RF or 1B relatively easily (and cheaply), but finding an above average (bat) C is difficult.
So you’re actually replacing a league average (.800 OPS) RF/1B bat with Jaramillo (.664 OPS in 219 PA this year)

It’s pretty close to playing Brandon Moss (.670 OPS in 424 PA this year) as your everyday RF…except Moss can actually play RF decently. Doumit: not so much.

by dirtyfrank on Oct 8, 2009 2:57 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

And when...

has Doumit ever hit .300 and 20 HR’s in the same season? He had a career year last year because he was able to play in 116 games. His 2009 numbers are almost identical to 2007 in which he played less than 85 games in both. He has been injury prone his entire career including the minors. And as Vlad has pointed out many times, putting him at another position doesn’t help because he was hurt while playing RF. He’s injury prone everywhere. Now with that being said, explaint to me how OPS of .813, .858 and .714 gives us an advantage at 1B or RF? .858 was his best season and we just ran a guy out of town who OPS’d .843 and .841 the last two years and that guy played better defense. I think we are all under this impression that somehow not playing behind the plate will allow Doumit to explode offensively. Well we can wish in one hand and you know the rest. Doumit, when healthy, is a guy who will OPS over .800 when healthy. I just don’t think he draws enough walks to ever sniff .900. I like the guy but my point is his OPS is nothing special at 1B and RF but is above average at C.

by Slick1 on Oct 8, 2009 6:28 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs