Reader Question: Kenshin Kawakami vs. Nate McLouth
January 19, 2011 at 4:22 pm by Kevin Orris under Front Office, Player Analysis, Q&A
Earlier this month, I received a question from a reader that wanted to know:
Why is Nate McLouth essentially being handed the starting center field job in 2011 while Kenshin Kawakami is being shown the door?
While I e-mailed him my response, I wanted to share it here for those of you who may be wondering the same thing.
For those unaware, Kenshin Kawakami is currently a member of the Mississippi Braves, the Braves’ Double-A affiliate. Therefore, he is still a member of the organization, however, Frank Wren has been trying to move him.
According to Wren, he has received multiple offers for Kawakami, including one from a NPB team in Japan, but he has not found an offer that has satisfied him to this point. I am positive that the Baseball Operations department has been evaluating plenty of scenarios, with every one of them having Kawakami dealt before Opening Day. He’s set to make $6.67 million next year, which would make him one of the highest paid minor league players of all-time.
From what I remember, most of the offers that Wren has received involve the Braves taking on around $4 million worth of salary. Right now, they are just waiting to receive an offer that provides bigger returns than those previously offered whether it is through cash or players. There’s an outside shot that they could trade a bad contract for a bad contract, but more likely that they trade him for a handful of washed up minor leaguers.
If they cannot find a suitor or an offer that they are satisfied with, I am sure that he will be invited to camp with a chance to compete for a role, but it’s unlikely that he will win one.
The Braves are committed to developing their young talent, therefore, Kawakami has no shot of making the rotation out of camp. Tim Hudson, Tommy Hanson, Derek Lowe, Jair Jurrjens, and Mike Minor currently make up the rotation with Brandon Beachy next in line.
While it once seemed like the bullpen could be a realistic landing place for KK, there are far too many superior arms at this point in Craig Kimbrel, Jonny Venters, Peter Moylan, Eric O’Flaherty, Scott Linebrink, and George Sherrill. There are also a handful of arms competing for a potential eighth bullpen spot: Scott Proctor, Erik Cordier, Juan Abreu, and Cristhian Martinez.
There aren’t many teams with money left in their budgets that are in desperate need of a back-end starter, so there’s a chance that he does compete in the spring, but even then, it only improves his trade value. Bill James projects him to pitch 50 innings this year with a 4.32 ERA. I’m not sure where he expects him to pitch, but there aren’t many players that the Braves would be willing to remove from the 40-man roster in order to make room for KK.
It’s interesting that you mention the Nate McLouth vs. Kawakami comparison. Fans might not realize this, but Kawakami posted a positive WAR last year, 0.6, while McLouth had an abysmal -1.3.
Obviously, any time that a player is costing you wins, it’s a bad thing. If WAR didn’t exist though, I would think that Kawakami cost the Braves more actual wins than McLouth did. (This is just an observation based on memory and no actual research)
The reason that McLouth has been handed the center field job is because of depth. While both are scheduled to make more money than they are probably worth, McLouth has more value over the alternative compared to Kawakami, who presents negative value to the pitching staff.
While McLouth had a sub-par season last year, he is still the best center fielder that the Braves have available. Kawakami isn’t even one of the best six starting pitchers available to the Braves, hence the difference.
In a perfect world, both would come into Spring Training and produce better numbers than ever before, but this is far from a perfect world. Don’t expect anything right out of the gate, but after the 40 game mark, the Braves are going to be forced to acquire an upgrade for McLouth if he fails to produce.
Have a burning question? E-mail me at Kevinorris@capitolavenueclub.com and I’ll answer them through e-mail and on the website on a regular basis.
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If you go by bWAR:
McLouth: -1.2
Kawakami: -1.0
Still, I agree with the thought that Kawakami cost us more wins because his potential replacement was far better than McLouth’s. When comparing between players on individual teams, it is important to remember that any value of WAR is not team specific.
yeah, anytime your replacement in the OF was Melky or Hinske it is kinda easier to side with Mclousy.
always to me the play that epitomized his season was against the Marlins when he came up as a PH with the bases loaded and none out he hit a dribbler back to the pitcher.
This isn’t related or anything but I thought you might be able to give a good opinion on this Kevin. If Jurrjens was fully healthy this year and managed to post another season along the lines of his ’09 campaign, what kind of package could the Braves realistically acquire for him in your opinion?
well going by fWAR, if he put up another 3.8 WAR season like in 09 he would have been worth 11.3 WAR from 08-10. Only 19 other pitchers in mlb would have had a higher WAR during that time. http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=sta&lg=all&qual=y&type=6&season=2010&month=12&season1=2010
Now considering Jurrjens would be under control for 3 arbitration years i think you could have gotten a hell of a package for him.
All we can hope for is that McLouth continues to hit like he did at the end of the year. He hit well (especially considering the precedent he’s set w/ATL) and was even robbed of two HRs (including a GS in FLA). Maybe he’ll be encouraged to put on one more pound of muscle…
And, if he isnt any better, we’re still a better hitting team than we were last year. Granted, the bullpen has seemingly taken a hit, but any time you exchange a Melky for an Uggla and a Glaus for a Freeman, you cant help but feel you’re going in the up direction.
Has the bullpen really taken a hit? Sure, experience-wise, yes, but talent and depth-wise I think the 2011 bullpen will be just as good as the 2010 bullpen.
Sorry for the delayed response.
As far as Jair Jurrjens goes, I think that he can fetch a few prospects, hopefully hitters, but the sabermetricians feel that it will be difficult for him to return to his form from a couple years ago.
The bullpen lost Dunn, Wagner, and Saito, but still has plenty of depth. I couldn’t be more excited for Craig Kimbrel to get a full time job, and for Jonny Venters to no longer be under the control of Bobby Cox. It’s not that I dislike Bobby, rather that I dislike him throwing 83 innings last season.
Why not just admit that Wren made a mistake in aquiring KK, instead of dancing around that? And why not go after a center fielder that can hit, instead of keeping McLouth, (who has defense only) to help this team be a winner? So many questions and so few answers.
McClouth is going to have a huge year and watch out for los Bravos in 2011. McClouth’s attitude has been great through his whole ordeal. He did the opposite of what Frenchy appeared to do and that is really worked hard on his hitting during his extended stay in the minors last year. He came back up to the big club and was a real spark, practically hitting piss rockets all over the field.
Go Nate! Go Braves.
Dorothy Davis: Will it bring your mind to ease that everyone agrees that the KK signing was a bad one? Does it even mean anything at all to acknowledge that fact, instead of delving into other, better things to talk about?
McLouth had a bum of a year. Nobody doesn’t think that. You’re pointing out the fact that McLouth can’t hit, which he’s actually shown that he can, unless you fell asleep at the end of this past season and missed a few of the shots he connected on. But you’ve missed the point, made in several posts on this site, that McLouth’s defensive abilities are average at best. You’ve also forgotten that the Braves are already above the payroll that they’ve had last year. They’re not in the position to offload many, or any, of the big contracts that they currently have and I’m not sure you put as much thought into that as you should have. Think about what you post.
Castrologist: An optimistic outlook is exactly what McLouth (one c, not two) needs. I’d like to see him bounce back this year, but I would rather see him bounce back in the 8-hole and not the 2-spot.
McLouth haters are killing me. You have many people on Atlanta that were tripping over themselves in the blogs recently to bring back Andruw Jones who has stunk for three years. You had people wanting to give Francouer chance after chance. Kelly Johnson the same. McLouth has one bad year, with a few reasons, and everyone is dumping on him. It’s pathetic.
1) He had the same surgery before last season that it took our beloved Brian McCann almost half the season to get right after. That can be attributed somewhat to his slow start because he was seeing the ball better, but differently and wasn’t used to it.
2) Before he could get on track he was splitting time with Melky Cabrera which cut his AB’s and certainly didn’t help. IT also didn’t provide much of an upgrade.
3) He got steamrolled by our RF on a ball that he clearly called Heyward off on. It was a rookie mistake by Heyward who was still trying to prove himself. Unfortunately the concussion that resulted hurt McLouth’s chances of turning his season around even more.
Still .. with all that, he cam ack in late August and started ripping the ball. His numbers looked really good, and it is a very good sign for this season. He still can run well, which is a rarity on the Braves. He covers ground well in the OF and always seems to get good jumps on the ball when I am watching in the stadium (but that is compared to watching Diaz, Melky, Hinske and Co, so he probably isn’t as good as he seems).
Quite frankly the hate being sent McLouth’s way is absolutely pathetic. He even handled his demotion with absolute professionalism, stating it would be a good chance for him to get more at bats and he obviously needed them.
KK on the other hand so no real signs of improvement. He was good in year one, but that might have been because no one had seen him before. Last year teams were absolutely crushing him and it seemed that every time we ran him out there it was a guaranteed loss. There is no reason coming into this year to think that KK will turn it around.
Don’t even try to compare him to Lowe at the beginning of the year. Lowe was imploding in the 6th inning more frequently than others, while with KK the game was out of hand after 3 innings. It’s much more demoralizing for a team to be down 3-4 runs after three innings than a pitcher giving those same runs up later. That is why KK got little support.
Also noted in the OP, KK comes from a position of great strength for the Braves. There is NO reason to want this guy on our team for the money he is making. He may go somehwere else and pitch well, but tht won’t bother me at all, even if the Braves rotation blows up.
Mark this down .. McLouth will have a season somehere between his 2008 and 2009 season. It won’t be anywhere near the season he had in 2010. By two months into the season all you haters will realize how silly you were. By my estimates he finishes around .280/20hrs/70rbis/90runs/20sb’s and tracks down a ton of gappers.