cards sign juan encarnacion

3 years / $15m. just announced on bernie miklasz's radio show. my knee-jerk is: dumb move. more to come.

Update [2005-12-23 9:19:22 by lboros]: encarnacion will turn 30 in march. he had a career year last season: .287 avg was two points off his career high (19 pts above career avg); .349 obp beat his prev career best by 19 points (and 33 pts above career avg); .447 slugging was his 3d best mark, close to his career avg.

his .796 ops in 2005 was juan's career high, 33 points better than his previous best. his career ops is .756.

.796 ops is a career year. man, this is a waste of money.

encarnac'n does, however, replace grud'k vis-vis long-last-name ability.

Update [2005-12-23 9:28:34 by lboros]: encarnacion has played most of his career in pitcher's parks (florida, los angeles, det), but unfortunately his splits do not reveal him to be a pronouncedly better "away" hitter. in fact, last year he hit much better in pro player than he did in other parks.

nor does he have a good platoon split --- his ops last year vs lefties was a healthy .866, but the previous two years he posted .600 and .736 against lefties.

Update [2005-12-23 9:41:48 by lboros]: juancion's VORP last year was 28.3, about what grud'ks was last year (23.1). that long-last-name thing again. walker and sanders both had comparable VORPs (29.1 and 27.5, resp'vly) but they only played half-seasons. so this guy is worth 1/2 one of those guys . . . . and remember, last year was juancion's best year.

other VORP comps of interest: jason lane (28.2), kevin mench (23.7), brad wilkerson (22.1), jacque jones (17.7), jeromy burnitz (17.5), so taguchi (15.2). . . . . baseball prospectus' rate2 puts him at a few runs below avg as a rightfielder.

per win shares, he ranked 19th among nat'l league outfielders with 19 --- 17.8 hitting, 1.6 fielding. similar win-sharers at his position included colorado's matt holiday (19), moises alou (20), geoff jenkins (22), luis gonzalez (22), junior (22), and wilkerson (23). just below him were jose guillen (18), shawn green (18), burnitz <17), klesko (17), ken lofton (16), and jason lane (15).

Update [2005-12-23 9:47:2 by lboros]: his list of comparables at baseball-ref'nce is interesting but not nec'ssly encouraging. lotta former redbirds. #1 is sixto lezcano. but these guys aren't really very similar. sixto's career on-base was .360; juancion's is .316. in his lone year as a card, sixto put up a .376 obp.

#5 is george hendrick, one of my all-time fav?ite cards ? but here too the comparison doesn?t hold. silent george posted pos+ figures above 100 (ie, above league avg) for 12 consec years between age 23 and age 34. his high ops + was 144; his low 107. juancion has only cracked the 100 barrier twice in seven years as a regular ? 113 last year, 101 in 2003. he has been been in the low 80s, which is a truly disastrous score, three times in 7 years.

comp #6 is andy van slyke --- also not similar. slick had a .349 career obp, and his lowest ops+ was above 100 in ops+ in 10 of 11 years between 22 and 32; low ops+ was 96.

i'm through for now. i'm disgusted. this acquisition sucks.