We took a quick look at the Hardy for Gomez trade a couple days ago, so now we’re going to peer a little deeper with the trade value calculator. Mainly because I wanna bust that thing out again.
Let’s start with Hardy. Hardy had a rough year last year with the bat, but a lot of that was BABIP related. It was just .264 last year, and his peripheral numbers weren’t really any different, although his strikeout rate did climb a bit. Projections have Hardy at around a .330 wOBA, and if we use his career UZR/150 plus his estimated playing time (really I have no idea. I’m assuming the Twins will want to play him as much as possible, and he did get a lot of playing time the past two years, so I’m going with a little over 600 PA) we get a 3.8 WAR for Hardy. Hardy made $4.65 million last year, so bumping him up a bit for arbitration, I really think he’ll only make about 5 million, but just to be pessimistic I’m going to put him at 6 million.
Based on these numbers, Hardy is set to be worth roughly 20 million in surplus value, not including compensation picks after he becomes a free agent. If he rebounds, it is entirely possible he could be a type B or hell even a type A free agent, but to me it’s safer to just estimate his value before picks. Let’s do the same with Gomez, shall we?
Gomez is probably going to be around a .290 wOBA player, and if we project him roughly in the middle defensively of his last to years, and if we give him starter’s playing time, we get a little over 1 WAR for next year. For the three years after that that he will still be under Milwaukee control, I’m going to bump him up gradually, eventually settling on 2 WAR.
Going on the numbers, it looks like the Twins came out ahead. However, if Gomez improves like he has the potential to, this will turn into a win for the Brewers due to the additional years he is under team control. This really seems like your classic win-win for both teams, although losing Gomez’s outfield defense will sure hurt for the Twins.