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January 21, 2008
Carlos Delgado: What Can We Expect?
Carlos Delgado started 2007 with a .522 OPS in his first month back from two offseason surgeries and ended it with a broken hand in the final game of one of the worst choke-jobs in sports history. You could say he had a rough year. What’s important now, though, is what Carlos is going to do in 2008. Will we again see the first baseman that hit a very pedestrian .242/.305/.435 in the first half of 2007? Or can he pick up right where he left off when Tom crapped the bed and Dontrelle broke his hand as a .949 OPS beast? Whether or not the Mets can retake their position at the top of the NL East will depend a lot on how much production they get out of first base. At age 36 in 2008, Delgado is never again going to be the wrecking machine that he was in his best years with the Blue Jays, but it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that he might get back to the player that he was in his first year with the Mets. Delgado had two surgeries in October of 2006 – how much of Carlos’s blah 2007 was the result of those surgeries, and how much was just age-related decline? If we want Carlos to get back to being a 130 OPS+ player, we’d better hope that the drop-off in 2007 was due to surgical recovery and not Father Time.  A quick glance at Delgado’s monthly OPS is encouraging. He started off 2007 abysmally, but improved by fits and starts the rest of the season. He put together a very respectable .844 OPS in the second half, and ended on a high note with the aforementioned .949 OPS in a hip-injury-shortened September. It’s worth noting that, as bad as Delgado was at the beginning of the year, he ended the year with a 103 OPS+, meaning he was actually slightly above league-average. Granted, you hope for better than slightly above league-average production from your first baseman, but he wasn’t a black hole all year long. If lingering effects from his elbow and wrist surgeries were what caused his bad first half in 2007, we might look forward optimistically to 2008. So what, exactly, did Carlos get cut, and what are the normal recovery rates for those surgeries? On October 23rd of 2006, Delgado had surgery on his right wrist for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (that’s right, Carlos Delgado and I share the same work-related injury), and then a week later surgery for tennis elbow, or lateral epicondylitis as the kids are calling it these days. Please bear in mind that I am not a doctor. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is a repetitive stress injury, where the median nerve is compressed in its passage through the wrist—the carpal tunnel—which leads to pain and numbness in the thumb, first, second, and sometimes third fingers, but not the pinky (good ol’ pinky, you’re not useless after all!). Surgeons relieve this pressure by enlarging the passage for the median nerve, like enlarging a tunnel. Hey, carpal tunnel—I just got it! Here’s how they do it: hold your hand out, palm up. At the base of your palm, the muscles that control your thumb are attached to the muscles that control your invincible pinky by the transverse carpal ligament (try touching the tip of your thumb to the tip of your pinky; those are the muscles I’m talking about). The median nerve – the one that’s causing all the problems – runs underneath that. Anyway, surgeons relieve pressure on the nerve by completely severing that ligament, which is apparently “useless.” Recovery time for this surgery, for normal people, is supposed to be about two months. Tennis elbow is either an inflammation or a series of tiny tears in the elbow’s tendon(s). Put one hand on your elbow, and try to flex your hand backwards, like you’re revving a motorcycle. You might also flex your wrist like that when you’re, say, swinging a bat. Anyway, feel that? Where the muscles of your forearm connect to your elbow is what’s causing the problem. To fix it, surgeons can either remove damaged sections of tendon, or even release the attachment of the damaged tendon. Patients are usually ready to begin athletic activity about three months after surgery. Now again, I’m no doctor, but it seems reasonable to me that, given the extremely fine muscle control required for a major league hitter, Carlos might require significantly longer than two or three months to fully recover from elbow and wrist surgeries. I might be able to bang away at the keyboard and play softball in the park at 80% capacity after carpal tunnel surgery and be just fine. But for a big league hitter to go to the plate at that same level is a recipe for disaster. Witness the first half of Delgado’s 2007. Of course, the other, less-happy way to look at it is that these injuries are symptomatic of Delgado’s decline with age, and not the cause of it. By which I mean, maybe Delgado is at the point in his career where he’s never going to be playing 100% healthy, and if he isn’t fighting a sore elbow or wrist it’ll be a cranky hip or something. All players eventually decline; maybe it’s just Delgado’s turn. Let’s take a look at Delgado’s career OPS and see what it tells us.  I’ve added a two-year moving average line to help us spot general trends. I’m also ignoring his first cup of coffee with Toronto, when he got one at-bat. Carlos has a pretty standard aging curve, meaning he gradually improved on his rookie performance with experience and physical maturity until he peaked in 2000 at age 28, which is about what you should expect; and now is slowly declining as his age starts to catch up with him. This trend line might show what I’m talking about more clearly:  That parabolic trend line looks like a pretty good fit to me. Of course this is totally unscientific, but you get my point. Forecasting for 2008, we could expect Carlos to bang out something like a .730 OPS. Ugh. Now, I don’t think that’s going to happen, but we ought to temper our expectations this year. He’s pretty clearly in the decline phase of his career. So how quickly is he declining? It might be helpful to look at some players similar to Delgado, hoping for a glimpse of the future. According to Baseball-Reference, Delgado’s most similar player through age 35 is Fred McGriff—the Crime Dog!  McGriff got a later start and had a lower peak—also around age 28—than Delgado, and then went into a slow decline through age 33. The Crime Dog had a bit of a renaissance at age 34 from 1998 to 2002, putting in years well above average with the Devil Rays and Cubs (OPS+ of 111, 142, 110, 144, and 125) before returning to Earth in 2003 (OPS+ 99) and then falling off it entirely in 2004 (OPS+ 53). That’d look like good news for Delgado, then, right? He’s due for a late-career surge! Well, maybe and maybe not. Setting aside the difficulty in forecasting one player’s career based on another—and bearing in mind that while McGriff is the player most similar to Delgado, the two of them actually aren’t all that similar—Fred had a couple of advantages going for him in ’98 that Carlos isn’t going to have in ’08.  For one, expansion: in 1998 the Devil Rays and Diamondbacks were added to the Major Leagues, diluting the pitching pool enough to cause some record offense—you may recall hearing something about it. And two, a suspicious man might mention that this was the height of the steroid era. Some of those late-career performance surges have recently been explained. So, what can we expect from Delgado in 2008? I think his second-half .844 OPS reflects his true level of ability at this point—he’ll have an OPS around .850 this year. Nothing to get excited about, for a first baseman, but nothing to be ashamed of, either. Eric’s got the CHONE projections here, and you can find Delgado’s 2008 Marcel projection here. Basically, everybody’s in agreement. Special thanks, as always, to Baseball-Reference and the Hardball Times. They know what they done. Jeff Mathews is a staff writer for MetsGeek whose writing can also be found at The Power of Hoodoo. 21 Responses to “Carlos Delgado: What Can We Expect?”Leave a ReplyYou must be logged in to post a comment. |
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He’ll be lucky if he even repeats the awful numbers from last year.
I wasn’t a fan of the trade for Delgado from day 1, but he should be better - significantly better but not a lot better -than last year. Assuming about 520 at bats, I’m figuring on 95 RBI’s. And I wouldn’t mind to see him rested against some lefties.
Tex in 09!!
I’ve been a HUGE fan of Delgado since he arrived (I was sorry the Mets didn’t sign him initially, thanks to his lunatic agent). No way the Mets even see the 2006 playoffs without CD’s bat to compliment Wright and Beltran. And imho, a healthy Delgado might have been enough to avoid the Collapse.
I also think he’ll be a major key to the team’s success in 2008.
****
Carpal Tunnel generally takes a long time to fully heal, especially if both wrists were treated. I personally know this from people who have had the procedures done and from my own doctor who has cared for many afflicted patients.
source: University of Maryland Medical Center
Ahh, Little “sky is falling” Mets. Do you ever look at anything positively? You know other than the “next HoF players” at age 18?
Question: while expansion may have diluted pitching and increased offensive numbers across the board, that can’t be the whole story or else McGriff’s OPS+ would have remained constant rather than improved, no? Also, how could he have benefited from feasting on the horrible Tampa pitchers when he was playing for Tampa? Maybe the special sauce theory isn’t idle speculation…
The parabolic Delgado chart seems to confirm my gloomy expectations for this year. If only this were the NBA; then his expiring contract would have some trade value.
BTW, I think Carlos will be better than last year although still not a huge plus to the team myself. But I do think he will be an important bat on the team and will help us win some games next year. Probably something like a “soft” 30 HRs and 90 RBI. with a better average than he had last year. I think he will not get many more RBI than last year as I think he will more consistently be batting later in the batting order than he did last year.
(I think we will see Beltran-Wright-Alou/Church as our 3-4-5 in many situations).
Amen, James.
LFM, shall we just swap the major league roster with Binghampton’s so you can watch all our “star prospects” compete for the NL East flag? :)
Obviously, you dislike the Mets roster soooo much….
I’ll take it in a heartbeat….add those 90 to the 100 each you’ll get from Beltran and Wright and you have a very nice middle of the lineup :)
LFM…where are you? I’m still waiting for the Giants didn’t win the game/ the Packers lost scenario. Do you go through life being so negative about everything or is it totally sports-related? Can’t you ever see the bright side of anything?
The Mets need Delgado to hit 30 hrs, 300 ba and 120 RBIS’s this year. Without him there is just too much to fix.
Moistless will be good for 3 months and we know Wright needs protection one way or the other.
If Del-Crappo shows up The Mets will struggle.
I say it was the injuries that held Delgado back, two injuries like that in 1 year is death for stats. In 2008, if he can stay injury free, Delgado will hit:
.275 BA, 370obp, 535slg, 35hr, 110rbi, 130+ops+
A hitter of Delgado’s caliber does not go from 2 years of getting MVP votes in both 05(mvp-6) and 06(mvp-12) and drop off the table. The man KNOWS how to hit, he just struggled with the wrist and elbow injury all year and couldn’t adjust. The hip problem was the result of him changing his swing enough in an attempt to make up for what he couldn’t do while having those two injuries. I fully expect to see him bounce back and hit less then his peak years but by far more then last years injury riddled campaign.
I expect Delgado to have a great year and be a large part of reclaiming the NL east, which i’m predicting they win with a 6 game lead, and helping The Mets deeper into the playoffs.
Take that your doubters and haters, you heard it here first baby!!!!!
Delgado actually when from #2 in MVP voting in 03, to #6 in 05 to *12 in 06 in 3 of the 4 years before his injury. In 04 he only played in 128 games and once again must have been slowed by injury to prevent him from another year of MVP votes while still posting a 129ops+. I repeat a hitter of this caliber does NOT drop off the table all in 1 year.
Delgado will have accomplish the numbers I posted above for this year and will have his option picked up is the mets fail to sign Texeria after 2008.
The Packers… did lose that game.
The kicker tried to lose it twice, Favre turned back into The Notorious I.N.T. and coughed it up.
The Delgado deal was a great deal… at first.
Now he’s injury-riddled and we’re paying the piper for giving him too long a contract. It is what it is.
I’m not saying that the deal was awful at first but… you sign a guy like Delgado to a contract that long and you just hope that he holds up for half of it but… y’know, here we are now.
Here come the judge.
yeah they are called ” Hall of Famers”
Some Hall of Famers were shamefully awful for the last few years of their careers.
Babe Ruth. Willie Mays.
Delgado was definitely a great player once, no doubt-about it.
But it’s over now, all that’s left is the erratic streaky stat-padding, the brief hints of past glory averaged out to nothing over the long grueling march of 162 game seasons.
It’s no diss on the middle of his career. Outstanding middle of his career.
But the hurrahs are done and all that’s left is the delusional optimism that he’ll somehow wake up one morning and be six years younger again.
I think the surgeries clearly impacted him last year and held down his numbers. The guy was helpless against inside fastballs in the first half, started cheating by swinging early and the pitchers took advantage by throwing even more inside, resulting in Carlos consistently swinging at balls that might have hit him in the ribs. His better second half shows he was recovering and that with that recovery came improved bat speed, allowing him to wait a little longer on pitches. I was optimistic for him tis year *until* he broke his wrist in the last game of 2007. How he does in 2008 will depend on how he recovers from that injury. We may see another slow start, if he’s still feeling sore.
LFM, I understand the pessimism (as annoyingly persistent as it might be), but the Mets did not “sign” Delgado…they traded for a 33 yr. old great hitter coming off a 161 ops+ in Dolphins Stadium! Was decline expected? Sure, but having that guy for 3 years sure seemed alright at the time (LoDuca? Not so much).
I expect a mild bounce back year for Carlos.
And the Packers did not lose that game (although I suspect you were just trying to push some commenters’ buttons).
If anything, the Giants were trying as hard as possible to give it away.
Letting Brett Favre be Brett Favre is begging to lose.
It is sort of a psychics problem, it is sort of like the Schrodinger’s Cat of football. The only time Brett Favre is good is when he isn’t Brett Favre.
It is sort of like The Grandfather Paradox except in this case, the “Grandfather” is merely as old as one and not literally a grandfather.
The Mets NEVER GAVE DELGADO A CONTRACT!
He was signed by the Marlins not the Mets, remember???
Okay, you “pick up a contract”. Same difference.
The point is… you get a long term deal on a guy who’s kind of just a big strong brick statue at his peak, you take your medicine on the fact that he’s probably gonna break down at the end of his contract.
I’m not saying that he wasn’t great once, I’m not saying that he wasn’t very good when the Mets first got him.
I’m just saying… these things are not valid reasons to get suddenly optimistic that he’s suddenly gonna be hitting .280 with 40 home runs out of nowhere again.
It’s over. Getting crazy expecations up now’ll just make it hurt more.