Printer-friendly

Contact Author

November 25, 2009

So You Need

To Hit the Jackpot

by Ken Funck

With a dearth of healthy, productive players on the market, a market loaded with lots of injury risks, and with the persistent pressure on GMs to do something to propel their clubs forward, this season's free-agent signing season is likely to be a crap-shoot—loud, fun, and highly dependent on luck, and in the end more players are certain to walk away losers than winners. That's why BP's own Joe Sheehan has repeated his warning of two seasons past, channeling the disembodied digital voice of the WOPR to remind us that "the only way to win is not to play."

Joe's right, of course, in the aggregate—and that warning would be just as true in Las Vegas, the town Penn Jillette famously described as subsisting on a harvest of bad math skills. But of course millions of people continue to gamble, many knowing that the house will likely get them in the end, but believing in their chance to make a killing and walk away. Similarly, while general managers may be wise to just give the whole free-agent thing a pass this year, we know that's not going to happen—most of them are jumping out of the cab and heading straight for the craps table. So Joe and the rest of the BP crew have been providing terrific analyses of which bets are the best—which players are the most likely to be undervalued, and which can you take a chance on without exposing your bankroll.

But today, I'm taking a slightly different tack. I'm going to recommend a few players that are more like progressive slot machines: the cost to play will be low, and the odds of winning may in fact fall squarely in the "sucker bet" category, but the payoff could put you on easy street. All of these players come with high risk, and to bet on them you may have to deny logic and apply faith – but as anyone that's taken home a prize with a raffle ticket can attest, winning in defiance of reason is half the fun.

Tossing Dice on the Corner: Once considered a genuine slugging third baseman, Chad Tracy has ended his career in the Snakepit as a backup corner infielder with little power and even less utility, and should be available for less than the buy-in at your local floating craps game (assuming such things still exist in a world short on noir dialog and long on Native American casinos). Tracy's last solid season was in 2006, before microfracture knee surgery and other injuries sidetracked his career, and an execrable .237/.306/.389 line last year looks especially bad at first base, where he's been spending most of his time. But our task here is to look for silver linings, and a little digging can unearth a few. Tracy's walk rate and isolated power have returned to their 2006 levels, he's striking out less, and his 2009 numbers were undermined by a career-low .251 BABIP. There's a non-trivial chance that Tracy could bounce back to his 2006 levels, or even better if he scores a randomly high HR/FB rate. At first base that would still be sub-par, but the defensive numbers hint he might not yet be a true liability at the hot corner. Sign him for a song, platoon him at third, and if luck's a lady you might have a top-flight contributor. And don't forget to break out that aw-shucks grin when the media starts calling you a genius.

Hulking third-baseman Troy Glaus is a posterchild for the "productive or hurt" set, a four-win player as recently as 2008 coming off a season lost to shoulder problems. Now that he's 33, you can safely add age to his long list of known risk factors. Glaus can still play a reasonable third base—his bulk has always made him look less nimble with the leather than he actually is—and nothing in his 2008 numbers point toward an impending decline at the plate. His isn't the cheapest ticket you can buy, but he can probably be had on a one-year deal—and the payoff if he's healthy is the highest of anyone on this list.