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Should O’s Extend J.J.? Hardly

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Recently J.J Hardy revealed there had been no progress in extension talks with the Orioles, saying “the ball is in their court.”

If that’s the case, the Orioles should take that ball and go home.

It seems blasphemous to say, but it is in the best interest of the Orioles to let Hardy walk at the end of 2014 or trade him instead of offering an extension.

It’s true Hardy is one of the top shortstops in the game both defensively and offensively, winning a Gold Glove and Silver Slugger award last season, but he also isn’t going to extend his stay in Baltimore without getting paid what he thinks he deserves. Based on the inflated prices we’ve seen in free agency lately, that amount could be a lot more than fans would expect.

Jhonny Peralta, who was only 0.2 fWAR in value higher than Hardy in 2013, just signed a four-year, $52 million deal this past offseason. Hardy is regarded as the superior defender of the two and doesn’t have the PED tag attached. In addition, if he does hit free agency after 2014, besides Hanley Ramirez, Hardy will be the only other top shortstop out there so he’ll get a substantial payday, likely larger than Peralta. That’s probably going to bump his extension figure up there quite a bit – somewhere in the $50-60 million range. That’s likely more than the Orioles should pay because of the question marks and risks that come with that dollar figure.

Looking at the health risk, Hardy has stayed healthy for two straight seasons, a small miracle in itself. Before the 2012-2013 seasons where he played in 317 games, he’d only played in 345 games over three seasons. So it’s pretty fair to say that he’s been an injury risk in the past, and you’d be signing up for his age 32-35 years most likely – or the downside of his prime and when he’s also going to be even more prone to injury.

Hardy has also been one of the culprits of the low team OBP for the past few years with the following numbers:

2011: .310
2012: .282
2013: .306

Even though shortstop isn’t known as an offensive position, Hardy only ranked 23rd in OBP for shortstops with at least 300 PAs in 2013. That’s not exactly going to help the Orioles improve their 19th ranked major league OBP.

An extension to Hardy would also tie up a good chunk of payroll and that needs to be considered when you are possibly trying to extend other players or give raises in arbitration. The Orioles can’t extend everybody, and players like Chris Davis and Manny Machado are far more important to the Orioles’ future than Hardy.

The best move for the Orioles, if they are in contention, is to ride the season out with Hardy and then offer him a qualifying offer at the end of the year and likely get the draft pick compensation if he turns it down. The worst case scenario is that he accepts, but then you’ve got him at shortstop for another year with no long-term commitment; there’s nothing wrong with that.

If the Orioles are somehow not in contention at the deadline, they should try to sell Hardy to the highest bidder as long as they are offering more value than a first-round pick. Given the teams that would love to have him on their roster, one would think there would be a significant return.

So we’ve established that Hardy should NOT be the O’s long-term answer at SS – then the question is this: how do you replace him?

Luckily for the Orioles, they already have a shortstop in their system ready to replace Hardy, and that’s Machado. Right now Machado’s numbers offensively play much better at shortstop than they do for third base, as almost all his value is in his glove. Now hopefully that’s soon to change as he’s still developing offensively, but the Orioles drafted Machado to play SS and to take over that position and 2015 is the perfect time for him to do that.

There are other shortstops to trade for as well if the Orioles want to leave Machado at third base. Nick Franklin from the Mariners has been a name that has been discussed this spring. He could play second base now and transition to shortstop for the Orioles after Hardy is gone. Franklin would be under team control until after 2019 and obviously be much cheaper than Hardy.

The Orioles could also possibly play Ryan Flaherty there. Flaherty had a 26.3 UZR/150 rating in the 33 innings he had at the position in 2013. It’s a small sample size, but he should be more than adequate at the position based on what he’s shown so far.

J.J. Hardy has been a core player for the Orioles and has been a big part of the resurgence of the team in the past two years. However, at some point a player’s value just isn’t worth the expense, especially when you have other options that may be just as good if not better. The Orioles have other parts of their core roster as well that must be a priority for future payroll allocation. Hardy’s age, injury risk and low OBP all work against him.

The key with any extension also is to realize that you aren’t paying the player for present performance, but you are paying them for their future performance. If you want to see the risk of paying a 32-35 year old a lot of money, all you have to do is just look at Brian Roberts. Many thought the Roberts extension was a good move at the time, but it turned out to be a disaster.

Hardy might seem like a good investment now, but he could very well turn into the second coming of Brian Roberts, and that’s a scenario the Orioles simply can’t afford to repeat.

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photo: Craig Landefeld

2 Responses

  1. Agree. Unless they could ink him to a sweet heart desk for 3 or less years thru should let him go and use the money to ink one of wieters or crush. If they do let hardy go they MUST extend at least one of those guys. Best case scenario is both flaherty and schoop end up hitting and manny moves over to short. You lose hardys power but maybe gain some obp which is more important.

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2 Responses

  1. Agree. Unless they could ink him to a sweet heart desk for 3 or less years thru should let him go and use the money to ink one of wieters or crush. If they do let hardy go they MUST extend at least one of those guys. Best case scenario is both flaherty and schoop end up hitting and manny moves over to short. You lose hardys power but maybe gain some obp which is more important.

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