Written By Brandon Warne
The Brian Dozier extension that had been rumored to be in the works the last few weeks finally came to fruition, as the Minnesota Twins announced early Tuesday morning that the club and its second baseman had come to terms on a four-year, $20 million deal.
The deal tears up Dozier’s originally agreed-upon deal for 2015 — somewhere north of $500,000 — and replaces it with a deal that’ll pay him $2 million, $3 million, $6 million and $9 million over the next four seasons. There are no option years on the back end, so it’s a straight up deal at an average annual value of $5 million — a pittance for a player of Dozier’s caliber based on his play last season.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t questions about the deal. Not just about the deal itself, but what it does or does not mean for the Twins moving forward.
The deal doesn’t give the Twins any added control over Dozier, practically speaking. The club already held Dozier under control for those four years, with next offseason representing the first time he’d be arbitration eligible.
The $2 million salary this season represents not only a large raise, but a measure of good faith from a team to reward him for a season in which he posted the following ranks among his ‘qualified’ AL counterparts at second base (out of eight qualifiers):
Home runs – 23 (first)
Runs – 112 (first)
RBI – 71 (fourth)
Steals – 21 (third)
BB rate – 12.6 percent (first)
Isolated power (SLG-AVG) – .174 (first)
BABIP – .269 (last)
Batting average – .242 (eighth)
On-base percentage – .345 (fifth)
Slugging percentage – .416 (fourth)
wOBA – .340 (third)
wRC+ – 118 (fourth)
fWAR – 4.8 (fifth)
In summary, it’s pretty clear he was among the very best second basemen in the league. Keep the batting average and BABIP numbers tucked away; we’ll come back to them.
Locking Dozier up for these four seasons gives the Twins cost certainty over his arbitration-eligible seasons. In essence, it’s a safety net in the event that he blows up in a good way over that time frame, but is still a generous enough deal that he can be convinced to sign. For a ‘senior sign’ out of a Conference USA school, $20 million is no small sum. Dozier has turned himself into a darnn fine baseball player and has worked for everything he has earned.
As a brief aside, if you’re unfamiliar with what “senior sign” means, it’s when a player signs after being drafted in his senior year of college. Since he no longer has the “go back to school” leverage, teams can usually sign these players very cheaply. Dozier’s bonus in the eighth round was $30,000; the two players surrounding him — Brandt Walker and Ryan Buch — each got over $100,000 to sign. The Twins’ ninth-round pick that year — high school shortstop Nick Lockwood — got $125,000. He only lasted three years in the Twins’ system and never advanced past Rookie ball.
But as a seasoned collegiate player who needed some time to develop on the farm, Dozier isn’t exactly a spring chicken in terms of service time relative to age. Heading into his third full season, he’ll be 28 about six weeks into the season, and this deal will take him through his age-31 season. By not buying out free agent years, the Twins are doing one of three things:
- Banking on someone else being ready to take his spot after 2018.
- Banking on the idea that he has more or less peaked.
- Banking — literally — on the idea that they’ll pay him what he’s worth in a new deal between now and free agency.
Each make sense in their own way. There’s a very good chance Jorge Polanco, Nick Gordon and perhaps even someone else acquired along the way could step up and take second base after 2018. And for the third point, why not? If Dozier is playing at an elite level through his age-31 season … pay the man!
The second point is where we can do a little breakdown and come full circle with the batting average and BABIP points.
The common refrain from Twins fans on message boards and social media seem to be “if only Dozier could raise his average.” Keep in mind he’s already an elite on-base guy, at least relative to his position. In this case, it’s literally OK to hit just .240, since the OBP with his walk rate will still comfortably put him around .340 — well above the AL second baseman average of .310 from last year.
Simply put, he doesn’t need to make that improvement to justify his deal. He’s already so dang good by simply being who he is.
But let’s play along; let’s just say he ostensibly *could* hit .280 like most people openly pine for. Even if he got there by simply hitting singles — and what are the odds of that? — you’re looking at a guy who’d check in around .280/.385/.455. A certain second baseman on a 10-year, $240 million deal last year hit .314/.382/.454. You may have heard of him.
So sure, it’d be super great if Dozier could become Robinson Cano. And it’d be great if Joe Mauer could roll back the hands of time and hit like 2009 again, too.
But when you look at Dozier’s BABIP (batting average on balls in play) of .269 last year, the natural instinct is to see potential to improve. After all, AL second basemen on the whole posted a .291 mark last year. Dozier has pretty good wheels too, which can also inflate a BABIP (which typically is considered ‘reasonable’ inside of .280-.320, depending on run environments and a few other factors).
So Dozier would seem to have room to improve, right? Well, not so fast. Dozier’s extra-base pop comes from his penchant to hit the ball in the air — and kind of a lot, actually. Among AL second basemen, Dozier’s 42.9 percent fly ball rate tied him for first with Ian Kinsler. Among all 76 qualified AL hitters, Dozier ranked 10th. So yeah, that’s kind of a lot.
And it’s not just long, majestic warning-track fly balls either. Dozier ranked fifth league wide in popup rate at 15.8 percent. Just 10 players had lower groundball-to-flyball ratios than Dozier. It’s a necessary tradeoff for Dozier’s extra-base power — since grounders rarely go for extra bases unless rolled right inside the foul line — but it also saps the potential for him to hit the ball on the ground and leg out a few more infield hits over the course of the season.
Also consider these AL-wide stats by batted ball, cobbled together by Baseball Reference:
Groundballs: .250/.250/.272 (.250 BABIP)
Flyballs: .157/.153/.443 (.084 BABIP)
Line Drives: .665/.659/1.001 (.644 BABIP)
Bunts: .475/.475/.475 (.475 BABIP)
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Total: .253/.316/.390 (.298 BABIP)
I threw in bunts just because it’s a fun stat, and because it ties the whole stat pack together. In short, it’s pretty easy to see why a flyball hitter like Dozier has a limited ceiling for improvement — pun intended.
The thing Dozier does well and should continue to do well is pull the ball. All 23 of Dozier’s home runs in 2014 went to left field, as he hit .391/.391/.767 to the pull side. Up the middle, Dozier hit only .259/.252/.293, and to the push side just .147/.140/.179. By the way, if you’re wondering how the OBP can ever be lower than the average, the answer is sacrifices.
This fun chart — shared by ESPN data guru Mark Simon on Twitter Tuesday — helps us get an understanding of how and why Dozier is the type of hitter he is. As you might have seen while watching him play, Dozier loves to ambush fastballs up, and is tough to beat inside. Weirdly, he doesn’t do much right down the middle and, as his line can attest — he’s pretty much hapless on pitches away.
All of this is pretty much to say that it’s not very likely that Dozier has much ‘untapped’ potential left. The Twins signed a safe talent to a safe contract, and it isn’t one that would preclude the club from moving him should another prospect force their hand.
It’s neither a deal that should be applauded or derided with much fervor. It’s simply a ‘fine’ deal.