Thursday, April 21, 2011

Aubrey Huff Worries

Aubrey Huff has gotten off to a truly awful start.

For perspective, here are the three worst players in 2011 by fWAR:

Player fWAR
Carl Crawford -1.2
James Loney -0.8
Aubrey Huff -0.7

Yikes.

Now he's been pretty weak with the bat so far, and there's no denying that (wRC+ of 79). But where he really takes the hit is his major-league-worst UZR of -7.0...

With Huff moving back to first base, we can reasonably expect this to be less of an issue -- at least for the time being.

As of now, his ZiPS RoS projection has him posting a .350 wOBA over 526 PAs for the rest of the season. Assuming he plays all of his games at first base -- and is a neutral defender there (which is a bit generous, considering his career UZR/150 of -2.8 at the position) -- that equates to 1.7 fWAR over the rest of the season; add that to his current -0.7 fWAR, and he's finishing the season at just one win above replacement.

Though we're only a few weeks into the season, it's fair to start worrying about Aubrey Huff. He's got $22MM owed to him over the next two years, and it's safe to assume first base will soon be occupied by Brandon Belt. Contrary to what I had believed at the beginning of the season, Huff is in all likelihood not capable of playing serviceable defense in right field.

This presents an issue for the Giants.



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