Adam Dunn's Nose Runs and His Feet Smell

If you want a bust in Cooperstown, either dominate the game for six or seven years, or compete at a high level for 20. You might call these the Sandy Koufax and Don Sutton methods, respectively.

But this isn't about the Hall of Fame at all. It's about Adam Dunn.
 
One method of determining with numerical analysis whether a contender is Hall-worthy is to measure his peak value -- the value he added to his team over some arbitrary number of his best years. In his six transcendent seasons, Koufax posted 46.6 wins against replacement. That's all the more astonishing because his total career value is only 53.2 WAR.

That's because the six seasons in which his performance looked like this -- 25-5, 1.88 -- followed six seasons that looked like this -- 11-11, 4.48. His career was a deep valley bordering a high mountain.

Wait til you hear about Adam Dunn.

Sutton, on the other hand, was more like a mesa, a high, flat plain. His peak six seasons only produced 31 wins against replacement for the Dodgers but his career mark of 68.7 outshines Koufax's. Sutton's best season, 1972 (19-9, 2.08), didn't look extraordinarily different from a below average season, say 1982 (13-8, 3.00).

Which brings us, mercifully, to Adam Dunn. The Big Donkey will see himself in Cooperstown only after purchasing admittance and looking in the bathroom mirror. What makes him special is his peak and career value.

Dunn is one of the very few players in baseball history whose peak value is higher than his career value. Dunn's top seven seasons (that's the number chosen for peak value by the respected JAWS system, developed by and named for former Baseball Prospectus writer Jay Jaffe) produced 16.5 wins. In his salad days, Dunn's batting average hovered around .250, he walked 100+ times and he socked 38 or more homers eight times. That was enough to overcome the face plant he did in the field. 

In his six worst seasons, Dunn has been an albatross, most notably in 2011, when he batted .159 with 11 homers in 496 plate appearances that made women and children weep. He cost the White Sox three wins that year compared to a Triple-A DH/left-fielder.

Adam Dunn is no stranger to nose-run/feet-smell kinds of results. Five times in his career (2004, 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012) Dunn has compiled more extra base hits than singles. As of last year, only five players in baseball history with 1000+ plate appearances had more extra base hits than singles for their career, including Dunn. Sadly, he fell of the list in 2013 by banging just 49 of his 115 hits for multiple bases. (Giancarlo Stanton also exited the august group, which means the list is down to three.)

Here's another Escher drawing of Dunn's career: in 2011, Dunn walked more often than he hit safely. (In 2008 he walked exactly as often.) In the last 40 years, that has been accomplished just 23 times (minimum 450 plate appearances), most notably by Barry Bonds, six times between '01 and '07. 

Here's one that very possibly stands alone in the annals of the game. In 2009, the giant righty slugged 38 home runs for the Washington Nationals, got on base just under 40% of the time, produced an OPS 44% above league average and added four wins of value at the plate. And produced below-replacement value overall. How hard is that? He stole no bases, needed a triple to advance from first to second, and displayed all the defensive range of a cactus. For his career, Adam Dunn has cost his teams 28 wins in the field, despite DHing the last three years.

We'll not see quite the likes of Adam Dunn again. This is a ballplayer who made the All-Star team one year while batting .204 (yet nonetheless producing an above-average on base percentage). He  slammed 206 homers over five years and never finished in the top 25 in MVP voting. He racked up 58 extra base hits in 2002 but only 75 RBI. He's walked, fanned or homered -- in other words did not put the ball in play -- more than half the time in his nearly 8,000 career plate appearances.

Funn with Dunn. Enjoy it while you can.

Big Donkey Kicking Again

And so, with 27 games in the books, we can conclusively pronounce Adam Dunn's career no longer over.

Dunn, as you may recall, achieved a dubious distinction last year: he had the worst mid-career season any great hitter has ever had. Dunn batted .159, fanned in 36% of his at-bats and swatted just 11 big flies, fewer than a third of his usual output.

This year, he's at an extremely Dunnian .250/.376/.587 with nine homers. He's more than halfway to last year's RBI total and and has already collected nearly 40% of last year's hit total. Enough ballots have been counted for retirement to concede. The Big Donkey's still kicking.

Whew! 'Cause that dude is fun to watch with his all or nothing approach. He's nearing 400 home runs, 1,000 RBI and 2,000 strikeouts. His .374 lifetime OBP belies that lousy batting average (.244). And if Dunn isn't Done -- he's just 32 -- he could rack up lots more highlights.

Hooray for us.

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Least Valuable Player Is A Dunn Deal

In the midst of the discussion of MLB's best, a brief respite is in order to consider the worst player in the game in 2011.

In one sense, it's a short discussion. Hanging on the noose of a four-year, $56 million contract, the White Sox had no choice but to continue playing Adam Dunn in the hope that he could rediscover some semblance of the player who boomed 38 or more big flies and posted .850+ OPS in each of the past seven seasons. 

Evidently, Dunn was hiding better than they thought. Despite batting .159 with 11 home runs, Dunn continued to collect plate appearances -- 496 in all. He cost the Sox 22 runs at the plate compared to a replacement player, and despite DHing most of the season, subtracted another couple of runs in the field. His .159/.292/.277 reflects only one positive accomplishment -- the ability to coax 75 walks. Alas, the guy runs like molasses going uphill.

Dunn was beyond awful, of course, and shockingly so, but much of his wretchedness lies in his continued presence in the batting order.

For pure, unadulterated stinkbomb, there's Tampa first-sacker Dan Johnson. In 90 plate appearances, Johnson accumulated seven singles, six walks, two home runs and a double, and got himself plunked once (woo-hoo!). He made 74 outs. His slash stats are not for the eyes of young children or those with pacemakers: .119/.187/.202, costing the Rays nearly 10 runs in parts of just 31 games.

In the world of "what-have-you-done-for-me-lately," Johnson will go down as a . . . hero. Johnson's last at-bat erased a season of wanton dreadfulness. Down 7-6 in the ninth inning of Game 162, Johnson crashed a two-out, two-strike pitch from NYY reliever Corey Wade into the foul pole to keep Tampa's season alive. They won in the 12th to slip into the playoffs.

Rays fans will recall Johnson fondly, but in a very real sense, he was the worst player in the majors this year.

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The First Robin League

The Hot Stove League is threatening to drag into the First Robin League as major free agents remain on the market. The economic decline has obviously played a role there, but there must be something else at work.

Three of the most notable free agents still available are Adam Dunn, Bobby Abreu and Manny Ramirez. I picked these three particularly because they're all outfielders and, in the case of Manny and Dunn, possess all the grace on land of a penguin. Here are their performance from last year:

Player G R 2B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS+ HBP GIDP
Ramirez 153 102 36 37 121 3 0 87 124 .332 .430 .601 164 11 17
Dunn----158 79 23 40 100 2 1 122 164 .236 .386 .513 129 7 7
Abreu---156 100 39 20 100 22 11 73 109 .276 .371 .471 120 1 14

(OPS+ is a measure of on base percentage plus slugging average compared to league average. An OPS of 129 is 29% better than league average, which is excellent. An OPS of 164 is MVP territory.)

Manny and agent Scott Boras seem to have painted themselves into a corner, demanding five years and bailout-sized dollars. Ramirez is still a one-man offensive wrecking crew, to be sure, but he's offensive in other ways and young children should avert their eyes when he's afield. The idea of team chemistry is vastly over-rated, but front offices know that bringing him on requires buying Tylenol in bulk. And of course, he's 37 and would be 42 by the end of a five-year deal. Signing him to anything more than two years is sheer folly, and it helps to have a centerfielder who can yell loud enough to wake the leftfielder when the ball is struck his way.

The case of Adam Dunn is an enigma. Ripped by Blue Jays GM JP Ricciardi last season, he is viewed as lackadaisical and inert in the field and has generated little interest around the majors. This is a 28-year-old who has recorded 40 or more home runs and .365 OBP or higher each of the last five seasons. Six-and-a-half foot boppers like Dunn don't tend to age well, but he should continue to provide terror at the plate for the next three years, at least. Bat him after Jose Reyes and David Wright and ahead of Carlos Beltran (or the other way around) and enjoy the basepath merry-go-round.

Apparently some AL clubs would like to sign him to DH but he has rejected moving off left field. That certainly limits his appeal, but there are still plenty of teams that can swallow is defense for 40 HRs and a .386 OBP. For an interesting and spot-on Dunn reckoning, link below to MLB.com.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090120&content_id=3750928&vkey=news_ml

Bobby Abreu is neither defensive liability nor slugger, but he's still an impressive offensive asset. Because he seemed to fall off the table following the '05 Home Run Derby, it's easy to assume he's older than 34. This is a guy who batted safely more than 39% of the time for nine straight years until 2006. Whether his decline is age-related, Yankee-related or Bronx-related we'll soon find out if someone else signs him. Unlike Dunn and Manny, Abreu has a howitzer of an arm and thus has some defensive value as a right fielder. A lot of teams can use this guy.

Of course, the other side of the equation may be the sticking point. Dunn made $13 million, Abreu $16 million and Ramirez $19 million last year and they may all be looking for raises to compensate for the 35% decline in their stock portfolios. The market -- yes, even the baseball labor market -- does seem to have contracted this year, as evidenced by Andy Pettite and Jason Varitek's flashy new pay cuts. Dunn, Abreu and Ramirez may need time to accept that before they sign less lucrative deals. Donations in their behalf can be sent in care of my home address.