Would Ben Zobrist Really Be An Upgrade Over Young Options?

Happy New Year to each of you! While most of the country is taking a day to recover from various New Year’s Eve activities last night, the crew at Yanks Go Yard continues to push forward, making every attempt to cover every angle of possibility for the 2015 New York Yankees. Recently, our friends over at It’s All About The Money, did a piece about why Ben Zobrist of the Tampa Bay Rays should already be on the Yankees’ radar as not only an upgrade over the recently-traded Martin Prado, but youngster Jose Pirela and Rob Refsnyder at second base. Today, we are going to take a closer look and see if that is indeed the case. 

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Here’s the thing. You can be in one of two camps when it comes to Ben Zobrist joining the Yankees. Either you view him as an immediate answer to go along with Chase Headley, Didi Gregorius, and Mark Teixeira in the Yankees’ infield, making them a better overall unit today. Or, you can believe the Yankees are on the right track by letting Pirela and Refsnyder battle it out, with the loser heading back to Triple-A for more seasoning.

Let’s start with Zobrist’s age. He’s 33-years old, and isn’t getting any young. Yes, he’s the super-utility guy that the Yankees could use all over the field. Yes, he’s projected as a 4-win player in 2015. And yes, he’d be a one-year rental until he hits the open market in 2016. Unfortunately, Zobrist will be 34 in May, and if you look closer at his projections, he’s regressing. Projected wins is only a guess, based on his other peripherals. He was almost a 6-win player in 2014, coming in at 5.7. A 2-win drop-off over one season? At $7.5 million? More on Zobrist later.

There aren’t projections for Rob Refsnyder available because he hasn’t had a single big league at-bat, so we’ll focus for now, on who I believe is the answer at second base in 2015 for the Yankees: Jose Pirela. The young infielder is only projected as a 1-win player in 2015, coming in at 0.6 for the season. Is that realistic? I say absolutely not. Pirela is almost 9 years younger than Zobrist, and in a brief audition in September of 2014, he posted a triple slash line of .333/.360/.542 in 25 plate appearances. Now we can’t expect a rookie who gets full time at-bats to post those kinds of numbers over a 500 at-bat season. It’s just not feasible. But when you look at Pirela’s eight seasons of minor league baseball, and his career triple slash line of .273/.339/.391, to go along with last season’s power numbers of 10 home runs, 60 RBI and 21 doubles, it’s worth noting that similar number for his next progression level–that being the big leagues, could easily be expected.

Back to Zobrist. He’s making $7 mil more in 2015 than Pirela. In more than 1300 career minor league chances at second base, Pirela has a career field percentage of .972. That equates to 37 errors over 8 seasons of playing second base, or just over 4.6 errors per season. In more than 2100 chances at second base over his big league career, Zobrist has a much better fielding percentage of .987, or 29 errors, which equates to 4.14 errors per season. Zobrist’s career triple slash line in the bigs is .264/.354/.429. For $7.5 mil? Just over half an error per season less, for $7 million more, as he regresses, is on the wrong side of 30, and risk stunting the further development of not only Pirela but Refsnyder as well?

As Zobrist’s offensive numbers to continue to decline, Pirela’s over the past two seasons continue to improve. While he might only be a career .273 hitter in the minors, he’s hit over .300 at both Double-A and Triple-A in each of the past two seasons, while his power numbers continue to improve, and are in-line with Zobrist’s declining numbers. Do the Yankees overspend for Zobrist, paying him for what he once was able to do, and at the same time giving up prospects to get him, or give the young Pirela a shot  to continue to grow and improve, while keeping costs under control and giving a homegrown Yankee a chance to be a part of the present, and the future?