Coco Crisp: An analysis

New Royal Coco CrispRoyals general manager Dayton Moore did a fine thing today by acquiring Coco Crisp from Boston for reliever Ramon Ramirez. Is it a franchising-changing trade? Are the Royals an odds-on favorite in their division because of this transaction? Of course not. The Royals are a little better today than they were yesterday, but only a little.

WHAT COCO CRISP IS NOT

He's not a All-Star. His power has not developed as well as it once appeared it would after he hit 31 homers in 2004 and 2005 for Cleveland at ages 24 and 25. Since then, in three seasons, he's hit 21 home runs.

Crisp not particularly patient, walking in only 7.4 percent of his plate appearances over the last five years. He's a career .280 hitter and with the walks added in, his career on-base percentage is .331, or below last season's American League average. He's not likely to improve the Royals' problems in that area unless he has a career season. At 29, he's still in his prime so you never know. He hasn't had that one standout season in his career yet.

Defensively, to say that Crisp has a weak throwing arm is kind of like saying that Lindsay Lohan has a P.R. problem. It goes way beyond that -- he'll remind you of Johnny Damon.

WHAT COCO CRISP IS

Crisp is an average hitter, with most of his value tied to batting average. (While that sentence parses strangely, I think it makes sense.) He's a little bit unusual for a hitter of his type, ie., one whose value is derived mostly from average. The standing of most of those types is built upon the loose footing of average on balls in play. Not Crisp, who has been consistent in that area. However, his rate of line drives has been up and down and, with it, goes his average and his offensive value. Overall, the effect is that of a player who you can expect to be right around league average.

And, guess what? From an offensive standpoint, the Royals were right about exactly league average in the outfield last season. Crisp likely won't improve that performance. He needs to maintain his line-drive rate, as I pointed out. And he could possibly recover some of his lost power, even though Kauffman Stadium is far from a homer haven. For whatever reason, Crisp's power stroke just didn't take to Fenway Park. Over the last two seasons, in 461 plate appearances in Boston, Crisp hit a total of two home runs. (He hit four there in 2006.) He hit 11 homers on the road the last two years.

Crisp is a fine baserunner. According to the advanced metrics at Baseball Prospectus, Crisp has added about 10 runs to the bottom line just because of base running in and of itself over the last two years. Part of that is base stealing -- he's averaged 21 steals per season over the last five years with a success rate right at the cut-off point of 75 percent.

The key to this deal from the Royals' standpoint will be Crisp's defense. In 2007, Crisp rated as the best defensive center fielder in all of baseball by several measures, including fielding runs above average at Baseball Prospectus and Defensive +/- at Baseball Info Solutions. Last season, he slid back to league average or just below in both measures. In fact, his defensive metrics last year weren't as good as David DeJesus. Will Crisp bounce back to his 2007 form? That's impossible to know. But it's healthy to observe that his downside is probably average.

However, since this deal presumably moves David DeJesus to left field, the Royals' outfield defense should be much improved in 2009 even if Crisp doesn't imitate Willie Mays with the glove. With two de facto center fielders patrolling the grass in Kauffman Stadium, even Jose Guillen's defensive performance should arc up a tad. The Royals were a sure-handed defensive team for the most part in 2008, but the overall range of the team's fielders was poor, perhaps the worst in the league. Much of that had to do with the outfield defense. If a defensive solution can be found for the shortstop position -- or if Mike Aviles stays there and proves that his showing there last season was no fluke -- KC should field a strong defensive unit. That would be a huge boost to the pitching staff and will edge KC closer to the .500 mark, with contention a distant but not totally-out-of-the-question possibility.

WHAT THEY GAVE UP

Ramon Ramirez did a nice enough job for KC in 2008. Whether he would have done the same in 2009 for the team is anyone's guess. There are few things more fickle than the season-to-season performance of your run-of-the-mill middle reliever. This is an area of depth for Moore and he's turned two highly-fungible assets (Ramirez and Leo Nunez) into a pair of everyday players (Crisp and Mike Jacobs). You may debate the actual quality of the players obtained, but you can't argue with the logic.

In the end, just like the Jacobs deal, I cant' say that I LOVE the move, but I am left with an overall feeling that the Royals have gotten just a little better. And that's how the race is going to be won for this franchise, little deals that inch the team forward by modest amounts. The aquisition of Crisp is a low-risk, high-reward kind of move as he's in the final year of a contract that will pay him around $5.2 million this season. I like it -- doesn't hurt anything now, may actually help and doesn't do anything to harm the long-term prospects of the franchise.

All this trade costs is money and that money ain't even mine, especially in that I won't step foot in a Wal-Mart.

PROJECTED 2009 ROYALS LINEUP

With 2008 Wins-Added per 600 plate appearances, by which you can see that the key to an above-average offense will be production from the middle of the order.