What can Boone do for You?
(Or: Bane? Boom? Boone.)

After hearing the news that the Twins acquired Bret Boone, a friend of mine joked that he wanted to give him a fruitcake to welcome him to Minneapolis. I couldn’t help but thinking that a Winstrol-cake would do Boone and the Twins a lot more good. It isn’t fair to pick on him as a steroid user, as none of us really know whether the juice contributed to his success. Nonetheless, it is difficult to find another player with such a meteoric spike in power numbers past his physical peak who experienced such a cataclysmic collapse upon the league’s introduction of the steroid policy.

Still, Boone probably isn’t as bad as his .231/.300/.385 line he has put up this year, but he’s probably not going to get back to his career average of .266/.325/.444. Taking out his three peak seasons from 2001-2003, his career averages are .253/.315/.414, which smells about right for the upside for the rest of ’05. That line fits with what he did in ’04, and he probably has not dropped off too much more from there in terms of true ability. Going from a losing team to a contender and a pitcher-friendly park to a more neutral one can’t hurt either.

The real question is what Boone’s arrival means for the Twins the rest of the way. In a wild card race that figures to be very close, a couple of wins can make a huge difference. To look at what Boone’s could do for the Twins chances, I’m using the Marginal Lineup Value rate to examine what his stats mean to the average lineup compared to the alternatives in the lineup. This formula works by setting the rest of the lineup to league average, then plugging in different players and calculating what they add or subtract on a game by game basis. Keith Woolner explains it in depth on the link above.

Twins IF MLVr/ Expected RS
Null: 0.000 802
Boone (current pace): -.113/ 784
Boone (proj. .253/.315/.414): -.054/ 793
Cuddyer: -.058/ 793
Rodriguez: .010/ 804
Punto: -.011/ 800
Rivas: -.263/ 760
Castro: -.279/ 757


The expected Runs Scored figure is based on a lineup of nine league average players. Each individual added represents a lineup with eight average players and that one player’s offensive contribution. Since we are looking at infielders and the numbers are not position adjusted, it isn’t so bad that they are mostly below league average in offensive numbers, especially when the one premium offensive position (3B) could easily get above average by season’s end. Also, the Twins’ lineup isn’t quite “league average” as it stands at the ASB. They project to only about 746 runs for the season, far less than the 802 that the league-wide component stats suggest as the average.

Additionally, the RS figure looks at what a player would do for a full year. Boone’s impact on the average lineup for a year would be to subtract about 9 runs, whereas Castro (yes, worse than Rivas) would cost the offense 45 runs. Using the rate stat for the remaining 76 games and swapping out Rivas for Boone at 2B, all else held constant, Boone would cost the average lineup about 4.10 runs, while Rivas would cost it about 19.98 runs. Even the depleted ’05 model of Boone only costs 8.59 runs, a big improvement over the status quo.

From this data, the best Twins infield going forward would include Boone at 2B, Punto at SS and either Cuddyer or Rodriguez at third. Castro’s defensive prowess might gain the team up to 10 runs the rest of the way if he is exceptional with the glove, but Punto’s a plus fielder at SS as well in limited action. Including both offense and defense, Punto is clearly the better choice. If Punto and Boone both live up to optimistic projections in the second half, it could be worth 20 runs of offense, and a couple of wins in the standings, well worth the PTBNL in a tight race.

Note: The MLVr data for all players except for projected Boone was taken from BaseballProspectus.com.