We stress this is a small sample size, smaller even than the 79 at-bats he had in September. We stress that it’s spring training, where teams and players aren’t concerned with results. (Spring training, if it’s about anything, is about preparation.) That said, this was Hector Olivera through 50 Grapefruit League at-bats:
Batting average of .400. On-base-plus-slugging-percentage of .884.
Of the 15 players who finished with an OPS of .884 last season – these are big names, Harper and Goldschmidt and Cabrera and Votto and Trout being the top five – all posted a WAR value of 3.2 or better. Most were way better. The 3.2 belonged to David Ortiz, who barely plays afield and thus has no defensive value. But let’s circle 3.2.
Only two everyday Braves compiled a better WAR last season: Andrelton Simmons at 4.0 and Freddie Freeman at 3.4. Most of Simmons’ value – 3.5 – came from defense, and he’s gone. That leaves Freeman, who remains the only real run-producer on the big-league roster – unless Olivera becomes one, too.
On an installment of Baseball Prospectus' Effectively Wild podcast last month, Sam Miller, BP's editor, said of Olivera: "He seems like a guy who the industry has soured on … He doesn't seem to fit the long-term vision of the team, because he's already into his 30s. He's ineligible for our top 10 (prospects by team) list because we don't treat veteran international signings as prospects. But even if he had been eligible, our guys would have left him out of the top 10. It really seems like an instance where (the Braves) see him differently than everybody in the industry."
Miller then directed a question to this correspondent: “What it is exactly that they still see in him that at this point that everybody else disagrees with or is missing?”
My answer was what I've written: They Braves held Olivera in such high esteem that they bid $40-plus million for him last spring. (They were trumped by the Dodgers' $62.5 million.) They'd scouted him and liked his approach at the plate – hits the ball hard, has a good eye, doesn't strike out much – and they were impressed by his "makeup," which is the baseball catch-all for temperament/intangibles/et cetera. (Olivera is Cuban. So is Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez. The two hit it off.)
The Braves didn’t acquire Olivera – for the high price of starter Alex Wood, then-closer Jim Johnson, lefty reliever Luis Avilan and Jose Peraza, often identified as their No. 1 prospect, to L.A. – to bat seventh. They got him to be a middle-of-the-order hitter, a right-handed complement to Freeman. As Miller suggested, this was the one Braves’ deal of recent vintage that didn’t have a long-term horizon: Olivera turns 31 the day after Opening Day.
Statistical projections for Olivera have been minimal. Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA had him hitting .248 with 10 homers and 46 RBIs and an OPS of .684; Dan Szymborski's ZiPS has Olivera hitting .257 with nine homers and 34 RBIs with an OPS of .714. PECOTA's WAR forecast is 0.0; ZiPS' is 0.4.
The trouble with projecting Olivera is that, duh, he has almost no track record beyond Cuba. He didn’t take a big-league at-bat until September. If the industry has indeed “soured on” him, it has done so without much in the way of eyeball evidence.
At this moment, the Braves are encouraged. (They'd be more encouraged if Olivera would hit a home run. He has none this spring.) But this deal was never the wild reach it might have appeared. The Braves owe Olivera $32.5 million over the next five seasons. Let's call that $6.5 mil per year. If he becomes a 1.0 WAR guy, that's about par. (One win, in WAR terms, is worth roughly $7 million.) If he becomes a 3.2 WAR producer, that's a windfall.
This isn’t to say we should pencil him for a 3.2 WAR every year through 2020. Forget the jury being out on Olivera; it hasn’t even been selected. Still, he’s a mature guy with major potential, and that’s a combination of assets the Braves lack. They’ve got some young hitters, but those are for later. They need this 30-year-old to hit now.
