The Rays for themselves a slugger for first base when they came to an agreement with Luke Scott on a one-year deal with an option for 2013. The Rays had an opening that I actually thought would be filled by a former Ray — Carlos Pena — but they chose to go a different route. Was it a wise choice? Perhaps. Let’s take a look into this.
The big downside to Luke Scott is his strikeout rate. For his career, it’s sitting at a not-too-pretty 20.3%. He does, however, own a slashline of .264/.349/.494/.843 to go with a .230 SLG%. Of his 4 full big league seasons, we’ve seen him hit 20+ HRs three times, each time hitting more and more with a career high of 27. Now last year he battled some injuries, which could be part of the reason for his off year. Despite playing a fair amount of his time at DH, he has racked up a few inning in the field – mostly the outfield. In nearly 3,000 innings he’s posted a 6.1 UZR and 3.0 UZR/150 in the outfield. Not terrible at all, and much better than I truly anticipated. At 1B, however, he’s only posted 316 innings to give him a 0.0 UZR and 0.1 UZR/150. Not awful, but not really great.
So this leads me to my next question. Who would have been better, Carlos Pena or Luke Scott? Let’s look at some hitting graphs really quick to figure that part out.
So there we have it. Almost the same sort of hitter, when you really think about it. Both have been pretty predictable and consistent, except for Pena in ISO, and both are within striking distance of each other in all categories at all seasons. And as I said before, Scott was battling injuries last season which could explain his drop in ISO. So lets look at defense. Pena has a few more innings logged at 1B, 9583 2/3 innings more to be exact. But he hasn’t really faired much better owning a career -15.5 UZR and -2.3 UZR/150.
So there we have it. Was it smarter to sign Scott over Pena? Almost the exact same player… and Scott is probably a good $4MM cheaper. So yes, I’d say the Rays made a great move.
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