In a brief fanshot I posted late last night, I noted that Matt Murton had been DFAed by the Rockies, and that teams should be jumping at a chance to acquire a league-average player for free. It was too late for me to think about busting out Excel then, but I figured it was worth checking out in more details in order to exercise my easily acquired WAR-crunching muscles. Details after the jump.

Matt Murton

#14 / Left Field / Colorado Rockies

Height: 6-1

Weight: 220

Bats: R

Throws: R

Born: Oct 03, 1981

Before the season, CHONE projected Murton as a .360 wOBA hitter, while ZiPS had him at .347. Based on his brief peformance in 14 gamesin Colorado, ZiPS Rest-of-Season projection has lower that to .330. But that's also based onhim only getting 60 more ABs the rest of the way. And we like to flex out "true talent" evaluatoin muscles a bit more than that here. Let's see where we can get without MLEs or component curves...

Offense: Again regressing each season's wOBA against 220 PAs of league average as directed in The Book, then giving a slight age adjustment (since this is just Murton's age 27 season), then taking a weighted average, Murton's true talent wOBA seems to be about .340. Converting to runs above average over a full season (700 PAs): (.340-.328)/1.2 = 7.2 Runs Above Average.

Defense: Taking his outfield stats as a whole and regressing against 100 games of league average (I regress OF defense more than IF defense) and taking a weighted average, I get him as a +2 defender on the corners. While Murton seems to have a good reputation on defense among some on the internet, the Fans Scouting Reports from 2006 and 2007 wasn't so friendly, and when I regressed to that, he was more of a league-average defender on the corners. I think we should stick with that for now, so +0 (average) of defense.

Adding it up: +7.2 offense + 0 defense - 7.5 positional adjustment + 20 NL replacement level = 19.7 x 85% playing time = ~1.7 Wins Above Replacement. That's not quite mlb average, as I'd guessed, but also keep in mind that we dno't have much information on his defense the last couple of seasons, and that the CHONE and ZiPS preseason projections where higher than mine.

Murton's still pretty close to average (and maybe better) and only 27 years old. Most importantly, he's freely acquirable talent at the league minimum.

So, yeah, there are many teams that should be jumping at this chance. Not my Royals, of course. They're totally set with Josh "Gathwhite" Anderson.