Bobby Jenks

Since leaving the Rockies organization to embark on my new venture as stay-at-home dad/freelance writer, I've been in a frenzy trying to line up things to do with my son as well as possible gigs, and I really need to write up how that all came to fruition, which I will attempt to do soon. But in the interim, I haven't been paying rapt attention to my Twitter feed, so I'm a little behind on who has and has not been tendered. But one name that caught my attention this afternoon was Bobby Jenks.

Jenks seems to have fallen into the arbitration trap that teams so frequently face. He was clearly going to get a raise based on his season last year - he had enough innings pitched, and had 27+ saves for a fifth consecutive season. No matter what your opinion of his true value is, in arbitration you can only use the facts of the situation, and for relievers, the two most important factors are service time/playing time and role (closer, set-up, middle, mop-up). Jenks was going to get a raise.

Chicago didn't need to pay for that. Reports already have Matt Thornton listed as his possible successor, and Ozzie Guillen and Don Cooper have always built strong bullpens. The $9-10 million Jenks would have cost them in arbitration is probably best served being spent elsewhere, especially if Paul Konerko really does want to live closer to home in Arizona (or if they need that money for Adam Dunn). But this doesn't mean that Jenks can't be an effective reliever somewhere else at a lower price.

Looking at Jenks 2010 season, he didn't rank well in metrics like WXRL, WARP, VORP, or fWAR. His walk rate was up, and his ERA+ of 99 was a career low, and he is now two years removed from what looks like a two year peak - he had WARP's of 4.9 and 3.9 in '07 and '08, nothing higher than 2.1 in any other year. But there are also a lot of positive indicators for Jenks going forward.

For starters, he will only be 30 years old next season and has saved 27+ games in one of the largest markets in the country. There are a number of others. Let's do this bullet point style:

- His BABIP last year was .368, which was easily a career high. Looking at his batted ball data however, this scream fluke - as his line drive rate wasn't significantly higher than in any other year, and his ground ball rate was up while his fly ball rate was down. Generally, that would be a recipe for a lower BABIP. For whatever reason, his balls found holes last year. This could be related to the fact that Jenks for the first time started mixing in a changeup last year - 6.5% of the time. But his average fastball velocity didn't dip it wouldn't seem on the surface that he worked in the change up to cover for a lack of pop in his heater.
- His K/9 and K/BB rates were each the second best rates of his career.
- He only allowed three home runs despite playing in a homeriffic ballpark, and 2 of them came at the hands of the Blue Jays, who in case you hadn't heard, hit a lot of home runs last year.
- His xFIP of 2.62 was the lowest of his career and his FIP of 2.59 was only .03 off his career high ('07).

Is Bobby Jenks worth a 3 year, $22 million deal? Maybe not, but for the right price, he could absolutely be an asset for someone next season. As an aside, I also wonder if he is a victim of the hot stove's new sped-up timeline. Probably not, as he wasn't going to be worth $9-10 million this week or two weeks from now, but perhaps the quicker deadlines were a factor, if not for him, for other tender/non-tender candidates. Finally, does Jenks being on the market reduce what is seemingly already a thin trade market for Jonathan Papelbon? I would certainly think so.

Last note - looking into a new blog site. Wordpress was recommended to me. Drop me a line on Twitter - @Swydan - if you have another suggestion. Thanks!