Is Adam Jones Good?

Last week Adam Jones signed a deal with the Orioles for $85 million over six years, the largest contract in Orioles history. That’s a very large commitment from both the team’s and the player’s perspective. It always brings up a multitude of questions: Is this a good deal? Will the player perform up to value over the length of the deal? Does the deal affect the team’s ability to sign other valuable players?

The answers to each of those questions are always unknown immediately, so I want to take a look at something that can be determined right now.

Is Adam Jones a good player?

He’s been the Orioles starting centerfielder the past four seasons, he won a Gold Glove and was an All Star in 2009. He’s also a notorious free swinger with a .323 career on base percentage and under 5% walk rate. According to Fangraphs, a walk rate under 5.5% is poor and 4% is awful.

Okay, so Adam Jones is a good defender with borderline-awful plate discipline. That’s fine; there are good centerfielders with this skillset. Well, UZR is the most widely used defensive metric that takes into account all aspects of defense and it does not like Adam Jones. UZR is measured with zero as the league average and anything above zero is above average. From 2009 to 2011, Adam Jones was between -4 and -9 UZR each year, meaning he was considerably below average. Ouch! Maybe he isn’t a good defender.

There are a lot of flaws with defensive metrics. It is recommended to have three years of data before making any conclusions on a player. And because UZR is a counting statistic, the more a player is on the field the more chance they have to help, or hurt, their UZR number. That is something to keep in mind, but either way, Adam Jones did not have good numbers from 2009-2011.

The numbers don’t look good for Adam Jones, but I would argue he is a very good player. His stats are much improved this season; he’s hitting .314 with 16 home runs and an improved walk rate. His defensive metrics are above league average, and all of this improvement is happening at the exact time most smart baseball people predict it to happen, in their age 26 or 27 season. His improved walk rate is likely to keep getting better because plate discipline is a skill that improves with age, which will only help to keep his value high.

So the answer is yes, Adam Jones is a good player right now. His defensive metrics must be taken with a grain of salt because his skills are apparent. According to Baseball Reference, he is most similar to Dave Winfield through their age 25 seasons. Things are looking good for Adam Jones, now it’s just a matter of answering all of the contract related questions when we have more data in six years.