37 Jays - Mark DeRosa Really Ties the Room Together

Who: Number 35, Mark DeRosa. Thirty-eight year-old right-handed hitting utility player and good clubhouse guy. Six-foot-one, 215 lbs.

Provenance: Passaic, New Jersey. Not far from Hackensack. Selected by the Atlanta Braves in the seventh round of the 1996 amateur draft out of the University of Pennsylvania. Debuted for the Braves in September of 1998.

Contract Status: Signed one-year, $750,000 contract with the Jays in January, 2013. A $750,000 cub option for 2014 is included, with a $25,000 buyout.

Back of the Baseball Card: In 15 MLB seasons, has played 1153 games with the Braves, Rangers, Cubs, Clevelanders, Cardinals, Giants and Nationals. Posted a .340 OBP, .412 slugging in 3858 plate appearances. Hit 93 dingers, including a career-high 23 in 2009 between Cleveland and St. Louis. His last homer was on April 5, 2010. Career WAR of 12.3 according to Fangraphs, including a 4.3 in 2008 with the Cubs.

2012 Stats: In 48 games with the Nationals, made 101 plate appearances, with an OBP of .300 (okay, not bad) and a slugging percentage of .247 (yeesh). Strikeout rate of 17.8%, walk rate of 13.9%.

Injury History: A long list of ailments over the past five years have served to limit DeRosa's effectiveness. Missed two months early and one month late in 2012 with oblique strains. Missed more than three months of 2011 with wrist problems, which had previously ended his 2010 season in May.

Looking Back: His medical chart screams "retire already!". He hits the ball so tepidly that his isolated power numbers over the past three season - .065, .023, .059 from 2010 through 2012 respectively - profile more along the lines of a skinny teenage infielder.

DeRosa's real skill or added value to the team is alleged to be the way that he ties the room together, not unlike like Lebowski's rug. If that's the case, then you'd have to assume that his intangible value is off the imperceptible chart, if only because the less ethereal value is so scarce as to be impossible to find in the stat lines.

It wasn't always thus, and there was a moment in his career where DeRosa had emerged as a second-tier star. After signing a three-year deal with the Cubs in 2007, DeRosa more than lived up to the bargain, posting an .800 OPS (.355 OBP, .445 SLG) through the deal's conclusion with the Cardinals. He averaged 18 homers, and filled in admirably around the diamond, getting reps everywhere but pitcher, catcher and centrefield.

Injuries have severely limited DeRosa in the past five seasons, and his wrist injury seems to be chronic. If past injury history is the most telling harbinger of future trouble, the chances of getting much more than 100 plate appearances seems remote.

Looking Ahead: The current narrative is that DeRosa is in camp to be the new, older and wiser best pal for Brett Lawrie. Maybe he's there to hide the Red Bull, or to suggest a use for his time and money that doesn't include more ink on the marginal segments of exposed flesh that the young phenom has remaining.

With today's news that Lawrie will start the season on the DL, though, it seems as though DeRosa will have a role to immediately fill in for the first week of the season, and maybe longer.

For all of the data that has piled up through a long career thus far, it is hard to say what to expect from DeRosa in the short term. Is there any pop left in his bat? And that's not to kid ourselves into thinking of him as any sort of power threat...but can he hit a double? Or send something past the infielders with enough gusto that a .235 BABIP doesn't become the norm? 



Pessimistically: Gets injured quickly, ushers in the Andy LaRoche era before they even start opening the dome on a regular basis.

Optimistically: 2009 is a long time ago now, but is it out of the question to think that DeRosa could keep his OPS above .700 and play in more than 50 games?

Mark DeRosa Might Be Your 25th Man

Of all of this offseason's signings, this is the one that I choose to discuss? Well, sure. Why the heck not?

Last week, in the midst of another unveiling of another big ticket winter acquisition, Alex Anthopoulos told Prime Time Sports that the team might still be looking for a 25th man, and there are few players who fit that bill better than Mark DeRosa at this point.

This isn't to dump on the player at all. There was a moment in his career when DeRosa seemed like a pretty legitimate guy, posting a .368 OBP and 109 OPS+ over three seasons from 2006 through 2008. The fact that he could be put just about anywhere in the lineup or on the field only added to his value. But a series of injuries hampered his performance, leaving him tucked at the back of the bench for the Cardinals, Giants and Nationals.

DeRosa's output has been at sub-Menchersonian levels in recent seasons: .309 OBP, .269 SLG with one home run in 302 plate appearances over the past three campaigns. His versatility in the field should be an asset, but even that can be overstated if you only glance at which positions he's played. Last season, DeRosa did make appearances all over the diamond, but he has mostly settled into a role as a fifth outfielder with the occasional emergency assignment around the infield. Last season, his forays at were limited at first (4.2 innings), second (3.0 innings) and shortstop (9 innings in one start). He can still play his old position at third base regularly if needed (128 innings over the past two seasons, and 519 in 2009), though there's seemingly some redundancy at that position for the Blue Jays already.

(Then again, with Brett Lawrie being the starter, an extra contingency plan couldn't hurt, right?)

So what's the value of a guy like DeRosa? The temptation is to set aside the "affable veteran" aspects that he brings to the team, because that seems like a big blanket to cover over some significant flaws. At the same time, these are some pretty low stakes that we're discussing, and maybe it is unwise to pull out the oversized detective's loupe when parsing over his value.

For the hundred plate appearances that DeRosa might get in a Jays uniform, his output in game action will probably be far less significant than what he does in the clubhouse, on the team flights, in the dugout and all of the other places where the players congregate when not in the field of play. Unfortunately, we're not there to see how those moments play out, so we'll just have to hope that the handful of raves that DeRosa gets for his off-field congeniality amounts to something.

There's an argument that maybe you give a younger player the opportunity to tag along with the team over the year to gain some seasoning, but how many young players can you remember who benefited from sitting on the bench in their twenties? Did Derek Bell really learn anything from those great Blue Jays teams?

But this is mice nuts. So tiny as to be insignificant, and not worth any sort of angst. I doubt that any of us will look back upon the 2013 season with any amount of dread for this signing. Though I suppose I'd have said the same thing of Omar Vizquel last year.