The Case for Edwin Encarnacion
It is now the night of Friday, December 9th, and Edwin Encarnacion is still left without a place to play baseball next year. While shocking to some, there were people who expected the market for a 33 year old who can't run and can't play the field reliably anymore to be a lot less lucrative than it would for any other player coming off five straight seasons of a 134 or better WRC+.
While he's never been a great defender, and that won't change, his bat did take a bit of a dip this past year. His strikeouts went up from 15.75 to 19.7%, his Isolated Power dropped from .280 to .266, and he lost 14 points on his batting average. To a very real extent, you can sort of see why no team is willing to even offer 3 years at $60MM.
All that said, it's still striking just how much the market has soured on one a hitter who's been one of the most consistent bats in all of baseball for about five years now. It's getting to a point where his signing prospects seem to look more foreboding than that of walk-averse and strikeout-loving Mark Trumbo, albeit a player with the same ability for counting stats and three years younger.
Even being the horrid defender he is, (when he still regularly played third base in Toronto he would go by "E-5") Encarnacion still manages to be an advanced stats darling in his approach to the plate. He's never struck out 20% of the time in any major league season, and walks a very consistent 12.5%. In the past five seasons Encarnacion has hit 42, 36, 34, 39, and 42 home runs. Those sort of numbers, along with a wOBA that hasn't dipped below .373 in that timeframe, show us that E-5 is actually one of the better pure hitters of this era, his only issue is that he can't do much else.
That said, he can play a servicable-enough 1B such that's it's somewhat unfair to say he's just a DH at this point. This past year in 636 and 1/3 innings at first he put up a perfectly average 0 defensive runs saved at the not-quite-so-hot corner, so practically speaking, he's not limited only to the American League side of things, and should spark interest in a National League franchise such as the St. Louis Cardinals, who currently intend to play an out-of-position Matt Carpenter there next year.
Were they to take the chance on Encarnacion, they could move Carpenter back to his natural spot at third, where he's somewhat above-average, and then they're not relying on the inconsistent Jhonny Peralta to start 100+ games next year.
Another match would be Cleveland, where their incumbent 1B/DH Carlos Santana has no competition for either role, meaning one way or another there will have to be an addition there.
And ultimately, going back to Toronto still doesn't seem like a bad fit. Of course we don't know what's going on behind the scenes, but a reported $17.2MM qualifying offer was declined by the slugger.
But as things stand right now no team would be outbid to offer one of the game's premier right-handed bats anything close to $20MM a year, which just seems surreal. The three teams mentioned above, as well as Boston, who just lost their historically great slow yet talented designated hitter doesn't seem to be paying Encarnacion the right amount of attention, and that's just a shame.