Mariners Should Admit Mistake, Find New Home for Dee Gordon

As the season winds down and as Robinson Cano continues to move around, one pivotal storyline is picking up ahead of the offseason — the fate of Dee Gordon.

Robinson Cano‘s mid-season suspension dealt a significant blow to the Mariners. No matter how the following weeks played out, losing Cano was huge, but if there was any silver lining to the circumstance, it was stitched in Dee Gordon‘s jersey.

Despite some pre-season hype about his feel for the position, Gordon did not impress in center field early on in the regular season. “Luckily,” Cano’s extended absence gave the Mariners reason enough to move him back to second base because had he been left to flounder in the outfield all year, he would have been one of the absolute least valuable players in the game.

He still found his way toward replacement level WAR anyway for a number of reasons, but the fact is that Dee Gordon just doesn’t fit in center field. At least not for the Mariners.

His defensive performance leaves him a huge question mark as an outfielder, and the Mariners simply cannot afford to start a developing center fielder if they wish to compete. This is especially true given that essentially all of Gordon’s value is tied up in his defense and baserunning. Take away the defense and you don’t have a quality player.

But at second base, Dee Gordon is a quality defender.

Over the last three seasons, Gordon has accrued 6.5 UZR and 6 DRS in 2623 innings at second base. Scaled to a rough one-season sample of 1350 innings, this is above average at just over 3 UZR/DRS. He may not be a perennial Gold Glove candidate, but at home at second base, he looks good and the numbers back that up.

While his talent level with the bat may hover around a 75-80 wRC+, he can still be a useful player as a good defender and baserunning threat.

For instance, in a great defensive year (7.5 UZR) in 2017, Dee accrued 3.7 fWAR. Slash his .354 BABIP to a more typical .315 (effectively turning a bunch of singles into outs) and by my calculations, his batting line drops to .274/.309/.342 — good for an unsurprising 76 wRC+ — but he sits an average 2.0 fWAR. Substituting his 3 DRS for his 7.5 UZR, we still get 1.5 fWAR.

There are some caveats here, however. Namely, by adjusting only BABIP, I did not change Dee’s rate of extra-base hits, his batted ball profile, nor did I adjust his UBR to account for a decreased amount of baserunning chances, so in general take these and any future adjustments I make as rough estimates.

But I digress. Properly utilized, Dee Gordon is nearly an average starter based on his likely talent level.

The problem for the Mariners is that in order to “properly” use Gordon, Robinson Cano — he of the statistically Hall of Fame worthy career — would need a full-time position change.

The fact that Cano has willingly moved around the infield recently opens the question of whether some combination of him, Gordon, and Ryon Healy and/or Dan Vogelbach or someone else can cover first and second base in 2019, but it is evident that Cano hasn’t transitioned smoothly away from his natural position.

While he expressed a desire to win above all else following his return from suspension, Cano still fits best at second base and need not expect anything less than positional certainty next year. Bumping him to better accommodate an underperforming player should not be expected to sit well regardless of his outward diplomacy and on top of that, moving him to first base to get value out of Dee’s glove isn’t an obvious win defensively either. Making things harder (or maybe easier), Gordon has previously picked out a few likely cheeky words of discontent about being a utility player.

Considering all of this, it appears that it could be in the Mariners’ best interest to cut ties with Dee Gordon and trade him. A clubhouse incident involving him that unfortunately spilled into the public’s awareness could even give greater impetus to such a move in spite of all the positive energy Gordon has brought to the team.

It will be an admission of a glaring misstep for Jerry Dipoto, but if a fitting role is not found on the roster, any amount of money saved on Gordon’s contract and any amount of roster crunch eased by his departure could go a long way toward making the Mariners more successful in 2019.