The Royals have designated infielder Ryan Goins for assignment in order to open a spot on the roster for Jorge Bonifacio, who has completed serving his 80-game PED suspension, the team told reporters Thursday (Twitter link via the Kansas City Star’s Maria Torres). Royals reporters indicated yesterday that Goins would be the likely roster casualty, with Rustin Dodd of The Athletic tweeting at the time that Goins took some time after yesterday’s game to shake hands with all of his teammates and say his goodbyes.
Goins, 30, landed with the Royals on a minor league deal after being non-tendered by the Blue Jays in the offseason. He spent parts of five seasons serving as a high-quality defender at both middle-infield positions for the Jays, but his work at the plate never matched the quality of his defense. That proved to be the case in Kansas City as well, where Goins received 120 plate appearances but batted just .226/.252/.313.
Goins is a career .228/.274/.333 hitter, but Defensive Runs Saved pegs him at 25 runs above average at second base in 2093 career innings and five runs above average at shortstop in 1370 innings as a Major Leaguer. Goins also has experience at third base in addition to very brief cameos at first base and in the outfield corners. He’s out of minor league options, so any team that claims him or trades for him will need to carry him on the Major League roster or else try to immediately pass him through waivers themselves.
But the Mets will stick with Reyes…
Lmao
Back to the Jays on a minor league deal I hope
why?
Why indeed.
Billy Eppler – “can he pitch?”
Only in the playoffs
That was Cliff Pennington, not Ryan Goins
Damn all those guys are the same anyways aren’t they;p
Wasn’t this guy good for like a week
He was good for a month and Jays fans ate it up. There was even one point where Jays fans were up in arms that he got beat out by Devon Travis as starting second baseman. Smh
Goins fit the jays much much better than Travis at 2nd. Firstly Goins can actually stay on the field. Secondly he can actually field the ball. When the Jays were mashing it was much much more important to save runs than create them. Goins could go 0 fer and he was still more valuable to the jays at 2b than Travis.
Send him to the Rangers
I always liked Ryan Goins. He’d be on my team.
Goins is better than the Jays have with Urshela and better defensively than Solarte, Diaz, Travis, and Martin. Better average than Diaz and Martin these days too, although his production has fallen off. And he can close. lol..
100% agree Jimmer. Best 2B defender since Alomar and a damn good defender at SS. Actually looked comfortable playing LF the rare times Gibby put him out there.
Yes he struggles with the bat. Ryan Goins is a solid defender.
0.1 WAR as a pitcher.
Best Jays 2B since Alomar? Remember someone named Orlando Hudson? He could hit better than Goins, too.
Goins’ defense is overrated anyway. Yes, he’s a very good, above-average defender. He’s not good enough to justify his bat. Since the article mentioned DRS, let’s look by year, starting in 2012: 12, 3, 4, 2, 3, 1. At SS: 0, 2, 8, 1, -5, -1.
If we look at something like UZR/150 he’s just barely above average at 2B and below average at SS. He’s a serviceable 25th player if you need a dependable defender who doesn’t mind a bench role, but there’s a million other guys like him.
Ted – best DEFENDER. Yes, Goins was better than O-Dog. And John McDonald.
Can’t use the defensive metric stats because they are extemely flawed with bias scorekeeping. So I’ll dismiss what you wrote just like you dismissed what I wrote.
If we were going by all-around, ofcourse Hudson was better. So was Aaron Hill for a bunch of years.
How are defensive stats biased? It goes by range not errors or hits.
Exactly. Range? Excellent to have. What if you have superb range with a frying pan for a glove? That was a rhetorical question you should think about before asking that question.
How are defensive stats biased? Well, I will assume you are old enough to have watched Alomar play? Or even Hudson. Is Brian Dozier a better defender than both guys? How about Robinson Cano? Well, fielding percentage says yes. Why? Because scorekeepers call plenty of errors base hits these days, improving the fielding percentage of inferior defenders.
UZR also measures errors and DPs. What if your DP partner’s arm is below average? That will hurt your UZR also.
Fielding percentage is the worst of all stats. I haven’t looked at it for years.
“UZR also measures errors . . .”
Nope:
“ . . . in UZR, errors are treated as balls that are normally fielded by that fielder and that fielder only (the one who made the error), 95% of the time . . . “
“ . . . and DPs”
Double nope:
“Double plays are treated the same as a single out.”
fangraphs.com/blogs/the-fangraphs-uzr-primer/
I dunno how the advanced d metrics were down on Goins. Every other game the guy made an amazing play that saved a run. I watch the mlb highlights every night rarely do I see a 2b make plays like Goins did nearly every night. He was god awful with the bat generally
Goins did okay in 2017 with the bat. .237, 9hr, 62 Rbis, Devon Travis never has touched 62 Rbis, even though Travis OPS is better.
I would take Goins over Travis everytime.
Great Defence and Pitching usually win championships.
So many utility infielders hit the waiver wire but Dipoto wants to stick with Romine for some reason. It doesn’t make sense to me. I know Goins won’t stick on the roster, but with Romine’s performance and being a pending FA, it’s worth a dfa just 3 months before he goes. Claim Goins.
I’m gonna get out ahead of the inevitable. I think we all agree (even Jays fans on a subconscious level) that Goins is your stereotypical all glove/no stick middle infielder who is destined to spend the rest of his career bouncing from team to team.
Some team will pick him up on a minors deal in the next week or two, and we’ll see the obligatory posts from the rose-colored glasses faithful who praise the “low cost, low risk depth move”. He’ll be in the minors until late July when somebody on the ML roster tweaks something and goes on the 10-day DL. Goins gets called up to fill in, bats .188 in a “small sample”, and subsequently is DFAd by the 2nd week of August. It’s like Groundhog Day with these guys.