Marwin Gonzalez Has Become the Best Bargain in MLB

Joe Maddon would have loved Marwin Gonzalez.

Any manager would, given what Gonzalez has done for the Houston Astros this season. Who wouldn't love a guy versatile enough to start games at five different positions and good enough that his 1.000 OPS ranks ninth among all players with 150-plus plate appearances?

"Nice player," Maddon said, and he's the guy who helped change the meaning of "utility player" with the way he used Ben Zobrist with the Tampa Bay Rays. He has Zobrist now with the Chicago Cubs, too, but it cost $56 million on a four-year contract.

Maddon points back to versatile players such as Tony Phillips and Mark McLemore, but the idea of a guy who can basically be an everyday player without having a position to call his own is bigger than ever in today's game. Nearly half the teams in baseball (12 of 30) have a player who has appeared at five or more defensive spots just this season.

Maddon's Cubs have three, with Zobrist, Willson Contreras and Javier Baez. And while Contreras is primarily a catcher and Baez is primarily a middle infielder, Zobrist is as super a utility as ever (when healthy), with multiple starts at second base, left field and right field and appearances at first base and shortstop.

He's still good, at age 36. Gonzalez is better, and he's significantly cheaper.

It seems almost funny that the Astros can have a guy like Gonzalez on a contract that pays him just $3.7 million in his third season of arbitration eligibility. It's even funnier that they could originally get him as a Rule 5 draft pick, plucked in December 2011 from the Cubs, who didn't hire Maddon until three years later.

The Astros picked up Gonzalez just hours after they hired Jeff Luhnow as general manager, and since they officially did it via a trade—the Boston Red Sox made the pick and sent Gonzalez to the Astros for long-forgotten minor league pitcher Marco Duarte—you can call it Luhnow's first Astros deal.

You can also call it a success, especially since Gonzalez has gone from being a useful, versatile player to one with numbers fitting a star. His .382 batting average in May was second in the majors behind teammate Carlos Correa, and it came with seven home runs and 22 RBI. Gonzalez's 37 RBI in 54 games for the season rank third on the team, behind Correa and George Springer.

Not bad for a utility guy, although understandably Luhnow preferred a different label when responding to a tweet that showed Gonzalez was the first player in the modern era to homer in four straight starts, each at a different position:

Utility by itself doesn't cover it, because Gonzalez is in the Astros lineup nearly every day. He was the third baseman Wednesday, as Alex Bregman got a night off. He was the left fielder the night before, giving Josh Reddick a rest (regular left fielder Nori Aoki played right field). He played shortstop in Correa's place Sunday and first base in Yuli Gurriel's place last Friday.

As Astros manager A.J. Hinch told Anthony Castrovince of Sports on Earth: "He can cover center, right, left, all infield positions. He sort [of] wants to catch, but he doesn't really want to catch, but he could. That's a huge, huge advantage."

Yes it is, and when you start listing reasons the Astros have had baseball's best record (45-22), you don't get far before you get to Gonzalez. He may not fit the image of an MVP candidate, but he's been significantly more valuable this season than some of the guys who do.

Zobrist, watching from afar in the other league, has been suitably impressed. He said the key for Gonzalez will be whether Hinch is able to keep him in the lineup, even if it's at a different position every day.

"If you're playing every day, the position switches don't make it tougher [to hit]," Zobrist said. "But if you take just a few days off a week, it's tough to keep your timing."

It's working so far for Gonzalez, Hinch and the Astros. It's working so well that the team is winning, he's hitting and he's the biggest bargain in the game.

If he keeps this up, he won't be such a bargain for long. Gonzalez can be a free agent after next season, and you can be certain other teams have noticed what he's doing.

"Overall, the league has seen the value of [versatility]," Zobrist said.

His contract is proof enough that eventually it pays off.

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

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