Giles To San Diego, Laroche on his way out?

Well, it looks like Marcus Giles is on his way to San Diego, after all. The catch? The Braves don't get anything in return. Linebrink would have fit in nicely with Soriano, methinks. Oh well. I haven't had a chance to gush about the HoRam for Soriano deal, but, rest assured, I love it. Ramirez was constantly injured the last few years, and as I mentioned earlier, the Braves had a logjam in their rotation anyway.

But, on to bigger news. The latest rumor to hit the papers is the three way trade that would send Laroche to the Pirates and Mike Gonzalez to the Yanks, who would shoot Melky Cabrera our way. Cabrera is a good looking young player, but I can't see us giving up Laroche for just Cabrera. I mean, this is the same Adam Laroche who as 10th in the NL in OPS last year, and posted a 2nd half line of .387/.655/1.042

Cabrera hit .360/.391/.751, which was an OPS+ of exactly 100. Not sparkling, but not too bad of a season for a 21 year old. The hope is Cabrera would be able to grow into a good top of the order hitter, and shift over to CF if or when Andruw leaves. Which is a fine idea, but I still think it's just a bit too little to get back for Laroche.

Adam Laroche

Last year Adam Laroche overcame some criticism for failing to hustle, and ended up having a fine year. He smacked 32 home runs and drove in 90 runs for the Braves. He was the Braves' third best hitter last year, behind McCann and Chipper (when he was healthy). So how does he stack up against other 1B of the league? Well, we're going to go ahead and exclude Ryan Howard, Albert Pujols, and Lance Berkman, who are three of the better hitters in the Majors. We will compare Laroche to Carlos Delgado of the Mutts, Nick Johnson of the Nats, Prince Fielder of the Brewers, Adrian Gonzalez of the Padres, and Todd Helton of the Rockies.



As you can see, of the "Second-tier" 1b in the NL, Laroche was probably the second best. If he can continue his progression, he might be able to knock on the door with the Berkmans, Pujols', and Howards of the world. This would be fantastic for the Braves.

One thing that I would like to see Laroche improve upon is his OBP. If he can draw more walks and raise his OBP to around the level of Johnson, he will become a truly elite hitter.

Soriano? Good. But 8 Years?

As you know, the Chicago Cubs just signed Alfonso Soriano to the richest contract in club history, $136 Million over 8 years. For those scoring at home, that comes to $17 Million a year. I think its a good move over the first half or so of the contract, but how good will it be for the second half of those 8 years, when Soriano is on the wrong side of 35? Let's try and find out.

They have a cool little feature (well, lots of cool things really) over at Baseball Reference, but we're going to work with the Similarity Scores today. Basically, it looks at various stats for a player and matches him with other players who put up similar numbers. The best two matches for Soriano look to be Matt Williams and Jeff Kent. The next two would probably be Danny Tartabull (he of Seinfeld fame) and Raul Mondesi. In the last group, I put Ken Boyer alone, mainly because he played in a different era. Anyway, lets look at the results:



As you can see, Kent and Boyer had better seasons than Soriano, and Williams and Tartabull were very close. Now Lets see what happened to these players rate stats in the years after they turned 30:




Jeff Kent was easily the most productive hitter after he turned 30, while Raul Mondesi struggled the most. Tartabull's career was cut short by injuries, and Boyer and Williams both struggled towards the end of their careers. Some graphs might better illustrate the effects:






As you can see, there is a general downward trend in production as players age, which is obviously to be expected. We can probably go ahead and throw out Mondesi's numbers, as he is far below everybody else and played for a shorter time. Tartabull also played for too short of a time. It is reasonable to expect production somewhere around what Matt Williams and Jeff Kent did for the first few years, but after that it's really anyone's guess. I fully expect Soriano to have between at least 6-7 RC/27 the next few years, but probably drop off a little after that, to about where Matt Williams was. Although he could be like Kent, who did not suffer this drop-off. If Soriano becomes the kind of player Kent was, the Cubs will be very happy. Even though that's probably not worth $17 Million, the market is what it is I suppose.

Actually, $51.1 Million

Okay. Wow. So apparently the Red Sox actually paid $51.1 M to negotiate with Matsuzaka. This changes our example from last time slightly:



Quick Note: These values are not meant to be exact by any means. They were less than perfect estimates when Baseball Prospectus calculated them and the way I'm employing them.

$42 Million?

That's what the Red Sox reportedly bid for the right to negotiate with Japanese Star Daisuke Matsuzaka. Assuming this isn't a ploy to block him from going to the Yankees (and I think we can be fairly sure it is not), it seems as if the Sox have grossly outbid all other competitors. The Rangers were rumored to have bid $22 Million, and I suppose we'll find out what the Yankees bid soon enough.

Anyway, agent Scott Boras is said to be seeking a 3 year deal so that his client can hit Free Agency when he is 29, which would be right in the prime of his career. Conservatively, let's predict a 3 year contract for $25 Million. This means the Red Sox will be paying $67 M for 3 years of Matsuzaka, or $22.33 M a year. Of course, the Red Sox aren't expecting to recoup all of this, but just for fun, lets give it a look.

Even if the Red Sox were to make the playoffs each of those years, it doesn't seem like he could be worth that much. Roughly using a complicated system for player valuation laid out in the excellent book Baseball Between the Numbers, by Baseball Prospectus, we can estimate how much revenue Matsuzaka might be able to earn for Boston.

First, some assumptions

1. The Red Sox make the playoffs each of the next three years, but Matsuzaka only directly affects this 2 out of the three years. (Optimistic, but we'll go with it)
2. Matsuzaka performs at a level similar to the top pitchers in the league those 2 years, and is slightly less effective the third year

The best VORP for a Pitcher this year was by Johan Santana, with 79.6 - if we use the accepted measure that 10 runs is about equal to one win, that's about an extra 8 wins that Santana added. We won't assume that Matsuzaka will be Santana-like. Let's say he has VORPs of 70 and 65 the two years he helps the Red Sox get into the playoffs, and one of about 45 the other year. Just individually, he is contributing about $11.7 M over those three years (using $650 k per win). And if Boston makes the playoffs two of those years because of him, thats another $50 M generated ($25 M per year, according to Baseball Prospectus).

So, that's a total of about $62 M that we can attribute to Matsuzaka. Falls short by about $5 M of what Boston spent, but I'm sure they would gladly take it. Of course, it could be different, as Matsuzaka is a huge star in Japan, and there might be additional revenue made there. If
anybody knows more about how that works, please feel free to comment.

Stop with the Lugo!

We'll hold off on talking about Marcus Giles extensively until the Braves either trade him or say that they're keeping him. In the meantime, we'll address a player that, for some reason, many Braves fans wish to see next year in the infield. That's right, we're talking about Julio Lugo.

Why do some want Lugo for the Braves? The most common answer is that they want a leadoff hitter, while others cite his defense. Let's take a closer look:

Well, Giles has a .361 career OBP, and Lugo has a .340. True, Lugo was having a fine campaign in Tampa Bay last year, with a line of .308/.373/.498 in 289 At-Bats. After coming over to the National League, he dropped of drastically, posting an abysmal line of .219/.278/.267 in 146 ABs. His decline is very interesting, as most will agree the AL East was a good bit better than the NL West in 2006. Giles and Lugo both posted similar OPS+'s last year (90 and 94), but Lugo had an incredibly low OPS+ of 40 for the Dodgers in the NL. Even if it was a prolonged slump last year for Lugo after the trade deadline, he was so horrible for LA that it might not be worth it to even take a chance.

That's another thing, Lugo would probably cost $5-6 million dollars a year, right about where Giles would be. Giles was better than the NL version of Lugo anyway, but was hampered by injuries. If healthy he should be able to bounce back and post comparable, if not better, numbers.

Let's move on to their fielding now. Giles has really been solid the last few years at 2B for Atlanta. He had a FRAR of 26 last year, and has consistently hovered around a 30 FRAR in his career. Now, Lugo did play 29 games at 2B for the Dodgers last year, and had a FRAR of 5. He notched a FRAR of 10 as the Devil ray's shortstop the first part of the season. However, since Lugo played a considerably fewer amount of games at 2B than Giles did, it is better to look at their Runs Saved Rate, with numbers over 100 being for the better. Lugo got the better of Giles here, with a 112 rate as compared to Giles' 104.

So what's the bottom line? For the season, Lugo had a WARP of 3.4, and Giles had one of 4.5. It makes very little sense to trade away Giles and replace him with Lugo, which would not provide much, if any, of a salary break. Replacing him from within, with a player like Martin Prado or Willie Aybar, might not match the production Giles had, but would free up salary for the Braves to commit somewhere else. We'll have to wait and see what John Schuerholz decides to do with Giles. I just hope he doesn't go pick up Lugo.

Barfield To Cleveland, Giles to San Diego?

With the San Diego Padres dealing young 2B Josh Barfield to the Indians, it seems more and more likely that Braves 2B Marcus Giles will be joining his brother in San Diego. As Ken Rosenthal has reported, a deal was rumored to have been discussed, but Barfield was potentially blocking Giles at the position. There was talk of Giles being moved to 3B, a position at which the Padres were thin.

Now, however, the Padres have their 3B of the future in Kouzmanoff, and a void at 2B. In exchange for Giles, the Braves would probably receive reliever Scott Linebrink. As all Braves fans know, the bullpen was horrible in 2006, and Linebrink was better than every single reliever the Braves had in '06, with the exception of Bob Wickman and Chris Reitsma.

(Kidding about Reitsma, just checking if you were paying attention).

Anyway, Linebrink went 7-4 with a 3.57 ERA (118 ERA+) and 68 Ks in 75.7 IP. He also had a 32 PRAR, or Pitching Runs Above Replacement. The best PRAR total by a Braves reliever in 2006 was 30, by Oscar Villareal. This only includes innings pitched for Atlanta. If you include all innings pitched, Wickman had a PRAR of 39.

Bullpen (with 2006 Atlanta statistics)



Linebrink would be a solid setup man and good first step towards restoring a bullpen that needs to be much better in '07 if the Braves want to regain control in the NL East. More will be addressed on the topic of the Braves bullpen throughout the off-season. Next, however, we will examine the ramifications of potentially losing Marcus Giles.

Igawa's ERC

Well, got the Home Run data for Igawa for 2006. He gave up 17 long balls, a rate of 1 every 12.3 innings. Not bad. Anyway, this lets us use some of his peripherals to roughly calculate his ERC.

	IP	Hits	BB	HR	K	HBP	ERC	ERA
Japan	209	180	55	17	194	6	2.69	2.97
MLB	209	194	59	21	171	6	3.19

Just to compare, his expected ERC of 3.19 in the Majors would have ranked 8th in the league, ahead of such pitchers such as Roy Oswalt (3.22), John Smoltz (3.34), and Carlos Zambrano (3.37). As you might have guessed, Johan Santana led the league last year with an ERC of 2.36.

Now, this isn't to say that Igawa would be the 8th best pitcher in the league. That would be a highly unrealistic expectation. This is just one measure of a pitcher's ability, and I would imagine there are plenty of other factors that would go into making the transition from THE NPB to the MLB.

Braves to bid on Japanese Pitcher?

No, no...it's not what you're thinking. The Braves definitely do not seem to be in the running for Daisuke Matsuzaka. However, according to Mr. Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports, the Braves seem to be interested in southpaw Kei Igawa, of the Hanshin Tigers. Even though he is rumored to be heading for the West Coast, Igawa, or "Iron Nerves", as he is known in Japan, could be a very interesting proposition for Atlanta.

Igawa went 14-9 with a 2.97 ERA and 1.12 WHIP in the Central League this past season. He also struck out 194 in 209 innings pitched. Using Jim Albright's Method for translating Japanese Stats to the Majors, these are roughly equivalent to 172 Strikeouts, 59 Walks, and 194 Hits. This puts his adjusted WHIP at 1.21. He also threw an average of 115 pitches a start.

As soon as I can locate some Home Run Data for Igawa, we can do some ERC calculations to further look at his possible effects overseas.

Now, as is obvious to any Braves fan, the team has an abundance of starters.

1. Smoltz
2. Hudson
3. Hampton
4. James
5. Ramirez/Davies

There is already a logjam at the back end of rotation. Hudson and Hampton are virtually immovable because of their large contracts, and James was too impressive in his stint last year (11-4, 91 Ks, 116 ERA+) to consider trading. Davies was abysmal last year, but he is still young and has at times showed great promise. This leaves Ramirez as the most likely trade candidate, although when healthy (a rare occurrence in recent years) he too has been decent. An acquisition of Igawa would necessitate that Atlanta displace two starters from the rotation, a feat easier said than done at the present time. More to come soon...