Was the Phillies Trade for Hunter Pence One of Baseball's All-Time Blunders?

The big news this week (well, one thing from the non-game front, at least) is the report that the Phillies may have accidentally sent the Astros a player that they didn’t mean to in the Hunter Pence trade. It’s worth noting that this was initially reported by a reporter for the Houston Chronicle, so maybe there’s some bias here, but it’s worth exploring a question it gave me: how bad was the Hunter Pence trade?

First, some background. Pence was traded in the middle of the 2011 season. The Phillies, in need of a corner outfielder to replace Jayson Werth, were a natural fit for his services, and so they acquired him for the next two and a half years at the price of Jarred Cosart, Jon Singleton, Josh Zeid, and a player to be named later that later became Domingo Santana (the player who may or may not have been included by accident). The Phillies were upset in the first round of the playoffs that season, and, after a disappointing start to the 2012 season, shipped Pence off to San Francisco.

Now, I think it’s pretty easy to say that this trade doesn’t look great for Philadelphia. Singleton is off to a solid start for his career, Cosart has been good and shows signs of improvement, and Santana is triple slashing a .295/.368/.498 line in AAA as a 21 year old (nearly six years below that league’s average age). We should give it a few years to be sure, but right now, you have to at least acknowledge that that is a lot to give up for a guy who hung around for only a year before being sent off for a disappointing return (more on that in a bit, though).

But really, that’s only part of the question. The bigger part is: is it a blunder? For those not aware, Rob Neyer once wrote a book called Rob Neyer’s Big Book of Baseball Blunders. In it, he more or less laid out two ways for a trade to be classified. First, a trade could be bad without being a blunder. Sometimes teams just miss on evaluating players, and you give up a Jeff Bagwell in order to get a piece you need to make a playoff run. For every Bagwell that turns out well for the rebuilding team, there are ten Brett Wallaces that fail to make a Hall-level impact.

However, if there were other factors involved, it could be a blunder. Was it a misread of the team’s situation? Was it a shortsighted trade made partly out of spite? Was there some other factor that made it particularly bad? Only then could it be qualified as a blunder.

Cape Cod League Update: The 2014 MLB Draft

With this, I suppose it really is the end of my Cape League series. The 2014 Draft marks the last time pre-Majors that I’ll hear about this large of a group of players from the 2012 Cape League (some of them still might be in the draft next year, but not on this overall scale). So, just like I did last year, here’s a list of the 2012 alumni who were taken in this year’s draft:


Player: Kyle Schwarber
Pick: Round 1, Pick 4
Position: C (LF on the Cape)
Cape League Team: Wareham Gatemen
College: Indiana
Major League Team: Chicago Cubs
I didn’t get to see a lot of eventual champion Wareham, but Schwarber was impressive the few times that I did see them. I featured him in my team write-up.


Player: Aaron Nola
Pick: Round 1, Pick 7
Position: RHP
Cape League Team: Harwich Mariners
College: LSU
Major League Team: Philadelphia Phillies


Player: Jeff Hoffman
Pick: Round 1, Pick 9
Position: RHP
Cape League Team: Hyannis Harbor Hawks
College: East Carolina
Major League Team: Toronto Blue Jays
Hoffman was the second half of Hyannis’s 1-2 punch that also featured last year’s first round pick Sean Manaea.

Player: Michael Conforto
Pick: Round 1, Pick 10
Position: OF
Cape League Team: Brewster Whitecaps
College: Oregon State
Major League Team: New York Mets

An Experiment

I had long been toying with the idea of adding essays about non-baseball subjects here. In the end, though, I decided it was best to keep all my writing separated into Baseball and Non-Baseball. To that end, I today started Out of Left Field. Right now, I'm thinking it'll be my writings on pop cultural things, but it may just evolve into whatever I feel like writing at the time. I also added a link to it on the main site.

The inaugural post is up over there, reviewing The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Go check it out!

The Jonathan Singleton Deal, and the Rebuilding, Finances, and Future of the Houston Astros

With Jon Singleton’s home run yesterday, it seems that a new era is officially under way for the Houston Astros. Although maybe it more accurately started two months ago with the call-up of George Springer. Or maybe a month ago, since that was when he took off (his first month was quite the opposite).

Or maybe it was Monday, when the team inked Singleton to a new contract. And not just any contract, but the largest contract in history for someone without a game of Major League experience. On one hand, a guaranteed $10 million for five years (or, if the options are exercised, $35 million/eight years) seems like a steal for the Astros. One Win Above Replacement is going for about $6 million on the free agent market, meaning that Singleton could match that without even making it to 2 WAR. On the other hand, there was no way Singleton would have cost that much as a pre-arbitration, then arbitration-eligible player. On the other-other hand, that’s still not an unreasonable total, and if Singleton is good, he almost certainly would have been worth that and more. On the other hand, Singleton still hasn’t even played a game at the Major League level. On the other hand, he’s only giving up one year of free agency, worst-case scenario, so he’ll still be paid in good time if he is worth it. All I can figure out from all of that is that the deal sounds about right in balancing risk and reward for both parties (and also that I apparently have five hands).

But this does bring up an interesting question: is this the new Astros, a small-market team? After all, they do have a rather meager $50 million payroll this season, with only two players making more than even $5 million this season (Dexter Fowler and Scott Feldman). This is a team that carried a $102 million payroll as recently as 2009; what’s going on here?

The Numbers of Mr. 3000

I've been a little busy, but I figured I'd give a heads up on some other writing I've been able to help with. Specifically, I contributed to this article analyzing the advanced stats of Bernie Mac's character in Mr. 3000. Check it out, it's a fun piece!

What Would a Giancarlo-Stanton-to-the-Cardinals Trade Look Like?

This isn’t the first time that the Cardinals have been tied in rumor to Giancarlo Stanton, but this is the first time that I’ve been able to write about it now that it’s kind of in the news again. So let’s look at it now. Should the Cardinals make this trade? Should the Marlins? If they both should, what would it take?

Let’s start with the Cardinals’ side: should they trade for Stanton? Yes. The answer is yes. Stanton is currently 24, he has a 167 OPS+ for this season and a 140 mark for his five year career. He has been playing Major League Baseball since he was 20 and he has still hit 40% better than league average. If a player like that is available, you should be fired for not asking about him. As for the logistics, he’s set to become a free agent after 2016, so a team would be acquiring him for at least two and a half seasons, plus any acquiring team would almost certainly be working to extend him, since he’ll be a free agent at the incredibly reasonable age of 27.

Now, the Marlins: would they make this trade? Well, it turns out that they have! Miguel Cabrera was traded two full seasons before becoming a free agent and for his…age 25 season. Well look at that, what a coincidence. Now, the GM has changed since then. However, the influential right hand man to the GM is still in place. Coincidentally, the GM’s right hand man is an actual sock puppet on owner Jeffrey Loria’s right hand.

All of that to say: as long as Jeffrey Loria is owner, there’s a chance that the Marlins will make some crazy cost-cutting maneuver at the expense of fielding a good team. If the team stays in contention this year, they might table talks until the offseason*, but we can’t just rule it out like we could for, oh, 29 other teams.

*And any time you’re depending on a bunch of young pitchers who might wear down, like Jose Fernandez, Nathan Eovaldi, Henderson Alvarez, and Jacob Turner, or a bunch of out-of-nowhere good seasons, like with Casey McGehee, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, and Tom Koehler, it’s fair to say “Let’s wait another month and see”.

So with that, what would a trade for Stanton look like? Well, let’s use Miguel Cabrera as a basis, since they were 24-year-old outfielders two years from free agency playing on the Marlins with career OPS+s around 140 (Miguel’s was 143, in fact). The full Miggy trade was:

Out of the Park Baseball 15 and the Orioles' New Big Three

As long-time readers may remember, last year, I got a chance to review Out of the Park Baseball 14. And once again, for Out of the Park 15, the company once again reached out to the Baseball Bloggers Alliance to test the game. OotP has long been my favorite simulator, not only for upcoming seasons, but also for simulating past hypotheticals. And as it just so happened, I had the perfect situation to test out.

Back during Hall of Fame season, Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine being up for election at the same time got me thinking about the Braves’ Big Three. And somehow, I got to wondering: could another team have won more (games or World Series) with a similar Big Three in their rotation?

And it wasn’t difficult to pick a team to test this out with. I already had a Big Three in mind: I wanted Hall-level pitchers from the 1990s to run concurrent with the Braves. Specifically, I wanted Mike Mussina, Curt Schilling, and Kevin Brown. All three have been overlooked for Cooperstown, and yet, cumulatively, they are only 13.4 Wins Above Replacement (Baseball-Reference) behind the Braves’ trio. That comes out to a difference of 4.5 WAR per player per career, all of which were close to 20 seasons. That’s not a big difference at all.

As for what team to use, I picked the one franchise that all three played on: the Orioles. I started in 1991, the year Mussina was called up and the first season following the trade that sent Schilling (still a young reliever just getting started) to Houston. Kevin Brown is the only one with experience from this batch so far, and he’s not scheduled to come to Baltimore for a few more seasons.

2014 Predictions: NL West

Links to the other divisions: AL East, AL Central, AL West, NL East, NL Central


NL West
Dodgers-92/89
Diamondbacks-81/80
Padres-76/72
Giants-76/74
Rockies-74/76

2014 Predictions: NL Central

Links to the other divisions: AL East, AL Central, AL West, NL East


NL Central
Cardinals-97/101
Pirates-94/88
Reds-90/93
Brewers-74/76
Cubs-66/71

2014 Predictions: NL East

I’ve fallen a little behind for this to be a true “prediction” I guess, but I want to finish this, so I’ll try and keep what’s occurred this year so far out of it. Also, to save time, I’ll try and cover all the NL together. As a reminder, I look at the team’s records and Pythagorean Won-Loss records (based on runs scored and allowed, a better predictor of future success than actual won-loss records) from last year, then what should be different this year. So, onward: (Previous predictions: AL East, AL Central, AL West)

NL East
Braves-96 wins/98 Pythagorean wins
Nationals-86/84
Mets-74/74
Phillies-73/66
Marlins-62/64

2014 Predictions: AL West

I’m a little behind with the start of the season, but I want to finish this. Let’s get this ball rolling and dive right in. Just a quick refresher, though: I’m looking at what happened last year both in Wins and Pythagorean Wins (which is the estimated wins total based on runs scored and allowed, which is often a better predictor of future wins than actual wins) and then looking at what’s different from last year.

AL West
A’s-96 Wins/96 Pythagorean Wins
Rangers-91/92
Angels-78/81
Mariners-71/67
Astros-51/57

2014 Predictions: AL Central

This is a continuation of my series from the other day predicting the 2014 season. Here’s the AL East article for those who missed it. Now, let’s get right into the AL Central predictions.

AL Central
Tigers-93 Wins/99 Pythagorean Wins (based on run differential)
Indians-92/90
Royals-86/87
Twins-66/63
White Sox-63/67

2014 Predictions: AL East

We’re fast approaching Opening Day, so I may as well make my predictions. They’re sure to be wrong, but they’ll be fun if nothing else. I’ll keep the introduction short so I can get right into the predictions, but first, a short description of my methods: basically, I’m going to look at how teams did last year (both in wins and Pythagorean wins, which are based on runs scored and allowed) and what should be different this year. The latter is a broad category that can cover anything from newly-acquired players to injuries to just straight regression to the mean (always an underrated force, but always prevalent).

AL East
Last year: Red Sox-97 wins/100 Pythagorean wins
Rays-92/87
Orioles-85/85
Yankees-85/79
Blue Jays-74/77

What should be different:

Roy Oswalt's Retirement and the Raised Bar for Hall of Fame Pitchers

I’m going to be covering some older news here, so apologies if you were looking for breaking news. Unfortunately, real life has kept me busy lately; I was determined to write this, though.

Roy Oswalt retired this offseason, as you may well know. When I heard this, I went through my traditional reaction, which was to look at Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference and reflect on his career. He had quite the run of dominance; from his 2001 debut year to 2007, he threw 1413.1 innings with 1170 Ks and a 143 ERA+, as well as three All-Star Game selections and five Top-5 Cy Young finishes.

For his career, he managed a 163-102 record with a 3.36 ERA in 2245.1 innings and 1852 strikeouts against only 486 unintentional walks. That all translates to a 127 ERA+, 49.9 rWAR, and 49.7 fWAR. All in all, pretty solid stuff. He’s certainly going to be well-remembered in Houston (I can’t imagine his number 44 remaining in circulation with the Astros for very much longer given their history and his talent), but he’s probably not going to Cooperstown without paying for a ticket.

Except there’s one other career value that I like to check: Hall Rating. And according to Adam Darowski’s metric, Oswalt actually clears the Hall of Stats bar. Granted, it’s just barely, with a 104 rating. And given the fluid nature of the Hall of Stats, combined with his proximity to the border, it’s no guarantee that he’ll make the Hall of Stats come 2019 (since they try and match the size of the Hall of Fame in size and keep the worst member as 100, the formula for Hall Rating shifts depending on voters). But he’s pretty much on track-it looks like 24 people would have to get the boot before he would slip below 100.

Lance Berkman and Michael Young Retire: Reflecting on Two Texas Stars

A pair of iconic Texas baseball players retired this past week. Like I do any time notable players retire, I wanted to take the “Hall of Fame” aspect of the discussion and run with it. So, are Lance Berkman and Michael Young Hall-worthy?

Let’s start with Berkman, since his announcement came first. I’ve always liked Berkman. As a non-Astros fan who moved to Houston in the post-Bagwell/Biggio years, Berkman was easily always the most fun player on the team to root for. His key role on the 2011 Cardinals only cemented that image of him for me.

It’s still easy to overlook just how dominant his run in the 2000s was, though. From 2001 to 2008, he had an OPS+ over 150 five times, with an overall OPS+ of 151 in that time span. His best mark, though, was his 164 mark in that 2011 season, something that will probably irk Houston fans a little (although four times in Houston, he fell between 160 and 163). The man could flat-out hit.

His 366 home runs rank fourth for a switch hitter, behind only Mickey Mantle, Eddie Murray, and Chipper Jones (and 76th all-time). On top of that, he managed a solid 422 doubles. His 1905 hits may seem uninspiring, but he reached base another 1201 times via the walk. It all added up to a .293/.406/.537 batting line, making him one of only 25 players with a .290/.400/.500 line in 6000 at bats. It also adds up to a career 144 OPS+ in fifteen seasons, 44th best all-time. It ties him with, among others, Hack Wilson, a Hall of Famer that he compares well with.