2011 Trade Watch (was trade deadline watch)

[Slateman]

Which would be a #1-#2 on the Nats right now... and a dream team of Stras, Znn and Rodriguez next year.

Seems like a no brainer for the Nats if all he's going to really cost is cash.

Cash and a prospect. Personally, I'd rather spend the cash on CJ Wilson. Younger and has post-season experience.

[Lintyfresh85]

Cash and a prospect. Personally, I'd rather spend the cash on CJ Wilson. Younger and has post-season experience.

Why not add both?

It's not like the Nats have a large payroll.

[tomterp]

Michael Jong, Baseball Prospectus:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=14686

The Nationals were able to pull off minor trades of Jerry Hairston Jr. and Jason Marquis, but ultimately the players coming back in those deals have a very small chance of being impact major leaguers for Washington in the future. The important thing was that the Nationals did not mortgage their future in their chase for a center fielder, particularly the Rays' B.J. Upton. Unfortunately, it does seem like they held onto their pieces a bit too strongly, if the rumors of a supposed Denard Span acquisition are true. Supposedly, a deal that would have seen Minnesota Twin Span traded to Washington in return for Roger Bernadina, Drew Storen, and a minor leaguer supposedly fell through because the Nationals were insisting on not trading Storen. Storen, of course, is no slouch, with a projected 0.6 WARP in 27 innings pitched according to PECOTA, but his current 3.86 FRA does not seem to indicate a player who should be held from a deal for a consistently good center fielder like Span. Span is a career .289/.366/.391 hitter (.276 TAv) with a 24.1 FRAA for his career, indicating a player who is both a classic leadoff hitter with good discipline, speed, and contact and a defensive asset at an up-the-middle position. Most relievers are not good enough to be holding up a deal for a talented player like Span, so it seems the possible mistake the Nationals made was actually trying to underpay rather than overpay for talent.

[MarquisDeSade]

What the hell does this mean?

"24.1 FRAA for his career"

[Lintyfresh85]

Michael Jong, Baseball Prospectus:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=14686

But no one thought Span was worth Storen. No one.

[/thread]

[The Chief]

What the hell does this mean?

"24.1 FRAA for his career"

Regardless of their validity, I'm convinced that advanced metrics are simply a form of hipsterism.

[MarquisDeSade]

I'm convinced that advanced metrics are simply a form of hipsterism.

QFT. 

[tomterp]

What the hell does this mean?

"24.1 FRAA for his career"

Fielding Runs Above Average

[MarquisDeSade]

Fielding Runs Above Average

Right, but how is it measured?

EDIT: This is not snark, I couldn't find a definition of it on a work-approved site.

[PatsNats28]

Yeah I just stick to the FanGraphs stats. I'm an advanced stats guy, but there's only so much I can handle.

My new favorite stat is tERA - I had always envisioned a stat like it, just didn't know that it existed.

[blue911]

Yeah I just stick to the FanGraphs stats. I'm an advanced stats guy, but there's only so much I can handle.

My new favorite stat is tERA - I had always envisioned a stat like it, just didn't know that it existed.

Is that a measurement of how much better/worse a pitcher is compared with placing the ball on a tee?

[RD]

Is that a measurement of how much better/worse a pitcher is compared with placing the ball on a tee?

No, it's based on how they perform after a night with tERA Patrick.

[tomterp]

Right, but how is it measured?

EDIT: This is not snark, I couldn't find a definition of it on a work-approved site.

They don't have a crisp definition, but it appears to have been developed by Clay Davenport about 7-8 years back, and is a non-zone based defensive metric.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=2620

Evaluating Defense
by James Click
3/1/2004

It is one of the most suspenseful moments in a baseball game. There's a smash to the second baseman, he slides, knocks it down, picks up the ball, throws from his knees, and the first baseman can't dig it out. The crowds waits, and then the message appears on the scoreboard "On the last play, the official scorer has ruled: HIT."
Many of the problems inherent in evaluating defense are evident in the situation above. The first, and most crucial, is the fact that one of the most basic statistics involved in defense, the error, is assigned by one of baseball's loosest rules, left to the interpretation of the various official scorers. While the league has struggled for the past few seasons to remove the subjectivity inherent in calling the strike zone, it has done nothing to remove the same from the assignment of errors. Rules 10.05.a-e discuss in detail what is to be considered a "base hit"--essentially any ball that could not be fielded with "ordinary effort," a phrase that is never defined or clarified. In any field, statistics are only valuable if they are consistent and accurately reflect the action on the field. Errors, especially recently, have become assigned in such an ad hoc fashion as to relegate the statistic to nearly unusable status.

Second, the conclusions about defense performance we draw with our eyes are often based on insufficient or severely flawed evidence. Rey Ordonez made more than his fair share of exciting plays at shortstop over the past few seasons, but while they certainly look impressive, you must ask yourself if the same plays are made by other fielders more consistently without the all the spins and ninja rolls, either because of greater range or better positioning before the play. Distinguishing between the economically boring and the inefficiently flashy is simultaneously essential and difficult.

Finally, defense is intrinsically a team activity, thus metrics assigning individual applaud or fault can be as deceptive as RBIs and other team dependent hitting measurements. Statistics like Range Factor are largely based on the number of balls fielded by a particular player. However, the fact that a right fielder, for example, doesn't field as many balls as other right fielders in the league may be the result of many other factors besides actual defensive ability; he may be playing next to an extraordinary center fielder, in a park with a small or irregular rightfield area, or playing behind a pitching staff that gives up significantly fewer flyballs than a league average staff. As with virtually all metrics in baseball, the context is the key, not the actual statistic.

When analyzing defensive performance, the most important mental adjustment to make is to hold the defense accountable for every hit on balls that could have been fielded. Initially, this does not seem fair--defense and pitching are almost inseparably entangled. Determining if the causality lies with the pitcher or the fielders is even more perplexing than drawing conclusions about the play itself. This approach certainly requires some refinement, but it removes the decisions of the official scorer from the equation. Bill James suggested this approach in one of his Abstracts in the 1980s, calling the new metric "Defensive Efficiency (DE)." It is, quite simply, the percentage of balls in play fielded by the defense. The best teams are usually around .7300 with the worst around .6900.

While DE works fine for entire teams, it doesn't yield any information about individual defensive accomplishment. To that end, BP's Clay Davenport has developed several metrics that allow us to better evaluate each fielder. First and foremost, these metrics are based on range, complimenting players more for the plays they make than the plays they screw up. The reason for this is quite simple: there is no difference between reaching a ball and dropping it and letting it drop in for a hit. It's like the old axiom in golf: 97% of the putts that don't make it to the hole don't go in; in baseball, if you can't get to a ball, you can't field it. To determine the number of opportunities the player had to make a play, we start with the league average defensive performance at that position and adjust it for the player's particular situation. There are five key adjustments:

Park Factor: This affects outfielders more than other positions since infield size is strictly regulated while outfields seem to be turning more into amusement parks than playing surfaces. Other factors, such as the amount of foul territory, can also have profound effects on fielding performance, at least until baseball allows players to enter the stands to make plays. Imagine if the Cubs had built Wrigley Field with just a little more space in left field--Steve Bartman wouldn't have been able to reach out and grab his fateful ball.

Balls in Play: Certain teams allow more balls in play than others. Teams with staffs heavy with power pitchers (again, the Cubs come to mind) see many more strikeouts than an average team, yielding fewer balls in play. Fielders should not be penalized for not making an out when the pitcher does it all himself.

Ground balls and fly balls: Having the best outfield in the league means less if you've got a groundball staff. Since the GB/FB ratio listed for pitchers is based on outs, some slight adjustments have to made to estimate how many of the hits allows for ground balls with eyes and how many were liners and flies.

Left/right balance of the pitching staff: Left-handed pitchers face more right-handed batters--something that generally leads to more balls hit to short, third, and left field, and vice versa. After adjusting for strikeouts, better estimates of batted-ball distribution can be made.

Men of first base: With the exception of the rare triple play, the double play is one of the most impressive defensive feats in baseball. Obviously, though, certain teams have more opportunities for double plays than others, so knowing the raw number of double plays isn't nearly as helpful as knowing what percentage of double play opportunities were actually converted.
Using these, it's possible to estimate better the performances of individual fielders compared to the league average. From there, the number of runs allowed above or below average can be determined for each fielder. In Baseball Prospectus 2004, the "Defense" column for fielders contains values like "154-1B 3"; this indicates that the player played 154 games at first and was 3 runs above average (FRAA). You can also see these numbers on BP's PECOTA Cards.

Davenport Fielding Runs are a major step up from other widely available defensive statistics such as Fielding Percentage, Range Factor, and the enigmatic Zone Rating, but statistical analysis of baseball defense is still in its infancy. Front offices have access to much more advanced metrics than the public, some specifically charting where each batted ball is hit, how hard, and how high. As that wealth of data expands and reaches the public, it will be possible to better evaluate individual defensive performances. For the time being, however, just try to use an objective eye the next time ESPN's Web Gems comes on.

And here's WAY more detail on the subject of FRAA vs other defensive metrics:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=6976

...In the past quarter of a century, analysts have begun to take advantage of those simple ideas, leading to the development of Bill James' Range Factor (RF), Pete Palmer's Fielding Runs (FR), our own Clay Davenport's Translations (DTs, which include FRAA and FRAR), Mitchell Lichtman's Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), ESPN's Zone Rating (ZR), David Pinto's Probabilistic Model of Range (PMR), Michael Humphrey's Defensive Regression Analysis (DRA), Shane Jensen's Spatial Aggregate Fielding Evaluation (SAFE), Baseball Info Solution's Plus/Minus system, and even Tom Tango's Scouting Report for the Fans.


...

[tomterp]

Steve Goldman declares the Nats one of the "winners" at the draft deadline.  (about half the clubs were winners)

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=14690

Washington Nationals
Washington got depth in Zach Walters and Erik Komatsu. These are hardly top-level prospects, but the Nationals weren’t dealing Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig either. Jason Marquis and Jerry Hairston were just passing through. If being a general manager is an art, then it is the art of turning today’s dross into tomorrow’s hope—however thin. As for their failure to acquire Denard Span or B.J. Upton, (a) it's not clear why that was a priority anyway, and (b) there will be plenty of time for that over the winter.

[NatsDad14]

Regardless of their validity, I'm convinced that advanced metrics are simply a form of hipsterism.

Hipsters don't use old stats. It's more a form of mental masturbation or statistical sophistry.

[houston-nat]

Hipsters don't use old stats. It's more a form of mental masturbation or statistical sophistry.

As silly as that is, major props for the awesome alliteration.

[spidernat]

Is that a measurement of how much better/worse a pitcher is compared with placing the ball on a tee?

No, it's based on how they perform after a night with tERA Patrick.

 You guys are freaking awesome.

[BerkeleyNat]

Why not add both?

It's not like the Nats have a large payroll.

  I have to wonder the same thing.

[hammondsnats]

Why not add both?

It's not like the Nats have a large payroll.

it's not how the lerners work. 

[cmdterps44]

according to Lobloblobetcetc

mlbtr:

The Twins wanted closer Drew Storen and minor league second baseman Stephen Lombardozzi for center fielder Denard Span, and the Nationals declined

[Kevrock]

Couldn't trade Lombo unless we want to commit to Desmond. Good decision.

[UMDNats]

according to Lobloblobetcetc

mlbtr:

Glad we turned that down.

[cmdterps44]

Couldn't trade Lombo unless we want to commit to Desmond. Good decision.

Glad we turned that down.

Yep. Me too. Some others would say that we should've clearly done the trade but my main problem is Lombo. He should (should because hopefully the FO gives him a chance) replace Desmond. People would say Desmond is easy to replace but I would disagree.

[Tyler Durden]

That's probably a fair trade but I'm fine with having not done it.  I can't see it costing less in the offseason for Span if he proves himself healthy, but between the concussion issues, Desmond's unreliability, Lombo's promise as a leadoff guy, and Storen's awesomeness, I'm OK with not doing this trade.

Maybe they get Upton after the season for something similar to what the A's sent us for Hammer.  Coco Crisp could be a decent stopgap.  May Melky Cabrera could be had cheaply (maybe he's even a non-tender?).

[Evolution33]

That's probably a fair trade but I'm fine with having not done it.  I can't see it costing less in the offseason for Span if he proves himself healthy, but between the concussion issues, Desmond's unreliability, Lombo's promise as a leadoff guy, and Storen's awesomeness, I'm OK with not doing this trade.

Maybe they get Upton after the season for something similar to what the A's sent us for Hammer.  Coco Crisp could be a decent stopgap.  May Melky Cabrera could be had cheaply (maybe he's even a non-tender?).

If it didn't look like Cody Ross' defense has completely fallen apart and with how he hits against the NL East I would suggest him as a better stop gap than Coco Crisp, but it doesn't look like he can play center anymore.