Friday, December 2, 2011

Looking at the Taylor Teagarden trade

The Texas Rangers traded Taylor Teagarden to the Orioles for Randy Henry and a player to be named later.

Teagarden has a 1.5 WAR in 392 PA according to Baseball Reference. I found this quite surprising actually, especially because of his .286 OBP. Fangraphs actually has him slightly better at a 1.7 WAR. (Back to Baseball Reference) His O-WAR is actually 1.3 WAR. However, he has just a 1.561 O4S, 81 OPS +, and 4.2 Runs Created per Game. On the other hand, he has a .425 Offensive Winning Percentage (which, if you think about it, is above replacement), .280 Secondary Average, and .197 ISO. He walks below average, but has homers at a stunning 4.1%. He also has hit extra base hits at a larger percentage than average, and is a flyball hitter. He also sees a lot of pitches, evidenced by his 96.06 PPS (despite having a really poor OBP). However, Teagarden doesn't have a season's worth of Plate Appearances (even though he has appeared in parts of 4 seasons), so one could argue that the positive or the negative statistics are because of small sample size. It may be helpful to look at his overall AAA numbers, even though they are PCL numbers which is more offensively friendly than IL numbers. In 2011, the PCL had a .030 OBP advantage, .078 OPS advantage, .3 PPG Advantage, and .25 PAPP lower (and 1.10 higher ERA, for future reference when looking at pitchers). So we should take Teagarden's relevant numbers, which are .339 OBP, .807 OPS, 1.12 PPG, and 2.65 PAPP. This would be adjusted to .309 OBP, .729 OPS, .82 PPG, and 2.9 PAPP. These aren't very good numbers at all, and is even worse once ran through the AAA metric: 3.47 PAPP, .42 PPG, and .263 OBP. These are worse than his Major League statistics, and would certainly be below replacement. So someone arguing that Teagarden's Major League statistics will be worse once the statistical size gets larger has a very valid point. Even though he is out of options, he is not even arbitration eligible yet. So even though he won't be very good most likely, he won't cost any money.

For the Rangers' side of the deal, Randy Henry hasn't pitched above A ball, but has a -1.16 PE in 75.2 Innings. He has only given up .6 HR/9IP and has only walked 1.7 every 9 innings. So he looks to be a very solid A reliever, but who knows how that will work out. The player to be named later will probably be announced after the Rule 5 draft, and it seems a lot of the merits of the trade will be determined after that. I don't really know how to evaluate this trade to say who "won", but I thought that the player evaluations (as with a long at the difference between the PCL and International League) would be helpful.

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