Friday, November 25, 2011

Should the Padres trade Orlando Hudson?

The Padres, a team that doesn't spend a lot of money (this seems to be by choice rather than by ability), is reportedly thinking about moving Orlando Hudson. He is scheduled to make 5.5 million in 2012. That is quite a problem, because he had a 4000 WASP (over the Halladay Standard of 3000) with a 4 million dollar salary. Over the past 3 years, he has had a 2.23 WAR, which would be a 2466 WASP for his 2012 salary. So was he poor 2011 season (1 WAR) an aberration, or is that what we should expect from Hudson from now on? For one, he had a career worst D-WAR in 2011, at -.7. I don't find defensive statistics very predictive, but at age 33, it is very likely that his defensive skills has diminished (his Range Factor was certainly poorer). So we will assume a -.7 D-WAR for 2012 to stay on the safe side (he has a 1.6 D-WAR in his 10 year career, so we will keep the number .16 around for theoretical purposes as well). In his 10 year career, he has a 20.1 O-WAR, so an average of 2.01 O-WAR (for the record, his Simple WAR is 1.42 for his career). In 2011, his O-WAR was 1.7 (His Simple WAR was .35). At his 2012 salary, Hudson will be about 12 percent of San Diego's salary. This means that, to justify his percentage of salary (assuming the Padres are trying to win 95 games), he would have to have a WAR of 5.23 according to my (sometimes shaky) math. Of course, Hudson has never come close to this. He would actually only need 1.83 WAR to meet the Halladay Standard, and it would be doubtful he could even reach that (if we look at his career Offensive WAR and assume a -.7 D-WAR). I thought it was slight insanity that the Padres didn't move him during the season, and it would be pure insanity if they didn't move him now.

No comments:

Post a Comment