The Travis Wood-Sean Marshall trade

The Cubs traded Sean Marshall to the Reds for Travis Wood, Dave Sappelt and Ronald Torreyes.

Marshall had a 2.5 WAR in 2011, and a 1.7 WAR average over the past 3 years. This is a bargain at a 3.1 million dollar salary for 2012, but he is a free agent afterwards. In 2011, he had a -3.75 PE, and -4.15 Adjusted PE. For his career, his PE is .33. In 2011 he pitched like a closer-type, but for his career, he has not very good reliever numbers. That is because earlier in his career, he was used many times as a starter. The Reds are probably not going to use him in this role, so it makes sense just to look at 2010 and 2011, the two years where he only pitched as a reliever. Those two years, he put up FIP - of 55 and 46, and SIERA's of 2.34 and 2.20. This is much better than their previous 9th inning man, Francisco Cordero, and is slightly better than Jonathan Papelbon and Ryan Madson.

Wood has a 1.5 WAR in 208.2 innings, which is about a full season. Fangraphs actually gives him a 3.3 WAR, as his PE is .99, but his adjusted PE is .56, virtually all as a starter. This is pretty solid. His FIP - is 94 with a SIERA of 4.22. He is a flyball pitcher, but he hasn't been bitten by the longball. He has given up a lot of line drives, but seems to be a pretty average starting pitcher that doesn't cost anything and is under club control for quite a while.

Ronald Torreyes is 19, and has never played above A ball. However, he has been pretty good, earning a .419 OBP and .935 OPS. He doesn't walk much, at just 5.3%, and he isn't a home run hitter.

Dave Sappelt has played in 38 games in MLB, so it is more helpful to look at his minor league statistics. He has 451 PA in AAA, so we should look there. There he had a .374 OBP, .838 OPS, and 3.16 Simple WAR. This translates to a .328 OBP and 1.67 Simple WAR. He is below average at Center Field however.

It appears to me that the Cubs won this trade. Even though the Reds got an under the radar elite relief pitcher, they gave up a cheap average starter, and a center fielder that is a good hitter and major league ready.

The Tyler Colvin-Ian Stewart Trade

The Cubs traded Tyler Colvin and DJ LeMahieu to the Rockies for Ian Stewart and Casey Weathers.

I have a write up on DJ LeMahieu already, and noted that his college statistics weren't impressive and thought it was interesting the Cubs drafted him in the first round anyway. He struggled in the small sample size in the Majors, and had just a .328 OBP in 58 AAA games.

Colvin has really struggled in 221 Major League games with a -.5 WAR, .274 OBP, and 84 OPS +. There are some positive things though, he has only had a .250 BABIP, one expects that to improve, has a decent Secondary Average of .294, and a very nice ISO of .207. While he doesn't really walk, he hits more extra base hits than average. One concerning thing is his lack of line drives, but his .447 Offensive Winning percentage and 4 Runs Created Per Game could improve. His defense has been spotty, he was good in 2011, but horrible in 2010.

Stewart had a terrible 2011 with a -1.2 WAR, but had a 1.3 WAR in 2010. Defensively, he has played under replacement level for the past 3 years. Offensively, it makes a lot of sense to throw out his 2011 season, as he just had 136 PAs, and a BABIP of .224. This is a pretty corrupted statistical sample. So what about 2010? He had a .338 OBP, 97 OPS +, and .308 BABIP. This was a much more reliable sample size (441 PA), and he had a .560 Offensive Winning Percentage and 5.2 Runs Created per Game. His Secondary Average and ISO are both solid, and he is an above average home run hitter and walker. Many don't like him because he strikes out a bunch, but I think strikeouts for hitters can be overrated.

Weathers is a minor league pitcher who hasn't pitched above AA. But in his minor league career, he has a -3.72 PE, all as a reliever. He looks to be far away, but he gets nearly 12 strikeouts per 9 innings. He does walk a whole lot of batters (he has a .190 BAA but has a WHIP of over 1.4), so in that sense he is sort of a Marmol type. He doesn't give up many HR/9IP, and he is a possible future closer option. I like this trade for the Cubs because I like Stewart over Colvin and Weathers over LeMahieu.

Koyie Hill: Arbitration

The Cubs' backup catcher Koyie Hill is up for arbitration. Arbitration can't take money away from a player but perhaps it should. He has a career WAR of -2.7, and a WAR of -.9 in 2011. His career OBP is just .275, an OPS of .573 and a PPG of .53. These are about as bad as numbers get. His PPS is really pitiful at 82.161, and he walks below league average, at just 8% of his plate appearances. He is a groundball hitter, which probably leads to his less than league average BABIP at .286. His Secondary Average is just .178 and his Runs created per game is just 2.7. He has a laughable Isolated Slugging at .086 and just doesn't have anything good going for him.

This is why the Cubs aren't any good. They spend a bunch of money on a few aging free agents and then have tons of holes on their roster like Hill. Surely they can find a way to just jettison him from the roster.

When Moneyball wasn't Moneyball: Overpaid Athletics

As the Moneyball movie comes out (to some very positive reviews), its interesting to look at where the Athletics are currently. Not only are they third place in the AL West, but they have found themselves in some very bad contracts. The whole point of "moneyball" was to maximize production in a very small payroll. This is why they groomed the trio of Hudson, Mulder, and Zito, but let them go when they got expensive, and replaced them with groomed Rich Harden, Houston Street, and Joe Blanton, only to get rid of them when they got expensive to replace them with Gio Gonzalez, Trevor Cahill and Dallas Braden (who can't stay healthy it seems). For the most part, the pitching has worked, but their struggles to develop hitters have cost them. Not to mention, Billy Beane has done something very anti-moneyball. This offseason, he signed/traded for 3 aging players with large deals. Hideki Matsui is making 4.25 million dollars this year (he was clearly worth this much when he was with the Yankees, but didn't show enough with the Angels last year to merit this), but barely has a positive WAR, giving him a WASP of over 6000. Josh Willingham is making 6 million dollars with a WAR of 1.5, giving him a sub-par 4000 WASP. Reliever Brian Fuentes is making a mind-numbing 5 million dollars, and with his .3 WAR, he has a WASP of 16,666. A GM that built his team using sabermetrics and avoiding deals like this has turned into the Cubs, who sign a bunch of old players that are overpaid and watch the thing blow up.

That disastrous Scott Kazmir trade is still funny

When teams are in pennant races, like both the Angels and Rays currently are, its important to look at previous roster moves to see how they got to this point. In the heat of a pennant in the 09 season, the Angels bizarrely traded for Rays starter Scott Kazmir, who had a 5.92 ERA and -.7 WAR. They gave up 3 minor league players, Sean Rodriquez, Matt Sweeney, and Alexander Torres. Scott Kazmir is no longer affiliated with any organization. In his Angels career, he posted a .3 WAR (he actually posted a 1.6 WAR in the 09 season) and an ERA well over 5. He has taken in about 18 million dollars from the club (!), giving him a horrific WASP (Wins after Replacement and Salary Per) of 60,000. Sean Rodriquez (who was originally the "player to be named" in the trade), has already given Tampa a 3.1 WAR and has made less than a million dollars over his time as a Ray, giving him a very good (remember, you want low numbers) WASP of 268.7. The other two players haven't even made it to the majors yet and it's already a great trade for Tampa. Torres has posted a 9-7 record with a 3.08 ERA, and 1.483 WHIP this year in AAA, and he strikes out nearly 10 batters every 9 innings. Sweeney has really struggled at hitting in AAA and seems much farther off. There are rumors that Tampa GM Andrew Friedman could become the Cubs GM, imagine what he could do with a club that has money.