August 16, 2011
Twins trade Delmon Young to Tigers for Cole Nelson and PTBNL
There's no doubt that trading Matt Garza, Jason Bartlett, and Eduardo Morlan to the Rays for Delmon Young, Brendan Harris, and Jason Pridie on November 28, 2007 was a big mistake. It was a bad move at the time, as the Twins undervalued Garza and Bartlett while overlooking Young's considerable flaws as part of his supposed upside, and in the four years since then it has proven to be one of the most lopsided missteps in team history.
At various points along the way the Twins surely could have gotten a decent return by trading Young, particularly following a 2010 season in which he hit .298/.333/.493 with 21 homers, 46 doubles, and a bunch of RBIs. But they didn't and he took several massive steps backward this year. Trading for Young was a mistake and not trading him after last season was too, but once those poor decisions were made yesterday's decision to dump him was a sound one.
Young was a No. 1 pick and universally regarded as an elite prospect, but those days are long gone. Now he's a 25-year-old veteran of 2,800 plate appearances and has hit .289/.322/.426 with meager power, zero plate discipline or strike-zone control, awful defense, and laughably bad baseball instincts. He's also being paid $5.38 million this season and would be in line for a raise to at least $6 million next season via arbitration, with free agency looming in 2013.
There's nothing the Twins could do to erase their previous bad decisions regarding Young, but the mistake now would have been keeping him for another season at that price. Too little too late, but the Twins finally came to the realization that he shouldn't be in their long-term plans and that left them three options. They could trade him now, they could try to trade him shortly after the season, or they could non-tender him this winter.
They chose the one option with a guaranteed return, minimal as it may be, trading him to the Tigers for minor leaguer Cole Nelson, a player to be named later, and around $1.25 million in savings. Nelson was a 10th-round pick in last year's draft out of Auburn and the Edina native is a 6-foot-7 southpaw with plus fastball velocity and mediocre numbers at Single-A, so he's a decent second-tier prospect. I'm told the player to be named later will be "nobody special."
By trading Young within the division the Twins made it clear they no longer believe his oft-cited potential is likely to arrive and it's difficult to argue otherwise about a poor defensive corner outfielder with a .426 slugging percentage and 12 homers per 500 at-bats. Since he joined the Twins in 2008 the only player in all of baseball with more plate appearances and a lower Wins Above Replacement total than Young is Yuniesky Betancourt. Seriously.
Even in 2010, his lone quality season in four years with the Twins, he was merely a good but not great hitter whose putrid defense wiped away much of his offensive value. That year there were 64 total corner outfielders, first basemen, and designated hitters with at least 500 plate appearances and Young ranked 46th in on-base percentage, 23rd in slugging percentage, and 27th in OPS. And in the three surrounding seasons Young slugged .401.
Perhaps it'll click for Young in Detroit or his next home after that, but he got ample opportunity to show he's more than just another bad-glove, good-bat corner outfielder and couldn't even consistently accomplish the good-bat part. Young's flaws on and off the field mean his bat has to be special and it's barely been average. There's a reason the Twins got so little for him and it's the same reason their trade for him was such a mistake: Young simply isn't very good.
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Lineup protection may not be real in a purely abstract, self referential world of statistical fantasy, but it is in the game of actual baseball. Players, coaches, anyone involved in the game know this. Batters hitting in front of feared hitters get better pitches to hit because you can’t pitch around them to get to the next, weaker hitter. This is elementary in baseball. The lineup you are in affects your production.
Basing your evaluations on stats alone is as foolhardy as not using stats at all. I’m not stupid or suggesting that 3 games is a valid sample size. Hence the comment “let’s check back at the end of the year”. I understand that there’s a certain romance in thinking you have it all figured out based on advanced stats. It’s new, you feel like you’re seeing things in a way the others aren’t, makes you feel like an expert. Much like I’m sure the moneyball guys smugly thought they had it all figured out when that movement was at its peak.
If you’re responsible in analyzing players, you see stats as one very important layer of info–one that is foolish to neglect, including advanced stats– but not the whole picture. Vogelsong and Bautista are two examples that you can’t get careless or think stats tell you everything about a player.
Take the last word if you like, good luck.
Comment by Houston Jimenez — August 18, 2011 @ 1:16 am
I’ll give you a link instead:
http://www.sabernomics.com/sabernomics/index.php/2004/09/the-protection-externality-it-doesnt-exist/
Comment by Gendo — August 18, 2011 @ 2:31 am
Thanks for the article. It’s interesting.
I think we should ask MLB hitters, managers, and coaches what they think of the conclusions. My guess is they wouldn’t agree. Good read tho.
Comment by Houston Jimenez — August 18, 2011 @ 2:49 am
In the debate game we call that logical fallacy an argument from authority, Houston.
Baseball players think all kinds of dumb things. As an example basically every ballplayer you talk to will tell you corking the bat adds power. That’s been proven conclusively false. Corking the bat lowers the natural frequency of the bat and reduces the amount of energy that can be transferred from bat to ball.
Baseball players think that wearing magical copper bracelets will align the ions in their blood stream and make them healthier.
The fact is that if protection was a real phenomenon there would be a spike in the stats to show it. There isn’t which means it is a statistically negligible factor.
The only thing the lineup around you can impact is RBIs which is part of why RBIs are a dumb stat.
Comment by Gendo — August 18, 2011 @ 3:01 am
That was hilarious. You made my day, thanks.
In the spirit of preserving the high quality content of this site, I’ll refrain from further posts, since you clearly have baseball figured out to a degree that not even the players themselves do. And here I was, lil’ ol me, thinking MLB players knew more about the game than some self-aggrandizing know it all on a blog showing off that he likes advanced stats. I hope one day you can share your thoughts with some big leaguers and see how they react. I’d pay 10 bucks to see that.
I”m out, good luck.
Comment by Houston Jimenez — August 18, 2011 @ 1:58 pm
“In the spirit of preserving the high quality content of this site, I’ll refrain from further posts”
Thank god. We can only stand so much asshattery on one thread.
Comment by Pedro Munoz — August 18, 2011 @ 3:51 pm
Now you’ve moved onto ad hominem. You’re not good at this. 🙁
Comment by Gendo — August 18, 2011 @ 5:00 pm
“In the debate game we call that logical fallacy an argument from authority, Houston.”
An authority. I guess that’s a label you’ve never been accused of, eh?
“Baseball players think all kinds of dumb things. As an example basically every ballplayer you talk to will tell you corking the bat adds power. That’s been proven conclusively false. Corking the bat lowers the natural frequency of the bat and reduces the amount of energy that can be transferred from bat to ball.”
Oh really?
http://articles.sfgate.com/2003-06-05/sports/17495422_1_baseball-bat-corked-bat-barrel-end
“Baseball players think that wearing magical copper bracelets will align the ions in their blood stream and make them healthier.”
In the debate game we call that logical fallacy a non sequitur, gendo.
Some statgeeks were magical copper bracelets too, but I think we should examine what they have to say, rather than dismiss them based on a copper bracelet.
“The fact is that if protection was a real phenomenon there would be a spike in the stats to show it. There isn’t which means it is a statistically negligible factor.”
Your words do not constitute facts. Cannot, in fact, constitute facts. It would be impossible to prove lineup protection does, or does not, exist, because there can be no test of the alternative. You can only know what a player hits with, or without, protection, and cannot know what would have happened had the opposite situation occured under the same circumstances.
“The only thing the lineup around you can impact is RBIs which is part of why RBIs are a dumb stat.”
You have, indeed, just contradicted yourself. If lineup construction affects RBIs, then it has to, by definition, affect the number of runs scored. Or are you claiming that if a team had the pitcher hit in Albert Pujols spot, and vice versa, that St Louis would score exactly the same number of runs?
You sir, are a pompous jerk. What’s worse, you are a pompous jerk who doesn’t even know enough to argue intelligently.
Comment by citizen — August 18, 2011 @ 10:58 pm
Hi citizen:
You’re conflating concepts here. I never said anything about run production. If a player hits *after* other players who get on base a lot of course they’re going to get more RBIs just by virtue of more opportunities. That has nothing to do with the concept of protection which has to do with a given player hitting *before* a feared hitter.
The theory is that because the pitcher doesn’t want to pitch to that feared hitter he won’t nibble around our protected batter and will give him better pitches to hit.
This has not been able to be proved statistically. RBIs would have nothing to do with this. You’d want to look at a stat like wOBA.
Your Albert Pujols example is, since we’re continuing this trend, a straw man. You are defeating a point I never made. I’m not sure if that’s intentional or if you’re just misunderstanding me.
As for the corked bat issue I would encourage you to read The Physics of Baseball and to check out additional studies like this one:
http://www.kettering.edu/physics/drussell/bats-new/corkedbat.html
As for the comments I made on baseball players and their kooky beliefs that was of course silly, but all I was saying is them being baseball players does not give them the authority to say things are true just by virtue of that authority.
Certainly not in a sport with the wealth of data like baseball has.
And for the last point of course you can’t prove lineup protection doesn’t exist. You can’t prove a negative. However it would be accurate to say there is no statistical evidence to prove it exists, so we discount it.
It’s like I can’t *prove* there’s no God but that’s silly, we all know there’s no God.
Comment by Gendo — August 18, 2011 @ 11:35 pm
Gendo
You might have more success getting people to consider your ideas if you weren’t writing like a pompous condescending jerk. None of your ideas are that novel. Anyone reading this site is at least somewhat familiar with sabrmetrics.
You seem to fancy yourself as some brilliant baseball analyst. So far the only thing we’ve seen are some pretty iffy arguments and a link to someone else’s work you pasted. The posters disagreeing with you are making some valid points. You may be as well, buy they’re getting lost because of the smug nature if your posts.
Seems like youre itching for a fight or just out to try to impress peoe It aint working. Let’s have some discussion thats productive, theres enough trolls out there already.
Comment by Elton — August 19, 2011 @ 3:38 am
I re-read all of Gendo’s comments and I’m not sure where the pompous jerk part comes in. Contrary to your claim, Elton, the posters disagreeing with Gendo are not making valid points. They are mostly spouting nonsense. This is my favorite bit in the post by Citizen:
“Your words do not constitute facts. Cannot, in fact, constitute facts. It would be impossible to prove lineup protection does, or does not, exist, because there can be no test of the alternative. You can only know what a player hits with, or without, protection, and cannot know what would have happened had the opposite situation occured under the same circumstances.”
Wow. Just wow. Everyone who read that paragraph is now dumber for doing so.
I also enjoyed the part where Elton mocks Gendo’s link by pointing out that it was someone else’s work. Does that mean that I can’t argue, for example, the theory of gravity because someone else came up with it? An iffy argument is not one like Gendos’ – which was supported by the study he linked to – but the ones by those he disagrees with, which seemingly were pulled out of their asses.
I think Gendo has been more than patient given what he has had to respond to. While everyone reading this site is “somewhat familiar” with sabermetrics, its pretty clear that a number of people don’t understand them at all.
Comment by Pedro Munoz — August 19, 2011 @ 10:30 am
I think more accurately, there’s a couple of self-aggrandizing windbags on here who enjoy hearing themselves talk about sabrmetrics.
Someone hit the gong, this discussion is over.
Comment by Elton — August 19, 2011 @ 1:30 pm
I just want you to love me, Elton.
Comment by Gendo — August 19, 2011 @ 2:23 pm