Arizona - Acquired the Big Unit
Arizona Diamondbacks - Acquired P
Randy Johnson from the New York Yankees for P
Luis Vizcaino, SS
Alberto Gonzalez, P
Ross Ohlendorf, and P
Steven Jackson.
Kind of a win-win for both teams, but I do think Arizona's getting the better end of the deal. A lot of people (including just about every Yankee fan) disagrees with me, but I think that if he's healthy, Johnson will be just fine. Nobody sustains as odd a windup/stretch split as the Unit had in 2006:
Bases Empty: 206/271/324
RISP: 348/399/608
Backs are always iffy, but Johnson's back has been a problem going back more than a decade - the guy can still pitch and there's nothing wrong with simply being as good as he was in 2005. The "such-and-such season is almost never done at 43 or 44" is a bogus argument - Johnson's an unusual, special, Hall-of-Fame pitcher, a better pitcher than Nolan Ryan. There's no magic Gambler's Fallacy God that strikes down 42 or 43-year-olds that are still good pitchers. Most guys going into their age-43 season don't have peripherals as good as Johnson and most guys going into their age-43 season weren't the best pitchers all-time at ages 38 and 40 and top 10 all-time when 41.
The Yankees, however, didn't clearly want the drama and used to opportunity to pick up some organizational depth. I can't blame them because when you're spending a fifth of a billion in payroll, you don't want to deal with any rotation surprises.
There are no top prospects here and all 3 of the prospects, while they would rank higher on the list of practically every other organization in baseball, were just barely in Sickels' top 20 Arizona prospect list. The Diamondbacks can deal these players without even sweating the prospect depth. A team in their position should be willing to gamble as they don't have many huge salary commitments and we're talking about a deserving, slam-dunk Hall of Famer who shouldn't be quite done yet. I'd rather have Unit than Gil Meche or Vicente Padilla and $5 million the next few years. By the time Arizona has to pay big money to their impressive stable of youngsters, Johnson will be retired and his contract mostly off the books, depending on what goofy deferred scheme Arizona does with Johnson (I think Matt Williams and Mark Grace are owed money through the year 2600 or something).
2007 ZiPS Projections
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Player W L G GS IP H ER HR BB SO ERA
-------------------------------------------------------------
Jackson 7 10 26 26 168 206 107 26 59 72 5.73
Johnson 17 10 33 33 216 195 87 28 57 206 3.63
Ohlendorf 6 13 28 27 183 221 113 30 47 86 5.56
Vizcaino 4 6 68 0 66 66 35 9 28 56 4.77
-------------------------------------------------------------
2007 ZiPS Projections
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Player AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB BA OBP SLG
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Gonzalez 463 60 115 20 2 4 45 35 45 2 .248 .308 .326
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Szymborski
Posted: January 05, 2007 at 08:34 AM |
304 comment(s)
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As is, the Yankees don't need to sign a stopgap. Seems like they have 5-6 decent minor league options including Ohlendorf now. They can put Pavano in the #5 spot if he's able to pitch, and if somebody doesn't step up and claim the spot by mid season, they can call up Hughes if he's on track or make a trade - they have the minor league depth now to get whoever is the best mid year option.
But they'll probably sign Roger. Its seems that's been the plan all along. They want a high priced, 44 year old future HOF in the rotation. But not Johnson, so there's only 1 other option.
anyway im just glad i wont have to watch him pitch again
Wait, why does the extreme nature of the split indicate that it's due to age/injury? Has Johnson historically had a poor split which has been exacerbated now?
It's almost important to keep in mind that the two explanations aren't mutually exclusive - the most likely explanation I see that is that it's largely a fluke, but there is an element of talent to it as well.
His back only hurts when pitching from the stretch but is cool when the bases are empty? His back's been an on-and-off problem for more than 10 years and he shows no splits like this (and in his stint with even worse back problems, he was awesome from the stretch).
f one is to look at the runners on split and expect it to drop dramatically, how about the .239 BABIP with bases empty?
Neither me or ZiPS predict Johnson to have anywhere near a .239 BABIP or for hitters to have a 206/271/324 OOPS as he did with the bases empty.
It's funny how similar Johnson's '06 season was to Javier Vazquez's '06 season.
8.17 K/9 (Johnson: 7.55)
3.29 K/BB (Johnson: 2.87)
1.02 HR/9 (Johnson: 1.23)
4.84 ERA (Johnson: 5.00)
Opponents hit .230/.291/.358 against him with nobody on base, but .299/.353/.479 with men on. (Johnson: .206/.271/.324 with nobody on and .321/.363/.564 with runners aboard.)
The Yankees might think he'll be OK, too - a team is put in a very difficult position when their fanbase completely turns on a player.
That's a HUGE ZIPS projection.
Somebody on another board sent me looking for other geezers' splits and I couldn't find anything. OK, that's not very helpful.
With the luxury tax, this saves the Yankees somthing close to $20M for one season. That's a lot of money, even for the Yankees.
Small consolation though...it's still gonna suck in that "Emmett Smith comes to the Desert" sort of way. As for the ZIPS, 200+ innings is very, very optimistic imho. Hell, he only had 205 innings last year and that was before the surgery and another half year of agedness. Not to mention all the times he'll be pulled in the 5th trailing 8-3.
At least Arizona is closer to Washington, so Big Gangly can be nearer to the illegitimate child he ignores. Family is important.
It's not that. It's that his stuff crosses the line between effective and hittable when Johnson doesn't have the wind-up, and it is reasonable to speculate that this may be related to his back problems. There may well have been something physical that prevented him from getting the necessary movement and/or velocity on his pitches when he wasn't able to wind up. Granted, it's just speculation, but why just assume luck when (a) the split is so extreme, and (b) it isn't an irrational thought in the first place to suppose that "stuff" is affected by pitching from the streth and by a bad back, and thus that the combination of the two might be especially problematic for a pitcher like Johnson.
So the thing is, his back hurt whether he pitched from the stretch or not. But if he could use the full wind-up, he could overcome the pain and get something resembling his old-fashioned stuff on the ball.
Or it could be the knee. Or he could just be in a free fall to mediocrity, and the stretch in 2006 is just a leading indicator of what he's gonna be like soon all the time. Personally, that's where my money is.
Mine too. I'm not buying that 2007 projection. Yes, The Big Unit is a special case, but 43 years old is 43 years old, and there is a point at which every athlete's physical problems finally reach critical mass and he declines, and/or hurts so bad he's unable to play very often.
It isn't a question of whether this will happen to RJ, only when. Yes, it might not happen in 2007, but there is a lot of reason to suspect that it might. I sure as hell wouldn't bet $16 million, a serviceable reliever, and a handful of prospects, even Grade B prospects, on it not happening in '07.
Since he was giving up so many more baserunners with runners on, doesn't that mean he was striking out a significantly smaller percentage of batters faced than he was with the bases empty?
Interestingly, or not, his xbh% (as a % of hits) goes wildly up (including a marked increase in HRs) with men on, all in addition to his babip.
I've no idea how to interpret this, fwiw. When he was hit he was hit hard - but he wasn't hit particularly more often with men on.
Ah, that wasn't clear.
I've no idea how to interpret this, fwiw. When he was hit he was hit hard - but he wasn't hit particularly more often with men on.
He was hanging up a lot of meatballs. That's all I can tell you.
It all depends on how close a team is to winning. In the NL West, the Snakes look to be as good as anyone else but their long-term prospects appear even brighter than their chances in 2007. I would call the trade a gamble.
The "luck" hypothesis is far more likely and far less contrived. I think people just like to search for explanations even when a situation doesn't require one. It appeals to our sense of story telling and logic for everything to have a cause.
Uh oh. The Yankees just traded possibly their best pitcher, a 43 year old comparable to Roger Clemens. What on earth could they possibly do to replace him?
Saying that he was unlucky in 2006 is *less* contrived than saying he was old, injured, and on the decline?
Indeed. It's contrived to say that his BABIP while pitching from the stretch is the "leading indicator" of his decline. BABIP while pitching from the stretch has never been known to be or shown to be an indicator of anything except bad luck.
Clearly true, in the general sense.
But this isn't the general sense we're dealing with here. It's a single, specific, particular player, for whom the specifics of his age and his physical health are manifestly relevant.
Obviously whatever component of his game caused The Big Unit's 2006 overall performance to be inferior to his prior standard might be attributable to simple misfortune, and therefore it's entirely possible that he'll bounce back to his prior standard in 2007. If this were a pitcher of typical age and health status, that would obviously be the prudent conclusion to draw.
But this is a guy entering his age-43 season with specific significant injury issues. To assume the most-likely scenario to be that his age-42 troubles were an aberration and that he'll be injury-free at age 43 just seems fanciful to me. Far more likely is that a bad moon is rising, and the troubles he encountered at age 42 were our first glimpse of it.
Link to SOSH Thread, see post #133
RJ absolutely sucked with runners on 3B. It's unreal.
I wouldn't assume that he'll be injury free. I'm just saying that trying to force a connection between a high BABIP while pitching from the stretch and a back injury is real stretch. That doesn't mean that his K-rate won't plummet next year or that he won't fall down in the shower and not be able to get back up.
When I get home, I might do a CBW-style comparison.
I have a theory that when historically great pitchers lose it, it happens fast. Unit's 43 years old, has back and knee issues and a declining fastball. He certainly gave up a lot of home runs in a park very helpful to left-handed pitchers. If I was a betting man, I'd put a large sum of money on Unit being cooked.
I don't think it's all that much of a stretch (no pun intended). There's a reason pitchers throw from the windup whenever they can; the stretch is unquestionably more stressful and/or less conducive to velocity.
1) that's a reason to believe that pitchers would in general be less effective from the stretch not a reason to believe that the effects of aging/injury would show up first in the stretch. These two *could* go together although I've never seen the connection made and don't know why Johnson would be different than other aging pitchers.
2) Even if we grant that ineffectiveness in the stretch would be meaningful, as Silver points out, Johnson didn't have a worse K-rate or GB-rate in the stretch. Mostly we're just talking about BABIP and HR/FB here. Two things that are generally largely attributable to luck.
The real stretch is believing that Johnson's injury age decided to show itself only in these most luck-driven components of pitching from the stretch.
Care to elaborate on the great pitcher, rapid decline theory?
Fair enough. Again I agree with all your points in a general sense.
But once again this isn't that; it's this particular player. Sure, the BABIP-from-the-stretch thing by itself might be a red herring. But in this case I think it would be more wise to be sensitive to the good possibility of it being a red flag instead: a manifestation of RJ's particular difficulty in putting batters away in tough spots with runners on. Maybe it was from a loss of velocity when pitching from the stretch, or perhaps it was that he tended to fall behind and had to come in with a lot of 2-0 and 3-1 get-me-overs. Maybe this problem, which just showed itself in tough spots and long innings in '06, will get worse and start showing up more generally from now on.
Or maybe not, of course. But I would look at RJ's splits less in context of how they compare to the mass of all other pitchers, and more in context of what we know about him specifically, most relevantly his age and health status. Projection systems and general findings are always best in expecting what will happen in a macro sense, but they don't necessarily override the particulars in individual cases.
I'll repeat what I said earlier: RJ is an historical outlier in terms of his greatness and longevity, but he isn't immortal. He *is* going to hit the end of the line sometime, it's only a question of when and how suddenly, not if. Given his age and his health status, it's prudent for us to *not* give him the same benefit of the doubt we give to the mass of pitchers, who while not as good, are also much younger and have much cleaner bills of health.
Cautiously optimistic that he'll be ready for opening day doesn't quite equate to a ZiPS that forecasts 33 starts and 216 IP. So 28 and 180 sounds more like it.
facing the NL West is probably his best play to ride off into the sunset
Maybe. Then again, the non-Arizona NL West teams scored a total of 3,086 runs last season. The non-NY AL East teams scored 3,110. Doesn't sound like quite the drastically different environment it's made out to be.
So you're theory, if I have it correctly, is that pitching from the stretch, primarily impacted the elements of pitching which are subject to the most luck, and had a pretty negligible impact on the elements of pitching which are least subject to luck.
If Johnson's K rate declined to being like 5 K/9, and his BB rate jumped to being like 4 BB/9, then I could see a case for it, but that's not what happened... His K rate remained about the same - and his BB rate took only a minor hit. Explain why Johnson's apparently reduced velocity from the stretch would impact his BABIP, but not his K rate? Or make him more prone to giving up flyballs?
The anti-Johnson vitriol has reached hilarious levels in this thread.
Oh, come on. I don't have any full-blown "theory." In the first place, the sample sizes here are too small to get all worked up about much of anything.
What I'm saying is that RJ's overall statline declined in '06 from his previous standard. Whatever split components of that manifested the worst decline might simply be a function of randomness, but they also might not, and in light of the particular facts we know of this particular player's age and health status, dismissing whatever happened as nothing but mere randomness doesn't seem very wise. And there's no law against speculating as to why this player's particular circumstances *might* have contributed to that particular split.
The anti-Johnson vitriol has reached hilarious levels in this thread.
Oh, get over it. Speaking for myself, I'm a huge Big Unit fan.
So you think that projection for Johnson is about what we'll actually see in '07?
Like Treder, I don't have any full-blown theory either, but let's not oversimplify things. HR rate is flukier than BB or K, but it tracks reasonably well year to year, far better than things like hits or ERA. And his xFIP suggests that his HR rate wasn't particularly flukey.
What's more, it's not uncommon to see good pitchers put up good DIPS stats but give up suprisingly many hits/high ERA when they're pitching while injured. Recent examples include Schilling in 05 and Sheets in 06. Not that this proves anything concretely, but it leads me to believe that the injury might be the reason for the 'bad luck.'
Trade of Big Unit Is a Step In the Right Direction
You know it's coming, Timmah, get ready for it.
But a sub-3.00 ERA, that'll get people pissed off.
Randy's BABIP wasn't unusually high in 2006 - just the distribution of the hits. His projection has relatively little to do with DIPS, and much more to do with his component ERA.
I can see Cashman kicking the living crap out of his dog...
You'd think you'd see that for all the other Yankees pitchers if so, but maybe it's just left handers <s>whom they don't like</s>, or something.
That's the information I had when the RJ to AZ trade rumors first surfaced. Basically, RJ didn't say exactly "Trade me to AZ, faggot" (unlike Shea) but he more or less told Cashman that he wasn't going to OK a trade to any other team but the Dbacks. The Padres, Dodgers, Giants rumors were basically a bunch of B.S. calls from Cashman to those teams, to create the impression that the Yankees actually had a choice. In reality, their choice was a) do everything they can to trade RJ to AZ; or b) have him join Pavano on the DL for all of 2006, who would then be lounging next to his pool in his PV home.
Scott Miller from CBS Sportsline reports the most the Padres were offering was Linebring and Chase Headley, and they were asking for $7m from NY. However, Rob Neyer claims in his chat that the Padres were never really after RJ, and Sandy Anderson, when asked on SD radio if the Padres had really offered Linebrink and prospects for RJ, basically laughed it off as a joke. The Yankees really never had much leverage here; their only leverage came from the fact that the Dbacks actually DID want to acquire RJ back, both to strengthen their rotation, but also to try to work out a better resolution to the $40m deferred money. Then there was the potential PR hit of going to the press and saying "We, the Yankees, wanted to trade RJ to AZ; RJ wanted to go to AZ; however, the Dbacks didn't want him". That might've made the Dbacks front office uncomfortable, especially since they have an agreement that RJ will join them after he retires.
Past a diving Jeter?
Cy Young put up a 194 ERA+ at the age of 41. Granted, that was fluke far above the previous several seasons. Then he had a 113 as a full-time pitcher at 42 (reasonably in line with his late 30's performance and a modest decline), then he started losing playing time, with 102 and 97 ERA+ in part-time performaces. One version of the tale I hear is that he was so fat and immobile that he couldn't really field his position any more and they started tormenting him with bunts. But I wouldn't really call it rapid decline.
Walter Johnson had ERA+ of 148, 137, 106 at age 36, 37, 38. Then at 39 he had a bad (79 ERA+) 100-inning season and hung them up at the end of the year. So maybe that fits the "rapid decline" model.
Pete Alexander was wondrously effective through age 41. At age 42 he still packed a 120 ERA+ but his IP fell by a half. At the end of that season, he was traded away to a bad team; he put in 20 forgettable innings with his last game in May. The only rapid decline here was in his playing time and his importance to his teams.
Dazzy Vance's career didn't even start until he was past 30. From age 39 to 40 to 41 his ERA+ went from 189 to 113 to 90; after that he wasn't a full-time starter any more but he kicked around for three more years as a part timer, until he was 44, keeping his ERA+ in the 90's. Even at the very end, he was still striking hitters out at a well above league average rate. (Vance is one of the more interesting comparisons to R. Johnson.)
Many very good pitchers from the 20's and 30's - guys like Root, Fitzsimmons, Lyons - faded very, very gradually into the sunset, pitching 140 effective innings a year for year after year. Schedules, rotations, and economics won't allow this model today, but if it were possible, many older pitchers would be effective.
Lefty Grove last had 30 starts at age 37. He had four years after that with 21-23 starts a year, and his ERA+ went 160, 185, 113, 96.
Warren Spahn at ages 40 through 42, had three consecutive years as a rotation starter with a 124 ERA+. At 43, that dropped preciptiously to a 67 ERA+ and he lost his rotation spot. He pitched one more year and had a partial bounce-back, but only to an 89 ERA+. One thing I can pick up in his line is that his walk rate suddenly jumped upwards. So maybe Spahn counts as sudden decline.
And then there's Ryan versus Carlton: there was the year they both passed Walter Johnson for the strikeout record and passed it back and forth between them - but you didn't know which one would hang on longer to claim the record in the end.
Ryan pretty much stayed Ryan - the same pitcher he always had been - right up until his elbow snapped at the age of 46. No sudden decline there.
Carlton did have a sudden decline, and you can spot it exactly in his record - although I don't remember the nature of the injury (and injury it obviously was). In 1985, at the age of 40, he was in the middle of what promised to be his best season in several years in mid-June. Then he didn't pitch again until September, and when he did come back in September, he got rocked. He spent the next two years plus 10 innings pitching badly for five different teams; his career ended involuntarily when the last of those teams released him and no one else made him an offer.
I speculate that the example of Carlton was on Flynn's mind when he said what he said.
Um, in that case, that doesn't bode well for Andy Pettite...
Plus, Pettitte's schnozola will bring back all the Jewish fans who abandoned the Yankees after all the "Big Unit" talk drove them to jealousy-induced madness.
I kid, I kid...
Plus, Pettitte's schnozola will bring back all the Jewish fans who abandoned the Yankees after all the "Big Unit" talk drove them to jealousy-induced madness.
I kid, I kid...
Anti-semitism! It's hilarious!
Jackass.
Not cool on my part, not cool. I apologize.
Again: Roam around aging/declining greats like Ryan or Carlton at Retrosheet or BR-PI and you won't find much precedent for Randy Johnson's 2006 BE/ROB/RISP splits (actually the closest I could find was Pedro in 2006). The alternative explanation, that Randy Johnson is somehow not just unusual but unique, doesn't lend itself well to the use of statistical splits either. That is there may well be some problem that mainly manifests itself when pitching from the stretch, but these numbers on their own are useless.
It just goes in one ear and out the other, doesn't it, greenback?
Where'd the fun be in doing it that way?
"Darren's Plan To Cut Internet Traffic IN HALF Overnight"
It worked with Sox Therapy.
It's not just pitching acquisitions where this "Buy Low, Sell High" strategy is being used. Josh Byrnes acquired Johnny Estrada, who hit .261/.303/.367 for the Braves in 2005 and was injured after a collision with Darrin Erstad, for Oscar Villareal and Lance Cormier. After Estrada bounced back to hit .302/.328/.444 in hitter-friendly Chase Field in 2006, Byrnes traded him with Claudio Vargas and Greg Aquino for Davis, Dana Eveland and Dave Krynzel. So in essence, it was 3 internally developed relievers (Villareal, Cormier, Aquino) + a waiver pickup (Vargas) for a solid 3/4 innings-eater and a pitching prospect who has had an ERA below 3.00 in all his minor league seasons. I'm not going to quibble about whether 1 season of Davis is a better deal than 3 seasons of Vargas but this was a good return on the gamble.
As for getting Johnson, the D-backs had the NL's 6th best ERA last season despite (because of?) being a 1-Webb show. Having 3 (potentially 4) pitchers who can reach 200 innings is a big issue now that they have traded one of their better relievers in Vizcaino. Yeah, it's a big gamble and a bet I wouldn't have made, but with $10 million, how many pitchers who has a chance (however slim) to get 17 wins are out there?
Where'd the fun be in doing it that way?
That's what Kramer thought, too. Birds of a feather.
If you and Repoz starting taking breaths, we'd have no content on BTF. So maybe this advice doesn't apply to everyone.
You got me. I often do scream racial epithets at large public gatherings, blissfully unaware that people's cell phones and fingernail clippers often have video cameras.
And apparently you're suffering from delusion of grandeur; I actually don't care that much for you, one way or another.
More likely he's just suffering from fatigue with your crass sense of humor. I mean, I understand you like to poke at different teams and their fans and all, and I don't begrudge anyone that (as Darren knows and laments), but that your jokes routinely are of the sort above (schnozola?) is disturbing and offensive.
The problem is that this, whatever you think you saw, runs entirely counter to the evidence.
OPS against;
none on 1 or 2 outs: .524
none on: .593
one man on first: .854
runners on: .927
2+ runners on: 1.000
bases loaded: 1.167
Worst luck ever? You decide.
It's probably also worth mentioning that the extraordinarily small sample sizes for some of those numbers you site. The bases loaded number is based on 6 at bats. 6!
I could also site:
Runner on third: 1.933 OPS
1st and third: 1.532 OPS
2nd and third: .866 OPS
Wow, he really managed to pull it together when that trail runner moved along! Pretty dramatic. Hard to argue with that statistical evidence.
Anyways, tons of Yankees fans on here, find me one that saw most of his starts and says he didn't have frequent meltdowns. Seriously, just one and I'll give it to you. Read some of the dozens of articles about "What's wrong with Randy?" that were written by the NY media over the course of the season. I'm not making this up, honest. It was documented to an obscene level. Consistent inning long clusters of remarkable "bad luck" over the course of a season is simply not plausible.
I never claimed to know why it happened. My personal hunch is that it was more than just pitching from the stretch but it might've been just that. I don't know.
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