Arizona - Acquired the Big Unit

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
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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   
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2007 ZiPS Projections  
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Player        AB   R    H  2B 3B  HR RBI  BB  SO  SB    BA   OBP   SLG 
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Gonzalez     463  60  115  20  2   4  45  35  45   2  .248  .308  .326
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