A’s - Acquired Taylor
Oakland A’s - Acquired OF Michael Taylor from the Toronto Blue Jays for 3B Brett Wallace
Can the A’s ever resist trying to get a finger in every big blockbuster? It must have killed Billy Beane to not have wormed his way into the Granderson blockbuster.
The Blue Jays should be a little concerned about how quickly the A’s traded Wallace. The A’s have third basemen on the roster with so many injury problems that they could have bankrupted a single-payer health system by themselves and the team is going to happily give up someone with experience at the hot corner that all his ligaments and bones?
The Jays do plan on using Wallace at first (bye bye Overbay), but Wallace is not a finished prospect at this point and I don’t think he’s ready for the offensive demands. An .822 OPS in the minors for a more polished college hitter is, in fact, a bit worrisome.
Taylor, all in all, is a more polished player and more likely to have a career in the majors. His long-term defensive potential is uncertain (Taylor is an impressive physical specimen), but he’s already shown he can terrorize minor league pitching while Wallace has not. The A’s haven’t developed a thumper in a while and Taylor could be that long-term.
2010 ZiPS Projections
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Player AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB BA OBP SLG OPS+
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Wallace 525 75 129 23 1 16 63 38 135 1 .246 .314 .385 85
Taylor 489 47 131 26 3 14 56 40 93 14 .268 .328 .419 100
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Dan Szymborski
Posted: December 19, 2009 at 04:35 PM |
20 comment(s)
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1. rawagman Posted: December 19, 2009 at 05:21 PM (#3417561)If anything, I think Wallace will exceed ZIP's predicted OBP.
Also, there must be some value in getting the guy with the better nickname.
That's just park/league (the projected Philly OPS+ was 104).
Dan - many other esteemed talking heads believe that Wallace is a superior pure hitter to Taylor (who does have a higher ceiling) and that Wallace cannot be an MLB 3B on more than a backup basis.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Wallace was extremely disappointing at hitting minor league pitchers. I'm not saying he's a lousy prospect or anything, but the upside for him is speculative, especially as a 1B. Taylor, on the other hand has already terrorized those very same pitchers and given that he's the upside guy, I'll take him in a heartbeat.
I must say that the overall scouting report and stats seem to all look brighter for Taylor , the only logic I can see in the Jays doing this trade seem to be Taylor's diabetic situation and that 6'6 250 OF on turf seems like a bad idea.
It's interesting to see the big effect of park/league on Taylor's projection, especially going from a hitter's park to a pitcher's park. In Philly ZiPS had him at .284/.343/.456.
It's interesting that there have been few tall players in MLB. P-I gives 20 guys 6'5" or taller with at least 3000 PAs. Although we are generally talking about very good hitters who teams would surely keep giving playing time, only 3 have made it past 10,000 PA (Thomas, Winfield, Parker). John Olerud, not your typical big-guy slugger, made it past 9000 as did Dale Murphy. While there are several exceptions, it's mainly a long list of defensively limited, oft-injured players. Oh, here it is, in OPS+ order:
McGwire, Thomas, F Howard, Strawberry, Dunn, Winfield, Olerud, D Lee, Glaus (I had no idea he was 6'5"), Murphy, Parker, Sexson, Kingman, Marshall, Hayes, T Clark, Rios, Dropo, Cabell, Alomar jr (he was huge for a C).
Maybe it's all rounding ... I only noticed because I was intrigued that Taylor had the better K and BB rates plus the better BA ... but noticed that his OBP-BA was lower which didn't make sense.
Anyway, if correct, Taylor has the better projected BA, K-rate, BB-rate, ISO and baserunning ... you've got to have a lot of faith in your scouting to prefer Wallace. And Wallace is almost a full year younger.
Hey, happy birthday Michael Taylor.
And thanks for the analysis Dan -- I only had to insult you once to make it happen. :-)
Walt, I'm disappointed in you! You answered your own question and didn't even realize it.
oakland got a hell of a player.
but unless he lets himself get fat, why should he have a problem because he is TALL?
and not ALL men get fat afterr age 24. taylor really should be full grown and shouldn't have to/need to "fill out." looks like he got PLENTY muscle already
Hey, is it my fault you didn't list HBP projections? :-) But yeah, 30 in 834 minor-league PAs is impressive.
seems to me that 235-250 is a normal weight for a man who is 6-6, especially a professional athlete. my brother is 6-3 and 230 and a LOT oldern taylor and he is not even a little bit fat (yeh, he has a job that requires him to do a lot of physical work)
and yeh, i know plenty of men, professional athletes and regular guys who jus cain't seem to lay offn them christmas cookies
seems to me that 235-250 is a normal weight for a man who is 6-6, especially a professional athlete. my brother is 6-3 and 230 and a LOT oldern taylor and he is not even a little bit fat (yeh, he has a job that requires him to do a lot of physical work)
It is normal, but it doesn't really scale like that. There's a very good reason why you'll never find any 6'6, 250 pound marathon runners, no matter how great in shape they are.
marathon runners, yeah, they have to be skinny for some reason i don't know, but there are plenty of football players who are even larger than taylor who run very fast.
but that still doesn't xplain why so few tall men make it past 3000 PA
how many men made to to 500 or even 1000 PA who are 6-5 or taller? could it just be sample size? that very few men at that tall?
And presumably, if you are exceptionally tall and a gifted athlete, it benefits you to go into a sport like basketball or football where being exceptionally tall is a major advantage...
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