Heyman's Proposed Trades

Jon Heyman of SI.com has seven trades that need to happen.  Some of them we've seen in speculation many times before.  But Heyman does identify interesting landing spots for Jon Rauch and Al Reyes.  As far as Chad Cordero to the Tribe...I think Mark Shapiro will pass on that one.

Comments

[Maracucho]

I for one, am not a big fan of Jon Heyman. This is the guy that actually said that the Cardinals made a mistake by not giving 8 million a year to Jeff Weaver. Yep, Jeff Weaver, he of the 14.32 ERA.

In any case, I really don't understand why so many writers propose trades in which the White Sox get another left handed hitter. This year, The Sox are OPSing .699 vs RHP and .605 against LHP.

While I know, that this is a relatively small sample size, if you look at the three year stats for the Sox players with the most at bats this year (and still on the roster), you see that between 2004 and 2006 this hitters OPS .753 against LHP and .799 against RHP. That being said, the current roster hits better against RHP.

This is important because in the AL central (minus the Sox) there are currently 11 RH and 9 LH SPs, so with the unbalanced schedule it is quite important to be able to hit LHs. Particularly Cleveland and Detroit, the teams ahead of the Sox, have three LH SPs each.

If you look at the values, the biggest splits are for players that hit better against RHP. In the splits for the players that do better against LHP the largest one is Pablo Ozuna at -0.129 and followed by Dye and Konerko at -.083 and -.074. These are quite small compared to Thome’s (.356) and Mackowiak (.226) and Pierzynski (.183)

---------------------------------vs-LHP------------vs-RHP----------------RHP-LHP
Darin Erstad--------------------0.630---------------0.746------------------- “ 0.116”
Paul Konerko------------------0.964---------------0.890------------------“ -0.074”
Jermaine Dye------------------0.941---------------0.858------------------“ -0.083”
Joe Crede------------------------0.783---------------0.764------------------“ -0.019”
A.J. Pierzynski----------------0.601---------------0.784----------------- “ 0.183”
Tadahito Iguchi---------------0.763---------------0.784-----------------“ 0.021”
Juan Uribe-----------------------0.758---------------0.745------------------“ -0.013”
Rob Mackowiak--------------0.548---------------0.774-----------------“0.226”
Alex Cintron--------------------0.694---------------0.685------------------“-0.009”
Pablo Ozuna--------------------0.773---------------0.644------------------“-0.129”
Jim Thome-----------------------0.726---------------1.082-----------------“0.356”
Scott Podsednik----------------0.645---------------0.698-----------------“0.053”

Thus, now that Thome has returned from the DL The Sox offense should improve against RHP.

The sad thing is that if you look at the current roster, against LHP the Sox should play Ozuna in left, and either Erstad (with the .630 OPS against LHP) or Terrero (who OPSed .313 in only 16 at bats against LHP this year, but I didn’t look at historical minor league splits for him).

If you ask me, the Sox need someone who can hit LHP. Let’s see if Griffey Jr. fills that need.

---------------------------------vs-LHP------------vs-RHP----------------RHP-LHP
Griffey Jr. --------------------0.761----------------.936---------------- “ 0.175”

So basically, Griffey’s OPS against LHP is lower than Pablo Ozuna’s, and even though he would be an improvement over Erstad/Terrero to me he would probably cost too much in terms of either salary or prospects.

[jmonahan7]

Bear with me here for a minute, lets pretend that Shapiro would seriously consider trading for Cordero. Now, i have almost no knowledge of the Indians farm system so what would the Nationals realistically be able to get in return for him based on past performance?