Braves To Acquire Javier Vazquez

I like it for both sides, actually. As a Braves fan, I like getting (for us) a #2-3 guy who is solid, and with a short commitment. Flowers had a great few weeks, to be sure, but did anybody really care about him until this Fall? I smell a bit of Kevin Mench on him.

ok couple things

1. Freddy Garcia injured his shoulder in a Dominican League game a couple weeks ago so no chance sox sign him.

2. Does the title of this article say the word Phillies in it? No so stop argueing about off topic crap.

3. If Jo Jo Reyes is not involved in this trade u will be very dissapointed

Yes I have seen him play, I went to 10+ games last year and watched many more on TV. Watching him play doesn't magically make me believe he is a great player. His offensive production is average (103 OPS+, 100 is average) and his defense was below average.

Maybe his defense was bad because he was adjusting to a new position. We will see when he moves back to his natural position at SS. I doubt we see him in CF as the Sox have abandoned that idea for now.

The bottom line is the numbers don't lie. There is a standardized zone for every position on the field (it is the same for every player). Of all the balls hit to the 2B zone while Alexei Ramirez was playing 2B, he only turned 79% of them into outs. The other 21% were either errors or he couldn't even get to them. Meanwhile, 14 other 2B in the majors were able to convert 80% or more of them.

I agree he has great power numbers, but his walk rate is abysmal. Unless you can bat .330 you need to be able to walk to get on base. If you cannot get on base at a decent rate, you provide less opportunities for your team to score runs.

I saw Ramirez do some amazing things, but that doesn't change the fact that he never walks and his defensive range was bad.

nixa,

you have a point, but this is what i was thinking (before this vazquez mess):

trade the proposed package to san diego for peavy, trade kelly johnson for ludwick for shortstop, put martin prado at 2nd. then get burnett with leftover funds. why not?

Tend to and almost are not guarantees. Also, plate discipline, the main factor in walks, is a hard thing to learn.

I am not saying Ramirez can't get better, but call him like he is. He was a league average offensive producer with gaudy power numbers and an alarming OBP with below average defense.

I hope he gets better, but I am not expecting him to be the next A rod.

so to finish it, you are fat, middle aged, single,and don an odd slightly heavy metal beard, octopus?

yea obvisiouly

"I disagree on Alexi's defense. He is at least on par with Derek Jeter and Micheal Young...."

Thats great! Its funny that scouts who watch baseball all year round and study players feel one way about Alexi, and some people in here are calling people stupid or uniformed for using some of the most intellegent metrics used to rate fielding.

Alexi is good, hes a rookie who when the pitchers adjust, hopefully will adjust right back. He made stupid mistakes but is very athletic and could be a good fielder, if he can cut down his Ks and walk more hes an allstar.

chicubs25:

Ks are not bad, and Alexei was still pretty low with only 61. Heck he was 10th in the league with 7.9 AB per K. He really only needs to increase his walk total.

wait so the braves passed trading flowers to the Pads for Peavy but pulled the trigger to get Vazquez? somebody fill me in...i must have missed something!!

Loblaw et al,

I have to hand it to you guys - you really know how to craft intelligent arguments.

Yeah, you are right. I was only looking at last year. Between 04 and 07 Jeter was in the .775-.805 RZR range. Last year he managed to bump it up to .839, which was good for 7th overall. His OOZ has been low consistently.

So yes, I would say Ramirez is similar to Jeter defensively, if one season is any indication (it likely isn't). There just isn't anything to indicate that Ramirez will get a good deal better other than unmeasurable things like familiarity with your position.

Yeah Keith Law certainly doesnt like him very much. Its not that I dont like him, i just feel hes been overrated a bit by his fans, as most players are. My only real problem is the person who said his defense is "second to none".

"If you really think Alexei Ramirez is a great player, go talk to Keith Law and let him rip apart Ramirez's game over and over. "

Ummmmmm.

"Dustin Pedroia doesn't have the strength or bat speed to hit major-league pitching consistently, and he has no power." - KLaw

According to Dewan's Fielding bible Alexi was a -7 at 2B last year... for 27th in the league at 2B

Micheal Young for the last 3 years at SS
Year Total Rank
2006 -10 28
2007 -15 32
2008 -7 27

Derek Jeter for the last 3 Years

Year Total Rank
2006 -22 34
2007 -34 34
2008 -12 31

Thats why people question Alexi's defense. All of this data is compiled by watching every single play from ever position from every player using the same aspect ratio with a computer designed program that determines both speed of the ball the acceptable range to get to that ball. If you get to the ball and not make an error you get a +, if not you get a -. Its not a perfect metric, but it is a much better gauge than most of the older defensive metrics.

When you strike out, you do the second least productive thing for your team at that point. It's not the same as an out resulting in a batted ball in play. Batted balls in play outs often advance or even score runners and at the very least tire fielders. It is nearly impossible to do something productive in an at-bat by striking out. The only thing worse is to bat a ball into play and record multiple outs.

For those of you wondering why Wren wouldnt turn the prospects lose for Peavy but will for Vazquez there is really no comparison.

The package the Braves were willing to give up for Peavy was exponentially better. They were offering Escobar and Schafer or Hernandez, all of which are better than every piece in this trade.

Plus they were offering Reyes or Morton and a Medlin or Locke type who were apparently not available to Chicago in this deal.

Wren only refused to include Flowers in the Peavy deal because Towers wanted him in addition to all the other pieces.

And you said it only hurts if its the first or last out? Ok 1 out and a man on first, the 2nd out strikes out and leaves the man at first while the following hitter hits a single that would have scored him from seconds. So there thats all 3 outs of an inning that a strike out hurts the team.

And let me clarify me post before this, yes they make you throw more pitches, but thats a bad reason for them to be productive because there are many other ways to do that. Thats just a very weak silver lining, assuming it takes that many pitches to stike that hitter out.

tsweet9000- The package the Braves were willing to give up for Peavy was exponentially better. They were offering Escobar and Schafer or Hernandez, all of which are better than every piece in this trade.

Plus they were offering Reyes or Morton and a Medlin or Locke type who were apparently not available to Chicago in this deal.
Wren only refused to include Flowers in the Peavy deal because Towers wanted him in addition to all the other pieces.

Wrong! Towers wanted Flowers instead of Hernandez in the Peavy Trade.

"Dustin Pedroia doesn't have the strength or bat speed to hit major-league pitching consistently, and he has no power." - KLaw "

LMAO. I like Law like alot others, but lets not take everything he says as gospel. He is not always right people. Heres another doozie from Law

"He works the count well, taking his walks but also fouling the ball off to get to his pitch, and he combines plus speed with strong base-stealing instincts. His batting average is primed for a big uptick this year, and he should hit 20-plus homers with an OBP near .400 and a healthy stolen base total. KLaw"
Of course the guy he is talking about is....the Great Rickie Weeks. Rickie Weeks...LMAO!!!!

Were talking about fielding here, well at least i am. Fielding is something you can use evidence to support, the things Law said about Pedroia and Weeks were predictions that most people agreed with. Perdroia is making a living proving people wrong, and Law admitted last year that him and guys like ryan theriot just keep making him look stupid. But as far as juding the talent thats already there i think hes one of the best.

scribbletone: Alexei Ramirez has the ability to hit .320. He was around .310 for a good month to a month and a half before he started to tail off in September.

Ramirez isn't your average hacker, anyway. Sure, he'll go up there, maybe swing out of his shoes at a couple of pitches, and go down 0-2. Then he becomes more selective and often times makes an AB out of it.

Being a Braves fan, I support this deal on both ends. Kenny Williams said he wanted to add speed, they got Lillibridge. Outstanding speed but he's a Tavares downgrade in SS form. If they want him then good. As for Flowers, we have quite possibly the best C in the NL locked up for a while so what would we do with him? He's a weak defended. Ok, let's put him at 1B. Oh wait, Freeman is our long term guy with miles more potention. So we could put him in a COF position. With Shafar, Gorkys, and Heyward there's no place. Flowers was going nowhere for us. Logan looks talented and who knows what could happen? We needed a solid LOOGY plus seeing Vazquez' 07 season on repeat would be nice.

Pretty even trade I believe.
Peavy
Vazquez
Jurrjens
Smoltz
Hudson
would look nice at the end of the season if you ask me.

"Wow I cant believe people actually think Vazquez is a sold guy top have. Yes he eats innings its true, but thats about it. Let me tell you he is the #1 most frustrating pitcher to watch. The big knock on him, and all sox fans will tell you, is that he has no balls, he pitches like a pus.

You saw it with the spat he had with AJ on the mound when AJ walked out there. It was a critical pitch in a critical sequence and Javy low and behold threw some garbage pitch low and away for a walk on a full count. Thats what he does. When the situation calls for a hard inside fastball he leaves one up and out over the plate, when it calls for strikeout pitch on a full count he throws a sally offspeed pitch low and away in the dirt. Hes a vag its that simple and everyone in chicago knows it, Ozzie Gullien, KW, the media, everyone.

Yeah he can beat the Royals, Orioles, A's, and anyone else that has a trash roster. And thats all he did last year. Though maybe his crappy style will go over well in the NL in in the pitchers park in Atl. After all he does have to face the vaunted offensive juggernauts of Fla, Was, San Diego, Col, Az, Pit, and Cin.

At the end of the day the fact that the braves were in on Peavy and instead landed Javy "no balls" Vazquez is a joke. Its laughable that they cant wait to give this guy his $11.5M to basically be a #5 at best. The mere fact that the braves gave up anything more than 1 or 2 B level prospects for this guy is laughable.

So for all you ppl who think the Braves got a steal of a trade here do me a favor. When your playing the mets/philles in a crucial situation late in the game and your man Vazquez walks the batter on waste pitches...just dont say I didn't tell u so!!"

Haha, man-this is a very entertaining post, you had me laughing out loud, I take it youre glad hes outta Chicago. I'm still hoping we're in the running for Burnett or still possibly going to trade for Peavy though, if all we end up with is Javy then I'll be pissed. I thought one of the only reasons we were looking at him was b/c we wanted to package Dye in the trade, o well. I agree with most of what you said though-he lacks confidence and finesse. I'm hoping a change of scenery will boost that a little. He pitched decent in the N.L. for a while, but I don't expect him to be anything but a #3, borderline #2B if he exceeds in the N.L. East. But hey, the Braves needed an innings eater-and they got it. Now we still need to land 2 more pitchers....

When the deal is completed later today, Kenny Williams is doing to step into the next room to have his mugshot taken with charges pending in the area of grand theft prospects.

Update on the report from OmegaMan; the charge is actually a violation of child labor laws. The victim is reportedly a 14 year-old boy from Washington. For purposes of anonymity the child was only referred to as "B.Lillibridge". Details forthcoming...

"We know, your a cubs fan, any kind of postseason success is not a skill, let alone a repeatable skill for you bunch of losers. hahahahahah fortunately, for the other 29 teams pitching in big games is a repeatable skill, see 05 White Sox"

No it isn't. By the way you type, I'm guessing graduating from anything was unfortunately not a repeatable skill for you either.

Also, it has been proven that clutch pitching does not exist more than so by just a small margin. I'm sure though your opinion refutes actual facts though. Good show.

I really get tired of people misusing the word proven in some sabrmetric arguments. Nobody has proven that "clutch" skills don't exist. What they have shown is that past "clutch" performance has very little predictive power for future "clutch" performance. Most of the sabrmetric arguments that "prove" that something doesn't exist actually only show that the related statistics have little predictive power. There is certainly room inside the variance for an unmeasurable skill to exist.

That depends what you mean in your use of the word "is" is.

phils,

I think the DH has something to do with it too.

If the Braves are taking on the whole salary, I think this is an obvious win for the Sox. Good show Kenny.

"Personally I'm tired of the assumption that when a pitcher goes from the AL to the NL that all of a sudden his ERA will drop a run because he's going to a "weaker league". That's a load of crap. He may improve slightly because he pitches to a pitcher 3+ times a game but that doesn't mean to me that all of a sudden he goes from a 4 starter to a 2. He comes to the NL East and has to bat against the Phillies, Mets, Marlins lineups. Not as potent as the AL East, but certainly moreso than the AL Central has been."

Not aware of a study on it, but I would assume that it is normally the case that pitchers improve going from league to league. I don't think it will be a run certainly, but I think he was much better than the ERA he posted last year. To say he'll have a sub 4 ERA I think is not a stretch and moreso in the realm of a very large possibility.

To provide evidence that clutch can exist... Joe Crede. That guy is not a great hitter, but he has hit some "clutch", very meaningful hits in his days with the sox.

Tim, I think a new "Javy to Atlanta" story needs to be opened, because this comments section is so convoluted.

CubbyFan23,

You clearly don't understand the math involved and shouldn't be trying to lecture others about it. Even if clutchness was a repeatable skill, past performance would not necessarily predict future performance significantly well because of the year to year variance you would expect to begin with.

I take it from your opinion of clutch that you are a Bill James fan. I am as well. You might enjoy reading this article he wrote...
http://www.sabr.org/cmsfiles/underestimating.pdf

The type of post you just made is the one that really gets under my skin. A bunch of people believe these things (you're probably one of them) have been proven because they are told over and over again that they have. You don't understand the math involved and while your argument may make some sense logically, it is extremely flawed.

I'm not even saying that I believe in a clutch skill. I think it may exist to a very small degree, but its not really worth discussing. Still, it is incorrect to say that its existence has been disproved.

:) I believe I understand the math just fine. I am not some random baseball nerd who listens to random tidbits and gobbles them up. I know the data, I know the math, and I have the background to understand what all of it means. Trust me; I'm not basing this opinion off Bill James fanboy'isms.

The statistics that I'm referencing prove that clutch is not a repeatable skill, one that does not carry weight from one season (or one at bat) to the next.

If it WAS a skill that was something each individual player possessed to a differing degree, there would be some sort of correlation. We can safely say Adam Dunn will hit a certain average with a certain HR per year, and be close to right most of the time. Clutch is not like this past the fact that we can say a player will hit in a clutch situation, what he normally hits.

The large degree of variability from one situation to the next shows that it is not a skill. It is a random occurrence tied to how good of a hitter or pitcher the player is.

Also, it has been proven that there is a bit of clutch that exists, but the effect on output is so minute that it does not hold any weight. The same can be said with a catcher's effect on a pitching staff, to which I have previously argued.

Read the paper by James. You clearly do not understand variance and how it works. The reason no statistical proof of a catcher's influence on a pitching staff exists is because of the huge variances you would expect to see in catcher ERA's to begin with. Even if there is an underlying skill there, it would be impossible to detect statistically because of the variance.

I love statistics as much as just about anyone. I'm currently majoring in math. I've actually written up papers on baseball before. That doesn't mean I can't accept the limits that statistical research has.

The end of that first sentence should read "something doesn't have a statistically significant effect."

I understand variance. I majored in Economics, worked in baseball, and work with numbers more so even now in a different field. Please don't try to come here and blast away because you're majoring in math and wrote a few papers. It's great you're pursuing it, but it certainly makes you nothing near an expert on the subject (nor am I).

I read the James piece, and while I agree with him that we're dealing with a lot of luck while studying these numbers, the fact remains that in all of these studies we should be able to detect a trace of a correlation between a clutch skill and the effect on the field. However, zero exists.

Who knows, perhaps it does exist. Perhaps one day I'll be proven wrong. When that happens, I'll be the first to admit I'm wrong. However, until then, when teams are basing multi-million dollar decisions on things like clutch (Jeter) and game calling ability (Varitek), to make those decisions on skills that have no basis in reality is misguided.

Also I realize that there is a difference between proving something doesn't exist and that it has no significant effect on output. However, as I have said numerous times in previous posts, I believe it exists, only to such an extent that it is irrelevant. Perhaps my wording is confusing you as I'm not being 100% technical here, but the point remains that it isn't a skill that anyone should be paying for or judging players upon.

post sub 4.00**

He has always been a good NL pitcher. He has had success in the NL East, granted, it was 5-7 years ago. His peripherals combined with a shift to a bigger ball park in a weaker hitting league should make all the difference in the world.

Yes, clearly no one cares about math and its relationship to baseball. That's why this new fangled sabrmetrics thingy is so unpopular with baseball fans today.

post sub 4.00**

He has always been a good NL pitcher. He has had success in the NL East, granted, it was 5-7 years ago. His peripherals combined with a shift to a bigger ball park in a weaker hitting league should make all the difference in the world.

nrmax,

I gotta disagree with you. Vazquez has 4.5+ ERA written all over him. To me his 2007 was an anomale. Back in 05 the Phils, Marlins and Nats all did very well against him while he did good in his one game against the Mets. And since then, IMO our lineup is better as is the Mets and Marlins. I don't see him better than a 3rd starter at best.

phils...

the braves aren't counting for Vazquez to be anything more than a #3 who eats innings.

Jair is our #2.

Vazquez, with a little coddling and making sure he isn't stupid (and getting him out of Guillen's perpetual doghouse) could win 15 games for the Braves in the Ted (a much better pitcher's park than in Chicago) with a 3.8-4.2 ERA. That, phils, would have made the braves competitive with you THIS YEAR.

this deal is amazing IF the braves can sign Burnett or panic the padres into giving up peavy for escobar/hernandez/reyes.

the peavy trade would mean atlanta would have to go after furcal HARD (and, you know, he still likes atlanta and bobby cox immensely).

if that fell through, which it probably would, renteria for 2 years is possible. and while the Defense is more suspect and the offense is not nearly as dynamic with Renteria, the clubhouse and team are settled. this would allow Atlanta to draft Green from USC and put him on a fast-track for 2011.

if the burnett signing happens (which seems like it is), the braves will let the market settle and see what LF, right handers are available (rivera has been a popular name, but i'm thinking that a Manny signing makes the most sense. 2 years, 38 million.

19 million for manny
17-18 million for burnett
11 million for vazquez

48 million (what we got to spend). it's not going to happen...we'll probably do a Bradley signing, but then it's fun to dream.

oh my...

now you're saying you write math papers on baseball at MIT.

and they're not about the Sox?

#1--you're lying...

with that being said...nobody cares

nixa, I'll call a truce. I was perhaps overstating that clutch doesn't exist, but I do believe that the degree that it exists is irrelevant. I think we can leave it at that.

"Anybody else see the irony in a Cubs fan saying that clutch ability doesn't exist? Hilarious!"

Ha, it's very ironic. But the fact that I'm right doesn't make it any less true.

We should all play ignorant and be just regular ol' baseball fans down at the pub talking about how gritty David Eckstein is I suppose. Regardless, I wouldn't be out at the club/bar talking about baseball in the first place. I don't know any of the people I go out with who would either.

I'm willing to bet that not only has that math background that I apply to baseball given me a better knowledge of the game than you, but far and away a better life than you as well. Try again.

And the average fan would have been free to disregard my post completely if he/she wasn't interested, just as you were. Whether you care or not, I think someone reading may care so I contributed my personal knowledge related to a subject that was being discussed. It was completely unnecessary and contributed nothing to the topic at hand.

But hey, you got flex some e-muscle so that's all that really important. I'm sure the chicks are all over you due to your ability to rip on nerds on the internet.