So far, the best move of the July trading season has been the Angels’ acquisition of Huston Street, ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick writes in a piece published before Street’s bad outing Friday. The acquisitions of Street and Jason Grilli have helped stabilize what had been a weak Angels bullpen. Meanwhile, higher-profile acquisitions like the Tigers’ trade for David Price and the Athletics’ deals for Jon Lester and Jeff Samardzija haven’t had as great an impact. Here are more notes from the West divisions.
- Before the White Sox traded Adam Dunn to the Athletics, the Dodgers tried to acquire him to help with their bench, USA Today’s Bob Nightengale tweets. Dunn’s lack of defensive value would have been a more serious issue in the National League, but his power and patience would surely have been appealing in a pinch-hitting role, especially with expanded September rosters that might have prevented him from having to play much in the field.
- Joe Wieland will pitch for the Padres Saturday afternoon, and it will be his first start in over two years, Jeff Sanders of the San Diego Union-Tribune writes. Wieland had Tommy John surgery in 2012 and has had setbacks since then that have delayed his return. “I won’t say it’s going to be quite like my debut, but it’s going to be pretty darn close. Two-and-a-half years is a long time,” he says. Wieland got hurt less than a year after the Padres acquired him (with Robbie Erlin) from the Rangers in a deal for Mike Adams, and he’s only started five big-league games since the trade and for his career.
Dunn strikes out an awful lot for someone with supposed patience at the plate.
He’s swinging at 21.4% of pitches out of the zone this season. League average is 31.1%. That said, his out of the zone contact rate is about 20 percentage points lower than league average.
There’s a lot more rates and percentages to be thrown around here, but basically he’s got a good eye at the plate, but he doesn’t have a good contact rate. He’s currently fifth on the leaderboard of pitches seen per plate appearance.
The number of pitches per PA is going to be an inflated number for player like Dunn. In many situations he isn’t going to see a strike.
Which is why he is known as a three outcome player. Strike out- walk- home run.
I prefer the short way of saying it: he whiffs a lot.
last time dodgers got a player like dunn look what happen. jim thome didnt really do much for us