Community Projection Review: Xavier Nady

by Charlie Wilmoth on Oct 8, 2008 9:06 PM EDT

PLAYER	POS.	COMMUNITY	ZiPS	ACTUAL
Xavier Nady	RF	.272/.331/.454	.259/.319/.449	.305/.357/.510

As with the Jason Bay projection, we were wrong here but still did better than ZiPS. (PECOTA actually deserves a gold star here for actually being more optimistic than we were, pegging Nady at .278/.334/.460, although I believe the actual Baseball Prospectus book wasn't nearly so positive.)

Leading the charge off a cliff were myself and Pat, as we were both really virulently anti-Nady last offseason. Fortunately, the Pirates didn't listen to us, and the Bucs managed to make a rare trade where a bad team managed to actually get something for a nearing-30 never-has-been like Nady.

I look for something I can learn from this, but I'm not sure there is anything. Lost in... whatever the Pirates and Yankees were doing in August and September is the fact that Nady went right back to being his usual mediocre self once the Pirates dealt him. He slammed a bunch of homers shortly after the trade but flamed out badly in September, and he ended up posting a .268/.320/.474 line with New York. That isn't horrible, but it couldn't have been what the Yankees were hoping for, and Nady's 108 OPS+ with the Yanks compares closely to his 107 with the Pirates in 2007, as well as his 102 in 2006 and his 104 in 2005.

But for four glorious months with the Pirates, Nady's been a very consistent player. Expect more consistency next year. And, if he's lucky, the year after that, by which point we're hopefully going to be very glad we've got Jose Tabata. The Pirates' front office did a great job handling Nady, and I'm glad I was wrong, but I'll always suspect they just got really lucky.

Geosport had the best prediction, guessing that Nady would hit .301/.355/.496.

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Comments

Funny how 2 months can really change perception

If I remember correctly, after the Nady deal people were furious that we didn’t get enough. After the Bay deal people weren’t particularly happy with the haul but thought it was decent. A mere 2 months of baseball later it looks like the Nady deal was the better of the two deals and Tabata has potential to be a good bit better than Nady and his career 108 OPS+.

Though, by the end of May with 2 more months of baseball played, we could well write off Tabata and think Andy Laroche will win an MVP someday. Who knows?

by Chad Bahamas on Oct 8, 2008 9:45 PM EDT reply actions

We dodged a bullet on that one.

I was never a Nady fan and at the beginning of the season advocated that we trade him and Scurvey ,the other Pirates mascot, to New York for a used sack of baseballs. I’m glad we traded him to the Yanks when he was at his peak for players with potential.

by Ketcham Bruce on Oct 9, 2008 11:27 AM EDT reply actions

Exactly.

i couldn’t believe how much Pat was in such a big hurry to dump Nady earlier this year. I thought they should keep him around and see if he increases his trade value before they just dump him. I’m glad that the Pirates management did what I thought they should do. Every time he hit a home run or had a game winning hit or whatever, all I could say was “Yeah, go X, increase that trade value! Whoo!”

I think that next year he will have a typical Nady season (with an injury taking out a big chunk of his season and an OPS+ between 100 and 110) and nobody will be talking how the Pirates got owned by the Yankees in that trade. He had a career year and we got a player who will probably be out performing him in three seasons.

by IAPiratesFan on Oct 10, 2008 10:02 PM EDT reply actions