Orioles "Considering" Trading for Jack Wilson

by Charlie on Nov 3, 2008 9:17 PM EST Comment 27 comments

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Photo: David Watson

[Andy] MacPhail doesn't comment specifically on players but made it clear the Orioles will focus on adding starting pitching and a shortstop. The San Diego Padres' Khalil Greene, the Milwaukee Brewers' J.J. Hardy and the Pittsburgh Pirates' Jack Wilson are among the shortstops the Orioles are considering pursuing in trades.

I don't think the Pirates would trade Wilson to the Orioles simply because the Pirates would want prospects, and the Orioles have been acquiring prospects recently, not trading them away. That might change if they acquire Mark Teixeira, but I'll believe that when I see it.

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If...

the price isn’t too high, I could see the Orioles trying to trade for him. Maybe, something like Jake Arrietta and Brandon Erbe for Wilson and we eat his whole salary. Actually, that might be too much for Wilson, but someone like Jake Arrietta would be a good center piece for us.

by joegonzo on Nov 3, 2008 11:40 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Arrieta's pretty good.

I think a lot of people are giving up too easily on Wilson’s money, though. I know that we throw around nickels like they’re manhole covers, but for a team like the Orioles, a $7M regular is no big deal.

by Vlad on Nov 4, 2008 9:51 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I Don't Like This Trade

This maybe a “silly” reason but I would not want Jack to go to the Birds. He deserves better. Bay and Nady went to contenders; so I’d like the same for Jack. He deserves a chance to play in October.

by zogger on Nov 4, 2008 7:37 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

He's FA at the end of the year.

So he can go wherever he wants, then. And it’s not like the O’s won’t have the option of flipping him to a contender at the deadline, anyway.

by Vlad on Nov 4, 2008 9:51 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

He Does????

For what reason does Jack Wilson deserve a chance to play in October???

I saw Jake Arrieta pitch in the AFL in 2007. I believe that it was his first appearance in professional baseball.

The kid can pitch.

by thegunner on Nov 4, 2008 9:54 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

In other news...

…our former GM Ted Simmons tied on with the Padres as a bench coach.

by Vlad on Nov 4, 2008 10:01 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

the San Diego paper

described him as adding some “fire.” In Milwaukee he was either calm as the Buddha or half asleep. Was he ever known as a fiery guy here?

by ol Pete on Nov 4, 2008 5:55 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Well, he had to retire as our GM because of a heart attack.

So he must’ve had at least a little bit of fire. Maybe he’s on beta blockers or something similar now, to keep him a little calmer?

by Vlad on Nov 5, 2008 8:35 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

If I was in California, I know what I would do to settle my nerves.

by ol Pete on Nov 5, 2008 11:30 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Jack is unlikely to be traded

I bet we hear a few more luke warm rumors like this one throughout the winter but Jack won’t be going anywhere. We have no one to replace him and I doubt we would sign anyone worth while from the FA market. Unless we somehow acquire a young SS through a trade or some other avenue, Jack will be more valuable to us than his trade value to other teams.

With our new SS prospects (Cunningham, Mercer, D’Arnaud, maybe Friday) at least 2 years away, I bet NH will have to consider offering Jack to a 1 year extension.

by Chad Bahamas on Nov 4, 2008 10:19 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

I never understood . . .

the “we have no one to replace Jack, so we shouldn’t trade him” reasoning. Not singling anyone out, Dejan subscribes to it too. But who cares who plays SS for us next year? The team will be awful, and if a player with any shot of helping this team when it has a chance of competing is dangled for Jack, I’d pull the trigger. In would understand the reasoning if the Pirates had even a sliver of hope of competing for a playoff spot, but they don’t, so if we trade Jack and Bixler has to play the entire year and is awful, who cares? And, under the same reasoning, I wouldn’t require a SS prospect in return, you’re only pigeonholing yourself. True, there appears no answer on the horizon, but the future is so uncertain and things change so much, it’s impossible to look at the Pirates now and say when they are ready to compete there will not be a competent SS in the system.

by Scranton on Nov 4, 2008 10:37 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

It’s important to keep a respectable defense behind young pitchers if there is to be any hope of developing them. Unless your young pitchers all have huge fastballs, which leaves us out. That said, the team was worse with Jack than without him last year, both before and after the deadline deals were made. So make the deal, Sonny….

by Arnold Rothstein on Nov 4, 2008 11:56 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Wrong

Their record was better when others started. In fact, they were 10-11 when Rivas started at SS. 15-17 with Bixler. They were 30-50 when Jack started, 26-32 before the deadline.

And the SS will be Luis Cruz, who is a better defender than Jack anyway, so even if he doesn’t hit, he’ll improve the young pitchers’ psyche’s if that’s really a concern. If their confidence is really an issue, they aren’t going to be very good anyway.

by azibuck on Nov 4, 2008 4:51 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

You can say all you want that their record was better when others started. I remain adament in my opinion that the team was worse with Jack then without him. So there.

by Arnold Rothstein on Nov 4, 2008 5:18 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

You're a moron, azibuck

Why don’t you try reading what people write before getting all snippy with them. With your one-word subject lines and your know-it-all attitude.

by azibuck on Nov 4, 2008 10:13 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Also important to consider:

Games with Jack-games without Jack isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison, because the composition of the team’s non-SS lineup changed greatly at the trading deadline. Replacing Bay and Nady with Moss and Pearce/Michaels was a pretty significant downgrade. And there were other big in-season variables, like Doumit’s absence. And it’s possible that there’s unequal starting pitcher distribution between the Jack starts and the non-Jack starts, as with the Doumit/Paulino CERA thing a few years back.

If you wanted to compute it the right way, you’d need to generate an expected run value for each day’s starting lineup, subtract the actual net run debit/credit for that day’s lineup, and then make a running total for the year. Which is a hell of a lot more work than I feel like doing, personally.

by Vlad on Nov 5, 2008 8:40 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Right

I did include the team’s with-Jack record before the deadline, in fairness. I think it’s a decent rough proof that Jack wasn’t that important to the 2008 Pirates, and probably won’t be in 2009 either.

Your 2nd paragraph — which I’m really not addressing to start a debate — goes to something that I don’t like about some uses of “modern” stats. That is, they completely remove game context. Like Pythag, it’s OK for what it is and does, but more involved methods are better.

by azibuck on Nov 5, 2008 9:29 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

That's funny...

…because I added the second graf specifically to provide game context. It’s possible that Russell might’ve been picking Jack’s rest days to coincide with specific Pirate starting pitchers, for example (like Tracy giving Nady some CF starts on days when there was a groundball starter), which would bias any “pure” W/L record. Or that he was doing similar selective starting against a particular type of opposing pitchers (because Rivas can’t hit the CB or whatever), which would provide a similar kind of distortion.

Without accounting for those kinds of things (either by normalizing the context, or some other way), I wouldn’t want to draw any conclusions about individual player W/L.

by Vlad on Nov 5, 2008 12:17 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I don't draw conclusions, I jump to them

I think we’re on the same page. Game context would be great, and the sample sizes for Rivas and Bixler are small. I still found it interesting that, pre-deadline, they were 26-32 when Jack started, and 25-28 when he didn’t. I’m sure there were quite a few games in there where whoever started at SS was inconsequential to the outcome.

by azibuck on Nov 5, 2008 2:04 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I agree...

What does it matter who plays short for us next year. We will still suck. Besides, I think Luis Cruz has earned himself some playing time, and who knows, we could have a Mike Aviles on our hands.

by joegonzo on Nov 4, 2008 11:53 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

We might...

…but what does that have to do with Luis Cruz?

by Vlad on Nov 4, 2008 12:19 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Luis Cruz could be the next Mike Aviles. Think about it. A pretty young shortstop with pretty good defense that never hit very well in the minors.

by joegonzo on Nov 4, 2008 1:14 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Mike Aviles...

…was several orders of magnitude better with the bat than Luis Cruz.

He was never a top prospect, but he was always delivering respectable offensive performances: between .750 and .800 OPS in ‘04, ’05, and ’07, before his big breakout in ’08 (stat link). Bump it down a little because he was old for his leagues, bump it a tiny bit more because two of those years came in the Texas League and the PCL (though neither Wichita nor Omaha is one of those leagues’ Looney Tunes environments), but it’s still a respectable offensive contribution.

Cruz, in contrast, has never hit well, in any year, at any level, before his hot 30 games at Indy this season (stat link). And while he was young for his leagues for part of that time, it’s still a pretty limp record. His absolute best season with the bat was probably ‘06, when he hit .261/.301/.415 as a 22-year-old in AA Mobile. Which is OK, for a young glove-first shortstop, except that it represents him at the absolute top of his game. He doesn’t have a particularly high on-contact BA (so he doesn’t hit for average), his career minor-league ISO is .119 (so he doesn’t hit for power), and his single-season high in BB is 30 (so he doesn’t get on base). For his minor-league career, he’s hit .247/.286/.366. That’s lower than Aviles’s worst single-season OPS. I mean, it’s 80 points below Don Kelly’s career figure.

I would LOVE to have Luis Cruz bust out this season and develop into a useful player, but to call him a longshot is an understatement.

by Vlad on Nov 4, 2008 1:56 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs