Past Trade Review Archives - Page 2 of 3

Past Trade Review: Scott Brosius

July 19, 2011 by Mike 30 Comments

Oh how I hated Kenny Rogers. I was still pretty young and didn’t really understand the ins and outs of baseball back then, so when the Yankees signed him after the 1995 season the extent of my thinking was “this is the guy that threw the perfect game last year, right? he’s awesome!” Rogers was most certainly not awesome, he was coming off his first All-Star Game berth in 1995 but had struggled to keep his K/BB ratio above 2.00 for most of his career. He was hittable, he walked a decent number of batters and he was a fly ball guy prone to the long ball, but hey, he was left-handed and threw a perfect game, which was good enough for 14-year-old Mike.

Rogers, then 31, was awful in his first year in New York. He walked 83 batters and struck out just 92 in 179 IP, posting a 4.68 ERA and an even uglier 4.83 FIP in 30 starts. Scheduled to start the fourth game in the playoffs, Rogers was instead called upon out of the bullpen in the 12th inning of Game Two to face the lefty Will Clark with runners on second and third with two outs. He promptly walked him on four pitches. Brian Boehringer came in and got out of the inning, then did the same three days later when Rogers couldn’t get out of the third inning in Game Four. Rogers gave up four runs in three innings in Game Four of the ALCS before he gave up five runs in two innings in his World Series Game Four starter. In four playoff appearances he’d allowed 21 baserunners and 11 runs in seven innings, and the Yankees won all four games. That still blows my mind. Boehringer, David Weathers, and Graeme Lloyd had picked up the slack.

The next year actually went worse for Rogers, who posted a 5.65 ERA with a 5.07 FIP in 22 starts and nine relief appearances, giving the Yankees 145 barely above replacement level innings. Joe Torre didn’t dare go near him in the ALDS against the Indians, in fact I can’t remember (and can’t find anything to confirm) if he was even on the playoff roster. I’m guessing it was a no. The Yankees had had enough, so they traded Rogers and some cash to the Athletics for a player to be named later on November 7th, 1997. Eleven days later, that player had a name, and it was Scott Brosius.

The Yankees were in need of a third baseman after letting 39-year-old Wade Boggs walk as a free agent, and Brosius seemed like nothing more than a stopgap. He had hit just .203/.259/.317 with 11 homers in 526 PA in 1997, though he did post a huge 1996 season: .304/.393/.516 with 22 jacks. Maybe the Yankees could catch lightning in a bottle with the 31-year-old. All it would cost them was a starter they didn’t want and $2.65M worth of salary.

Brosius came out of the gate hitless on Opening Day, but before you knew it he had six multi-hit games in the team’s first 18 contests, driving in a dozen runs from the eighth and ninth spots in the order. And he just kept hitting. A .396/.466/.593 effort in May pushed his season line to .333/.401/.462, and from June 1st on he produced a .284/.357/.476 batting line. Brosius was an RBI machine, hitting .373/.444/.588 with runners in scoring position and driving in 98 runs from the bottom third of the order. He was an All-Star and a force in the postseason, hitting .383/.400/.660 in 13 October games. He hit two homeruns in Game Three of the World Series, the second with one out in the eighth inning against Trevor Hoffman that turned a 3-2 deficit into a 5-3 lead.

The Yankees rewarded Brosius with a three-year contract worth over $15M after the season. The problem is that he never performed up to his 1998 level again. Brosius hit .247/.307/.414 in 1999, losing more than 120 OPS points off his previous year. His trademark clutchiness evaporated (.282/.326/.462 with RISP), and although the Yankees again won the World Series, it was no thanks to Brosius. He hit .250/.267/.477 in a dozen postseason games. Things got even worse in 2000, when Brosius hit .230/.299/.374 in the regular season, .237/.315/.427 with RISP, and .229/.304/.313 in 16 playoff games.

scotty bro — (Photo Credit: NY Daily News)

The 2001 season was the last on Brosius’ contract and ultimately the final one of his career. He had a nice little dead cat bounce during the regular season, hitting .287/.343/.446 even though he was limited to just 120 games. His playoff performance was awful, hilariously awful when you look back at it (.140/.155/.263 in 17 games), but the moment that pretty much defines Scott Brosius’ Yankee career came in Game Five of the World Series. The series was tied at two but the Yankees were down 2-0 in the ninth inning after getting manhandled by Miguel Batista of all people. Jorge Posada led off the ninth with a double, but Shane Spencer grounded out and Chuck Knoblauch struck out to bring Brosius to the plate with two outs. Byung-Hyung Kim’s slider hung, Brosius’ left arm went up. His two-run homer tied the game, the second straight night the Yankees rallied from down two in the ninth against Kim.

I’m sure Brosius and many others will say they remember him for the homer off Hoffman since the Yankees actually won that World Series, but it’s 2001 for me. The city was still reeling from the September 11th attacks, emotions were high, it seemed like an impossible situation … I’m never ever ever going to forget that. All told, the Yankees won four pennants and three World Titles with Brosius as their starting third baseman, during which time he hit .267/.331/.428 with 76 homers, the two most memorable of which came on baseball’s biggest stage.

As for Rogers, the Athletics got a 3.17 ERA and 3.95 FIP out of him in 1998, then kept him around for half of 1999 before flipping him to the Mets for Terrence Long and a minor leaguer. In terms of bWAR, Oakland acquired 8.6 wins worth of Rogers from the Yankees for what turned out to be 5.7 bWAR worth of Brosius. Since the Yankees re-signed him as a free agent after 1998, we can’t really count that 1999-2001 production as part of the trade, but who cares? The Yankees won this trade in every way imaginable but bWAR, and they’d do it again a million times out of a million.

Past Trade Review: Tyler Clippard

July 13, 2011 by Joe Pawlikowski 125 Comments

YankeeClippard — (From Flickr user MissChatter via Creative Commons license.)

Last year, as he continued his ascension as one of the league’s better setup men, Tyler Clippard earned a reputation. He cruised through the first half of the season with a remarkably low ERA, but he had a knack for allowing inherited runners to score. The Nationals’ offense also had a knack for scoring runs just after Clippard had blown a lead. That led to an 11-win season for a guy who pitched just 91 innings, all in relief and mostly in late relief. It begat the term, clipping a win, in which a reliever blows a lead but the offense gives him the win anyway. Last night he was at it again, facing one batter in the All-Star game and allowing a single, but benefitting when Hunter Pence gunned down Jose Bautista at the plate to end the inning. Prince Fielder homered in the bottom half of the inning, and so Clippard was awarded the W.

Only the youngest of fans doesn’t remember Clippard’s time with the Yankees. He was a 9th round draftee in 2003, and he quickly established himself by striking out a batter per inning or more through his first four seasons in the minors. His stuff wasn’t overpowering, but he mixed pitched and employed enough deception to fool minor league hitters. In 2006 he even tossed a no-hitter, which elicited this juvenile response from some amateur hack. Baseball America rated him the Yanks No. 7 prospect before 2007, right behind Joba Chamberlain and Ian Kennedy. It was during the 2007 that he got his first taste of the show.

The Yankees had plenty of pitching problems that year, and by mid-May they absolutely needed a starter. Clippard was struggling in the upper minors — he had a 4.50 ERA between AA and AAA that year — but a need is a need. Clippard came up to start a Sunday night game against the Mets, and he got through it as well as anyone could have hoped: six innings of one-run ball, including six strikeouts. That earned him a longer look, though his next few starts didn’t go as well. After a failure in his repeat performance against the Mets — 3.1 IP, 5 R — the Yankees sent him back down to the minors. About six months later, he was no longer on the team.

That September the Nationals put on display one of their lesser regarded pitching prospects, Jonathan Albaladejo. He made a quick impression, striking out three in 1.2 innings in his debut appearance. He pitched very well that month, allowing just three runs while striking out 12 and walking just two in 14.1 innings. This came after he tore through AAA in a mid-season promotion. The Yankees, wanting to cash in while they could on Clippard, thought they could get a quality major league reliever in Albaladejo, and so made the swap that December.

Albaladejo definitely impressed the Yankees brass, as he broke camp with the team in both 2008 and 2009. There were circumstances involved in both instances, and he was soon after optioned to the minors. But they still liked his stuff, especially his sinking fastball. But with the results not coming, they had little choice but to stash him in the minors. Even in 2010, as he dominated as Scranton Wilkes-Barre’s closer, they hesitated to call him up. When they finally did they saw more of the same: not enough strikeouts, too many walks. After the season they released him and allowed him to sign with a Japanese team. His final tally as a Yankee: 59.1 IP, 4.70 ERA, 5.21 FIP, -0.2 WAR.

After the trade Clippard had his own set of struggles. He returned to AAA for the Nationals in 2008, and in 26 starts he produced a 4.66 ERA, which was in part because he walked far too many batters. This was a problem he faced in 2007 as well, making it seem like a longer-term issue. It didn’t help that he walked seven in 10.1 innings (two starts) during a brief call-up. He still had some promise, but things didn’t look optimistic. He was a guy with average, at best, stuff, and he couldn’t control it.

After the season the Nationals shifted him to the bullpen, and that’s where he began to shine. He pitched 39 innings in AAA in 2009, allowing just four earned runs while striking out 42 and walking 15. Something had apparently clicked. In late June they called him up to the big league club, and he never looked back. He continued to walk a ton of batters, but he compensated by striking out more than a batter per inning. A .197 BABIP helped get him through 2009, but in 2010 that went up to .284 and he was still reasonably effective: 3.07 ERA and 3.18 FIP in 91 innings. This year he’s been even better, lowering his walk rate by nearly a batter per nine while maintaining an 11 per nine strikeout rate. His 1.75 ERA is aided by his .184 BABIP and an astounding 99.4 percent strand rate, but by all means he has gotten the job done.

In the excellent interview with NoMaas, Yankees VP of Baseball Ops Mark Newman said of Clippard, “The mistake we made was not seeing what [he] looked like in the pen.” It’s an understandable mistake, but it’s one that the Yankees probably won’t make again. Even the Nationals continued to view him as a starter for another year following the trade. It wasn’t until he had completely disappointed everyone in that role that they tried him as a reliever. Sometimes, that type of move sticks. The Yankees absolutely lost out on this trade, even though it seemed like a minor one at the time.

Past Trade Review: Denny Neagle

November 26, 2010 by Mike 20 Comments

On the heels of two consecutive World Championships and three in four years, the 2000 Yankees limped into July with a pedestrian 39-36 record that had them three games back of the Blue Jays. The team was in clear need of another bat and another starting pitcher, and Brian Cashman addressed the first issue when he acquired David Justice from the Indians in late-June. Just about three weeks before the trade deadline, Cashman addressed the need for a starting pitcher, shipping four prospects to the Reds for left-hander Denny Neagle and minor league outfielder Mike Frank.

“We like these [prospects], but we’ve made the decision to go for it,” said Brian Cashman shortly after the trade. “Denny Neagle is the guy we wanted. We feel he was the best pitcher available on the market. He has postseason experience. He’s healthy. He’s been successful. And a left-hander at Yankee Stadium—all those attributes played a part in it.”

The Yankees had first hand knowledge of Neagle; he threw six innings against them for the Braves in the 1996 World Series. Those were just two of his ten career postseason appearances (up to that point), which featured a 3.09 ERA with a .249 wOBA against in 35 innings. Before the trade he’d pitched to a 3.52 ERA (4.65 FIP) in 18 starts with the Reds, and from 1995 through 1999 he owned a 3.46 ERA (3.97 FIP) in just about 1,000 innings. There were obvious reasons to expect Neagle to be successful for the Yankees, and at the outset he was.

In his first start for New York, Neagle tossed eight innings of one run ball against the Phillies and then followed that up with complete game, one run effort against the then-Devil Rays. His next two outings were good but not great (7 IP, 4 R against both the Twins and Royals), but it all started to go downhill from there. The Mariners hung seven runs on Neagle in 5.2 innings next time out, capped off by a Carlos Guillen grand slam in the sixth. Five days later he gave up six runs to the Angels, recording just five outs. Neagle received a brief reprieve after shutting out the Angels for 6.2 innings in his next start, but he went on to allow 36 runs and ten homers in his final eight starts of the season, covering 45.2 innings. His season ERA had risen from 3.52 with the Reds to 4.52 overall.

Neagle was on the team’s ALDS roster but did not pitch in the series. Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte both pitched on three days rest as the Yanks topped the A’s in five games. Those two starts, plus the need for third starter Orlando Hernandez to pitch in relief during Game Five, forced Joe Torre to start Neagle in Game One of the ALCS. He performed pretty well, holding the Mariners to two runs in 5.2 innings, but the Yankees didn’t bother to score and lost by the score of (yep) 2-0. Neagle then started Game Five with the Yanks leading the series three games to one, surrendering one run in 4.1 innings before Jeff Nelson relieved him and allowed a pair of inherited runners to score (and then some).

The Yankees eventually won the ALCS in six, advancing to the Subway Series. Pettitte, Clemens, and El Duque got the ball in Games One, Two, and Three, handing a two games to one series lead off the Neagle for Game Four. On another short leash, he held the Mets to two runs in 4.2 innings, but the Yankee bullpen made an early 3-2 lead stand up. The Yanks eventually won the series as you know, and Neagle was allowed to leave as a free agent after the season, signing that five-year, $51M contract with the Rockies. With the draft picks they received as compensation, the Yanks selected Bronson Sardinha and Jason Arnold.

All told, the Yanks received 91.1 innings out of Neagle, who pitched to a 5.81 ERA (5.23 FIP). His first playoff start was good but the other two were no better than acceptable, and all together Neagle was worth just 0.2 bWAR in pinstripes. The Yankees also assumed the $2.55MM left on his contract, a pittance by today’s salary standards. Mike Frank, the other player they received in the trade, never reached the big leagues with the Yankees, hitting .249/.329/.393 in 572 plate appearances with Triple-A Columbus in 2000 and 2001. He signed with the Cardinals as a minor league free agent after that, and has been out of baseball since 2002.

As for Cincinnati, they received a hodgepodge of four highly regarded prospects in the transaction. The headliner was 1998 third round pick Drew Henson, who had been rated the 24th best prospect in the game by Baseball America before the season. He played just 16 games in the Reds’ farm system that season, going 11-for-64 with eight doubles, a homer, four walks and 25 strikeouts. Cincy then traded him back to the Yankees (with outfielder Michael Coleman) after the season for another top prospect, outfielder Wily Mo Pena.

Left-hander Ed Yarnall was the second key piece for the Reds. Baseball America ranked him the 55th best prospect in the game before the 2000 season, and of course the Yankees originally acquired him in the ill-fated Mike Lowell trade. Yarnall had appeared in seven total games with the Yanks in 1999 and 2000, though he predictably struggled (14 K, 13 BB in 20 IP). Cincinnati never received even that much production out of him at the big league level; Yarnell made 11 starts for the Reds’ Triple-A affiliate after the trade (3.86 ERA) before bolting for Japan after the season. He returned to the U.S. in 2003, but not with the Reds and never to reach the majors again.

The third top prospect that headed to Cincinnati was outfielder Jackson Melian, who Baseball America ranked the 72nd best prospect in the game before the season. The then 20-year-old hit .236/.309/.398 in a year-and-a-half with Cincy’s various minor league affiliates, eventually getting plucked off waivers by the Brewers before the 2002 season. Melian never reached the big leagues, though he bounced around in the minors (including a second stint with the Yankees) through 2008.

REITH LARUE — Brian Reith. (AP Photo/Al Behrman)

The fourth player was not a top 100 prospect, just a Single-A right-hander named Brian Reith. He was the only player Cincinnati received in the trade that actually managed to play for them at the big league level, throwing 127.2 innings (5.92 ERA) spread out from 2001 through 2004 before being claimed off waivers from the Phillies. His Reds career was worth -1.4 bWAR.

Neagle has long been considered a bust in pinstripes, but the Yankees got far more out of him than the Reds got out of the players they received. Other than the payroll savings and the secondary deal for Pena, Cincinnati received almost no return for two-plus months of their best starting pitcher. Neagle pitched poorly in New York, but he helped the team win a World Championship, which is exactly why they brought him in. It’s certainly not a clear win, but I’d rather have been on the Yankees end of the deal.

Past Trade Review: Paul O’Neill

November 3, 2010 by Mike 78 Comments

VARITEK O'NEILL — (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

It might be hard for the younger generation of fans to believe, but two decades ago the Yankees were a non-factor in the AL East, finishing no better than fourth in the then-seven team division from 1987 through 1992. They hadn’t been to the playoffs since 1981. Don Mattingly was a bonafide homegrown superstar, but Dave Righetti’s talent was being wasted in the bullpen, Ron Guidry was fading, and a numerous free agent signings and trades just didn’t work out. For every Dave Winfield there was an Andy Hawkins, for every Rickey Henderson a Tim Leary.

George Steinbrenner, who always dipped his toe deep into the baseball operations pool, was banned from day-to-day management of the team in late-July 1990 after paying Howie Spira $40,000 to dig up dirt on Winfield. Gene Michael took over as general manager the very next month, and he and his front office staff went to work rebuilding the Yankees without The Boss interfering. They were patient with prospects, valued high-end pitching, and above all wanted batters that worked the count and wore pitchers down.

One of the team’s few established above-average players was centerfielder Roberto Kelly, who broke in during the 1987 season but didn’t grab hold of an every day job until two years later. He hit .284/.339/.426 from 1989 through 1991, increasing his homer output from nine to 15 to 20 during that time. Kelly rode a hot start (topped out at .361/.396/.514 in late-May) in 1992 to his first appearance in the All Star Game, though ironically enough that ended up being the worst full season of his career (98 OPS+, 0.8 bWAR) up to that point.

The then-28 year old Kelly was obviously a solid contributor for the Yanks, but his on-base percentage (just .325 from 1990-1992) wasn’t good enough for a guy that spent the majority of his time hitting in one of the top three spots of the batting order. Eighteen years ago today, Stick dealt Kelly to the Reds for a fellow 1992 All Star outfielder named Paul O’Neill and Single-A first base prospect Joe Deberry.

O’Neill was more than a year older than Kelly and relegated to an outfielder corner defensively, but it didn’t matter. He fit the grind-it-out philosophy, not only getting on base 34.4% of the time from 1989-1992, but he was also trending upwards. His IsoD (isolated discipline, or OBP-AVG, which measures a batter’s ability to get on base by a means other than a hit) went from .069 in 1990 to .090 in 1991 to .100 in 1992. O’Neill also brought World Series experience, though he wasn’t without his warts. The lefty swinger had plenty of trouble against southpaws, hitting .225/.279/.295 off them in 1992, and just .227/.278/.332 over the last three seasons.

O’Neill’s first season in New York was the best of his career up to that point, a .311/.367/.504 effort, career highs across the board. He was still hopeless against lefties though, hitting just .230/.279/.319 off them that year. The Yankees improved by a dozen wins from the previous season and finished second to the Blue Jays in the division. O’Neill managed to top his strong debut season with a career year in 1994, winning the batting title and hitting .359/.460/.603 with more walks (72) than strikeouts (56) for the first time in his career. As if someone flipped a switch, he hit .305/.439/.571 off lefties and went to his second All Star Game, finishing fifth in the MVP voting. The Yanks were robbed of their first playoff berth in more than a decade because of the strike though; at 70-43, they had the best record in the AL.

As the Yankees incorporated more and more young players onto their roster, O’Neill remained one of manager Buck Showalter’s stalwarts. His newfound level of production proved to be his true talent level, as O’Neill hit a whopping .317/.397/.517 during his first six years in pinstripes. He was the three-hole hitter the majority of the time during the team’s titles runs in 1996, 1998, 1999, and 2000, usually protected by cleanup hitter Bernie Williams, the guy that replaced Kelly in centerfield after the trade.

All told, O’Neill hit .303/.377/.492 with 185 homers in his nine years with the Yanks, going to four All Star Games and finishing in the top 15 of the MVP voting four times as well. Steinbrenner, reinstated by the commissioner two years after being banned, dubbed him The Warrior, and fans fell head over heels in love with him for his style of play. O’Neill was famously hard on himself, throwing helmets and smashing water coolers whenever something went wrong, and if you took a gander at him in the outfielder between pitches or at-bats, you’d often catch him practicing his stance and swing with an invisible bat.

O’Neill’s Yankee career is full of far more memorable moments than I care to count, but two stick out to me. The first is pretty obvious, the “Paul O-Nei-ll clap clap clapclapclap” chant in the ninth inning of Game Five of the 2001 World Series, a grand send-off in his final game at Yankee Stadium. The second came back in 1996 (left), when he ran down a Luis Polonia line drive to record the final out of Game Five of that World Series, saving an extra-base hit in a game that ended 1-0. I’ll also never forget yelling at him through the TV to catch the final out of David Wells’ perfect game with two damn hands. Sheesh.

As for Kelly, he went on to be very productive for Cincinnati, hitting .313/.353/.447 for them before being traded to Atlanta for Deion Sanders during the 1994 season. He bounced around a bit the rest of his career, making stops with the Expos, Dodgers, Twins, Mariners, and Rangers before rejoining the Yankees in 2000, a 27 plate appearance finale to his career. He was certainly a quality player, just not at the same level of O’Neill. Deberry never played in the big leagues, topping out at Triple-A. He was out of baseball by 1998.

O’Neill’s 24.8 bWAR with New York is more than Kelly’s entire career (16.9, just 5.0 post-Yanks), but we don’t need any kind of advance stats or detailed analysis to call this trade a clear win for the Yankees. It’s arguably one the ten best trades in franchise history, maybe even top five. The Warrior is still a fan favorite and a semi-regular at Yankee Stadium to this day, showing up to Old Timer’s Day and calling games for the YES Network whenever he feels like getting out of Ohio.

Happy Paul O’Neill Trade Anniversary Day, I’m not sure any of us knew how important and beloved he’d become.

Past Trade Review: Mark Wohlers

October 29, 2010 by Mike 5 Comments

Yesterday we broke down the first of two trades Brian Cashman made during the summer of 2001 to overhaul his team’s middle relief corps, and now it’s time to move on to the second.

July 1st: Acquired Mark Wohlers from Cincinnati for minor league Ricardo Aramboles

Of course, whenever Yankee fans hear the name Mark Wohlers they all think back to one moment: 1996 World Series, Game Four, eighth inning, Yanks down by three, Jim Leyritz at the plate. Wohlers gives up that game-tying three-run homer and the Yankees go on the to win the game and eventually the series. That one homer literally changed the course of Yankee franchise history, because if they lose that game and go down three games to one in the series, who knows what happens after that.

Anyway, Wohlers came over from the Reds five years later, still sporting the same high-90’s gas that won him Atlanta’s closing job in the mid-90’s. His performance in Cincinnati was solid but hardly spectacular, a 3.94 ERA with 21 strikeouts and five unintentional walks in 32 innings as Danny Graves’ primary set-up man. Like Witasick, Wohlers got a crack at some high leverage work after the deal.

In his first game with the Yanks, Wohlers threw a scoreless ninth inning against Tampa with the Yanks up by five. Next time out he entered the seventh inning of a two run game with a man on first and two outs against the Orioles, striking out Larry Bigbie to escape the jam. A walk and a single put two men on in the eight, at which point Joe Torre turned to Mariano Rivera for the five out save. Mo allowed one of the inherited runners to score but eventually nailed it down.

Wohlers stranded two inherited runners in the eight inning the next day, but allowed two to come around to score in the ninth, cutting the Yanks lead to 6-3. Mo came in and finished the game off. Wohlers was shaky, and had pretty much lost Torre’s faith when he allowed a total of eight runs across two innings in two consecutive appearances in mid-July. That was the last time he’d see setup work, instead relegated to traditional middle relief and mop-up duty. Wohlers pitched well enough in that role, throwing up a 2.45 ERA with 29 strikeouts in 29.1 innings after that eight-run meltdown in July. From July 20th to September 30th, he never entered a game with the Yankees leading by fewer than five runs.

The Yankees carried Wohlers on their various playoff rosters but he wasn’t used much. In fact he only appeared in one game that postseason, Game Three of the ALCS when the Mariners torched Orlando Hernandez and Mike Stanton for eight runs in five-and-a-third innings. Wohlers took over for Stanton with a man on third and one out in the sixth, and the first batter he faced (Bret Boone) took him deep. He allowed two more runs to score in the seventh before giving the ball over to Witasick. The Yanks lost that game 14-3, and Wohlers wouldn’t throw another pitch until Spring Training.

WHOLERS BROSIUS TORRE POSADA — (AP Photo/Chris Garnder)

As for the Reds, well they got basically nothing out of Aramboles. He never reached the big leagues, appearing in just four games above Double-A. His back story is somewhat interesting though; he originally signed with the Marlins in 1996 but the deal was voided when it turned out he was just 14-years-old. The Yanks swooped in and signed him two years later and he gradually climbed the minor league ladder (Tommy John surgery cost him a big chunk of the 1999 season, however). Aramboles was a solid yet unspectacular pitching prospect easily overlooked in a stacked farm system (yes, the Yanks’ system was one of the very best in the game back then), sporting a 3.82 ERA with 7.12 K/9 and 2.24 BB/9 in 92.1 innings at the time of the trade. He was just 19-years-old and barely out of A-ball however, so there was reason for optimism.

Anyway, Aramboles suffered another elbow injury in 2002, then missed the entire 2003 season after tearing his labrum. His return in 2004 wasn’t pretty, and he’s now been out of affiliated baseball for more than half-a-decade. The Reds got just 158.2 minor league innings out of him after the deal.

It’s tough to call this one a win for the the Yankees but it kinda sorta was. Wohlers gave them 0.1 bWAR in 31 appearances while the Reds got nothing out of Aramboles and didn’t even receive much in the way of payroll relief; Wohlers was only making $500,000 that year. He didn’t give them that setup righthander they were looking for, but Wohlers was pigeon-holed into a role where he didn’t cost them any games during the majority of his tenure in pinstripes. All he did was soak up innings in low-leverage spots at a low cost. Not a trade to write home about, but certainly not a disaster.

Past Trade Review: Jay Witasick

October 28, 2010 by Mike 44 Comments

Coming off their third consecutive World Series victory, the Yankees found the 2001 season to be a little more difficult than the previous three. Their record was a solid 39-31 on June 20th, but they were three-and-a-half games behind the Red Sox in the AL East, the same Red Sox team that had gone 15-5 in their previous 20 games and showed no signs of slowing down.

The Yanks were operating with the same formula as always, a deep lineup full of players that work counts and get on base, and a powerful pitching staff highlighted by a strong back-end of the bullpen. Righty Jeff Nelson fled for the Mariners after the 2000 season, but Mike Stanton and Ramiro Mendoza were still doing fine work in front of the unmatched Mariano Rivera. Randy Choate had his moments as a lefty specialist/occasional mop up man. The middle innings, though, they were a generally a problem.

Brian Boehringer was solid for the first six weeks of the season (0.83 ERA, .578 OPS against in 21.1 IP) but fell apart in mid-May (6.92 ERA, .899 OPS against in 13 IP). He was jettisoned off to San Francisco in July. Journeyman Todd Williams had a shiny ERA (2.38) but was allowing batters to reach base 41.9% of the time, so he was sent to the minors right about the time Boehringer turned into a pumpkin. Carlos Almanzar impressed pretty much no one with his inability to miss a bat, and other fill-ins like Brandon Knight and Adrian Hernandez were completely forgettable.

The Yankees needed bullpen help to solidify those middle innings, so Brian Cashman swung a pair of trades in late-June/early-July in an attempt to shore things up. Let’s cover the first one now, and come back tomorrow for the second.

June 23rd: Acquired Jay Witasick from San Diego for D’Angelo Jimenez

The 28-year-old Witasick had bounced around a bit in the years before coming to the Yanks, landing in San Diego in 2000 after a trade with the Royals and before that spending time with the Athletics. He was lights out for the Padres in the first half of the season, striking out 53 batters against just a dozen unintentional walks in 31 appearances (38.2 IP). Jimenez, once one of the team’s very best prospects, had been toiling away in Triple-A for a few seasons and was deemed expendable with Alfonso Soriano establishing himself as a bonafide big leaguer in 2001.

Witasick did a poor job of introducing himself to the New York faithful, blowing a four run lead in the sixth inning of his first game in pinstripes. Granted, he did inherit a first-and-third, no outs situation from Randy Keisler and got no help from a Scott Brosius error, but still. It was a poor first impression. Witasick settled down a bit and fired off five consecutive scoreless innings (9 K in 5.1 IP), but the wheels really came off the wagon on July 13th against the Marlins.

new-york-yankees-baseball-jw — (Photo Credit: yankees.com)

Brought into the seventh inning of a semi-blowout (Florida was up 6-0 at the time), Witasick tossed up a scoreless frame before taking a pounding in the eighth. The first four, and five of the first six batters of the inning picked up a hit, and he was left in to wear it all. The end result was a five run inning and a season ERA that climbed just about a full run.

Witasick didn’t see an ounce of high leverage work the rest of the season, throwing 31 innings with a solid 3.77 ERA after that game with the Marlins, but it was all mop-up work. In one particularly brutal outing, Witasick was left in to throw 84 (!!!) pitches in relief of a lit up Ted Lilly (five runs in two innings to Oakland), walking six and allowing three runs in 3.2 innings of work.

Witasick made the playoff roster but only appeared in three games (one each round), the closest of which was a three run deficit to the A’s in Game One of the ALCS. His farewell moment came in Game Six of the World Series, when he allowed nine runs and ten hits to the Diamondbacks in just one-and-a-third innings of work. The Yanks traded him to the Giants for John Vander Wal after the season.

Jimenez, meanwhile, stepped right in as the Padres every day shortstop after the trade, and hit .276/.355/.367 the rest of the way. He was unable to repeat that success in 2002 and was dealt to the White Sox at midseason. All told, Witasick was worth -0.2 bWAR with the Yanks, Jimenez -0.3 bWAR with San Diego. That obviously doesn’t count the production of the players each was later traded for, but it doesn’t really matter. This trade was pretty much a dud for both teams.

Is Tyler Clippard the one who got away?

April 29, 2010 by Mike 65 Comments

The Yankees’ bullpen has cost them a few games over the last week or so, which really isn’t anything new in April. However, this year we were privy to an added bonus, some revisionist history pieces written about a trade the Yankees and Nationals consummated way back in December of 2007. That’s because over the last ten months or so, former Yankee Tyler Clippard has emerged as a bullpen force for the Nationals while the player he was traded for – Jon Albaladejo – toils away in Triple-A after being unable to make a positive impression in his many call-ups over the last two-plus seasons.

As I’m sure you remember, Clippard was a darling on the interwebs because of his gaudy minor league stats, and make no mistake, they were superb. He struck out 501 batters in 450.2 innings from 2004-2006, finishing among the top five in strikeouts per nine innings in all of minor league baseball each season. If you’ve followed me long enough, then you know that I was never a big T-Clip fan because the scouting report never matched the results, and I took a lot of heat for it. He relied on deception too much for my liking (look at this freaking delivery), and the stuff was merely good, not holy crap good. I acknowledged on more than one occasion that he was probably a back-end starter or reliever in the long run, and not for a team like the Yankees, which is pretty much what he is.

While Albaladejo was busy not missing bats during his many chances with the big league team (including two Opening Day roster assignments), Clippard struggled as a starter in Triple-A before the Nats made the decision to move him to the bullpen full time before last season. Without a doubt, Clippard has been tremendous for the Nationals since resurfacing as a reliever last June. He’s struck out 87 in 77 innings with just 43 hits allowed since, good for a rock solid 3.98 FIP. The ERA looks even better at 2.22, and he’s emerged as the team’s 8th inning setup man in recent weeks. However, there’s a little bit of luck fueling that performance.

Just as he was in the minors, Clippard is an extreme fly ball pitcher, getting nearly two outs in the air for every one he records on the ground (0.53 GB/FB ratio), and because of this he’s pretty homer prone, again just like he was in the minors. In those 77 innings since being called up, he’s given up nine long balls, or one for every 8.2 innings pitched or so. Furthermore, his batting average on balls in play during that time is … wait for it … an unsustainably low .204. Point two oh four! Clippard’s expected BABIP (xBABIP) based on the types of batted balls he gives up (line drives, fly balls, etc) over the same time is a still low .283, but it’s much more in the realm of normalcy. Essentially, he has allowed one fewer hit than expected out of every 11 balls put into play, so we’re talking about 16 hits that should have been charged to Clippard over those 77 innings that somehow ended up being turned into outs.

In addition to the BABIP luck, the percentage of runners that Clippard has stranded is a ridiculous 88.01%. The league average is right around 70-72%. If that were to ever regress back to the mean, his ERA would climb something like a run, a run and a quarter. Stranding runners is not a repeatable skill, though it is somewhat influenced by groundball rates because of the double play potential. However, we’ve already noted that Clippard is an extreme fly ball pitcher, so this does not compute.

Does this mean the Yankees are better off with Albaladejo than they would be with Clippard? No, of course not. They’d like to have him back just like the Mets would like to have Heath Bell back and the Brewers would like to have Nelson Cruz back. There’s no denying that Brian Cashman would like a do-over on that one, but let’s not act like the Yanks let a young John Smoltz get away here. Relievers are very volatile, and signs point to Clippard’s success having a lot more to do with straight up good great luck than true talent.

I’ve seen more than one person say recently that the Yankees screwed up by making the trade, but that’s incredibly easy to say nearly three years after the fact. They traded a surplus prospect with a less than stellar track record at Triple-A and above for a young reliever with a slightly better track record at the higher levels. The Yanks needed help for their beleaguered bullpen, the Nats needed anyone that offered some kind of promise. It really was a swap of spare parts, and Washington got the better of it. To claim the Yankees should have seen Clippard having such immense (luck fueled) success is weaksauce.

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As an aside, take a quick gander at this sample of core peripheral stats dating back to last season…

Pitcher A is Clippard. Pitcher B is a reliever in the Yanks’ bullpen. His name rhymes with Ravid Dobertson. Considering the environment (league and division) each set was compiled in, who would you rather have?