Thread: Article: The Case For Trading Span

Originally Posted by jorgenswest

I don't think there are many comps of trading an outfielder for a starting pitcher unless the outfielder is relatively better at his position or a starting pitching prospect is included.

Lots of teams lost a starting pitcher to free agency and are in the market for a pitcher. I fear they will have the prospects and depth to top the Twins offer of Span.

Apparently you are unaware of the previous trade with Tampa when A Twins SP wasn't adequate for an OF--which is true. OF play every game, pitchers one in five.

I realize this isn't quite the same, but it relates. If you are trying to value OF vs P, look at the FA contracts signed by players at those positions the past 5-10 years. Without actually digging in and looking, my guess is many more pitchers have signed $50M contracts than OF. Doesn't that indicate that teams value SP over OF? That is why we can't get Shields for Span alone. Having Bourn and Upton on the FA market doesn't help Span's value, although he should be a cheaper option.

Originally Posted by Chris in Osaka

Originally Posted by Willihammer

Originally Posted by mk

Aquiring good starting pitching for 2013 and the future is priority #1, but I'm scared that Span's likely successor in CF and the lead-off spot has a career .319 OBP. I think that is the biggest case against trading Span.

There is an easy fix to this. Due to Revere's extreme contact proficiency,it is more beneficial for him to simply stop swinging when he gets ahead in the count, and avoid terminating his at-bat prematurely by putting a ball in play. Specifically if he avoided swinging on all 2-0, 3-0, and 3-1 counts, I believe he could raise his OBP .040 or .050 points or more overnight. I made some rough calculations to arrive at that conclusion here:

How many such counts did he have? Since he has no power, I can't believe he was able to build too many such hitter-friendly counts.

233 counts total in 1064 PAs. Would have been more if he hadn't swung 79 times (and put most of those balls into play). I will have to go through all the math again, but there are a lot of walks he's leaving on the table.

He does rake on 2-0 and 3-1 in terms of batting avg but I am convinced that after you account for the probabilities of strike and ball sequences, that Revere is actually having a slight negative effect on his OBP. And then you can further account for the hits he is not sacrificing due to him being still a very effective hitter in 2-1 and 3-2 (though less in 2-2). Again, I will go through the math which factors in his plate discipline and the percentage of non-swinging strikes he is actually seeing, and how these iterations would play out, and probably make another blog post to clarify this hypothesis.

Originally Posted by Willihammer

Originally Posted by Chris in Osaka

Originally Posted by Willihammer

Originally Posted by mk

Aquiring good starting pitching for 2013 and the future is priority #1, but I'm scared that Span's likely successor in CF and the lead-off spot has a career .319 OBP. I think that is the biggest case against trading Span.

There is an easy fix to this. Due to Revere's extreme contact proficiency,it is more beneficial for him to simply stop swinging when he gets ahead in the count, and avoid terminating his at-bat prematurely by putting a ball in play. Specifically if he avoided swinging on all 2-0, 3-0, and 3-1 counts, I believe he could raise his OBP .040 or .050 points or more overnight. I made some rough calculations to arrive at that conclusion here:

How many such counts did he have? Since he has no power, I can't believe he was able to build too many such hitter-friendly counts.

233 counts total in 1064 PAs.

Impressive.

Just off the top of your head, how many 1-2 counts did Joe Mauer have in innings 3 and 4 in the months of May through July?

OK, so I may have been wrong. A quick look (I may have missed a couple) on Cot's shows 11 OF and 9 SP signing $50M+ free agent contracts. There were however more SP signed to $50M extensions (8-4) - meaning they signed with current team before reaching FA. There just seems to be more team looking for SP than OF.

Originally Posted by jorgenswest

I don't think there are many comps of trading an outfielder for a starting pitcher unless the outfielder is relatively better at his position or a starting pitching prospect is included.

Lots of teams lost a starting pitcher to free agency and are in the market for a pitcher. I fear they will have the prospects and depth to top the Twins offer of Span.

I don't think Tampa is looking for a prospect led package. They are ready to compete now and they need offense. Imo the Twins match up better than any team aside from possibly Texas (Andrus).

Originally Posted by Physics Guy

OK, so I may have been wrong. A quick look (I may have missed a couple) on Cot's shows 11 OF and 9 SP signing $50M+ free agent contracts. There were however more SP signed to $50M extensions (8-4) - meaning they signed with current team before reaching FA. There just seems to be more team looking for SP than OF.

Keep in mind that teams need 5 SP, as opposed to only 3 OF. With more pitchers needed on a team, there are a lot more pitchers contracts given out and you are more likely to get a greater than $50M contract just by the sheer volume of contracts. I do, however, agree with your point that SP seems to have a higher value on average. Just look at some of Terry Ryan/Tom Kelly's comments. TK liked to say "You're only as good as your next day's starting pitcher." In Terry Ryan's interview in the offseason handbook, he said "you can't have enough pitching, ***** ******" Those superlatives I replaced with ***s were added by Terry for emphasis. So he's not shy about that point. I guess that emphatically states that pitching is highly regarded by our GM. That's why it's so frustrating that they didn't have any pitching this year. However, they do have the excuse of counting on some people that were either injured or didn't perform. This year, I hope they have learned from their mistakes.

I agree with someone earlier that said that if we trade Span we are giving away an above average OF, so we should get an above average pitcher in return. I hope the Twins stand firm with that. That is probably why we haven't seen a trade, yet. People are probably trying to get him for a 4th or 5th starter. I think it would be a shame if we don't at least get a 3rd or better. ML avg. ERA for starting pitchers was around 4 last year, so I would like to see a lower than 4 FIP for whomever we get.