There are two ways of looking at this trade. The wrong way, and our way.
The wrong way:
Neal Hussein Huntington was beating down Brian Cashman's door to get a guy who people once thought was good, but now everyone knows is bad. He should have just retained Paul Maholm, and not pulled this Dave Littlefield / Matt Morris shit. The Pirates need to play the game the right way.
The FTC way:
(All star) Kevin Correia was penciled into our starting rotation; the Pirates needed to find some warm body -- really ANY warm body-- to keep (all star) Kevin Correia out of the starting rotation. The price for a warm body in this market is about $4.5m - $6.5m, so when Brian Cashman offered to give us a warm body for $13m / 2 years, Neal Huntington really didn't have any reason not to take a chance on it.
The marginal player in this case, happens to be AJ Burnett. He's known for having a mid-90s fastball, a picturesque 12-6 curveball, and a track record of being a bust. The Blue Jays gave him his first big money, with a 3-year, $30m deal, which yielded 7.6 WAR for them. The Yankees followed that up by giving him $82m for 5 years, which has yielded 3.1 WAR for the first 3 years (the final two years, of course, are costing the Yankees $20m for 0 WAR).
So yeah. AJ Burnett has sort of produced what you'd expect from a marginal dude. It's not his fault that teams have paid him like he's something more than that. We're not doing that.
There isn't a lot to this story beyond the warm body narrative. Don't get excited, don't get disappointed. The guy might help us win a few games, he might stink and we'll end up eating some contract. Reasonable.
Some other things to consider:
-Burnett's home run / flyball rate was at 9.9% when pitching for the Yankees. League average is closer to 8%, so it's reasonable to think he ran into some bad luck pitching in the AL East. He might have an easier time keeping the ball in the park, here in Pittsburgh.
-Burnett's fastball averaged yearly speeds of 94.9mph, 95.1mph, and 94.3mph when he was with Toronto. In New York, it went down to 94.2mph, 93.2mph, and 92.7mph. Averaging a fastball in the low 90s is fine, especially when you can still peak out in the mid 90s; however, being 35 years old and losing velocity on an annual basis can result in a guy getting lit up. Not saying it's sure to happen, but keep an eye out for it.
-Paul Maholm is another guy in the proud tradition of warm bodies. We let him walk, and the Cubs paid him $4.5m for one year. This is a very reasonable deal for the Cubs. The only reason it wouldn't have been reasonable for us, is that we had already been paying him $6.5m for last year's service, and would have had to escalate that to $9.5m to keep him for this year. There's probably a little more boom-or-bust potential with Burnett than Maholm, but it's very marginal.
Again, this was a pretty logistical trade, folks. Nothing much to see here beyond that. Please feel free to be angry that ownership is a cheap pile of shit, and that MLB's CBA is a broken piece of shit. We absolutely encourage that. But as far as what Huntington is doing, there's no need to get angry at him.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Making some sense of the AJ Burnett noise
Labels:
AJ Burnett,
baseball,
Dave Littlefield,
Neal Huntington,
Pirates,
trades
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