An Unexpected Interruption

It would be incredibly easy for me to analyze this trade to the point of excess. Aside from a few brief comments about Javier Vazquez and a discussion of the money changing hands in the deal, I intend to spend this entry explaining why over the last several months I informed the Sox fans I hold dear that 1) Chris Young had become my favorite White Sox player 2) I could tolerate virtually any move Kenny Williams made over the offseason as long as he did not deal Chris Young 3) Chris Young is an elite prospect who should not be lumped together with Brian Anderson, Chris Owens, and Ryan Sweeney despite the fact that all four players are worthwhile prospects.

When the Yankees traded for Vazquez and signed the righthander to an extension in 2004, I considered the move a major coup. The Yanks had apparently locked up one of the five or ten best starters in baseball at the ripe age of 27. As everyone knows, Vazquez imploded after the All Star Break in '04 and had a mediocre ERA and W-L record in 2005. The good news is that Vazquez improved to sport a stellar 4:1 K/BB rate last season. The bad news as pointed out by many, including BP's Nate Silver via Jonah Kerri, is that Vazquez has averaged a terrifying 34 home runs allowed the past two seasons and is now moving to the park which has produced the second most home runs in baseball over the past two seasons. Most likely, the fact that Vazquez pitched better than his ERA and record last season will be cancelled out by the fact that The Cell will detrimental his production, and we will see a performance along the lines of his 2005 season.

Immediately after the trade was announce, I read the amount of money sent from the D-Backs to the Sox in the trade rumored at $3 million (by the AP), $5 million (by the Chicago Tribune), and $8 million (by USA Today). Well the deal finally became official this week and the actual dollar figure ended up being $4 million. A good deal of the analysis I have seen from White Sox fans regarding this trade suggests the fact that Arizona is paying some of Vazquez's salary is one of several factors that makes this deal a success for the White Sox. I do not understand this logic for a second.

While $20 million for two years is not a bad deal for a good number three starter, especially in baseball's current economic climate, this is due to the number of years remaining on the contract and not Vazquez's annual salary. While Vazquez has a good shot of outperforming Toronto's $11 million per season man, A.J. Burnett, I am not so sure he will perform far better than Paul Byrd ($14.5 million for two years), Matt Morris (3 years, $27 million), or even Esteban Loiza (3 years, $21.4 million) even though I believe Vazquez to be the best of that group. Consistent with Jerry Reinsdorf's prudent unwillingness to sign pitchers, the best part of Vazquez's deal is that there are only two guaranteed years remaining on his contract, so that if he has flashbacks to the second half of '04 or goes under the knife (knock on wood) the club will be able to avoid reliving the Jamie Navarro saga all over again.

What blows my mind most of all though, is that people are singing the praises of this trade due to the cash included when in reality the Sox will be paying Vazquez more money per season than the Diamondbacks would have had they held onto Vazquez! When the Yankees shipped Vazquez to Arizona, they sent $9 million dollars in the trade meaning that Vazquez's salary was lowered from $36 million over three years to $27 million over three years, in other words $9 million per season. Well, the Diamondbacks theoretically put one third of that money towards paying Vazquez's salary in 2005, leaving $6 million to put towards his salary in 2006 and 2007. $4 million of this money was shipped to the White Sox while $2 million was apparently pocketed by the D-Backs for other purposes. In short, taking into consideration the money Arizona received to pay Vazquez's salary a year ago, the Sox actually paid the Diamond Backs $2 million dollars to acquire Vazquez. That's far from a huge discount in my opinion.

Here are the numbers for Brian Anderson, Jerry Owens, and Chris Young for 2005. I am not including Ryan Sweeney because his prospectdom has been quieted after a mediocre '05 season and he is at least two years younger than each member of this trio of outfield prospects that receives the lions' share of the attention from the press.

Prospect				Age					Avg					OBP					SLG					SB/CS				ISO
Brian Anderson				24					.295					.360					.469					4/2				.174
Jerry Owens				25					.331					.393					.406					38/20				.75
Chris Young				22					.277					.377					.545					32/6				.268

It's a crude table but includes what I believe to be the most critical available data for evaluating prospects. The ages are as of opening day 2006 (Young is admittedly a bit older than I realized as he will turn 23 in September). A superficial glance at the numbers shows three players of comparable value and explains why the trio has been lumped together in the press. Young and Anderson's numbers appear similar especially considering that Anderson played at a more advanced level in 2005. Owens appears to overcome his struggles in the power department with a high batting average and more stolen bases than the other two outfielders. To demonstrate how Young separates himself from the pack, here is my attempt to dissect the numbers further and add some context:

Age. The morning the deal was confirmed I was distraught enough with Young's departure to phone my father from work (one of the only personal calls I've made in over five months on the job). While attempting to explain to my old man why I often find baseball fans' inability to place adequate emphasis on prospects' ages maddening, I stumbled upon what I believe to be an apt analogy: a twelve year old who earns straight A's in sixth grade is a bright student; a ten year old who earns the same marks in sixth grade is a child prodigy. Admittedly, the development of baseball players is less straightforward but not by a margin large enough to render the analogy irrelevant. Young's production was substantially superior to Owens' and comparable to Anderson's (I suspect some readers will take issue with these contentions, which will hopefully appear slightly more reasonable after reading the next few paragraphs) despite the fact that Young is over a year and a half younger than the Anderson and two and a half years younger than Owens. The most accurate comparison of the three players will be to compare Young's production eighteen months from now - most seem to believe he will be entrenched as a starting center fielder in the big leagues at that point - with Anderson and Owens' good but not great 2005 seasons.

Walks & Power vs. Batting Average. The sabermetric community places greater value on the ability to draw walks and hit for power than the ability to hit for average. The reason for this is that the ability to earn free passes and hit for extra bases is considered to be far more consistent from month to month and season to season than the frequency with which a player gets a hit. A shortened, oversimplified summary of the logic behind this belief is that while chance effects every aspect of the game, it is far easier to get lucky and hit a few bloop singles than it is to get lucky and hit the ball 380 feet or consistently run work deep into the count. Uncoincidentally, the combination of good power numbers and high walk totals is also considered to be one of the strongest predictors of future growth. Chris Young ranked ninth in the Southern league with 70 base on balls in 2005, compared to 44 walks for Brian Anderson and 52 for Chris Owens. 70 free passes may not sound like a great deal to Sox fans who have been spoiled by Frank Thomas' prolific walk rate over the years, but it projects to 90 walks over the course of a full season which would have been good for 13th in the majors in '05. Young also crushes the ball. His 41 doubles led the Southern League and his 26 home runs tied for the most long balls in what is known to be a pitchers league.

The most impressive aspect of Young's power is that it is not the driven by a high batting average. The final column in the table above is isolated power (ISO) calculated for these purposed by subtracting a player's batting average from his slugging percentage. This calculation represents players' true power more accurately than slugging percentage by removing the frequency with which a player hits singles from the equation. Simply put, isolated power strives to measure how hard a batter hits the ball when he puts it in play (though it is obviously an imperfect measurement as sometimes a player hits the cover off the ball yet the ball is hit directly at a fielder). An ISO above .200 is considered phenomenal, only 50 major leaguers topped that mark in 2005. An ISO of .268 in what is widely considered to be a pitchers league is downright mind boggling.

Simply referring to the Southern League as "a pitchers league" is not sufficient for our purposes here because the vagueness of that statement leaves the reader with little to take away regarding exactly how the league and the Baron's ball park may have affected Young's (and Owen's) numbers. Unfortunately, my lack of experience with park factors and the lack of data available for minor league ballparks prevents considerable precision on this topic. What I have been able to uncover is that from 2001 through 2004, the parks in the Southern League depressed run scoring by 9% while the Birmingham's home field depressed scoring by 10%. The only resource I was able to discover for weighted park factors that included minor league teams was BaseballThinkFactory.org. While the lack of additional sources to corroborate the data and the staggering nature of the figures requires one to view these factors with an appropriately sized grain of salt, Think Factory's numbers suggest that although Birmingham allows singles, doubles, walks, and strikeouts at a near average rate, the park allowed 45% fewer home run than average from 2003 to 2005! Even a conservative application of that figure suggests that 1) if not for park effects, Young would have hit over 30 home runs 2) Young's already staggering ISO is understated.

Stolen Bases & Athleticism. It is widely believed that sabermetrics frowns on the pursuit of stolen bases as well as scouts' infatuation with tools and athleticism. While these assumptions were certainly not plucked out of thin air, the sabermetric community's views on these subjects is certainly not so incredibly cut and dry. As I discussed in a previous entry, sabermetrician's frequent distaste for stolen bases lies in the fact that very few players are capable of attempting stolen bases at a frequent rate and also succeeding often enough to render these attempts beneficial. Chris Young appears as though he may one day represent one of the members the exclusive group of players capable of both stealing often and stealing successfully. As I stated in the aforementioned entry on stolen bases, 70% is considered the approximate break even point for stolen base success rate - if a player succeeds in more than 70% of his stolen base attempts he is helping his team win games, otherwise his steal attempts are detrimental to the team's ability to win games. Well, Chris Young somehow managed to steal bases with over an 84% success rate in 2005. Owens has the reputation as the speed demon of the group due to his higher stolen base total, higher batting average, and lower power totals but he needed 20 more attempts than Young just to steal six more bases.

A key element of sabermetric analysis is to resist the urge to evaluate players based on how polished or athletic they appear out on the field (as Billy Beane famously put it "we're not hear to sell jeans"). Baseball is first and foremost a game of skill and there are a ton of players with apparent natural ability in the form of sweet looking swings, cannons for an arm, and incredible speed who simply do not perform well enough to be successful major league players. Think of it this way, if by overemphasizing how well a player looks out on the field you would take Corey Patterson over Matt Stairs every time which needless to say would not be the right situation. A lot of people however unfairly interpret this to mean that sabermetrics places no value in scouting which would be completely absurd (there is a reason Ken Griffey Jr. had a higher ceiling as a prospect than Stairs). Athleticism clearly does play an important role in terms of projecting a player' future development. BP's PECOTA system places a substantial emphasis on stolen bases in projecting future performance because it is the only real statistical measurement of athleticism. Depending on the player's skill set, a low stolen base total can be surprisingly damning to a the player's PECOTA projections.

Anyone who has read a scouting report on Chris Young realizes the kid is a tremendous athlete. Young is one of the sometimes rare prospects who both the performance analysis community and the scouting community salivate over. Baseball America editor Jim Callis rated Young 17th in "a ranking of long-term value, limited to players I think will establish themselves in the majors in 2007" and elsewhere confirmed that Young would have passed Anderson as the Sox top prospect for 2006. There is something frightening to me about parting with a player well liked on both sides of the aisle.

Yikes...

Five months without an update has clearly robbed this space of the minimal legitimacy it once possessed. That is without evening mentioning the fact that by far the most historic White Sox moment in my lifetime occurred during that time span. Much like a cheating husband crawling back to his wife for the upteenth time, I refuse to promise things will be different from here on out because past experience emphatically suggests otherwise. However, I will state that I sincerely hope to update the blog with more frequency and that I fully expect to have more free time to discuss the World Champions in the near future.

I would be remiss if I did not spend this rare entry discussing the most momentous White Sox transaction since at least the Scott Podsednik for Carlos Lee deal last offseason. In what is perhaps an attempt to be more diplomatic in my assessment of Kenny Williams' moves, I will proceed to address both the good and bad aspects of this trade. While, as usual, I have substantial concerns about this trade, there several highly admirable qualities of this maneuver for which Williams must be congratulated.

The Good:

1) Jim Thome has been a tremendous player throughout his career. It is highly encouraging to know that Williams appreciates Thome's skill set. With all the talk of small ball, grinders, and speed last season it is a massive relief that Kenny was able to both identify and properly value the club's weakness and Thome's strength: the ability to work the count. Overemphasizing Thome's strikeouts and mediocre batting average demonstrates an intense inability to read between the lines and understand the finer points of the game. Thome's career .408 on base percentage and .556 slugging percentage speak for themselves and leave no doubt the man has been one of the four or five best hitters in the game over the last decade. Admittedly, the gamble here is Thome's ability to bounce back from a trying, injury plagued season at age 35. Regardless of the outcome, however, the fact that Williams has displayed a genuine appreciation of his game is important.

2) Convincing a team to pay a player over 20 million dollars to be a member of a different team is highly impressive. Obtaining half a player's salary is a major feat even when you're dealing with someone like Mike Hampton who had completely imploded when the Rockies moved him. Securing such major cash considerations for a player like Thome who is only one season removed from greatness is truly a thing of beauty.

3) The key to repeating is understanding a World Series trophy in no way enhances a team's odds of winning games the next season. Certainly retaining talent from a championship club elevates the Sox's chances of winning well above those of the Devil Rays and Pirates of the world. However, the belief that the team is the favorite or even one of the top three of four contenders to win it all in '06 due simply to the hardware the players are now sporting can only serve to hurt the team. Like every other World Series victor before them, the White Sox would not have ended up on top without considerable luck. Immediately jumping to the conclusion that the organization would not benefit from change can only lead to failure because receiving identical baseball bounces in consecutive seasons is close to impossible. Winning the series does not mean the team lacked weaknesses or that there were not critical lessons to be learned from the team's performance throughout the season. As countless professional baseball writers have acknowledged before me, Williams' desire to improve the World Champions speaks volumes. While I believe his fearless aggressiveness has proven rash in the past, this eagerness to improve the roster figures to be highly effective with a roster full of "proven winners", many who have likely become overvalued at this point in time.

The Bad:

1) The White Sox parted with the organization's top two pitching prospects in a trade for a player the Phillies wanted to move so badly that they were willing to pay half of Thome's remaining salary. In conjunction with the Javier Vazquez trade which I discuss in my next entry, the club has now traded three of the top four players in my prospect hot list from last July. While the team's payroll certainly figures to be larger after winning a World Series, sustainable success will require the integration of successful homegrown talent into the lineup. This feat will certainly be difficult to achieve if the organization continues to part with 70% of the club's most promising prospects.

Admittedly, there are a few reasons that parting with Gonzalez and Haigwood may not be a huge blow to the farm system. First of all, pitching prospects tend to be dicey propositions at best. Fans are fond of reacting to the departure of a top flight prospect by responding "C'mon, how many of these so called 'can't miss' prospects actually succeed?" The reason for this attitude is the constant unpredictability of pitching prospects (sabermetricians are fond of the acronym TINSTAPP which stands for "there is no such thing as a pitching prospect"). The reason pitching prospects are notoriously unreliable is arm injuries. White Sox fans should understand this concept as well as any fans in baseball. Over the last four or five seasons the club has lost the following young pitchers to arm injuries: Jim Parque, Corwin Malone, Kris Honel, Jon Rauch, and Dan Wright. The only advanced pitching prospects who have failed to develop due solely to ineffectiveness that I can recall of off the top of my head are Aaron Myette, Matt Ginter, and Dennis Ulacia. As a 20 year old of slight build, Gonzalez is as susceptible to a debilitating arm injury as any young pitching prospect in the minors. At 6-2 and 200 pounds, and nearly two full years older than Gonzalez, Haigwood is less of an injury risk. However, despite the impressiveness of Haigwood's 2005 season, such dramatic progress is often followed a somewhat less impressive performance the next season (of course the frightening alternative is that Haigwood has simply turned the corner and is now on the fast track to the majors).

2) The White Sox lost a critical component of the club's league best defense in 2005. While the club's defense received considerable praise in the mainstream media, the majority of the team's success has been attributed to the starting pitching. Few have underscored the large degree to which the success of the starting pitching was a product of the stellar defense the Sox played throughout the field. Aaron Rowand is a legitimate gold glove contender and acted as a critical cog in the club's World Champion defense in '05. Clay Davenport's defensive metrics rate Rowand a spectacular 7 defensive runs (close to a full win) above average last season. While another positive aspect to this transaction is that the club has a suitable replacement waiting in the wings in Brian Anderson - who is also reputed to be an outstanding fielder - it is quite unfair and unreasonable to expect Anderson to match Rowand's exceptional defensive prowess in center field.

3) The acquisition of Jim Thome signals the departure of the greatest hitter in White Sox history. The resigning of Paul Konerko and the acquisition of Thome at DH eliminates any potential starting role for Frank Thomas in the 2006 lineup. The majority of my disdain over Thomas' departure may be the result of sentimentality. I can still recall attending one of Thomas' first games with the big league club as a seven year old and have lost track of the countless blissful moments I have experienced as a result of Big Frank's play over the years. Furthermore, while I figure to have another sixty years on this planet if my health holds up, I remain skeptical that I will ever witness a more potent hitter in a White Sox uniform. Personally, the hardest part of letting go of number 35 is that I virtually no doubt that Thomas can continue to produce at an All-Star caliber level, the only question remains his health. With Anderson, Young, and Owens waiting in the wings, the club would have been in the perfect position to sign Thomas to an incentive laden contract to stay with the club. If Frank remained healthy and posted his typical .300/.410/.530 line the team would have scored the best bargain of the offseason. If the Big Hurt's health failed him yet again, the club would be able to improve its defense further by moving Jermaine Dye to first base and adding a young, defensive minded, athletic young outfielder to the mix.

Since I find it impossible to withhold my ultimate take on the deal, here it is: securing Thome for three seasons at $8 million a year is a tremendous move which is mitigated by parting with the best player in the history of the franchise and dealing away two of the club's three best chances (with a nod to Lance Broadway) to develop someone to start alongside McCarthy for the long run. B-.