James Loney Would Welcome A Trade

[Leitch]

Hm, that's a bit interesting. Does anyone know the Las Vegas park factors? He only hit 8 homers but 33 doubles.

I dunno, I still wouldn't trade any of the big 3. We already have two major holes in the rotation and it'd be worse having 3.

I'm pretty sure it's a good hitter's park.

[CrimsonTribe]

I'd trade Penn, Liz, Olson, or Ray for him.

[Fan4Life]

Well all this speculation about who would do what is nice and at times exciting, the only answer that matters is what our FO will do IF they even have interest. Maybe BigBird can keep his ears open on this one.

[ShoelesJoe]

Bedard "will very likely be out of the game"? What have you got to base that on?

In 2002 there were 56 ML pitchers who were at least 28 years old and threw 140+ innings. Right now 30 of those guys are not active in the game.

Okay, maybe I'm being too harsh so let's look at it another way. These are the guys who in 2002 were 28 years old (Bedard's current age) and threw 100 innings:

Derek Lowe

Bartolo Colon

Ramon Ortiz

Jason Simontacchi

Ismael Valdez

Mark Redman

Kazuhisa Ishii

Brett Tomko

Jason Johnson

Scott Schoeneweis

Julian Tavarez

Chan Ho Park

How many of these same twelve guys threw 100 innings five years later?

Six.

And how many of these guys are good pitchers at age 33? One? Two?

Okay, let's look at it still another way. Last year there were 278 ML pitchers who threw at least 60 innings. How many of them were 33+ years old?

50.

I said it before, and I'll say it again -- the attrition rate for pitchers in their 30's is horrific. The reporters and pundits always focus on the old guys who are still productive because they're such a great story. What they don't tell you about is the 95% of pitchers who break down before their first grey hair and are never heard from again.

Erik Bedard is a good pitcher, but the record of the hundreds and hundreds of players who have gone before him tell us it's very likely he won't be good for much longer. Trading him for a guy like James Loney wouldn't be popular, but the odds are it would improve the Orioles in the long run. A year from now or two years from now Bedard's real value is likely to be significantly less than it is now, and we'll either sign him long term and pay twice what he's worth, or eventually trade him for fifty cents on the dollar compared to right now.

[ShoelesJoe]

It's the same crap he was trying to sell a few weeks ago. No one was buying it then, either.

Ya, it's also the same crap I was selling two years ago about Jay Gibbons.

How'd that work out?

[mweb]

I'd pass on that. If we decide to trade Tejada, we're rebuilding, and wouldn't want/need Furcal in that case.

Furcal + Loney > Tejada

And that's right now. The difference between Tejada and Furcal is less than 1 win. Furcal is also 2 and a half years younger, the Dodgers would be dumb to make that trade imo.

[mweb]

And I do believe Furcal is more expensive than Tejada

Including this year, Tejada is owed 3/42, Furcal is owed 2/26 plus 4M deferred, so it would depend on who pays that.

[Sports Guy]

In 2002 there were 56 ML pitchers who were at least 28 years old and threw 140+ innings. Right now 30 of those guys are not active in the game.

Okay, maybe I'm being too harsh so let's look at it another way. These are the guys who in 2002 were 28 years old (Bedard's current age) and threw 100 innings:

Derek Lowe

Bartolo Colon

Ramon Ortiz

Jason Simontacchi

Ismael Valdez

Mark Redman

Kazuhisa Ishii

Brett Tomko

Jason Johnson

Scott Schoeneweis

Julian Tavarez

Chan Ho Park

How many of these same twelve guys threw 100 innings five years later?

Six.

And how many of these guys are good pitchers at age 33? One? Two?

Okay, let's look at it still another way. Last year there were 278 ML pitchers who threw at least 60 innings. How many of them were 33+ years old?

50.

I said it before, and I'll say it again -- the attrition rate for pitchers in their 30's is horrific. The reporters and pundits always focus on the old guys who are still productive because they're such a great story. What they don't tell you about is the 95% of pitchers who break down before their first grey hair and are never heard from again.

Erik Bedard is a good pitcher, but the record of the hundreds and hundreds of players who have gone before him tell us it's very likely he won't be good for much longer. Trading him for a guy like James Loney wouldn't be popular, but the odds are it would improve the Orioles in the long run. A year from now or two years from now Bedard's real value is likely to be significantly less than it is now, and we'll either sign him long term and pay twice what he's worth, or eventually trade him for fifty cents on the dollar compared to right now.

First of all, most of those guys are terrible pitchers which explains why they suck or are done.

Secondly, you don't have to trade Bedard to get Loney so your premise here is ridiculous.

[ShoelesJoe]

The difference is that most people agreed with you on Gibbons.

LOL. No they did not. Don't you remember -- Gibbons was at the very least going to be the next Paul O'Neill, and possibly occupy our clean-up spot for the next eight years. Nobody who drove in a hundred runs one season could be traded the next season. Putting Jay on the market two years ago would have been just as unpopular as trading Bedard now.

Another difference is that Gibbons is/was a dime a dozen corner OF. Bedard most definitely isn't a dime a dozen pitcher.

Again, you're rewriting history (or not remembering it). Back then Jay was untouchable, same as Bedard right now. What the early '05 Gibbons and the early '07 Bedard do have in common is that both are over-valued and under-paid. That's usually a great combination to have when trading a player for younger talent.

In 3-4 years Bedard will probably be just as much a dime a dozen player as Gibbons is now.

[BillySmith]

In 3-4 years Bedard will probably be just as much a dime a dozen player as Gibbons is now.

Oh, come on. Is that because of Monday?

[Sports Guy]

I applaud you for taking the time to look all of this up, but surely you see the difference in talent level between each of these pitchers and Erik Bedard.

First off, 6 of the 12 you listed (Lowe, Ortiz, Colon, Tomko, Park, and Tavarez) were in their age 29 season in 2002, not age 28 (and this will be Bedard's age 28 season coming up).

The absolute two best indicators of future success or failure major league pitchers are K/BB and K-Rate.

On the bright side, 7 of the 12 on your list had a K/BB of greater than 2.00. Unfortunately for those 7 pitchers, only two had a K-Rate greater than 6.00 - and both of those (Johnson and Ortiz) were obvious outlier seasons for those two pitchers (outlier in terms of K-Rate).

Exactly two people on your list had a K-Rate over 7 that season - and they offset those good K-Rates with BB-Rates of 6.19 and 4.82.

Only three pitchers on the list (Lowe, Redman, and Colon) had a FIP ERA of less than 4.67.

Again, hardly a representative list.

I would ask why you didn't use his comps list, but I have a pretty good idea of why you didn't.

None of this will matter to him.

[ShoelesJoe]

First of all, most of those guys are terrible pitchers which explains why they suck or are done.

Secondly, you don't have to trade Bedard to get Loney so your premise here is ridiculous.

First of all, most of those guys are terrible pitchers which explains why they suck or are done.

Fine, then do the same experiment yourself for any year going back as far as you like. Take all the 28 year old pitchers who threw 100 innings in a given season, and then see how they did 5 years later. Let us know what you discover.

Secondly, you don't have to trade Bedard to get Loney so your premise here is ridiculous.

If you can get more than Loney then great, but if giving up the rest of Bedard's (probably short) career gets you the rest of Loney's (probably long) career then that's still a deal worth making.

[Moose Milligan]

So does James Loney get added to the long list of OH love fest players?

[ShoelesJoe]

I would ask why you didn't use his comps list, but I have a pretty good idea of why you didn't.

According to Baseball Reference the most similar players to Bedard are:

Greg Mathews

Noah Lowry

Horacio Ramirez

Mike Dunne

Steve Cooke

Jack Easton

Ross Baumgarten

Duster Mails

Marv Breuer

Ralph Birkofer

Only one of which pitched into his 30s.

The most similar by age are:

Doug Capilla

Chris Hammond

Tim Lollar

None of whome pitched into their 30s.

Again I'll make the same challange I made in a previous post -- take any group of 28 year old pitchers who threw 100 innings in a given season, and then fast forward five years and see how good they were at age 33. Take those results and calculate the odds that Erik Bedard will still be a productive pitcher in five years.

[Lt Melmo]

Haha, BR doesn't give any pitcher who pitched into their 30s because BR makes their comps based on (someone can correct me if I'm wrong) current career stats, as compared to other career stats. It doesn't take the future into account, so it wouldn't make much sense to compare him to a starter who pitched into his 30's but has the same career stats. That's not a comparison. In five years that comp list will be very different.

At least, that's what I can tell. BR comps are only useful when looking at retired players.