Indians News, Pirates News
The Indians are reportedly interested in Jason Bay. Rumors out of Pittsburgh say that they want OF-Trevor Crowe and SP-Chuck Lofgren. Crowe and Lofgren project to be league-average players, with Crowe being the slightly better prospect. Both should make it to the show, but neither are projected to be stars. Jason Bay is a star fallen from grace, turning in a year with 43 less walks and 14 less bombs.
Jason Bay, 2006: .286/.396/.532, 35 HR, 156:102 K/BB
Jason Bay, 2007: .247/.327/.418, 21 HR, 141:59 K/BB
That’s a sick decline at a young age. That being said, he did have nagging injuries all year and showed a lower pitches per AB ratio in 2007, something that I hope will increase in 2008.
I feel the deal is something that has to get done considering the glut of league-ready talent the Indians have in their farm system. The opportunity to have an outfield of Bay/Sizemore/Gutierrez is too good to pass up, assuming Bay rebounds to even 80% of his previous form.
Unfortunately, I don’t think the deal is going to be that easy. The new Pirates GM, Neal Huntington, in response to a reader’s question, had this to say:
The Pirates upper management has widely ignored OBP (on base percentage) in the past. How important will OBP be in player evaluation under your leadership?
– Eric S., Pennsboro, W.Va
We are going to utilize several objective measures of player performance to evaluate and develop players. We’ll rely on the more traditional objective evaluations: OPS (on base percentage plus slugging percentage) , WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched), Runs Created, ERC (Component ERA), GB/FB (ground ball to fly ball ratio), K/9 (strikeouts per nine innings), K/BB (strikeouts to walks ratio), BB%, etc., but we’ll also look to rely on some of the more recent variations: VORP (value over replacement player), Relative Performance, EqAve (equivalent average), EqOBP (equivalent on base percentage), EqSLG (equivalent slugging percentage), BIP% (balls put into play percentage), wOBA (weighted on base average), Range Factor, PMR (probabilistic model of range) and Zone Rating.
–Neal Huntington, GM of the Pirates
Fuuuuuuuuuck. Bring back Dave Littlefield.
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