Assessing the Luis Arraez for Pablo López Trade

On 1/21/2023 at 4:08 AM, Karbo said:

I have said for the last year now that Ober would be a great candidate for the pen. He seems to have a certain amount of deception in his delivery, probably because of his size, and being in the pen would cut down how much guys see him to adjust. And with his injury history it just seems like a good fit. But I'm guessing instead they will start with a 6 man rotation, further stretching the pen (due to short starts).

I agree with you Karbo, last year too I advocated Ober for BP. Ober fits in the group of long relief/ spot start. In that role he'd have excelled and now because of lost innings, I'd still put him in that group. Some kind of piggy-back with Maeda would be ideal.

When Arraez for Lopez was being floated as a 1 for 1 trade, or some were saying the Twins should throw in a player to get trade done, I was not for it.  However, this trade to me is a slam dunk win for Twins.  As much as I loved Arraez, I feel the Twins made an amazing move.  First, they clearly could tell the Marlins desire to get a 2nd base guy, and a good hitter.  They also knew Marlins were willing to part some of their starters, but Lopez was the clear one they were looking to deal.  

The FO stood strong and made the Marlins give more value.  The fact they were able to get a top prospect and a good, not great pitcher, in the deal is great.  As much as I loved watching Arraez bat, he was limited to mostly singles, with some flashes of power.  He was  fun guy to see play, but he was not anything amazing.  He is limited on defense, and his running limited him as well.  The fact is, we have several guys that should have overall good value that can fill in.  

The fact that we got not only a top 100 prospect, that unless he has terrible year should only go up, we also got a flier prospect.  The fact that the the top prosect is most likely a couple years away means he will either be trade value, or will help out when we lose other guys to FA.  

When I saw what we got back in return I thought this was amazing trade for Twins. 

18 hours ago, Cris E said:

If we hit .260 as a team it'll mean the whole roster hit 15 points above the league average and it would take some real strangeness to not be above average in runs scored.  If you're going to be so concerned about batting average you should take a look at the league context.  That list you're so worried about features exactly two guys below .243, the AL average in 2022, and those two guys are expected to be thumpers. 

But batting average doesn't really address the two real issues:  getting someone on base and then driving them home, and improving the pitching to reduce how many runs we need to score.  We've made a lot of good progress but we could really use one more solid bullpen arm. 

If you hit .199 for your career OR if you hit.260 vs. .314 you have less of a chance to get on base ……..less of a chance to drive runs in as well. Seems straightforward.

If you only strikeout 7.1% of the time you have a better chance of getting on base. Also, your ability to drive in runs increases if you strike out at near the league’s best rate of 7.1% of the time. This is evidenced by Arraez .366 BA with RISP.

Tell me that doesn’t matter.

Our line-ups career averages denote that if our guys are average this season we will hit .260 as a team and will have success scoring runs. Again, seems straightforward.

The object of the game is not getting on base. It's advancing baserunners to home. The whole 'he gets on base' scene in Moneyball is a well directed scene and effective for the movie's distillation of the philosophy. But look at it this way - Gallo has 1.8 x more PAs in his career to Arraez. Yet he's got 1.9 times as many total bases. Doesn't sound like much until you put it to scale. if G and A both have the same number of ABs, 500, for example A: 205 TB. G: 234. That's 20 runners closer to home over a season, many of whom are auto scored since such a high percentage of his hits are HRs. 

Obviously, Gallo would be better if his slug was matched with better contact. And Arraez would be better if his contact was matched with better slug. But then again, that's why the twins might be getting a deal on Gallo. Minor increases in contact will yield much bigger payoffs than hoping for more slug from Arraez. And they're basically paying only for defense.

That's also why Arraez was 'only' worth a #2 and two prospects rather than somebody's ace. 

1 hour ago, JD-TWINS said:

If you hit .199 for your career OR if you hit.260 vs. .314 you have less of a chance to get on base ……..less of a chance to drive runs in as well. Seems straightforward.

If you only strikeout 7.1% of the time you have a better chance of getting on base. Also, your ability to drive in runs increases if you strike out at near the league’s best rate of 7.1% of the time. This is evidenced by Arraez .366 BA with RISP.

Tell me that doesn’t matter.

Our line-ups career averages denote that if our guys are average this season we will hit .260 as a team and will have success scoring runs. Again, seems straightforward.

If you're worried about how often a guy gets on base you shouldn't look at batting average, you should look at his on base percentage, which measures that directly. In 2021 Gallo and Arraez were within .006 of each other and in 2019 they were .010 apart. Two of the last four years they were the same at getting on base. But in those two years Gallo out-homered Luis 60-6. Plus Gallo is a far better OF than Arraez is an infielder. Arraez' best defensive season was -2.0 runs in only 32 games according to Fangraphs. Gallo only ever had one year that bad and it was from when Texas was still thinking he could play third.

And strikeout percentage doesn't directly affect your on base percentage: some guys don't strike out AND don't get on base, while TTO gods walk and strike out all the time. Besides which it's a junk stat that doesn't  corelate with much at all. You can look up AB per SO (which is about the same thing) and it's a real mixed bag of decent players and randos (Kwan, Kirk and Yandi Diaz are 2-4.) 

And again, if the team hits .260 it doesn't mean much until you know who is doing the hitting. If you put nine Arraez clones out there and they all hit .270 (ten points higher!) you'll get wiped out. If Polanco comes back healthy and comes close to his career averages he'll hit .270 with 30 doubles and 20HR. details matter and batting average skips over a lot of important details.

5 hours ago, Mike Sixel said:

I think the board has unrealistic expectations of individuals, but did not understand how valuable teams view the assets that are prospects. 

This board overvalues players in the Twins system and undervalues players on other teams.