Baseball Musings: Why Wells?

September 01, 2006

Why Wells?

The Padres acquired David Wells to beat the Mets. Right now, the most likely scenario puts the Padres in the wild card slot in a five game series against New York. The Mets own the best offense in the league, and the Padres need someone who can stop that.

Why is the Mets offense so good? They hit for power. The team's batting average and OBA are middle of the road for the NL (that surprised me, I thought the team's OBA would rank higher). But they are number one in slugging percentage.

(Note, the Mets are a much better offensive team than they look, since Shea pulls down their averages. If you look at them on the road, they are quite good in OBA.)

Wells does two things that help specifically against New York. The Mets power drops against left-handed pitching. Delgado and Beltran especially go down when they face a southpaw. The second thing Wells does is not issue walks. Whenever you do that, you reduce a team's OBA to it's batting average. At least, that's my hypothesis

The hypothesis doesn't hold up to scrutiny very well, however. I looked at the record of left-handed control pitchers starting against the Mets this season. It's not pretty. I took as control pitchers anyone with walks per 9 innings below 3.00. There have been eight starts against the Mets by pitchers with those parameters. Those pitchers are 1-6 with an 9.21 ERA. The pitcher who got the win was Erik Bedard. The others were, Randy Johnson, Jamie Moyer, Odalis Perez, Eric Milton and Chris Capuano. Old lefties don't fare well against New York.

Posted by David Pinto at 12:27 PM | Trades | TrackBack (0)

Comments

I'd have thought the Padres' first consideration is getting into the playoffs at all, not who they might face in the NLDS. They're in a real dogfight for the wild card -- and they still have a chance to catch the Dodgers and win the West. If he's supplanting Park or Thompson in the rotation, Wells could easily net the Pads 2-3 games down the stretch. That could make the all the difference.

As for the Mets' numbers vs. left-handed control pitchers: it's a striking stat, but it's a small sample size. Its predictive value may be limited.

Posted by: johnw at September 1, 2006 02:30 PM

I'd say... by not issuing walks, you reduce a team's OBA to it's batting average and its batting average AGAINST lhp/rhp/specific pitcher/etc.

Either way - this is a great move by the Padres.

Interesting trades by the Red Sox this year. In summation, it's been...

Wells
Renteria
Marte
Mota
Sanchez
Ramirez
Meredith
Bard
Riske
Shoppach (AAA Catcher)
Bausher (rhp)
$ or PTBNL to Indians
More $ or PTBNL to Indians
$ or PTBNL to Orioles
$ or PTBNL to Padres
$ or PTBNL to Diamondbacks
$ to Reds

for...

Beckett
Lowell
Loretta
Mirabelli
Hinske
Pena
Burns (rhp)
J. Lopez (lhp)
J. Lopez (C)
Kottaras (AAA Catcher)
Jarvis
J. Johnson (released)
$ consideration from Indians
$ from Blue Jays

Plus all the space fillers: Pena, Choi, Snow...

Posted by: anonymous at September 1, 2006 02:43 PM

Sorry for the double post, but I had a couple more thoughts.

The simple answer to "Why Wells?" is that he was by far the best starting pitcher available.

Since his return from the knee injury he's pitched very well, so he has real value. His ERA from April through July was over 9; in August it was 2.65. The Sox put him through waivers before his return; it's doubtful he would have cleared waivers more recently.

Posted by: johnw at September 1, 2006 02:45 PM

My god, look at those trades the Red Sox made. The front office really sucks!

Posted by: Sawks Fan at September 1, 2006 05:43 PM

Don't forget Coco.

Posted by: Joel Jacobsen at September 1, 2006 07:22 PM

Umm...at the time of the trade, most seemed to like the Beckett and Willy Mo Pena deals. I don't know anyone who thought Ramirez would already be this good...and the same goes for Sanchez. Maybe they did overpay a bit, but Beckett was a 25 year old vet with plus potential...the only question, at the time, was health.

The Willy Mo deal still looks good, because anyone who thinks Arroyo would have thrown this well in the AL is deluding themselves, and Pena has huge upside. The Coco trade was questionable, and the desperate swap to get Mirabelli back was probably wrong too. The Riske/Lopez deal straight up sucked from the start...no idea why that happened.

I'd also point out that it's been ONE season...Crisp and especially Beckett have a few years, and the potential, to turn things around.

I hate having to sound like a Boston apologist...but passing judgment on long-term-minded deals after one season is sort of stupid.

Posted by: the other josh at September 1, 2006 08:40 PM

Good point about how Wells can help the Padres against the Mets.

The Mets are cruising along to easily the best record in the NL but I don't think the NLDS is going to be easy for them. It's conceivable they could face the Padres, who with Wells and an improving Peavy seem to have the sort of pitching that could give them fits. And the Astros are surging and I'm sure no one wants to see Clemens and Oswalt in a best-of-five.

Cola
http://www.classiccolaforthesoul.com

Posted by: Cola at September 1, 2006 09:16 PM

"Old lefties don't fare well against New York." Maybe, but how do fat, drunk, old lefties fare?

Posted by: abe at September 1, 2006 09:51 PM

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