Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
January 12, 2009
Young Available

Michael Young asked the Rangers to trade him.

The Rangers would like to move Young to third to make room for highly touted prospect Elvis Andrus at shortstop. Andrus came to Texas in 2007 in the trade that sent Mark Teixeira (Mount St. Joseph) to the Atlanta Braves. Young, a career .300 hitter who has played nine seasons with Texas, earned his first American League Gold Glove award last season.

Young was okay at shortstop last year but didn't deserve the Gold Glove. A team picks him up for his offense at the position. Young is one of those players whose value lies mostly in his batting average. A career .300 hitter, his OBA is .346. If his batting average drops 20 points, he's suddenly below average at getting on base. He's lost some power the last two seasons also, so a team trading for him would be getting a shortstop on the downside of his career who is likely not to age well because he is too dependent on his batting average. (He did bring his walks up a little last season, so maybe he's adjusting.) In a trade, he's a short term fix.

He would help the Athletics, but I'm not sure Texas would trade in the division. The White Sox might be an option also.


Posted by David Pinto at 08:57 AM | Trades | TrackBack (0)
Comments

He came up as a 2B - might be more helpful there.

Posted by: bandit at January 12, 2009 11:38 AM

Young's OPS has declined in each of the last four seasons; the good batting average is almost his entire offensive value. Unless he pulls a major reversal, he'd be a subpar hitter at any position but SS or 2B. And his defensive range is very poor at either position.

He's also got a huge contract -- $16 million per season through 2013, I believe. That would make him virtually untradeable in this market unless the Rangers are willing to eat a bunch of his salary.

Posted by: jvwalt at January 12, 2009 12:44 PM

Correction to my previous post: Young's remaining salary works out to $12.4 million a season for 5 years -- $62M total. So the contract is a slightlly smaller millstone than I said earlier. Still quite a millstone for a player in decline.

Posted by: jvwalt at January 12, 2009 12:48 PM

Young wants a trade because Elvis is coming into the building.

(hey, someone had to say it)

I hope Andrus has an excellent career, just so we can read all the headlines.

Posted by: rbj at January 12, 2009 01:13 PM
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