More photos » by Lenny Ignelzi - AP

FILE - In this Nov. 4, 2008, file photo, San Diego Padres general manager Kevin Towers talks about the possibilities of trading star pitcher Jake Peavy and shortstop Khalil Greene, at a meeting of baseball GMs in Dana Point, Calif. Towers, the longest-tenured general manager in the major leagues, is being fired by the San Diego Padres after 14 seasons. (AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi, File)

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Floating around the rumor mill lately are reports that San Diego Padres GM will be fired after the season is over.  Towers spent the last 14 seasons as the GM of the Padres, and over that span San Diego has made the playoffs 4 times, including their only World Series appearance in 1998.  Assuming Towers will indeed lose his job, the Padres record over his Tenure will be 1107-1159, for a .478 winning percentage.

Of course, Jeff Moorad and the new Padres ownership group probably isn't terribly interested in the 1998 World Series run nor the back-to-back division titles in 2005 and 2006.  As ESPN is wont to remind us, the world of professional sports is a "What have you done for me lately?" world.  The Padres 74 win season this year certainly looks great compared to their 2008 win total of 63.  However, their run differential suggests a talent level closer to 66 wins.  Regardless, the talent on the field right now leaves something to be desired.  The question must be asked, though - what did Towers do to deserve getting fired?

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More photos » by Jim Prisching - AP

8 months ago: Chicago Cubs' Milton Bradley flexes his injured leg during a stop in play in the fourth inning of a baseball game against the Milwaukee Brewers, Sunday, April 12, 2009, in Milwaukee. Bradley left the game with an injury. (AP Photo/Jim Prisching)

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It's another down year in the North Side.  The Cubs are barely above .500, and Murphy's Law appears to be in full effect once again.  Perhaps the biggest disappointment of this season for the Cubs has been the inability of Milton Bradley to adjust to life in Chicago.  The Cubs knew they were taking a risk with Bradley, as the slugger's long list of injuries and attitude problems hardly needs to be listed here.  Now, Bradley's season is over after the Cubs suspended him for the season on Sunday. 

It's not injuries that have brought Bradley crashing down to earth after a remarkable season with Texas last year.  Bradley's played in 124 games so far, 2 fewer than last year.  Bradley's wOBA fell 78 points from last year, a difference of over 30 runs in a similar sample size.  His traditional statistics look especially poor, as Bradley's .257 batting average, 12 HRs, and 40 RBIs have drawn the ire of Cubs fans.

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Seth Smith

#7 / Left Field / Colorado Rockies

Height: 6-3

Weight: 215

Bats: L

Throws: L

Born: Sep 30, 1982

Once again, the Colorado Rockies success is the major story of the National League playoff race.  At the time of this writing, the Rockies currently sit 2.5 games in front of the San Francisco Giants for the NL Wild Card lead, with a record of 82-64 after opening up 18-28, with playoff odds below 1%.

A big part of the Rockies' good fortune this year has been the emergence of Seth Smith.  At 27, Smith has emerged as a producer at the big league level after two insignificant major league stints in the previous two seasons.  Smith's impressive stats above have impressed both traditionalists and sabermetricians alike. His .402 wOBA currently ranks 13th in the entire major leagues among players with 345 or more PAs (the amount Smith has as of Tuesday night)

Smith's contributions haven't been limited to the batter's box.   In 75 games as a LF, Smith has posted a remarkable +7.5 UZR (+18.4 UZR/15).  Smith's .913 RZR ranks favorably as well, and would tie for third in the league if he were qualified.  However, these numbers should be taken with a pound of salt, due to a small sample size and the fact that Smith did not have anything more than an average COF defensive reputation coming into the league.

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Nick Johnson

#20 / First Base / Florida Marlins

Height: 6-3

Weight: 235

Bats: L

Throws: L

Born: Sep 19, 1978

Nick Johnson's career has become one of the major oddities of professional baseball over the last decade.  Johnson debuted in 2001 with the New York Yankees, and after mediocre seasons in 2001 and 2002, Johnson broke out in 2003.  He became more selective and made more contact, resulting in a much higher walk rate (17.8% vs. 11.3% in 2002) and a much lower strikeout rate (17.6% vs. 25.9%).  We see the impact of these rates in his slash line statistics, as a .243/.347/.402 season in 2002 became a .284/.422/.472 line in 2003.

Fast forward to 2009.  Johnson's walk rates have remained fantastic since that 2003 season with New York, bottoming out in 2004 at 13.7% (vs. a league average of 8.7%) with Montreal after an offseason trade.  High OBPs and above average fielding (+3.3 UZR/150 career) carried Johnson to seasons of 4.6 and 5.3 wins respectively in 2005 and 2006.  Johnson's career never jumped to superstardom because of injuries, which forced him to miss siginificant time in both 2004 and 2008, and all of 2007.

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When reading analyses of trades past, it is very common to see the analyst insert the caveat that "we'll really know who won this trade in 3 years," or something along those lines.  Of course, it's obvious that the Yankees won that famous "trade" in which they bought Babe Ruth from the Red Sox.  Consider, though, that if Ruth had suffered a career ending injury in the first year following the trade, we'd never talk about it.  That wouldn't make it a smart deal for the Red Sox.  This is only the most obvious of examples, but the point is that we base far too much of how we evaluate trades on results, both in the immediate aftermath and in retrospective look-backs, as opposed to process.

Let us consider the following trade.  For the sake of the exercise, only the relevant information of the players involved will be presented.  No names, no teams.  This trade occurred with free agency rules in place, and arbitration rules were as they are today.  Minimum salary was roughly 140,000, and one marginal win cost roughly 750,000 dollars overall.  A free agent win cost roughly 1.5 million.  Here is the deal:

TEAM A (NL 7.5 GB OF PLAYOFF SPOT) TRADES
------------------------
PLAYER 1 - AGE: 27 POS: RP ML SEASONS: 2.5 ML IP: 159.3 CAREER WAR: 3.1 CONTRACT STATUS: PRE-ARB
AGE 25: 8.5 K/9 3.4 BB/9 29.2 IP
AGE 26: 8.6 K/9 3.5 BB/9 83.2 IP
AGE 27: 9.0 K/9 3.5 BB/9 46.0 IP
---
PLAYER 2 - AGE: 25 POS: SP/RP ML SEASONS: 1 ML IP 16.2 CAREER WAR: -0.8 CONTRACT STATUS: PRE-ARB
MINORS -
AGE 23: 7.7 K/9 4.1 BB/9 163.1 IP between AA/AAA
AGE 24: 10.9 K/9 3.6 BB/9 60.1 IP AAA
AGE 25: 9.6 K/9 2.9 BB/9 80 IP AAA
---
PLAYER 3 - AGE: 23 POS: SP ML SEASONS: 0 ML IP: 0.0 CAREER WAR: 0.0 CONTRACT STATUS: PRE-ARB
AGE 21: 8.6 K/9 3.9 BB/9 139.2 IP A
AGE 22: 8.3 K/9 2.8 BB/9 172.0 IP A+
AGE 23: 7.7 K/9 3.3 BB/9 133.2 IP AA

-----------------------------------------------------------

TEAM B (AL, 19.5 GB) TRADES

-----------------------------------------------------------
PLAYER 4 - AGE: 33 POS: 1B/DH ML SEASONS: 11 ML PA: 5409 CAREER WAR: 43.3 CONTRACT STATUS: SIGNED THROUGH AGE 33 SEASON AT 2.40MM REMAINING
AGE 31: +55 bRAA, -2 TZ, 5.5 WAR
AGE 32: +67 bRAA, -3 TZ, 6.5 WAR
AGE 33: +30 bRAA, -7 TZ, 2.7 WAR

DO NOT CLICK "CONTINUE READING THIS POST" OR READ PAST THE JUMP ("***") BEFORE VOTING IN THE POLL, OR IF YOU FIGURE OUT WHICH TRADE THIS POST IS REFERRING TO.

The point of this is to evaluate a trade without the bias that comes from the names, and knowing what happened in their careers.  Let me know who you think wins this deal.

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Marco Scutaro

#19 / Short Stop / Toronto Blue Jays

Height: 5-9

Weight: 175

Bats: R

Throws: R

Born: Oct 30, 1975

Every year sees players jump from relative obscurity to stardom.  Although Marco Scutaro's traditional numbers (.291 AVG, 11 HR, 55 RBIs) have kept him under the mainstream media radar, Scutaro is having a year that will excite any sabermetrically inclined fan.  After bouncing between 2B, 3B, and SS with Oakland from 2004-2007, Scutaro seems to have settled in as a SS with the Blue Jays, and his UZR with Toronto has been fantastic, rating at +17.5 runs in just over a full season's worth of games (+10 this year).  Not only that, but Scutaro has been an on-base machine, supplementing his .291 batting average with a 13.3% walk rate to post a Jeter-esque .385 OBP.  Combine that with his modest power (.138 ISO, best in his career), and Scutaro has been worth +15 runs with the bat as well (by FanGraphs wOBA)

Overall, Scutaro has been almost exactly worth 5 wins so far in 2009.  This is certainly uncharted territory for the 33-year-old, and it certainly begs the question of what we can expect from him going forward.  Why did a player who only put up  5.2 wins total in 5 full seasons from 2004-2008 suddenly double his career production in one fell swoop in 2009?

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More photos » by Lenny Ignelzi - ASSOCIATED PRESS

Jake Peavy's contract has 52 million dollars remaining on it. Will his contract, along with the 62 million remaining on Alex Rios's contract, bog down the White Sox, or will they be able to win with them?

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The White Sox have arguably been the biggest movers and shakers of this year's soft trade deadline, adding two gigantic contracts in the forms of Jake Peavy and Alex Rios.  The White Sox, through these deals, have added over 110 million dollars of salary between 2010 and 2014.  There's no question that Jake Peavy and Alex Rios will provide some sort of production over the course of these contracts, even if it's not the level of production that the White Sox are paying for.  The question for the White Sox is whether or not they can still manage to operate from under the burden of these and other large contracts.  Before adding Peavy and Rios, the White Sox were already at a $96MM payroll entering the season - 12th highest in the league, but the 13th highest was $82MM.  The White Sox certainly belong to that second tier of large-market teams, behind the New York teams, the Cubs, and the Tigers, but more in line with the L.A. teams, Seattle, and Philadelphia. 

It's possible that the White Sox could afford to add payroll because they subtracted over 25 million dollars in payroll over the 2008 offseason.   Still, these additions have pushed them right back into that 120 million dollar range.  With the economy as it is, I find it more feasible for the White Sox payroll to remain in the 100-110 million range as it did in 2006 and 2007.  Let's take a look at the team that the White Sox will have under control for the 2010 season.

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Derek Jeter's HR totals the last 3 years (2009 excluded): 14, 12, 11.  So far, through 45 fewer games than 2008, Jeter already has 12 HRs.  Much has been made about the homer-increasing effect of the New Yankee Stadium.  Let's take a look at where the 10 HRs Jeter has hit at the new park map out at the House that Ruth Built.  Red dots represent balls that would not make it out at Old Yankee Stadium.

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