The Nationals acquired Wily Mo Pena, along with cash, for a PTBNL. Boston made room for Bobby Kielty, who might be a better fit for their team, but Washington got one of the top 50 power hitters in all of baseball for the proverbial PTBNL...probably a player on their 40-man roster who hasn't been in MLB this year, so that suggests Emiliano Fruto or Michael O'Connor...and Fruto is, by far, the more likely candidate, IMO.

Wily Mo Pena needs regular playing time to be effective. The Nats used him as a starting outfielder in his first two games, and he responded by hitting .286/.444/.857 (2-7 with a double, a home run, and two walks). While he might not maintain that, a batting line of .260/.320/.480, his career norm when not pinch-hitting, for the period from now through the end of next year, barring injury, looks likely.

The up side? Wellllll...

1) Assume that his HR/FB ratio goes back to near its NL 30% from its AL 15% as Wily Mo gets out of the AL East, and

2) Assume that his BABIP goes back to near his career mark of .337, a high BABIP but a realistic one given how hard he hits ground balls, and

3) Assume that his improvement in strike zone discipline this year stays with him, and that he can put balls into play as often as he did with Boston in 2006...

...then we're talking about a batting line around .300/.370/.540, and a probable All Star berth.

Optimistic? Sure, but I considered it a high side, with .260/.320/.480 more likely...and it required the 25-year-old to do nothing that he hadn't done before. Most 25-year-old outfielders are making the jump from AAA to MLB or transitioning from part-time roles as a rookie to their first full-time job, and everybody expects them to get better. Wily Mo Pena can hit .300/.370/.540 if he just does his best, no improvement with age considered.

For the pessimistic among you:

From Baseball Reference, Wily Mo Pena's ten most similar players through age 24, based on stats up through 2006:

Jesse Barfield (969)
Phil Plantier (960)
Bobby Thomson (958)
Billy Conigliaro (952)
George Hendrick (947)
Bill Melton (947)
Cory Snyder (945)
Pat Burrell (943)
Austin Kearns (942)
Pete Incaviglia (942)

A lot of those guys flamed out early; a lot of those guys were serious power hitters through their late 20's. A lot, oddly enough, had trouble right at age 26. Billy C was gone by age 26...the remaining nine had a median batting line of .252/.323/.420 at age 26. That's a little lower than .260/.320/.480.

BP PECOTA 2007 considers Wily Mo Pena a likely .275/.341/.516 hitter in 2008...that's about 25 batting average points short of my proposed high side, but with similar BB% and isolated power.

All told, when you contrast Wily Mo's potential to that of the possible PTBNL, Emiliano Fruto, Wily Mo is far better. Fruto has only about a 30% chance of becoming an MLB regular bullpen pitcher, and almost no chance of ever being a starter. Unless Fruto suddenly finds his control and shows closer potential--which is less likely than Wily Mo Pena's showing All Star capability in his contract year--Fruto isn't even an MLB-caliber relief pitcher, he's a AAA player who can fill in for injured relief pitchers from time to time. Unless the PTBNL is somebody unforeseen--say, one of Washington's best lower-level prospects, not a 40-man roster guy--Washington wins this trade easily.



Edit:

While I've moved this from a tangent in the Boston Red Sox "Best Bullpen in Baseball" thread, I wanted to mention this quote from a good Nats blogger on the arrival of Wily Mo:

http://www.districtofbaseball.com/aggregator/sources/23

I'm new here, but Baseballoholic and mpic both seem to be knowledgeable posters. Many knowledgeable baseball people don't realize how fast Wily Mo can run because it's so far away from the stereotype of the young, big power hitter.

To paraphrase Galileo, "Nonetheless, he can run." ;)

***

I also just read that it's rumored that there's likely to be a follow-on trade between Washington and Arizona to get the PTBNL..maybe Chris Carter...because of waiver issues, that might be a better possibility. The rumor has Jon Rauch going to the D-Backs for a prospect who is then flipped to Boston--that makes sense given the ties between the D-Backs and Red Sox front offices.

I still think that the Nats will win this one big.

It's gonna be a 3-way with Chris Carter from Arizona going to Boston.

Hope that you're right, KTF...Chris Carter would be a good left-handed complement to Kevin Youkilis, with the same high OBP and medium power.

I'll be happy if that's how it's finally resolved.

That's what I heard. He could be ready to start next year and we could move Youk to 3rd and let go of Lowell.

He is what 26? He isn't going to be any more ready than he is now.

he hasnt turned 25 yet.

oh his birthday is in September.

Pena is gonna be like Ryan Howard in a couple of years guaenteed.

he certainly has the potential
i remember in SI a couple months ago he was voted by the players as the person who gets the least out of the most talent

Could be.

Until then, after going 3-4 last night with another home run and a walk, he's hitting .455/.571/1.091 since his return to the NL. That's a 1.091 SLG--his OPS is 1.662.

Nice start. *cool*

www.redsox.com is reporting that Chris Carter has indeed been traded from Arizona to Washington and then immediately to Boston.

Note that Fruto was the guy traded away by the Nats...it's just that he went to Arizona, not Boston.

willy mo hits HUGE homers. boston shouldn't have given up on him, really.

I wish they could of made room for him to start everyday sucks.

I totally agree. Wily Mo is an amazing hitter, and getting regular playing time with the Nats is just going to make him better and better. I hated seeing the Reds trade him away, but I'm hoping he has a long, great career.

From Pena's standpoint if he gets regular playing time and can produce effectively all will end well. RS fans that I know say him as a waste of a roster spot the way he was being used.

It always seems like the Nats are going in the right direction, but then Bowden fucks it up.... Like getting Snelling and Fruto for NOTHING and actually unloading contract in Vidro, but then dealing Snelling for shit.

Maybe they don't really want to succeed.....just kidding, maybe.

It's all a matter of perspective. I'm a Red Sox fan, and I maintained that Terry Francona was a waste of a managerial slot the way he was using Wily Mo Pena. ;)

Seriously, Wily Mo Pena rode the bench through huge, injury-aggravated slumps for Coco Crisp and JD Drew...and yes, before anybody asks, WMP can play CF, he reaches the fly balls even though he looks awkward and clumsy doing it. WMP could've had enough time to get his swing worked out starting in April...you know, he was fine when he started games, anyway. Check his 1-3 inning split, a situation achieved almost exclusively in games started. He was .267/.365/.489 in the first three innings in 2007. Conversely, he was just 2-21 batting in the 3-4-5 holes (as a late-inning replacement in blowouts--he started no games batting 3-4-5) and he batted 1-8 as a pinch hitter. Heck, he hit .259 even just excluding the 3-29 hitting in those two ways of joining the game late...WMP was, and is, a very good starting outfielder.

Bobby Kielty and Chris Carter may do more with the Red Sox than Wily Mo would have done, given the roster construction and the manager. Wily Mo, however, will be worth way more to the Nats than Fruto would've been worth. I maintain that the Nats win this one by a big margin, even if the Red Sox really didn't lose, either.

Wily Mo is a talented player. Does anybody remember the 2006 Boston Red Sox? Coco Crisp got hurt, and Wily Mo Pena took over as the regular center fielder. It was during this time that the Sox played their best baseball. Pena hit over .300, showed good power, and made all the plays in center field. People need to learn that this guy is a good player, not the piece of shit many make him out to be. In Boston, could he succeed? Not after the horrendous contract the Sox signed J.D. Drew too. But with consistent playing time, Wily Mo Pena can and will develop into a feared hitter, with decent defense. With Wily Mo, it was all about playing time, and thats something he didn't get in Boston.

At least you realize that when both teams have had time to utilize the players they acquire, neither the RS nor the Nats will probably lose in this trade.

That actually is the description in my mind of what a 'good trade' should be. Both teams benefit, all players benefit - rather than teams and players having unhappy players who are not being used effectively to produce for their teams (prio to trade of course).

Wily Mo Pena continues his slugging ways with the Nats, crushing another home run last night in Denver. He's now batting .320/.393/.720 since the trade.

The argument that how some managers use a player creates an 'unhealthy' situation for the player and therefore leads to a lack of productivity and all the rest, is an old argument.

We can say the same about Joe Torre and how he used Edwar Ramirez several weeks ago. He used him a few days in a row and was very effective than had him bench sitting for over 2 weeks, so when he pitched again, he was terrible.

It is what happens, and when it does it usually leads to a trade or demotion, or a demotion and then a trade.

And there were opportunities to use Pena through the struggles that others had...but you can't get into a managers head and reasoning.

It may be an "old argument," but with modern information systems it can be far more persuasive than it was in the old days.

Take, as one example, platoon splits. As recently as the 1980's, the magnitude of individual players' platoon splits usually wasn't known, and managers just did standard platooning when they had the roster depth and opportunity. Now we know more, and we can determine that some players have larger and smaller platoon splits. Does Terry Francona use this information? Heck, no--he clearly uses career batter vs. pitcher splits to design his lineups, disregarding other relevant splits and, most infuriatingly, disregarding recent performance. That's why he persisted in playing Kevin Millar and John Olerud and benching Roberto Petagine; that's why he persisted in playing Coco Crisp and JD Drew and benching Wily Mo Pena. Right now he's got Alex Cora, who's batted .202/.257/.290 since May 15th, and whose career OPS by month split looks like a ski slope:

APR .734
MAY .671
JUN .668
JUL .648
AUG .645
SEP .615

and he's benching Dustin Pedroia, who's hitting .337/.404/.462 in that same stretch since May 15th, to gain a freakin' platoon advantage...even though Pedroia shows a career platoon split of just 13 OPS points, and it's a reverse split. But what's worse, Alex Cora has a career 54-point reverse platoon split! Terry Francona is accepting a 300-point drop in OPS to gain a negative-67-point platoon disadvantage. :wacko:

Look, better stats guys than I am have damned Terry Francona. Using the Birnbaum database, Chris Jaffe evaluated every manager of the 20th Century on five different aspects of management. Terry Francona, who managed the Phillies then, was below-average in all five metrics, and he was, overall, the 20th-worst manager in MLB history and the 4th-worst of the free agent era.

Jaffe, Part One

Jaffe, Part Two

Jaffe then looked at the 21st Century using simulations, and Francona continued to do badly.

Jaffe, Part Three

So I think that I'm on pretty solid ground in condemning Terry Francona as a manager.

***

But this is a Wily Mo Pena thread.

My position is that Terry Francona had only to use the stats to know that using Wily Mo Pena as anything but a starter was counterproductive. He chose to disregard the stats--as is his pattern, excepting career batter-pitcher matchups--and his choice let Wily Mo Pena's skills atrophy.

Wily Mo Pena seems to be a great young man, earnest and eager to learn and succeed. He's doing very well with the Nats. I hope that it keeps up through 2008 and that he earns himself a whopper of a free agent contract...frankly, I hope that he solidifies his skill set and bashes 400-500 home runs in his career. That's a challenging goal, but not impossible for a player with his skill set.

We have become a 'statistical' world. But unlike 'clear guaranteed outcomes to alegebra equations', managers still go by what they feel, regardless of what stats say.

I am not always a fan of Torre decisions, but when he managed Paul Oneil, he went from using Paulie as a platoon player to an everyday player. If I remember all the stats, supported Paulie as a platoon player, but Torre did what he felt 'somewhere in his gut' was better.

This Yankee fan is sure glad that he did. That is one example of where stats, proved less effective than you would have thought.

Do some managers waste players, yes. We all know that. They end up having 'manager pets' that seem no matter how bad they are hitting still are in the lineup, when there is another choice to be made.

No one has the answer....and managers write the lineup cards.

Yes, managers go with what they feel. Terry Francona's results from using his feelings are atrocious.

How would you know what I would've thought? :unsure:

But since you raise the point, let's check Joe Torre's "decision not to platoon" O'Neill.

For each year of 100+ plate appearances, let's check the stats:

Year / Percent PA vs. RHP / Platoon Advantage (OPS Points)

1987 93% 0.504

1988 82% 0.121
1989 65% 0.375
1990 72% 0.057
1991 71% 0.362
1992 68% 0.229

1993 73% 0.375
1994 70% 0.075
1995 65% 0.144

1996 65% 0.227
1997 67% 0.221
1998 70% 0.174
1999 74% 0.364
2000 73% -0.104
2001 74% 0.076

OK...in 1987 O'Neill had just come up with the Reds, and he was pretty strictly platooned. In 1988, his first 100+ game year, he was still pretty much platooned. From 1989-1992 with the Reds, he saw between 65-72% RHP, and he hit them 253 OPS points better than LHP. From 1993-1995 with the Yankees under Showalter, he faced 65-73% RHP, and he hit them 206 OPS points better than LHP. From 1996-1999 with the Yankees under Torre, he faced 65-74% RHP--with Torre giving him proportionally more at bats vs. RHP over the years, not fewer--and O'Neill hit RHP 247 OPS points better than LHP.

Finally, in 2000-2001, with Torre continuing to platoon O'Neill more than Showalter or his Reds managers did, the platoon difference disappeared--but that was due to a drop in effectiveness vs. RHP more than any increase in effectiveness vs. LHP.

The way I read this, Torre adopted Showalter's tendency to use O'Neill every day, but he chose to ease him back into more of a platoon role. He used his players in accordance with stats, and it worked. At the very end, as O'Neill aged, he hit LHP as well as he hit RHP--but by then he was an average hitter.

The legend that Torre stopped platooning O'Neill and that he thrived as a result seems unsupported. If that's the best anecdotal example of a manager going with his gut feeling and its working, then managers might be better off using stats. ;)

But we can check the managers' performance and hold them accountable.

I do that--and I blame Terry Francona for not getting more out of Wily Mo Pena.



PS Check out the linked articles by Jaffe--they're a pretty strong indictment of Terry Francona's management. You might not defend him so much if you see how low he ranks historically.

Good luck with that piece of crap Pena. If starts and plays for the Nats all year next year he'll hit .250 with 200 K's, 15 errors and 30 homers. Doesn't seem worthwhile to have him does it?

The Washington Nationals thank you for wishing them luck regarding Wily Mo. :D

Back when you posted, MLIG, Wily Mo Pena was suffering from a foot injury. That messed him up for about a week: in the five games following his injury, he missed one, struck out pinch-hitting in another, and went one-for-eleven in the other three.

Before that minor injury, Wily Mo was hitting .265/.324/.647 for the Nats. Since those five games I mentioned, he's been hitting .345/.377/.586. Overall, including his trouble with injury, he's hit .291/.336/.553 for the Nats.

Face it: Wily Mo Pena is a stud who was badly mismanaged by Terry Francona.

Good luck eating your words in the future.

I wish the Giants had more people who bat .250 with 30 homers...

The guy is a one dimmensional player, if the Nats can afford to have 15 errors and 200k's, then go for it. Pena could have bene a complete player if the Reds hadn't screwed up his progress early in his career.

Yeah. A couple of thoughts:

1) In 31 games with Washington, Wily Mo Pena has zero errors thus far. At that rate, he'd reach 15 errors in 162...no, wait, 1,620...hold on, he'd never reach 15 errors. FWIW, at his career average rate of 3 errors per 109 games in left field (where he plays for the Nats), he's a five-error outfielder, not a 15-error outfielder.

2) Two hundred strikeouts is also a bit of an exaggeration. He's had 154 strikeouts per 162 career games. If you increase his strikeouts by 30%, though, you're almost there.

But, just to be fair, here's Wily Mo Pena's 162-game production rate with the Nationals, extrapolating his 2007 performance with the Nats and increasing everything 30%, same as you did with strikeouts:

Batting average: .286
HR 54
RBI 129

you can't do that, b/c A. Pena would slow down, B. Pitchers in the NL will learn that Pena can't hit curveballas and offspeed stuff, and he'll chase anything with two strikes, so playing a full year will produce all the K's.

You can't do that. You're using hyperbole to suggest that Wily Mo Pena would break the single-season record for strikeouts, but you're ignoring the rest of what he'd produce if he somehow got that many plate appearances.

Except he hits better with more playing time...so I understated the likely production. :lol:

your only getting Pena for 50 or so games, he did the same thing his first year in Boston, he had a +.300 average, but when Pena played nearly a full season, which he did for a year in Cincy, he hit .260. He is only good for somewhat short consecutive stints, then he gets tired.

Yeah. Two comments:

1) Wily Mo Pena never had more than 116 strikeouts in a season while playing with the Reds.

2) Wily Mo Pena will be 26 next year. He was 22 and 23 when he played with Cincinnati. Projecting a player hitting his peak to perform the way he did at age 22-23 isn't always a smart bet, especially if he's been doing better recently.

But, hey, we've got your projection: 30 home runs, 15 errors, and 200 strikeouts. I project a slugging percentage among the top twenty players in the NL, fewer than 15 errors, and fewer than 200 strikeouts.

See ya next September! B)