Athletics Get Best of Swisher Deal
The Oakland Athletics organization made some key trades in the 2007-08 off-season. A trade with the Chicago White Sox saw the A’s send one of its key offensive cogs north in somewhat of a surprising move. First baseman-outfielder Nick Swisher was traded to The Windy City for disappointing outfielder Ryan Sweeney and top pitching prospects Gio Gonzalez and Fautino De Los Santos.
Swisher’s trade was a bit of a surprise considering he was a young hitter locked into a reasonable five-year contract that runs through 2011 and includes an option at $10.25 million for 2012. That said, Swisher has struggled this season with the White Sox and is hitting only .228/.343/.386 in 215 at-bats. His slugging percentage is down 70 points from his career average. Maybe the A’s knew something the rest of us did not (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more)? Or maybe he is just having an off year. On the plus side, he’s still walking a lot (14.7 percent) and the club is in first place in its division.
Sweeney, a former second round pick out of high school, was in desperate need of a scenery change – and former Sox teammate Brian Anderson is no doubt envious of his good fortune. Sweeney, 23, is currently hitting .293/.353/.407 in 123 at-bats for his new club. Those obviously are not All-Star numbers but he has been a solid contributor for the organization.
Southpaw Gonzalez, 22, is currently biding his time in Triple-A Sacramento and gives the Athletics excellent starting pitching depth. If the club needed him, he could probably be at least a league average starter right now. Currently, he has a 5.71 ERA in 64.2 innings of work with 74 hits allowed and 35 walks. His numbers are a little skewed after he was roughed up in two of his last four starts for 17 earned runs on 20 hits in 8.2 innings.
De Los Santos, 22, was considered one of the biggest up-and-comers in 2007 after going 10-5 with a 2.65 ERA and 153 strikeouts in 122.1 A-ball innings. But he succumbed to Tommy John surgery after only five High-A ball starts after coming over to the Athletics. Gee… what a surprise. The White Sox organization has never traded (Mike) an injured pitcher (Sirotka) before. Luckily the track record for pitchers returning from the surgery is pretty solid.
Even with the injury, the trade seems to be in Oakland’s favor at this point.
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I would have to disagree with the assertion that the A’s are winning this deal.
A closer look at Swisher’s batted ball data shows that essentially nothing has changed about his game. His walks remain high, his line drive percentage is high and he’s actually hitting slightly fewer groundballs while whiffing less. The only negative aspect of Swisher’s stats is his BABIP, which is an extremely low .259. Given his line drive percentage (21%, according to First Inning), we should expect Swish to be batting about .320 on balls in play. If we adjust his line to add the additional .61 points, his line is .289/.404/.447 (and that assumes all were singles). In other words, nothing is wrong with Swish.
Seems far too early to assess this one, but I think this write-up tilts a little with anti-Sox (or pro-Beane) bias.
Swisher will come around, if his .258 BABIP (on an LD% of 23.5%) is any guide. Add in FDLS’s injury and Gio’s AAA stats, and I’m not sure there’s any clear winner (yet) in this one.
Don’t forget Britt Burns. Traded in 1985 after his 26 yr old season to the Yankees. Never pitched again (bad hip IIRC)
This was a remarkably uninformed blog post given (1) the excellent points made in the first comment, (2) the fact that 60 games of a season is far too few to judge Swisher’s season, let alone the future careers of the minor leaguers received by Oakland, and (3) that Chicago is 6.5 games up in the AL Central.
While I agree the points about Swisher, in that it appears he’s hit a bit of bad luck, though his O-Swing% is up nearly 3% suggesting he isn’t quite as selective as he used to be. In any case…. I’m not sure how Chicago being up 6.5 games in the AL Central has anything to do with who is winning this trade.
Swisher has not been good this year. Among qualified AL outfielders he is bottom 10 in WPA and bottom 5 in BRAA.
Also, in Marc’s defense, in the article he didn’t exactly slam the door shut on how history will view this trade, though I’ll admit that is not what the title insinuates.
But if you just look at the raw numbers, it does appear the trade has worked out better for the Athletics, so far.
That 3% spike in O-Swing% only equals about 18 balls out of the zone (a mere 1 out of every 32) that he wouldn’t have chased last year, and given that his BB/K rate is as high as it’s ever been, I wouldn’t worry too much about his selectivity.
What jumps out at me though is that 66% O-Contact rate, which is 34% higher relative to last year and a ridiculous 62% higher relative to two years ago. In only two years time he’s gone from the seventh lowest O-Contact rate out of 159 qualified MLB batters to the cusp of the upper third (64th out of 178), and I can only speculate if that might be at least part of the driving force behind such a paltry .259 BABIP despite a lofty 23.5% line drive rate.
Says Baseball Reference, Swisher’s BABIP on ground balls stands at .164, roughly four base hits worse than the near-league average .236 mark that he posted in 2006-07, which could possibly be attributed to softly rolling over on bad pitches outside of the zone. I don’t know. I don’t watch the games. Four hits isn’t much anyway. Add in the small handful of air balls that Swisher has also been “unlucky” on, and PrOPS thinks his BABIP should be sitting at .340 for a difference of 13 hits (several more than I’d have guessed), pumping his measly .228/.343/.368 line up to a robust .288/.393/.477, a difference of roughly a dozen runs that would be good enough to leapfrog him from 49th to 12th in the AL in OPS.