The McLouth Deal
Badly in need of an outfielder who could hit, the Braves acquired Nate McLouth from the Pirates yesterday for three prospects. Rather than rolling the dice with an unknown, the Braves acquired one of the easiest guys in baseball to project.
In 2007, McLouth posted a .364 wOBA. Last year, he posted a .369 wOBA. This year, he’s got a .367 wOBA. Despite a hot start to the season last year, you know what you’re getting with McLouth – a quality left-handed bat who draws some walks and has some power. Given an expected ~.360 to .370 wOBA over about 450 plate appearances for the rest of the season, we can expect McLouth to be worth something like 10 runs above an average hitter from here on out. It’s a nice bat.
Despite winning a gold glove last season, the glove isn’t as valuable. McLouth has consistently ranked as a below average defensive center fielder, compiling a -10.6 UZR/150 over his career. He’s a corner outfielder playing out of position in center, but he’s not an atrocity out there. He’ll let some balls fall in that you wished he could have got to, but he’ll make up for with the bat.
Remember, even with his -14.5 UZR last year, McLouth was a +3.6 win player for the Pirates, and he’s on basically the same pace this year. Over the last three years, he’s compiled 1,262 plate appearances and been worth +6.4 wins. Going forward, we should expect McLouth to be a +3 to +4 win player. That’s a borderline all-star, and definitely the kind of player the Braves needed to acquire.
Toss in the fact that McLouth signed away his arbitration years over the winter, and is now under contract for $15 million through 2011 with a club option for 2012, and the Braves have acquired a player who is significantly underpaid. Even with the economic uncertainty of the free agent market, 27-year-olds with +3 to +4 win talent should command upwards of $12 million per season. McLouth will make less than half of that.
As an acquisition, McLouth makes all kinds of sense for the Braves. He’s a high quality player signed to a team friendly contract, in the midst of his prime, and provides a significant upgrade over what they had on hand in the outfield. At 5 pm, we’ll look at what they gave up to get him, but Braves fans should certainly look forward to having McLouth in their line-up. Atlanta just got quite a bit better.
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Can’t wait for your 5pm analysis of what the Braves gave up to get him. I am really looking forward to hear what you have to say about Charlie Morton. I’m hoping you cover what to expect not only this year but what the rest of his career could possibly be. This kid pitched at Pawtucket (AAA) earlier this year and looked absolutely dominant, as did his opposing pitcher.
What about Morton and Hernandez? Curious to hear your takes on them.
“At 5 pm, we’ll look at what they gave up to get him . . . “
Locke will be the real steal in this deal for the Pirates, IMO.
I like the deal a lot for the Braves, but I really think the Pirates could have gotten a lot more back. The idea of trading Nate was the right one but the results could have been better, at least IMO.
i can’t figure what that office is trying to do… it looks like they didn’t get enough in return, just like the Bay trade. argh.
McLouth 6/1/08-6/3/09:
.256/.327/.447 with well below average defense.
Well that’s kind of arbitrary right? So far this year he’s matching his last two year (as shown above). Over the last roughly calendar year those stats are dragged down by two bad months.
June 2008: .214/.272/.350
August 2008: .226/.309/.310
Then it completely ignores two amazing months in 2008:
March: .342/.425/.658
April: .279/.372/.548
And I’m not sure last June, or even August, means a heck of a lot more than last March and April.
Zips, which is going to take these kind of things into account, is projecting his wOBA to be .360 for the rest of the year. Which is a downward trend thanks to those bad months being more recent than the good ones, but its nothing like you’re suggesting, and basically the same as what he did last year and the year before. So, you’re arbitrarily picking your end points to suite a predetermined conclusion…… That kind of thing isn’t going to fly around here.
FWIW, he likely didn’t pick them, he copied them from Keith Law, because that triple-slash line excludes IBB.
Terrible move. McLouth has a .589 career OPS in June. They should have waited a month.
This was the dumbest move they’ve made in quite sometime. During rebuilding, why trade the only decent player you have. The prudent thing would have been to continue to build around Nate the Great….
The pirates gave up way to early if you ask me. Personally, prior to this trade I still had them ranked as a darkhorse wild card team. Essentially if they traded for a veteran Starting pitcher that gave them a low 4s era or better the rest of the way, and a Right fielder that could Slug .500 or better, then they would have been a wild card team. Their defense is strong, most of the pitching is strong, and the offense just needs a bit more for them to contend. But, this trade did them in for this season. Plus, I do not think they got enough for McLouth. This franchise needs a more aggressive approach out of its management for sure!
The pirates are rebuilding. Giving up the future talent it would take to get the peices you are talking about would have been totally backwards.
Pat makes the big point here (even if he stole it from KLaw). And the excuse that we’re leaving out his April/May numbers is a classic ignorant stat head move. There is a reason some guys tear it up in April and May and then fall off later in the season (Chris Shelton). There is such a thing as a scouting report, which is developed over time, and adjusted accordingly.
Nate has trouble squaring up breaking balls and is slowly turning into a poor man’s Brian Giles circa ‘00-’03 (HR, roll over GO to second, pop up to left, line drive to center). He has been completely average in his past 140 games, and at 27, may have already peaked considering how long he has been a professional athlete. All of this makes me think he’ll end up around .265/.355/.480 over the next three years, which isn’t bad but considering his defense, definitely doesn’t make him a +3 player.
I love Nate McClouth (even though he supports the Wings) and wish him the best. But the Pirates did right on selling high. And I think everyone was just starting to realize how average he actually was.
Either way, Nate’s definitely better than any other Braves OF right now and they didn’t have to give up any of their top four prospects. Win-win?
Yes, it does make him a 3 win player. You said it yourself. That “.265/.355/.480 line”, puts him at almost identical OBP and SLG as last year that resulted in his .360-.370 wOBA.
So unless he plays worse defense in center than -15 UZR (-0.9 now), he’s gonna be worth at least 3 wins by your own admittance. Possibly over 4 if his defense keeps on being average.
Your argument is completely arbitrary and just straight up wrong. Yea, a lot of guys flourish in the spring, but some guys don’t (Tex comes to mind). A lot of people wear down in the summer months and some heat up. If you are going to disqualify his top-end outliers then, if you are honest, you have to disqualify his bottom outliers. If you are honest and we do that, we end up in the same spot. The guy is a +3 player. Stop the hate.
And you want us to believe every spring teams tare up their scounting reports? Only to make new ones in June of every year. That’s some faulty logic if I ever saw it. Never mind thta it isn’t supported by the facts. If McLouth become such an easy out after May, why did he post a .931 OPS in July last year, which also happened to be better than his May? Did teams only use their scouting reports in June and Auguest?Then in 2007 his best months where August and Septmember. I guess teams threw away their scouting reports in late July that year huh?
Seriously, did you think we’d buy this BS? Do you even believe this nonsense you’re spouting?
I bet if you took out everyone’s best 2 months last year, their numbers would not be impressive. What kind of argument is that. I don’t care who brought it up originally. That is dumb.
Yeah, looking at the most recent data is generally a good thing, but ignoring older data, after some convient cut-off, is dumb. I’m surprised KLaw would do that, he generally does a very good job in analyzing players/trades/trends, but this was a little much.
Does the +3 estimate assume he’s in center going forward? I don’t think that’s a very sound assumption. What’s the value of an .830 OPS guy with mediocre defense in a corner as opposed to in center?
Because he’ll be a .830 OPS guy with a +.200 ISO who has been fantastic in LF for his career (SSS) to go along with his ~90% success rate in stolen bases.
Wally – Not sure there’s problem with Klaw’s analysis; he was simply pointing out that McLouth’s early numbers from last year were most likely an outlier given his performance over a larger sample size. Also, what’s the problem with taking out his IBB? If we’re trying to get an objective look at a player, why would we include a statistic that is based on the discretion of the opposing manager?
Like Klaw and some others here, I’m not ready to declare McLouth a “nice bat” until some more data is in.
Well I don’t really have a problem with taking out IBB. Though they obviously have value and have something to do with the player’s talent.
As far as ignoring the so called “outliers,” couldn’t we also say that June and August were “outliers?” And don’t April and May count as part of a “larger sample size?” Basically, it all counts, and ignoring any data is, as said above, dumb.
McLouth had 4 pretty great months running from August of 2007 through May of 2008. If we decided that’s all we wanted to look at, how well would we have predicted McLouth? Terribly, as he’s lost about .200 points of OPS since then. That’s basically the same thing you and Law are advocating here, just in the opposite direction, and it rarely turns out well.
McLouth is nether as good as his August 2007-May 2008 stretch, nor as bad as his June 2008-June 2009 stretch. And really since the start of the season he’s matched his previous two year averages, so that June 2008-June 2009 stretch that looks so bad is just from two months, June 2008 and August 2008. I’m not sure why those matter so much more than April and May of 2008, that we should just ignore the former.
I don’t see how anyone can really rag on this guy. Sure, his speed means he has been miscast as a CFer, but he has improved significantly this year (-1.4 UZR/150) and he is a plus defender at a corner. He is an incredibly solid offensive player and he is incredibly underpaid, which allows payroll flexibility. A guy with clear 20/20 ability and results combined with a .350+ OBP is nothing to sneeze at and assuredly a welcome addition to a team like the Braves that gets nothing out of its OF. Would you really rather have Jeff Francoeur playing everyday than this guy?