Thoughts on Tim Hudson
October 24, 2009 at 8:00 am by Capitol Avenue Club under Atlanta Braves, Pitching, Transactions
Apparently the Braves began negotiations with Tim Hudson’s agent about a contract extension that would keep him in Atlanta. Mark Bowman has all the details. The money quotes:
Braves general manager Frank Wren and Hudson’s agent, Paul Cohen, began negotiations on Thursday and they are expected to continue talking over the course of the next couple of days.
—snip—
Specifics about the early extension talks weren’t revealed. But it is believed the Braves would be comfortable providing Hudson an offer of three years worth $27-29 million.
I think this is probably good news. I take away a few things from this. One, Hudson is going to be back next year and the extension will likely be announced by this time next week.
There were, basically five ways to deal with the pitching excess. The first would’ve been to let Hudson walk and get nothing for him. You save $11 million or so, but letting a valuable commodity walk and receiving nothing in return–not even draft compensation–doesn’t seem like the best move. Option number 2, keep the staff intact. I’m as big of a proponent of depth as you’ll find, but with other needs–namely acquiring a bat and shoring up the bullpen–I don’t believe the organization has the resources to field a complete ball club with all six starters around. Option three is to trade one of the young, pre-arb starters for a bat with similar contractual status. I wouldn’t be opposed to this idea, really. We’ll see how it plays out. Option four, trade Vazquez for a bat. I wouldn’t be opposed to this either, but with only 1 year left on his contract, you’re not going to get a young player with a ton of cheap years ahead of him. So you’re looking at either swapping Vazquez for another 1-year contract (I don’t see any matches) or a bad contract, which would be stupid considering Vazquez’ s trade value. Option five, trade Lowe or Kawakami for something of negligible value and salary and use the money you save to sign a bat. Everyone’s ideal scenario is trading Lowe. I fall under the umbrella of everyone.
I don’t have any idea how it will actually play out, but I’m glad Wren has elected to not go with Option 1, let Hudson walk and receive nothing in return. Getting nothing for Kawakami or Lowe is better than getting nothing for Hudson, if you ask me.
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well framed, all around
Thanks.
There is a new poll. I voted for Yunel.
A hard call between Yunel and Vazquez. Without looking, I’d bet Vazquez’s Win Probability Added is alot more than anyone else’s, and that Yunel’s and Prado’s is closer than one might think, given that Prado didn’t start playing every day til June or so.
Looking at Fangraphs now. Diaz led the team in net WPA. He added a good bit with his bat, and his -WPA (loss probability added) was lower than comparable players. Yunel’s -WPA was the worst on the team, worse than GAnderson’s or McCann’s (the slow guys G’gIDP). In net WPA, Jurrjens actually comes in ahead of Vazquez, but Vazquez’s in high leverage is a higher. 6th best among starters, between Verlander and Josh Johnson (who I don’t know about you, but he was fun to watch this year, enemy or no).
We would have been in most trouble if we’d lost Yunel. I don’t have enough of a lock-down on how WPA is calculated to know how it weights defense (if at all). If it doesn’t, Yunel. If it does, then it helps reinforce my first reaction, that Vazquez was our best player this year.
WPA doesn’t include defense. And that’s a systematic flaw that I never had thought about.