Serious Baseball: Nationals-Rangers Trade

In a deal that happened late Wednesday night the Washington Nationals shipped 28 year old OF Brad Wilkerson, 28 year old OF Terrmel Sledge, and Minor League right-hander Armando Galarraga to the Texas Rangers for soon-to-be 28 year old second baseman Alfonso Soriano.

As always, here is each of the involved players 2005 and career stats, as well as their relevant salary information:

Rangers receive:

Brad Wilkerson (28 year old 1B/RF/LF/CF, Arbitration eligible, made $3.05 million in 2005)

2005: 565 AB, .248/.351/.405, 11 HR, 57 RBI, 76 Runs Scored, 8/10 SB/CS, 7 BRAA, 0 FRAA, 5.1 WARP3

Career: 2265 AB, .256/.365/.452, 83 HR, 265 RBI, 369 Runs Scored, 43/35 SB/CS, 55 BRAA, 16 FRAA, 23.8 WARP3

Terrmel Sledge (28 year old LF/CF/RF, made $350,000 in 2005, can find no information on 2006 salary)

2005 (Limited to only 37 AB in 2005 due to injury, and only has 435 career Major League AB’s):

Major League Career: 435 AB, .267/.337/.455, 16 HR, 70 RBI, 52 Runs, 5/4 SB/CS, 3 BRAA, 6 FRAA, 3.9 WARP3

Minor League Career: 2061 AB, .308/.399/.473, 56 HR, 304 RBI, 385 Runs, 100/41 SB/CS

Armando Galarraga (23 year old RH Starting Pitcher, minor league contract)

2005 (Double A Harrisburg East): 76.3 IP, 3-4, 5.19 ERA, 9.4 H/9—1.2 HR/9—2.5 BB/9—6.8 K/9

Minor League Career: 375.0 IP, 14-21, 4-27 ERA, 8.7 H/9—0.9 HR/9—3.1 BB/9—7.6 K/9

Nationals Receive:

Alfonso Soriano (27 year old SS, Arbitration eligible, made $7.5 million in 2005)

2005: 637 AB, .268/.309/.512, 36 HR, 104 RBI, 102 Runs, 30/2 SB/CS, 10 BRAA, (-24) FRAA, 4.9 WARP3

Career: 3255 AB, .280/.320/.500, 162 HR, 465 RBI, 505 Runs, 53 BRAA, (-68) FRAA, 29.7 WARP3

The most obvious, and glaring statistic of all the above-mentioned players is Soriano’s career FRAA. Yes, you’re reading it right, Soriano has been so bad defensively that his bad defense has outweighed his very impatient, power-heavy offensive game.

When a player is this bad defensively he should, without hesitation, be moved to one of the easier defensive positions on the diamond. He definitely shouldn’t man one of the more important defensive positions, like second base. Thankfully, the Nationals realize this and are planning to move him to left field. By doing this, Soriano will sort of be like Manny Ramirez in that he most likely will be a horrible defender stuck into one of the least important defensive spots, but can swing the stick.

Now there is no way to project how Soriano will do out in left field, but it would be safe to say he probably won’t be that great. Will he be better than either of the outfielders the Nationals traded away though? If he is, he will barely be.

Since Soriano will be playing a new position, it would be unfair for me to compare him to any of the traded players total production (both offense and defense), so I will only compare offensive abilities.

The fact of the matter is that Soriano is so impatient at the plate; making his OBP so low he isn’t really as productive as he could be. Notice that even though the man has averaged close to 32 HR’s a year since his first full-duty season; he only has a career BRAA of 53. Disregarding his two part time seasons with the New York Yankees, in those five full-time seasons he has accumulated 58 BRAA, and average of 11.6 per season. For a player with Soriano’s power, you’d expect a number much higher than this.

Besides last season, an off year for Wilkerson that some blame on injury, in his first three years of full time duty, his BRAA totals have been 15, 15, and 23 (02’, 03’ and 04’). To put it bluntly, he is already a better offensive player than Soriano. On top of this, as we already know, he is also much better defender, that already plays the outfield. Even in his “off-year” last season, Wilkerson still out-produced Soriano in WARP3 (5.1 vs. 4.9 WARP3).

Notice that I am just comparing Soriano and Wilkerson here. I am not even including the young, great-looking Terrmel Sledge. I do this for a reason, and that is to show how horrible of a deal this actually was. The Rangers are getting three players, when they already would have gained production if they had only dealt for Wilkerson. It’s as if Sledge and Galarraga were just added to make the Nationals look more incompetent.

Galarraga is too old for the level he is at, and doesn’t really make a difference as far as who wins or loses this deal.

As far as salaries are concerned, Soriano will probably make close to $10 million next year through arbitration. Wilkerson, because of his off year will probably make around $4 million. As far as Terrmel Sledge, since I can’t find any information on his 2006 salary, and he only made $350,000 last season, I’ll just use the nice round figure of $1 million for his 2006 salary.

This means that Wilkerson and Sledge will combine to make $5 million, which is $5 million less than Soriano will make! The Rangers ripped the Nationals off in this deal even worse than the Phillies ripped the White Sox off in the Thome/Rowand deal a few weeks ago.

This deal makes absolutely no sense from the Nationals perspective. They add payroll, get a player who is worse than the player(s) they traded away, and according to what I’ve been reading, they’re getting an unhappy player because Soriano is saying he doesn’t want to move to the outfield.

Final Analysis: The Nationals get an unhappy, impatient hitting, horrible fielding player, and add around $5 million in payroll. The Rangers get a very productive, young outfielder that can both hit and field well in Wilkerson, and another young outfielder in Sledge who has shown great potential in his minor league career and hasn’t done that bad in his brief major league career.

This was an embarrassing deal for the Nationals, just plain embarrassing.

Thank you for reading. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions, please do not hesitate to email me at frnkbndy@yahoo.com.