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Saturday, December 10, 2011
Pujols and Iannetta versus Abreu and Mathis
What is the addition of Pujols and Iannetta worth to the Angels, assuming they take Mathis’ and Abreue’s place?
I ran a quick sim against an average team. The gain is 5.5 wins per 150 games versus a RHP, and 10.4 wins versus a LHP.
Interestingly, of that 5.5 win gain versus RHP, 3.6 is from Iannetta over Mathis (assuming roughly equal defensive value), which leaves only 1.9 for Pujols.
Against LHP, only 2.1 of those wins are from Iannetta/Mathis, so 8.3 are from Pujols/Abreu.
Anyway, if we assume 2/3 of their PA are against RHP, we get a total upgrade of 7.1 wins.
This probably overstates the upgrade, though, since Mathis was not nearly the full time catcher last year (he only played in 93 games).