THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

What is so troubling about a .358 OBP after a month for a player with a career mark of .376?

If there’s any troubling number about Ichiro it would have to be his age.

If you re-construct Ichiro’s batting line with a .356 BABIP (his career rate) instead of the .333 he has this season (and keep everything else the same) his OBP comes out to .361, the same as last year. All this with his lowest BB% in 8 years. I think he’ll be fine.

Ichiro also presumably brings in more overseas revenue than an American player with the same production level.

Also… It obviously depends on the package you would receive in return, but I wouldn’t think it’s a wise move to trade Ortiz while his value is at its lowest point in years, unless the Red Sox think it’s only going to get worse. ZiPS still projects a fairly productive year, though not great for a DH.

Tom’s made this point before, but I’ll just throw this out there - these WSJ pieces, we have ~300 words to write an intro and make a point.  The medium obviously doesn’t lend itself to rigorous, thorough analysis of all the issues.  We’re also limited in what kind of metrics we can use, given the audience.  It’s not like we just stick position adjusted linear weights in there. 

So, all that to say… yea.  Trading these guys is a far more complicated decision than presented here.

I’m not sure if Pronk or Ortiz could get much in a trade.

Dave has a full-length article on the idea behind trading a star player:
http://ussmariner.com/2009/05/15/should-the-team-do-the-unthinkable/