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Hearing The Magic Numbers
A Bad Trade? Now I'm Confused
Anyone who thinks that the Soriano-Wilkerson deal was a bad trade for the Nationals either has their nose too far up Bill James’ ass, is on meth, or is suffering from a nasty combo of both.
Baseball Musings (a friend of SBL) claims that DC got robbed. As a major part of his arguement against the trade, Musings was nice enough to point out that Wilkerson has more “win shares” than Soriano. I don’t have any idea what a “win share” is, but it sounds like a good thing… I guess. Unless it's related to "time shares." Those are a scam.
I do know this: Soriano has had five consitantly kick-ass seasons in a row in both N.Y. and Texas. He beat Wilkerson in every single offensive category last season (BA, runs, RBI, HR, doubles, steals, slugging percentage, OPS and had less K’s) except for walks and on-base percentage.
Sure you can say Wilkerson’s power production was hurt in massive RFK (and Soriano’s will be too), but even in Montreal his number’s still pale in comparison to Soriano’s. Really, Wilkerson has had one great season in his career and it was in ’04. Soriano has had five in a row that better it.
Brad Wilkerson is a fine ballplayer and I’m sad to see him go, but if you think he’s in anyway a better player than Alfanso Soriano than you are just a dumb, dumb human and I feel sorry for you.
-Chris The Intern
Bonus Goods: Hear Baseball Prospectus Radio's Will Carroll call it a bad trade and much more on SBL.
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Soriano also played in an extreme hitter's park. His road numbers were abysmal (.224/.265/.374). After park and league adjustments, his OPS+ was 110 as compared to Wilkerson's 104. Over their career, both have an OPS+ of 111. Win Shares measure both offense and defense. Soriano only had 2.1 Defensive Win Shares, which is absolutely awful for a second baseman -- a good defensive second baseman has three times that many Defensive Win Shares. Baseball Prospectus had Soriano at -24 runs below the average second baseman last year, which mans he was about 16% worse than the league average defensive second baseman. That is very bad. Wilkerson had 4.3 Defensive Win Shares in the outfield, which isn't stellar, but about average.
Unlike OPS, Win Shares account for all aspects of offense, including with Batting Average With Runners in Scoring Position. Soriano only hit .235 with RISP and Wilkerson hit .283 with RISP. When all was said and done, Soriano had 14 Batting Win Shares and Wilkerson had 18.4
That being said, Win Shares should not be used as a predictive tool. Win Shares measure exactly what happened on the field, and make no attempt to measure certain skills. What is alarming about Soriano is his terrible W/K ratio of 26.4. A W/K of .50 is considered acceptable in regards to solid future performance. Guys with W/K ratios like Soriano usually bat around .240, and since Soriano's BA has declined for three years now, he could be rapidly approaching a cliff.
Brad Wilkerson is not exactly a cornerstone of a team, but Soriano has been one of the most vastly overrated players of the past five years.
12/22/05 8:31 PM