Wednesday, August 1, 2012

The Flyin' Hawaiian Heads West

After acquiring Hanley Ramirez, the Los Angeles Dodgers went out and acquired outfielder, Shane Victorino, from the Philadelphia Phillies. Victorino is a free agent after the season, and the Dodgers got him relatively cheap. He won't finish as good as last season, but he's still on pace to have +3-3.5 WAR by the time the season ends.

Shane Victorino is one of the more underrated outfielders in all of baseball. He doesn't post the sexiest numbers, but he's certainly someone that you should want on your baseball team. The Dodgers knew what he was capable of, and they also needed a reliable lead-off bat so they went ahead and acquired Victorino.

Before Victorino arrived, the Dodgers had either Dee Gordon or Tony Gywnn Jr. hit at the lead-off position. Both performed extremely poorly, posting an OBP of .280 apiece. That isn't what you expect from your lead-off hitter at all. With Victorino they get a hitter who has a career OBP of .342. His .324 OBP isn't quite what you'd expect, but it's a huge improvement when you consider what Dee Gordon and Tony Gwynn Jr. contributed. Defensively he's slightly above average for his career. This season he only has a .1 UZR, but we all know that defensive statistics aren't 100% indicative of a players true ability, so make of that what you will. This move also allowed the Dodgers to designate outfielder, Bobby Abreu, for assignment.

The Phillies on the other hand had to make this move. If they had decided to offer Victorino the qualifying offer that's necessary to receive compensation it's likely that he would have accepted it. In my opinion though it seemed like they were to eager to make a move. Victorino had a career year last season, and they traded him for practically no worthwhile return. Josh Lindblom is a reliever who has struggled with home runs, and has shown lackluster command. For his career he's walked more than 3 batters per 9 innings. Ethan Martin is a starting pitcher in AA and he has also shown terrible command problems.

In the end the Dodgers filled a position of need and did it without giving up anything that would have affected their future. The Phillies got a couple of pitchers but overall did a poor job.

1 comment:

  1. Considering he's a FA at the end of the season, 31, and having an all right season (about league average for a center fielder, which will profile worse in LF) I'd say the return the Phillies got is far from poor, but about what should be expected and about as best as they probably could do.

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