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July 27, 2006

Lies, Damned Lies

Playing Matchmaker

by Nate Silver

How beautiful would it be to acquire Alfonso Soriano? That depends on just who the beholder is. There are probably seven teams that are legitimate contenders to acquire Soriano, or one of the two other big bats on the market--Bobby Abreu and Carlos Lee--before the trade deadline passes next week:

• The White Sox, for whom he would most likely replace Scott Podsednik in left field (and not the center-field pseudo-platoon of Brian Anderson and Rob Mackowiak, or so reports Phil Rogers);
• The Tigers, for whom he'd take at-bats away from the three-headed hydra of Craig Monroe, Marcus Thames and Dmitri Young;
• The Angels, for whom he'd replace a healthy Robb Quinlan, an injured Garret Anderson, or possibly Maicer Izturis, with Chone Figgins free to take more at-bats at third base.
• The Twins, for whom he'd displace Jason Kubel or Rondell White;
• The Cardinals, who could use him to end the So Taguchi experiment;
• The Dodgers, for whom he'd ultimately replace Kenny Lofton, with J.D. Drew or perhaps Andre Ethier moving from a corner outfield spot to center;
• And the Yankees, who could play him in place of either Melky Cabrera or Bernie Williams, or possibly at second base, depending on just who gets back from injury and when.

The Red Sox and Mets have been associated with Abreu, but have more pressing needs. The Mariners were interested too, but have just picked up a bat in Ben Broussard. So we'll focus on these seven teams for now. Which has the most incentive to acquire a corner outfielder?

We can quantify the impact of picking up a player like Soriano by comparing his projected MLVr to that of the players whom he'd be replacing. To make this projection, we'll use a combination of the player's pre-season PECOTA, and his MLVr on the season to date.

The percentage that we'll weight the season-to-date MLVr depends on the number of plate appearances that the player has had thus far in 2006. In particular, the weight assigned to the 2006 performance is determined by the formula:

    Weight(2006) = PA(2006) / 650 * .5