Archive for Josh Willingham

At 47-43, the Pittsburgh Pirates sit just one game back in the NL Central standings. The club has a winning record after the All-Star break for the first time since Sid Bream slid and Barry Bonds bolted. And for the first time since the 1997 “Freak Show” edition of the club, whose entire payroll was less than what Albert Belle made that year, the Bucs will play pennant-altering games in the second half. The fans are taking notice: attendance is up by 3,000-4,000 per game at PNC Park, and local TV ratings have increased by a third.

But there’s one major weakness that could turn the Pirates’ resurgent season sour: the offense. Pittsburgh ranks 11th in the NL in on-base percentage, 14th in slugging and 12th in runs scored. Outside of MVP candidate Andrew McCutchen, no current starter has been comfortably above-average in the batter’s box. It’s going to be hard to keep up with the Cardinals and Brewers with such a tepid lineup.

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The month of June marks the unofficial beginning of the trade season, and so we thought it would be helpful to run down a list of which players might be for sale at some point this summer. But, rather than just run down a list of potential trade targets, we thought that we would spend the week discussing the most interesting players at each position and have compiled a list of the best players available at each spot, along with their expected production going forward and notes about which teams might be possible fits as buyers. We hope you enjoy the series.

Kicking off our week of looking at trade targets are the players who will be acquired primarily for their work with the bat: first basemen and designated hitters. Note that there might be some overlap across the posts as some players can handle multiple positions.

Here are five realistic trade candidates at the position(s), based on projected WAR over the rest of the season, contract status, the state of their current employers and the needs of various potential contenders.

PLAYER: Billy Butler
TEAM: Royals
POSSIBLE DESTINATION(S): Angels, Rays
CONTRACT STATUS: Four-year, $30 million deal through 2014
PROJECTED WAR: 2.1

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A few days after signing Hideki Matsui to DH, the Oakland Athletics have taken another step to invigorate an offense that ranked 10th in the American League in wOBA last season. The A’s have acquired outfielder Josh Willingham from the Washington Nationals for a pair of prospects: outfielder Corey Brown and right-handed reliever Henry Rodriguez.

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Today is deadline day, and as Chris Needham points out so well, the Nationals have been quiet. Too quiet.

Apparently the Nats are so loaded with talent and potential for the coming years that they don’t need to make a change. At least that’s how you could read it considering all the moves they haven’t made and how two-thirds of the league’s players have seemingly changed hands.

The Nationals are on their way to losing well over 100 games this season and even the most die-hard idealist isn’t expecting them contend anytime soon. Their attendance is one of the worst in baseball despite their nifty new facilities. Let’s face it; the team may as well be back in Canada for all Washington fans care at the moment. They have one thing in the world to look forward to as fans: Signing Stephen Strasburg. So why are the Nats not in full blown fire-sale mode, a la Pittsburgh? They have some assets.

Needham pointed out a few, including Nick Johnson and Josh Willingham. Johnson is healthy this season and still gets on base at a high clip. ZiPS projects Johnson to produce a robust .380 wOBA the rest of the season. He’s going to be a Type B free agent, meaning you can buy Nick Johnson and he comes with the added bonus of a draft pick. Not much not to like.

Josh Willingham is quietly having a fantastic season, putting together a .300/.410/.586 line. Bear in mind his batting average is nearly thirty points higher than his career standard, but Willingham has been a consistently productive hitter, with a career .372 wOBA. He picked a great time to have a career year, as he’ll be arbitration eligible for the second time this off-season, making him due for a raise.

But what about Adam Dunn? Why is no one talking about him? The Prophet of the Three True Outcomes Cult is putting together yet another strong offensive season, posting a .407 wOBA. Granted, he’s been downright grisly in left field (-12) UZR, but there has to be a contending team out there with a 1B/DH on their wish list. Matt Holliday, Dunn is not, but he’d bring comparable offensive production, just keep the Big Donkey away from the outfield.

The only stumbling block I can see that would deter a team from trading for Dunn is that he has 1 year, $12 million left on his contract after the season. While that might not be ideal for some buyers, in view of the fact that he’ll most likely be a 3-4 win player next year, that’s really not all that exorbitant.

The Nationals are a terrible team with a rather weak farm system. They need all the extra dough they can scrape up just to sign Strasburg, and more talent than the Zimmerman(n)s and Derek Norris to build around their future ace. It’s a quarter to midnight, Mr. Rizzo. Do the team’s future GM a favor and don’t just keep his seat warm. Give him or her a head start at rebuilding this mess.

updated: I stand corrected, Johnson is just short of Type B status. He’s still a decent trading chip, though.

Josh Willingham began his career with the Marlins, becoming an everyday starter in 2006. For three years, he posted remarkably consistent offensive numbers: wOBAs of .364, .365, and .363. Much like then teammate Hanley Ramirez, Willingham sandwiched a very poor UZR mark in 2007 with ratings that hovered around the league average. This past offseason, he was traded to the Nationals, along with Scott Olsen, in exchange for Emilio Bonifacio and a couple of prospects. Despite employing a glut of outfielders, the Nationals have been able to give Willingham 133 plate appearances this season, and boy has he responded.

Willingham is staying relatively true to his career marks with a .252 BA and .376 OBP, but has produced a .550 SLG so far that dwarfs his career .477 mark. The surge has helped his wOBA soar to a robust .393. Most of the total bases involved in the SLG calculation come from Willingham’s nine home runs, but there is something much more interesting about those dingers – they are all solo home runs!

Nine home runs, all solo, which makes his 9 HR-12 RBI line quite comical. Curious about the nature and frequency of solo homers, I tallied the number of solo dingers in my database for each player-season, divided by the total home runs hit and determined the solo home run percentages. To find the leaders and trailers for all players since 1954, it really depends on the floors set.

For instance, of anyone with at least 15 total home runs in a season, Ken Singleton has the record for highest solo percentage at 1.000, as he went a perfect 15-15 in 1975 for the Orioles. On the flipside, Tom Brunansky went 1-16 in 1990, a 0.0625 rate. How about if we adjust the minimum to 20?

Curtis Granderson launched 23 longballs in 2007, but 21 were solo homers. In fact, many of the leaders in solo homer percentage were leadoff hitters, which makes intuitive sense given that a leadoff home run comes with nobody on base, and that they might come to the plate with the bases empty less often with poor hitters in front of them. Behind Grandy is Dave Winfield, who went 18-20 in 1974 with the Padres. At the bottom of the list is Greg Luzinski, who went 3-21 in 1976, a 0.143 percentage. When we make a subtle adjustment from a minimum of 15 to a minimum of 20, the lowest percentage jumps from 6.3% to 14.3%.

Toby Harrah tops the list with a minimum of 25 homers, when he went 22-25 in 1982 for the Indians. Behind him is Bobby Bonds, who went 22-26 in 1970. At the bottom of the list: Frank Thomas (not the White Sox guy) in 1956 for the Pirates went 5-25, and Hank Aaron went 8-38 in 1970. Kevin Youkilis had one of the lowest percentages last season, as only eight of his 29 home runs were of the solo variety.

How about if we place the minimum at 40 home runs? Of the 239 player-seasons, nobody had a higher solo percentage than Richard Hidalgo, who hit 35 solo home runs out of 44 total in 2000. Barry Bonds could have tied Hidalgo but decided to hit one more total home run with runners on in 2003, when he went 35-45. The lowest such percentage belongs to Bonds’ godfather, Willie Mays, who hit 14 solo homers out of 51 total in 1955. Recently, Alex Rodriguez went 18-54 in 2007, the same year in which Ryan Howard went 17-47. Howard also went 22-48 last year.

What makes Willingham’s “feat” all the more interesting is his spot in the lineup as well as the team for which he plays. Josh generally hits fifth for the Nationals, behind such on-base luminaries as Nick Johnson, Ryan Zimmerman and Adam Dunn. That he has not hit a home run with any of these guys on base is particularly mind-boggling. He projects to finish the season with 23 home runs, which would put him in Granderson territory if he can keep up this solo pace.

This week’s salary dump by the Florida Marlins will definitely benefit the Washington Nationals. The trade sent established Major League players Josh Willingham, an outfielder, and Scott Olsen, a left-handed pitcher in need of an attitude adjustment, to Washington for three prospects. Yesterday, you read about Dave Cameron’s take on the Major Leaguers in the trade.

The three prospects obtained by Florida include: second baseman Emilio Bonifacio, infielder Jake Smolinski, and right-hander P.J. Dean. I’ll touch on Bonifacio with a little more depth tomorrow over at RotoGraphs, because he has the most potential of the three for regular playing time at the Major League level in 2009. Basically, he’s really fast, doesn’t walk enough and strikes out too much. He hit .243/.296/.337 in 169 MLB at-bats in 2008 at the age of 23.

Smolinski was a 2007 second round pick out of an Illinois high school. He was a shortstop in high school, played outfield in his pro debut and then spent 2008 at second base, where he failed to set the world on fire. The 19-year-old hit .306/.364/.408 with no home runs in 98 short-season at-bats in 2008. He also hit .261/.330/.402 with four home runs in 184 A-ball at-bats. He posted rates of 9.4 BB% and 17.9 K% at the higher level. His ISO increased from .102 in the short-season league to .141 in A-ball. Smolinski is your basic B-level prospect whose value could easily go way up or way down in 2009.

Dean is my favorite player in the deal. He is a young, projectable right-hander who currently throws 90-92 mph with room to grow. Dean also has a curveball with plus potential and a developing change-up. A 2007 seventh round pick out of high school, Dean has spent the past two seasons in short-season ball. In 2008, he posted a 1.57 ERA (but 3.40 FIP) with 26 hits allowed in 46 innings pitched. He also had rates of 3.13 BB/9 and 6.65 K/9. In two seasons totaling 77 innings, Dean has allowed just three home runs.

The trade between Florida and Washington will definitely favor the latter organization for at least the next three seasons. But if either Dean or Smolinski reaches his potential, it could swing back to Florida’s favor (at least until said player gets too expensive).

Coming into the 2008 season the National League East had been reduced to a three-team race between the Braves, Mets, and Phillies. Nobody pegged the Marlins as potential contenders even with Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis; their subsequent trade to the Tigers did nothing to help the cause.

Looking at the standings right now might require a double take because the three pre-season contenders currently rank 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in the division. The first place team? Well, none other than the pesky fish from Florida, who currently sport a 15-10 record and a 1.5 game lead over the Mets and Phillies. This isn’t likely to continue but they have had a good first month and deserve some recognition. One of the major reasons for their early success is the stellar production from leftfielder Josh Willingham. He will not make headlines as a fantasy or statistical superstud, like teammate Hanley Ramirez, but Willingham has quietly become a very solid hitter.

His 2006 and 2007 seasons were pretty consistent, evidenced by the following breakdowns:

• 2006: 142 GP, .277/.356/.496, 56 XBH, 109 K, 21.7 K%, 0.50 BB/K
• 2007: 144 GP, .265/.364/.463, 57 XBH, 122 K, 23.4 K%, 0.54 BB/K

Though we are still suffering from some small sample size issues, Willingham has seemingly increased his production levels relative to the previous two seasons. In fact, his RC/27 has vastly increased:

I would love to say that Willingham will keep this up, as I draft him for my fantasy team every year, but his balls-in-play rates just do not seem to point in that direction. Now, this is not to say he will not have a productive year, but rather that his production is very likely to level off in the coming weeks or months. Here is a look at his GB/FB/LD rates:

As you can see, his percentage of grounders has increased upwards of ten percent. Due to this increase, his BABIP currently rest at .348, much higher than the .310 and .308 posted in the last two seasons. Another so called red flag is the fact that his HR/FB % has increased from 12% to 23%; while his percentage of flyballs has decreased by about ten percent he is hitting a little over ten percent more of them out of the ballpark.

He could defy the odds and put up an incredible season but it would come with the potential stigma of having high luck-based indicators, IE, a fluke. His numbers should improve from those posted last year but not along the lines of what would occur should we extrapolate his current statistics over the rest of the season.