Vicente Padilla, Claudio Vargas, and the Dodgers

by
August 20, 2009

In the most minor of trade deadline deals, the Los Angeles Dodgers traded pitcher Claudio Vargas to the Milwaukee Brewers for back-up catcher Vinny Rottino. Less than three weeks later, the Dodgers saw a rotation slot open up, with no obvious options at hand to fill it.

So, did they hurt themselves by helping Vargas?

Vargas is no great shakes, mind you, he’s thrown 20 innings in relief this season with a 3.84 FIP, but the Dodgers need for a starter includes reaching out to free agent Vicente Padilla and inking him to a minor league deal. Outside of name value, the two are pretty similar.

Over the last three years Vargas has appeared in 57 games, starting 27, with a 6.7 K/9 and 3.3 BB/9. Padilla meanwhile has started all 70 of his games with a 5.8 K/9 and 3.5 BB/9. Since 2007, Padilla’s FIP is 5.04 and tRA is 5.96 while Vargas’ is 4.86 and 5.40. Since Vargas basically split his time between relief and starting you can add about a half run to both his run average metrics to project the numbers as a full time starter and you wind up with 5.36 and 5.90.

Padilla pitched in the American League and in a park that has a 1.04 PF per our five-year factors. Vargas pitched in Milwaukee (1.00), the part of New York that reps the National League (0.97), and of course with the Dodgers (0.98). Meaning Padilla has had the tougher slate of batters faced in tougher pitching environments yet performed near equally.

Padilla will make about 100k from this point on which is right on with what Vargas would make. Neither cost anything but money, making them essentially equal in value. I suppose this is a case of nothing gained, nothing lost, although it could make the Dodgers think twice before making another ‘favor trade’ in the future.

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MU789
16 years ago

What happens if Padilla starts hitting batters? Will Manny have to wear a suit of armor when Padilla starts plunking people? Don Drysdale and Bob Gibson could get away with pitching inside and hitting people but Padilla ain’t Drysdale or Gibson.

When the players on your own team say how happy they are to see you leave and wonder what took the Rangers so long to do it, the expectations for Padilla better be pretty low.

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