Yanks Acquire Pudge

by
July 30, 2008

The New York Yankees made a splash today, acquiring Ivan Rodriguez from the Detroit Tigers to replace the injured Jorge Posada behind the plate. In reality, Pudge will take at-bats from Jose Molina, who had been doing the catching in Posada’s absence. How big of an upgrade is Rodriguez over Molina?

Pudge is a slightly below average hitter, putting up a .295/.338/.417 line that translates into a -0.39 WPA/LI for the season. For a catcher, being a nearly league average hitter is very good, and when combined with his defense behind the plate, makes Pudge something like a +3 win player (compared to a replacement level catcher) over a full season. With 1/3 of the year left, that makes Pudge about +1 win over replacement covering the final two months.

Speaking of replacement level, Molina is basically the poster boy. He’d racked up -1.56 WPA/LI in just 192 at-bats, thanks to his .229/.279/.307 line for the season. While he’s a good defensive catcher, so is Pudge, and the offensive difference is pretty significant.

The Yankees just added a one win upgrade in their line-up in exchange for Kyle Farnsworth. Kinda makes the Angels marginal improvement yesterday look bad in comparison.





 

Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.

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Joser
15 years ago

But the Angels are already running away with their division, whereas the Yankees are in a three-team dogfight (and just as close a three-way for the wild card). Over the rest of regular season, one win isn’t going to make any difference to the Angels; for the Yankees, it could be the dividing line between going on and going home.

Or, looking at it another way, the Angels had fewer gaping holes so it’s harder for them to make much of an improvement with any single deal.

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