couple things I don't understand. how Dunn clears waviers and how the Dbacks are able to get him when the only known prospect is a 24 year old coming off TJ surgery pitching in single A. looks like Jocketty is well on his way to ruining the good that Krivsky did for the Reds.
Dunn is a good hitter who will provide a much-needed boost to the Arizona lineup. Byrnes and Hudson are likely out for the season, and Upton is still not back. And that deal appears to be a huge ripoff. Sounds like the Reds would've gotten a lot more by keeping Dunn and letting him walk at the end of the year.
Dunn is of course not garbage (his lifetime .900 OPS is higher than that of any players on the Yankees and Mets other than Rodriguez, Giambi, Delgado, and Wright, and he's right on his average this year), and to me the only reasonable explanation is that the other two players are going to be off the major league roster, but not until after the season is over. The point about him clearing waivers is interesting, although if you look at the teams below the D'Backs, it's not clear who would have wanted him. If the Dodgers hadn't gotten Manny they might have, but everyone else is out of any race.
He didn't clear waivers, Arizona claimed him. And a lot of times the reason that it's a PTBNL is so those players don't have to clear waivers. The Reds already know who they're getting and they could very well be two pretty good prospects.
Dunn probably only made it arizona, they claimed him and then worked out a trade. Also a note on return, there are 2 PTBNLs in the deal, one option is that at least one of them is someone who was drafted this year, and as such can't be traded yet.
No. The way waivers work (well, THIS kind of waivers, there are like 3 or 4 kinds) is the player is placed on the waiver wire. Any team can put in a claim for him. If he is claimed, the original team can either pull him back and keep him, say "ok, here you go, take his salary", or work out a trade with the team that claimed him. If more than one team claims him, the team with the worst record gets the rights to him. If no team claims him, he has cleared waivers and can be traded to any team. So with Dunn, the Reds put him on waivers and Arizona (and possibly others with better records) claimed him.
The Reds farm system is loaded with outfielders, top to bottom. Shortstops, too. Jockety's track record speaks for itself; he builds through trades by plundering the farm system. That's what makes me skittish as a longtime Reds fan. I loved to watch Dunn hit; however, as fun as his longball is, he never liked playing small-ball, and he is pretty slow in the outfield. His strikeout percentage offsets the fun of his HRs. Rumor around these parts is that Griffey's sense of entitlement had trickled down to the younger players and it was driving Baker bananas.
Strikeout percentage doesn't offset jack shit when you're still getting on base 40% of the time auuugh kaboom
This looks like highway robbery unless the prospects are better then we are lead to believe. He will make a decent 1st baseman or worse case DH on an AL team.
I will never understand the notion that there is something inherently more wrong with a strikeout than any other out. There's no reality behind it - the "productive out" is vastly overrated in general (as all statistical analysis has shown), and if you're a slow power hitter, striking out with a man on first and less than two outs is better than hitting a ground ball. This article is just one example of how when you actually look at it, other than in the very limited context of something like a man on third with one out, there is nothing particularly good about productive outs. Dunn is underrated because people still look at batting average, despite the fact that it is uniformly inferior to OBP as a measure of someone's ability to get on base.
Okay, let's cut to the chase. Dunn was in 114 games and had 87 hits. Jay Bruce has been in 61 games and has 71 hits. This is a glaring statistic, HRs not withstanding. The Reds need base hits this year. Dunn didn't deliver what the team needs. And his OBP is comparable to three other players still on the Reds roster. Bruce is left-handed like Dunn, and his SO rate is roughly the same; his ability to get hits makes him, to Baker and Jockety, more valuable than Dunn.
For me, it's more that a hit is better than a walk. I don't see a lot of Dunn so I am guessing here as far as he goes, but I saw it with Drew a lot last year: many of the strikeouts are a result of trying to draw the walk and taking close pitches. Working the count is great, but if you're a middle of the order hitter, you need to be swinging the bat. Getting on base is great, but as a 3 or 4 hitter, it's a secondary job to driving in the guys that do get on. With one outs and guys on second and third, a strikeout doesn't help you like a fly ball or even a ground ball to the right side. Now I don't see Dunn enough to know if he takes a lot of pitches or swings and misses a lot. If it's the former, he should be hitting at the top of the order, regardless of his power. In high school I hit 3rd usually, sometimes 4th, and was always told to swing the bat. Jump on the first pitch I could hit hard. I still got a fair share of walks, but I rarely struck out. The leadoff and second guys were told the opposite. Maybe it's different due to vastly better defense in the Majors, but I was taught that as a middle of the order guy, it's always better to put the ball in play, especially with men on base.
Dunn also had 80 walks, and ignoring that is ridiculous. All teams need baserunners every year, and Dunn's OBP is 53 points higher than Bruce's (his slugging percentage is also 82 points higher, by the way). There is no sensible measure by which Bruce is more valuable than Dunn, other than their ages, and therefore the possibility that Bruce might eventually develop a better batting eye and develop more power (Bruce also has the big advantage in salary, of course). And it's not like Dunn is old - he's only 28 - and he has the 62nd highest career OPS in major league history. The only person on the Reds who is having an offensive year close to Dunn's is Jerry Hairston, and he's missed half of the games. Other than Hairston, the guys left with highest OBP are Votto (OBP 28 points lower and SLG 80 points lower), Ross (OBP 8 points higher, SLG 162 points lower), and Freel (OBP 33 points lower, SLG 169 points lower). Enccarnacion is also having a good year, but again not close to Dunn (OBP 35 points lower, SLG 41 points lower). If, in fact, Baker and Jockity ignore the value of walks and extra base hits this way, that would just show that they have no idea what they're doing. I don't know for a fact that that is true of Jockity (this might be an excellent trade, depending on who they get in return), but it certainly is true of Baker. He is a terrible manager, who has a long history of not understanding what it is that actually improves the chances of scoring runs.
I have no doubt that that is what you were taught, but that doesn't mean that it's right. Baseball has the great advantage of having massive amounts of data readily available, and all of that data shows again and again that by far the most important ingredients for a team to have a competitive advantage in scoring runs is to get people on base and get extra base hits (the rest of the stuff pretty much evens out). Of course you want to put people in their proper places to do that, so people with high OBPs should be at the top of the order, and people with high SLGs should come after them. The fact is that because walks were taken out of the batting average calculation more than 100 years ago, and because extra base hits count the same as singles in the batting average calculation, they have always been undervalued. I don't see either J.D. Drew or Adam Dunn enough to get personal impressions, but Drew's 2007 wasn't remotely close to Dunn's 2008 - Drew slugged .423, while Dunn is slugging .528. I also don't see how your argument about why Drew had a bad year last year hangs together. He is walking more this year, slugging far more, and also striking out more, a fine example of why strikeout rates tell you very little about the kind of year a player is having.
The impression I get from watching Dunn and looking at his stats/splits is that it's not that he strikes out so much because he's up there not swinging the bat trying to get a walk, but that he's trying to hit a 500 foot HR with every swing. This is also why his batting average is so low. You also have to account for this when looking at things like "failing to get the runner in from 3rd with less then 2 outs". Sure, he may strike out, but the next time in that situation he might hit a 3 run HR. That's alot more valuable in a Luis Castillo type who "never strikes out". As far as hits vs walks a hit can be more valuable as if there are runners on base a walk can only move them up one base. As jeff said though the most important thing is getting on base.
