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It sucks we won't even get anything back for him because of the new CBA but I don't see him as a $25 mil per year type of pitcher.
He was good not great for us down the stretch and we have plenty of other holes where that money can be better applied.
I'm a fan of the deal because we get our #3 guy without having to pay a FA contract and mess with out draft picks or financial pool.
You can laugh at bullpen roles but this young "fireballer" has seen his velo drop over 1 mph every season for the last three years, has a slider valued at zero and a changeup with negative value.. Or maybe just look at how his K/9 fell off almost two full Ks from 2011 to 2012 despite making relatively the same number of appearances. Or maybe that he had a negative total WPA when he did come in last year, no matter what the role.
If he was so great we could have flipped him for something a lot better than a pitcher with back issues.
And there's plenty of evidence of me having tons of Asian friends. Tons...
You're out loud laughter is unwarranted.Comment
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May wanna take another look at his K/9 last season.. it was 9.75 and coincides pretty neatly with his consistent velo drop.
Not to mention he won't be in the friendly confines of Angels stadium anymore.. where fly balls go to die.Comment
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No doubt but you can survive in a rotation with velo drops especially in Anaheim.. Jared Weaver has done it for years.
I obviously looked at the wrong set of numbers for K/9 but that doesn't change the fact that Walden is a negative WPA reliever with only one real value pitch in the FB and that value is questionable because like I said before he's been consistently been losing 1 mph off that fast ball every year since 2010. Throw in a walk rate that jumped from 3.88 to 4.15 over one year and its not hard to see why the Angels were willing to move this kid.
I'll take the extra 140 innings of added work we'll get from a (healthy) Hanson.
That said.. pen is still a mess. The Angels front office has a lot of work to do but this deal and the Madson deal are both low risk/high ceiling moves.
A stark contrast from last off-season and the Greinke trade.Comment
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What a derp argument. The trade makes sense for both sides. Solid baseball trade, my guy for your guy, one for one, no bullshit, no hokey "prospects", OLD TIMEY TRADE.
Nobody is winning this an hour after it happened. Lets bump in July.Comment
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Like this deal far more for the Barves than the Angels. Atlanta's pen is even more disgusting now.
^ Shouts to MvP for the sick sig. GFX TEAM BACK
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That's probably true. Braves have no real need for Hanson and Tehran is probably going to be a better pitcher if not next season than certainly in the long run.
I liked Walden a lot two years ago but I soured on him last season as did a lot of people out here so I'm not exactly sad to see him go, especially when it fills a huge hole in the rotation is all I was really trying to say.
I wish him the best and maybe facing NL hitting consistently will boost his production.Comment
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Keith Law's take on the deal for non-ESPN insiders here...
Pretty convincing stuff regarding Hanson's injuries. At least if it doesn't work out we can part ways after one year with him, and if it does work out we get a bargain in the rotation.I understand the Los Angeles Angels are looking for affordable help for the back of their rotation, and I don't think trading a hard-throwing reliever for it is a bad idea, but I'm very pessimistic about the pitcher they acquired, Tommy Hanson, while I think the reliever they dealt, Jordan Walden, still has the potential to become a 2-plus WAR reliever for the Atlanta Braves.
The Angels didn't give up a ton for,Hanson, but Hanson is so diminished at this point by shoulder and back problems that I'm not sure I'd want any part of him at his projected $4 million salary in arbitration. Hanson's a mess, and even when healthy in 2012 was barely above replacement level. He got worse as the season went on, and his fastball hasn't been the same since the shoulder problems began in earnest in 2011.
He doesn't have a great delivery, one that relies more on his arm than his legs to generate velocity, with late arm acceleration and minimal hip rotation, and he's fairly unathletic as well.
His command and control are both in decline as well, and unless the Angels plan to do something radical, such as giving him extra time off between starts or perhaps start his 2013 season later to try to build up strength in his shoulder and ensure that his back is 100 percent, I'm not optimistic that he'll be able to help their rotation.
In exchange for a player they had to at least be considering a potential non-tender, Atlanta gets back a project reliever in Walden. He throws in the upper 90s with heavy sink, but has below-average command and often has to elevate the ball just to throw strikes, meaning he doesn't generate the ground balls you'd expect from the scouting report.
His slider is sharp but is just a pitch to keep hitters off the fastball, meaning it won't be effective unless he can improve his ability to locate his primary pitch.
But Walden isn't eligible for arbitration yet, with one more year of club control than Hanson has remaining, so Atlanta saves some cash for 2013 and also has more time to try to fix what ails Walden, mostly command, which is more likely than the Angels fixing Hanson's health issues. I'd much rather have four years of Walden than three of Hanson, and that's even more true when we consider the greater expense for Hanson, because arbitration values starters more highly than non-closer relievers.
Maybe the Braves can have more luck helping Walden locate than Butcher could here. God knows they've had plenty of success developing relievers over the past few years.
Any time Keith Law kills a move my trade makes I worry though...Comment
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Fangraphs article on the deal... May or may not have been written by Warner..
I guess this means the Angels are probably all in on the Anibal Sanchez sweepstakes which gives me a sudden pain in my left arm when I think about it for too long.Some time ago, the Angels attempted to trade Dan Haren to the Cubs in exchange for Carlos Marmol. The Angels had concerns about Haren, and wanted to turn him into something useful. The Cubs had concerns about Marmol, and wanted to turn him into something useful. On paper, the deal looked lopsided in the Cubs’ favor, and so one had to consider that maybe the Angels knew something scary about Haren’s medicals. Sure enough, the deal fell through, and now Haren is a free agent looking for a short-term contract. No one’s going to be ballsy enough to give him a long-term contract.
Friday, the Angels completed sort of the opposite of that Haren/Marmol trade. Instead of the Angels dealing a troubled starter to get a troubled reliever, they’ve dealt the somewhat troubled Jordan Walden to the Braves in exchange for the troubled Tommy Hanson. Unlike with Haren, we don’t have to speculate that something might be up with Hanson, physically — we know that his shoulder has been groaning. The Angels, without question, know that they’re taking a chance, here. They determined, at the cost of Jordan Walden, the chance is worth taking.
One of the worst-kept secrets in baseball is that the Angels have been desperate for starters. It’s been a poorly-kept secret because it wasn’t really intended to be a secret. They dealt away Ervin Santana, they let Dan Haren become a free agent, and they lost Zack Greinke to free agency. From the beginning, word was the Angels badly wanted to get Greinke re-signed, but more recently there’s been talk that the Dodgers are the front-runners, with the Nationals another possibility. Until Greinke makes a decision, we can’t say much of anything, but Greinke re-signing has been far from a guarantee, and the Angels were left with four starters on their depth chart. Two of those starters are Jerome Williams and Garrett Richards. The Angels would like to contend, and in order to contend, the Angels needed to address their starting pitching.
The question, then, is exactly how much better Tommy Hanson makes them. He makes them at least a little better, because he’s a fifth starting pitcher on the roster. Previously there was no one in that slot. But there’s a reason the Braves didn’t have Hanson in their projected rotation, and there’s a reason the Braves gave him up for a reliever, even though he’s under team control another three years. The Tommy Hanson that exists now is similar in many ways to the Tommy Hanson that used to exist before, but when it comes to pitching, there are alarming differences.
Before 2009, Hanson was Baseball America’s fourth-best prospect in the league. Even now, the righty’s only 26, and he just started 31 games for a contending team. The prospect status and initial success gave Hanson lingering name value, but he’s been of dwindling actual value. He’s battled through shoulder discomfort that correlates to an expected velocity drop:
2009: 92.3 mph average fastball 2010: 92.7 2011: 91.2 2012: 89.7
Hanson hasn’t been treated surgically. We can’t definitively tie the softening fastball to the softening shoulder. But it makes a lot of sense, and it doesn’t bode super well going forward. One should note that Hanson’s always drawn some criticism for his mechanics, and I might as well include a .gif:
Some people who think they know about these things don’t like Hanson’s throwing motion, and he does seem to begin slowly before exploding later on. It stands to reason there’s probably something deceptive about his forearm action, but maybe this has been doing Hanson harm. Maybe something else. Hanson hasn’t had surgery yet, but he’s gotten worse, and we don’t know if he’s done getting worse.
What’s important, of course, isn’t Hanson’s average fastball velocity. That’s relevant only insofar as it suggests other things, and what we care about are Hanson’s results when he’s pitching. Interestingly, his contact rate hasn’t really been getting worse. His strikeouts in 2012 were basically the same as they were in 2009 and 2010, when he threw harder. Batted balls are the same, albeit lately there have been more dingers. Hanson’s strike rate is down, though, implying worse command. He might be making more mistakes, and he might have less of a margin of error for those mistakes. He just posted a below-average ERA, a below-average FIP, and a below-average xFIP. His xFIP was actually tied with Ervin Santana’s. That Hanson used to be a tippy-top prospect doesn’t matter anymore. We know a lot more about him than we used to.
Pitchers lose velocity as they age. Bill Petti and Jeff Zimmerman have examined this at length. Hanson’s velocity probably isn’t coming back, and there could be something more sinister than simple aging going on. By performance, most recently Tommy Hanson was mediocre. By various indicators, he could be approaching a fairly significant DL stint. As is, he looks like a capable back-of-the-rotation starter, and he could bounce back to some degree, but he’s going to a more difficult league and the indicators are worrisome. The Angels will hope that there’s meaning in Hanson’s final six 2012 starts, over which he generated 35 strikeouts against just ten walks.
Going the other way is Jordan Walden, and at least for the Angels, Walden won’t feel like much of a loss at all. After beginning the 2012 season as the Angels’ closer, Walden was quickly demoted, and after a midseason DL trip, Walden wound up relegated to low-leverage, infrequent relief. It seems meaningful that the Angels both wanted to improve their bullpen this offseason, and were extremely willing to send Jordan Walden somewhere else. Walden must not have been a favorite of theirs.
Yet the numbers are fine. Walden was, statistically, the same pitcher in 2012 as he was in 2011, and in 2011 he was an All-Star closer. He still threw hard, he still missed bats, and he still issued a few too many walks. Walden has his blemishes, but as always, it’s the overall results that matter most, and he’s been a better-than-average reliever. With a weird and unique throwing motion of his own:
It’s worth noting that Walden’s own average fastball velocity has dropped more than two ticks since breaking in in 2010. It’s still up there, though, and the results speak for themselves. Walden will clearly be behind Craig Kimbrel and Jonny Venters on the Braves’ bullpen depth chart, but he fits in the sixth and seventh innings, and he can help to shorten games. As Hanson is going to a more challenging league, Walden’s going to an easier one, so he could be of real value, even as a middle reliever. And for whatever it’s worth, he’s under contract another four years.
As a simple rule of thumb, it’s oftentimes a good move to deal a reliever for a starter. As another simple rule of thumb, one shouldn’t stick to simple rule of thumbs, because everything should be treated on a case-by-case basis. The Angels pretty clearly weren’t big on Walden, so they added a talented starting pitcher effectively for free. The Braves pretty clearly weren’t big on Hanson, so they added a talented relief pitcher effectively for free, freeing up payroll space to go after another outfielder. The Angels had their reasons for being down on Walden and the Braves had their reasons for being down on Hanson, and the Braves’ reasons strike me as being more compelling. Hanson’s been throwing slower, he’s been getting worse, and I don’t know why we should believe those trends are going to stop. Hanson’s top-prospect days are well behind him.
It’s not a bad trade for the Angels, who just needed a starter. It’s not a bad trade for the Braves, who had no use for Hanson. Middle relievers can be only so valuable. But these days, the same could be said of Tommy Hanson, and after adding one starter, you better believe the Angels are still going to be looking for another, better one.Comment
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Sup.Comment
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Walden had a very productive season in Atlanta, broke down a bit down the stretch and the layoff resulted in a less than reliable form for the playoffs, but he was a major piece of our high leverage bullpen last season.
10 K/9, slashes his BB rate from 4.0 as an Angel to 2.7. Hope he can help bolster our back-end again this season.
As for Tommy, he failed to earn a rotation spot on a team which trotted out something called a Tanner Scheppers on Opening Day and yielded 14 runs to the Phillies. I think he might be done.
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