Friar Forecast

The Padres traded 1b Tony Clark to Arizona for Evan Scribner, a right handed relief pitcher.

Check the link above for a good report on Scribner (it’s to Paul DePodesta’s blog). In the minors so far he has posted this line: 91.3 inn, 3 hr, 24 bb, 123 k, 2.27 era.

I’ve commented before that minor league numbers, without any adjustments (especially only two seasons worth for a relief pitcher), are not particularly useful. Well, I haven’t changed my opinion on that, so I’ll leave any true evaluation of Scribner to those with more ambition or data than myself. That said, here are a few random “observations:”

• Um, yeah, those are great numbers. And, more importantly, those are great peripherals. 
• According to Baseball Prospectus 2008, the park factors in South Bend over the last three years have been 970, 991, 1013. For Missoula, where he pitched 37 innings in 07, they are 1000, 1010, 1011. So, relatively neutral parks (although, I would certainly argue that more detailed, component park factors would be better for this type of ‘analysis’).
• You need a scout.com subscription to read it, but futurebacks.com ranked Scribner as the 45th best prospect in the Arizona system (as of January ‘08).

At this point, I’d guess Tony Clark is an average hitter. Via Baseball Reference, his batting runs over the last four years are ~: +27 (2004), -9, -1, 0. Of course, he takes a pretty big hit for being a first basemen. I’m not quite sure about his fielding (the fans didn’t love it/didn’t hate it — Clark’s at 47, position-neutral).

Let’s just say that, hypothetically, Clark is worth .5 wins to both the Padres and the Dbacks the rest of the way. As we’ve discussed before, adding .5 wins to a 60-65 win team isn’t worth much. According to Nate Silver, an additional regular season win is worth about 750k in marginal revenues, so maybe the Padres are giving away ~300-500k. On the other hand, a half of a win is much more important for Arizona. Let’s say it increases their playoff chances by 5%. So they add 375k for half a regular season win, plus $1.5 million for the increased playoff chances (30 m * .05).

I think that’s why it may appear that the Dbacks, in trading away a pretty decent prospect, overpaid for an aging first basemen, who will probably have little value to them in the long term. In reality, because of what I tried to quickly outline above, they probably didn’t … but, really, I could easily be way off the mark : )

More commentary and analysis
The Sacrifice Bunt
AZ Snakepit
Friar John (with a couple of other links and a fun fact — “An oddity of Clark’s four-month Padres career: He played a total of 22 innings on defense — all in one game! Yes, Clark played the whole 22-inning game against Colorado on April 17, his only appearance at first base this year.”
Baseball Think Factory
More links as I find ‘em