Weapon X

Back to the post about Weapon X that was briefly posted yesterday (all of the stats I quote are before yesterday's games, so sue me). The purpose is to try and quantify what Nady has done since arrival based on something more than "When he hit ball bat go boom." Instead, I figured it might be good to compare him to Ryan Shealy, the guy of nearly the same age (Nady is about 9 months older than Shealy) that we chose X over.

Again using the Baseball Musings Day by Day Database (you can tell this is becoming one of my favorite tools) we get the stats for Shealy and Nady following the trade deadline. Both are hitting quite well since their respective trades. Shealy is hitting .311/.364/.447 (OPS of .811) and Nady is hitting .342/.406/.450 (OPS of .856). Shealy has walked a little more than Nady, but not much more. He's outhomered him (which is probably to be expected given the dimensions at PNC), but Nady made up for the gap in SLG with tons of doubles. Nady has also struck out considerably less (18 times in 120 ABs as compared to 37 times in 132). For fun (and to spite Jeff Manto), using the Baseball Reference formula for Runs Created (which is, admittedly, one of the simpler formulas for the stat) Nady is at 20.51 and Shealy is at 23.07 since the trade. That gives them almost identical RC27's (how many runs a team full of all Xavier Nady's or all Ryan Shealy's would score in a game) of 6.92 and 6.84 respectively (Nady's is higher because of fewer at-bats). So given the market at the time and making the assumption that Littlefield felt he had to choose one, it's hard to say he made a mistake by picking Nady over Shealy at this point.

Of course, the place it's easy to say that Littlefield screwed up is in what he gave up for Nady, especially since it's possible he could've had Shealy for Grabow. Shockingly, I'm not talking about Roberto Hernandez, I'm talking about Oliver Perez. In case you missed it, Ollie tossed a complete game five-hit shutout last night against the Braves with 6 Ks and only 1 walk. He tossed 75 of his 107 pitches for strikes. Mets fans are undeniably, very, incredibly excited. They certainly should be, Ollie hasn't been that dominant in a long time. It seems that Rick Peterson has already done some work taming his crazy motion. If that's the case, this certainly might be a step towards the unemployment line for DL. Still, if Ollie were still a Pirate, I'd be using this very same space to caution you that one start does not a comeback make and that the Braves are not very good, and that the planets align every once in a while and sometimes even Ollie finds the strike zone. I'm not knocking the Mets fans for being excited because they should be and because it's a lot easier to be excited about Perez when you're a million games up in your division and your future success doesn't hinge on him getting his shit together. But if Perez keeps pitching like he did last night, Nady is going to need more than an .856 OPS an a 6.92 RC27.