AJC columnist Mark Bradley writes that the Braves should pass on trading for A’s outfielder Matt Holliday, which is a fine sentiment, but his logic is a little flawed.

Bradley says:

And there’s no assurance Holliday would swing the 2009 division race any more than Teixeira did in 2007. (Albert Pujols would, but he’s not apt to be available.) There’s no great difference-maker to be had. This is baseball, where the difference-makers are starting pitchers, and the Braves have enough of those.

It’s true the Braves already have plenty of starting pitching. But they’ve got room for improvement on defense (-19 team UZR) and on offense (last in runs scored in the NL East). Maybe Matt Holliday isn’t the answer, but the Braves have plenty of questions outside of their rotation.

Here’s a thought: trade for Scott Rolen and move Chipper Jones and his -9.4 UZR to first base. Here’s what Fangraphs had to say about Rolen in a post on Tuesday:

Rolen is experiencing an inflated BABIP, raising his wOBA to .369 on the season. ZiPS suggests that’ll come back to Earth, but that he’s still an above average hitter moving forward. Gone are the days where Rolen would accumulate 15-20 runs on defense, but he’s still very much above average. So far his UZR/150 is 5.2, last year it was 8.5, and the year before 17.9.

Acquiring Rolen likely wouldn’t cost nearly as much as landing Holliday, and Rolen’s addition would drastically improve Atlanta’s infield defense. Moreover, replacing Kotchman with Rolen would improve Atlanta’s offense as well.

It’s just a thought. If the Braves don’t want Rolen, they they might trade for a new first baseman (Carlos Delgado, Aubrey Huff and Nick Johnson could all be available). The larger point is that pitchers are not the only impact players and the Braves need plenty of help.

Monday is Hot Baseball Wife Day here at UmpBump, and this week’s honoree is Leslee Holliday, wife of Oakland A’s outfielder Matt Holliday.

The couple met in 1998, when Matt had just signed his first pro contract out of high school and was still living with his family in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and Leslee was a freshman at the University of Oklahoma. The couple has two children, sons Ethan and Jackson.

More pictures after the jump…

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Matt Holliday has hit two home runs the last three days. So maybe he’s about to go on a tear and what follows is a gross overreaction on my part. Wouldn’t be the first time.

But the Rockies offered Holliday a four-year, $80 million contract at the conclusion of the 2008 season, and I want to say, on the record: Matt, dude, you shoulda taken the money.

Over the last three seasons Holliday averaged 32 HR, 113 RBI, a .330 batting avg., and an OBP around .400. Oh, and last year he swiped 28 bags and only got caught twice. Fangraphs says Holliday was worth $28MM in 2008, $32MM in 2007, and $16MM in 2006. As Stuart Scott might say, that’s big pimpin.

In the first month of 2009, Holliday is hitting .253 with 2 home run and no stolen bases. He’s got a putrid .303 OBP. As Ernest might say: Ewwwwwwwwww.

The other day Dan Szymborski released an updated ZIPS projection that accounts for April data. Zips estimates Holliday will finish 2009 with the following stats: 21 HR, .285 AVG, .361 OBP, 87 RBI and 12 stolen bases. Obviously, these revised projections represent a pretty serious drop from his career averages.

What’s that worth?

Hard to say, exactly. But last season Torii Hunter (21 HR, .278 AVG, .344 OBP, 78 RBI and 19 stolen bases) put together a line similar to what Holliday is projected to hit in 2009 and Fangraphs says it was worth $16MM. (It’s true Hunter and Holliday are different players, especially defensively, but Hunter’s combination of what is now below average defense at a more difficult position is actually valued similarly to Holliday’s above-average defense in left field.)

Is it likely a team is going to pay Holliday $20MM a year if he has a 2009 worth $16-$18MM? No.

Is it likely a team will give Holliday an eight-year contract when he’s already passed his peak and guys like Pat Burrell and Adam Dunn weren’t able to get more than two years this winter? No.

If Holliday thinks he’s going to get an eight-year deal in the neighborhood of $160MM…well, a word of advice: start hacking, Matt.

The easy thing to say when considering “what the Rockies need” is to make a snarky faith joke. But readers, I won’t do that to you or our site. Because we all know that you’ve come to expect much more high-browed, intellectually stimulating commentary from us UmpBump writers. And by jove, that’s what you’re going to get.

Poop.

Anyhow, when writing Colorado’s “Hot Offseason Action” post back in February, I wondered to myself if I was being too rough on these guys. Turns out, they’ve been worse that I thought they’d be. The Rockies have a mediocre offense to go along with sub-par pitching. Put those together and the results are rarely pretty.

Consequently, the Rockies are currently 6 games out in the NL West (which I’m thinking is pretty difficult to do) and 13 games under .500. And something tells me that their incredible run to close out the 2007 regular season is not going to repeat itself this year. Why? Because you can only beat “improbable” so many times.

So unless the Diamondbacks and the Dodgers tank big time between now and the trade deadline, the Rockies should be dealing some pieces. And no, I am not going to advocate dealing Matt Holliday. Not this year, anyway. Holliday is still under contract in 2009, albeit at a higher price. If the Rockies have no shot in hell of winning the division next year, then by all means, please do trade him away. But that’s not the case here. With some maneuvering, they could still compete in 2009. And here’s my suggestion.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, TRADE GARRETT ATKINS AND PLAY IAN STEWART AT THIRD ALREADY.

This of course is not a novel idea. It’s been said and argued ad nauseum for over a year. It just hasn’t happened yet. And just because it’s been said but ignored, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. At this juncture, there are a couple of teams vying for the playoffs (Milwaukee and Minnesota) who could use offensive help at third. It’s clear that Stewart has earned a shot to be a big league regular. It just makes perfect sense. As a result of the injury to Todd Helton, Stewart was recalled from AAA this past week with Atkins moving to first for the time being, which is all well and good. But what happens when Helton returns? Move Ian Stewart to second base permanently? This seems like an odd thing to do to a young player. And so far this year, Jeff Baker is doing a better job of hitting righties so he might be their solution at second.

The Rockies do, however, need another starting pitcher if they are to compete in 2009. Ubaldo Jimenez and Aaron Cook are solid, and Jeff Francis has been better than his ERA suggests. But Jorge de la Rosa, Greg Reynolds, and Mark Redman have been disasters. Sure, it’s possible that Franklin Morales becomes a solution, but it’s not like the guy’s dominating AAA. How about something like Atkins for Boof Bonser and a B-Prospect? Or Atkins for Carlos Villanueva and a B? Teams like the Rockies really need to maximize the value of each dollar they spend. Continually blocking your best prospect just doesn’t make much sense at this point.

- What They Need Index -

First of all, dear UmpBump readers, an apology is in order. We had a very heated exchange today with our hosting provider due to their decision to pull down the site.

As a result, we had to strip most of our sidebar links and other things (ie, like having two posts on the home page). Like my mom says, you gotta look at the positives, so we’ll be redesigning the site to increase efficiency and avoid database resource “over-use” (btw, any WordPress theme designers out there that want to contribute, let us know).

And now, as an apology for the downtime I present to you all this special video I came across today, featuring the beautiful HBW alumna Juliana Ramirez and a new HBW inductee, Leslie Holliday, wife of All-Star Slugger Matt Holliday, appearing in a beauty-at-the-ballpark special on the Today Show.

Très, très belles.

Yogi Berra lip balm, though? Talk about odd…

Comparisons may be odious. But dang it, they make great bar conversations. And few topics fuel debate more than comparing the inherent value/abilities of baseball players.

Since the American League Most Valuable Player in 2007 is ABSOLUTELY NOT UP FOR DEBATE (and if you somehow disagree with this absolute, you deserve a karate chop to the throat), we will move on to the National League MVP. Paul argues in favor of David Wright, while Coley touts the virtues of Matt Holliday.

PAUL SAYS:

Although the regular season has come and gone, it still seems that the general answer to the question “Who’s the NL MVP?” can vary daily. Simply put, there are far too many candidates. There’s Chase Utley, Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins in Philadelphia. Chipper Jones had a tragically overlooked season for the Braves. There’s Prince Fielder for Milwaukee, Matt Holliday in Colorado, Hanley Ramirez and Miguel Cabrera for the Fish, David Wright, Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes in New York, and no MVP conversation is complete without mentioning Albert Pujols.

With so many candidates, I’m not going to bother going through each player’s credentials here. But I will explain why I feel that David Wright should be (but won’t be because putting numbers into context is too hard for BBWAA members to understand) your 2007 NL MVP.

The detractors will point to the fact (and perhaps fairly) that David Wright does not lead the league in anything that’s easy to compute. “Homeruns are the best a hitter can do, right? Then Wright can’t be the best because he only hit 30. And scoring runs are good too. He only brought home 103 of those!” But context, people, context!

Let’s begin with Park Factor. David Wright plays in the National League East – home of the pitcher’s park. Four of the five stadiums are disadvantageous to hitters. And looking at two ways to measure these things (at Baseball-Reference.com and ESPN), it appears that Shea may be the toughest of them all. This puts Wright at a severe disadvantage in terms of power numbers when compared to those who play in hitter’s parks such as Wrigley, Coors, Minute Maid, Great American, Chase, and Citizens Bank. Luckily for us, people far smarter than I have created ways to help equalize these numbers.

By now, I think most baseball fans have at least heard of things like Win Shares or VORP, either as respectable tools for evaluation or as the thing that’s destroying the very fiber of everything we’ve ever held dear. But as a quick recap, Win Shares was devised to calculate how much each individual player contributed (both offensively and defensively) to their team’s wins. Wright led the NL in Win Shares this year with 34, with Pujols behind him with 32. Basically, this means that Wright’s contributions to the Mets’ total number of wins outweighs that of any other player in the National League.

For VORP, Wright placed second behind Hanley Ramirez (who had an amazing offensive season) which is even more impressive once you consider that VORP does not calculate defensive value – an area that strongly divides Ramirez (arguably the worst defensive shortstop in MLB in 2007) and Wright (one of the best defensive 3rd baseman in the NL).

Then there’s Runs Created, another one of these wacky numbers made popular by Bill James, where we see literally how many runs scored were a direct result of each player’s offensive contributions. Wright leads the NL here too, barely over Miguel Cabrera (136 to 135), but again, when you take defense into account, Wright truly was the better player in 2007.

Lastly, Runs Above Average. This is a metric that figures out how many runs a player either created offensively or prevented defensively when compared to their positional peers. In 2007, David Wright was responsible for 73 Runs Above Average, which by far and away was tops in the NL (Pujols comes in second again with 60 RAA).

In 2007, David Wright did everything anyone could ask of him as an individual player. He hit for a very high average (.325), was one of the best at not making outs (.416 OBP), had 30 HRs and 34SBs (with an excellent stolen base success rate of 87%), hit with runners in scoring position (.310 AVG, .975 OPS), and played a very good 3rd base (he led all MLB 3rd baseman in the number of plays made outside of his zone. By a lot.). By pretty much all sabermetric measurements, David Wright was the best player in the 2007 National League.

COLEY SAYS:

Paul, I notice you’ve listed a lot of really good reasons why David Wright should be the NL MVP.

But I also notice you’ve omitted all the reasons why he shouldn’t. Like, for example, the fact that he played for the New York Mets.

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