Ray Durham -- Latest: Trade completed? Ford and Hammond to the Giants for sure, no Taschner

[PeaveyFury]

McCalvy at brewers.com confirms a deal is in the works:

 

http://milwaukee.brewers.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20080720&content_id=3160400&vkey=news_mil&fext=.jsp&c_id=mil

[LouisEly]

Rickie will play against lefties, where he is at .265 - .380 for the season. Against righties, he is hitting .199 with a .280 OBP. Meanwhile, Durham against righties this year is hitting .318 with an OBP of .398.

 

So we are replacing a .199/.280 lead off hitter against righties with a .318/.398 guy. Why are you complaining?

 

Thank you!

 

If the projection systems did what you suggest they did, they would be guilty of the gambler's fallacy. They do not. Durham's overperformance so far raises his Marcel for the rest of the year, Weeks's underperformance lowers his Marcel for the rest of the year. But the original gap in their projection was such that not even a gap as wide as has existed so far this season is enough to compensate for it.

 

Brawndo, I like your posts and you are one of my favorite posters, however there is an old saying, "If 'ifs' and 'buts' were candies and nuts, it would be Christmas the whole year 'round." (I prefer, "If 'buts' and 'ands' were pots and pans we'd all be gourmet chefs.") The reality is that Rickie has been given ample opportunity to revert back to "norm" and he is not doing it. The sample size for Weeks is getting larger and larger with little if any improvement. I am not willing to bank the season on Rickie and 'ifs' and 'buts'. Melvin is proactively going out and getting a contingency plan in case Rickie and those 'ifs' and 'buts' turn out to be Santa Claus. Yeah I want to believe in Rickie, and I'd like to believe in Santa Claus, but Virginia, there is no Santa Claus, and I'll take the bird in hand that is Durham in case Weeks continues to be a partridge in a pear tree.

 

There is another saying, "it is what it is". Rickie is what he is, and Ray is what he is. And the fact that it cost Darren Ford, who I will bet anyone $20 will never see more than a cup of coffee in the majors, and Hammond who is interchangeable with Narron, Welch, Miller, and Wright, is nothing. They got a contingency plan for basically nothing. And I am A-OK with that.

[kramnoj]

I don't know of anything I'd call "exhaustive". Sure, guys have fluke bad seasons.

 

Clearly you believe in Marcel when it was created through the exhaustive research of enough player seasons to be a good projection tool. I don't think there are enough seasons like last year for Durham to try to account for how truly flukish there are. Durham was a good player for a decade, was awful for a year, and is good this year. I don't have any reason to think this year's performance should be projected right now with any relevance from last year, just as I think that Mike Lowell's crazy flukish season didn't have anything to do with the rest of his career so far.

 

But Marcel isn't doing what you say it's doing -- it's not projecting him to hit as bad as he hit last season

 

I didn't say this.

 

Not to mention that once you factor in defense, Weeks and Durham have been worth about the same number of runs this year so far anyway.

 

You could be precise and say that Durham has been better this year given that metric. I have said that I view this as insurance, and I believe that even more after hearing the broadcast so far. If Durham stinks immediately upon arrival, we bench him, and he wouldn't have been much worse than what we have been getting from Weeks anyway. I don't see anyway that this costs the Brewers anything, and there's a possibility it could be the marginal difference the team needs to get into the playoffs.

[monty57]

And doesn't that make the most sense? That Ray Durham today is somewhere between how bad he was last year and how good he's been so far this year?

 

Possibly, but not necessarily. Here's Durham's career:

 

SEASON TEAM G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS AVG OBP SLG OPS

1995 CWS 125 471 68 121 27 6 7 51 31 83 18 5 .257 .309 .384 .693

1996 CWS 156 557 79 153 33 5 10 65 58 95 30 4 .275 .350 .406 .756

1997 CWS 155 634 106 172 27 5 11 53 61 96 33 16 .271 .337 .382 .719

1998 CWS 158 635 126 181 35 8 19 67 73 105 36 9 .285 .363 .455 .818

1999 CWS 153 612 109 181 30 8 13 60 73 105 34 11 .296 .373 .435 .808

2000 CWS 151 614 121 172 35 9 17 75 75 105 25 13 .280 .361 .450 .811

2001 CWS 152 611 104 163 42 10 20 65 64 110 23 10 .267 .337 .466 .803

2002 CWS 96 345 71 103 20 2 9 48 49 59 20 5 .299 .390 .446 .836

2002 Oak 54 219 43 60 14 4 6 22 24 34 6 2 .274 .350 .457 .807

2003 SF 110 410 61 117 30 5 8 33 50 82 7 7 .285 .366 .441 .807

2004 SF 120 471 95 133 28 8 17 65 57 60 10 4 .282 .364 .484 .848

2005 SF 142 497 67 144 33 0 12 62 48 59 6 3 .290 .356 .429 .785

2006 SF 137 498 79 146 30 7 26 93 51 61 7 2 .293 .360 .538 .898

2007 SF 138 464 56 101 21 2 11 71 53 75 10 2 .218 .295 .343 .638

2008 SF 87 263 43 77 23 0 3 32 38 49 6 2 .293 .385 .414 .799

 

As you can see, his OPS throughout his career has hovered slightly over .800. The one anomoly has been last year's .638. I understand that players lose it with age, but the real outlier could be the .638 season. I don't know what happened that year. It could've been a lot of things. However, I don't see this year's .799 as unsustainable do to Durham's history. In fact, his HR rate is almost at an unsustainable low compared to what he's done over the past few seasons, so it's entirely possible that his numbers could go up from here.

 

However the projections were figured, it just seems their really not giving much of a chance for Durham to be good at all. The only reasons I can think of are age and one year (last year). On the other hand, Weeks' projections must have been high based on his age and his season last year, which would have been a normal year for Durham in his career. Those are significant factors, but it is entirely in the realm of possibility that Durham can outplay Weeks for the next two months.

[DHonks]

per Haudricourt's blog, the trade has happened

[WisconsinSportsRule]

Brewers live just confirmed this a little while ago.

[splitterpfj]

Yep, please use the thread in the major league forum.