Analyzing the Trades

Given the rash of trades the Pirates have made, it is time to do some analysis on trades that the team has made over the last 5 years and judge them.

The methodology used for this analysis will be to look at the Win Shares of the players involved based on information at: http://www.hardballtimes.com/ Only time with the Pirates will be considered.

First up, is the momentous trade of 2003: Brian Giles to the Padres for Jason Bay, Corey Stewart, and Oliver Perez.

Since the database starts at 2004, we will discount 2003 from this analysis, which should be ok since it was only 1 month.

Giles: 122 Win Shares (2004: 25, 2005: 35, 2006: 23, 2007: 17, 2008:22)

Bay: 107 Win Shares (2004: 18, 2005:34, 2006: 24, 2007:13, 2008: 18)

Perez: 17 Win Shares (2004: 17, 2005: 1, 2006: -1)

Of course, the Pirates then dealt Perez and Roberto Hernandez to the Mets for Xavier Nady in 2006.

Nady: 31 Win Shares (2006: 5, 2007: 11, 2008: 15)

while Perez and Hernandex did:

Perez: 19 Win Shares (2006: 0, 2007: 11, 2008: 8)

Hernandez: 1 Win Share (2006: 1, 2007:0)

So, for the 122 WS that the Pirates gave up for Giles, they received 124 for Bay+Perez. And they turned Perez into an additional 31 with Nady.

Verdict: Good trade by the Bucs (no surprise). Giles played well in San Diego, but Bay has almost been his equivalent at a lower price, plus getting Perez was a boon. Perez never lived up to his first season with Pittsburgh, but flipping him for Nady was huge.

Of course, if we could go back and look at the Giles for Ricardo Rincon trade, that was the move that let this whole chain get started.