Trade Winds

January 10, 2009

By AllStarsPlus

So the rumor is the Nats pursuit of Dunn in Free Agency won’t bring him to Washington so now the Warm Stove is stacked with the Nats out there looking for a lefthanded power hitter via a trade.

In the latest unconfirmed rumor, the Nats have gone back to the A’s to talk about Jack Cust for Nick Johnson and the Nats are interested again in Nick Swisher.

So with the Yanks acquisition of Mark Teixeira and the A’s acquisition of Holliday and Giambi this frees up both teams to make some moves. Swisher was rumored to be trade bait by the White Sox in October and the Nationals were interested then but Swisher was traded to the Yankees in November for Wilson Betemit and others.

Swisher is a 20+ Home Run guy but he had a low batting average (.219) and a low OBP in 2008 which ranked him as the worst batting average among players with at least 502 plate appearances, the number needed to qualify for the batting title. His SABRmetrics aren’t great either over his career. Now then if you are an American League team looking for power, Swisher can DH for you.

Here’s the one stat that is amazing to me. In 2008 in Interleague Swisher was a beast against the National League opponents. His batting average was .286 with a .414 OBP but his power was down in Interleague. The other stat for 2008 is Swisher was much better as a LH batter as Swisher is a switch-hitter.

Cust is a LH power hitter with 33 HRs in 2008 and a .375 OBP, but Cust has mainly been an outfielder and would need to be converted into a 1st baseman.

Personally, if these are the 2 players the Nats are trying to go after in a trade they don’t match up to Adam Dunn’s stats. The Nats should wait for any trades to see what Jeff Moorad will do with the Padres if he acquires the team as another run at Adrian Gonzalez could work out with the new ownership.

Posted in MLB, Washington Nationals