No sooner had I put the finishing touches on yesterday’s piece than I got a phone call from my pal Nick. He sounded so somber as he asked, “Did you hear the news?” that I was bracing myself to learn of some tragic death. In that context, the Javier Vazquez/Nick Johnson deal was a relief from such gravitas. It wasn’t much of a shock, either; the Yanks’ determination to trade their young first baseman/DH had become a foregone conclusion, and the local newspapers had been buzzing about the imminence of the deal.

As I wrote yesterday, I have mixed emotions about the trade, which sent Johnson, outfielder Juan Rivera, and reliever Randy Choate to the Expos for Vazquez, a 27-year-old righty who’s a potential ace. I hate to see the Yanks trade Johnson, who posted a .422 OBP in 2003 and is already a heck of of a hitter. He was one of the few young, cheap players left in an aging, expensive lineup, and the best homegrown prospect they had to show for themselves since the bumper crop of ’95-’96 that helped fuel their championship run (Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte, Mariano Rivera, Ramiro Mendoza). With Jason Giambi’s knee deteriorating, Johnson provided ample insurance at first base, not to mention the hope that he could develop into a Giambi-esque hitter.

But if they were going to trade him, sending Johnson far afield is a better thing than trading him to an AL rival (not that they considered that), and Lord knows, the Expos could use a break. Acquiring Johnson and freeing themselves from the potential of Vazquez’s contract keeps a glimmer of hope open that the ‘Spos can re-sign Vladimir Guerrero within their absurd MLB-imposed budgetary constraints. And while I think Johnson’s got a ton of potential, he’s not without his drawbacks. At 25, he’d shown an alarming fragility and a tendency to sustain hand and wrist injuries. A fractured hand cost him 61 games in 2003, he missed three weeks with a bruised wrist in 2002, and he spent all of 2000 on the DL with a mysterious wrist injury that was never fully explained. He’s also a bad-body type, seemingly destined to carry his baby fat until it becomes a bit less charming. His defense is average but unspectacular.

My friend Nick, who has a vested interest in watching Johnson develop into the best ballplayer bearing their shared first name, likes to speculate that Nick the Stick could develop power as Giambi has over the course of his career. For fun I did a quick comparison of the two by age (as of July 1 for each year). For purposes here, plate appearances (PA) is just at bats plus bases on balls because peripheral stats aren’t uniformly available via the web (here’s Giambi and here’s Johnson):

Johnson                               Giambi

Age Level  PA  2B   HR   OBP   SLG    Age  Level  PA   2B   HR   OBP   SLG

19    A   371  14   17  .466  .538    19   coll.  ??   ??   ??   ???   ???

20   AA   543  33   14  .525  .548    20   coll.  ??   ??   ??   ???   ???

21  DNP       -- injured --           21    A-    50    3    3  .440  .610

22  AAA   440  20   18  .407  .462    22    A    386   16   12  .430  .470

    MLB    74   2    2  .308  .313    

23  MLB   426  15   15  .347  .402    23    AA   220    9    6  .319  .363    

                                           AAA   201   20    4  .388  .500

24  MLB   394  19   14  .422  .472    24   AAA   224   26    3  .441  .537

                                           MLB   204    7    6  .364  .398   

25  MLB   ???                         25   MLB   587   40   20  .355  .481

26  MLB   ???                         26   MLB   574   41   20  .362  .495 

What does that show? Not a hell of a lot. Johnson is ahead of Giambi’s pace at developing into a major-leaguer because he’s been playing in the minors since age 17 (which I didn’t include), while Giambi wasn’t drafted until after two years of college at Long Beach State and a stint on the ’92 US Olympic team. But Giambi was hitting a lot more doubles and had higher raw slugging percentages despite the difference in levels, and he’s showed a lot more durability since entering the majors. Until Johnson can put up a full season that’s comparable to Giambi’s ’96-’97 seasons (ages 25 and 26 above), I’m not sure I’m buying the comp, and I do think the physical differences between the two are considerable.

Beyond Johnson, I don’t think Juan Rivera will amount to much that can’t be easily replaced. He showed a bit more promise in the 185 major league plate appearances he got in 2003 (304 OBP/.468 SLG) than in the 91 he got in 2002 (.311/.361), but he lacks plate discipline and he’ll be 26 in April (five months older than Johnson). On the trade market, he had shown that he wasn’t valuable enough to command anything in return that could help the Yanks at the major league level. Choate should have been a serviceable lefty out of the Yankee pen , but Joe Torre never took to him and the Yankee org had yo-yoed him between AAA and the majors so often over the past four seasons it had to drive the poor guy nuts.

And say this for the Yankees (again): they’re getting the best pitcher on the market, a guy who’s better than any of the free agents available, and who’s still pretty young at 27. He’s got the things you like to see in a pitcher: a high K rate (9.4 per 9 IP) and excellent control (4.2 K/W ratio). He’s not ground-ball dependent (a plus with the shaky Yankee D), not gopher-happy. Except for the lack of postseason/pennant race experience, you couldn’t engineer a better fit for the Yanks right now.

The concern is his usage. He was second only to Kerry Wood in Pitcher Abuse Points this season. I spoke to Will Carroll about him last night and he says that Vazquez is a guy who doesn’t have a great build for a pitcher and that he tends to develop minor injuries (such as a calf strain or a blister) or fatigue and requires occasional extra rest, but that the good news is that he responds well. Will writes today that Vazquez is a “bright yellow light,” which is a bit alarming, but adds that the Yanks know how to deal with fragile pitchers. Furthermore:

Over the last four seasons, he has been able to pitch over 200 innings with effectiveness. Given he started that streak at age 22, one could look at Vazquez’s history as a ticking time bomb or as proof that we have a new member of the Abuse Sponge Club (Livan Hernandez, Proprietor). Vazquez is also the poster child for V-Loss. After any long rest, his velocity and movement on his fastball recover quickly, pointing to fatigue, not injury, as the culprit in his occasional lapses.

As Will notes, the Yanks won’t push him as hard as the Expos did. While Vazquez threw 231 innings for the Expos, no Yankee starter threw more than Mussina’s 215 — roughly an inning less for every two starts. The Yanks have more incentive to protect such a valuable commodity — both for the postseason and for a longer-term deal, should they choose to pursue one. And since the deal wasn’t contingent on the two parties agreeng to an extension, the Yanks have a chance to wait and see what develops. The trade will look like a disaster if Vazquez comes up lame in 2004, but it will look even worse if they sign him to a $40 million deal and he develops rotator cuff or elbow trouble a year down the road.

The nut of the deal is this: the Yankees gave up a fragile hitter (Carroll: “it speaks volumes that ‘prospect’ is still often the word used to describe him. The second-most used is ‘injured.'”) of questionable defensive value but great potential for a pitcher who’s just jelling into one of the top hurlers in the game. Given the Yankees rapidly aging core, dearth of young bargaining chips, and potential for taking on a lousy bat in centerfield (Kenny Lofton?) to replace him (with Bernie Williams slotting to DH), that’s a bit troublesome, but it’s a deal whose principle is sound: it’s much easier to find a good-hitting first baseman than it is to find a near-ace pitcher. “Youneverknow” what could happen with regards to injuries to either key player in this deal, but I think it’s a defensible move.

• • •

Yesterday’s DIPS/rotation piece got a great reception; it was a Clutch Hit on Baseball Primer and brought about 1000 people to the site, a week’s worth of traffic in a day, and enough praise to make my head swell a litte.

I want to point out a few things. This is the third batch of data that has been analyzed using DIPS 2.0, and the old war-horse is showing its cracks. There’s data that suggests that groundball pitchers have more control over the outcome of balls in play than flyball pitchers, and things like that which I’ll be covering this in more detail when I do my full-scale rollout later this month. Nevertheless, DIPS remains a handy way to quickly evaluate pitchers and quantify the things they do which show up as repeatable skills. I didn’t invent the system; I’m standing on the shoulders of the giant — Voros McCracken — who did, and have gleaned a lot from the people who’ve taken the time to kick the tires in the various stathead-related forums online. I’m doing my part to keep the stuff in the public eye, but I’ll be just as happy when somebody else comes along with an improved version of this fine tool.

I got some very good feedback on the piece from one of those tire-kickers, MGL (Mitchel Lichtman), who has done some impressive work on Baseball Primer and elsewhere, including the defensive metric Ultimate Zone Rating (which came up a few days ago).

MGL chided me for including Won-Loss records, which — given the broader audience I envisioned for the piece — I used to provide a context of perceived value and something for the less stathead-oriented folks to latch onto before being bombarded with rate stats. Somebody might know Pettitte won 21 games last year, but do they realize his season wasn’t necessarily more productive than Curt Schilling, who won 8? Once we sort those dERA’s,the W/L records end up looking pretty random, and that’s a good thing to show people, I believe.

Another of MGL’s criticisms was the use of only one year of data, a decision I made due to both time constraints (I got hold of the spreadsheet last Friday and wanted to pull something together before the Yankees struck; I won the race by about 15 minutes) and to my lack of facility with larger sets of data. Once you get two seasons of the stuff, you’re either working with databases or doing a ton of sorting by hand, something I don’t have the patience for. Another reason is that in McCracken’s original work, he was comparing two single consecutive seasons, and made no claims which considered multiple years of data together. I’ve simply replicated his methodology because I don’t have any proof beyond one year’s worth of data.

Anyway, MGL’s criticsms were gentle and well-intentioned, so I was quite flattered. Moving along, there are a few more pitchers I wanted to add to the comparison:

• Ted Lilly, who showed signs of blossoming at the end of the season, was traded by Oakland to Toronto a couple of weeks ago.

• Eric Milton, who missed most of 2003 with a knee injury, was traded by Minnesota to Philadelphia earlier this week.

• A.J. Burnett missed most of 2003 after undergoing Tommy John surgery. His injury caused a lot of finger-pointing and precipitated the firing of Florida Marlins manager Jeff Torborg and the hiring of Jack McKeon, so I guess things worked out pretty well in the end. Burnett is on the same accelerated rehab plan that Yankee prospect Brandon Claussen was on, and there’s been speculation that he would be nontendered by the cash-poor but pitching-rich Marlins. Since their trade of Derek Lee, that situation may be resolved, but there’s a good chance he may be wearing another uniform come springtime given the bad blood between him and the Marlins brass.

• Chuck Finley, a free agent last winter, missed all of 2003 for well-publicized personal reasons and an inability to find a contract to his liking. Normally a 41-year-old pitcher who took a season off wouldn’t rate a mention, but Finley’s strikeout rate of 8.2 per 9 IP was second only to Roger Clemens in last year’s free agent class, and that’s the kind of thing that’s worth keeping in mind.

Here are those four pitchers; Lilly’s stats are for ’03, Finley’s for ’02, and the other two guys are blended, with Milton pitching 17 innings in ’03 and Burnett 23:

Player        W   L   IP    ERA    K/9   WHIP  K/W   HR/9   BABIP  dERA

C Finley*    11  15   191   4.15   8.2   1.37   2.2   0.6   .313   3.43

A Burnett    12  11   227   3.44   8.9   1.23   2.1   0.6   .265   3.64

T Lilly*     12  10   178   4.34   7.4   1.33   2.5   1.2   .288   4.22

E Milton*    14   9   188   4.64   6.1   1.16   4.1   1.2   .279   4.41 

The arbitration-eligible Burnett, who made $2.5 million last year and at best won’t get a pay cut, would be a financial steal if the Marlins don’t keep him, and because he’s doing his rehab with the Yankees’ secret weapon in Tampa (an outcome of the spat with the Fish heads), they might have an inside track. Lilly is a decent pickup but he’s got lousy mechanics and reported attitude problems, and unless the Blue Jays do something about their defense (they were 25th in Defensive Efficiency, a hair ahead of the Yanks), he may suffer on their turf. It’s tough to know how much to discount Finley’s missed season or even if he’s truly interested; San Diego has been mentioned as a possible destination, and Anaheim, where he made his star, is always a possiblity. At $9 million for an essentially league-average, fragile pitcher, Milton is grossly overvalued, but he may benefit from leaving the turf of the Metrodome. But if the Phils think he’s Kevin Milwood’s equal, fuggedaboutit.

One more name has come up several times, that of Cuban defector Maels Rodriguez, a 24-year old who can reportedly hit triple digits on the radar gun. I don’t know any more about Rodriguez than I’ve read in a few articles, and have very little data on him other than stuff like this:

The righthander’s fastball topped 100 mph when he was 20 years old and he struck out 263 – setting the Cuban league record – three seasons ago.

But last season he pitched only 113 innings, and rumblings of an injury problem cropped up when he was left off Cuba’s Pan Am Games team as well as the Olympic qualifying squad.

Like everybody else, I’ve heard conflicting reports as to whether the injury was legit or a ploy to prevent him from defecting. So I’ll say only this: if he demonstrates that he’s healthy in his audition next month (as the above article mentions), and the triple-digit claims are true or nearly so, the Yanks are sure to be players for him — even with the interest of the 29 other teams. But I doubt George will spring for Contreras money unless they’ve lost Pettitte, closed the door on Colon and seen the Red Sox making eyes at hiim. If that happens, all bets are off.