Trade: Twins send Francisco Liriano to the White Sox

[Cowtipper]

The White Sox tried hard to land Zack Greinke before he went to the Angels, so they instead turned to a familiar foe to shore up the rotation. The team announced that they have acquired Francisco Liriano from the Twins for infielder Eduardo Escobar and left-hander Pedro Hernandez.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2012/0...o-liriano.html

[chicagowhitesox1173]

I made a thread on this yesterday and nobody responded. Goodluck with your thread.

I'm somewhat weary on Liriano but he has pitched better recently and like I said in my post maybe Don Cooper can help him like he did with Matt Thornton, Gavin Floyd, Bobby Jenks and Jose Contreas. Plus the Whitesox gave up practically nothing and another lefty will help out giving Sale some rest.

[plask_stirlac]

The White Sox tried hard to land Zack Greinke before he went to the Angels, so they instead turned to a familiar foe to shore up the rotation. The team announced that they have acquired Francisco Liriano from the Twins for infielder Eduardo Escobar and left-hander Pedro Hernandez.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2012/0...o-liriano.html

I'm a Twins fan, but it's been a long time since I've recognized a name coming back in a trade, nor do we have guys from major trades on our roster. Even from the Santana deal.

We should have traded Garza and Santana together for some good package involving Hughes, Lester, Ellsbury, Kennedy... at least one major-league player! Not the Mets' scraps.

[chicagowhitesox1173]

That was the first trade between the Whitesox and Twins since 1986.

[wu-tang clan]

Definitely has a lot of upside for the Sox, but Liriano really needs Butera (probably the greatest fundamental catcher I've ever seen, and I really do mean that) out there to pitch well; Cooper is a very good coach, but it'll take a lot to prevent him from relapsing into throwing 20 pitches/inning, walking an infuriating amount, and allowing a grip of homers, especially considering U.S. Cellular's his new home for at least a half-season as opposed to Target Field. He's not a "smart pitcher" a la Maddux. Liriano's very prone to nervousness allowing him to completely lose a game for a ballclub, and I can't see a change in scenery quelling that trait at all, although, who honestly knows. Considering how well Escobar's defense reportedly is and the fact that the other guy seems like an archetypal Tom Kelly pitcher that fits very well in the Twins' system, I think it's a very fair trade, especially once you consider Liriano doesn't have a contract next season. 60% chance the Twins get the better deal in the long run, although their upside is much, much lower.

Alas, the fruits-from-the-AJ Pierzynski trade era is now officially over. Crazy to think how things have projected since 2006.

[Rich the Giants fan]

Definitely has a lot of upside for the Sox, but Liriano really needs Butera (probably the greatest fundamental catcher I've ever seen, and I really do mean that) out there to pitch well; Cooper is a very good coach, but it'll take a lot to prevent him from relapsing into throwing 20 pitches/inning, walking an infuriating amount, and allowing a grip of homers, especially considering U.S. Cellular's his new home for at least a half-season as opposed to Target Field. He's not a "smart pitcher" a la Maddux. Liriano's very prone to nervousness allowing him to completely lose a game for a ballclub, and I can't see a change in scenery quelling that trait at all, although, who honestly knows. Considering how well Escobar's defense reportedly is and the fact that the other guy seems like an archetypal Tom Kelly pitcher that fits very well in the Twins' system, I think it's a very fair trade, especially once you consider Liriano doesn't have a contract next season. 60% chance the Twins get the better deal in the long run, although their upside is much, much lower.

Alas, the fruits-from-the-AJ Pierzynski trade era is now officially over. Crazy to think how things have projected since 2006.

To the first, Butera's CERA with Liriano pitching is 4.26 (31 games). With Mauer that mark is 4.31 (85 games). Mike Redmond (18 games), 3.86.

To the second, while the trade obviously did not turn out well for San Francisco, time has shown it's not as bad as first thought. Certainly Nathan's performance as a Twin, and Pierzynski's as a Giant made this one a win for Minnesota, but Boof Bonser was a downright bust and Liriano only had about a season and a half to be envious of.

[chicagowhitesox1173]

Only thing about that is the Giants seem to keep their pitchers heads straight or at least do the best they can. I have to wonder what coulda been had he stayed in SF

[wu-tang clan]

To the first, Butera's CERA with Liriano pitching is 4.26 (31 games). With Mauer that mark is 4.31 (85 games). Mike Redmond (18 games), 3.86.

To the second, while the trade obviously did not turn out well for San Francisco, time has shown it's not as bad as first thought. Certainly Nathan's performance as a Twin, and Pierzynski's as a Giant made this one a win for Minnesota, but Boof Bonser was a downright bust and Liriano only had about a season and a half to be envious of.

First off, you can assuredly throw out the frivolous-in-relation-to-the-topic (considering it's concerning the present day Francisco Liriano) Redmond stat, as Frankie was in a very, very different part of his career when Red Dog (bless his heart) was catching. You can actually pretty much throw out all three stats, as the man once known as "The Franchise" has had a very shaky, binary, bipolar career ever since he underwent TJ surgery, and stats from his entire career for this purpose are very misleading; there have been a few sporadic month-long periods of serenity, but this summer has been far and away the longest of those, almost to the point of coming to the conclusion that he's a changed man, and that's in large part to the second-generation backup catcher's in-game handling of him. It's a very un-metricized area, so I can't offer any stats other than pitching stats from May 30-July 18 to further my case, as I don't expect you to re-watch every one of his starts this summer to get a better feel of Butera's impact on his game:

IP—63.1
ERA—2.84
H—38
BB—28
WHIP—1.04
SO—77
HR—3

In addition, Liriano, a guy notorious for five-inning games and never quite reaching 100 pitches in starts, had six starts in that period go over 100, including five starts in a row at one point (June 25-July 18). He usually NEVER goes over six innings per start (the only complete game he's had in his career, major and minor, was his six BB no-hitter, which Drew Butera coincidentally caught), but managed to go over six twice in that time-frame, including going eight in a 15 K loss to Oakland due to bad beats. I in general dislike using stat lines, as they are misleading at some point in almost every case, but the numbers unquestionably look pretty good in that time-frame with Butera catching.

Also, this guy agrees with me, and describes very nicely what I'm getting at:

http://twinsdaily.com/showthread.php...efense-of-Drew

Credit definitely goes to Rick Anderson, and obviously most of all Liriano himself, for his resurgence this summer, but Butera's had a huge role in it.

Secondly, the AJ trade is merely heavily lopsided now looking back, and would have been way worse if not for some pretty bad beats for the Twins, who have had some pretty horrific beats over the past five or so years; things could have gone very differently if one extrapolates favorably upon June-July 2006. We landed the second-best reliever of the decade, a rookie pitcher whose results over a months-long period in 2006 were better than the best pitcher in the game, and a decent middle-of-the-order pitcher. Of course, bad things do happen; we were robbed of basically two whole years of Nathan due to TJ surgery (leaving him with only basically six years as a Twin), and Liriano had to undergo season-ending TJ surgery in 2006 that pretty much undermined his career and hurt the Twins in the ALDS that year. Boof wasn't really a bad beat, he was just overperforming in 2006, so I won't count him, but yeah. You're downplaying it a tad by just calling it a 'win' for Minnesota and not using some preceding hyperbolic adjective. Don't take it personally though, it's still a better deal than what Minnesota got for Johan Santana.

[Rich the Giants fan]

Don't forget that Sabean had two reasons for being willing to deal Liriano. One, he was concerned about his physical durability, and he was shown to be correct on that count. Secondly, he was concerned about his mental make-up. The way I'm reading your post, sounds like he was right about that, too.

[wu-tang clan]

Don't forget that Sabean had two reasons for being willing to deal Liriano. One, he was concerned about his physical durability, and he was shown to be correct on that count. Secondly, he was concerned about his mental make-up. The way I'm reading your post, sounds like he was right about that, too.

One-hundred percent spot-on by Sabean; in addition to what I've said about his nervousness with guys on base (since he allows a lot of lead-off walks, a common occurrence indeed), Liriano's mechanics would have resulted in an injury somewhere down the road even if the one that manifested in 2006 somehow hadn't.