The A's made a trade for Jose Guillen yesterday. It's a weird trade for the A's, because it seems like they usually pursue players who are actually good, as opposed to players who are ok and having great seasons.

Guillen is actually not having as great a season as his 1.000+ OPS might indicate. That OPS is very slugging-heavy, as he's only carrying about a .340 OBP. I thought his park would be helping him more than it is, but it's, according to Baseball Prospectus, a very neutral park, only increasing scoring by 0.5%.

That said, Guillen immediately becomes the A's best power threat and his .319 EqA (good for 9th in the NL) makes him far and away the most valuable A's batter. I'll just hope he doesn't go immediately in the tank. PECOTA had him pegged for about a .250 EqA this year, with a 90th percentile mark of .288. In other words, it was a little off on him. Then again, the whole point is that he's never shown he can hit like this before, so this is probably a huge fluke. What I can only hope is that it's a season-long, age-27 fluke, not a Cincinnati-only fluke.

Plus he's a free agent at year's end, so the A's will almost certainly let him walk and pick up a few good draft picks when the Dodgers or Orioles overpay for him. Either that or they could try to sign him and see if they can trade Jermaine Dye to a team like that. Tweet

blog comments powered by Disqus