Jack Hannahan

#22 / Third Base / Oakland Athletics

Height: 6-2

Weight: 205

Bats: L

Throws: R

Born: Mar 04, 1980

Adrian Beltre is out for the year, and the Mariners need to plug a hole. Do they make a desperation trade? No. But they don't do nothing, either. They trade a Double-A pitcher, Justin Souza, to the Athletics for Jack Hannahan, whom, as I'm sure you all remember, was 2008's God of Little Things here at Driveline Mechanics. Seemingly not much to see here, but let's check it out.

I know almost nothing about Justin Souza other than what is in the press releases, so feel free to add comments on him below. He's a 23 year-old who was with Seattle's Double-A club, and wasn't in Baseball America's top-30 list of Seattle prospects. In a quick browse of  John Sickels' site, I couldn't find anything. I assume this is the proverbial "live arm?"

But let's talk Hannahan. He's been Eric Chavez's caddy (ahem) for a while. But what do the numbers say he's worth at the moment?

Batting: Using the ZiPS in-season projections from the FanGraphs player pages again, Hannahan's current wOBA talent is estimated at .310. Converting wOBA to Runs Above/Below average over a full season (700 PAs), with the current league wOBA of .328 and the conversion to runs scale at 1.2: we do ((.310 - .328)/1.2)*700 = 10.5 runs below average.

Fielding:Hannahan shines here. His UZR/150s from 2007-2009 are 9.3, 13.0, and 22.8. A weighted and regressed average gives us +7.5/150 for Hannahan. His preseason TotalZone projection was +5. So it's all good, of course, but keep in mind the sample size is small -- one season of defensive stats is sometimes said to be the equivalent on two months of hitting stats. The sample is based off of 218 games at third base. So let's check the fans scouting report. The one position-neutral ranking for him  (50 is average) is 57 in 2008, which doesn't seem inconsistent. With caveats in mind, let's call him +6 at 3B over a full season.

Value: Let's give him 75% playing time over a ful-season, given that he's never been a regular before and is already 29. -10.5 offense + 6 defense + 2.5 positional adjustment for 3B + 25 AL replacement level = 23 RAR * .75 = about 1.7 WAR.

That seems a bit shocking -- nearly an MLB average (2 WAR) player for seemingly little or nothing. Again, keep in mind the small sample size on his defense (and major-league offense, for that matter). But if you look at his pre-season offensive projections, they were all the same or better than a .310 wOBA. I guess that Oakland feels better with Adam Kennedy out there (and he's been hitting well), and I'm not in a position to say what Billy Beane's plan is. Hannahan had been horrible with the bat so far, and maybe the scouts see something that outweighs the small samlpe size issues. But it's worth noting that Hannahan was about 1.3 WAR in both 2008 in about 500 PAs (with a .289 wOBA!) so it isn't totally out of the blue.

On the other side, his seems like another smart move by Mariner's Jack Zduriencik. No, it won't make them AL West champs. the season's half over, so Hannahan might give them one win over a replacment player. But he didn't cost them much of anything, he's making the minimum, and from what I can see, allows them to continue to field a respectable team. They aren't completely out of it (4.5 back as of this writing), so maybe they still have a chance. But if the team or Hannahan bombs, this move doesn't really cost them anything anyway.

This is how you stay competitive without mortgaging the future. I hope certain other GMs (ahem) are taking notes.