So who gets to trade for Choo in 2012?

Scanning the comments on the article, I have to say: Neyer has to have the best readers of any ESPN reader. 

It does seem to me that Choo and Howard are different enough players that we’re kinda sorta talking apples and oranges here.  Choo is a great OBP guy with moderate power while Howard is a moderate OBP guy and outstanding power.  Choo is going to hurt you a little bit virtually all the time.  Howard will sometimes not hurt you at all, and sometimes hurt you a bunch.  Choo’s contributions to the Indians add up over a season.  Howard’s value to the Phillies comes in bursts.  I can see the guy being either the goat or the hero of the series with little trouble.

I guess on some level I can understand the enjoyment he gets out of this (and that you get out of tweaking your NBC readers). But if you’re going to aim for such an easy target, you really have to hit it. Judging by the comments, his trolling seems to have failed. Isn’t that sort of embarrassing?

WAR comparison:

Shin-Soo Choo - 5.1
Ryan Howard - 4.9

Sounds like Rob hit the nail on the head.

Alex Rodriguez missed more than a month of the season to a hip surgery he appears to be well-recovered from.  Scaling A-Rod to Howard’s plate appearances makes him a 6 WAR player.

Sort of like saying that Howard is not a “prodigious slugger” on the basis that Shin-Soo Choo had an outstanding year in left field?

No, actually, not like that at all.

Also, please point out where he says Howard isn’t a prodigious slugger on the basis of the year Shin-Soo Choo had.  Because in the article I read, he does a comparison of all aspects of their respective games.

I can see that I am not explaining myself very well, so here is a longer post.

This is Rob’s argument: Bill Conlin and Tyler Kepner (among others, presumably) seem to think that Howard is comparable to A-Rod as a slugger. That is ridiculous (“a bit of a corrective is in order,” “I’m not sure what’s going on here”) because Howard was arguably not even as valuable as Shin-Soo Choo this year.

Presumably he means to tie this in with his broader point that the Yankees’ offense is much better than the Phillies’, but for whatever reason he doesn’t actually say that.

One problem with this argument is that the reason that Howard is arguably not as valuable as Choo is not that Howard has been playing poorly—it’s that Choo has been playing outstandingly well. So well, in fact, that he was also more valuable than A-Rod this year (but yes, only because A-Rod missed a month).

Another problem is that he does indeed compare all aspects of their play, whereas the quotes he is taking issue with were only comparing Howard and A-Rod as hitters.

The reasonable way to compare them as hitters is to compare their batting statistics—not to compare one with a third-party in all aspects and leave it as self-evident that the other is superior to that third-party. The reason he does not compare Choo to A-Rod as well is that doing so would show that his comparison between Choo and Howard is a lot less meaningful than he presents it as being. That is what is disingenuous.

This year, A-Rod’s wOBA is .404 and Howard’s is .393, good for 10th and 19th in the majors respectively. A-Rod is clearly the better hitter, but it is pretty reasonable to compare them. Moreover, if a .393 wOBA with 45 home runs does not qualify one as a prodigious slugger, I am not sure what does. There is no reason, from an analytical standpoint, to include Shin-Soo Choo in the analysis of these points. Neyer includes him for two reasons: 1) antagonize Phillies fans (which is fine with me); and 2) to make his argument appear stronger than it actually is to the casual fan who has never heard of Shin-Soo Choo (which is lame and disingenuous).

@Jim C.  The only thing about Howard that’s going to grow over the next few years is his waist.  Howard always reminds me of what Bill James wrote about Cecil Fielder: “A big fat guy who hit home runs for a few years.”

@Jacob.  And guess who is rated as Ryan Howard’s #1 most similar player by Baseball-Reference.  If you guessed “Cecil Fielder”, you win our prize.