BP on the Pena trade

Christina Kahrl:

The more basic problem is that he [Tony Pena] just wasn’t pitching well, even as the third-best reliever on the staff. This year’s setback also isn’t remarkable in light of his fall from grace in 2008: whereas he was one of the invincible three amigos in the Snake pen of 2007 with a 4.244 WXRL, last year he dropped off to a merely good 1.611. Change your flavor to a rate-based metric, and Peña’s FRA has gone from 3.01 to 4.87 to 5.27. The situational dominance against right-handers that underlay his ’07 breakthrough with a 521 OPS bounced up to 695 last year, and is back down to 629, and might be lower still if not for bad breaks with BABIP. Nevertheless, lefties are pasting him at a .317/.403/.524 clip, which suggests that he’s going to be something of a situational right-hander for a staff that sort of already employs Octavio Dotel in the role. He doesn’t seem to lose that much effectiveness with men aboard, and he’s still basically the same pitcher he was before in terms of throwing mid-90s heat and a good slider. …

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