John Royal has a post discussing the Feliz trade. Mainly, it's "Ed Wade is still an idiot."
Wade was widely and correctly mocked during the off-season for the Feliz signing as it appears that he was the only one who didn't know how to read a stat sheet, thus rendering him unable to figure out that Feliz was going to suck this season. But a guy who had trouble hitting with the Phillies and struggled to get RBI's in a lineup featuring Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Shane Victorino, Ryan Howard, and Jayson Werth was clearly not going to be able to hack it with the Astros, especially if he was making $4.5 million.
Maybe this move is an indication that Wade is finally figuring this whole GM thing, and that's he is finally figuring out how to read and understand baseball stats. But I seriously doubt it. The saying is, after all, that a broke clock is right twice the day, and seeing as how Chris Johnson had to play in the minors most of the season because of Feliz, I'm counting this trade as one of those two times where the broken clock is right.
It is worth pointing out that CHONE predicted that Feliz would hit .256/.299/.407. Not great, but not .221/.243/.311. When the Astros signed Feliz, we said that it was entirely too much money, and apologized to Chris Johnson.
So while I don't think too many people were jazzed up about the signing, his OPS from 2001-2009 was .716. It's .555 this year. I don't think anyone foresaw an OPS-dropoff of 161 points.
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
