Notes on Today's Trades - Rauch and Wolf

The Cubs get a fresh look at Jon Rauch, who just came over to Arizona from Washington. Randy Wolf moves into our division, to Houston. This will be a great experiment in park effects.

First, are the Astros really buyers right now? Seriously? And, seeing that they are, Randy Wolf? Seriously?

Randy is not horrible, but going from Petco to the Juice Box won't work to his advantage. I've covered Wolf a few times, so I'll refer you back to some of those (over here and even here), and move on to Jon Rauch.

Rauch is huge. OK, not huge. He's not even seven feet tall. 6'11". He can dunk over Randy Johnson. Locals may remember him, from the 2002 and 2004 White Sox, who drafted him in 1999. He worked less than 40 innings for the South Siders before being shipped off to Montreal in a trade for Carl Everett. So, he was an original National, so to speak.

Rauch probably throws a full set of fastballs - four-seam, two-seam and cut. I'm lumping them into a single FA for now. He also has a change-up, and two breaking pitches.

This first pass isn't perfect, but close enough.



Which boils down to this



With some funky release points



Which make for flight paths like this - bird's eye looks like someone's first base.



Yes, he's tall (notice the release point chart y-axis is 6ft - 8ft, not the usual 5-7) and he throws hard on a downward plane. Are his pitches tough to pick-up or not?

cfx	L	R	mph	pfx_x	pfx_z	deg	rpm	B:CS	corner%	Sw%	Whiff%	SwOZ%	TaIZ%	HR%	NKS	G:AO
CH	47	1	85.6	-5.6	9.7	210	1,377	2.8	16.67	37.50	16.67	20.59	13.64	0.0	0.250	1.0
CU	60	35	75.6	6.7	-4.2	238	865	2.1	9.47	50.53	22.92	40.98	25.58	1.1	0.737	2.7
FA	282	250	92.6	-3.4	12.1	196	1,667	1.3	14.85	52.26	13.67	41.44	26.02	0.6	0.448	0.3
SL	97	174	84.0	2.6	4.7	151	675	2.0	15.13	51.29	33.81	39.29	20.83	1.1	0.551	0.7
	486	460	88.1	-0.8	8.2	188	1,288	1.6	14.48	51.06	20.50	39.46	24.05	0.7	0.497	0.5

		#	FA	CH	SL	CU
L	first	123	67.5	8.1	17.1	7.3
L	ahead	176	46.0	8.5	23.9	21.6
L	behind	84	70.2	10.7	14.3	4.8
L	even	89	55.1	13.5	21.3	10.1
L	full	14	71.4	7.1	21.4	0.0

		#	FA	CH	SL	CU
R	first	124	58.1	0.0	41.1	0.8
R	ahead	164	47.6	0.0	36.0	16.5
R	behind	73	76.7	0.0	23.3	0.0
R	even	80	41.3	1.3	48.8	8.8
R	full	19	57.9	0.0	42.1	0.0