One of MLB's Best Players Has Been Traded

What do you think of this player:

In his six full seasons starting in '09, he's batted .270, hit 16 homers and swiped 16 bags in 21 tries per annum. A good hitter but not Mike Trout, right?

A switch hitter, he sports an .801 OPS, 23% above league average, thanks mostly to 84 walks and 40 doubles/triples a year. Getting better, right?

And now the big reveal: He's a second baseman.

With a golden glove.

And he's a right fielder too.

And a shortstop.

And in a pinch, a left fielder, center fielder, DH and first baseman.

And that's why Ben Zobrist is one of the best players in baseball, and one of the least well-known. He's the kind of practitioner whose reputation is a pale shadow of his real value because he doesn't do the showy things we look at -- slug 40 home runs, collect RBIs, steal 80 bases, bat .300. What he does do is often overlooked -- piles up doubles and triples, works the count (fourth most pitches seen last season) and accepts free passes, offers his manager positional flexibility, flashes leather without the flash, leaves the yard or thieves a bag just often enough to cause the opposition stress.

In his career, Zobrist has handled duties 547 times at the keystone, 331 times in the right corner, 229 times at short, 66 times in left, 34 in center and a smattering elsewhere. The value of the flexibility he provides his manager doesn't show up even in the sabermetric stats. Other than catcher, pitcher and third, Zobrist is ready, willing and able.

Like, really, really able. He's averaged 6.2 wins against replacement -- that's solidly All-Star material -- for six seasons with Tampa.

And now he'll play for Oakland, who traded John Jaso and prospects (including Herschel "Boog" Powell, a low-minors on-base machine at age 21) to snag Zobrist and shortstop Yunel Escobar.

Why would a savvy franchise give up on Zobrist? Because he's 33 and eligible for free agency after this coming season, and because his WAR has declined from 8.7 to 5.7 to 4.8 to 5.0 over the last four seasons. That's still high quality, and suggests plenty more the next few years, but the vector is concerning.

Zobrist is one cog in a package of swaps by Billy Beane that revamped the A's in a zigzag pattern, which appears, on balance, to have added some youth, slashed some payroll and stripped some talent from the club, at least in 2015. But if Oakland fails to make the playoffs it probably won't be Ben Zobrist's fault.

Getting On the JV Team

The winner of this year's Ben Zobrist Award for the best player who came out of nowhere will be Joey Votto. This is a trick selection. Just because you're not familiar with him doesn't mean the big-swinging, 27-year-old lefty isn't already an accomplished Major League hitter.

The Reds' first baseman, Votto has been pounding Major League pitching for two years and a coffee break. His .310/.388/.536 resume may be (Great American) Ballpark-aided, but 53 homers and 77 doubles in a thousand at-bats is hard to argue with.

Votto enters his third full season ready to explode. With a couple of full campaigns under his belt, with an increasing walk rate and with an improving team around him, the big Canadian is channeling Justin Morneau in the Queen City. His .414 OBP in an injury-trimmed season last year suggests a full year of Votto could catapult him into the MVP discussion in '10.

If that happens, you'll hear of him. And you'll wonder, where did this guy come from? Well, a pretty good place.
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