Colorado Rockies: Making sense of a Chicago Cubs-Nolan Arenado trade

Arenado vs. Bryant

By most measures Bryant provides more value with his bat than Arenado. He leads in wRC+ and OPS+ while Arenado tops Bryant by DRC+ (per their 2019 stats). Nolan is vastly superior with his glove, though, and makes up a ton of value in those regards.

Additionally, Nolan creeps out ahead of Bryant in a few other measures on Statcast. They’re both similar in terms of xwOBA (67th percentile for Arenado and 69th percentile for Bryant) but Arenado breaks out in front in terms of his average Exit Velocity (58th percentile) and Hard Hit Percentage (40th percentile). Bryant’s average Exit Velocity is in the 23rd percentile and his Hard Hit Percentage is in the 25th percentile.

Colorado Rockies

This would allude to the idea that with Nolan’s hitting profile that it can translate fairly easily from ballpark to ballpark and should cause less worries among potential suitors of his. This is demonstrated by the fact that he was the only Rockies hitter last season to post a road wRC+ above 100 at 118. Bryant’s profile suggests he may have been getting somewhat lucky and the 33 point gap between his wOBA and xwOBA would suggest that some luck was involved as well.

We’ve already determined that Bryant should put up around 5.0 fWAR this upcoming season with potential to surpass that number. Nolan’s fWAR number should end closer to 6.0 as he’s shown both consistency and progression over the past few seasons (5.0, 5.7, 5.7, 5.9). He’s not showing signs of slowing down either defensively or offensively, so expecting him to finish with a number close to 6.0 this season shouldn’t be out of the question. FanGraphs is lower on his projections as they’re expecting a number around 5.0, but that would be low based off the data from prior years. Bryant’s estimate of 4.8 can be low as well, but he has more questions going forward.