Hanson Not Traded To Red Sox Ridiculous! Edition

I thought the Hot Stove was cooking pretty good before, now something's got me steaming mad!  Tommy Hanson, erstwhile Ace of the Atlanta Braves, was just traded to the LA Angels for RP Jordan Walden.  The Braves are going to use Walden in the middle innings because they have the best closer in the game in young Craig Kimbrel.  I argued against trading for a guy like Josh Johnson a few weeks ago because he was at the tail end of his prime years, and trading for a guy like Pedro because his best years were ahead of him.  Let's stack up Hanson compared to those two in the first four years of their careers with baseball references WAR:

Name:            Hanson      Pedro       Johnson    

Age/WAR         22/3.7          22/2.2         22/3.0      
                         23/2.6          23/4.5         23/-.6        
                         24/1.2          24/3.8         24/1.9      
                         25/-.9          25/8.7         25/6.4      

Pedro is on another plain, but through 3 years Hanson had 7.5 WAR, Johnson had 4.3. The difference is Hanson tanked in year 4 while the other two took off.  Hanson had a bad year last year, concussing himself by crashing his car in February then he had a back strain that put him on the DL in July.  He also had a shoulder strain in 2011.  His WAR is in a clear downward trend but this is not the type of guy you just let slip through your fingers. This guy has huge potential and The Angels gave up their out of no where closer to get him. The Sox couldn't top that jazz? How about a finer look at Hanson:

Age              22        23          24          25

Innings        127.2   202.2     130.0      174.2
WHIP          1.183   1.174     1.169      1.454
HR/9           .7          .6           1.2          1.4
K/9              8.2        7.7         9.8          8.3
K/BB           2.52     3.09       3.09        2.27

He lost some control lost year resulting in the lower K/BB and WHIP and higher HR/9 but his K/9 was great and I'm almost shocked the Braves didn't shop him for more or the Red Sox let this happen without a serious offer.  All I can do is shake my head sometimes.

Until next time,

The SAHD