(So naturally after I link to BA's cover/store it goes down)

Yes, that is B.J. Upton. Yes that is Baseball America's Almanac. No, I have not bought that to do whatever you cruel people will suggest that I do to pictures of B.J., and no I do not plan on doing so, but you might be interested. Also worth noting, David Price is on the cover of BP2009.

His face shot is the second from the right. BP2009 features PECOTA projections and some other stuff I don't know about. My good friend Marc Normandin worked on  it though, so I'm confident there's some material worth absorbing.

Speaking of Normandin-books, did I mention he and I did a section apiece in the new Graphical Player annual? If you're into somewhat funky graphs and fantasy baseball, it's probably for you. Otherwise, I would suggest viewing a few demo pages from previous issues before making the purchase. It makes a good Christmas present too, although be forewarned that you aren't getting a ton of me, but just a snippet. That should've been my selling point.

Finally, I finished reading Derek Zumsteg's Cheaters Guide to Baseball. If you like baseball history, good writing, and facts (!) it's worth the purchase. It's not a sabermetric book either, leaving the "learning curve" at general baseball knowledge.

From CBS Sportsline:

Shortstop Jason Bartlett was voted the Rays' most valuable player, and he was a big part in Tampa Bay's improbable run to the World Series.

Now the Rays are willing to trade him, according to a baseball official who has spoken to the Rays. Not only that, but the Rays have also discussed trying to reacquire Delmon Young, the outfielder who they traded to the Twins last winter to get Bartlett and Matt Garza.

It doesn't appear that the Young talks got very far, and neither did Tampa Bay's efforts to acquire Denard Span, another Twins outfielder. But the Rays are continuing to search everywhere for another outfielder, and Bartlett could be what it takes to acquire one.

Most defensive metrics were down on Bartlett this season, despite loving him before. I'm assuming that's due to a knee injury and he'll bounce back. The funny thing is, I wonder if a team would actually buy into Bartlett being the reason for the Rays success and overpay because of it.  Trading Bartlett would kill the Rays. Despite what I've said in the past, others who said I simply wasn't paying attention were right. Did anyone see our win-loss record without JB? Man, oh man.

The good news is the Rays are being quite creative in their search for a new outfielder. Bartlett is hardly irreplaceable, and if the Rays can use the "MVP" label to sell high, by all means they should do so. I'll try and dig up some defensive data on Reid Brignac in the meanwhile. 

It's a one year, 2 million dollar contract with the potential to grow into 4 million.

Before signing an oft-injured player, teams must ask themselves a line of questions.

Does player, when healthy, help our team?
    If yes, can we expect at least 50% playing time?
           If yes, will player still help our team?
           If no, pass.
               If yes, can we expect 75% playing time?
                   If yes, is the player's value equal to his asking price?
                   If no, is the player's value equal to his asking price?
                        If no, pass.

I would suspect the Astros went through this conversation, and they arrived at yes multiple times. Despite this, I'm not sure I agree with their thinking. Houston won 86 games last season despite being outscored and having 75.8 third order wins. Since they aren't in a position to win 90 games or honestly compete for a playoff spot, barring unforeseen miracles, they should be shielding themselves against overpaying for slight upgrades that will only push them to a fourth place finish.

Since 2003, when Hampton was traded to the Marlins and then the Braves, he's thrown 190, 172.3, 69.1, and 78 innings. Observant readers will note that two seasons worth of innings are missing those being 2006 and 2007, which Hampton missed in full. When Hampton has pitched lately, he hasn't been his usually self. Even in 2005, only 9.51% of Hampton's plate appearances resulted in strikeouts. That number was back up to pre-injury days in 2008, at 11.48%, but Hampton was still only generating 6.3% swinging strikes with his 87 miles per hour fastball.

While two million is hardly going to sink their budget, this is a team that had better options on hand. It's not that Hampton is overpaid or a poor risk, but rather a redundancy. At this point, the Astros have Roy Oswalt and Wandy Rodriguez who are clearly superior to Hampton, Brian Moehler and Chris Sampson who are arguably better, and Brandon Backe, who is special in his own "snowflake" sort of way. Will Hampton's contributions even make that much of a difference over Backe?

In order to project Hampton's value we have to make assumptions about things like his FIP and innings workload. Marcels has him at 4.77 and 99 innings pitched. If that's the case, Hampton is 10.78 non-leveraged runs saved. Backe projects for 146 innings of 5.39 FIP ball, or 5.84 non-leveraged runs saved. That's a difference of just over a half of a win. On a .500-at-best team, is that worth 2 million? Even more so, Claudio Vargas is a free agent who can likely be had for 800k. If Vargas simply pitched to his career 5.22 FIP for 160 innings, he would compile 9.42 NLRS. Almost equal to Hampton, and for 1.2 million less that could've went towards the draft or amateur signings.

The deal isn't bad, at least not in the sense that Houston will regret signing Hampton. Instead, it just seems like a questionable usage of resources for a team that apparently has some payroll cutting concerns.

Disclaimer: I had no intention of taking this angle, but after about 400 words noticed it was a worthwhile one.

Continue reading this post »

Digging through assorted Rays history in a database, I wanted to find out how often Carl Crawford attempted a steal. More specifically, I wanted the percentage of times on base that Crawford ran. If you recall I figured something similar a few weeks ago, but I wanted to also see where he ranked in Rays history.

Much to my surprise, when I lowered the times on base threshold to 10 (SSS, I know) Nathan Haynes name popped up. Haynes reached based 13 times this season, and attempted five steals. Of course, that doesn't account for Haynes pinch running, and I don't have the play-by-play database abilities to filter that down, so take it for what it is.

After my near Haynes experience, I turned back to the original question. You shouldn't be surprised to learn that Crawford dominates the list, with his highest being 33.5% in 2004. Here's a list of the top 10:

On the other hand, how about the guys who got on base 100+ times, aren't catchers, and got the steal sign the least? Here you go:

Cantu is the only one of these players who was not in the latter stages of his career (or at least older than 28), yet somehow he was listed twice. God blessed that Human Lawn Statue, just not with speed.

Boston Globe's Nick Cafardo:

5. Jermaine Dye: The White Sox right fielder fits so well with a few teams, including Philadelphia, Tampa Bay, and the Mets. Dye was a player the Red Sox were hot after before pursuing J.D. Drew. The Rays are trying to deal the back of their starting rotation - Andy Sonnanstine or Edwin Jackson - for a power-hitting righthanded [sic] bat, but the White Sox would want more.

Dye makes 11.5 million in 2009. Let's do the math, assuming the soon to be 35 year old loses some hitting and fielding ability.

Position: -0.75

Fielding: -0.8

Hitting: 1.0

Replacement level: 2.25

Wins above replacement: 1.7

Estimated value: 8.6 million

That's without talking about the one million dollar buyout (I'm guessing the Rays would rather not have a 36 year old with a 12 million dollar contract around.)

Assume Edwin loses a run or so off of his tRA and becomes a 4.5 reliever, who throws 75 innings as a long-man/mop-up type. He's a 0.5 WAR player just like that, and we're assuming he doesn't improve by much more than the average transition.  Plus Edwin's going to be paid right around what an ARB1 0.5 WAR player should be (~1.2 mil) and they want more?

No thanks, I'd rather take my chances on Nick Evans.