Today, Albert Pujols was named the National League MVP, and rightfully so. Giving it to anyone else would have been some kind of travesty, as Pujols is clearly the game’s best player, had a season that no one else can even come close to, and carried a pretty bad group of teammates towards contention for most of the season. He clearly is the game’s most valuable player.

But that’s not what this post is about. This post is about the guy who finished 15th in the NL MVP voting – Chase Utley. We’ve known for quite a while that Utley’s value was greatly underestimated by the average fan and the mainstream media, but this just drives the point home even further.

Utley hit .292/.380/.535 on the way to posting a 3.63 WPA/LI for the season. The next closest second baseman to Utley in terms of offensive value was Dan Uggla, who posted a 2.27 WPA/LI. That’s basically a win and a half difference between the next best guy at his position. Dustin Pedroia, who is getting all kinds of support for AL MVP, and will almost certainly finish in the top three when voting is announced tomorrow, had a 2.03 WPA/LI. Utley is so far and away the best offensive second baseman in the game, it’s ridiculous to even consider anyone else.

That’s not all – he’s also an elite defender. The +/- system has Utley as a +47 defender in 2008. That’s not a typo – plus 47!. They expected him to make 338 outs on ground balls this year – he actually made 384. Now, a +47 ranking is so insane that it almost certainly contains a good bit of noise that isn’t actually measuring Utley’s real defensive value. He’d been ranked as a +16 and +22 defender in each of the last two seasons, so so it’s nearly impossible that he improved to a level where he was actually 47 plays better than an average second baseman this year.

So, let’s just assume that there was all kinds of sample error in the +/- data and call Utley a +25 defender for 2008. This assumes that he was very good, slightly better than in previous years, but takes out the extreme portion of the Fielding Bible numbers and gives us something we can swallow a little easier.

If Utley was really +25 plays, that’s about 20 runs saved over an average defensive second baseman, which translates to about two wins.

+3.5 wins for his offense, +.25 wins for the position adjustment (second baseman hit a little bit worse than average), +2 wins for defense, and +2 wins for replacement level = +7.75 wins.

You can quibble with the numbers to some degree if you want, but no matter what kind of adjustments you make, you can’t get away from the fact that Chase Utley was something like a +7 to +8 win player this year, compared to a replacement level second baseman. He’s obviously the Phillies best player and the main reason they are the World Series Champions today.

Pujols was better, but Chase Utley was the second best player in baseball this year. That he finished 15th in the MVP voting just shows how amazingly underrated he really is.

For those of you who missed last week’s post, or have not yet voted, Dave Cameron is up for a $10,000 college scholarship because of the fine work he’s done blogging over at U.S.S. Mariner. He is currently in 2nd place, down by approximately 700 votes, with voting open through Thursday night.

Dave has consistently done exemplary work here at FanGraphs, providing you with what I believe is some of the best baseball analysis on the web. If you’ve read Dave’s work even once this season, or even if you haven’t and just visit FanGraphs for the stats, please go and vote.

It only takes 3 mouse clicks, and I’m certain that if everyone who visits FanGraphs votes, we’ll be able to help award Dave this much deserved scholarship.

I’m doing a preview for an undetermined amount of time (maybe permanent depending on the reception) of the new My Team feature.

There are a few minor changes to the site:

1. You’ll notice there is a login bar right below the navigation bar on the site. If you have already signed up for the forums, there is no need to re-register. Just enter in your forum username and password. If you have not signed up for the forums, you’ll need to register to create your own team. Nothing else has changed. You do not need to register or log in to access any of the other FanGraphs features.

2. Once you log in you’ll notice that you can go to “My Team”, which is essentially a customized leaderboard for only the players you select. There won’t be any players in it, but you can add players from that page. You can also add players from their individual pages by clicking on the “Add Player” button which will appear if you are logged in.

3. You can share your team page with anyone by just giving them the web address. Only you will be able to alter your team page, but no team page can currently be made private. For instance, here’s my fantasy team from last season.

4. This is really just a first step in customization for FanGraphs. The way the system is set up should let us do some pretty cool things in the future.

I think that’s it. If you notice serious errors or minor glitches, please let me know. If you have suggestions, we’re taking those too and we’d really appreciate them.

Update: Things seem to be running smoothly enough that this probably won’t be a preview and I’ll just add features and correct bugs as we go. So feel free to use the new My Team feature to your hearts content. However, it should still be considered in beta.

O-Swing% (outside swing percentage): The percentage of pitches a batter swings at outside the strike zone.

Why you should care: When a batter swings at a pitch thrown outside the strike zone his chances of success are severely decreased. The ability of a batter to differentiate pitches inside or outside the strike zone is often referred to as plate discipline and O-Swing% is a good measure of true plate discipline. Likewise, pitchers try to get batters to swing at pitches outside the strike zone and O-Swing% for pitchers shows how adept a pitcher is at tricking batters to swing at pitches outside the strike zone.

Current Baselines: The major league average O-Swing% changes slightly from year to year. The chart below shows the major league averages from 2005-2008 for both batters and pitchers.

2002          18.1%
2003          22.2%
2004          16.6%
2005          20.3%
2006          23.5%
2007          25.0%
2008          25.4%

Batters: A lower O-Swing% is preferable for batters.
Pitchers: A higher O-Swing% is preferable for pitchers.

Links and Resources:
Dissecting Plate Discipline: Part 1
Dissecting Plate Discipline: Part 2
More on Plate Discipline
Pitchers, Pitch by Pitch
Expanding the Strike Zone

A continuation of the series of retrospectives looking back at the regular season and how teams fared. They will be presented, from first to last, in order of their run differential as given by the BaseRuns formula and adjusted for strength of schedule, which I feel is the best measurement of a team’s actual talent level.

Number Twenty five: San Diego Padres

The San Diego Padres share a Spring Training facility with the Seattle Mariners. Perhaps it is worthy of investigating whether someone snuck a vial of the suck virus inside the complex sometime around October of 2007. A combined 177-148 record last year turned to an incredible 124-200 in 2008.

Never much of a scoring team, the Padres seemed fine with abandoning all pretense of trying to score runs this year, finishing with just 637. BaseRuns generously gives them credit for 664, still bad enough for 27th in baseball. And whereas in successful years they would limit opponents to under 700 runs scored, like the 666 allowed in 2007 (in 163 games), they managed to yield 764 (in 162 games) this season. Again, BaseRuns comes to the rescue of San Diego’s ego, saying they were only responsible for 742. Those differences are why San Diego managed to jump up a few spots from their actual finish in the standings.

San Diego’s defense, part of that usually excellent run prevention group stayed above average according to The Hardball Times and John Dewan which means the blame for the extra 100 runs allowed falls to the guys toeing the rubber. Last year’s Padres had a Cy Young season from Jake Peavy and great supporting years from Chris Young and Greg Maddux along with a fantastic bullpen (thanks to Trevor Hoffman and Heath Bell) and decent filler. 2008 saw Young get hurt, Maddux age and Peavy suffer from some serious regression, which was natural after a season like the one he had in 2007.

The bullpen also took a collective step back as Bell was good, but not as good, ditto Hoffman. They weren’t bad as a unit, just spread thin as they used a remarkable 27 different pitchers in relief roles at one point or another. Likewise, 14 different pitchers recorded at least one start and chief offenders of bad Josh Banks and Shawn Estes were handed 22 starts in which they recorded 55 strikeouts while walking 44 batters and allowing 17 home runs, all in just 118.1 innings. That’s a 4.2SO/3.3BB/1.3HR slash line per nine.

The hitters scored a hundred fewer runs so that certainly played a part as well. The Padres would have done well to hang onto Milton Bradley, but they did a much improved year from Brian Giles, who will be sticking around, for now, in 2009. Adrian Gonzalez also had another solid season, cementing himself as one of the more under appreciated commodities in baseball.

With Jake Peavy seemingly having pitched his last game in a Padre uniform, and a messy divorce for the San Diego owner driving them to slash payroll it could be a while before they can offer some resistance to other NL West clubs.

Every so often, I will check my e-mail and find a hidden gem from our captain, David Appelman. The messages usually discuss any pertinent baseball topics we may have interest in covering, but, every now and then, inform us writers of new statistical updates at the website. This is my favorite type of e-mail, one of which I received yesterday, that almost gave me a sabergasm. See, we have some new stats on this site that are not only incredibly useful, but are incredibly interesting to peruse as well. You can find these new statistics on the individual player pages as well as the leaderboards.

To get the suspense out of the way, the statistics are: First-strike percentage for both batters and pitchers, Plate Discipline stats for pitchers, and Pitch Type stats for batters. The percentage of first strikes tells us, for pitchers, which ones get ahead 0-1 in the count most often; it also counts a ball put in play on the first pitch as a strike. For hitters, we can see which get behind 0-1 the most or least, with plate appearances ending with just one pitch intermingled as well. For instance, did you know that Corey Hart of the Brewers had a 68.9% F-Strike this year? Yeah, over two-thirds of his plate appearances began with him down in the count 0-1, or ended after just one pitch.

On the flipside, Chipper Jones had the lowest F-Strike for a hitter at just 48.3%. Albert Pujols finished at a somewhat distant second with 49.7%. From a pitching standpoint, Barry Zito threw a first-pitch strike just 51.5% of the time, with Edinson Volquez and Oliver Perez finishing close behind. Inversely, Mike Mussina led all of baseball with a 67.6% F-Strike. Close behind him were Ervin Santana, Cliff Lee, Greg Maddux, and Dan Haren, all of which exhibted exemplary control during the 2008 season.

The plate discipline stats for pitchers are not what some may think. No, it isn’t hitting stats for pitchers, explaining how often Joe Blanton swung at pitches out of the zone. Rather, these include the O-Swing, Z-Swing, etc, stats, but for hitters against pitchers. So, if you go to Joe Blanton’s page, and find the plate discipline section, you will be able to see how often hitters swung at his pitches in the zone, out of the zone, how often he threw in the zone, how often did hitters make contact on his pitches, and more along those lines.

This is an amazing addition to the site, and something I will delve into much more next week, but as an appetizer, I will say that Daniel Cabrera, by far had the lowest percentage of swings at pitches outside of the zone. Jake Peavy, however, induced the highest percentage of such swings. In fact, here’s an interesting nugget: Peavy led the league with a 32.4% O-Swing, and threw just 47.6% of his pitches in the zone. Meanwhile, Barry Zito, who had the lowest F-Strike%, threw a league-low 47.2% of his pitches in the zone, but only induced 26% swings on those pitches. Essentially, while both he and Peavy threw the same amount of pitches in and out of the strike zone, Zito could not get as many hitters to swing, which amounts to a large difference in strikeouts and walks.

The other addition is pitch type stats for hitters. Haven’t you ever wondered what percentage of pitches certain hitters see in a given year? I know I have. Countless times this year I wondered what percentage of fastballs Ryan Howard saw, given that he really cannot hit anything else. Well, with the additions here, I know now he saw 51.2% fastballs in 2008, the fourth lowest percentage in the sport. Hunter Pence, at 49.8%, actually saw the lowest percentage, with Dan Uggla, Aubrey Huff, Ryan Howard, and Geovany Soto close behind. Basically, this bottom five consists of sluggers who struggle with breaking pitches, and therefore see a wide array of such pitches.

Click the leaderboard again, to sort by descending order, and we get: Gregor Blanco (70.5%), Jason Kendall (70.0%), Chone Figgins (69.1%), Placido Polanco (68.1%), Willy Taveras (68.0%). Pretty much the opposite group, as these guys are by no means whatsoever power threats, but five hitters who rarely strike out. Moving further, we can also take a look at the average velocities these hitters faced.

Did you know that the AL East had a very high average fastball? It must have, since Kevin Youkilis led the league with a 91.8 mph heater faced, while Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, Dustin Pedroia, and Jacoby Ellsbury all found themselves in the top five. Reverse the list and we see that Chone Figgins, who saw one of the highest percentages of fastballs, led the league by seeing the slowest average fastball, at just 90.1%. I’m sure myself and my colleagues here will be using these stats much more moving forward, but hopefully this serves as a nice introduction to the new types of information now accessible.

Like we did this afternoon with CC Sabathia, let’s take a look at what we think Mark Teixeira should sign for this winter if the market is somewhat rational. The first step in ascertaining a player’s worth in dollars is figuring out his worth in wins, so let’s take a look at Teixeira’s on field value.

While he’s had some ridiculously hot stetches of hitting, in the aggregate, Teixeira has been quite consistent the last two years: .306/.400/.563 in 2007 and .308/.410/.552 in 2008. As a 28-year-old in his prime, he’s established a level of performance that clearly reflects his abilities, and we shouldn’t expect him to either improve or decline significantly from these marks. This is what Teixeira is – a .300 hitter with power and walks, and one of the game’s best switch hitters.

We see that he racked up 6.46 WPA/LI over the last two seasons, for a 150 game average of about +3 wins compared to a league average hitter. That’s impressive. We can dock him one win for the position adjustment, since first baseman hit quite a bit better than the league average as a group, put that still makes him +2 wins compared to an average offensive first baseman.

Teixeira’s not just a hitter, though – he’s also a pretty good defensive first baseman. How good is up for debate – the +/- system had him at +24 in 2008, but -4 in 2007, while other systems have him as somewhere between above average and very good. I’m comfortable calling him a +10 defensive first baseman. That adds a win right back to his total.

He’s at +3 wins compared to average, and adding in a +2 win adjustment for replacement level, Teixeira comes out as a +5 win first baseman. That’s a true all-star. He’s not Albert Pujols, but he’s clearly in the next tier of players.

If Teixeira is a +5 win player, and we use the $5.5 million per win projection for off-season spending, that gives us a $27.5 million figure for 2009. Again, we’ll factor in a 10% discount off of his current value for the safety of a long term deal, and that gives us something like $24.5 million for Teixeira. Teams are more comfortable giving longer deals to hitters than pitchers, so let’s pencil him in for a 7 year, $171 million contract.

Now, with the Yankees acquiring Nick Swisher yesterday, that might take one big bidder out of the market. Will Arte Moreno have to go this high to keep T-Rex if the Yankees aren’t trying to lure him away? I doubt it, so my guess is he’ll sign for something more like 6/150. But if the Yankees get back involved, don’t be surprised if he ends up closer to our original figure – 28 year old, +5 win position players don’t hit the market every year.

The Graduate: Garrett Olson | Born: October 1983 | Left-Handed Pitcher

Garrett Olson had a nice start to his 2008 Major League season and maintained a respectable ERA through the month of June. After that, though, the southpaw posted an ERA over 8.00 in his final 14 starts and allowed 98 hits in in 68.1 innings. Overall, he allowed rates of 4.21 BB/9 and 5.63 K/9. Bill James’ projection for 2009 sees Olson returning to form as a No. 4 or 5 starter in the Baltimore rotation. He’ll need to fool batters a little more in 2009 to achieve that projection, as hitters made contact more than 90 percent of the time when they swung at pitches in the strike zone against Olson in 2008.

The Riser: Jake Arrieta | Born: March 1986 | Right-Handed Pitcher

Jake Arrieta took a little bit of a tumble in the 2007 draft due to signability concerns and signed late – so he did not put on a pro uniform until last year’s Arizona Fall League. He more than held his own there and carried that success on over into 2008. Arrieta allowed just 80 hits in 113 High-A ball innings. He posted rates of 4.06 BB/9 and 9.56 K/9. He features a low-90s fastball that touches the mid-90s, a slider and a change-up. Despite his lack of pro experience, Arrieta could be pitching in Baltimore by the end of the 2009 season.

The Tumbler: Billy Rowell | Born: September 1988 | Third Baseman

Billy Rowell, the Orioles first-round pick in 2006, is only 20 years old and has plenty of time to right the ship but Baltimore is no doubt disappointed with his development to this point. The first high school player selected in the draft, Rowell has already been surpassed development-wise by Toronto’s Travis Snider, who was selected shortly after him but has already made his Major League debut. In 2008 at High-A ball, Rowell hit .248/.314/.368 with seven home runs and an ISO of .120 in 375 at-bats. He walked 8.8 percent of the time, while striking out at a rate of 27.7 percent.

The ’08 Draft Pick: L.J. Hoes | Born: March 1990 | Second Baseman

A Washington D.C. native, L.J. Hoes was selected in the third round of the 2008 draft out of high school and thrived in Rookie ball. He hit .308/.418/.390 with an ISO of .082 and 10 stolen bases in 159 at-bats. He posted rates of 15.9 BB% and 13.8 K%. Defensively, he may move to center field down the line.

The ’09 Sleeper: Brandon Erbe | Born: December 1987 | Right-Handed Pitcher

It’s understandable that some Baltimore fans are getting frustrated with Brandon Erbe’s apparent lack of development, but the right-hander will be pitching at Double-A in 2009 – his fifth season in pro ball – at the age of just 21. Erbe pitched at High-A ball in 2008, for the second straight season, and had a solid year by allowing 120 hits in 150.2 innings of work. He posted rates of 2.99 BB/9 and 9.02 K/9. His control was much improved this past season as he shaved off almost two walks per nine innings. Erbe’s biggest nemesis is consistency, followed by a penchant for allowing home runs (21 in 2008, at a rate of 1.25 HR/9). I am going on record by stating, if healthy, Erbe will be one of the biggest breakout pitchers of 2009.

Up Next: The Los Angeles Dodgers

Welcome to the Free Agent Frenzy – starting today, GMs can rush around with their owner’s checkbooks, signing available players for massive contracts that they’ll probably regret in a year or two. But while free agency, as a whole, is a bad way to build a team, that doesn’t mean you can’t get a good deal if you understand what a player’s value is likely to be going forward.

So, today, we kick off a look at some of the big free agents, and what they should be expected to sign for if the market is rational. The market isn’t rational, so bet on almost everyone getting a lot more than the figure we come to, but consider it a baseline for a fair salary. First up, CC Sabathia.

As we all saw, Sabathia was a monster last year, throwing 253 innings with a 2.93 FIP, combining quantity and quality into a package that was one of baseball’s most valuable. He ran a 4.25 K/BB rate and limited the long balls, which pretty much guarantees success at a high level. He was a dominating, MVP caliber pitcher. But what can we expect going forward?

He’s 28, and he’d never been that good before, so some regression has to be expected. We can’t expect him to perpetuate his career year into infinity. However, his last three seasons have established a level of excellence that few in the game can match – a 3.30 FIP in 2006, a 3.14 FIP in 2007, and a 2.93 FIP in 2008. Those are best-in-the-league type numbers, and he’s been pitching at an elite level for quite a while now, so while we expect some regression, we can only regress him back to a Cy Young level.

Let’s put his true talent level FIP at 3.10 – it will be slightly higher if he signs with an AL club, slightly lower if it’s an NL team, but that’s a pretty solid estimate of his current abilities. And, because he’s proven more durable than most pitchers the last two years, let’s project him as a 210 inning starter going forward. How valuable is a 210 inning, 3.10 FIP starting pitcher?

I’d argue that a replacement level starting pitcher is something like a 5.50 FIP, but that pitcher certainly wouldn’t be allowed to throw 210 innings in a season. He’d get taken out for relievers much earlier in his starts, and so we’ll split the replacement level performance between 160 innings at 5.50 FIP and 50 innings at 4.50 FIP, which we’ll call our estimated replacement level for a reliever.

Now, to compare the two.

Sabathia: 210 innings, 72 runs allowed

Replacement Lever Starter: 160 innings, 98 runs allowed
Replacement Level Reliever: 50 innings, 25 runs allowed
Replacement Level Total: 210 innings, 123 runs allowed

That’s a 51 run difference in Sabathia’s favor, which translates to about 5 wins. One could potentially argue that there’s some additional value in having Sabathia eat those innings instead of relievers, which takes a load off the bullpen and allows the higher leverage relief aces to work more often when the other four starters pitch, so let’s toss another half a win into the pile to account for the cascade effect on the pitching staff.

That puts Sabathia as a +5.5 win pitcher. That makes him a legitimate MVP candidate, and right there with Johan and Halladay as the best pitchers in the game. So what’s a 5.5 win pitcher worth?

Last year, the going rate for free agents was $4.5 to $5 million per win. Not everyone got exactly that, of course, but the aggregate was pretty close. Free agent salary inflation has been near 10% per year for quite a while, so we’ll call this year’s marginal win rate $5.5 million just to be safe. I think the economy might shrink some spending and it could end up closer to $5 million, but we’ll see – for now, we’ll say it’s $5.5 million.

5.5 million * 5.5 wins = 30.25 million. That’s what we’d expect Sabathia to be worth if he signed a one year deal, which he clearly won’t do. In exchange for the security of a long term deal, he’ll give teams a slight discount off his current value. At a 10% discount for the safety of a five to seven year deal, that would put his annual average salary at $27 million.

So, that’s the baseline – six years, $162 million for Sabathia. If he signs for significantly less than that, whoever gets him is getting a relative bargain.

F-Strike% (first pitch strike percentage): The percentage of plate appearances (for batters) or batters faced (for pitchers) that the first pitch was a strike. This includes anytime that the count after the first pitch was 0-1, or anytime the ball was put into play on the first pitch of a plate appearance.

Why you should care: Getting the first strike on a batter significantly decreases the batter’s chance of success and likewise increases a pitcher’s chance of success.

Current Baselines: The major league average F-Strike% for all players from 2005-2008 is 59%. There is very little variation in the major league average from year to year.

Batters: A lower F-Strike% is preferable for batters.
Pitchers: A higher F-Strike% is preferable for pitchers.

Links and Resources:
Hardball Times: The Importance Of Strike One (Part One)
Hardball Times: The Importance Of Strike One (Part Two)