Padres sign Mark Prior and Chris Burke (minor league deals)

Prior is baseball’s version of Prometheus. No matter how many times he attempts to come back, it seems like that darn eagle will scoop in and eat his Achilles tendon or an arm ligament. Unbelievably, Prior hasn’t thrown a pitch in a regular season game – majors or minors – in two full years. It’s easy to talk about “When Prior is healthy…” but he never is. Regardless, if he somehow does stay healthy, the only data we can go off is two seasons old and doesn’t reflect well on him anyways. CHONE says 54 innings and a 4.87 FIP, the Padres would be lucky to get that. I always like to reflect on how special Prior’s 2003 season was when writing about him: 211.3 innings, 245 strikeouts, only 2.13 walks per nine, and a 2.47 FIP – that’s good for 6.8 wins. Tim Lincecum’s 2008 was worth 7.1 wins. That should give you an idea of just how special Prior was and had the chance to be.

Dave covered Burke in more depth following his non-tendering, but in simple terms: Burke’s a potentially valuable player who’s ran into some poor luck and a lack of chances over the years. At his best, Burke is a 0.75-1 win player. His defensive versatility – especially in left and at second – is a plus for keeping him. It’s a bit odd that the Padres are the ones making this move unless they have the intent of starting him at some point.

Pirates sign Craig Monroe (minor league deal)

The Pirates were reportedly right in the Rocco Baldelli sweepstakes until the end, so it makes sense that they promptly jump on Monroe after losing out. Monroe is basically what you think he is: an okay fielding corner outfielder who hits for power against lefties. Like Baldelli, Monroe doesn’t walk much and tends to go out of the strike zone quite a bit. It’s a minor league deal, and the Pirates seem unlikely to use him in a starting capacity barring a disaster.

Today was a day of finalizations for Atlanta as Kenshin Kawakami passed his physical and was announced and Derek Lowe’s signing became sufficiently official. We’ve covered Derek Lowe in pretty substantial detail prior, so suffice to say that his reported 4-year, $60 million contract is right around market value. Not too bad for the Braves who, after losing Smoltz, needed to bring in another man for the rotation.

But who is Kenshin Kawakami? The Braves have the right-hander signed for his age 34-6 seasons at an apparent cost of about $24 million, meaning that as a starter, the Braves are valuing him as a roughly two-win pitcher, akin to about Oliver Perez’s projection for the same time frame.

Kawakami throws a fastball around 88mph, relying on command of the outer part of the plate. He also has a big loopy overhand curveball that clocks in around the high 60s. A cut fastball around 85mph completes his repertoire. Kawakami’s throwing motion will remind some of Daisuke Matsuzaka’s though without Daisuke’s trademark hip thrust during his pause when his hands are at their peak altitude.

It will be important to see how Kawakami’s curveball, a big weapon for him to change the hitter’s eye level and disrupt their timing, given the vast difference in speed from his fastballs, reacts to the slightly bigger baseball used in America. If he’s unable to make that transition smoothly, it could prevent him from being effective out of the rotation.

Combined with the breakout, but still speculative, Jorge Campillo, the emerging youngster Jair Jurrjens and the often under rated Javier Vazquez, the Braves have built themselves a rotation that could end up solid top to bottom or could flame out in several spots.

Believe it or not, pitchers and catchers report in about one month. It still seems like yesterday, metaphorically speaking, that Eric Hinske flailed at a Brad Lidge slider, officially ending the 2008 season. And yet here we are, three months later, with the offseason in full bloom. Though a fair share of players have inked deals with new teams or garnered new uniforms via a trade, three players who would normally report to camp in the middle of February are still available.

And all three are old!

Jason Varitek and Paul Lo Duca are each 37 years old, and Ivan Rodriguez is one year their senior. All three are at different stages in their respective careers, but given the importance of the position, could at least be expected to serve backup duty, right? Varitek and Pudge could probably still hold down fort as starters while Lo Duca would need to play for a team like the Nationals to earn starting time.

Tek, the Red Sox captain, is coming off of a terribly disappointing 2008 season. With a wOBA just south of .300, Varitek saw his win value drop from +3.0 to +1.3. Prior to that, his win values were up and down as well. Over the last four years: +4.3, +1.2, +3.0, +1.3. Granted, quantifying the defensive prowess of catchers is an extremely difficult task, and these measures are excluding that facet of the game. If Varitek’s leadership, defense, and ability to handle the pitching staff is worth +5 runs in each of these seasons, he still comes strikingly close to a league average player in 2008.

Next year, he projects to -6 runs offensively. With a slight decline in his defense and intangibles to +3 runs, and similar adjustment values for position and replacement level, Varitek looks like a +2.3 win player. At $4.5 mil/win, 2.3 wins commands a fair market value of $10.4 mil. If he declines to +1.8 wins in 2010, assuming he plays that long, then a 2-yr deal properly valuing his contributions would pay him $19.3 mil. Bump that up to $20 mil and it is still in the realm of the understandable.

Pudge Rodriguez saw a slight improvement in his numbers from 2007, as his .317 wOBA helped produce a +1.6 win season. Over the last four seasons, all of which were spent with the Tigers: +2.1, +2.6, +1.3, +1.6. Prior to joining the Tigers, Pudge put up two consecutive +5 win seasons. Suffice it to say, he simply is not that type of player anymore. He still has value, though, but it would not surprise me in the least if he is forced to take a minor league deal. Despite a projection of +1.75 wins (FMV of $7.9 mil), Rodriguez could also fall into the Kenny Lofton category of players with value seemingly forced to retire.

Paul Lo Duca is a different story altogether. Even though he produced +2.3 wins in 2005 and +3.4 wins in 2006, his best days are very far behind him. In fact, his average or slightly below average days are a pretty decent hike behind him. In 67 games last season, Paul posted a .287 wOBA for the Marlins and Nationals. All told, he was the definition of replacement level, literally worth 0 wins above replacement. If he signs with a team and receives similar playing time to last season, Lo Duca projects to be worth +0.1 wins, still virtually replacement level.

The Astros are reportedly interested in signing Lo Duca to a minor league contract. Anything above $600K would greatly overpay him, but signing him to a deal like that would carry with it little risk. Still, kind of odd that Lo Duca is the only one of these three catchers being tossed around the rumor mill.

This afternoon, we talked about why we chose FIP as the metric to base our pitcher win values on. Now, we turn our attention to the other key aspect involved with understanding how many wins a pitcher was worth – the value of a replacement level pitcher as the baseline.

As we did with position players, we’re defining replacement level production as the expected performance you could get from players who can be acquired for virtually no cost. This pool of players would include free agents who sign minor league contracts or for the league minimum, rule 5 draft picks, guys claimed on waivers, and minor league veterans who can’t shake the “Quad-A” label.

Some walking examples of that group from this off-season would include R.A. Dickey, Clay Hensley, Jason Johnson, Gary Majewski, and Tomo Ohka. Not the most impressive group of guys ever, but that’s why they’ve signed for nothing. They represent a portion of the free talent community, and that’s the group that we want to define as zero value pitchers.

Here’s a good discussion about the historical quality of replacement level pitchers. As Tom notes, it is extremely important to distinguish between roles.

While both involve hurling a ball towards home plate, starting and relieving are still remarkably different. Relievers are, in general, failed starting pitchers who are given an easier task that their skillset will allow them to handle. They are selectively managed to face hitters whom they have the best chance of getting out, and they get to throw at maximum effort on nearly every pitch, giving them greater velocity over their shorter appearances.

Nearly every starting pitcher in baseball could be a useful relief pitcher. Very few relief pitchers could be useful starting pitchers. The distribution of pitching talent is skewed very heavily towards the rotation, and because of this and the extra skills required to pitch 5+ innings per start, we use different replacement levels for starting and relieving in order to capture the additional value added by starting pitchers above and beyond simple run prevention.

What are those replacement levels? Perhaps it’s easiest to understand them in relation to a single game. If we assume that a team has a league average offense, a league average defense, and a league average bullpen, and that they are playing a league average opponent, we would expect them to win any single game started by a replacement level starter 38% of the time.

At the same time, we’d expect a team with a league average offense, league average defense, and a league average starting pitcher, facing a league average opponent, we would expect them to win 47% of any games in which their replacement level bullpen was used.

So, we call a .380 win% the replacement level line for a starting pitcher, and a .470 win% the replacement level line for a relief pitcher. However, league average is different for the AL and NL, thanks to the DH, and of course offensive levels vary from year to year. So, how do we take these replacement level winning percentages and compare them to the RA-scaled FIPs we talked about earlier?

We’ll work through those calculations tomorrow.

The Minnesota Twins organization was one of the busiest clubs when it came time to protect prospects on the 40-man rosters near the beginning of the off-season. The club added three pitchers, two catchers and four infielders.

Anthony Swarzak is the most promising out of the trio of hurlers added to the roster. His repertoire includes an 89-93 mph fastball, a plus curveball and a change-up. The former high school second-round draft pick is on the cusp of joining the Twins’ big league rotations despite having a rough year in Double-A. After making 15 appearances at that level in 2007, the right-hander was asked to start back there in 2008. Swarzak’s FIP went from 3.32 to 4.42 and his rates took a hit too from 2.40 BB/9 and 7.92 K/9 in 2007 to 3.28 BB/9 and 6.73 K/9 in 2008. Perhaps there was a lack of motivation because his numbers improved (on the surface) when he joined Triple-A late in the season. In seven starts, he allowed 41 hits in 45 innings of work and posted rates of 2.80 BB/9 and 5.20 K/9. However, there are some signs that his success at Triple-A was luck-induced. His ERA was 1.70, but his FIP was 4.40. His K/BB ratio has also reduced in each of his last four assignments: 3.60 to 3.30 to 2.05 to 1.86.

Brian Duensing, a former third-round pick out of the University of Nebraska, has seen his strikeout rate drop off dramatically as he approaches the Major League level. In his first full season in 2006, Duensing posted an OK rate of 7.00 K/9 in A-ball, only to see it settle in around 5.0 K/9 after a full season in Triple-A in 2008 (He also spent much of 2007 there with better results). The left-handed was quite hittable in 2008 and he allowed 150 hits in 138.2 innings. Duensing, 25, has excellent control as witnessed by his rate of 2.21 BB/9. He works in the upper 80s with his fastball and complements that with a good change-up and a couple of breaking balls.

Catcher Wilson Ramos is one of the club’s better hitting prospects and could eventually give the Twins an excuse to move Joe Mauer from behind the plate. The right-handed hitter spent the 2008 season in High-A ball and hit .288/.346/.434 with an ISO of .146. Like many Twins prospects, he could stand to show more patience after posting a walk rate of 7.6% last season. Defensively, Ramos, 21, threw out 32 of 74 (43%) base runners attempting to steal.

Offensively, Luke Hughes has the most present potential of the four infielders. He split 2008 between Double-A and Triple-A. At the lower level, he hit .319/.385/.551 with an ISO of .232 in 285 at-bats. At Triple-A, he hit .283/.325/.453 with an ISO of .170 in 106 at-bats. His walk and strikeout rates in Triple-A were 6.2 BB% and 28.3 K%. Defensively, Hughes has appeared all over the diamond after playing himself off second base. He spent the majority of his time at third base in 2008 but had a poor fielding percentage (.888 at Double-A) and showed below-average range.

Of the remaining infielders, Steven Tolleson is the safest bet to secure a Major League utility infielder’s role. The 25-year-old batter hit .300/.382/.466 with 12 stolen bases at Double-A in 2008. Trevor Plouffe is a former first-round pick whose numbers have never matched his potential. He spent the 2008 season split between Double-A and Triple-A. His career line is an uninspiring .255/.319/.380.

As we announced yesterday, win values for pitchers are now available on the site. As before, we’re going to go through the process of explaining the calculations that lead to the values you see here on FanGraphs and lay the foundation for understanding what these win values represent.

To start with, let’s take a look at the main input that goes into the win value calculation – a pitcher’s FIP, or Fielding Independent Pitching, which calculates a pitcher’s responsibility for the runs he allows based on his walks, strikeouts, and home runs allowed. The FIP formula is (HR*13+(BB+HBP-IBB)*3-K*2)/IP, plus a league-specific factor that scales FIP to match league average ERA for a given season and league. For the win value purposes, we modified the league specific factor to scale FIP to RA instead of ERA.

Why did we use FIP? I know this a popular question, and it’s something I wrestled with myself. However, what I couldn’t get away from is that we wanted the context sensitivity for the position player and pitcher win values to be as close as possible. wRAA, the offensive input into Win Values for position players, is context-neutral – a hitter does not get credit for his situational performance, such as hitting well with runners in scoring position. Since we aren’t giving hitters credit for situational performance, we can’t give it to pitchers either, in order to maintain the same situation neutral scale.

This is going to lead to some questions – we’re aware of that. Claiming that Javier Vazquez was a +5.2 win pitcher in 2006, when traditional metrics will tell you that he went 11-12 with a 4.84 ERA, is going to be a tough sell. We know.

However, the tangled web of responsibility for run prevention is not accurately unraveled by simply giving pitchers credit and blame for all earned runs and fielders credit and blame for all unearned runs. As most of you know, there are so many extra variables that go into a pitcher’s ERA that the pitcher himself simply doesn’t have control over. We have to try to extract the pitcher’s responsibility from his team’s run prevention while he’s on the mound. Using ERA or RA simply adds too many non-pitcher factors into the equation to the point that we’re no longer just evaluating the pitcher.

FIP removes defense from the equation by only looking at three factors that a pitcher has demonstrable control over – walks, strikeouts, and home runs allowed. By using FIP, we’re isolating the pitcher’s core abilities and evaluating him based on those skills. Now, we’re not claiming that FIP captures everything a pitcher is responsible for. It is not the perfect context-neutral pitcher run modeler – we know that. But when confronted with a choice of including way too many non-pitcher inputs or leaving out a few minor actual pitcher inputs, the latter was the better choice. You will get more accurate win values for a pitcher using FIP than you will ERA or RA.

Getting back to Vazquez for a second – his 2006 FIP was a full run lower than his ERA. The driving forces behind his struggles were a .321 BABIP and a 65.8% LOB%. Most everyone would agree that we don’t want to penalize him for poor defense played behind him, but how do we untangle the responsibility for the lack of stranded runners? Vazquez was horrible with men on base in ’06, but most of that was BABIP related – a .343 BABIP with men on versus a .284 BABIP with the bases empty. If we’re going to say that he’s not responsible for his high batting average on balls in play, and the batting average on balls in play was responsible for the lack of runners stranded, than how do we remove the former but not the latter? This is what I mean by a tangled web of responsibility in terms of run prevention.

If you wanted to make the argument that the context-sensitive stuff, such as how often a pitcher leaves runners on base, should be included, then you also need to be prepared to fight for WPA/LI as the offensive metric of choice for hitter win values. And honestly, I won’t put up much of an argument – there’s a case to be made for context-sensitive win values as a useful metric, and I’d imagine there will be a day that those are publicly available too. But, there’s a more compelling argument for context neutral win values, which is what we’ve decided to present here. What most of us are interested in knowing is how well a player performed in helping his team win, regardless of the performance of his teammates. To answer that, we have to strip out as much context as we can.

Think of FIP as the pitcher version of wRAA. wRAA doesn’t include non-SB/CS baserunning or situational hitting. FIP doesn’t include batted ball data or situational pitching. Neither are perfect, but but both give us the vast majority of the context-neutral picture.

That doesn’t mean that we’re set in our ways and that these win values will never be improved upon. If and when a new metric like tRA is proven to be significantly more effective in valuing pitchers (and I’m hopeful that it will be, given more data exploration on the topic), we won’t be standing here as guardians of the infallibility of FIP. We want to get to the truth, and do so as quickly and as accurately as possible. I will encourage you (especially those of you in the “tRA is awesome/FIP sucks” camp), though, to not let minor differences cause you to miss the fact that FIP and tRA lead to very similar results.

This afternoon, we’ll talk about replacement level for pitchers, how it differs for each league and role, and how we tackled the issue.

You know the 30-year-old starting pitcher fresh off nearly 200 innings and a 3.38 FIP with the Milwaukee Brewers, but it seems as if teams, or at least reporters, have all but forgotten Ben Sheets. The injuries make a Milton Bradley comparison germane, although that’s where the comparison ends. Naturally, that leaves the Texas Rangers as one of the few teams known as interested.

Even with those injury concerns, Sheets is a valuable asset. Sheets’ streak of 200+ inning seasons ended in 2005. Yet despite reduced innings Sheets has posted win values of 3.5, 4.2, 2.5, and 3.9. That’s an average of 3.5. Coincidentally 2005 was also Derek Lowe’s first season with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and in the same time span, Lowe has averaged 3.48 wins. It’s worth noting that Lowe also pitched in 244 more innings.

(The red line represents Sheets 2008 innings)

This suggests that while Sheets will not match Lowe in quantity, he will match him in quality. It also reinforces the idea that having an above average often-injured pitcher can be beneficial.

CHONE
Sheets 148 IP 3.84 FIP
Lowe 171 IP 3.71 FIP

Marcels
Sheets 173 IP 3.61 FIP
Lowe 185 IP 3.67 FIP

Awfully close, but we know Lowe reportedly wants more than 3/36 with murmurs of a fourth year. Sheets demands haven’t been as publicly known. That doesn’t speak either way about his demands – if they were low enough you would assume the Brewers would jump on re-signing him.

Eric covered the Lowe/Perez offers earlier, if that’s indicative of the entire market, some team is going to wind up with Ben Sheets, and even if he does miss a few starts yearly, some team is not going to be disappointed.

Omar Minaya and the Mets made a 3-yr/$36 mil offer to Derek Lowe a week or two ago. Lowe, and agent Scott Boras, felt the contract would not compensate the pitcher relative to his contributions. Those of us who have covered Lowe’s projected performance here have felt the same way, as Lowe still projects to be an above average pitcher in the 2011 season. I have said, time and time again, that he will end up signing a 3-yr/$45 mil deal or something in that vicinity. And it looks like the Braves might agree.

Frank Wren reportedly has an offer on the table for Lowe that would pay the grounder-inducing righty $15 mil/yr for at least three seasons. In fact, the deal might include an option for a fourth year, if not an outright fourth year guaranteed. Who would the Braves be getting?

Well, Lowe is 35 years old, but has been one of the most consistent, durable, and effective major league starters over the last four seasons. His minimum innings pitched total in that span is 199. He has made 32+ starts each season while averaging approximately a 3.55 ERA and 3.75 FIP. This past season actually wound up being Lowe’s best as a starter. He posted a 3.26 FIP and 3.27 K/BB ratio, both lows in his career work as a starter.

He projects to about +3.6 wins next season, which translates to a fair market value of $16.5 mil. If he declines by 0.6 wins per season, we get the following:

2009: +3.6 at $16.5 mil
2010: +3.0 at $14.9 mil
2011: +2.4 at $13.0 mil

That deal would net +9.0 wins and cost $44.4 mil over three seasons. A four-year deal would come in the $55 mil range. Given that the Braves are reportedly valuing Lowe at $0.6 mil more than his 3-yr projection and $5 mil more than his 4-yr projection, the deal looks pretty sound. The Mets have made it clear that pitching is their top concern, but Tim Redding is nowhere near enough. If they are not serious about pursuing Lowe, are they going to re-sign Oliver Perez?

Well, according to other reports that have recently surfaced, an offer to Ollie may already be on the table. The contract could be close to 3-yrs/$30 mil. Now, perhaps the Mets knew Lowe would reject the $36 mil and negotiations would begin, but it seems odd to consider Perez that close to Lowe’s production level from a monetary standpoint.

Perez may be just 27 years old, but he has not put it together yet, so to speak. Can he? Maybe. At times, he has looked dominant, but prefacing the dominance with “at times” should speak for itself. While a member of the Mets, he has experienced a big disconnect between ERA and FIP. Last season, Perez posted a 4.68 FIP but a much lower 4.22 ERA.

Over the last three seasons, his win values have been -0.3, +2.1, +1.2. Suffice it to say, nowhere near Lowe. His projections call for around +1.7 wins next season, which places him closer to the $8.5 mil/yr range than $10+ mil/yr. Maybe the Mets are hoping to re-sign him in the hopes that he finally harnesses his raw talent and breaks out.

If they see him as a +2.5 win pitcher next season capable of sustaining that performance with just a slight decline in 2011, his fair market values look like:

2009: +2.5 at $11.5 mil
2010: +2.5 at $12.5 mil
2011: +2.3 at $12.4 mil

Put together, Perez would be a +7.3 win pitcher earning $36.4 mil. Based on the supposed 3-yr/$30 mil contract, the Mets, whether they realize it or not, are valuing him as being capable of producing somewhere in this vicinity. If he continues his inconsistency, however, his value could realistically be cut in half. As of right now, though, the monetary tradeoff isn’t the same.

If the Braves are offering $15 mil/yr for three seasons, the Mets would at least have to go to $16 mil/yr for three seasons. They might even have to guarantee a fourth year or raise the salary even more. Potentially, we could be talking about 4-yrs/$66 mil for Lowe or 3-yrs/$30 mil for Perez. For Mets fans who have seen their team fall apart the last couple of seasons, the consistency of Lowe may be worth the extra money.

Of course, if he signs with the Braves in the next day or two, they won’t have a choice, but any Mets fans out there who come here: would you rather take a chance on Perez, hoping the young lefty will return to performance closer to that one season with the Pirates? Or would you rather pay extra money for Lowe, given that he has been eerily consistent in the recent years?

The Hall of Fame inductees were announced today. I was not aware that today would be that day and upon learning who got in, I found myself with two reactions: good for Rickey, he was a Hall of Fame worthy player no matter what rational criteria you use and disappointment that Jim Rice finally made his way in. Mostly though I was left with a resounding apathy. Like every award that is voted on by the writers association or by the general fans, I can no longer get emotionally invested in it. The process is too broken, the voters too uninformed.

People who I was (and mostly still am) willing to defer to had by and large made the relevant cases for why Jim Rice did not belong among the game’s supposedly greatest elites. That was fine enough for me since my aforementioned lack of caring about the Hall of Fame (other than to be happy for the people that I wanted to get in since I imagine they do still care about the honor) gave me little motivation to investigate otherwise.

But it’s worth a little bit of work now that Rice is officially in. Granted, we only have sketchy information for that time period, and I don’t have historical weights off-hand, so I’m going to present a range of possible values for Jim Rice’s career and we’ll see how that stacks up.

Rice’s career wOBA ends up at .373 or so depending on which formula you use, which is quite a good number, especially since the league average on base percentage (which wOBA aims to be scaled against) from 1975 through 1988 is roughly .328. Over the roughly 9,000 plate appearances of Rice’s career, we’re left with Rice generating just shy of 360 runs, or to put it a more familiar context, about 24 runs per 600 PAs.

Seems pretty good but there’s a giant missing part here and it’s green and very tall. A right-handed hitter in Fenway Park enjoys a tremendous boost to his hitting stats. Given Rice’s hitting profile, his overall numbers are likely to have contributed to a 2% increase in his wOBA. That sounds small, but when adjusted, Rice’s wOBA drops down to .366, and his value per season to 20 runs. As it turns out, that would mark Rice down for roughly 300 runs over his career, a number very much close to Baseball-Reference’s Batting Runs (294.7) which is park and league adjusted.

Positional wise, Rice spent three-quarters of his career in a corner outfield spot and the remainder at DH meaning that he averaged a ten run penalty per season for his position. Left is to make guesses about how much his defense was worth. If you thought he was an average defender, Rice grades out at about the three-win level. Having never seen Rice play, I cannot attest to any valid opinion on his defense, but even granting Rice average defensive skill, is 15 seasons of three wins worth a Hall of Fame induction?

The Tampa Bay Rays continued their extremely solid offseason today by signing Gabe Kapler to a 1-yr deal worth $1 mil. Andrew Friedman and company previously traded Edwin Jackson to the Tigers for outfielder Matt Joyce, signed reliever Joe Nelson to a nice deal, and inked Pat Burrell to a 2-yr/$16 mil contract. These moves might not carry the same flash value as Sabathia/Burnett/Teixeira, but improve the club at positions meriting an uprade.

Kapler is coming off of pretty much the best season of his career. Oddly enough, the career year came on the heels of nothing, as he was, for all intents and purposes, retired from major league baseball. Kapler’s last season came in 2006, when he produced a .311 wOBA in just 147 PA. Last year, as a member of the Brewers, Kapler starred in centerfield while Mike Cameron served his suspension and began the season as one of baseball’s best.

And, he was the subject of Dave Cameron’s first post here at Fangraphs. One other interesting Rays-related note: my first post here involved Pat Burrell, Kapler’s new teammate. Coincidence? I think not! Okay, yeah, definitely a coincidence.

Kapler played 96 games last year, amassing 245 PA and posting a .362 wOBA. Adjusting for park effects, Kapler was worth +8 runs offensively last year. He played +5 run defense in centerfield though fell below the average mark in the corner outfield spots. All told, he produced a 1.7 win season in 2008, enough to command a fair market value of $7.7 mil.

His projection calls for a wOBA around .333, good for +1 run offensively. On the defensive side, it seems safe to expect around +1 or +2 runs again. In terms of playing time, it is not likely that Kapler will log more than 300 PA in 100 games. These plate appearances could come as a result of B.J. Upton not being ready for opening day. Kapler could also platoon in RF with Joyce or Gabe Gross. Or, he could just end up as the fourth outfielder.

Taking his projected playing time into account, Kapler appears to be a +0.75 to +0.80 win player next season. At $4.5-$4.8 mil/win, his fair market value would fall somewhere between $3.3 and $3.8 mil. The Rays signed him for approximately 1/3 of that value.

A low risk move in every sense of the phrase, the Rays are able to cover themselves should Kapler get hurt or prove to be ineffective. Either way, this move works out for them. If he produces like Michael Bourn or 2008-Andruw Jones, the team can cut him loose without wasting much money. Or, should he prove to be every bit as valuable as last season, they have him as a steal.