Straight out of literature; embattled young man takes his dreams elsewhere, becomes a lionized figure in the world of baseball, then experiences a tragic fall from grace. David Ortiz is one of Theo Epstein’s masterstrokes as GM, and could quickly become one of his greatest challenges. A contract extension in 2006 has Ortiz earning 12.5 million this and next year, and then a club option for 2011 without a buyout. If Ortiz continues hitting like he’s hitting – not at all – the contract can quickly become an albatross.

The best method to avoid such faith is to figure out whether Ortiz will improve or not and then decide on an appropriate action to pursue. Ortiz’ vitals show a declined walk rate, increased strikeout rate, and uncharacteristic ISO. Ortiz’ BABIP is .263, lower than last year, and far lower than Ortiz’ career .307 BABIP. This is despite an increased amount of line drives and fly balls being hit. In the old days, more fly balls meant more homeruns, right now, Ortiz’ HR/FB is 1.7%, a drastic decrease from previous years; 26.1% in 2006, 17.2% in 2007, and 14.8% in 2008.

Ortiz’ O-Swing% is at a post-2002 high 25.8%, the previous five-year high came in 2008; 20.6%. This means Ortiz is swinging out of the strike zone more and this is leading to the changes in walk and strikeout rates. Ortiz is swinging nearly 50% of the time and only making contact 76.1% of the time, consider that his career averages in those measures are 44.6% and 78.1%.

Hit Tracker Online is a ridiculously handy resource. You get a graphical view consisting of each Ortiz’ during the last four years and over measures, like the speed of the ball off of the bat. In 2007 Ortiz launched 35 homeruns and had an average speed of nearly 105 MPH, that number was actually up in 2008 to 106.3 MPH but his amount of homeruns dropped. The difference seems relatively unimportant, and the sample size for this year’s SOB – which registers in around 96 MPH, for what it’s worth – is so small that nothing can be drawn from the data.

Pardon me for stating the obvious, but something isn’t quite right with Ortiz and it seems to be physical. Either Oritz’ pitch recognition abilities are slipping, which would explain the increased hacks and decrease solid contact, and/or his bat speed, which again, would explain the former two as well as the loss of power. I’m not sure Ortiz can regain either ability, even if I do think he’s going to finish with a wOBA well above .300.

Of course, I also never thought I’d write that about David Ortiz.

When Jack Zduriencik took over as GM of the Seattle Mariners, one of his first decisions was that he was going to sign Russell Branyan to play first base, and that he was going to give him an opportunity to prove that he could be an everyday player. Heading into his age 33 season, Zduriencik was convinced that Branyan could produce in a regular role, and was going to let Branyan prove him wrong.

So far, he looks like a genius. Branyan entered the day hitting .306/.395/.590, and he just hit a Trevor Cahill fastball about 750 feet for his 11th home run of the season. Given a chance to hit against left-handed pitching for the first time, he’s responded by showing a fairly normal platoon split – .312/.407/.634 vs RHPs and .294/.373/.529 against LHPs.

Watching him play on a daily basis, and looking at his career performances, I have to wonder just what kind of career Branyan missed out on for no real reason. Starting in 2000, when he got some real playing time for the first time in his career as a 24-year-old, Branyan has never posted a wOBA below .326. His career wOBA is .350, and his wRAA of 43.0 in 2,487 PA paints the picture of a guy who was worth about 10 runs more than a league average hitter over each full season’s worth of playing time.

He’s not a bad defender. He’s not a slow, plodding runner. He’s a pretty good hitter with ridiculous power. But, here he is, at age 33, getting his fist real shot as a major league regular. The Mariners are the ninth major league team he’s played for, yet none of the first eight saw fit to give him more than a couple hundred trips to the plate per season.

Branyan isn’t this good, but there’s a decent argument to be made that he could have been the early decade’s version of Carlos Pena had someone been willing to give him a chance. I’m glad that he’s finally gotten one and is running with it, but unfortunately, his career legacy will probably be a giant “what if?”

2008 Draft Slot: 19th overall
Top Pick: Andrew Cashner, RHP, Texas Christian University
Best Pick: Jay Jackson, RHP, Furman University (9th round)
Keep an Eye On: Chris Carpenter, RHP, Kent State (3rd round)
Notes: Chris Carpenter has always had the stuff to make scouts drool, but a stream of constant injury concerns caused him to slip every year. He’s been healthy in pro ball so far and has the numbers to prove it, although he needs to be challenged and moved out of low-A. Jay Jackson was a two-way player in college, who has taken to full-time pitching like a fish to water. He’s already in double-A. Andrew Cashner had his greatest success in college as a reliever, but the Cubs have him back in the starting rotation. The results have not been pretty. Cashner can touch 99 mph with the fastball, but his control is not good at all.

2007 Draft Slot: Third overall
Top Pick: Josh Vitters, 3B, California high school
Best Pick: Josh Vitters
Worst Pick: Brandon Guyer, OF, University of Virginia (5th round)
Notes: There were three quality prep third basemen at the top of the 2007 draft and Josh Vitters was the second to go off the board (sandwiched between Mike Moustakas, 2nd overall, and Matt Dominguez, 12th overall). However, he struggled early and has fallen behind the other two. Vitters is making more noise in 2009 with a .355 average and 10 homers, but he’s also a level behind the pack. Luckily it’s a marathon, not a sprint. The Cubs’ second pick, catcher Josh Donaldson, helped land pitcher Rich Harden from the A’s in 2008.

2006 Draft Slot: 13th overall
Top Pick: Tyler Colvin, OF, Clemson University
Best Pick: Jeff Samardzija, RHP, Notre Dame University (Fifth round)
Worst Pick: Tyler Colvin
Notes: Everyone scratched their heads from the moment that the Cubs grabbed Tyler Colvin with the 13th overall pick and now everyone’s bald… no one has stopped scratching. Colvin spent 2008 in double-A and was demoted to high-A to begin 2009. He’s hitting .253 with one home run. The Cubs lacked 2nd to 4th round selections and then spent a boatload of money to sway Jeff Samardzija away from the National Football League. It looks like a smart move, but he may be better off as a reliever. Time will tell.

2009 Draft Slot: 31st overall
Draft Preference (2006-08): College for the most part
MLB Club Need: Second base, Third base, Catcher
Organizational Need: Left-handed pitching, Left field, Right field, First base
Organizational Strength: Third base, Shortstop
Notes: The club does not pick until 31st overall, so it’s almost impossible to know who is going to be there, especially in this draft where no one is even sure who’s in the mix for No. 2 overall. The Cubs could look to someone like James Paxton, who would immediately become the best left-handed pitcher in the system. He’s a college starter that can hit the high 90s, but his numbers have not been good this year – so he could slide to them. Paxton is a high risk, high reward player (but a much better bet than Colvin).

We had a technical issue calculating the in-season ZiPS projections this morning and many of you noticed that they mysteriously disappeared from the player pages.

The problem has been fixed and the updated projections are now back where they should be. Thanks for your patience.

I’m going to assume that the line-up that the Mets ran out last night was not the one that Omar Minaya was counting on to lead his team to the top of the NL East. Here’s the team that they put on the field, as well as their ZIPS projected wOBA for the rest of the season:

Pagan, CF, .312 woBA
Castillo, 2B, .324 wOBA
Wright, 3B, .415 wOBA
Sheffield, LF, .343 wOBA
Tatis, 1B, .334 wOBA
Martinez, RF, .308 wOBA
Santos, C, .273 wOBA
Martinez, SS, .263 wOBA

Wright is great, Sheffield is hitting like its 1999 instead of 2009, and Castillo and Tatis are useful role player, but that is a line-up that badly misses Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran, not to mention Carlos Delgado, Daniel Murphy, and Ryan Church.

Of course, they were playing the Washington Generals Nationals, so they racked up a fairly easy win anyway. But against an actual major league team, that’s not a line-up that is going to score many runs.

Fernando Martinez is a really good young talent, but he’s not ready to produce at a level that a contending team needs from a corner outfielder. Pagan is a decent reserve outfielder, but you don’t want him playing with any regularity. Santos and Martinez are not major league players.

The Mets stand a half game behind the first place Phillies, and they’ve learned the last few years that the margin between first and second place can be microscopic. They aren’t in a position to be punting winnable games, and while Reyes and Beltran will get healthy again relatively soon, the team needs better back-up plans. They can’t be caught running out a line-up like this too often.

Trading season is just about to kick off. I’d suggest that the Mets should be at the front of the line.

Nothing annoys me more with regards to baseball than seeing pitchers who have clearly lost all semblances of effectiveness still given opportunities to throw at the major league level (SEE: Sidney Ponson). However, I considered it to be a good deal when the Washington Nationals signed Daniel Cabrera this past offseason. After all, the commitment to Cabrera did not extend beyond the 2009 season and they would be paying him just $2.6 mil. All sorts of questions surrounding his health and abilities surfaced at the time of the signing but it seemed that the Nationals were willing to risk that Cabrera’s arm would hold up for at least one more year.

Nine games in, the plug has been pulled on the experiment. Cabrera has been designated for assignment after abysmally bad production. In fact, acting GM Mike Rizzo did not sugarcoat his thought process on the matter, saying specifically – “I was tired of watching him.”

In 40 innings of work, Cabrera surrendered 48 hits, walked 35, and managed just 16 strikeouts. No, that isn’t an error on my part, mixing up the walk and strikeout totals. Cabrera fanned 3.6 batters per nine with a 7.9 walk rate. His .313 BABIP did not necessarily portend insanely bad luck but a 2.08 WHIP coupled with a 57% strand rate isn’t going to do anything other than drive fans and executives crazy. With a 5.85 ERA and 6.44 FIP, the Nationals reached their breaking point and cut ties with the tall righthander.

Something is clearly wrong with Cabrera, as pitchers do not just magically lose four or five miles per hour on their fastball in under two seasons. If he has any hope of pitching in the majors, the health issues need to be rectified. A 0.46 K/BB is inexcusable at the major league level, even for the Nationals. Cabrera’s pitch selection should have been scrutinized more as well. You don’t throw a fastball with average of worse movement almost 70% of the time if it isn’t 93+ mph. Cabrera seemed to be sticking to his old guns, so to speak, even though the ammo had run out long ago.

Even in a penny-pinching market like the one experienced last season, I cannot fathom any team bringing him aboard at this point unless his health problems are resolved. A good pitching coach can teach a new pitch or potentially show a few mechanical pointers to increase velocity by fractions of miles per hour, but nobody can snap his fingers and provide what Cabrera currently lacks. For a few years, Cabrera was like the jerk boyfriend that all girls think they can change with a bit of guidance. Unfortunately for those who spent a great deal of time attempting to streamline the transition, it seems that the problems were not mechanical or mental, really, but physical.

I could see Cabrera having some sort of surgery and resurfacing in a couple of years like Kris Benson did, but his window as a young stud prospect bound for success if he corrects a few minor flaws has closed. Thankfully, nobody, including Rizzo, will have to watch this incarnation of Cabrera any more this season.

Of all of the pitchers struggling on the Phillies, Brad Lidge is the most surprising. A glance at the relievers’ WAR board has Lidge firmly at the bottom of the totem pole; something unimaginable just a few months ago. Lidge’s 9.15 ERA is a scrambled mess of the 1.95 ERA posted last year. Lidge’s important metrics aren’t fairing too well either.

About 32% of the batters to step to the plate against Lidge last year went down via strikeout. That number is down to 21% this year. Fewer pitches are being thrown inside of the zone, and far less first-strikes are being recorded, leaving Lidge down in most counts. Batters are still swinging out of the zone at about the same rate but Lidge is still getting fewer strikes overall. When he is throwing pitches in the zone, batters are making contact at a ridiculously high rate. Lidge’s career Z-Contact% is 74.5%, this year it’s 86.4%.

Of the 29 hits given up, 12 have gone for extra bases, including six homeruns and doubles apiece. Lidge’s BABIP is a rotund .400. Combining this information, it would be easy to infer that Lidge is having a ton of line drives hit against him, yet this is simply not the case. His line drive percentage is at 16.7%, lower than last season or his career total. The Phillies defense is middle of the pack in UZR and BABIP against, which suggests Lidge is an outlier, that or the story lies beneath the numbers.

Looking at the pitch data, Lidge’s pitch usage is roughly the same, but velocity on his fastball is down just a bit. Lidge’s slider is still moving about the same, as is his fastball, which raises all kinds of questions about why both pitches are being hit harder than before. Our linear weights have Llidge’s fastball at -5.51 runs per 100 pitches and his slider at 0.27 per 100; last year Lidge’s fastball was worth -0.53 runs per 100 pitches and his slider 2.5 runs per 100. So again, what’s the deal here?

Per Baseball-Reference, Lidge’s fly balls have resulted in three doubles, the same amount as his line drives allowed. Lidge has a .192 fly ball BABIP against while his line drive BABIP against is .900. If those numbers seem high, well, they are. Major League average for fly ball BABIP is .143 this year; .725 for line drives. Either Lidge is unlucky, is being hit harder than the league average pitcher – which the homeruns support, although not the line drive percentage – or a combination.

Until we get more data to suggest otherwise, I’m going to assume Lidge will be fine, but he’s an interesting case none the less.

Over the Memorial Day weekend, it was leaked that Alfonso Soriano had told Cubs manager Lou Piniella that he would be willing to play second base if it meant that Micah Hoffpauir could get more playing time.

So far for the Cubs, second base has been manned primarily by Mike Fontenot when he’s not playing third filling in for the injured Aramis Ramirez, and Aaron Miles. Essentially, if they made this sort of move, the Cubs would be saying that they are not happy with the offensive output of either of those two to date and are looking for ways to get more punch in the batting order. Is that reasonable?

First off, Mike Fontenot probably deserves the nominal starting job. He’s been hurt by a bad BABIP this season that seems mostly due to bad luck. Based on his core numbers, he seems likely to positively regress to somewhere above his 2007 numbers. ZiPS sees him at a .328 wOBA for the rest of the season. He also provides a glove worth about +5 runs a year at second.

If we consider that the base case, would the Cubs be better off shifting Alfonso Soriano to second base and Micah Hoffpauir to left field? Soriano is already in the everyday lineup, so all we have to do for him is compare the impact of his defensive shift. Based on prior UZRs, Soriano is about 20 runs less proficient at second base than in a corner outfield spot. He would gain 10 runs back in scarcity value, but that still leaves a net negative of 15 runs (factoring in Fontenot’s +5) and that’s assuming that Soriano hasn’t gotten any worse at second base in the 3+ years since he last played there regularly and that his hitting wouldn’t deteriorate playing a tougher position.

We do not have enough defensive sample for Hoffpauir to say anything about his defense, so assuming for now that he would be an average left fielder (the scanty evidence we do have suggests he’s below average), Hoffpauir’s bat would have to be at least 15 runs (over a full season) more valuable than Fontenot’s in order for the net benefit to be positive. ZiPS sees Hoffpauir as worth a .357 wOBA the rest of the season. Over 600 PAs, the difference between a .357 wOBA and a .328 one is about 15 runs.

On a strict numbers basis, it looks like a neutral move for the Cubs, but that comes with a lot of assumptions about Hoffpauir’s defense and Soriano’s ability to transition back to second base. Even with those assumptions, the net gain for the Cubs only looks to be on the order of about nothing. Hardly seems worth the risk.

I was talking to Eric this afternoon about Erik Bedard, and during the conversation, I mentioned something to him that I noticed a while ago but hadn’t talked about here – this winter is shaping up to be a free agent auction of the walking wounded. Ever wondered how much a talented but injury prone starting pitcher is worth? We’re going to find out this winter.

The list of potential free agent pitchers this winter is littered with names who offer remarkable upside when healthy, but are among the pitchers that have track records showing that they just can’t really be counted on.

Erik Bedard. Rich Harden. Ben Sheets. Kelvim Escobar. Brad Penny. John Smoltz. Justin Duchscherer. Carl Pavano. Jason Schmidt.

If you were going to assemble the All-Time-Talented-But-Fragile Pitching Staff, those nine would probably end up prominently featured. It’s a collection of big arms with top shelf stuff, all of whom come with needles, scar tissue, and more than enough MRIs to build a bridge to nowhere.

It’s a veritable plethora of pitching potential wrapped in all the reminders of how fragile an arm really is. A couple of years ago, a rotation of Bedard-Harden-Sheets would be the kind of thing that dreams were made of. Now, it’s a race to see which of them can grab the largest collection of innings-based contract incentives.

It should be interesting, if nothing else. Last winter, we saw a glut of corner outfielders hit the market at the same time that teams were shifting away from poor defensive sluggers. This winter, the market will be saturated with ultra high risk/reward pitchers. We’ll find out pretty quickly how well teams have learned from the mistakes of the past – like, say, the last time Schmidt was available in free agency.

2008 Draft Slot: 16th overall
Top Pick: Brett Lawrie, 2B, British Columbia (Canada) high school
Best Pick: Brett Lawrie
Keep an Eye On: Logan Schafer, OF, Cal Poly State University (3rd round)
Notes: Logan Schafer, a gifted defender, is making huge strides offensively despite being quickly promoted to high-A to begin 2009. He’s hitting more than .300 and he’s trimmed his strikeout rate by 10%. The walk rate, though, is too low at about 4%. Brett Lawrie has looked good at the plate for such a young player – and given his inexperience as a Canadian product. His move from catcher to second base, though, hurts his value a bit, especially considering his defense at the keystone is… not good.

Bonus: Here is my pre-2008 draft interview with Brett Lawrie.

2007 Draft Slot: Seventh overall
Top Pick: Matt LaPorta, OF/1B, University of Florida
Best Pick: Matt LaPorta
Worst Pick: Dan Merklinger, LHP, Seton Hall (6th round)
Notes: Remember when Seton Hall was a powerhouse school? Dan Merklinger has struggled with staying healthy and throwing strikes. But it’s not a bad draft when your worst pick (which isn’t that bad) doesn’t occur until the sixth round. Matt LaPorta was a valuable pick because it helped the club get C.C. Sabathia from the Indians for the playoff race in 2008. The club lacked a second-round pick, but it found value in the third round with Jonathan Lucroy, who is now in double-A.

2006 Draft Slot: 16th overall
Top Pick: Jeremy Jeffress, RHP, Virginia high school
Best Pick: Jeremy Jeffress
Worst Pick: Brent Brewer, IF, Georgia high school (2nd round)
Notes: Brent Brewer would be a great marketing tool for the Brewers, but the bat just does not look like its going to play above A-ball. Jeremy Jeffress is still one of the most talented players in the draft but he’s painfully inconsistent and there are questions regarding his maturity and dedication, as well. Cole Gillespie (3rd round) and Lee Haydel (19th round) both appear to have the potential to make the Majors as fourth outfielders, if not more.

2009 Draft Slot: 26th overall
Draft Preference (2006-08): Best available player, college or prep
MLB Club Need: Second base, Catcher, Relief pitching
Organizational Need: Right field, Second base, First base, Left-handed pitching
Organizational Strength: Center field, Catcher
Notes: The Brewers organization does not pick until the back end of the first round in 2009, but the club also has two supplemental first round picks for losing pitchers C.C. Sabathia and Brian Shouse to free agency. The club also has an extra second-round pick for Sabathia (It would have been a first-rounder if the Yanks hadn’t signed Mark Teixeira too).