This week we’re taking a look at some of the top rookies in Major League Baseball in an attempt to ascertain who is the most deserving candidate for Rookie of the Year in both the American and National Leagues. Today, we’ll take a look at four position players in the American League (minimum 200 at-bats).

Elvis Andrus, SS, Texas Rangers

Andrus received a lot of hype early on in the season for his solid play, but that has quieted down a bit. The soon-to-be 21-year-old infielder had a slow June and July average-wise and the power he showed in May never reappeared. He hit two homers and had a total of eight extra-base hits that month, but has just six extra base hits since June 1 (157 at-bats). Overall, the youngster has a respectable line of .262/.326/.361 with 20 steals in 22 attempts. With Andrus, though, his defense must also be weighed heavily when discussing his value to the Rangers. He’s made 14 errors, but Andrus gets to balls no other shortstop can dream of reaching and his UZR of 7.8 is third in all of Major League Baseball behind Jack Wilson (Seattle/Pittsburgh) and J.J. Hardy (Milwaukee).

Gordon Beckham, 3B, Chicago White Sox

Beckham has not been in the Majors quite as long as the other three rookies, but he has arguably made the most noise over the past month. After a slow start (that oddly had some writers calling him a bust with a lousy swing), the infielder finished his first month in the Majors with a line of .267/.353/.387 in 75 at-bats. Since then, he’s been one of the club’s best hitters and now has an overall line of .302/.369/.483 with six homers in 205 at-bats. The 22-year-old also has 19 doubles, which is tops amongst rookies in the AL. Beckham also leads in average, on-base percentage, slugging and RBIs. He’s third in homers behind Reimold and teammate Jayson Nix. The former college and minor league shortstop has also been learning his new position on the fly at the hot corner.

Chris Getz, 2B, Chicago White Sox

A former fourth-round pick out of the University of Michigan, Getz just keeps plugging along. The middle infielder isn’t flashy but he’s put together a respectable first season in the Majors with a line of .268/.320/.368 in 310 at-bats. He has 18 steals in 20 attempts. Getz has also scored 43 runs. He doesn’t have much power (.100 ISO) but he has a healthy line drive rate at 19.7%. The 25-year-old has a solid strikeout rate at 13.9 K% but his walk rate is a little low at 6.1 BB%. Getz looks like a solid No. 2 hitter. He leads AL rookies in hits and is tied with Elvis Andrus in runs scored.

Nolan Reimold, LF, Baltimore Orioles

Reimold’s teammate (and the top prospect in baseball entering 2009) Matt Wieters is slowly picking up steam but he has yet to top 200 at-bats in the majors this season. As such, Reimold is currently the favorite amongst Baltimore’s rookies to win the AL Rookie of the Year. Reimold hit a few rough patches in the minors, which temporarily clouded his potential, but he entered pro ball with some hype as a second round draft pick out of Bowling Green University in 2005. The 25-year-old outfielder has a solid line of .272/.365/.444 with 10 homers in 239 at-bats. He also has an encouraging walk rate for a young player at 11.8 BB%, and a solid strikeout rate for a power-hitting prospect at 20.1 K%. Reimold leads rookies in the AL in homers, walks, and is second in RBI as well as OPS.

So, who do you think is most deserving amongst AL rookies for the year-end award? Will Wieters or another rookie hitter climb the charts in the final two months and steal the coveted title of best rookie hitter?

Tomorrow, we’ll look at some rookie pitchers in the American League.

When the Reds announced that they had traded David Weathers to the Brewers for a player to be named later or cash, I saw a few people scratch their heads. After all, Cincinatti just traded for Scott Rolen to bolster their roster for the rest of this year and next year, so why did they turn around and give away a veteran setup man with a 3.32 ERA a week later?

It’s not as confusing as it might look on the surface, however. Weathers just isn’t very good, and the Reds saved themselves just over $1 million in salary for the rest of this year, plus $400,000 they would have had to pay him to go away over the winter.

Despite the shiny ERA, he hasn’t pitched well at all this year, posting a 5.39 FIP. In addition to his usual spotty command and lack of strikeouts, he’s also added a home run problem this year, which completes the replacement level reliever trifecta. The only reason his ERA still makes him look useful is the massively unsustainable .200 batting average on balls in play he has run this year, which the Brewers shouldn’t be counting on going forward. Before you get all “some pitchers can outperform league average BABIP!” on me, Weathers career mark in the category is .309, so I humbly submit that while some pitchers can indeed limit hits on balls in play to some small degree, Weathers isn’t one of them.

In reality, the Brewers just traded for a rather overpriced reputation. At 39, Weathers career is teetering on the brink of being over, but the fact that he’s been good before and had a superficially low ERA made him look attractive enough as a waiver claim, I guess. However, with the team fading out of the NL Central race, it’s a little bit curious why they’d throw even a little bit of money at a guy who isn’t much better than generic Triple-A waiver fodder. The Reds were right to get rid of Weathers – he’s old, not good, and makes more money than he should.

Why the Brewers claimed him is the real head-scratcher.

The Jason Giambi Reunion Tour has officially been canceled. The last-place A’s gave the aging slugger his walking papers after he was able to scratch together a rather woeful .197/.332/.364 line. His release probably means that it is curtains for a successful, albeit tainted career.

This season has been chock full of disappointment for the A’s, who looked like contenders headed into the season. It appeared they might have won the Defensively Challenged Slugger Sweepstakes after they signed Giambi to a low risk, one-year, $5.25 million deal, which included a $4 million option with a $1.25 buyout. The contract essentially valued Giambi as a 1.2 win player — bargain basement stuff considering Giambi was worth nearly 6 WAR over his previous two healthy years, which included a 32 HR season with the Yankees just last year.

Now that it’s all but over for Giambi, where does he rank among the all-time greats? I’m not sure anyone will confuse Giambi as a future Hall of Famer considering his checkered past and also the era he played in, but for his career he was one heck of a ballplayer, even if he was quite overpaid from that colossal contract the Yankees gave him.

407 HR, 43rd all time
1319 RBI, 89th all time
.527 slugging, 52nd all time
1255 walks, 45th all time
143 Adjusted OPS+, 52nd all time
1512 runs created, 76th all time, tied with Ernie Banks and Lou Brock
.405 career on base percentage, tied for 45th all time with Bobby Abreu
.248 ISO, 32nd all time

His 52.3 wins above replacement ranks 150th overall according to Rally’s historical WAR database. That total is better than 48 players currently in the Hall right now, for what it’s worth.

Just for fun, here are some mostly meaningless historical comparisons for your enjoyment:

And another lashing of a dead horse:

Over the weekend Matthew covered the American League East race, meanwhile the Tampa Bay Rays made a few moves to make the last fourth of the season a bit more interesting.

The Rays catching tandem of Dioner Navarro and Michel Hernandez combined for the lowest wOBA in the league at .262 or a .227/.262/.335 line. Enter Gregg Zaun, acquired from the Orioles for cash and a player to be named later, the veteran journeyman is hitting .243/.351/.370 and represents an offensive blizzard compared to the snow globe the Rays were previously trotting out there. If you assume Zaun gets most of the remaining ~200 plate appearances and hits to his ZiPS projection (.321 wOBA) he represents a ~3-4 run improvement over Navarro’s projected performance.

Along with being a patient hitter capable, Zaun has a reputation of being a decent defensive catcher. We don’t attempt to quantify defense, but everyone who has attempted agrees with conventional scouting that Zaun is a good defender minus an iffy throwing arm. Navarro on the other hand has struggled with actually catching the ball at times and questions about his ability to do the small things behind the plate were intensified with Hernandez’ presence. Whether or not the difference is worthwhile or not is just gravy to the offensive upgrade.

As if one veteran addition wasn’t enough, the Rays claimed Russ Springer on waivers and were granted his services on Saturday. Springer comes from Oakland where his 3.39 FIP was surprisingly met with his highest HR/FB% in years. Somehow Springer’s BABIP is .400 despite 60% fly balls. Major league average BABIP on fly balls is .138 while Springer’s is .174. His groundballs and line drives are becoming hits more often than league average as well, but he’s heading to a team loaded with stout outfield defenders like Carl Crawford, B.J. Upton, and Gabe Gross. For some reason I don’t see that BABIP sticking the rest of the way.

Neither move is going to catapult the Rays over the Red Sox or Yankees, but they’ve been super active on the waiver wire for the second consecutive year. Who says the acquisition madness ends on July 31st?

Earlier, I went through the actual, run differential and BaseRuns standings of the top three in the AL East and came out with three different positions for each team one through three, depending on the method. Today I am looking at discrete units of each team (pitching, defense, offense) with our best available metrics, in my opinion, and see where the teams stack up.

First up, pitching. We use FIP here at FanGraphs and I am also partial to tRA as you may have noticed, so I will list both. Based off FIP, FanGraphs lists the Red Sox pitching staff at 18.8 wins above replacement, the Rays at 11.6 and the Yanks at 11.4. tRA only reports runs against average, and it has Boston at 68.8, Tampa at -13.9 and New York at -21.4. Either way, we have the Red Sox well out in front, through tRA sees a larger gulf between them and the other two teams.

For defense, we make use of UZR here on FanGraphs. The Rays lead the three teams with a 38.8 runs above average mark, third best in all the Majors. The Yankees are at -14.7 runs and the Red Sox are dead last at -29.8 runs. That certainly helps to level the playing field between the teams when it comes to the runs allowed department.

For offense, I will list two methods. The first is the baserunning-included version of wOBA presented here on FanGraphs. Factoring in positional and replacement level adjustments, done automatically, we have the following figures for runs above replacement

wOBA
BOS – 173.6
NYA – 246.4
TBA – 217.7

Another method to estimate run scoring ability would be to look at just that half of the BaseRuns output, which gives us these readings

BaseRuns
BOS – 560
NYA – 613
TBA – 589

Do not worry about converting one to another. Here is what sounds like delicious agreement between the two systems. The Yankees are tops in both, followed by Tampa in both, 28.7 runs behind by wOBA, 24 runs behind by BaseRuns. Boston is in the rear, 72.8 runs behind New York by wOBA, 53 by BaseRuns. 20 runs is a bit more than I would like to see in difference for perfect agreement, but it is pretty solid.

Adding it all together looks like this. By FIP, UZR and wOBA (the three listed here on FanGraphs) we would expect to see:
Tampa, —
New York, 1.5
Boston, 3.5

By tRA, UZR and BaseRuns, we arrive at:
Tampa, —
Boston, 1.0
New York, 4.0

That is a lot of different standings to look at so consider this a summation. Apart from actual wins and losses, Tampa always rates favorably, as either the divison leader or a close second (and Tampa has since taken over the run differential lead from Boston after last night’s game). Who deserves second place between Boston and New York is much harder to figure and essentially is a toss up. No matter which system you use, all three teams are within striking distance and that should make this a real exciting pennant drive as they fight for a likely, and maximum, two playoff spots.

Keeping in theme today at FanGraphs with the look at teams in general, I decided to take a look into the AL East and examine how the three contenders, Boston, New York and Tampa have performed so far to date.

First of all, we have the traditional benchmark, won loss record. At time of writing, they look as follows:
New York, 65-42, —
Boston RS, 62-44, 2.5
Tampa Bay, 60-48, 5.5

Looking at run differential paints a slightly different picture:
Boston RS, 63-43, —
Tampa Bay, 63-45, 1.0
New York, 61-46, 2.5

Run differential does not tell the whole story however, as there are various other factors, namely luck, that can still skew results this far into the season. Instead, I like to look at a couple other measures. One is straight BaseRuns. If you are not familair with the model, here is a decent starting point.

BaseRuns concludes that Boston has been really lucky at keeping runs off the board, that the Rays have been a touch unlucky at plating runs and that the Yankees have been very slightly unlucky on both ends. BaseRuns would set the standings as follows:
Tampa Bay, 64-44, —
New York, 63-44, 0.5
Boston RS, 59-47, 4.0

Three measurements, three different leaders. In fact, each team appears in each possible spot in the respected order. We can introduce a fourth method here, looking at discrete units of the team (pitching, defense, offense) with our best metrics and see where the teams stack up. That will be part 2.

Well, this was unanticipated. I’m not sure what is more surprising – that Carl Pavano has actually thrown nearly 2000 pitches this season, or that Carl Pavano is an actual upgrade to the Twins’ rotation. The Twins’ rotation looked to be their saving grace headed into the season, but injuries and disappointing performances (I’m looking at you, Francisco Liriano) have kept them behind the Tigers and White Sox in the AL Central.

Minnesota fans probably will see what’s on the surface — a legendary bust of a free agent signing from years gone by who just so happens to be sporting a 5.37 ERA — and be unhappy, but that’s not quite fair to Pavano. While he has been known to have bouts of awfulness, his periphs are less than awful: 4.26 FIP, 4.15 xFIP, tRA* of 4.72 (when scaled to ERA it would be around 4.3). He’s been striking out batters at about an average rate (6.3) while demonstrating good control (1.65 BB/9). ZiPS projects a 4.25 FIP from here on out, although it also projects just 5 more starts left. After all, it is Pavano ZiPS is projecting, but I think he’ll surpass that.

Stuff-wise, Pavano has been throwing a good slider along with a decent change. He has returned to the 90-91 MPH mark with his fastball, a velocity he’s been able to consistently maintain throughout the season, so that’s encouraging. But less encouraging is that it’s the fastball that he’s gotten pasted with; the pitch has been “worth” 17 runs below average. Looking at his pitch f/x numbers, I can’t see quite why this is, those of who have seen him pitch feel free to fill me in. All I can see is the fastball that has a little over an inch more of tail than average, but a little less than half an inch of “rise” than average. Is he catching too much of the plate, or is this just a crummy sinker that the pitch f/x algorithms have mislabeled as a 4-seam fastball?

Pavano’s not going to put the Twins over the top in the Central; at best he lightens the blow of losing Kevin Slowey for the rest of the season with a wrist injury, and that at a reasonable cost. Then again, we are talking about the Twins, who always seem to have hope as long as there is a chance, however slim that chance may be.

At the expiration of the Major League Baseball trading deadline, 35 prospects had changed hands (beginning July 19 with Milwaukee’s acquisition of Felipe Lopez). Over the next week, FanGraphs will take a look at each prospect, while also ranking them individually in value from 35 down to one. Players such as Justin Masterson, Clayton Richard, Kevin Hart, and Jeff Clement were not considered in this list because they have expired their rookie eligibility. However, they can still technically be considered “prospects” because they are young and have yet to establish themselves at the MLB level.

The week-long series wraps up today with the top seven prospects who moved at the trade deadline. We’ve already taken a look at 28 prospects:
35-29 on Monday
28-22 on Tuesday
21-15 on Wednesday
14-8 on Thursday

So let’s get to it and see who the biggest prospect names were.

With their fifth starter spot still something of a question mark, the Yankees added some more depth yesterday by acquiring Chad Gaudin from the Padres. It’s hard to believe the well traveled Gaudin is only 26 years of age, as the Yankees will mark his sixth different franchise in the last seven years. That kind of journeyman status is usually only achieved by 35 year old lefty specialists, but Gaudin has shown enough at times to keep getting jobs but never enough to convince his employer to keep him around.

For the Yankees, he’s a nice addition, though. Don’t be swayed by his ERA in the National League, which is driven by a high BABIP and a low LOB%, neither of which are particularly good predictors of future performance. Gaudin has a solid fastball/slider combination and is extremely tough on right-handed hitters. Unfortunately, his change-up kind of sucks, so lefties give him serious problems, which is why he’s never been able to hold down a job as a starting pitcher.

Seriously, check out his career splits:

Vs RHB: 8.3% BB%, 23.8% K%
Vs LHB: 13.2% BB%, 10.8% K%

Against right-handers, he’s terrific, using his slider to generate a ton of swinging strikes, which puts him ahead in the count and gives him a real out pitch. Against lefties, the slider doesn’t work, so he just nibbles the corners and ends up walking everyone. He does a good enough job of pitching away from the strike zone that lefties don’t light him up when they make contact, but by living on the edges, he ends up as a high-walk, pitch-to-contact guy.

In reality, he’s best suited to relief work, where his problems against LHPs can be minimized, but he’s got enough endurance to start, which is why teams keep running him out there as a member of their rotation. The Yankees have said he’ll start off in their bullpen, though he might transition to the 5th starter job if Sergio Mitre keeps struggling.

Whatever role he ends up filling over the last two months, he’s certainly going to be a reliever in October if he makes the playoff roster, and he could be a pretty good one if the Yankees use right. As a right-handed specialist, he could be a real asset out of the pen. Look at him as Jeff Nelson 2.0, and use him accordingly, and New York will have added a nice piece. If they continue to force him to face lefties, though, it won’t be as pretty.

The week after the trade deadline is always fun. The waiver wire rumors may lack the intrigue and publicity of their free trading big brother, but the amount of movement we saw this week, specifically with veteran pitchers. Here’s a recap of the frenzy.

After Sidney Ponson’s latest effort, the doughty cousin of Radhames Dykhoff was designated for assignment by the Royals. ERA can and does lie and probably did Ponson in more than anything. Ponson’s FIP was a decent a 4.69, eons better than his 7.36 ERA. No word yet on whether Ponson has cleared waivers or if louche behavior played into the transaction.

The Yankees signed Russ Ortiz for added depth meanwhile the heir to that position, Brett Tomko, was signed by the Athletics. Much like Ponson, Ortiz is the sufferer of a poor ERA and figures to spend more time in Triple-A than the majors. Tomko is an interesting addition if solely due to the tidbit that if he reaches the majors this would be his fourth California-based team to do so with, leaving only the Angels. Here’s hoping Tony Reagins hands him a contract during the winter.

Not to be outdone by their bitter rivals the Red Sox re-added Paul Byrd. I’m not entirely sure why, since the Red Sox have a surplus of young starters close to the majors, including that guy Clay Buchholz. Byrd has familiarity with the team and all that goodness, but it still seems odd given the Red Sox’s refusal to find consistent starts for Buchholz or Michael Bowden.

Joe Nelson’s time in the majors dates back to 2001. Since the often-injured journeyman has made trips to the show with Boston, Kansas City, Florida, and currently with Tampa Bay. Somehow a minor league option remained on Nelson’s book and the Rays exercised it this past weekend. Nelson had been ineffective at best since transitioning to the American League.

Oh yeah and Mike Koplove was traded to the Mariners. I’m not sure anyone else can top that.