Yesterday, Keith Law confirmed an interesting old trade rumor, noting that he was in the room in 2002 when Steve Phillips offered J.P. Ricciardi a straight up swap of David Wright for Jose Cruz Jr, which Ricciardi then declined. Given how their careers have gone since, the obvious reaction is that this was a massive blunder by the Blue Jays. However, they didn’t have any way of knowing the future, so they were left to make decisions based on the information available at the time. So, let’s go back in time and look at the proposal as it would have been viewed at the time.

In 2002, Cruz was coming off the best season of his career and in the middle of his physical prime. While we don’t have UZR data for 2001 on the site, his career fielding numbers paint the picture of a guy with good enough wheels for a corner but not enough ability to play center field regularly – a classic tweener, basically. Combined with the best offensive performance of his career (a .367 wOBA that featured both power and speed), that kind of player is worth +3 to +4 wins, and Cruz had the kind of skillset that should have aged well.

He regressed in 2002, but was still an above average player, posting a +2.5 win season and showing the core skills that could have led to a rebound in the future. There were certainly reasons to value Cruz Jr as a player.

However, trade value isn’t just about the on field value, but factors in the contract status as well, and Cruz was headed towards free agency. So, in reality, the Mets were offering Wright for a several month rental during a season in which Toronto was not a contender (they stood 20.5 games out of first place on July 31st, 2002).

So, the Blue Jays wouldn’t accept Wright as enough value in return to deal Cruz in the final year of his contract, choosing instead to keep him for the remainder of the season and let him walk as a free agent after declining to offer him arbitration. Due to that decision, they didn’t receive any compensation when the Giants signed him as a free agent the following winter.

In other words, they basically didn’t value Wright as a prospect much at all. Should they have?

During the 2002 season, Wright was a 19-year-old in the low-A South Atlantic League, a year removed from being a supplemental first round pick. He hit .266/.367/.401 in the pitcher-friendly league, but the combination of little power and a lot of strikeouts were concerns. There were reasons for optimism and pessimism, which isn’t particularly surprising for a teenager that was several years from the majors, but Wright was a prospect, even if not an elite one.

If you want to compare that offer to a recent transaction, the current version of Felipe Lopez is actually not a bad comparison for what Cruz was – talented but inconsistent on an expiring contract, a solid player but not a star. Lopez was traded for a pair of fringe prospects, and the general consensus was that the D’Backs got as much as they could, given the market for Lopez’s services. Certainly, neither Cole Gillespie or Roque Mercedes were near the level of prospect that Wright was in 2002.

Even without the benefit of foresight, it really is tough to see what Ricciardi was thinking by turning the deal down. When you’re trading a guy with an expiring contract, you expect the player coming back to have some kind of issues, and Wright’s were of the kind that could be eliminated with further development. If Cruz Jr wasn’t in their future plans (as indicated by the decision to not offer arbitration), having a prospect like Wright in the system seems like a much better alternative to letting Cruz Jr play out the string before moving on.

The Huffington Post today released their list of top 10 “Game Changers” in the world of sports “who are harnessing the power of new media to reshape their fields and change the world.”

I was honored to be part of the list and it’s really a testament to our incredible writing staff and of course all our visitors who have helped spread the word and have taken the time to help educate people about the usefulness of stats based analysis.

In the meantime, if you have a free minute head over to the Huffington Post and give your vote!

Prospect ranking season is just around the corner. In anticipation of that, we present an intro series looking at some of the players who deserve mentioning but probably will not be appearing on their teams’ Top 10 lists. The popular series is back for a second year.

The Graduate: Brian Duensing, LHP
The 26-year-old lefty played a valuable role on the Twins squad in ’09. Duensing served as a swing man by making nine starts and 15 relief appearances. He features four pitches: fastball, slider, changeup and curveball. His most effective pitches in ’09 were his heater, which sat around 91 mph, and his slider. Duensing’s MLB ground-ball rate was just 45.5%, 5 – 10% below what he averaged in the minors, so there is room for improvement there.

The Riser: Loek Van Mil, RHP
Van Mil was about as raw as they come when he was signed out of the Netherlands. The big right-hander, though, has an exciting repertoire that includes a 90-95 mph fastball, slider, changeup and curveball. More than 7’0” tall, he struggles to maintain a reasonable walk rate (4.41 BB/9 in high-A) and his lack of command also hinders his strikeout totals (5.97 K/9). Despite a four-pitch repertoire, Van Mil has been developed as a reliever; his age is catching up to him as he turned 25 after the minor-league season. He has appeared in just eight games above high-A ball. He does, though, have a fresh arm.

The Tumbler: Shooter Hunt, RHP
The 31st overall pick out of Tulane University in the 2008 draft, Hunt has been unable to throw strikes as a pro. The right-hander pitched just 32.2 innings of work in ’09 because he couldn’t find the plate. He walked 58 batters. When he’s right, Hunt has an 89-94 mph fastball, as well as a curveball and changeup. He also produces a solid ground-ball rate. Unfortunately, his control issues are massive, and he has a lot of work ahead of him before he’ll come close to realizing his considerable potential.

The ’10 Sleeper: Angel Morales, OF
Morales has moved slowly through the system, since being drafted out of a Puerto Rico high school in 2007. He reached low-A for the first time in ’09 and had an encouraging season even if his overall line was just .266/.329/.455. The outfielder showed a much improved contact rate and saw his strikeouts decrease from a frightening 39.3% in ’08 to a more manageable 27.7% this past season. Morales also showed his power potential with an ISO rate of .189, and he improved is base running. He has 20-20 potential as he matures as ball player.

Bonus: Wilson Ramos, C
Ramos is certainly a Top 10 prospect, and he was identified as the Twins sleeper during the ’08 series. Injuries took a bite out of his ’09 season, but Ramos still showed a good batting stroke with a line of .317/.341/.454 in 205 at-bats in double-A. He significantly trimmed his strikeout rate from 22.8 to 11.2%. On the downside, his walk rate took a tumble too, from 7.6 to 2.8%. Defensively, he threw out more than 40% of base runners for the third straight season.

2010 is not exactly a banner year for free agent catchers. Bengie Molina will enter the hot stove league as the only type A catcher available*, according to Cot’s Contracts 2010 free agents list. Bengie Molina has been a standby in the league for years, but he will be 35 for most of the 2010 season.

*Assuming the Red Sox pick up Victor Martinez’s $7M 2010 option

Bengie’s career has been a model of consistency. Since 2003, he’s put up 14.8 WAR, for an average of 2.1 WAR per season, and has always stayed within the 1.0 to 3.0 WAR range. Keep in mind, however, that our catcher WAR on FanGraphs doesn’t take defense into account. We can be relatively certain that he is not the gold glover of 2002 and 2003, though. His CS% has dropped from 40%+ from 1999-2003 to 32% for his career now. Also, the elder Molina doesn’t excel on the bases, and WAR doesn’t include non-SB baserunning, depressing his value even more.

Given Molina’s age, production, and previous contract (6M in 2009), it’s hard to imagine the Giants offering Molina arbitration, especially with Buster Posey almost ready. As such, he likely won’t have the dreaded type-A tag that doomed Orlando Hudson to a contract with a base salary of only $3.38 million.

So what can he expect? With his wOBA dropping below .310 for the first time since 2002, it’s fair to say 2009 was a down season. His BABIP of .273 was only 8 points below his career average. Still, a catcher with a wOBA of .308 is still valuable on the free agent market. However, teams will be taking into account the fact that Molina is aging and his defensive value will only drop as the years go on.

Jason Varitek, with a similar 2008 to Molina’s 2009, received a 5 million dollar contract. Molina might be able to expect something similar, but he doesn’t have the “captain” moniker to aid him. Still, he does hit for power – his .177 ISO ranked 3rd in the majors this year. If he can avoid injuries and provide near-average defense, his power will make him a 1.0+ win player, with a 4 million dollar contract or more on a one-year deal. Plenty of teams will have needs at catcher. The question is which one wants Bengie.

There are a lot of reasons the Yankees lost last night, and most of them have to do with bad pitching. A.J. Burnett threw a lot of bad pitches. Phil Hughes threw some bad pitches. It happens. The Angels are a good team, and they pounced on some mistakes. New York is still pretty likely to win one of the last two games and go on to the World Series. In the end, last night’s game is probably a footnote.

However, that doesn’t let Joe Girardi off the hook. I’m not the only one who has called him out for over-managing in this series, but last night, he took it to an incomprehensible level. I’m going to gloss over the fact that Mike Scioscia intentionally walked Alex Rodriguez and put the tying run on base – that’s another post entirely. And while the decision was bad, you can at least kind of understand his thinking there. But then Girardi took Scioscia’s questionable managerial move and raised him all-in by sending Freddy Guzman in to run for A-Rod.

The Yankees were down by a run with two outs, so yes, maximizing the odds of scoring that baserunner is a good idea. However, any move you make in an attempt to improve your odds of scoring has to be proportional to the penalty of making the move. If you’re taking Rodriguez out of a game that could easily go to extra innings, you’re inflicting pretty significant harm to your team later on, so there better be at least some kind of real, tangible improvement in the likelihood of scoring.

Guzman is fast, no doubt, but so is Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod has 297 career stolen bases while succeeding at an 82 percent clip and he was 14 for 16 this year. Yes, he hits home runs, but he’s both fast and good at running the bases. The marginal improvement in speed from having Guzman stand on first base instead of Rodriguez is minuscule. There was essentially one play where the difference in speed could have come into play – a double into the gap or down the line that leads to a play at the plate.

In his career with the Yankees, Hideki Matsui has 207 doubles and triples in 3,820 plate appearances. 5.4 percent of his trips to the plate have resulted in an extra base hit that didn’t clear the fence. Over the last three years, he’s at 4.6 percent. So, let’s just say that the odds of Matsui hitting a ball in the gap or down the line was about five percent, or one in 20.

Now, we have to eliminate all the plays where speed won’t really matter – either runner could easily score on a ball that gets to the wall, given that they’d be running on contact with two outs. Neither runner likely scores on a blooper down the line that just finds the chalk or a ground ball past the first baseman that hooks into the corner. The ball has to get past the outfielders for there to be a play at the plate, but not so far past them that they couldn’t get it back in fast enough to make it close at home.

So now we’re talking about a fraction of those one in twenty odds. The real odds of that one specific play happening? One in 50? One in 75? It’s somewhere in there. And now, when that play occurs, what is the actual improvement in the odds of scoring with Guzman on base? Even if you think it’s a 50 percent improvement, now you’re staring at something like one-in-100 or one-in-150 that the move works out.

Joe Girardi took Alex Rodriguez out of a game that could have easily gone to extra innings for something like a one percent improvement in his odds of scoring. That’s just insane.

This makes replacing Robertson with Aceves look downright tame. Someone stop Joe Girardi before he manages the best team in baseball right out of the playoffs.

Yesterday, we talked about Jed Hoyer potentially taking the post as the Padres new GM. Today, let’s look at two situations which he’ll need to address this off-season.

Adrian Gonzalez

One of the most talented (and underrated) players in the N.L. held a coming out party last season. Gonzalez has been worth at least 3 WAR in every season since 2006, but not many saw a 6 WAR season coming surrounded by a bunch of nothing. Gonzalez is signed in 2010 for $4.75M and the Padres hold a club option worth $5.5M in 2011. When talking about great team contracts, this one has to be mentioned. Kevin Towers signed him to a four-year, $9.5M extension back in April of 2007 and he’s been worth over $50M since. Good deal? No. Great deal.

With such, Gonzalez holds a tremendous amount of trade value. The Red Sox are known to be heavily interested, which likely means the Yankees hold interest too. He’ll turn 28 in May, so there’s no rush to move him due to age and decline concerns. The Jake Peavy deal helped to rebuild the Padres farm system, but there’s still work to be done. Certainly the Padres don’t have to (and seemingly won’t) move him. That won’t stop teams from calling and shouldn’t stop the Padres from listening.

Heath Bell

It’s amazing how one 42 save season is going to change Bell’s perceived value. Since arriving in San Diego back in 2007, Bell has been an extremely solid reliever. He’s posted FIP of 2.50, 3.34, and 2.42; tRA of 2.55, 3.59, 2.45. He’s predominantly a groundball pitcher, but he has some swing-and-miss stuff. Last season he posted a career low HR/FB% of 5.1 which surpasses his previous totals by nearly a full percentage point and should cause some skepticism about a repeat performance quite this good. He’s entering his second year of arbitration and San Diego may be able to cash in on those saves if the right team buys into him.

Given how the Padres shifted into “sell everything” mode last year, this off-season should be a fun one to watch. Will Hoyer attempt to load up for a quick run or will he attempt to rebuild further?

Adrian Beltre’s contract was often lumped in with other poor free agent signings because his offensive numbers in his four years with Seattle never came close to his 2004 career year with the Dodgers. But it was a good contract. Beltre provided 67.2 million dollars of value, a small premium over his 64 million dollar contract.

Detractors looking at his offensive numbers ignored his Gold Glove-caliber defense at third. He averages better than 10 runs saved with his glove over the average third basemen during a season. Couple that with his league average bat and you have a very good player.

The thing about that league average bat is that it would play much better away from Safeco, which kills RHBs. Beltre came to Seattle in 2005; check out his home/road splits since.

This year he was injured and had a down year, but in the three previous he had solid away wOBAs. In neutral parks you expect a hitter to have a better home wOBA, so in a neutral home park he should outperform those already good away wOBAs.

To examine this further, I looked at his slugging rate on balls in the air (all non-grounders), play by angle, for 2005 to 2009, separated for home (Safeco) and away. The lines are estimates based on the data with standard error indicated.

You can see Beltre’s power is to left, typical pull power for a RHB, and that he gets more power in away parks through much of left and left-center field. The differences look slight, but many flies and lines to left over the course of a season makes up for the big difference. Interestingly, he also gets more power in away parks to extreme right field, where I had thought Safeco was a little more generous.

Beltre is an excellent defensive third basemen, and in many other ballparks he should be an above average offensive player. He has the chance to be a solid free agent signing once again.

One half of the World Series is set as the Phillies will return to the Fall Classic to defend their title against either the Yankees or the Angels. The ALCS could wrap up tonight, with the Yankees holding a 3-1 advantage and looking in every way to be the far superior team at the moment.

But I’m rooting for the Angels tonight, because I like baseball, and I don’t want to have to wait a week to watch another game. Thanks to the scheduling of the World Series around the preferences of Fox television executives, the World Series doesn’t begin until next Wednesday. A Yankee victory tonight means a five day stretch from when both LCS’ end to when the World Series begins.

That’s lame. By setting the LCS schedules to ensure that as many of the games as possible begin at 8 PM Eastern, the playoffs have been stretched out to a degree bordering on tedious. Did we really need a 10 day schedule to play the league championship series? Do we need a minimum two day buffer between the end of the ALCS and the start of the World Series?

The only way we weren’t having a significant baseball lull at the end of October was if the ALCS went seven games. Even if it went six and the NLCS went the distance, we were still going to have three days off before the World Series started. Did MLB really think that re-creating the all-star break in October was a good idea?

I know that baseball is a business, but at some point, shouldn’t someone realize that beginning the Fall Classic on October 28th isn’t a very good idea? Especially with an expected New York-Philadelphia series, playing half of the games in November doesn’t seem like a very good plan.

I realize I’m tilting at windmills here, and that the business of selling advertisements has surpassed the best interest of the fans, so all we can really do is root for the Angels or prepare for a very boring five days.

The Philadelphia Phillies are headed back to the World Series. On Wednesday night, the Phillies clinched the National League Championship Series (NLCS) title with a 10-4 drubbing of the National League West’s best club. The reigning world champions defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers in five games.

The Dodgers pitching staff was unable to contain what is, arguably, the most potent offense in the National League, which was described in last night’s broadcast as an “American League offense playing in the National League.” On the flip side, Los Angeles struggled to score runs.

Offensive MVP: Ryan Howard
The National League Division Series MVP (according to Fangraphs) repeats as the NLCS champion. In the series, Howard posted WPAs of: .154, .156, .155, .098, and .025 with five runs scored and eight RBI.

Honorable Mention: Shane Victorino
Quiet for the first two games of the series, the Flyin’ Hawaiian posted WPAs of .040, .170, and .086 through the last three games. He scored four runs and drove in six during that three-game span.

Pitching MVP: Cliff Lee
The momentum in the series came dangerously close to shifting after Hamels struggled in Game 1 and then LA came through with a late-game win in Game 2. Lee, though, slammed the door on the LA club with eight shutout innings in Game 3. Other pitchers worth praising for their contributions in the series include Pedro Martinez, Chad Durbin and Brad Lidge.

Let’s break down the series a little more.

What Philly Did Poorly:
Cole Hamels, who is supposed to be Philly’s best pitcher, has looked very ordinary in the post-season. He’s not going to have much luck against New York (assuming that will be the match-up) by throwing 80% fastballs.

It’s nitpicking, but the bench didn’t get much work in the NLCS and they might be called on during some key moments in the World Series.

What LA Did Poorly:
Why did Ronnie Belliard get every start at second base during the playoffs? As Dave Cameron wrote weeks ago, Orlando Hudson is the far superior hitter and fielder – even when he’s not 100% healthy. The feeling was that Belliard has more pop in his bat, thanks to a small-sample size performance after coming to LA… But he failed to get an extra-base hit in the entire post-season. Ironically, Hudson hit a pinch-hit homer in Game 5. And why did Jim Thome only have two at-bats in the NLCS?

I questioned the decision to start Padilla in Game 5… and he looked terrible. In the first inning, 22 of his 23 pitches were fastballs, according to Gameday. Against the Phillies lineup?! The Hiroki Kuroda start was yet another gamble that Torre lost.

As a whole, LA’s veteran hitters were pretty well neutered in the series. Rafael Furcal hit .143, Casey Blake hit .105, Manny Ramirez hit .263 with one extra base hit.

What Philly Did Well:
The pitching staff was able to contain Manny Ramirez, who had his quietest post-season since 1999 with Cleveland. In eight games, Ramirez drove in just four runs and showed little fire (especially compared to the 2007 and 2008 post-seasons).

The offense scored 35 runs in five games. Ryan Howard, Shane Victorino, and Carlos Ruiz were red-hot in the NLCS. Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, and Jayson Werth were not as consistent, but they all had key hits in the series.

Closer Brad Lidge put a bad regular season behind him and did not allow a run against LA in three games (2.2 innings). He’s 3-for-3 in save opportunities and he’s allowed just one hit in four innings throughout the playoffs.

Cliff Lee was the dominating starter that every team needs to roll through the playoffs. In 24.1 playoff innings (the first post-season of his career), Lee has allowed just 14 hits and three walks. It’s really difficult to give up a big inning if you don’t have men on base.

What LA Did Well:
On offense, Andre Ethier showed why he is one of the best young hitters in the National League – although he hit better in the NLDS than he did in the NLCS. James Loney also had a nice NLCS series.

Carlos Guillen was not happy with his role last season. After accruing 17.2 wins as Detroit’s SS from 2004-2007, he has since spent games bouncing between 1B, 3B, LF and the DL. Guillen’s move off of SS came in the wake of a -10 UZR season at SS. Although he put up 1.2 WAR in limited time in 2008, his wOBA dropped 30 points and he lost even more time to injury in 2009. As such, the Tigers saw themselves left with the very definition of a replacement player.

This leaves the Tigers with a dilemma. Although it’s not likely that Guillen’s true talent has dipped below replacement level, it certainly is not at the six win level of 2006 and probably not at the three win level of 2003, either. With Ryan Raburn waiting in the wings, it makes little sense to commit to a 33-year-old declining hitter over the team-controlled player. Unfortunately, Guillen’s contract calls for $13 million in both 2010 and 2011.

Naturally, Jim Leyland’s response was to name Carlos Guillen the starting left fielder for 2010. The Tigers, having reached a 163rd game playoff with the Minnesota Twins this year, likely have playoff aspirations.

Their best bet to reach the playoffs, of course, is to field the best team. Ryan Raburn put up a .378 wOBA last year vs. Guillen’s .328. Guillen ranks as a 2.46 in the Fan’s Scouting Report, and has a -3 UZR in a small sample. Raburn only ranks slightly better, and has a +1 UZR in LF in a 110 game sample – again, not big enough to draw conclusions. The 50 point wOBA difference is akin to the difference between Lance Berkman and James Loney, and there’s no reason to believe Guillen’s defense outweighs this copious gap in offensive production.

The counterpoint is that Guillen’s BABIP was a precipitous .267 in his shortened 2009. With a career BABIP of .325, this is especially low, and we should expect regression. The question is, though, can Guillen recover from injuries at age 33, learn how to play a relatively new position, and put up a wOBA over .350 like he has in the past?

It seems like a rather large gamble to take for Detroit. Raburn is young but has very solid minor league numbers to support his first ML season. Apparently, money talks. This is just yet another example of the veteran with the big contract getting playing time over an equally skilled or possibly better young player because the team is unwilling to cut its losses and admit its mistake.