The star of spring training thus far has to be Jason Heyward. Before the exhibition season begins there’s only so many actions that can create hype. Going on a fastball-crunching, executive car-battering frenzy during batting practice is one of those actions. Media and fans are like are swooning over this guy, which makes it time for the Braves to think about their future and Heyward’s role in that future by glancing at Evan Longoria’s situation from 2008.

No, not the demotion to the minors, but by making sure Heyward buddies up with Eric Hinske and discusses the finer points of ballplayer finances. Generally, having the stud rookie talk with a former stud rookie whose most notable accomplishment in the last 12 months includes a $5,000 tattoo seems like a recipe for disaster, but remember what Hinske did for Longoria? If not, a refresher:

“He told me don’t pass up the chance to make your first fortune,” Longoria recalled with a smile. “I trust everything he says and I definitely took that advice.”

Longoria, of course, signed a six-year, $17.5M extension that could reach nine-years and more than $30M if things stay on course. That deal is the Heyward of contracts and a large reason why Longoria has been named the most valuable asset in baseball two years running by this site. Obviously Hinske’s words may not capture Heyward’s (or his agent’s) heart quite like they caught Longoria, but Heyward has the makings of a special career. With such, the Braves should pull out the big guns and have Hinske attached to Heyward’s hip all spring.

If nothing else, maybe the snake on Hinske’s back can intimidate the youngster into doing some inking of his own.

The esteemed Joe Posnanski wrote about the ultimate spring training story in a post artistically named, get this, The Ultimate Spring Training Story. Posnanski’s muse was Kyle Farnsworth and his attempt at rejuvenation by joining the rotation. Posnanski might be the greatest baseball writer alive not named Peter Gammons, but he might have missed the boat on this one, because Farnsworth’s teammate is probably more deserving of such a title.

Luke Hochevar is not what one could describe as irrelevant. Not yet, at least. His career has been a mixture of highs and lows. In 2005 the Los Angeles Dodgers drafted Hochevar (out of the University of Tennessee) with the 40th overall pick. Agent Scott Boras drove a hard bargain – so hard that Hochevar himself removed Boras as his agent at one point, signed another agent, agreed to a deal, then walked away and rehired Boras. He would not sign with the Dodgers and would go 39 picks earlier the next year, as the Kansas City Royals chose him first overall. That was over Tim Lincecum, Evan Longoria, and Clayton Kershaw, amongst others. Hochevar received a $3.5M signing bonus and joined the Royals’ minor league system weeks later.

Fast forward to present day and Hochevar has made 51 appearances in the majors with career statistics of: 284.2 IP, 183 SO, 97 BB, 36 HR, 4.54 xFIP, and a 4.67 tERA. That’s not quite as poor as his 5.88 or 13-26 win-loss record suggests, but it’s still not first overall pick material. Avoiding bust status isn’t the reason Hochevar is the ultimate spring story, though; oh no, it’s because someone needs to ask him how it felt to lay claim to probably the weirdest season in the Majors last year. Behold his monthly splits:

May: 11.2 IP, 2.31 K/9, 5.93 xFIP
June: 33.2 IP, 4.01 K/9, 4.69 xFIP
July: 31.1 IP, 9.77 K/9, 3.03 xFIP
August: 34.2 IP, 8.31 K/9, 4.03 xFIP
Sept/Oct: 31.2 IP, 6.25 K/9, 5.03 xFIP

Enough’s been written about how granular 40 innings is, but talk about some extreme data points. Hochevar went from striking out nobody to striking out mostly everyone. The natural reaction to such a polar shift is to look for the variables that changed. Here is his pitchfx usage chart, which seems to suggest he began using his curve more and his slider less. Which shouldn’t make him more effective, considering his curve was the worst pitch in his arsenal (per run values per 100 pitches) and his slider was the best.

So, like Dave Cameron did last week, allow me to question the Royals fans (and Dave Allen) out there: What changed in July that caused Hochevar to transform from Livan Hernandez to Tim Lincecum for a two month stint? Or, did nothing change and Hochevar’s data simply suffered from the same sample size issues that his May and June did?

Why, yes, I am starting a consulting firm specializing in hack-tastic headlines, why do you ask?

The Yankees designated reliever Edwar Ramirez for assignment on Sunday to make room for Chan Ho Park on the roster. Although the Yankees say outwardly that they want to hold on to him, Ramirez’s strikeout rate leads some observers (like Rob Neyer) to the understandable conclusion that he’ll be claimed off of waivers.

It’s hard to imagine Ramirez making it through waivers. Sure, there are probably still some teams that look at a reliever with a 5.19 ERA and a sub-90 mph heater and blow him off, but this isn’t 1999. Many, probably most teams look deeper. Ramirez’s strikeout rate in the major leagues from 2007-2009 is 10.62 per nine innings. That is higher than Francisco Rodriguez, Rafael Soriano, Joe Nathan, and Jose Valverde, among others.

Of course, during the same period, Ramirez also walked 5.13 batters per nine innings, leaving him with a decidely below-average 2.07 K/BB ratio. To make matters worse, 2009 was by far Ramirez’s worst major league performance in both areas, with his K/9 dropping from 13.29 in 2007 to 10.25 in 2008 to 9.00 in 2009, at the same time his walk rate ballooned to its highest yet, at 7.36 in 2009. All of this is reflected in his FIP, which was only good in 2008 (3.96) but horrible in 2007 and 2009. WAR, as one would expect, followed suit, with Ramirez posting a -0.3 in 2007, 0.5 in 2008, and -0.4 in 2009. While it is true that single-season reliever performances have to be taken with a shaker of salt due to sample size, it is also true that pitcher true talent tends to vary more season-to-season than that of hitters, and Ramirez’s overall trend it not good.

FIP doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story. While Ramirez is a fly ball pitcher, he did suffer some dreadful luck with home run/fly ball rates in 2007 (19.4%) and 2009 (18.2%), whereas in his one decent season of 2008, it was closer to league average (10.9% — average is usually around 11%). Still, the advanced stats that adjust for batted ball types don’t completely absolve Ramirez — xFIP agrees that he was fairly unlucky in 2007 (4.73) but the decreased Ks and increased walks in 2009 gives him a 5.60. tERA says something similar — a 6.40 in 2009 is downright ugly.

According to our pitch types, about half of Ramirez’s pitches are fastballs, a bit under 10% are sliders, and about 40% are the change-up that reputedly got him discovered in the independents by the Yankees. His fastball has not fared well, being below average all three seasons according to pitch type linear weights. The slider has been slightly below average, but what got Ramirez in 2009 was that, unlike the previous two seasons, his formerly excellent changeup stopped fooling hitters. In genearl, prior to 2009, major league hitters offered at Ramirez’s outside-the-zone pitches fairly often, but in 2009, his O-Swing% was below average.

I’m not a scout or a coach, so I’m not going to say exactly what Ramirez might be doing wrong or whether it’s fixable. The numbers seem to indicate that Ramirez has to rely on fooling hitters with his changeup, and that simply didn’t happen in 2009. It will be interesting to see which team takes the (low-risk) chance to find out whether it can in the future.

At the risk of Edwin Jackson overexposure I wanted to look at one more thing that piqued my curiosity when I was putting together my post last Thursday. Guys who predominately throw sliders and fastballs are typically relievers because of their trouble getting out opposite-handed batters, so I was interested to see how Jackson handles lefties.

His splits are interesting. Although his xFIP shows the split you would expect — 4.63 against RHBs and 5.05 against LHBs — his FIP is actually better against lefties, 4.87 to RHBs versus 4.57 to LHBs. The reason is the big difference in HR/FB rate: 12% against RHBs and 7.5% against LHBs. That is with over 330 innings logged against each. A pitcher’s ability to control his HR/FB is still a pretty open question, and his ability to control HR/FB differentially against lefties and righties even more so. But so far in his career a big part of Jackson’s game against lefties is HR prevention.

Slicing the data any further is dangerous because of sample size issues, but I wanted see whether a specific pitch type was responsible for this difference. So I looked at his HR/FB by handedness and pitch type:

HR/FB
           RHB     LHB   
Fastball  0.153   0.057
Slider    0.100   0.073
Change    0       0.233
Curve     0       0

Remember he very rarely throws anything but his slider and fastball to RHBs, so ignore those last two. And even against LHBs that change is thrown rarely, so put little stock in that number also. The most striking difference, and backed up by the most number of pitches, is the difference off fastballs. A fly ball off his fastball from a LHBs is three times less likely to leave the park than from a righty.

What is going on here? How can he get such a low rate against LHBs and can we expect a rate nearly that low going forward? Here I look at the location of his fastballs to LHBs compared to all RHPs’ fastballs to LHBs. I broke the zone into bins and then color coded the bins. Red indicates zones where Jackson gets a greater fraction of his fastballs, and blues a smaller fraction.

It looks like Jackson hits the middle-away part of the plate pretty well. I think this, coupled with the speed of his fastball, is the key to his HR prevention against LHBs. These blazing fastballs on the outside of the plate are the hardest pitches to pull, and thus get any power off of.

General Manager: Brian Sabean
Farm Director: Fred Stanley
Scouting Director: John Barr

2006-2009 Draft Results:
First three rounds included
x- over-slot signees ($200,000 or more)

2009 1st Round: Zack Wheeler, RHP, Georgia HS
2. Tommy Joseph, C, Arizona HS
3. Chris Dominguez, 3B, Louisville
5x – Brandon Belt, 1B, Texas
6x – Matthew Graham, RHP, Texas HS

The Giants organization nabbed one of my favorite arms in the ’09 draft in Wheeler. The right-hander will not make his debut until the 2010 season and he’ll likely begin the season in extended spring training. Joseph also did not play in ’09 and he’s an offensive-minded catcher with good pop. He’ll likely join Wheeler in extended spring training.

Dominguez, the club’s first collegiate pick, displayed his well-documented power in short-season ball with nine homers in 181 at-bats, but he also showed why there are huge question marks surrounding his potential. He struck out at a 31.5% clip, while walking just 4.5% of the time. He has a very strong arm at third base.

Drafted as a pitcher out of high school, Belt showed more potential at the plate in college. Despite his size (6’5”, 200 lbs), the first baseman does not hit with as much home-run pop as you would expect so the organization may look to adjust his batting stance in order to maximize his power output. The club swayed Graham away from his North Carolina committed (with the aid of $500,000). The right-hander has a good fastball-curveball mix but consistency has eluded him thus far.

Keep an eye on fourth rounder Jason Stoffel. The late-game reliever could move quickly through the system.

2008 1st Round: Buster Posey, C, Florida State
1S. Conor Gillaspie, 3B, Wichita State
3. Roger Kieschnick, OF, Texas Tech
4x – Brandon Crawford, SS, UCLA

The organization could have packed up its bags and walked away from the draft after its first pick and it still would have had a very successful draft. Despite having just one pro season under his belt, Mr. Posey shows All-Star potential and could end 2010 as the big-league club’s starting catcher.

Gillaspie made it quickly to the Majors but but his ceiling is hampered by his serious lack of power (.100 ISO in ’09). He projects to have a Bill Mueller type of career, which is nice, but nothing to get too excited about. Kieschnick could perhaps give some of his power to Gillaspie. The outfielder has a very powerful bat and made the club’s Top 10 list. Crawford joins him on the list after zooming through the system in ’09.

Left-hander Scott Barnes (8th round) was flipped to Cleveland last season for first baseman Ryan Garko, who was then allowed to walk away at the end of the year.

2007 1st Round: Madison Bumgarner, LHP, North Carolina HS
1. Tim Alderson, RHP, Arizona HS
1. Wendell Fairley, OF, Mississippi HS
1S. Nick Noonan, 2B, California HS
1S. Jackson Williams, C, Oklahoma
1S. Charlie Culberson, SS, Georgia HS

The club nabbed two very promising arms at the top of this draft in Bumgarner and Alderson. The left-hander sits near the top of the club’s best prospects, while Alderson was sent to Pittsburgh in a questionable trade for (oft-injured) second baseman Freddy Sanchez.

Fairley was a head-scratcher from the start and he hasn’t performed well (.243/.323/.333 in low-A). Noonan hasn’t taken to pro ball quite as well as I though he would. His batting average has dropped each season while his strikeout rate has risen (and his power has remained static). He has some speed but he attempted just 14 steals in ’09 after nabbing 29 successfully in ’08.

Williams is one of the better defensive catchers in the minors, but his bat is a stretch even for triple-A. He hit .223/.316/.310 at double-A in ’09. Culberson was a bit of an over-draft with the club’s final supplemental pick and he hasn’t hit well in pro ball. He repeated low-A in ’09 and batted .246/.303/.306 in 509 at-bats.

Dan Runzler (9th round) is among the club’s top prospects and could play a significant role in the big league club’s bullpen in 2010. Despite a below-average fastball, Joe Paterson (10th round) could reach the Majors as a LOOGY. In double-A in ’09, he held left-handed batters to a .130 average and posted a strikeout rate of 11.10 K/9. Steve Edlefsen (16th round) is another under-the-radar reliever who could end up having some big-league value. The ground-ball pitcher (57.7 GB% in ’09) played at three levels in ’09 and topped out in triple-A. He needs to improve his control, though.

2006 1st Round: Tim Lincecum, RHP, Washington
1S. Emmanuel Burriss, SS, Kent State
3. Clayton Tanner, LHP, California HS

Like the Posey draft, the ’06 draft begins and ends with the first pick.

Burriss has seen some time in the Majors but he hasn’t really wowed anyone and his window to seize a full-time gig may have already slammed shut. I like Tanner, a soft-tosser, more than a lot of people and he’s on the Top 10 list. Ben Snyder (4th round) was a recent Rule 5 draft pick and he’s in camp with the Texas Rangers.

Infielder Ryan Rohlinger (6th round) has a chance to be a useful bench player for the Giants. Shortstop Brian Bocock (9th round) reached the Majors quickly out of necessity but he’s a glove-only player who was lost on waivers to Toronto (who then lost him to Philly).

Up Next: The San Francisco Giants Top 10 Prospects

When new Indians manager Manny Acta announced that Grady Sizemore would slide down to the No. 2 spot while Asdrubal Cabrera would assume leadoff duties, it didn’t seem out of the ordinary. Sizemore’s power makes him a better fit for the middle of the lineup, while Cabrera’s .360 OBP and 42 doubles in 2009 make him a quality leadoff candidate. It makes enough sense that there seemed little use arguing the point.

About an hour after reading this, I started to think about it again. Leading off with Cabrera and Sizemore sounds nice enough, but who will hit after them? The linked article mentions Shin-Soo Choo and Travis Hafner coming next, and surely Russell Branyan will also hit in the middle of the lineup. In fact, looking at the Indians’ lineup, the only other candidate for the 3-4-5 spots, barring a Matt LaPorta breakout, is Jhonny Peralta. Branyan is the stronger hitter, though, so I expect he’d fill the No. 5 spot.

This arrangement places lefties in four straight lineup spots, two through five. This makes me wonder if 1) these lefties have shown poor platoon splits over their careers and 2) if Acta will bat Peralta ahead of Branyan. While there is no current way to prove the latter — we won’t know until Acta starts filling out lineup cards — we can still examine the first. This is how the middle of the Indians order has performed against lefties, using their career numbers.

Sizemore: .235/.326/.393 in 1121 PA
Choo: .268/.353/.429 in 330 PA
Hafner: .261/.375/.462 in 1092 PA
Branyan: .210/.297/.459 in 513 PA

Clearly we run into sampling issues, as Choo and Branyan haven’t accumulated even a full season’s worth of PA against lefties. Branyan’s case is stranger still, as 36 percent of his career at bats against lefties came last season. He performed very well, hitting .222/.321/.481. He never got much of a shot against lefties earlier in his career, but then again he never got much of a shot as a starter until 2009.

We typically see managers try to break up a long string of lefties, but in this case I’m not sure that’s a good idea. These four, plus Cabrera, are the Indians best hitters, and should be receiving as many plate appearances as possible. Plus, it’s not like Jhonny Peralta has been great against lefties in his 956 career PA: .265/.337/.450. Why place him between two players who generally hit better?

Given the lineup composition, the Indians against left-handed pitchers could be a storyline to run through the season. Their career numbers indicate that they’ll fare just fine, and since skills are closer to average than they appear, we can expect decent performances from this lineup. Manny Acta has been billed as a progressive-thinking manager. Will he make the off-beat move and bat four straight lefties in his lineup?

Last week, Red Sox GM Theo Epstein did an in-depth interview with WEEI, focusing mainly on the topic of the winter – defense, defensive statistics, and how most of the stat-friendly teams have made moves to improve themselves defensively in recent years. During the interview, he made one specific comment that we feel is worth addressing, since it was aimed our way. In response to a question about whether Jacoby Ellsbury had defensive problems in center field last year, Theo said this:

I think that he is an above-average center fielder now, who is going to be a great center fielder. I know there is a certain number we don’t use that is accessible to people online that had him as one of the worst defensive center fielders in baseball last year. I don’t think it’s worth anything. I don’t think that number is legitimate. We do our own stuff and it showed that he is above average.

Since we publish that “certain number” – more often referred to as UZR – let me weigh in with a few thoughts.

UZR, with its -18.6 rating for Ellsbury in center field in 2009, isn’t exactly out on an island here. John Dewan’s +/- metric had him at 9 runs below average. Sean Smith’s Total Zone system had him at 10 runs below average. Tom Tango stated that his With Or Without You system had him between 14 and 18 runs below average. This isn’t a case of UZR delivering a strange result that other systems don’t agree with. Pretty much all of the publicly available defensive metrics show Ellsbury had some issues last year.

Now, Theo might lump all of those metrics together as inferior to their proprietary internal metrics, and indeed, they may be. However, we need to keep two things in mind here: first, Epstein making positive public comments about his own players is a classic case of a statement made in self-interest, and second, the Red Sox moved Ellsbury to left field. Theo’s not going to come out and trash any of his own players, and it’s in the Red Sox best interest to fight any perception of Ellsbury as a defensive liability. If they engage in trade negotiations with another team, it would not be helpful if the league comes to a consensus that Ellsbury really does have some defensive issues, considering that is the biggest selling point for his particular skillset.

The Red Sox decision to move Ellsbury to left reinforces that idea. If Theo had left it unchallenged, it would essentially amount to a tacit acceptance of the rating, which would not be good for Jacoby’s trade value. Even if the Red Sox internal metrics had not shown Ellsbury as above average, it would still behoove Theo to publicly defend his player against the perception that his defense in center field may be questionable. Once the Red Sox decided to shift Ellsbury over, it became necessary for Epstein to make a statement to this effect, whether he believes it or not (and I’d bet that he does – this is not intended to question his integrity).

Finally, this is a big point – Jacoby Ellsbury played 1,302 innings in center field last year, basically one full season’s worth. As has been noted many times, one season’s worth of any defensive metric is not a very large sample size. Due to the amount of marginal plays that a player is judged on over the course of a single season, a few bad breaks here or there can make a pretty significant impact on a player’s overall rating. We have always suggested that you want more than one year of data before you start making judgments about a player’s true worth defensively. No one should look at Ellsbury’s 2009 UZR and state definitively that he is a poor defensive center fielder.

In fact, UZR doesn’t even support that assessment. In 2007 and 2008, Ellsbury racked up a +14.4 UZR in 777 innings between left and right field. That equates out to about 20 runs above average, if you extrapolate out over a full season. UZR loved Ellsbury in the corners, and historically, the defensive gap between a CF and a corner OF is about 10 runs. Given how well UZR rated him as a corner outfielder (again, in a very small sample), we can use that data as information about how well he should be able to handle center field. An overall view of Ellsbury through UZR, including all of the data from 2007 to 2009, would have him as a barely below average CF, not anything close to a disaster, and not that far from what Epstein is claiming.

There is a school of thought that these swings suggest an underlying flaw with UZR, but I’d suggest that it may be evidence that the perception of perfectly consistent defensive value is a myth. We know that hitters and pitchers often see wild swings in their performance, but no one thinks its proof that home runs are bunk when David Wright gets out-homered by Ichiro Suzuki. Wright obviously has more power, but over one season, he didn’t show it. It is certainly reasonable to believe that a player that Epstein believes to be “a good defensive center fielder” could simply have a bad year.

In the end, there’s no huge disagreement between FanGraphs and the Red Sox on how to evaluate defense, even if they prefer their internal metrics to UZR. We love the defense that Mike Cameron and Adrian Beltre provide and, obviously, so do the decision makers in Boston. Additionally, that Ellsbury was shifted to left field to make room for a 37-year-old suggests that the Red Sox may agree that he’s not yet an elite defender, even if they think he may become one. In this instance, I think that actions may speak louder than words, and I don’t think that Theo sees Ellsbury all that differently than we do.

Episode Eight
In which the panel considers everything and its mother.

Headlines
The Next Questions in Baseballing Analysis
Theo Epstein and UZR: Frenemies?
Twitter and/as Sports Reporting
Over/Unders of Note
Jonah Keri Doesn’t Mention Bloomberg Sports
… and other wild speculations!

Featuring
Dave Cameron
Jonah Keri

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Audio on the flip-flop.

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Lance Berkman has been nothing short of a star in his time with the Houston Astros. Since 2000, Berkman has made five all-star teams and finished in the top five in MVP voting four times. This praise is supported by five seasons of 6.0+ WAR and 43.2 total WAR since we began calculating win values in 2002. This puts him 4th among hitters, behind only Pujols, Rodriguez, and Bonds – all surefire hall of famers.

Berkman’s future is now in doubt, however, as the Astros, mired in a rebuilding period and with current owner Drayton McLane attempting to find a buyer, may decline his $15 million 2011 club option. The 34 year old first baseman suggested that if the option is not picked up that he would choose not to return to Houston on a different deal and would instead test the free agent market.

Certainly there would be teams that could use Berkman either as a 1B or as a DH. Berkman’s defense has not been an issue thus far, but he is certainly not elite, and any long term deal would likely end with a DH role, given his age. The man can still hit – his worst wRC+ came in 2007, and that was at a still stellar 135, and he is capable of putting up numbers in the 160s, as he showed in 2008. As a hitter of that caliber, Berkman probably has a few good years left in him at the least, and should be a coveted asset come the 2010-2011 winter.

Is Berkman worth $15 million, though? It’s very close. At $3.5MM per win, his 3.6 WAR CHONE projection puts him at $12.6MM for a one year deal. A 4 WAR season, which I would predict for Berkman, would run at $14MM. With his age and the Astros’ current position on the win curve, he probably isn’t worth the money to them. At the trading deadline, the Astros could probably pull in a decent haul of prospects for him, a much better use of that asset.

As far as Berkman’s next contract goes, there isn’t a very good analog to Berkman in this year’s free agent class. Berkman is probably better than anyone that hit the market this winter, and even at 35, he should be able to get a contract that pays him into the middle of the decade. A fair market value would probably be a 4 year, $50MM contract, taking into account the discounts players typically give for longer term deals. However, Berkman does have “money skills,” with loads of HRs and RBIs, and may command something above Jason Bay‘s deal (4/$66MM) and maybe something similar to John Lackey’s new contract (5/$82.5MM).

The question is how Berkman will handle aging. If he can defy nature into his late 30s and possibly his early 40s and remain a star slugger, he could be worth every penny of a large contract and even make a run at the Hall of Fame. If not, his career could end much like that of Albert Belle – derailed by injury – or Mo Vaughn – simply unable to sustain production in his later years.

If Felipe Lopez earns the maximum payout on his 2010 player contract, he will earn roughly $2.2M from the Cardinals. Lopez was worth nearly 5 wins last season and roughly 3 wins in the three seasons prior to that. Alex Cora has 5.9 WAR since 2002 and he will earn at least $2M next season with the chance to earn $3M with certain incentives, or vest a 2011 option worth an additional $2M.

Besides the fact that life just isn’t fair at time, a few other factors played into Lopez’ pay being lower than Cora’s – even beyond Omar Minaya’s indiscretion in re-signing Cora instead of waiting out the middle-infielder market. Lopez carries with him questionable makeup that removed a few potential suitors and he’s coming off a career season in which he’s highly unlikely to repeat.

The Cardinals’ depth chart up the middle features Brendan Ryan (currently nursing a wrist injury), Julio Lugo, Skip Schumaker, Tyler Green, and minor league invitee Ruben Gotay. Assuming Schumaker can also fill the role of reserve outfielder, there’s a pretty good chance three of those players make the opening day roster with Lopez, with the clear advantages being held in that order. This gives the Cardinals some pretty nice depth, and also allows for an alternative at third base if David Freese is to slip up.

The finances of this deal are excellent for the Cardinals. If he never steps on the field, it’s a sunk cost at the price of a middle reliever. If he plays well, the most he can earn is the price of … well, a slightly better middle reliever. It’s a fail-safe commitment and one that comes on a wildly varying performer. Check his wOBA and plate appearance totals over the last three seasons:

2007: 671 PA, .295 wOBA
2008: 532 PA, .320 wOBA
2009: 680 PA, .356 wOBA

What he’ll do next season is anyone’s guess. CHONE and Marcel combine for a .326 average, which would be more than enough to justify this deal and would essentially equal his career total.

Good job by the opportunistic Cardinals.