The three-year deal given to Raul Ibanez prior to the 2009 season was puzzling at the time given the length of contract weighted against the veteran’s age (He’s about to turn 38 at the mid-point of the contract). Ibanez, though, laid those concerns to rest with an outstanding ’09 season in which he posted a 3.9 WAR and slugged 34 homers.

This season has been a different story. He’s currently hitting .253/.356/.404 in 177 plate appearances. Ibanez’ wOBA has slipped from .379 last season to .325 in ’10. He’s currently being paid $11.5 million and will receive the same amount in 2011. He also has a full no-trade clause in his contract.

The good news for Phillies fans is that the veteran is currently hitting much better in May than he did in April; his wOBA has increased from .308 to .341. However, Ibanez has a .640 OPS against left-handed pitching. His OPS, in comparison, is .805 against righties. Like many left-handed hitters, Ibanez has hit right-handers much better over the course of his career.

At this point, it might make sense for the club to consider platooning the former Mariner. With turning 38 soon, Ibanez’ body would probably benefit from the added rest. Unfortunately, neither back-up outfielder – Ben Francisco nor Ross Gload – has been overly effective this season. Francisco is currently hitting .219/.265/.281, while Gload is batting .241/.241/.448 in an almost strictly pinch-hitting role.

The best solution can found down in triple-A in the form of former No. 1 draft pick John Mayberry Jr. who, at the age of 26, has never been given a fair shot to stick on a MLB roster. The 6’6” 235 lbs outfielder is currently hitting .288/.354/.494 in 160 at-bats. Against left-handers, though, he’s hitting .333/.383/.500. The Stanford alum also has a track record of success against left-handed pitching, as seen by his career line of .283/.355/.495. Mayberry could also potentially spell Ryan Howard from time-to-time, as the big first baseman has also been struggling against southpaws (.696 vs .880 OPS).

At the cost of just Francisco or Gload, it’s really not a big risk for the organization to give Mayberry a chance. Adding his prowess against left-handers could help the club when facing some of the tougher left-handers in the league. With the Phillies club in first place in the National League East, the instinct may be to leave things well enough alone. However, it’s a long season and the club’s hold on first place is anything but secure. This move has the potential to make the team stronger with little downside.

This season hasn’t gone too well for the two main components of the Braves-Pirates trade from last season. Nate McLouth’s production declined a bit last season after his move to Atlanta, and he has completely fallen off this year. Pittsburgh got three players in return, though the most major league ready was Charlie Morton. He broke camp in the Pirates’ rotation this year, and has been one of the more notable 2010 disasters. It’s hard to ignore some of Morton’s crazy stats.

He has the NL-worst ERA, though you might not know it

If you go to the NL pitchers leaderboard and sort by ERA, you’ll see Edwin Jackson’s name atop the list. That’s strange, because Morton’s ERA is over three runs worse than Jackson’s. That’s because Morton doesn’t have enough innings to qualify. He has made 10 starts, which puts him in a massive tie for second in the NL, but has thrown only 43.1 innings. Four and a third innings per start will not get the job done.

xFIP might like him a bit much

Not only is Morton’s ERA 9.35, but his FIP sits at 6.46, which is one of the worse ones I can remember. Yet his xFIP sits at just 4.38. This might lead some to think that he’s getting unlucky on fly balls, but this isn’t necessarily the case. Morton has a 30 percent fly ball rate and a 25 percent HR/FB ratio. Yet he also has a 24.4 percent line drive rate. I wonder how many 12 home runs he has allowed have come on line drives. That number could certainly alter a perception of ill luck.

His strand rate is crazy low, but…

Morton currently has a 49.1 percent strand rate, which at some point should change. It has already, really, as it has been 60 percent in May after 38 percent in April. On the road, though, he has a 38.5 percent strand rate. That’s pretty insanely low.

It’s not just his strand rate

The road hasn’t been a kind place for Morton. He’s striking out more hitters there and walking fewer, but everything else is worse. And by everything I mean his home run rate is off the charts. Of the 12 he has surrendered 10 have come on the road. His WHIP sits at 2.05, his BABIP is 4.18, his LD% is 28.6, and his HR/FB is 33.3.

When the going gets tough, the tough get Morton

Morton has faced only 12 batters in high leverage situations — when you average 4.1 IP per start you tend to miss out on those dramatics. Of those 12 hitters, six have picked up hits, producing eight runs, seven earned. All 12 have put the ball in play, and five have hit the ball on a line. Another five have hit it on the ground, though, so he has that going for him. Which is nice.

GAB didn’t help

Morton faced the Reds last night at the Great American Ballpark, and it went about as poorly as possible. In two innings he allowed eight hits, including two homers, and walked three. Yet he did strike out two, keeping up his 8.88 K/9 rate on the road.

Randy at Pittsburgh Lumber Co. thinks they should send Morton to Indy. His next start comes against the Cubs at home, so maybe the Pirates will give him one more shot before going with Jeff Karstens or Daniel McCutchen. But man, his numbers are really something else this year.

A few weeks ago I toyed around with a metric for comparing bullpen usage between teams. In that same post I highlighted a couple of relievers by plotting their pLI by appearance. Jeff Zimmerman took those second set of graphs and created a within-team usage comparison pair of charts (with some input from Tango) at Royal’s Review. Since then I’ve been pondering ways to quickly and graphically compare usage between teams. For a first attempt I narrowed the scope to just closer usage. My methodology was to bin each gmLI into one of four bins as specified by the below table

I then simply counted up the instances in each bin and charted the results. Here is the graph for the AL East, first with just raw totals

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And then broken down by percentage

Read the rest of this entry »

Two weeks ago, David announced a new feature here at FanGraphs, aimed at giving you guys an opportunity to show off your capabilities. Our community blog has surpassed our expectations so far, as you guys have really stepped up and submitted some great stuff. Since there’s a a lot of content going up on FanGraphs on a daily basis, I wanted to highlight some of the community blog posts from the first couple of weeks, in case you missed them.

The first submission we published was from Daniel Moroz, and looked at Nick Markakis’ lack of power this year. Daniel did a great job of diving into the issue, using both data and images to help explain why Markakis has suddenly lost his ability to hit the ball over the wall. He followed this entry up with a later look at Adam Jones’ plate discipline, which was also very well done. Both articles came from his blog, Camden Crazies, which is clearly a must-read for any Orioles fan.

In a different vein than player analysis, “lincolndude” responded to a Tom Verducci article with a piece called Saving Baseball’s Charm. He looked at the way the game has changed over the years, looking at how different styles of baseball provide different value. It’s different than what normally goes up on FanGraphs, and that was one of the reasons I liked it.

A few days ago, “badenjr” took a stab at an always fun topic – Dusty Baker and pitch counts. He looked at how hard the Reds starters have been worked relative to the rest of the league, and showed that Baker may be at least somewhat reformed, as he’s not slagging his pitchers like he used to. The article gets extra points for use of pretty graphs.

Finally, yesterday’s submission from Mike Lee featured an interview with Padres GM Jed Hoyer, which touched on a variety of subjects and led to some pretty interesting answers. Based on the comments, this one was a winner as well. I will point out that any interviews, or articles containing a quote from any person, will be verified before they run.

These are just a few of the terrific posts that have gone up over at the community blog in the last two weeks. Keep them coming, and we’ll continue to feature the best ones here on the site. If your submission didn’t get approved, don’t get discouraged, and feel free to write something else up and submit it. If you’d like feedback on a piece you submitted that didn’t make the cut, you can email community@fangraphs.com, and we’ll do our best to explain why it didn’t get published.

Keep up the great work, everyone, and keep the great submissions rolling in.

This is the final part in a three part series on first round shortstops. On Wednesday, I looked at a 15-year history. On Thursday, I looked at the shortstop prospects still in the minors. Today: the 2010 draftees.

If the last two days have proven anything, it’s that scouting directors often use their first pick on a shortstop, but that it doesn’t-so-often result in a future big league regular entering the organization. In 22 years, we have, I think, eight players that I think will go down as elite draft picks: Alex Rodriguez, Chipper Jones, Derek Jeter, Nomar Garciaparra, Chuck Knoblauch, Troy Tulowitzki, Justin Upton and Mike Moustakas. The latter is me going out on a ledge, and you might be able to add 2-3 more guys to the list, but we’re talking about eight stars in 98 attempts. Today, I’ll run through the three consensus first rounders that will try to join that list, before hitting on four that might slip into the first round in the honorable mention section. (Note: These rankings are not my own, but what seems to be the consensus in the industry. You’ll get a feeling on whether or not I agree in my write-up.)

1. Manny Machado, Brito Miami Private School

As best I can tell, Machado is about 10 days from becoming the 22nd player drafted as a high school shortstop in the top five picks. Since he’s from Miami, people always have to mention Alex Rodriguez, but never seem to bring up failed 1979 fifth overall pick Juan Bustabad. Of that group, only the Upton Brothers, Rodriguez, Chipper Jones and Josh Booty were Machado’s size, so he’s in solid company in that regard. I also think his hit tool is probably better than everyone’s except Moustakas and Justin Upton since A-Rod was drafted. He’s going to be a big leaguer.

In watching him on videos, there is no denying his bat speed. Also, the MLB.com draft video has two different triples on the highlight reel, and Machado makes it from home-to-third in more time than I would have expected. Like Bryce Harper, I do wonder if the desire to keep him at his position will prolong his development: you have to think Machado would move quicker if he was thrown into right field and told to just worry about his hitting. The best compromise is probably third base, where he still gets a positive positional adjustment, can still show off his big arm, and has a chance to be plus defensively.

2. Nick Castellanos, Archbishop McCarthy HS (Fla.)

There are a lot of iffy things in Castellanos’ scouting report that make me worry he might become a bust. At 6-foot-4, there is a chance he isn’t even announced as a shortstop on draft day — he’s a third baseman, realistically. But with the downgrade on the defensive spectrum comes heightened offensive expectations, and I’m not sure Castellanos can deliver. No one seems convinced about either hit tool, and specifically if his raw power will ever develop with a wood bat. We’ve been down this road with prospects in the past, and it doesn’t work out well.

And yet, Castellanos is also fairly unique. There aren’t a lot of players that were drafted as shortstops listed at 6-foot-4, and if you see Castellanos, there is no doubt he has room to fill out. In looking back, maybe he’ll be a bit like Sergio Santos, or a bit like Brandon Wood. Hopefully he avoids the fate suffered by Matt Halloran or Mark Farris, or maybe the team that drafts him tries to make him a catcher, a la Joe Lawrence or Michael Barrett. We can wish for him the minor league success of Kevin Witt and Kevin Orie, the best comps as far as body type go, but better big league success would be nice. I don’t really see it, though.

3. Christian Colon, Cal State Fullerton

I don’t think we can ignore that Colon’s last summer, with Team USA, was one of the best national team performances we’ve seen. He was slow out of the gate this season, but really came back, and continued to show his contact abiliy. In over 700 at-bats at Fullerton, Colon now has a walk-to-strikeout ratio of 73-64, and also has a habit of getting plunked. Defensively, he’s probably a tweener; a below-average shortstop, a solid-average second baseman. I’m guessing his lack of speed will get him moved to second eventually.

Like a right-handed Adrian Cardenas, Colon’s biggest praise comes from his hit tool, and the rest of the praise comes from his work ethic. He showed last summer how good he can be with wood, and I have no question he’ll be able to hit for a high average, and walk enough to post a good OBP. A career path resembling Cliff Pennington’s wouldn’t shock me, so ultimately, I think a team needs to decide if that is the value they want from their first rounder. Could be.

Honorable Mention

I wrote about Derek Dietrich a couple weeks ago, and he could slide into the supplemental first round if a team thinks he could play second base. The most encouraging thing about his All-American season was the drastic slash in strikeouts … Some people really like Utah high school product Marcus Littlewood, a 6-foot-3 switch-hitter. But to me, his left-handed swing is a mess, and he swings through a lot of pitches. I almost think you let him go to college and check back in three years … I do like Yordy Cabrera, another big “shortstop” that will eventually move to third or the outfield. One look at a video of Cabrera and you see his power, which seems more present than his peers. He seems to be someone that is worth the seven figure risk … Finally, I think we’ll see Indiana shortstop Justin O’Connor in the first round, as he has real believers in a lot of his tools: plus-plus arm strength, a good-looking swing, some power projection. His ultimate position is in question, and while he looks very raw behind the plate, it might be worth it for a team to dedicate development time to that endeavor.

Perhaps more than any other pitcher in the game, Joel Zumaya is associated with radar gun readings. After every fastball that the Detroit righty throws, flames literally shooting down his tattooed arms, fans turn to see if Zumaya cracked the triple digits.

The Tigers’ 11th round pick in the 2002 draft was developed as a starting pitcher, but he was shifted to the ‘pen upon reaching the majors. His rookie season back in 2006 was excellent — averaging 98.6 MPH with his vaunted fastball, Zumaya had 10.48 K/9, 4.54 BB/9 and a 3.93 xFIP. His control wasn’t great, but he garnered swinging strikes 13.4 percent of the time (9.3 percent MLB average for relievers) and compiled 1.9 WAR in 83.1 innings pitched. Zumaya’s heater wasn’t just a high-velocity novelty act — it was worth +1.43 runs per 100 pitches thrown.

After dominating hitters in ’06, Zumaya spent the better part of the next three seasons on the surgeon’s table or on the rehab trail. Joel’s injury woes actually began during the 2006 postseason, as he missed part of the ALCS with forearm and wrist inflammation suffered by rocking a little too hard on “Guitar Hero.” He then ruptured a tendon in his right middle finger in May of 2007, requiring surgery that sidelined him until August.

That off-season, Zumaya injured his shoulder moving boxes in his father’s attic as a California wildfire approached. He went under the knife again to repair his separated shoulder. Zumaya didn’t pitch in the majors until June of 2008, but he was shut down with a stress fracture in his shoulder in September. Last year, he began the season on the DL with shoulder soreness and then had yet another procedure on his shoulder in August.

When Zumaya did take the mound from 2007-2009, he wasn’t effective. He struck out 8.07 batters per nine frames, issued 6.24 BB/9 and had a 5.40 xFIP in 88 combined frames. After looking like a shut-down reliever during his rookie year, an ailing Zumaya contributed all of -0.2 WAR from ’07 to ’09. He still threw hard, averaging 97.5 MPH in 2007 and 2008 and 99.3 MPH in 2009, but hitters didn’t tremble at the prospect of getting a Zumaya fastball. The pitch had a +0.71 runs/100 value in ’07, but declined to -0.86 in ’08 and -0.94 last year.

In 2010, however, Zumaya again looks like a relief ace. In 26.2 innings, he has 9.79 K/9, 1.69 BB/9 and a 2.97 xFIP. With 1.1 WAR, the 25-year-old trails just Jonathan Broxton among relievers. Chucking his fastball (averaging 98.4 MPH) a career-high 84.2 percent of the time, Zumaya has a +2.48 runs/100 value with the heat. Joel is getting first pitch strikes 66.7 percent, and batters are chasing plenty of pitches — his outside swing percentage is 31.5, compared to a career 24.4 percent average and the 25.7 percent big league average for relievers.

I have no idea if Zumaya can remain healthy. Given his lengthy injury history and the stress that he puts on his shoulder with each searing fastball, he could be a ticking time bomb. But whatever the future holds, Zumaya’s pitching like one of the best relievers in the bigs right now.

In case you’re not familiar, Pat Venditte is a pitcher in the New York Yankees minor league system who has made some waves for his remakarkable talent: he’s a switch pitcher. Venditte pitches proficiently with both arms. His story made some national waves last year when an at-bat against a switch hitter led to a bit of a debacle (link includes video).

Not only was Venditte’s season a point of interest for those into baseball trivia and oddities, he actually performed quite well. Although his age (23) was advanced for A and A+, it was only his second professional season, and so his 2.07 cumulative FIP and 2.24 FIP at A+ Tampa certainly piqued the interest of some, although others aren’t exactly convinced yet.

Venditte has remained at Tampa for the beginning of the 2010 season, and he’s picked up right where he left off. Venditte is currently running an FIP of 2.52 in 26.1 innings, thanks to a 30:7 K:BB ratio and a spectacular HR/9 rate of only 0.34. His walk rate is actually slightly up from last season, when he only walked only 12 batters in 76.3 innings. To compensate, Venditte has seen a massive increase in his ground ball rate against both hands of hitters – his GB rate against both hitters has increased to 54.5%, up from only 34.2% against lefties and 49.2% against righties.

At the age of 24 – 25 in June – Venditte is about a year and a half older than the average Florida State League player. Between this season and the end of 2009, Venditte has put up about 70 innings of sub-3.00 FIP pitching in the FSL. In the Eastern League, where the AA Trenton Thunder play, the average age is 25. It seems that now (or at least soon) would be a good opportunity to see Venditte perform against players closer to his age level.

Especially given Venditte’s high K-rates and his increased ability to induce the ground ball, I think Venditte warrants more than just a passing look as a prospect. Having a reliever that has the platoon advantage in every situation is very intriguing, as it could potentially reduce the amount of relievers that a manager would need to carry. More importantly, Venditte has quite simply produced at every opportunity. The jump to AA is a big one, and it’s not obvious that Venditte has what it takes to handle the increased talent level, but after over 135 very successful innings in the lower minors, it may be time to get that opportunity sooner rather than later.

The oddity of Venditte also inspired me to think about what other interesting combinations of skills would be useful in a player. Personally, I would be interested in seeing a high platoon split reliever who also had the ability to play a strong (or even roughly average) defensive outfield. That way, that reliever could pitch to a same handed batter, move into the outfield for an opposite handed batter, and then return to the mound for any other same handed batters. Given the way benches are constructed, especially in the National League, the idea may be completely implausible, but given how important platoon splits can be late in games, I still think the idea could work. Feel free to post your concoctions in the comments section.

Offense
Seattle: .238/.311/.348, 1.6% PA/HR, 9.3% BB/PA, 29% XBH/H
San Diego: .241/.321/.360, 1.8% PA/HR, 9.7% BB/PA, 30% XBH/H

Defense
Seattle: 27 DRS, 7.6 UZR
San Diego: 35 DRS, 19.9 UZR

Rotation
Seattle: 3.78 ERA, 3.99 FIP, 4.39 xFIP
San Diego: 2.88 ERA, 3.66 FIP, 4.08 xFIP

Bullpen
Seattle: 3.70 ERA, 3.75 FIP, 4.27 xFIP
San Diego: 2.91 ERA, 3.14 FIP, 3.19 xFIP

Record
Seattle: 18-28
San Diego: 28-18

Okay, to the commentary.

No, I’m not saying Seattle and San Diego are equals. I do think Seattle will play better than they’ve played so far – which is to say better than one of the worst teams in baseball – and I think San Diego will play worse than they have so far – which is to say worse than one of the best teams in baseball – and I think most people would agree with that.

Seattle and San Diego are basically playing with the same blueprint: good-to-great defense, above-average pitching, and an offense that chronically struggles to scrap out a few runs per game. And it’s working beautifully for one and horribly for the other. Obviously, the comparison using raw statistics is imperfect. Safeco is tough on batters, but Petco is tougher. The Padres are without access to a designated hitter and that has the tendency to affect offensive statistics.

My point is, though, that Seattle’s paltry offensive efforts are well-publicized and mocked. San Diego’s efforts aren’t much better, and would do little to inspire that certain poultry staple of the area. Seattle has a number of struggling batters right now that seem unlikely to be this bad going forward. Jose Lopez, Milton Bradley, Casey Kotchman, and Chone Figgins, for starters, and maybe not all of them come around like we’d expect, but by the end of the year, Seattle should end up outhitting San Diego. That’s largely irrelevant though, since both are below average offenses.

Teams can compete without hitting for a lot of power or hitting a lot in general. Ask San Diego. They’re just doing what a lot of folks thought Seattle would do.

Carlos Marmol has great stuff. Carlos Marmol effectively uses that great stuff to strike out a lot of hitters. Neither of those two statements is shocking or relatively unknown, even to casual fans. Carlos Marmol has been a big component of the Chicago Cubs bullpen for the past few years and he’s consistently racked up impressive strikeout totals.

In 2007, it was 96 strikeouts in 69.1 innings or 33.7% of all batters faced. In 2008, Marmol punched out 114 over 87.1 innings with what was actually a slightly lower rate at 32.8% of all batters faced. 2009 seemed like a bad omen as the strikeouts slipped to 93 in 74 innings and just 27.8% of hitters.

I think we can put that bad omen to rest. Marmol finished today having faced 103 batters on the season. He’s sent 49 of them back to the dugout with a strikeout. That’s an absurd 47.6% strikeout rate. Given that he’s recorded 24.2 innings pitched, the strikeout rate on the more well known K/9 scale registers a you-have-to-be-kidding-me 17.9.

For every inning that Carlos Marmol has pitched, he’s averaged two strikeouts. Do I even need to put that in perspective for you or can you intuitively grasp how insanely dominant that is?

Of course, Marmol is also a bit wild, yielding about 5.5 walks per nine innings as well. For out of this world comedy when it comes to skewed pitching lines, take a gander at Jonathan Broxton’s 30 strikeouts, two walks and zero home runs allowed over 20.1 innings. Broxton’s resulting FIP of 0.45 and xFIP of 1.59 are both league leaders as is his 15.0 strikeout to walk ratio.

Broxton has been more valuable, but I’m not sure that what he’s accomplished thus far is more impressive than Carlos Marmol’s strikeout rate.

The Kansas City Royals have a very interesting player currently learning how to play left field for their AAA affiliate in Omaha. At 26, he might be a little old for the league, but there’s no denying his production. Alex Gordon, the Royals former third baseman, has put together a .377/.515/.688 line in about 100 plate appearances with the O-Royals.

We’ve already chronicled the demotion of Alex Gordon to AAA early this season. It seemed ridiculous at the time – Gordon was clearly deserving of a spot on the roster, as he is just simply better than both Chris Getz, and Alberto Callaspo’s defense is extremely suspect. Apparently the Royals felt that they weren’t going to contend this season and that their best course of action, for the long term, would be to try Alex Gordon in left field and let Callaspo’s bat play at third. It is almost certainly better for Gordon to be receiving the at bats that he has at AAA than to be stagnating on the Royals’ bench at the Major League level, but the Royals almost certainly cost themselves some wins on the season.

As we look at the standings, the Royals are pretty clearly finished. They sit at 19-28, 7.5 games behind the Twins for the Central and 9.5 behind the Yankees for the Wild Card. Given the talent disparity between the Royals and those two teams, we can safely say the Royals will not catch them. Still, there is reason to believe that winning now is valuable, and so the Royals should try and make the most of their current season while building for the long term.

They have the perfect player to bring up to the major leagues right now in Gordon. Learning left field clearly hasn’t impacted his offense in the minor leagues. Scott Podsednik has a .234/.281/.328 line in May. Mitch Maier and Rick Ankiel have wOBAs below .320. Willie Bloomquist has played well so far, but he’s Willie Bloomquist. The only truly talented player in the Royals’ outfield right now is David DeJesus, and he’s a 3-4 WAR player at best.

The Royals should have room in their outfield. Podsednik, Bloomquist, Maier, and Ankiel are all expendable players, and DeJesus could bring in some prospects in a potential trade. Alex Gordon does not have anything left to learn in the minors – if there are still any kinks in his outfield defense, he can work them out in the majors. Gordon was a good enough player to make the roster in April. At the plate, he has nothing left to learn in the minors. There’s no excuse if he’s not back in Kansas City by June.