Perhaps the story of the Phillies in ye old National League Championship Series of 2010 is the story of missed opportunities at the plate. We know how poor of a statistic batting average is, but Ryan Howard was the only regular to top .261, so the bats weren’t hot. The entire team put up a .216/.311/.321 line, which is somewhere between “that’s disappointing” and “OMGz, trade that bum Chase Utley (.182/.333/.227) like yesterday” depending on your current state of mind. A team that hit .260/.332/.413 during the season didn’t come close to equaling that production in a six-game stretch. It happens, and it seems there’s no reason to slice and dice that sample any smaller.

Or maybe there is. Because we’ve talked about this team’s struggles against lefthanders at times. Looking at the series as a whole, though, the Phillies managed “only” 10 runs, 18 hits (7 extra base) and 9 walks in 21 innings against lefties. Perhaps we only remember the high-profile strikeouts – and the Giants’ LHPs did strike out 23 in those 21 innings. Even if we think the overall line overstates the case and want to consider the leverage index of all those Javier Lopez outings, in particular, he only averaged a 1.4 LI while compiling that 2.08 ERA and getting those 13 outs. Impressive? Yes. Higher-than-average pressure in those situations? Yes. The reason the Phillies lost the series? Hardly. The Phillies had chances and we obviously can’t blame their lack of offense all on their overall performance against lefties.

The word going in was that even if the Phillies offense was going to have a little trouble with this staff, their own pitching staff would easily neutralize the poor Giants offense. After all, the Giants were the only playoff team with a below-average wOBA and the Phillies had Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels. That trio didn’t perform poorly – they pitched 33 innings and allowed 13 runs, striking out 34 against only six walks. Perhaps more was expected of Roy Halladay after his no-hitter in the first round, but he did strain that groin and you don’t point at three pitchers that pitched 65% of your innings to a 3.27 ERA and say, there, that’s your problem right there.

The bullpen? 13 innings, three runs. The defense? Four errors to the Giants’ three – and even if you want to say errors are a poor gauge of defense, you’d have to admit they played about even on the field in that regard. Timely hitting? Sure, but what can you really do about that, and how much of that is the short sample? Want to blame Ryan Howard just ’cause? Check Dave Cameron’s defense.

It was a tight series. Javier Lopez certainly helped the Giants, and the San Francisco staff deserves some credit for keeping a good offense down. Play this series a million times, though, and the Philadelphia squad probably wins close to half of ’em. The Phillies didn’t play terribly and don’t have an obvious scapegoat going into the offseason, so all they can do is find a way to replace Jayson Werth if he leaves (preferably with a right-handed bat), rework the bullpen as good teams do every offseason, and give it another shot next year.

On account of you’re reading these words, you’re almost definitely aware that the World Series begins on Wednesday. What you might not have admitted to yourself yet, reader, is that, when the World Series is over — in a week-and-a-half or so — there will be no more baseball games to watch.

If this is the first you’re hearing of these developments, allow me to offer my condolences. It can come rather suddenly, this post-postseason, and is a bit like losing a limb. Except less painful, of course. And there’s no blood. And it’ll come back — the baseball season, that is — in like five months.

So, okay, it’s not like losing a limb. Not at all, really.

The thing that ought to be noted, too — before one plunges oneself into darkest despair — is that the offseason is actually kinda great. Just as the baseballing enthusiast has acquainted himself with — and maybe become tired of — each team’s roster, with the “identity,” as it were, of the season, the whole thing ends and is renewed, creating a thousand new things to be learned.

The question is — both for readers and writers of this site — is how best to “cover” the offseason. My colleagues here, as you’ll know, are pretty much excllent with regard to trade and free-agent analyses. Also, Dave Cameron presents his flawless organizational rankings, with which, as you’ll know, the entire readership agrees uniformly.

In any case, neither of those things are exactly what you’d call this author’s “area of expertise.”

And yet, reader, I feel like we’ve developed a relationship this season — with the One Night Onlys, I mean — maybe even (metaphorically speaking, of course) shared a bottle of Malbec together and done some inapporpriate things on a faux-bearskin rug.

Even if you don’t feel the same way I do, I am, at the very least, a dude with (a) the internet, (b) free time, and (c) like six or seven stock jokes that I’m prepared to make over and over again with only the very slightest variation.

So here’s the thing: there’s almost definitely a way to cover the offseason both intelligently and hilariously. I don’t know that I, personally, have come across what I’d regard as “perfect” coverage of the Hot Stove League.

But, look: if FanGraphs is dedicated to any one thing — besides preventing an entire generation of young men from reproducing, I mean — it’s dedicated to trying different things and seeing what works. That’s what I, personally, have attempted with the One Night Onlys series — that is, tried to see what a game preview could be. It’s been an incredibly satisfying experience — especially to share that with readers — and now I want to experiment with an offseason format.

So what matters in the offseason, to an “offseason notes”-type column? I don’t know — not entirely, at least. Below, you’ll find some sections that could appear in such a column, but I’m not married to any of them, really.

Mostly, I’m curious as to what the readership has to say about offseason coverage, what it ought to look like. Will I listen to every last suggestion? Absolutely not. But let’s start the conversation and see what happens.

So, like I say, here are some sections that might appear in an offseason-type column:

Fall- and Winter-League Notes
In which the author gets all intimate with some box scores.

Notable Projections/Projection(s) of the Day
In which the author looks into the future.

Rumors
In which the author copy-and-pastes notes from actual, legitimate news sources, and couples it with whimsical statements.

Transactions
In which the author forgoes actual analysis in favor of casual and offhand remarks.

Unsolicited Commentary
In which the author attempts to make order out of chaos — against the reader’s will.

The Rangers, like most American League teams before them, will lose an advantage as they travel to a National League park. For Games 1 and 2, and perhaps Games 6 and 7, they will have to decide whether offense or defense is more important. In those two to four games the Rangers will lose either their DH, Vladimir Guerrero, or a cog in their outfield platoon, David Murphy and Jeff Francoeur. Unsurprisingly, Ron Washington is opting to stick with his cleanup hitter:

“You can bet we will figure out a way to get Vlad in the starting lineup,” Washington said Sunday during a media availability. “We are not going to take his bat out of the lineup.”

Looking just at Vlad this might seem like a sound decision. He finished second on the Rangers with a .360 wOBA and has hit fourth for them all season. Why take that kind of hitter out of your lineup? Yet, as with most baseball questions, the answer isn’t as straight forward as we might think. There is certainly a downside to playing Guerrero in the field.

The first obvious downside is self-explanatory: they have to play Guerrero in the field. He played just 125.2 innings in the field this season and has just 141.2 innings during the last two seasons. There is good reason for that. Even when Vlad was younger he wasn’t the fleetest of foot in the outfield. In fact, from 2002 through 2008 his UZR was -20.5 in right field. Those might be a bit low, because his arm score was mostly negative, too. Yet even DRS doesn’t think too highly of him, rating him -1 in those seven seasons, mostly because of his good arm. Yet that might not be the case any longer.

We know Vlad as the guy who throws like this, but is that really the case any more? We have very limited information on Guerrero’s arm right now, but during his 125.2 innings in the field this year both +/- (-1) and UZR (-0.6) showed less than favorable results. They might not provide a totally accurate description of Guerrero’s current throwing skills, but with those numbers, combined with what we can see and what we know about aging arms, I think we can safely assume that Vlad won’t be throwing out runners from the warning track.

In order to complete the analysis we have to look at the player, or players, who would replace Vlad should he find himself in a pinch hitting role. Assuming Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain go in Games 1 and 2, that player would be David Murphy. He’s a generally good outfielder, as his 2.4 career UZR/150 in left field indicates. He did have a down year per UZR, -2.3, though he did play only 533 innings out there during the season. For the most part he’s going to cover more ground than Guerrero. Yet what’s underrated about Murphy is his contribution at the plate this season.

We saw already that Vlad ranked third on the Rangers with a .360 wOBA. In fourth, though, was Murphy, just .002 behind at .358. Most of that came against right-handed pitching. Throughout his career, even when he didn’t hit as well overall as he did in 2010, he still hit righties very well, a career .357 wOBA. Guerrero, unsurprisingly, hit lefties far better than righties this season. He has also had an incredibly slow start to the playoffs, going just 12 for 45 with three extra base hits, all doubles. He might fit better as a bench bat in the first two games.

Having Vlad on the bench also means he can come in and pinch hit should Bruce Bochy bring Javier Lopez into a game. Whether that’s Murphy or Mitch Moreland, it will give the Rangers a late-game advantage. The league-average LI for pinch-hitting situations is 1.31, so that would give even more importance to Guerrero’s at-bats. So while they’d lose him for the game, they’d not only be replacing him with someone who can perhaps hit and field better in those circumstances, but they’d also have him available in select late-game situations that can prove critical to the game’s outcome.

Given what we know, in a general sense, about the current level of performance from both Guerrero and Murphy, it does make sense to use Murphy against the two righties in San Francisco. When the series then moves back to Arlington the Rangers can not only have Guerrero DH, but have him DH against a pair of left-handed pitchers. It’s tough to fault Washington for sticking with Guerrero, but it might not be the best move in this specific situation. Murphy appears to match up better.

The World Series always presents a couple of interesting strategic decisions for each team due to the rule differences between leagues. Most AL championship teams have an immobile DH who they have to hide somewhere in the field in NL parks, while the NL champs have to figure out which bench player they want to have hit for their pitcher in AL parks. The Rangers have announced that Vladimir Guerrero will only start one of the first two games in San Francisco, but the Giants have not yet said what they’re going to do at DH. Let’s try to figure out what their best option is.

The no-hassle option

If Bruce Bochy just wants to play it straight, he could use Pablo Sandoval as the DH. He’s the best hitter of their bench players, and despite his struggles, still has some value at the plate – his career line of .305/.356/.484 is certainly not embarrassing for the position.

But given the match-ups, that’s probably not a reasonable expectation. The Rangers could throw left-handed pitchers in all three games in Texas if they choose to use Derek Holland as the Game 4 starter, and Sandoval is a significantly worse hitter from the right side of the plate. Even if the Rangers use Tommy Hunter as the Game 4 starter, the Giants would still have to face C.J. Wilson in Game 3 and Cliff Lee in Game 5, so it seems unlikely that Sandoval will be the primary DH for the Giants in Texas.

The tell-him-to-man-up option

The Giants have a DH in their starting line-up, Pat Burrell. He’s the prototypical player for the position, as a slugger who doesn’t move well and is a defensive liability. There’s a problem, though – Burrell was awful as a DH in his time in Tampa Bay, and he’s a career .209/.306/.348 hitter when not playing the field.

There is an established trend of hitters performing worse when that is the only thing they are asked to do, and Burrell has publicly stated that he hated doing the job. His DH sample involves only 663 plate appearances, so it is certainly possible that his true-talent level is better than those numbers indicate, but asking a guy to do something he doesn’t want to do, and has struggled at the last few years, doesn’t seem like an attractive option.

If the Giants had a really good outfielder on the bench, perhaps it would be worth the risk. But I don’t know that you want to risk Burrell’s confidence just to get Aaron Rowand on the field. While he’s got a good glove and is right-handed, he was miserable offensively this year and has barely played in the postseason. Rowand probably wouldn’t provide much in the way of production, and you’d make Burrell unhappy in the process. I’m not sure that’s worth it.

The upgrade-the-first-base-defense option

If the Giants want to use the DH spot to upgrade their defense by shifting a regular to the position, maybe left field isn’t the place to look. Aubrey Huff has had some high-profile misplays in the field, and the Giants have a first baseman on the bench whose glove is his calling card in Travis Ishikawa.

There’s a few problems here as well, though. Ishikawa is left-handed and has been strictly platooned in his big league career, rarely getting to face lefty pitchers. He has only 67 career plate appearances against them, and he’s hit just .230/.288/.246, not exactly what you’re looking for out of a first baseman in the World Series. His defense is good, but Huff would have to be a butcher at first base to justify the swap, and history says that he’s actually not that bad.

In over 3,000 innings at the position, Huff’s career UZR is -6.5, putting him just below average. His UZR this year was +5.4, so its hard to make a case that he’s worse now than he was as a youngster. Despite the problems in the NLCS, Huff is a competent fielder, so moving him to DH doesn’t present the kind of upside for which the team is looking.

The Hail Mary option

There’s one other possibility the Giants could consider, though it would certainly qualify as a last resort – put Jose Guillen on the roster and start him at DH against lefties. As a right-handed bat with some power, this is the kind of role that the Giants acquired him for in the first place.

The problem is that Guillen isn’t any kind of lefty masher. He’s shown almost no platoon split throughout his career, posting just a .270/.327/.460 line against LHPs that is nearly identical to his performance against RHPs. And while a .787 OPS might seem like a decent option, Guillen’s career numbers don’t really represent what he is in 2010.

He hit .258/.314/.416 this season, only marginally better than what he did the last two seasons in Kansas City. He didn’t hit when he got to the National League, either, and in fact he hasn’t been a positive offensive performer since 2007.

There’s a reason Guillen was left off the postseason roster to begin with – he’s not a good player, and his weaknesses far outweigh his strengths. Even as a DH versus LHP, he’s only a marginally useful player, and removing someone with some potential value to get him into the line-up might not be a worthy trade off.

Given those four choices, I’m honestly not sure what Bruce Bochy’s best bet is. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t end up settling on one choice, but just kept shuffling through the options. Maybe you DH Burrell in Game 3, and if he has a big day, you run him back out there for Game 4, but if he doesn’t, you go with one of the other plans. No matter what way they go, it won’t be a great option, and the Giants will be at a disadvantage in the AL park.

Even before Ryan Howard struck out looking to end the NLCS on Saturday, he was already being fitted with goat horns, especially by broadcasters Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. If you watched any of the last few games of the series, you heard some version of the following phrase every time Howard stepped into the box:

“Here’s Ryan Howard, who does not yet have an RBI in the series.”

You could count on one hand the number of times the Fox crew said his name and failed to mention his series RBI total. So, when Howard took strike three on a nasty slider from Brian Wilson in the ninth inning, the narrative was confirmed, and Ryan Howard has now become the reason the Phillies lost the series.

There’s only one problem – besides Jayson Werth, he was the only guy who did anything offensively against the Giants. The Phillies lost in spite of Ryan Howard’s performance, not because of it. Here are the individual NLCS lines for each Philadelphia starter.

Shane Victorino: .208/.296/.250
Placido Polanco: .250/.360/.350
Chase Utley: .182/.333/.227
Ryan Howard: .318/.400/.500
Jayson Werth: .222/.375/.611
Jimmy Rollins: .261/.320/.304
Raul Ibanez: .211/.250/.263
Carlos Ruiz: .167/.318.333

Howard led the team in batting average, on base percentage, and extra base hits in the NLCS. And yet, because he didn’t knock in a run, Fox decided that he was struggling at the plate. Usage of the statistic like this is why the sabermetric community has spent so much time working to explain its faults – if it was put in context, it’s not the worst proxy for offensive prowess, but too often it is used to tell a story that is simply not true.

The Phillies lost not because Ryan Howard didn’t hit when it mattered, but because all of his teammates except for one failed to bring the offense when the season was on the line. Howard had some noticeable failures, but on the whole, he did his job. In this case, RBIs are more deceptive than descriptive.

Eric Chavez: Oakland Athletics
Option: $12.5M Buyout: $3M

The Eric Chavez contract has been one of the most disappointing in Oakland Athletics history and a big reason why many around baseball have been proclaiming the death of Beane as a brilliant general manager. After posting 3.6 WAR in 2006, injuries turned Chavez into a shell of his former self, as he has posted a total of 0.3 WAR since. As R.J. covered last year, it’s unfair to blame Beane for this effectively unforeseeable turn of events. Last season, the Athletics went into the year with the idea of using Chavez as a DH, with the hopes that he could at least remain in the lineup, but that proved fruitless. Chavez posted a .234/.276/.333 line in 123 plate appearances and recorded five innings in the field, all at first base. That line comes out to -0.4 WAR, and there’s no indication from his performance or durability in the past four years that suggests much better. Eric Chavez’s certainly won’t return to Oakland and his career is likely over. Although he was fantastic from 2001-2006, he may be (unfairly) remembered more as a mistake contract than a great MLB player.

Bill Hall: Boston Red Sox
Option: $9.25M Buyout: $0.25M

After disappointing seasons in 2008 and 2009 with Milwaukee and Seattle, Hall bounced back as a super-utility man with the Boston Red Sox. Hall showcased strong pull power during his best years in Milwaukee and that resurfaced in 2010, as he socked 16 doubles and 18 homers in his 382 plate appearances as a Red Sox member. But he still hasn’t found a positional home, as he played every position except for 1B and C (yes, he pitched an inning). Although he was decent in center field for a year with Milwaukee, he was at his best on the left side of the infield, where he showcased a plus glove at both shortstop and third base. If he can maintain the bat he showed this year, he could be a valuable player at those positions, but he’s guaranteed to strike out a ton and therefore needs to hit for power to be productive. He’s too high variance of a player for Boston to pick up his option, but Hall deserves a multi-million dollar deal, and he probably deserves the chance to compete for a starting job somewhere around the league.

Adrian Beltre, Boston
Option: $10M (player) Buyout: $1M

Beltre’s contract called for a player option worth $5M in 2011 unless he reached the 640 plate appearance plateau in 2010. He finished with 641, earning him a potential $5M raise. A majestic season with a .321/.365/.553 line and his choice of agent suggests free agency is his destination. Beltre remains one of the best defensive third basemen in the league and putting the offensive disaster that took place in 2009 behind him can only help his stock. Look for him to secure a much lengthier deal than the “prove it” variety he settled for last offseason.

Nick Punto, Minnesota
Option: $5M Buyout $0.5M

Punto remains a slick fielder and a generally good baserunner. His ability to fill in at multiple positions and pinch run are the only things marketable about him, though, as outside of some walks his bat is putrid. Punto is worth $5M on a WAR-to-dollars basis and the Twins could probably bring him back without much fuss, especially with the pending departures inside the rest of the infield. The decisive question is whether the $4.5M gained through declining his option is more useful to the Twins on the open market than Punto.