“Baseball becomes markedly less interesting at the conclusion of the regular season.”

I’m sure there are people who’ll disagree with this sentiment, but there are also people who go camping of their own volition. I should not be surprised to find significant overlap between these two populations.

In any case, I bring it up, on account of — as Alex Remington noted in these pages yesterday — the Major League Baseball playoffs are likely to be expanded soon to include 10 teams come the 2012 season.

While I’ll stop short of calling the move a “travesty” — I mean, it’s not like Community is being taken off the air or the collected works of P.G. Wodehouse are being summarily banned — I’m more than willing to state publicly that it’s 100% of a bummer.

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It seems odd that a team that wants to contend in the future would entertain offers for its best young player. Yet discussions surrounding a possible Justin Upton trade have dominated baseball news this week. As Dave described, this is a unique situation, since teams don’t often trade players who are not only young and cheap, but also project to provide plenty of surplus value. It made me wonder if any other teams could benefit by trading a young, cost-controlled player who projects to rank among the elite. And then it came to me.

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Just because I find it interesting, a comparison:

Joaquin Benoit: 217 batters faced, 30 hits, 6 HR, 11 BB, 75 K
J.J. Putz: 219 batters faced, 41 hits, 4 HR, 15 BB, 65 K

Benoit was marginally better than Putz a year ago. Putz has a significantly better track record than Benoit. Yet, it was essentially a consensus agreement that Benoit was the best setup reliever on the market, and he’s the one Detroit paid a premium to sign early in the offseason. But, given their respective careers, wouldn’t you rather have Putz going forward?

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According to this report, the Nationals have decided not to offer a long-term contract extension to outfielder Josh Willingham. It is also likely that the team will deal Willingham by the start of the 2011 season. Willingham, who turns 32 in February, will enter his final arbitration season next year. He is coming off a $4.6 million contract last season, and with a injury shortened but still successful 2010, the outfielder can probably expect an arbitration reward somewhere in the neighborhood of $6.5 to $7.5 million.

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This edition of Offseason Notes is funnier than about 60% of all episodes of The Jeffersons.

Marginally Important News
In which the author examines news that’s just barely fit to print.

Juan Carlos Linares Getting Attention
SCOUT-leaderboard-fixture Juan Carlos Linares is discussed glowingly by Sox GM Theo Epstein and a mysterious scouty-type person. “He rakes,” says — er, actually, texts — the latter, presumably not discussing Linares’s fondness for yardwork.

Amazin’ Avenue Starts Book Club
Clearly aware that sporting news can reach absurd heights at this particular juncture of the baseballing calendar, Amazin’ Avenue’s James Kannengieser has started a virtual book club, and the first assignment is Moneyball. Among the penetrating discussion questions, we find this, for example:

5. Was early 1980s Billy Beane [pictured above right] really as handsome as the scouts declared? How would he stack up vs. other 1986 Mets in that department? As a GM, would you rather sign a lothario or a mature, married player (like Ollie)?

It’s obvious, America: Metropolitan fans are willing to ask the tough questions..

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Two weeks ago, I wrote about Bud Selig’s proposal to add two wild card teams; in the interim, that proposal has all but become a certainty. “Expanded playoffs appear inevitable” is the Yahoo headline for the Associated Press story. And, of course, it makes sense why it would be inevitable: Selig and the owners believe that more playoff teams means more money, and players and teams have little incentive to resist a plan that gives them more of a shot at the postseason. Two more facets of the plan from two weeks ago seem more likely: the new wild cards will first appear in 2012, not 2011, and they will probably play a best-of-three series rather than a one-game playoff.

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Ed Wade and Dan O’Dowd combined for a straightforward deal of major leaguers.

Clint Barmes turns 32 in early March. It’s a little early to start setting depth charts, but one has to figure Barmes will be under serious consideration to start at shortstop in place of Tommy Manzella and Angel Sanchez. Part of that consideration may stem from his price tag (more than $4 million) which could have led to a non-tender from Colorado. The book on Barmes begins and ends with defense since he profiles as a plus defender at either middle infield position. His leather is slick enough that Colorado kept him at short during the 2006 season despite racking up -41.7 park-adjusted batting runs.

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I was excited to see that David Appelman added Pace to the stats pages based on don’t_bring_in_the_lefty’s post at BtBS. It was something I had thought about before when Carson emailed me about including it in NERD. Nothing came of it, but I had the code lying around on my computer and I thought this would be good opportunity to share some of my observations.

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In two hours, the American League Cy Young Award winner will be announced, but the story will be less about the pitcher who takes home the trophy and more about the people who cast their ballots. With Felix Hernandez and CC Sabathia as the presumed top two candidates, this vote is being seen as a referendum on Win-Loss record and a litmus test for how far the BBWAA has come in their acceptance of sabermetric thinking.

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In a previous post, I looked at the five players who hurt their teams the most by grounding into double plays in 2010. The worst players were around four to six runs below average. Avoiding the double play is also a skill, so today we’ll take a look at the players who saved their teams the most runs above average by doing so in 2010.

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