If the season started tomorrow, the Houston Astros would lack a determined fifth starter. The man who made the fifth most starts for the Astros last season – Felipe Paulino – is now Colorado property, leaving the team with Brett Myers, Wandy Rodriguez, Bud Norris, and J.A. Happ as locked-in starters. The season does not start tomorrow – it’s snowing, sillies – and as such the Astros have the ability to collect options and see who catches their eye during workouts and exhibition games. Over the latter part of the week they added two interesting options. Does either have hope?

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The old adage about death, taxes, and something consistent being the only fixtures in life has a baseball offseason equivalent. The Royals signing a former Braves’ hotshot, the Red Sox making a splash, and the Angels signing a late-inning reliever are offseason givens. The Halos penned Brian Fuentes and Fernando Rodney to a pair of two-year deals over the last two offseasons, and added this year’s version with Scott Downs on Friday night. Unlike his southpaw predecessor and bullpen teammate, Downs received a three-year deal, not two, with the total worth at $15 million.

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While his moves didn’t exactly make Ken Rosenthal and Jon Heyman all hot under the collar, Pittsburgh Pirates GM Neal Huntington was busy at the Winter Meetings. Huntington and company selected infielder Josh Rodriguez with the first pick in the Rule V draft, acquired RHP Cesar Valdez to complete the Zach Duke deal, and signed outfielder Matt Diaz and RHP Kevin Correia to two-year free agent contracts. While the deal isn’t yet official, the Pirates have also reportedly come to terms with free agent lefty Scott Olsen on a one-year, $500,000 deal with a $4 million club option for the 2012 season. Olsen’s pact allows him to earn an additional $3 million in incentives based on starts made in ’11, according to ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick.

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Negative WAR and the DL

A while back I ran articles on the amount of negative WAR generated by each team and team DL information.

Dan and BN in the comments of the negative WAR article wondered if trips to the DL and negative WAR were related at the team level. As a team has more trips to the DL, they are forced to use below replacement level talent. I went back and looked to see if there was any correlation between the two.

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At the winter meetings this week, John Coppolella, the Braves Director of Baseball Administration, was kind enough to sit down with me and answer some questions about the Braves, his role on the team, and the current state of statistical analysis in the game. He’s a bright young executive in the game, and has a great perspective on the work that front offices do, so this was nothing but a pleasure.

Eno Sarris: What is your role with the Braves exactly? Can you describe what you do?

John Coppolella: I help out [General Manager] Frank Wren and [Assistant General Manager] Bruce Manno. I help them by executing our depth charts, prospect lists, arbitration cases and our statistical analysis. When we break down players, we will use stuff that we find on sites like FanGraphs sometimes. We were in the room a few days back, and we were sorting guys by UZR/150. There’s probably about 10 or 15 we will take from your site, five or 10 from here, from there. We’re always trying to find new information.

Eno Sarris: That’s interesting. I was going to ask you about how aware you are of the stuff that is out there. In particular, valuing defense – there’s a lot of work being done right now trying to figure out how far we’ve gotten with defensive statistics. How do you feel about defensive statistics – do you have any advice for those that are working on defensive numbers?

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I’m pretty whipped after four tiring days in Orlando, so today’s post isn’t going to be a complete argument as much as it is an interesting tidbit to digest. Using the ridiculously awesome new mutli-year capabilities of the leaderboards, I decided to filter my personal dashboard for position players to show the 2006-2010 years, giving us the best players in the game over the last five years. This is what it looks like (click to expand).

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Marginally Important News
In which the author tells the truth, but tells it slant.

Winter Meetings Acquisitions, Complete List
MLB Trade Rumors has an exhaustive list of all the moves teams have made since this past Sunday. I don’t know exactly how you’d do it, but I’m almost positive that some sort of drinking game could be made of this.

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On the leaderboards you can now filter by multiple seasons going all the way back to 1871.

There are a couple caveats, in that some sections of the leaderboard only go back so far. The Batted Ball, Pitch Type, Pitch Value and Plate Discipline sections can only go back to 2002, and the Win Probability section only goes back to 1974. Splits will also only go back to 2002 and monthly splits currently only for single seasons right now. I’ve included a label which shows exactly which seasons you’re looking at, even if you’ve selected something else.

For instance, if you’ve selected dates between 1980 and 2004 and you go the the Batted Ball section, you’ll only see the dates between 2002 and 2004.

If you’re filtering huge date ranges, please be a little more patient than usual because it may take a few seconds more to grab all the data.

This feature will be making its way to the other sortable stats sections fairly soon.

The Baltimore Orioles
2010 MLB Record: 66-96 (5th in the AL East)
Minor League Power Ranking: 23rd (out of 30)
Click for: Last Year’s Top 10 Prospect List

1. Zach Britton, LHP
Acquired: 2006 3rd round (Texas HS)
Pro Experience: 5 seasons
2010 MiLB Level: AA/AAA
Opening Day Age: 23
Estimated Peak WAR: 5.0

Notes: Britton, 23, was one of my favorite under-the-radar pitching prospects in 2008 and 2009 but he’s no longer a secret after another successful season in 2010. The lefty produces outstanding ground-ball numbers (64%) while also showing OK control and acceptable strikeout numbers (7.60 K/9 in AAA). The far-from-elite K-rate is what keeps the southpaw from being considered a future ace. Britton, Chris Tillman, and Brian Matusz could form a very solid nucleus at the top of the rotation for years to come. Britton throws with a short-arm motion and I’m not love with his arm action, which appears to put a bit of stress on his elbow. There also isn’t much deception in his delivery and he also slows his arm down when he throws his breaking ball. His overall repertoire includes a sinking fastball that touches 94 mph, a slider, and a changeup. The off-speed pitches is still a work in progress. Britton should be ready for The Show by mid-2011.

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Late last night (or very early this morning), Jerry Crasnick reported that the Cincinnati Reds signed emerging star Jay Bruce to a six-year, $51 million dollar contract with a club option for a seventh year. While many casual fans first may have noticed Bruce due to a memorable defensive gaffe in the playoffs, the 24 year-old outfielder had the great season in 2010 that Reds fans had expected from him for a while. Deals like these with young, cost-controlled players almost always look good for the team, so let’s see just how good.

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