Chris Capuano, the Mets’ new left-handed pitcher, has a strange platoon split. Against right-handed batters he gets grounders like Jered Weaver (37%), but against left-handed batters he gets them like Felix Hernandez (54%). The average pitcher has a fairly large difference in strikeout and walk rates by batter-handedness (Capuano’s strikeout and walk splits are standard for a lefty), but a small difference in ground-ball rate. Dave Cameron found that left-handed pitchers get only marginally more grounders against left-handed batters (46%) than against right-handed batters (44%). Capuano’s ground-ball split is out of the ordinary.

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Ryan Raburn, who will turn 30 early next season, finally made a “big score” this week. Raburn, who has been in the Detroit Tigers’ organization since 2001, was finally eligible for arbitration this season. Instead of going to arbitration, Raburn signed a two-year deal with the Tigers for 3.4 million dollars. Assuming that five million dollars is the cost of a marginal win on the open market and a conservative five-percent increase in that cost per season, along with Raburn being in his first year of arbitration (we assume teams typically pay 40, 60, and 80 percent of his time for those three seasons, so this is a one-year (.4+.6) deal for $3.4 when compared to the open market), the Tigers are paying as if he’s worth slightly more than half a Win Above Replacement (WAR). It is pretty obvious than Raburn is better than that, but how much better?

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The free agent market always gets a bit more interesting in early December, after the non-tender deadline. A new crop of free agents become available, and every year it seems as though two or three players generate a ton of interest. This year Matt Diaz ranked among them. Despite his injury-shortened 2010 season, plenty of teams saw value in his bat, especially in a platoon role. The Pirates won the sweepstakes, signing him to a two-year deal. There was another, less heralded player on the market whose skills are somewhat similar to Diaz’s. Yet Scott Hairston has barely received a mention this winter.

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When the Brewers traded four young players to Kansas City and snatched away Zack Greinke, the deal triggered two reactions:

1) The Brewers traded for Zack Greinke? The Brewers?!?!
2) Too bad they had to take back Yuniesky Betancourt to seal the deal.

The Betancourt snark was funny, but few people actually figured it would make a big difference. The Brewers had already nabbed one of the most underrated starting pitchers in the game in Shaun Marcum. Now they were adding one of the best pitchers on the planet in Greinke to team with Yovanni Gallardo and a potent lineup that included the likes of Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun, Rickie Weeks, Casey McGehee, and Corey Hart. This Brewers team owns enough front-line talent to make a serious run this season. So how much harm could one stone-handed statue of a shortstop possibly cause?

A lot, actually. So much in fact that Betancourt, combined with the rest of a marginal defense, could torpedo a potential run at a championship.

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The Mariners offense last year was more of the deep-sea variety than the ancient, although this fated passage from the Coleridge poem may yet apply:

“God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!—

Fiends indeed, or a particular fiend named offensive ineptitude. The team scored 507 runs last year, worst in the American League by a whopping 99 runs. The depths that this offense plumbed were Mariana-Trench-like in both the short- and long-term.

Consider this: The Mariners were last in the league, by wRC+, at the following positions: catcher, first base, left field, and designated hitter. And it’s not like the rest of the team was racing cigarette boats, as they were third-to-last at shortstop, second-to-last at third, and fourth-to-last in center. Guess which position was the only one that was above average last year? That’s how you finish almost a century short of your nearest DH-using competitor.

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Thirteen months ago, the New York Yankees acquired Curtis Granderson from the Detroit Tigers in a three-way trade. Instead of talk about the Yankees or Tigers, most initial reactions focused on answering what the Arizona Diamondbacks were thinking. After all, trading Max Scherzer and Daniel Schlereth for Ian Kennedy and Edwin Jackson appeared to be a loss on paper. It’s too early to close the book on the trade, but the Diamondbacks’ return looks a lot better with a season under its belt.

Surprisingly, the Diamondbacks received the most WAR of any trade participant in 2010. Kennedy found his prospect magic and delivered 194 innings with a 4.33 FIP. Jackson, despite a poor ERA, chipped in 21 starts with strong peripherals (4.24 FIP). He ultimately found himself on his way to the Chicago White Sox for Daniel Hudson. Jackson and Hudson matched each other in WAR after the trade – two wins apiece – and thus left the D-Backs with 6.2 wins, which was more than Granderson (who had a five-plus win season) produced or the Tigers’ return. Of course, trade analysis is not that simple.

The most common complaint revolved around Scherzer’s service time and cost. He remains cheaper and further away from free agency than Jackson. Given their contract statuses, Scherzer represented the better choice if they were considered equal in talent and performance expectations. No one outside of the Arizona organization knows just how that comparative analysis looked, but the combustibility concerns that surrounded Scherzer may have tipped the scales in Jackson’s favor.

Scherzer has since changed his mechanics and produced at a ridiculously high level from that point on. Whether he would have received the same adjustments within the Arizona system is up to anyone’s guess. My inclination is to think he would not have made similar adjustments, otherwise that tinkering would have occurred at some point during his developmental process. If that is the case and Scherzer would’ve busted – and really nobody knows the probability of either event – then one can argue the Diamondbacks are actually better off now with Hudson and Kennedy than they would be with Scherzer in tow, particularly since Hudson and Kennedy are cheaper and further away from free agency than Scherzer.

News Item #1 – AL East team with strong sabermetric leanings signs free-agent reliever. His peripherals are better than his ERA, and he’s considered to have some personality baggage. Reliever gets $12 million over two years – reaction is mostly positive.

News Item #2 – AL East team with strong sabermetric leanings signs free-agent reliever. His peripherals are better than his ERA, and he’s considered to have some pesonality baggage. Reliever gets $3.5 million for one year – reaction is abject mocking.

As you may have figured out by now, News Item #1 refers to the Boston Red Sox’ signing of Bobby Jenks, which took place a month ago, while News Item #2 refers to the Tampa Bay Rays’ signing of Kyle Farnsworth, which broke today. I find the differences in response to these deals somewhat amusing.

Here are the numbers for Farnsworth and Jenks over the last two seasons.

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I’m pleased to announce that Joshua Maciel’s original WAR Grids are now automated for you to create your very own. Also a big thanks to Dave Allen for his help.

Here’s what one looks like for the top 25 WAR leaders since the year 2000.

click to make big

I have done a number of posts since end of the 2010 season ranking players and plays based on stats not normally given prominence. But I haven’t yet done one of my “classics”: the season’s “King of Little Things.” As the name implies, it is an attempt to quantify a player’s contribution with regard to the game state beyond average run expectancy. Who were the best and worst in 2010?

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Projecting players is a tough business. Because of the natural tendency to ignore injury risk and reversion to the mean, our instincts lead us to over project. We have seen this with the fans who are about half a win high (and a full win high projecting players on their favorite time) and who are generous with projected playing time.

So it is easy to look at projections and think they look low, and so we should give people a pass when they say so. But when they say so and in the process disparage the projector, I think it’s fair game to call them out. Here is a video of Bob Ryan and Joe Sullivan discussing Bill James’ projections for some Boston Red Sox players (h/t Repoz). Ryan and Sullivan were aghast that Bill James would project Jon Lester for just 14 wins in 2011, joking that their colleague Dan Shaughnessy would say “Bill James doesn’t even like to watch baseball!” and that if James actually watched Lester pitch he might think differently. Ryan claimed that Lester is a 19-game winner for the foreseeable future.

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