Prior to the beginning of the 2010 season, I asked whether Yankees outfielder Brett Gardner could become 2010’s’ Nyjer Morgan. In 2009, Morgan seemingly came out of nowhere and produced a five-win season with very impressive defense and surprisingly useful offense. While my earlier post did not claim that Gardner was likely to be a five-win player in 2010 (neither was Morgan, given regression to the mean), I did point to his similarities to Morgan: excellent outfield defense and enough on-base ability and speed to overcome a lack of power. Gardner’s 2010 exceeded my optimistic expectations, as he accumulated over five wins according to FanGraphs’ WAR. In the meantime, however, Morgan followed up his outstanding 2009 with a miserable 2010, particularly at the plate. If Brett Gardner was to 2010 what Nyjer Morgan was to 2009, can he avoid being to 2011 what his counterpart was to 2010?

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Baseball Prehistory | Deadball Era | Liveball Era | Post-War
Expansion | Free Agency | Modern Era

The Expansion Era saw the Major Leagues spread west and go from 16 teams to 24 26 by 1977:

The pitching mound had been lowered, the designated hitter added, and baseball was looking like the modern game save for one thing: Free Agency. In the 19th century, players started getting paid more than the average worker. In order to control salaries, baseball created the Reserve Clause in 1879 which said that even if a player’s contract expired, the team that contract was with still retained rights to their services. Players were given one-year contracts, and if they refused to sign, they couldn’t sign with another team.

The Federal League was formed in 1914 to compete with the Major Leagues, but only lasted two seasons. After 1915, the Major Leagues bought out most of the owners of the Federal Leagues, giving them ownership in Major League teams, or other considerations. The owner of one of those teams, the Baltimore Terrapins, refused to be bought out and brought suit against the National League under the Sherman Anti-trust Act. That came to a head in 1922 in Federal Baseball Club vs. National League which created the MLB Anti-Trust exemption. Apparently because baseball was an amusement, it didn’t fall under the same rules for interstate commerce.
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Over his last 169.2 innings pitched, Justin Duchscherer’s ERA+ is 160, which ain’t too shabby, as the kids say (Note: Kids don’t say this at all). Looking at other pitchers with similar innings pitched totals, we see that Scott Baker’s ERA+ was 92, Wade Davis’ was 97 and Phil Hughes’ was 102. The difference of course, is that these three pitchers accumulated those innings in 2010, whereas you have to go back to 2008 for Duchscherer’s innings count that high. Additionally, a lot of things have gone his way when he has been healthy. Expecting those results to continue may be a bit optimistic, but with such a low base, the Orioles made a nice calculated gamble when they signed him for 2011 this past weekend.

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After being confronted with failure or disappointment, it’s human nature to look back and assess what went wrong. After all, you can’t prevent the same mistakes from being made in the future if you don’t know what went wrong in the first place.

Fans and general managers use this line of thinking when they look back at the previous season. They want to know what kept their team from making the playoffs. The answer to this questions isn’t difficult to find — a suspect bullpen, injuries to key players, etc. But whatever the reason, the answer to this question is typically the focal point of the team’s offseason efforts. However, it’s imperative to keep the larger picture in mind. Improving one area to the detriment of others doesn’t help the team overall.

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Baseball Info Solutions has two job openings.

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You can use your metric of choice, but it won’t make a difference. The Diamondbacks featured the worst bullpen in 2010, and it wasn’t particularly close. The unit’s ERA was more than a full run worse than the next closest, and their collective WAR was 1.7 worse. Their new GM, Kevin Towers, built some pretty solid bullpens during his years in San Diego, and now he faces the same task in Arizona. It appears that he’s following the same blueprint as a few teams from recent memory.

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While you weren’t looking, the salary arbitration season has shifted into its final phase. From the 1st (yesterday) until Feb 18, hearings commence in the process that has been in place since 1974. By then, the final 18 players that have yet to reach agreements will have done so through negotiations with their clubs, or through the hearing process where a player’s asking salary and the club’s offering salary are picked – there is no middle ground (see this salary arbitration figure tracker for details). For the uninitiated, here’s how the process works:

A player with three or more years of service, but less than six years, may file for salary arbitration. Free agents can also be offered salary arbitration, which they can accept, or decline and opt for free agency. Of the 34 free agents in Major League Baseball that were offered salary arbitration this year, just two players, then Texas Ranger and now Toronto Blue Jay RHP Frank Francisco and Toronto Blue Jays reliever Jason Frasor accepted the offers from their clubs (here’s a listing of every free agent that accepted salary arbitration and exchanged figures over the last 20 years).

In addition, a player can be classified as a “Super Two” and be eligible for arbitration with less than three years of service. This may read like a stereo manual, but here’s how the Super 2 is defined: A player with at least two but less than three years of Major League service shall be eligible for salary arbitration if he has accumulated at least 86 days of service during the immediately preceding season and he ranks in the top 17 percent in total service in the class of Players who have at least two but less than three years of Major League service, however accumulated, but with at least 86 days of service accumulated during the immediately preceding season.

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Any time a general theory that applies to most people is advanced, people naturally begin to look for the outliers, and they often use the examples at the ends of the spectrum to cast validity on the theory. Or, they just dismiss the theory as not being applicable to that specific case, which may or may not be true. We see this quite a bit with metrics like xFIP and Matt Cain, who has become the poster child for the part of our readership who thinks that stat isn’t worth all that much. For years, Cain’s ERA has been better than his xFIP would suggest, largely because he has sustained one of the lowest HR/FB rates in all of baseball.

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In honor or Rob Neyer announcing himself as one of us, I’m going to pull out one of his favorite toys, the Player A/B comparison. The numbers are from 2010.

Player A: 215 IP, 2.46 BB/9, 5.05 K/9, 43.4% GB%, 4.60 xFIP, 88.0 MPH FBv
Player B: 200 IP, 2.52 BB/9, 5.22 K/9, 37.6% GB%, 4.70 xFIP, 88.2 MPH FBv

Pretty similar, yeah? Let’s go with career numbers, for more context.

Career:

Player A: 1,675 IP, 2.73 BB/9, 6.01 K/9, 40.2% GB%, 4.49 xFIP, 88.5 MPH FBv
Player B: 1,246 IP, 2.76 BB/9, 5.84 K/9, 41.9% GB%, 4.42 xFIP, 89.3 MPH FBv

I’m going to go with Still Very Similar for $200, Alex. They certainly weren’t treated as equals this winter, though.

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