Two days ago, Major League Baseball announced that it had hired John Thorn, an author and member of the Society for American Baseball Research, as its official historian. The position had been vacant since the 2008 death of Jerome Holtzman, the longtime Chicago sportswriter who invented the save stat. Thorn is a great choice: a historian who combines a sense of humor with a love for the game’s minutiae, his hiring is probably the best thing to come out of MLB’s press office all winter. But his hiring is good news for another reason: unlike Bud Selig, he doesn’t believe Abner Doubleday invented baseball.
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For the past two seasons, no player has provided a better surplus value than Evan Longoria. In that span he produced 14.2 WAR, which was second to only Albert Pujols among all MLB players. Considering he made just $1.5 million in those two years, he clearly becomes the team-friendliest player in the league. That probably won’t be the case this year. While Longoria will earn only $2 million in 2011, there are a number of younger players who could make a quarter, or less, of what Longoria will earn and could turn in similar numbers.

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In one sense, the 2011 Phillies are pretty easy to sum up – they’ve pushed all in on starting pitching, and with the best rotation that anyone has seen in some time, they are perceived as the strong favorites to win the National League. If the pitching holds up, they’re going to be good. But, there’s far more to the story than that, and I actually find this Phillies team rather fascinating.

Let’s start with the offense.

Starting Line-Up

1. Jimmy Rollins, SS
2. Placido Polanco, 3B
3. Chase Utley, 2B*
4. Ryan Howard, 1B*
5. Raul Ibanez, LF*
6. Shane Victorino, CF
7. Carlos Ruiz, C
8. Domonic Brown*/Ben Francisco, RF

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Towards the end of January, I wrote a review of the OLIVER projections — and general layout of same — that appear at The Hardball Times (a piece that was complemented by an interview with the giant brain behind the operation, Brian Cartwright). As part of that review, I included a “Kinda Sorta” Prospect List — that is, the top-10 rookie-eligible batters sorted purely by OLIVER’s projected 2011 WAR.

Mr. Cartwright has recently informed me that, since that first post, he has altered the amount of regression on the defensive side of the player projections. As a result, the top-10 list has changed, and so I offer this follow-up.

In fact, below you will find two lists. Because the first list is so rife with catchers, I’ve included a second list of field players sans sans catchers.

With Catchers:

1. Jesus Montero, C, NYA
2. Robinson Chirinos, C, TBA
3. Derek Norris, C, WAS
4. Mike Moustakas, 3B, KCA
5. Wil Myers, C, KCA
6. Matt Young, CF, ATL
7. Devin Mesoraco, C, CIN
8. Jason Kipnis, 2B, CLE
9. Todd Frazier, LF, CIN
10. Ryan Lavarnway, C, BOS

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The Cincinnati Reds are the defending NL Central champs. The Milwaukee Brewers are this year’s darlings after adding Zack Greinke and Shaun Marcum to a team already flush with big bats and young bullpen arms. The St. Louis Cardinals should still contend even with Adam Wainwright gone, given the presence of Chris Carpenter, Matt Holliday, Colby Rasmus, and the best player in the world.

Where does leave the Chicago Cubs? Middle of the pack, most likely.

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While the top of the National League Central figures to be competitive in 2011, the Houston Astros will be fighting their own battle this season: to stay out of the basement. The Astros might not be a complete doormat this year, but it’s hard to envision a scenario where they compete for a division title. That being said, Houston has a few position players to watch and a pitching staff that might surprise in 2011.

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Since 2000, the Colorado Rockies have produced only two draftees who have reached at least 10 WAR over their careers. The Rockies have succeeded despite their poor performances in the draft due to a combination of shrewd acquisitions (Carlos Gonzalez and Jorge de la Rosa), and great scouting in Latin America (Ubaldo Jimenez and Jhoulys Chacin).The importance of the Rockies’ ability (or inability) to excel in the draft will be put to the test this season, however, as their success will depend heavily on their home-grown talent. As Paul Swydan mentioned in his Team Preview article, the Rockies will need strong seasons from Dexter Fowler, Chris Iannetta, Seth Smith and Ian Stewart in order to make another run at Rocktober. Based on the Rockies’ recent history in the draft, counting on their home-grown talent is a risky proposition.
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Episode Sixty-Six
In which the guests are masters of the genre.

Headlines
The History of ottoneu — Recounted!
ottoneu Strategy — Detailed!
Close Friends — Alienated!

Featuring
Niv Shah, Designer
Chad Young, Winner!

Finally, you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio on the flip-flop. (Approximately 45 min play time.)

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Right around this time last year we looked at how the FAN projections projected the 2010 standings, so now seems to be as good a time as any to take a look at what the 2011 fans have projected the standings to look like based on their individual player projections thus far.

Red Sox       98
Yankees       94
Rays          87
Baltimore     81
Blue Jays     79

Twins         87
Tigers        83
White Sox     79
Cleveland     73
Royals        68

Rangers       85
Angels        79
Athletics     78
Mariners      76

Phillies      90
Marlins       85
Mets          84
Braves        82
Nationals     74

Brewers       84
Cardinals     83
Cubs          82
Reds          80
Pirates       71
Astros        60

Rockies       90
Giants        84
Padres        80
Dodgers       79
Diamondbacks  75

Once again, the fan ballots were a bit optimistic and needed to be scaled back a bit to make the win totals look realistic.

The Braves look obviously low to me (maybe there’s something weird going on there) and the fans really have their hopes up for the Rockies, but I’m pretty pleased with how these came out.

The discussion a month ago about Matt Cain and his –and teammates’—home run suppression had me thinking about park factors and the nature of comparing unadjusted stats like RA to ones like xFIP. It feels at times that people will point to the gap between a pitcher’s ERA and his FIP or xFIP as proof that said pitcher is a statistically significant outlier at having control over one of the results of pitching that the DIPS theory rejects. Where I think a disconnect forms is that those assertions ignore that controlling for “luck” factors like BABIP and HR/FB is not the only thing that metrics like FIP do. They also attempt to control out the pitcher’s home park and the defensive skill behind him.

If we want to examine the question of whether a metric like xFIP underrates Matt Cain (or anyone) because it ignores some aspect of Cain’s skill at controlling his batted balls then we need to first isolate that part of the spread between his ERA and his xFIP. That means making corrections for park and defensive skill.

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