When it comes to season-long success, I remain convinced that depth is an underrated asset – every team is going to struggle with injuries or unexpected poor performance, and those that have reliable alternatives in house can limit the damage and keep from being caught off guard. In that sense, I think we have to give the San Francisco Giants quite a bit of credit – they might be the deepest team in baseball.

Andres Torres, Cody Ross, Pat Burrell, Mark DeRosa, and Nate Schierholtz give the team five useful outfielders, and that’s before we consider that Brandon Belt’s arrival could push Aubrey Huff into the outfield as well. Belt also serves as insurance at first base, should Huff get injured or fail to hit. Barry Zito is their fifth starter. They have enough power arms to live without Brian Wilson for a few weeks if he’s not ready to go by opening day.

At most positions, the Giants have some insurance, and should be able to plug leaks that spring up during the season. But there’s one spot on the field that they’ve left themselves vulnerable at, and it happens to be a pretty important one.

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Losing Adrian Gonzalez would be painful to any team. But for a Padres squad whose second-best 2010 regular (or quasi-regular) was Will Venable (.324 wOBA), it was a monumental loss. Still, the haul from the Gonzalez trade boosts the team’s farm system ranking significantly, and there are some reasons for optimism on a team with limited resources and little chance of contending in 2011.

Present Talent – 75.00 (T-20th)

Padres Season Preview

Future Talent – 85.00 (T-5th)

Padres Top 10 Prospects

Financial Resources – 68.08 (29th)
Baseball Operations – 81.67 (11th)

Overall Rating – 76.09 (20th)

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An organization in turmoil, the Mets nonetheless have the assets to make the turnaround on a short time frame. It’s hard not to like the new management in place, and a new stadium in that market with those resources – the pain can’t continue can it?

Present Talent – 78.33 (t-16th)

Mets Season Preview

Future Talent – 65.00 (t-26th)

Mets Top 10 Prospects

Financial Resources – 76.54 (18th)
Baseball Operations – 72.50 (t-16th)

Overall Rating – 75.79 (21st)

New York Met fandom, self-mutilation be thy name. There’s something about following a team that hasn’t won in a while that turns you against them in a strange way. Doom and gloom settle in, and cynicism abounds. New GM? Ah, he’ll screw it up. New manager? Well he’s not a true Met. New pitchers on the cheap? Yeah, they’ll be injured by May. New stadium? Oh, doesn’t matter if the team sucks. Money to fund one of the most expensive rosters in the game? Yeah, but for how long?

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Introduction
#25-#21
#20-#16
#15-#11

#10 – Yunesky Maya, RHP, Washington
#9 – Ivan Nova, RHP, New York (AL)

I’ll say this about Maya and Nova: there’s a good chance that neither becomes a particularly excellent major leaguer. They’re not totally devoid of promise, of course: Nova appears likely to induce ground balls at an above-average rate, if nothing else, while Maya won the Cuban version of the Cy Young award even while Aroldis Chapman was pitching in the league. As opposed to other players on this list, however, whose inclusion is largely a function of being underrated (not that I would dare say it so plainly), Maya and Nova are here primarily for aesthetic purposes. Specifically, each throws a pitch (or, in the case of Maya, pitches) that’s captured the imagination of this author.

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Once viewed as the third baseman of the future for the Milwaukee Brewers, Mat Gamel has been optioned to Triple-A for the third consecutive season. Gamel has always shown the ability to hit, but injuries have prevented him from making the Opening Day roster the last two seasons. Due to those injuries, Casey McGehee was able to grab hold of the Brewers’ third base position in 2009. After another strong season in 2010, McGehee has rendered Gamel a spare part. Still youngish (to borrow a term from Carson Cistulli), does Gamel still fit into the Brewers’ plans?
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For reasons I’m not at liberty to share — but which mostly concern finding a wife who lived through the Depression — I’m in Jupiter, Florida this week. Against all odds, Jupiter also happens to be the spring training home of both the Florida Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals. It’s a Christmas miracle in mid-late-March, is what that is.

Yesterday, I went to Roger Dean Stadium for a game between the Twins and Marlins, but actually spent most of my time on the backfields where both Mike Stanton and Chris Coghlan were playing in a minor league game.

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We’re pleased to welcome the newest member of the FanGraphs staff, Bradley Woodrum, to the site. He coined the term Luck Dragon and created some fantastic videos this winter, as well as writing for about 150 different places around the web. We think he’s going to be a great fit here at FanGraphs.

On June 17, 2010, Jeff Baker cracked a Dallas Braden changeup so hard it dangled in the Chicago sun for about 30 seconds before some lucky fan 20 seats to the right of me caught it. When Baker made contact with the ball, it sounded like he fired a pistol, and the fans, taking their queue, jumped from their seats like runners jumping from the starting blocks.

I was not the least of the runners, perhaps far more surprised than the common fan at Baker’s uncanny power display. I knew his hitting ability was a tick under league average, but little did I realize the reason (his dramatic platoon split). Seeing him only occasionally had created in me a skewed perspective of the second baseman, making his offense seem unremarkable and his defense altogether forgettable.

The Cubs acquired Jeff Baker from the Colorado Rockies in 2009 for minor league reliever Al Alburquerque (real person). In 2008, Baker had shown sufficient ability to hit lefties and embarrass himself against righties. Now, as Spring Training 2011 draws its final breathes, it seems the prototypical platooner has found himself a legitimate shot to become an everyday kind of guy.

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I’ve added a place on the player pages where you can leave a comment or have a threaded discussion about a particular player. You can log in using pretty much whichever service you want (twitter, facebook, google, etc…), or continue to comment anonymously.

We tried something like this a couple years ago for a short amount of time and it didn’t work out too well, but I think it’s worth trying again.

The comments section is at the very bottom of the page (with a link at the top of the page showing how many comments there are) so it doesn’t get in the way of your stats browsing.

While the team has made no official announcement, it has become clear this week that the Mets intend to name Rule 5 pick Brad Emaus the starting second baseman. The first indication came on Monday, when the team released Luis Castillo. Then this morning they sent Justin Turner to minor league camp and also informed Daniel Murphy that they’d work him around the diamond in the next few weeks while they play Emaus at second. At this point it’s almost too easy to draw a comparison to another second baseman Rule 5 pick: Dan Uggla.

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Most sabermetric analyses of batting order find that the most optimal batting order is worth between five and 15 runs over a typical batting order. From this, it is often concluded that batting order isn’t very important. Is that the correct conclusion?

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