Episode 124
Wendy Thurm, who’s written for FanGraphs since October, is different from most of the site’s writers in terms of the amount of X chromosomes she possesses. Her capacity for providing crack analysis to our electronic pages is very much the same, however.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 49 min. play time.)

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The 2011 Rays opened the season with their designated hitter position filled by a Hall of Very Good platoon: Johnny Damon and Manny Ramirez. I don’t need to remind you how many people around here and elsewhere thought the combined pickup was a great idea, and one reason that they came to the Rays so cheap — just $7.25 million combined, just $2 million of which went to Manny — was that their mutual agent Scott Boras negotiated a package deal. Once Manny retired, Johnny Damon picked up nearly all of the slack, winding up with 150 games played — his 16th straight season with at least 140 games played.

But after hearing that the Rays weren’t bringing him back, Damon is right where Manny is: at the back of the breadline. Manny is currently unemployed because he has announced his desire to unretire, as Matt Klaassen wrote Monday. One reason Manny says for his desire to return is that, as he told ESPN, he wants to be a role model:

I want to show people that Manny can change, that he can do the right thing.

Manny will still have to serve a 50-game suspension, and his one-for-17 performance in 2011 won’t inspire much confidence either, so he may have a difficult time convincing another team to take a chance on him. (Much like Barry Bonds in 2008.)
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Colorado Rockies 2010 first round pick Kyle Parker posted impressive power numbers, but lofty strikeout totals in his full season debut in the South Atlantic League. Given his being age appropriate for the level, if not a touch long in the tooth, Parker’s triple slash line of .285/.367/.483 appears better on paper than in practice as his 132/48 strikeout-to-walk ratio and .353 BABIP point to a prospect whose success has a bit of a “Smoke and Mirrors” feel.

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Wine and cheese make for a delectable combo. But the two foods don’t age the same. Wine takes much longer to turn to vinegar than it does for your cheese to grow fuzzy green mold. That’s why wine is the one used in sayings by older men verifying their remaining virility.

Power, patience and contact are the components of a delectable (productive) hitter. And yet, like wine and cheese, it turns out that these different skills age differently. Ages 26 through 28 are often used to represent a hitter’s peak, but not all of their different faculties are at their apex in that age range. Let’s check the aging curves, once again courtesy stat guru Jeff Zimmerman.

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This off-season, Major League teams forced a quality group of proven closers into a game of musical chairs. There were too many guys with ninth inning experience on the market and not enough jobs to go around, which directly led to Ryan Madson‘s decision to take the last available closer’s job by signing a one year deal with Cincinnati. Madson’s move to the Reds likely closed the door on Francisco Cordero’s ability to return to his prior team, and now that the music has stopped, he finds himself as the guy without a home.

It’s no coincidence that Cordero is the odd man out, however – his current employment status is simply a reflection of the fact that his performance last year threw up a ton of red flags about how much longer he’ll be an effective high leverage reliever.

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Here are five recent — and not entirely inconsequential — moves.

Baltimore Signs Taiwanese Left-Hander Chen
The Baltimore Orioles signed Taiwanese left-hander Wei-Yin Chen to a three-year, $11.3 million deal on Tuesday, reports a large portion of the internet. Our man David Goleblahblahblah, writing for RotoGraphs, looked at Chen in some depth yesterday. The salient details: Chen is 26 years old. His strikeout rates have plummeted over his four years in the NPB (8.4, 8.0, 7.3, 5.1 K/9). His walk rates have also declined (2.6, 2.2, 2.3, 1.7). All things being equal, more strikeouts with more walks — like, with the same strikeout-to-walk ratio — is better than fewer strikeouts and fewer walks (i.e. a pitcher with a 9.0 K/9 and 3.0 BB/9 is more valuable than one with a 3.0 K/9 and 1.0 BB/9). His fastball velocity has declined about 1-2 mph over that time (per Patrick Newman’s NPB Tracker). He only needs to produce, like, 2.5 wins to earn his contract. He’ll probably have a better 2012 than Brian Matusz had a 2011.

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The San Francisco Giants are hoping 2011 was the beginning of great things for veteran pitcher Ryan Vogelsong. After posting mediocre numbers that led to a three-year stint in Japan, the 34-year-old returned to the United States with a vengeance this past season, posting a 2.71 ERA in 179.2 innings. The Giants rewarded that performance on Wednesday and signed Vogelsong to a two-year, $8.3 million extension.

Since they already had him under team control through arbitration for 2012, the contract essentially just buys out his 2013 season (for something like $4 to $5 million in salary) when he would have otherwise been eligible for free agency. Given Vogelsong’s inconsistent career, making the decision to lock him up now seems a little odd. Is there reason to believe that Vogelgong’s 2011 performance represents a true step forward that would justify guaranteeing his 2013 salary in advance?

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Episode 123
The NFL playoffs are a thing that is happening, and it’s a well-known fact that Brian Burke of Advanced NFL Stats is the soundest, most rational voice on gridiron football in — probably literally — the entire multiverse. Among the topics addressed: WTF, Tim Tebow? Also: your Super Bowl winner.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 40 min. play time.)

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While fans of large market teams get to look forward to the Winter Meetings, us small-market fans have a different, less heralded offseason event to look forward to each year: the Mid-January Bargain Bin Shopping Spree! At this point of the offseason, players that haven’t yet signed with a team start to feel pressure to sign — Spring Training begins in around a month, after all — and there are normally some good bargains that can be found on the market. Ryan Madson appears to be this year’s first victim, although I’m sure there will be many more cheap deals signed in the coming weeks.

One of the most intriguing potential buy-low signings available in this year’s Bargain Bin is Luke Scott. After hitting 27 homeruns in 2010 and posting a .387 wOBA, Scott suffered through a number of injuries last season and eventually had season-ending shoulder surgery in July. He was non-tendered by the Orioles earlier this offseason, and due to his age (turning 34 in June) and injury history, he seems like a good candidate for a cheap one-year deal with incentives.

Dan Connolly from the Baltimore Sun has just confirmed that the Tampa Bay Rays have signed Scott to a one year deal with an option for a second (pending a physical), which would seem to confirm our brief surface analysis: he’s a good buy low candidate, and could provide some cheap power at DH. But on digging into his profile more, there is one reason we might want to temper our expectations for Luke Scott: Tropicana Field.

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Recently I was reflecting on just how historically stacked third base seems to have been in the 1970s. Brooks Robinson and Ron Santo were nearing the end of their careers, but still had some good years left. George Brett and Mike Schmidt were famously taken back-to-back in the 1971 draft (that’s right, any team in baseball — including the Royals and Phillies, could have had them both) and while both initially struggled, well, do I even need to finish that thought? Graig Nettles, Darrell Evans, and Buddy Bell were all active and all have at least somewhat compelling Hall of Fame cases. And that is without getting into other third basemen who had excellent careers like Sal Bando and Ron Cey.

The position is not nearly as stacked these days, but there are obviously a number of excellent players, from the big guns in the New York and Boston to the young superstars in Tampa Bay and Washington to underrated guys in Cincinnati and Texas. But those sorts of players will probably get plenty of Fan Projections. Today, I want to take a look at less-scrutinized, but still interesting, third base situations that deserve your input — those of the Orioles, White Sox, and Angels.

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