Unless you make it a habit to read FanGraphs only on Fridays (and if you do, what’s up with that?), you’ve likely read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series. So you know the score. We’re taking a look at team financial health as we head into the 2013 season. You also the know which teams are in the top tier, because you’re smart and can figure that out for yourself. But we’ve come this far, so we’re going to complete the exercise. We’re nothing if not true to our word.

The top tier teams, in alphabetical order by team name.

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Is a pop-up the same as a strikeout? No, of course not, by definition they are very different things. A pop-up requires contact, whereas a strikeout requires no contact, or at least very little contact, or a two-strike foul bunt. Pop-ups and strikeouts look nothing alike, to the eye. However, to the numbers, pop-ups and strikeouts look very much alike. On one level they are very different, and on another level they are very similar.

A few weeks ago, Dave asked whether infield flies should be included in FIP. The idea is that IFFBs have little to do with defensive skill, and pop-ups are effectively strikeouts, in terms of plate-appearance result. Pop-ups don’t advance runners, and pop-ups are almost always outs. They’re not literally always outs, but then, a batter can reach on a strikeout if the ball gets away from the catcher. So while pop-ups lead to outs slightly less often, they’re still just about automatic.

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Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of the Daily Notes.

1. A Note Regarding the Data in This Post
2. SCOUT Leaderboards: Spring Training
3. Notable Spring Performance: Cincinnati’s J.J. Hoover

A Note Regarding the Data in This Post
While, until now, the author has been painstakingly copy-and-pasting the raw data for these conspicuously absurd spring-training posts from ca. 50 pages’ worth of leaderboards at MLB.com, he has (read: I have) since found that Baseball Reference offers almost precisely the same data by means of just two such pages — that is, an entire one for hitters and also one for pitchers.

While Rainer Maria Rilke advises — in his important Letters to a Young Poet, which the author has totally read — while Rilke advises in that text to do a thing because it is difficult, it’s very likely that he (i.e. Rilke) was not accounting for pre-existing medical conditions such as Ulnar Claw or Terrifying and Painful Ulnar Claw while so doing. As such, the author has taken the liberty of utilizing BR’s data for the purposes of this post. (Note: a second liberty the author has taken is to compose the present document while drinking from a magnum of Marcus James’ Malbec — i.e. the sexiest of the Malbecs.)

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Ben and Sam answer listener emails about the worst team to work for, what baseball would look like without outfield fences, when it’s okay to give up on high draft picks, and how Mariano Rivera compares to top starting pitchers.

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Somehow it’s still spring training, and it won’t stop being spring training for another week and a half. We’re at the point now where everyone is beyond ready for meaningful games to begin, but just because spring training might last too long doesn’t mean it doesn’t serve a useful purpose. In spring training, pitchers and hitters can start building up their stamina. In spring training, young players can try to push veterans for jobs. In spring training, teams make money! And in spring training, players can work on tweaks during live game action without the games yet being of any real significance. Players seem to be constantly making little adjustments.

Now, the people over at Hardball Talk do great work in chronicling all the best-shape-of-his-life stories that emerge around this time of year. It’s intended in fun, but it could also conceivably be of some analytical value. Here, I want to chronicle stories of pitchers making mechanical adjustments, tweaks to their deliveries. Implementing changes they made over the offseason, or even earlier in spring. I think it would be handy to have this information in one place, even if it’s presently unclear why that might be. It could be of use down the road.

I’ve spent a lot of time on Google, and below, you’ll find what I’ve recovered. Note that changes to delivery are not the same thing as trying a new pitch — that might make for an interesting but separate reference post. Also, this is about pitchers tweaking their mechanics, not hitters tweaking their mechanics. And finally, before we proceed, please let me know in the comments if there are stories that I’ve missed. I’m almost certain that there are, and there are possibly several of them. Think of this as crowdsourcing in a way, and if you provide a link, I’ll add the information to the post. Now, the rest of the post.

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At this point, it seems like piling on to write about anything that the Miami Marlins do. But the last couple of days have produced a news story simultaneously hilarious and revealing: after two fans wanted to back out of the second year of a two-year season ticket contract, the Marlins threatened to sue them.

Of course, all baseball teams are businesses, owned by people or corporations who prefer making money to losing it. But the Marlins have pioneered a Producers approach to baseball, making money on failure rather than success. It would be conspiratorial of me to allege that the Marlins have determined that a losing team is more profitable than a winning team and therefore have intentionally sabotaged their chances of winning — like Rachel Phelps did — so I won’t. But this lawsuit helps to underscore that the team does not place a high priority on building a winning ballclub or drawing fans.
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As we rolled out the Positional Power Rankings over the last week, several people noted that there were some pretty large variances in the WAR totals between positions. Indeed, if you look at the totals by position, you see two distinct groups:

Catcher: +107 WAR
Center Field: +104 WAR
Third Base: +101 WAR
Left Field: +81 WAR
Shortstop: +80 WAR
Second Base: +80 WAR
First Base: +78 WAR
Right Field: +74 WAR

Side note: The projected WAR totals here are higher than observed WAR totals because projections essentially put a lower bound on bad performances, with very few players projected for negative WAR. Because of injuries and the non-normal distribution of variance around a player’s true mean, it’s easier to underperform than overperform projections, and inevitably, there will be below replacement level performances in MLB next year. Because of this lower bound, the replacement level in this system is more like 39 wins, so adjust accordingly. Now, back to the subject at hand.

C/CF/3B are all expected to perform at a similar level, and that production is quite a bit higher than the LF/SS/2B/RF/1B group. Instinctually, this feels incorrect, but I think it’s probably worth talking about the reasons for why positions might not be projected to provide the same value.

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You don’t know how close you came to reading a “Hand-ley Ramirez” joke. I guess now you might.

Hanley Ramirez participated in the recently-concluded World Baseball Classic. He played third base, even though he was to spend the regular season as a shortstop. While attempting to make a play in the field the other day, Ramirez jammed his thumb, and shortly thereafter he was removed. Initial estimates put him out for 2-10 weeks, pending further word. Further word is in, and it’s not good news for Ramirez or for the Dodgers. It is good news for Ramirez’s backups, if they’re selfish.

According to Ken Rosenthal, and since confirmed by others, Ramirez is having surgery to repair a torn thumb ligament. His thumb won’t be able to do anything for three weeks, and it’s estimated that Ramirez could return to action in eight weeks. Depending on the length of any rehab assignment, then, the Dodgers will be without Hanley Ramirez until mid- or late-May. Which means Ramirez is set to miss a quarter or a third of the regular season, barring any setbacks or surprises.

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As we explained yesterday in Part 1 of the series, we’re looking at the financial health of all thirty major league teams. The focus is on attendance, local TV contracts, and estimated 2013 payroll. We’re not ranking the teams one to thirty because we lack the kind of detailed information that would make such a ranking meaningful. We do, however, have enough information to paint with broad strokes, so as part of our attempt to give an overview of where each team stands as 2013 begins, we’ll look at their access to monetary resources for the upcoming season.

We’ve grouped the teams in tiers. Today we look at the ten teams in the middle.

In alphabetical order, by team name:

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