When the Nationals acquired Denard Span, it essentially meant they’d have to choose between Adam LaRoche and Michael Morse. When they re-signed LaRoche to a multi-year contract, it essentially meant Morse would have to be traded. One might have thought this would have reduced the Nationals’ negotiating leverage, but a three-team trade on Wednesday saw the Nationals still manage to turn Morse into legitimate value.

The overall summary, in case you haven’t seen it:

To Seattle, from Washington: Michael Morse
To Oakland, from Seattle: John Jaso
To Washington, from Oakland: A.J. Cole, Blake Treinen, PTBNL

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John Jaso isn’t much of a household name. A year ago, he was traded for felon-turned-reliever Josh Lueke, as the Rays decided that Jaso’s deficiencies rendered expendable. The Mariners picked him up as a depth piece, and then Eric Wedge buried him on the bench to start the season, as he watched Miguel Olivo and Jesus Montero do most of the catching at the start of the season. An injury to Olivo opened the door to some actual playing time in May, however, and he was able to work his way into the catching platoon over the rest of the season.

But, because he played in Seattle, and wasn’t an everyday player, and because his skillset isn’t all that flashy, you might not have noticed how good John Jaso was last year. For reference, here’s a list of every hitter who had 300 or more plate appearances in the big leagues last year, and posted a wRC+ between 140 and 150.

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The distinction between observed performance and true talent is one that is, in a way, intuitive, yet tends to be elusive. Even the most careful of us can slip from talking of one to talking of the other. Determining the difference for a specific skill or a specific player can be difficult, but the general idea itself is not so hard to understand. Even the most casual fan of baseball understands that pretty much any player can go 0-4 or 4-4 in any given game without thinking that player’s true talent batting average is either .000 or 1.000. That understanding already contains the basic notion of a proper sample size and its relation to true talent. The reader can peruse the appropriate sections of the Sabermetric Library to get caught up.

Instead, this post is going to look at some specific metrics for hitters (in the near future I may do a similar post for pitchers) and compare how well they correlate from from year to year. This gives us an idea of how these assorted metrics compare (relative to each other) with respect to predicting a player’s future performance (another way of saying true talent). I have included a couple of tables for reference, along with some brief commentary.

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When plans were revealed for Marlins Park’s left-center home run sculpture, people freaked out. When the sculpture was actually constructed and emplaced, people freaked out all over again, having been given a better sense of scale. The thing drew criticism from all corners, and while I’m sure some of that was just piling on, and while I’m sure some more of that was just standard Internet overreaction, people had a lot to say about the aesthetics of the monstrosity. People were not prepared to see in real life what they would…see in real life…in left-center field, and for a while it seemed the Marlins’ sculpture was more frequently discussed than the actual Marlins.

But it wasn’t only the beauty of the thing, or the lack thereof, that made for a topic of discussion. There were also some on-field concerns, some actual baseball concerns, that I believe were first voiced by Greg Dobbs. Quote:

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Allen Craig is a bit of a beast. Reading through last year’s list of accomplishments can be dizzying. Craig is also turning 29, and he only has one full season under his belt.

The reasons it took him so long to get here are specific: He got injured some, a legendary player blocked him at first base and his glove didn’t allow him to play where his team needed him. But there is a chance that he’s so very, well, Cardinal. Look around his team and you can see it. Matt Carpenter debuted in his age 25 season. David Freese (26), Adron Chambers (24), Shane Robinson (25) and Jon Jay (25) were all “older” debuts. Once again, there are specific reasons for each of these, and there’s also a chance this is part of the Cardinal Way.

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

1. A Schedule of Upcoming Actual Baseball
2. GIF: Last Pitch of the 2009 WBC

A Schedule of Upcoming Actual Baseball
With the announcement scheduled for Thursday of all 16 WBC provisional rosters and also the continued progression of the various winter-league playoffs — which end, finally, with the Caribbean Series (in Hermosillo, Mexico this year) — the prospect of real-live baseball is an actual thing.

Below are three upcoming events that will offer said real and live baseball to the reader.

Event: 2013 Caribbean Series
Dates: February 1-7
Notes: The Caribbean Series features the winners of the four major winter leagues from the Dominican, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela — and looks likely to feature, for example, Elvis Andrus and Pablo Sandoval this season (whose Magallanes team is currently first place in the Venezuelan league’s playoff round robin) and probably Javier Vazquez (who continues to dominate for Caguas in Puerto Rico). While in past seasons the Caribbean Series has utilized merely a round-robin format, this year’s edition will feature a proper final (about which one can read here). The Series is generally available on both MLB Network and MLB.com.

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Jeff Karstens‘s free agent case was, to me, one of the most intriguing of the offseason. I covered it multiple times at multiple outlets. I thought the Pirates’ decision to non-tender Karstens was curious — the club has little starter depth beyond A.J. Burnett, James McDonald and Wandy Rodriguez; Phil Irwin was the fifth best starter in the organization according to ZiPS, including minors-bound first overall pick Gerrit Cole. Things only looked worse following the Francisco Liriano debacle — his two-year, $14 million contract remains on hold, in the same limbo as Mike Napoli’s would-be deal with Boston.

Although I understood why Pittsburgh might not want to take the risk on Karstens — he has dealt with regular injuries and has never thrown more than 162.2 innings in a season. Given a likely budget crunch, it’s easy to see how Pittsburgh might be better served with a sure thing. But I thought Karstens and his 3.59 ERA and 3.94 FIP since 2010 (49 appearances, 41 starts) could be an intriguing value play for which a team would pay at least $5 million — meaning, considering the non-tender, Karstens wouldn’t return to Pittsburgh.

Tuesday, Karstens reportedly signed a $2.5 million contract with the Pirates. I was wrong on both counts of my prediction, a good reminder of the imperfect information available to those of us who try to foresee these things from outside MLB organizations.

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Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, which have typically appeared in the pages of Baseball Think Factory, are being released at FanGraphs this year. Below are the projections for the Chicago White Sox. Szymborski can be found on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other 2013 Projections: Angels / Astros / Athletics / Blue Jays / Brewers / Cubs / Giants / Nationals / Phillies / Pirates / Rangers / Royals.

Batters
To their credit, Chicago has had some success in populating their starting lineup with cost-controlled talent. Alejandro De Aza, Gordon Beckham, Tyler Flowers, Dayan Viciedo: all are either in their first season of arbitration or earlier, and all are likely to be worth more than their salaries in 2012. What’s less fortunate is that none of them is likely to be any better than average, if that.

Even more unfortunate is that no other field player on the team is projected to be much better than average, either. Adam Dunn, Paul Konerko, and Alex Rios will make more than $40 million combined in 2013, but are forecast to produce just six wins or so — or, about $7 million a win.

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Ben and Sam answer listener emails about how much steroids help, the best farm systems in baseball, and how they’d try to negotiate a hypothetical trade.

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