Of course they did.

Last week, Jeff wrote about “What Delmon Young Was“, and he closed with these two paragraphs:

I haven’t yet figured out how Delmon Young hit that pitch for a home run. If you watch Young’s highlight videos, you’ll see similar batted balls that come off the bat faster than it seems like they should. That raw talent of Young’s hasn’t deteriorated with time, so it lingers on, a living sign of what Young was, and of what Young was supposed to be. Watch that home run, and only that home run, and you might think “this guy is amazing, he can hit anything out.”

Young, it seems, always believed that to be true, and while it’s never too late to try to make changes, it can get too late to actually make them. Talent alone got Delmon Young to the majors. Young either hasn’t worked hard, or he hasn’t worked smart. Young at 26 was the same as he was at 21. The same, but bigger, and a whole hell of a lot less promising.

When trying to figure out what team would give Young a contract this winter, it basically boiled down to figuring out what organizations didn’t place a high value on the base on balls, favored traditional offensive metrics over the kinds of things we write about here on FanGraphs, and would see Young as still having the potential to be a good player. The Phillies check every box on the list, and were in search of a right-handed corner outfielder. This should have been an obvious match for a while.

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I don’t know exactly how many trips to spring training I’ve taken in my life, but I’m probably getting close to 10 by now. I went to Arizona and Florida a few times before this became my profession, and over the last few years, I’ve been in charge of organizing the FanGraphs staff weekend trip to Phoenix. I’m nothing close to an expert on the area, but I have learned a few things from traveling down there with some frequency, and since I know many of you are likely considering taking a trip to Phoenix this year — especially with the WBC as an added attraction — I figured I’d share a few of the things I’ve picked up on during my trips to the desert.

Rent a car from a non-airport location.

I don’t think I can emphasize this one any stronger. Standing in line at the rental counters at Sky Harbor can be a maddening experience. The first time I tried to rent a car at the airport, I waited for approximately three hours, as there weren’t any cars to be had, and a couple of dozen of us waited for people to return cars so we could have something to drive away in. Since rental car companies have mostly conglomerated into just a few corporations with different sub-brands (Hertz/Dollar/Thrifty, Enterprise/National/Alamo, and Avis/Budget) and because all of the rental car companies are in one large facility, they share fleets, which means that your car may not be waiting for you when you get there. I have never been in the Sky Harbor rental car facility during March and not seen a long line of frustrated people.

And, as an added bonus, you pay a significant premium for the “convenience” of an airport rental. In order to pay for all of the various sports stadiums spread across the city, Phoenix adds on additional taxes and fees to tourists renting a car from PHX. For example, I just ran a search on carrentals.com for a one week mid-sized sedan during March, then picked Hertz as an example of a company that has both airport and non-airport locations. If you rent that mid-sized car from PHX, you’ll pay $370 for the weekly base rate, and then pay an additional $175 in taxes and fees for a total of $545. If you rent that same type of car from their location in Scottsdale, you pay $286 for the weekly base rate, and $52 in taxes and fees, for a total price of $338.

That’s a $207 difference for the convenience of standing in a very long line. The Scottsdale location is 7 miles from the airport, so you’re probably looking at a cab ride that costs something like $20 each way. Even factoring in that cost, renting off site will save you roughly $165, and you’ll probably be in your car sooner than you will be if you rent from the airport facility. And I’m just using this Scottsdale Hertz location as an example – there are off-site facilities within 5 to 10 miles of the airport in each direction, so you can get a non-airport rental from pretty much any of one of the major companies and save yourself a good chunk of money and time in the process.

One last car rental hint – if you happen to stay at a hotel that has an airport shuttle, many of them will also take you within a several mile radius of the hotel during your stay. For the last few years, our FanGraphs group hotel was about two miles from a Budget Truck rental that also rented cars, so I would simply take the airport shuttle to the hotel, check-in to my room, then take the shuttle to the rental car facility and pick up my car there. No cabs necessary. Depending on where you’re staying, this might not be an option, but it’s worth looking into, at least.

Consider not staying all that close to your favorite team’s stadium.

In most of the cases in Phoenix, the actual stadiums themselves aren’t in parts of Phoenix that you would want to spend a huge amount of time in. Peoria, Surprise, Goodyear, and Camelback are all well to the west of downtown Phoenix, and are essentially in areas where there’s not much beyond your basic strip malls and highways. If you enjoy spending time at Best Buy and Applebees, then you may like the areas, but if you’re looking for any kind of specific Phoenix feeling, you won’t get it in the suburbs. The five parks on the eastern side of Phoenix aren’t quite as far removed from interesting areas, but none of them are in particularly convenient spots either, especially if you’re considering going to multiple venues during your trip.

And you should absolutely consider going to multiple venues. Odds are pretty good that whatever team you want to see isn’t going to be playing home games each day you’re there anyway, so even if you’re following one team around, you should try to go to multiple stadiums and see the different complexes. In particular, if you’re looking for something really modern and comfortable, Salt River Fields is hands down the nicest complex in the area, and is basically a Major League ballpark on a slightly smaller scale. There are some other good places to watch a game, but in terms of overall quality, the Rockies/D’Backs facility blows everyone else away.

But, back to the original point — unless you just don’t like driving, I’ve found the overall experience to be more enjoyable if you stay in a more central location and then drive to the stadiums, rather than staying near the stadiums and then driving away from those areas when it comes time to do something besides watch baseball. If you want to spend the entire day at the ballpark on the back fields watching prospects, then there’s probably an advantage to staying close to the ballpark, but if you’re just going for the Cactus League game itself, you’re only going to be at the park for about 16% of your day, so the rest of it may very well be more enjoyable if you are staying in an interesting neighborhood.

The last few years, the FanGraphs staff stayed at a hotel in the Biltmore neighborhood, which is a bit of an odd mix of a business park, an upscale mall, and some interesting food options. The hotel we stayed at has been converted into a Hampton Inn, which promptly raised the rates and started charging for the airport shuttle — a big deal to us, given how many FG authors come into town — so we’re switching to a different location this year, but I actually enjoyed that neighborhood, despite it not being all that close to any one stadium. It’s close enough to the airport that a cab ride isn’t all that expensive, there are some decent restaurants around, and it’s close to the highways, making it fairly easy to get to just about any of the stadiums you want to get to within 30-40 minutes.

For eats, just trust Keith Law.

At this point, Keith might be as well known for his food conversations as his baseball opinions, but given that he lives in the area, goes to all of these stadiums regularly, and actually knows what good food tastes like, his opinion is probably the most useful you’ll find during your trip. He’s got a bunch of posts on his blog detailing different reviews of places he’s eaten, and we hit up a nice selection of his recommended places last year, with those spots pretty much being a hit across the board.

Obviously, people have different tastes and different budgets, but there’s enough good food in Phoenix that you shouldn’t have to settle for generic chain dinners unless you just really want to. If you want to go beyond just Keith’s list, I’d also recommend the Phoenix chowhound board, as there’s some pretty good information in their archives as well.

If you’re not attached to Cactus League play, consider going the second weekend in March.

The SABR Analytics Conference will be going on from March 7th-9th, and Pool D of the WBC first round will be taking place during that same weekend. If you’re not coming to see your favorite team play, it’s hard to imagine a better combination than attending the conference during the day and then heading over to see the evening WBC games on Friday and Saturday, before catching the Sunday afternoon WBC game after the conference ends. You’d get to see the U.S. squad play all three of their games, watching a match-up against each of their pool opponents in Canada, Mexico, and Italy. It’s not necessarily a classic spring training trip, but it’d be a pretty fun weekend in Phoenix, and the WBC only happens once every four years.

Buy seats in the shade.

Phoenix can be very hot. The games are played in the hottest part of the day. Most of the seats at most of the stadiums are not covered by any kind of overhang. If you sit near the field or down one of the lines, you’re almost certainly going to bake for three hours. Look at the seating charts ahead of time and figure out what areas are covered. If you’re going to a popular stadium, consider buying those tickets in advance – they usually fill up. You can buy tickets at the gate to nearly any stadium as long as you’re willing to sit in the sun, but everything is more enjoyable if you have some shade.

If you’re going for a prolonged trip, take a break from baseball in the middle.

Phoenix isn’t the only thing in Arizona, though it may feel that way when you start to drive out of the city. But, two hours north, the Red Rocks and Sedona make for a nice day trip. The Grand Canyon is another hour and a half from there, if you want to really see the beauty of northern Arizona. Even within the city, there are some mountains to hike and scenery to be enjoyed. If you’re only in town for a few days, you might want to maximize your baseball viewing, but if you’re staying a while, consider seeing what else the area has to offer.

Those are my suggestions, but I’m sure you guys have plenty of your own. So, experienced spring training travelers — especially ones with Florida experience, since I’m kind of useless when it comes to the Grapefruit League — feel free and put your own suggestions in the comments below.

With Stan Musial passing away over the weekend, Jesse did a nice workup of his career numbers, noting that Musial stands as one of the best hitters to ever play Major League Baseball. But, the more I looked at his player page, the harder I found it to wrap my head around his combination of power and contact rates.

Musial struck out 696 times in his entire career, spanning nearly 11,000 plate appearances, and his strikeout rate was nearly half of his career average (5.5%) during his peak years. In 1943, Musial struck out 18 times in 701 trips to the plate, a strikeout rate of just 2.6%, the third lowest mark of the year. In that same season, Musial racked up 81 extra base hits, and he posted a .206 ISO, good for fifth best in baseball. We just don’t see guys who are elite power hitters and elite contact hitters much anymore.

Of course, the game has changed a lot over the last 70 years, with a drastic increase in strikeouts being one of the most prominent changes. A 5% strikeout rate today is more impressive than that would have been during Musial’s day, but while we have things like wRC+ that adjust for historical offensive levels, I didn’t have a great feel for what context adjusted metrics for the individual strikeout and power numbers would be. So, in order to get a better sense of what Musial’s numbers would look like if we brought them into the modern game, I decided to scale his numbers to the norms of 2012.

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The Seattle Mariners offense has been awful the last few years. Historically awful, in fact. Over the last decade, the two lowest scoring teams have been the 2010 Mariners (513 runs) and the 2011 Mariners (556 runs). At 619 runs, the 2012 Mariners moved all the way up to just 17th worst in the last 10 years. After three seasons of offensive ineptitude, it’s not a big surprise that the organization has dramatically shifted their focus, and has spent the winter collecting defensively challenged hitters with power, including Michael Morse, Kendrys Morales, Raul Ibanez, and taking a flier on the remains of Jason Bay.

None of these guys are great players, but they provide the team with something they haven’t had much of lately, and combined with adjusting the dimensions of Safeco Field, it’s a pretty good bet that the 2013 Mariners are going to score more runs than the line-ups that they’ve put on the field the last three seasons. But, the question remains, will those additional runs scored lead to more wins?

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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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Michael Bourn is a pretty terrific defensive center fielder. Last year, he was the best defensive outfielder in baseball by UZR (after you account for the positional differences), grading out as 25 runs above an average defensive player, and it wasn’t a one year aberration, as no player has a higher FLD+POS rating over the last four years either. With over 6,500 innings big league innings, we’re not dealing with problematic small samples either. Bourn has been a tremendous defensive asset this far in his career.

However, teams are no longer as willing to pay for past performance as they used to be, as front offices are now populated with people who are more interested in projecting a player’s future than they are with paying for an established track record. So, while Bourn’s defensive performances are notable, they’re only worth paying for to the extent that they inform our understanding about what they mean for his defensive value in the future. Now 30-years-old, Bourn’s getting further and further from his peak, and defensive skills seem to plateau earlier than offensive skills, so there’s some legitimate questions about just how much of his defensive value he will retain in future years.

To try and shed a light on that question, we can identify players who were valuable defensive outfielders in their twenties, and then see how much of that value carried over to their thirties. If you’re Michael Bourn, or Michael Bourn’s agent, you might want to stop reading now, because the answer probably isn’t something you’re going to want to hear.

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If you go up to the toolbar at the top of the screen and click on leaders, then switch over to the pitching tab, you will see three names at the top of the list:

1. Justin Verlander
2. Felix Hernandez
3. Clayton Kershaw

Those three are, without a doubt, three of the best pitchers in baseball. You could probably make a pretty good case that they are the three best pitchers in baseball. And, last year, they rated #1, #2, and #3 in pitcher WAR, which is why they’re the first three names on the list of the default leaderboard. But, they also have something else in common; they’re all due to become free agents in two years.

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