When talking about a player’s defensive value, you will almost never hear things like errors or fielding percentage discussed on FanGraphs. These metrics have all kinds of problems, and we simply have better ways to evaluate the abilities of defenders nowadays. Occasionally, errors and fielding percentage do tell the story correctly, however. For instance, I present Edwin Encarnacion.

The Blue Jays began the season with E5 as their starting third baseman. He’s played 141 innings in 16 games at the position this year during which time he has already made eight errors, tying him for the league lead among third baseman. The man he is tied with, Mark Reynolds, has played 430 innings at third base this year. Encarnacion has made the same amount of errors as the league leader in 1/3 of the playing time.

Or, if you want to look at it from a fielding percentage standpoint, his mark at third base this year is .784. The next lowest mark of any semi-regular player in baseball is Andy LaRoche at .892. How low is E5’s fielding percentage? Let’s just put it this way – Jose Bautista slugging percentage is higher than Encarnacion’s fielding percentage at third base. Disenchanted with his play at third, the Jays have recently used Encarnacion more at first base; he has the lowest fielding percentage in baseball of any first baseman too.

In 200 innings in the field, he has made 11 errors. A normal everyday position player will rack up about 1,300 defensive innings over the course of the season – at this rate, over a full season, Encarnacion would finish the year with about 70 errors. Seventy.

Teams have been putting up with E5’s defensive issues over the years in order to get his bat into the line-up, but this year, he’s not even providing any offensive value – he’s hitting just .237/.262/.324, he’s without a home run, and he’s decided to just stop walking. His ZIPS projection over the rest of the season is .247/.313/.427, good for a .328 wOBA that would make him roughly a league average hitter.

A league average hitter who is also one of the worst defensive players in baseball is not a Major Leaguer. The Blue Jays have resisted bringing up top prospect Brett Lawrie from Triple-A Las Vegas, in part because his defense at third base is also not very good, but there’s no way the Blue Jays should continue to pencil Encarnacion’s name into the line-up. He’s an absolute disaster in the field, and his bat simply doesn’t even come close to making up for it.

Despite their current three game losing streak, Toronto should have some hopes for contending for the wild-card this year. They’re only four games behind the Red Sox and Yankees, have scored more runs than they’ve allowed, and have the game’s best hitter anchoring a solid line-up. If they patch a few holes and keep their pitchers relatively healthy, the Jays could stay in the race all summer.

If they’re not convinced that Lawrie is ready yet – and remember, Las Vegas is a hitter’s paradise, so you have to deflate his Triple-A numbers by a good amount – they should still be able to find a competent alternative at third base. There’s no reason that the Jays should continue to put up with a never-ending series of errors from one of the worst defenders the sport has seen in a long time.

I’m not the first person to say this today, and I’m sure I won’t be the last, but it’s hard to watch the collision at home plate last night that broke Buster Posey’s leg and think anything besides “that should not be part of baseball.”

Let’s set aside blame for a second; I’m not here to vilify Scott Cousins, the player’s association, or the rules committee. Cousins did what he’s been trained to do, he did it because it’s a legal play by the rulebook, and he was trying to help his team win a baseball game. However, I just don’t see any reason why that play should be allowed in the sport.

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There’s something rather interesting going on over in the AL West; the only four team division in baseball is really only offering three different teams this year. There are still four franchises, but Oakland and Seattle have apparently decided to put the exact same team on the field this year.

If you go to the team pages here on the site, it’s impossible to avoid the similarities. We’ll start on the mound, which is where both teams strengths lie.

SEA: 2.78 BB/9, 7.26 K/9, 0.55 HR/9, 44.6% GB%, .290 BABIP, 5.8% HR/FB, 3.10 FIP, 3.50 xFIP
OAK: 2.97 BB/9, 7.11 K/9, 0.55 HR/9, 49.4% GB%, .288 BABIP, 6.5% HR/FB, 3.18 FIP, 3.45 xFIP

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Last night, Neftali Feliz blew his second save of the season, giving up a run to the Royals in the ninth inning of a game that the Rangers would eventually go on to lose in extra innings. Because the run he allowed was charged to Derek Holland, his ERA actually fell to 1.26, so on the surface, it would seem like there’s not much to worry about.

Once you put ERA aside, however, it’s clear that not all is right with the Ranger’s closer. His BB/9 has jumped from 2.34 last year to 7.53 this year, and perhaps more worryingly, his K/9 has plummeted – he’s struck out just eight of the 62 batters he’s faced this year. Feliz is a power pitcher who succeeds by throwing the ball past hitters, and right now, he’s just not doing that.

However, diagnosing the cause of Feliz’s problems is somewhat complicated, because, well, just look at this:

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After Charlie Morton’s first three starts of the season, his ERA stood at 1.64, and I noted that his revamped style of pitching simply wouldn’t let him keep this up for much longer. Since I wrote that article, Morton has made five more starts and posted an ERA of 3.27 – technically that does represent regression, but it’s still better than I would have expected. After another dominant start last night, I figured we needed to take another look at the guy they call Ground Chuck.

In Morton’s last five starts, he has reduced his reliance on his sinker, going from 90% fastballs in his first three starts to “just” 80% in his last five. He’s still basically just throwing one pitch, but he has mixed in his off-speed stuff a bit more in order to be a little less predictable. It has helped as well, as after posting a 12/6 BB/K ratio in his first three starts, he’s at 14/23 in his last five. The decrease in fastball usage has led to fewer walks and fewer ground balls, but overall it’s been a worthwhile trade-off for Morton – his xFIP has dropped from 4.09 in April to 3.63 in May- putting fewer men on base outweighs the small change in his batted ball profile.

But there’s still an area that has to be cause for concern with Morton, and it’s directly related to the changes he’s made to his repertoire. Morton has decided to lean on a two-seam fastball more heavily than just about anyone in baseball, and as Dave Allen has noted, the two-seam fastball and the slider have the largest platoon splits of any pitches in baseball. Two-seamers are great against same-handed batters, but aren’t an effective weapon against opposite-handed hitters.

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It’s only May 17th, but for the Minnesota Twins, the 2011 season is essentially over. Losers of nine straight, they now stand just 12-27 and are 13 1/2 games behind the first place Indians. They’ve been atrocious at nearly every aspect of the game; they rank last in wOBA and last in xFIP, a pretty awful combination. Even the eventual return of Joe Mauer won’t be enough to right the ship – there are just too many problems to overcome to save this season, and the Twins need to start playing for 2012 and beyond.

The problem is that I’m not sure how much they can actually do. For most teams, when they fall out of the race they promote youngsters from the farm and put the veterans on the trade block to try and add a few prospects to the organization. The Twins don’t really have all that much in the way of interesting assets to sell off, though.

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Since the Chuck Norris meme became mainstream a few years ago, it has inevitably sprung offshoots in different genres, and baseball is no exception. Matt Wieters Facts took off, and more recently, we’ve seen Eric Hosmer Facts.

Well, I’m here to present you with Jose Bautista Facts, but there’s one slight difference – despite being just as crazy, these facts are all true (h/t to DrewGROF on Twitter for noticing this first).

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When the Blue Jays signed Jose Bautista to a five-year, $65 million contract extension before spring training, I said the following:

I get why Toronto made this deal. I think there’s a pretty decent chance he lives up to the contract, even if he’ll likely be perceived as a bust for not repeating his 2010 line each year going forward. However, for me, I’m not sure Toronto got enough of a discount on his expected free agent price to absorb the extra risk of doing this deal now. If my option was take this deal now or let him play out 2011 and re-evaluate at the end of the year, I think I would have waited.

It’s a good thing for Blue Jays fans that I’m not in charge because I would have cost them a lot of money. What’s worse is that I probably would have cost them the chance to keep Bautista in Toronto past this year, because given the start he’s off to this year there’s little chance that the Blue Jays would have been able to re-sign him after this season. The question I want to ask today, though, is just how much did Alex Anthopolous save the Blue Jays with his preemptive strike, signing Bautista before his price went through the roof?

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