Sorry, Astros fans – for the second year in a row, your team is bringing up the rear.

Present Talent – 65.00 (30th)

Astros Season Preview

Future Talent – 65.00 (30th)

Astros Top 10 Prospects

Financial Resources – 72.69 (23rd)
Baseball Operations – 62.50 (30th)

Overall Rating – 66.68 (30th)

Things aren’t going very well down in Houston. In addition to having both the worst rated major league roster and the bleakest future outlook in terms of talent, the Astros also scored the lowest grade of any baseball operations department, and were in the bottom tier of teams in terms of financial resources. There isn’t just one glaring problem here – it’s a collection of wide-ranging issues that harm the team’s chances of winning now or any time in the foreseeable future.

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Today, we’re rolling out our 2011 Organizational Rankings. Like with the team previews, we’re going to do three posts per day for the next two weeks, taking us right up to Opening Day as we count down from the worst to the best. We’ve made some pretty substantial changes to the format this year, though, and I wanted to explain the changes.

The biggest change is the way the rankings were compiled. While previous lists have been based on a collaborative discussion with the staff, the questions posed this time around are different. Rather than asking our writing staff to rank each organization from 1-30, we asked them to grade each organization on four key variables – financial resources, quality of baseball operations department, present talent, and future talent. We then took these individual grades for each area and produced a final tally for each organization based on all the votes from the our staff members, and the list was generated from those numbers.

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At some point in baseball history, someone decided that there were two groups of player types – “up the middle guys” and “corner guys”. For whatever reason, it was decided that defense was important at catcher, shortstop, second base, and center field, while offense was the priority at third base, first base, left field, and right field. Little guys were shuffled towards the middle of the diamond, big guys were contained in the corners, and the self-fulfilling prophecy became a convention.

The problem is that this is an overly simplistic way of separating players, and it doesn’t actually reflect where each position draws its talent from. Rather than cutting the diamond in two, we should really slice it into thirds based on the traits that actually land players at one spot or another.

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The news that the Mets had released Luis Castillo this morning was hardly a shock, as it has been speculated on for months now – neither side was particularly happy with the marriage, and the Mets decided that having him around just wasn’t worth the drama. As the old saying goes, however, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and Ruben Amaro should take the opportunity to bring Castillo to Philadelphia.

With Chase Utley showing minimal improvement and looking likely to begin the year on the disabled list, the Phillies have at least a temporary hole at second base. Wilson Valdez is slated to get first crack at the opening, but while Valdez might have posted better numbers than Castillo last year, they’re essentially two versions of the same player, but Castillo is likely the superior option of the two.

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Among many fun conversations I had while in Arizona last week, perhaps the most interesting involved a topic I’d been thinking about for a while – Scott Rolen’s chances of getting elected to the Hall Of Fame. Rolen’s 12th on the list of career WAR by third baseman with +71.6, and that kind of total is generally good enough to get you elected. Given that he’s still reasonably productive and should have a few more years to add value, I think Rolen has a really strong case for election.

But if we change the question from “should Rolen get in?” to “will Rolen get in?”, the story changes quite a bit. Whether right or wrong, BBWAA voters still lean heavily on the results of seasonal awards, and Rolen has not been a guy that has done all that well in those categories. He’s made only six all-star games in 14 seasons and only finished in the top 25 in MVP voting four times, topping out at fourth in 2004 – the only year he cracked the top 10. Despite some excellent seasons, Rolen’s skillset is generally undervalued and he has spent most of his career with teams who haven’t made the postseason. Because he never posted eye-popping offensive numbers, he was easy to overlook, and that’s basically what happened.

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We’re happy to introduce the newest member of the FanGraphs staff, and host of our new weekly Thursday prospects chat – Frankie Piliere. Frankie worked as a scout for the Texas Rangers and then moved into a prominent role covering prospects for AOL FanHouse. He’ll be talking prospects here each week, as well as filing reports on players as the season gets started. Please welcome Frankie to the site.

Beginning next week, we will be rolling out our 2011 Organizational Rankings, and due to a reaction that we’ll just refer to as “popular demand”, we’ve revamped the system and are doing them a bit differently this year. Last year, you guys asked for a system that is a bit less subjective than what we had done previously, and since we’re into objective measures around here, that seemed like a perfectly natural request. So, this time around, we’re going with a model that weights what we consider to be the four main variables to a franchise’s success, resulting in a final tally.

Of course, the model is being designed by humans, so there is still room for subjectivity in the results. After all, we  all likelyhave differing opinions on the relative weights that should be assigned to each variable, and those weights would likely become a new target of angst for those who disagreed with the final outcome for one team or another. So, in the spirit of the Wisdom Of Crowds, you guys are going to help decide the weightings for each of the four identified variables.

The four categories are as follows.

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For those of you in the Phoenix area this weekend, I wanted to remind you about the event we’re holding on Saturday evening. It will take place beginning at 6:30 pm with a Q&A with Rick Hahn (Chicago White Sox Assistant GM), Tony Blengino (Seattle Mariners Assistant GM), and Joe Bohringer (Arizona Diamondbacks Professional Scout). A large quantity of writers from FanGraphs, RotoGraphs, and NotGraphs will all be around as well, and we’ll be hanging out for several hours talking baseball and whatever it is that Carson thinks Joe West will be doing next. Jonah Keri will also have copies of his book on hand and will be shamelessly shilling for it all night long. It’s going to be a fun time.

This event is free to attend, though the room is limited space wise, and we suggest you arrive a bit early to make sure you get a seat. It will be held at the Hotel Highland At Biltmore in north Phoenix. We look forward to seeing you all on Saturday night.

Last summer, Stephen Strasburg put the Nationals into the spotlight every time he took the hill, bringing attention to a franchise that has been forgettable since their move to Washington D.C. Strasburg’s injury took away their star attraction, however, so Mike Rizzo decided to make a big splash this winter in order to try and retain his franchises newfound relevancy. Will it work? Let’s start by evaluating the team’s everyday players.

The Starting Line-Up

1. Nyjer Morgan*, CF
2. Ian Desmond, SS
3. Jayson Werth, RF
4. Ryan Zimmerman, 3B
5. Adam LaRoche*, 1B
6. Rick Ankiel*/Mike Morse, LF
7. Ivan Rodriguez, C
8. Danny Espinosa, 2B

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