Going into this one, I thought Beltre would be something of a polarizing player, but it turns out that a vast majority of the crowd agrees on what kind of deal Beltre will land this winter. The results of this afternoon’s crowdsourcing:

Average length: 3.60 years
Average salary: $13.06 million

Median length: 4 years
Median salary: $13 million

Standard deviation, length: 0.75 years
Standard deviation, salary: $2.45 million

The crowd estimates that Beltre will land a $4 year, $52 million contract this winter, but the gap between three and four years was pretty small, so we could more accurately estimate it as something like three guaranteed years with an expected fourth year option, or something along those lines.

As you can see from the lower standard deviations, agreement was pretty high. Of the 900 votes counted, 87 percent of them chose either a three or four year contract. Likewise, 69 percent of the voters chose an annual average salary between $12 and $15 million per year. $12 million was the most chosen salary, but significantly more people picked a number north of that than below it, pushing the average up over $13 million.

My feeling is that these estimates are probably close to correct. I might take the over, but not by much – I’d probably have estimated 4/56 or something, but I’d be close to the crowd on this one. His performance variances drive the expected price down, but even at this expected rate, he should probably be a good signing for whoever lands him this winter. $13 million a year values him as about a +3 win player going forward, while he’s averaged +4 wins per season over his career. Even as he heads into the downside of his career, he’s got enough athleticism and ability to sustain a performance that should justify the crowd’s expected investment.

For a team looking to upgrade at third base this winter, Beltre is probably their best bet. Given these prices, there’s a good chance they come out ahead in the long run. I’d put him near the top of the list of free agents to go after this winter.

Adrian Beltre took a one year deal with the Red Sox in order to reestablish his value and hit the market with better numbers than he posted last year. Mission accomplished, and then some. Beltre’s +7.1 WAR is second only to Josh Hamilton in the American League, as he’s been a revelation for the Red Sox. In addition to his legendary defense at third base, he’s found his power stroke again and has been one of the league’s best hitters this year. That combination of production on both sides of the field is something few players bring, and you can expect Scott Boras to point that out all winter long.

If Beltre could be expected to repeat his 2010 season, he’d be in for a monstrous payday. But Beltre is something of an enigma on offense, as his career batting runs totals show: from 2000, he’s gone +15.7, -2.3, -2.3, -7.8 +55.3, -6.9, +7.0, +10.3, +6.0, -7.9, and +33.9. You don’t really know what kind of production you’re going to get from him at the plate. He’s had two great years mixed in with a host of solid ones, and the uncertainty of knowing which version of Beltre you might get creates some risk, which drives down prices. But the upside is tantalizing, and while Beltre does turn 32 next year, he’s shown no signs of aging, and is as durable as they come.

He’s clearly the best third baseman on the market, and every team with a hole at the position will at least kick the tires to see what Boras’ asking price will be. So, now, it’s up to you guys to determine what that price will eventually settle on. What will Adrian Beltre sign for this winter?

In the eighth inning of yesterday’s otherwise meaningless game between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Florida Marlins, Prince Fielder received a standing ovation after being removed for a pinch-runner. It very well could have been the last thing he ever did at home as a member of the Brewers, and everyone in attendance knew it.

Fielder is probably the most likely big name player to be traded this winter, as the Brewers have come to the conclusion that they’re not going to be able to sign their first baseman to a long term extension. Talks with Scott Boras earlier this spring apparently ended after the team’s offer – reportedly for 5 years and $100 million or so – was rebuffed, and it seems unlikely that either side will have a change of heart now. Fielder is looking for a market rate paycheck, while the Brewers are just not going to give him one.

So, the Brewers face a choice – they could keep their slugging first baseman, hope the 2011 team performs well in the first half of the season, and evaluate their potential playoff chances before deciding whether to move him at the deadline or collect two draft picks next winter, or they can trade him this winter and retool their roster. If they keep him, they run the risk of having to compete with San Diego next summer, who may be shopping Adrian Gonzalez if their season doesn’t work out so well. They also run the risk of Fielder getting hurt or having a down season, or potentially few contenders needing a 1B/DH type at the deadline, which would create diminished demand for his services.

The smart decision seems to be to move him. However, that might not be as easy as it sounds. Fielder is going to be a 5th year arbitration guy coming off a $10.5 million salary and with strong numbers in traditional categories, so he’s looking at a $15 million plus paycheck for 2011. And, while he’s a good player, that isn’t all that much of a bargain.

In five seasons as a big leaguer, Fielder has hit .281/.385/.538, good for a .389 wOBA. That’s very good, of course, but the only place he adds value is at the plate. UZR has consistently rated him as a below average defender, as he averages about -7 runs per season as a first baseman. While he moves pretty decently for a guy his size, he’s not any kind of asset on the bases. He’s a hitter, and a good one, but that’s all he is. And there are a lot of those available in free agency this winter.

For instance, most teams that would be interested in Fielder would probably also take a look at Adam Dunn, whose .251/.381/.522 career mark is very similar to Fielder’s. They have similar skillsets, and while Dunn is older, teams can sign him without surrendering prospects in their system or have to worry about the long term contract that Boras is seeking for his client. Even if you have to give up a draft pick to sign Dunn, he’ll look like a pretty attractive option at 4/40 compared to giving up premium talent to sign Fielder and then having Boras ask for six years and $150 million at the negotiating table.

While Fielder is a good player, he’s not a huge asset, because his annual salary is already pretty pricey and his lack of value beyond his bat is nonexistent. He’s a good player, but not a superstar, as his career +3.5 WAR per 600 PA shows. Even if we called him a +4 to +5 win player, he’s probably not worth $20 million per year, and Boras has already demonstrated that the expected price tag of keeping him is over that mark.

Realistically, the Brewers are probably better off finding a team who would see Fielder as a rental – a club that needs a big time slugger to put them over the top next year, and is willing to switch out prospects for present value and some long term draft picks. Rather than focusing on finding Fielder’s permanent home, it’s probably in everyone’s best interests if he’s a hired hand for one year, and then lets the market determine his landing place next winter.

How much is a one year rental 1B/DH with an expected salary of $15 million worth? Probably a lot less than Brewer fans are hoping for.

Want to watch playoff baseball in September? This weekend, you get a chance.

Having lost four in a row, the Colorado Rockies put their season on the line against the San Francisco Giants, who hold a 3 1/2 game lead over them in the NL West. Sweep and they’re right back in this thing – anything less and their odds of playing in October mostly vanish.

The Rockies have about a 3 percent chance of making the playoffs right now. They’re in a pretty big hole, but this weekend presents baseball’s version of a way to climb out of it. It won’t be easy – taking three straight from a good baseball team never is, and the Rockies will have to do it without Ubaldo Jimenez. Jhoulys Chacin, Jason Hammel, and Jorge de la Rosa will have to carry the day, and they’re going to have to figure out how to put runs on the board against a red hot pitching staff.

Don’t put money on the Rockies taking all three, but series like this are why we love baseball. You want the last week of the season to mean something? Win three in a row. Earn it.

The things that we remember, the things that we talk about, the things that go down in history are not the ordinary, expected outcomes. No one cares when the probable occurs. It’s the can-you-believe-that-happened experiences that create memories, and the Rockies have a chance to give their fans that kind of memory this weekend. Beat up on the Giants at home, put yourself back in the race, and I guarantee that there will be some kids in Denver who become baseball fans for life.

On the other side of the coin, the Giants have a chance to make this a two horse race. If they win the series, they’ll have one less team to worry about, and could conceivably end up getting enough of a lead where the final weekend series against San Diego might not matter all that much, especially if Atlanta’s struggles continue.

Colorado-San Francisco is the most important baseball series we’ve had this year. One team’s season is on the line, while the other can give themselves a great chance of playing in October with a strong performance on the road. It’s great drama, and it’s the kind of series to get excited about.

Forget Red Sox-Yankees – this is the match-up of the weekend. It should be a lot of fun.

You want to know why the San Francisco Giants are in first place in the NL West right now? Their team ERA in September is 1.47.

That is not a typo. One point four seven. They have allowed 33 runs in 20 games. The Angels, who have the second fewest runs allowed this month, have given up 59. The Brewers, in third place, have given up 66. The Giants have allowed half as many runs this month as the team that has given up the third fewest in baseball.

Their pitching has been ridiculous. Here are their performances and ranks in the core pitching stats for September.

BB/9: 2.12 (1st)
K/9: 8.44 (3rd)
GB%: 47.9% (5th)

Their staff has essentially pitched like a collective of Adam Wainwrights. Even when you regress their HR/FB and BABIP rates (both unsustainably low, as you would suspect of any team with a 1.47 ERA), you’re still looking at a team xFIP of 3.34 this month, which is the equivalent of Mat Latos‘ season.

It has been a total team effort, with essentially the entire pitching staff throwing lights out every night. Matt Cain has the lowest strikeout rate of any of the starters, but he’s made up for it with a ridiculous 0.96 BB/9. Barry Zito hasn’t had good command, but he’s upped his K/9 to 8.31 this month. Tim Lincecum, Jonathan Sanchez, and Madison Bumgarner have done both, avoiding walks and racking up strikeouts in bunches.

And then there’s the bullpen. In 50 innings pitched, they’ve allowed three runs. Seven of the nine relievers that have pitched for San Francisco this month have an ERA of 0.00. Brian Wilson (1.00) and Jeremy Affeldt (1.50) are the slackers who have dared to allow a run. Their .163 BABIP obviously won’t continue, but they have a bullpen full of groundballers who are pounding the strike zone, and that’s a pretty good combination.

The Giants face the suddenly slumping Rockies for three this weekend, and if they keep preventing runs at the rate they have been in September, they’ll put nails into Colorado’s coffin. The Rockies are going to have to figure out how to hit this pitching staff, which no one else has been able to do this month.

There are two weeks left in the regular season, and over in the NL West, things are getting fun. Here are the current standings as we head down the stretch:

San Francisco, 84-66
San Diego, 83-66
Colorado, 82-67

The Giants have the edge by virtue of winning the one extra game they’ve played, while Colorado stands one back in the loss column behind both teams. All three teams have a real chance of winning this thing, and the division will be decided by who finishes the strongest.

To figure out if any of the teams have an advantage, let’s take a look at their respective schedules.

SF: @CHC (3), @COL (3), Off, vs ARI (3), vs SD (3)
SD: @LAD (3), vs CIN (3), @CHC (4), @SF (3)
COL: @ARI (3), vs SF (3), vs LAD (3), @STL (4)

The big difference between the three teams is that San Francisco is the only one with an off-day left in their regular season schedule. After this weekend’s games, they take Monday off before starting their final homestand of the year. Offsetting that, the Giants are the only team that has to play two teams fighting for a playoff berth down the stretch, as they face the two teams they’re fighting for the NL West over the next two weekends.

San Diego has to contend with a good Cincinnati club, but they have little to play for at this point, so Dusty Baker may be more inclined to hold out players who would otherwise be on the field on some days, and there’s certainly a motivational aspect that can’t be completely ignored. Meanwhile, the Rockies have just their three game set against the Giants, but other than that, they play a bunch of teams that are already planning their October vacations.

I’d give a slight edge to the Rockies in terms of ease of remaining schedule, but that previously mentioned off-day for San Francisco looms as an equalizer. Their next six games will see games started by Matt Cain, Jonathan Sanchez, Madison Bumgarner, Tim Lincecum, Barry Zito, and then Cain again before the day-off. The break gives them the opportunity to shift their rotation around, setting them up better for a potential tie-breaker or the NLDS.

They could finish the season with Sanchez-Lincecum-Bumgarner-Cain-Zito-Sanchez, which would allow them to limit Barry Zito to just two starts over the rest of the season, and setup Lincecum to pitch on regular rest in either Game 1 of the NLDS or an if necessary tie-breaker following the conclusion of the regular season. If they had to play their way into the NLDS, they’d then have Bumgarner available to start on full rest, which isn’t the worst situation they could face.

Meanwhile, Colorado and San Diego just have to roll with how their rotation shakes out, since they play 13 games in the final 13 days. Unless one of them runs away with this thing, which seems unlikely, they won’t be able to set their rotations up for a a potential tie-breaker or the NLDS. Given that they also have a slight lead over the other two clubs, the Giants have to be considered the favorites right now.

Yesterday, we debuted our newest writer here on FanGraphs, as Albert Lyu joined the staff. Albert had been writing at his blog for several months, and after we launched the Community Blog, he began submitting pieces for publication. We liked his work so much that we offered him a job.

The Community Blog has been a great addition to the site. When it went live in mid-May, we weren’t really sure what to expect, honestly. We knew a lot of you guys had some interesting things to say, and we wanted to give you a platform to have your voice heard on a scale that it probably wouldn’t be otherwise. There was so much initial interest that we were overwhelmed with entries, and had a large backlog of quality pieces to publish. Sometimes, they’d be a bit out of date by the time we were able to publish them, simply because there were so many good articles to go through. Then, late July hit, we all got swamped with our own writing, and the Community Blog didn’t receive the attention it needed.

If you submitted something to the Community Blog in late July, consider this an official apology – we dropped the ball on keeping it updated. However, we’ve got a system in place now to ensure that doesn’t happen again, and we’re going to stay on top of things over there going forward. We’re going to make sure that the great submissions you guys are turning in get published in a timely fashion, and we’re going to increase their visibility on the main site. As 2:00 Eastern today, we’ll feature an article from the Community Blog on the FanGraphs home page, and this will become a regular feature of the blog. We want to give these high quality pieces the exposure they deserve, and so we’ll regularly run articles from the Community Blog on the FanGraphs home page, where the amount of eyes that see your work will grow exponentially.

We really want the blog to be a podium for good ideas and interesting research. I think most of us would agree that Albert’s pieces are pretty fascinating stuff, and they bring something new to the table. You don’t have to know how to publish heat maps from R, but I will say that our tendency is going to be to publish topics that have not already been covered. It doesn’t have to original content, as Albert’s posts were copies of things he’d already published on his blog, but the best work comes from original ideas, and that’s really what we’re hoping to shine a spotlight on.

A few of my favorite posts from the Community Blog to date, to kind of give you an idea of what we’d like to see in future submissions:

A New Old Idea For The KC Royals

Dusty Baker And Pitch Counts

Interview: Jed Hoyer

Revisiting A Blown Call From The 2009 Playoffs

The Nationals Unique FanBase

Liberating Liberated Fandom

There’s a wide spectrum of topics in there, and all were handled differently. The key was that they were all original ideas. With the Community Blog, we want to feature the creative ideas that you guys have, and we’re going to work to make sure that they get the exposure they deserve. So, keep those submissions coming, and we’ll keep featuring the best articles right here on FanGraphs.

One of the objections I heard today to my suggestion that Troy Tulowitzki deserves MVP consideration is that there’s a massive gap between him and Joey Votto in WPA. And it’s true, there is. Votto has the highest WPA in baseball, coming in at +6.47, while Tulowitzki’s +1.38 ranks him just 46th among position players, never mind all the pitchers who also rank ahead of him.

One of the main reasons why Tulowitzki’s WPA is so low is that a lot of his offense has come in games that had already been decided. In low leverage at-bats, he is hitting .361/.427/.649, but just .261/.357/.472 in high leverage situations. This gap is pretty large, and the opposite of Votto’s, who has hit better in high leverage situations this year. That makes a difference to a lot of people, and I understand why.

However, let me use an example from Saturday to show why you should be careful using context-dependent stats like WPA to determine how valuable a specific player was.

9/18, Colorado vs LA

Top 1st, 2 outs, runner on 1st, no score.

Tulowitzki hits a home run, giving the Rockies a 2-0 lead. Since their chances of winning jumped from 48 percent to 68 percent, Tulowitzki gets 0.20 added to his WPA total for the season.

Top 3rd, 2 outs, no one on, 2-0 Rockies.

Tulowitzki doubles to center. Because the Rockies were already likely to win the game, this double was worth a little less than a normal double, and he is credited with just 0.02 WPA. He would eventually score on Melvin Mora’s single, and the Rockies would take a 3-0 lead.

Top 5th, 1 out, runner on 1st, 3-0 Rockies.

Tulowitzki hits a home run, giving the Rockies a 5-0 lead. Because the Rockies already had an advantage, these runs were worth less than the earlier runs, so Tulowitzki only got 0.08 WPA for pushing their win expectancy from 86 percent to 94 percent.

I’d imagine you can see what happened here. Tulowitzki received minimal credit for his 5th inning home run because the Rockies already stood a really good chance of winning the game, and yet they had those good odds of winning because of what Tulowitzki did in his prior two at-bats. He essentially created his own low-leverage situation by single-handedly beating the Dodgers on Saturday.

Do you really want to say that Tulowitzki’s two-run homer in the 5th was less than half as valuable as his two run homer in the first? In terms of the story of the game, those runs didn’t have the same impact, but were they really less valuable? The fact is that the WPA of that HR is decided by how Tulowitzki performed in his first two at-bats of the game – should we hold a player’s good performances in less standing if they come after his previous good performances in the same game? Or, alternately, should we punish him for performing well on the same day that Jhoulis Chacin was throwing a shutout? If his first inning home run had tied the game, rather than breaking a tie, and his second home run had broken open a closer affair, the WPA story would be a lot different, even though the only variable we’re changing is the performance of the Rockies starting pitcher.

For these reasons, I lean towards context neutral performance. For me, WPA is like overall team performance – use it as a tie-breaker in a situation where it is otherwise hard to distinguish between two candidates, but don’t lean too heavily upon it. I’ll give Votto a bit of a boost for just how awesome he’s been in high pressure situations this year, but I’m not going to ignore how great Tulowitzki has been in situations where the game wasn’t close just because he helped make it not close in the first place.

WPA is great at telling the story of how a game unfolded. It is less great at evaluating how much a player helped his team win through his own actions. This doesn’t make it a bad stat, but it was designed for a specific purpose, and it is best used in that purpose. Trying to take it and turn it into a value stat for player performance is asking it to do something it was never intended for in the first place.