Adrian Gonzalez is the new Roy Halladay. Given his agent’s statements that he is not willing to give San Diego a hometown discount and sees Mark Teixeira’s contract as the comparison for what his player expects, there is essentially no chance that the Padres end up keeping him. He will be traded, the only question is when and where. So, prepare yourselves for a never ending rumor mill, which was so much fun the last time we had one of these…

But, that’s not the point of this post. Since Gonzalez’s agent wants to draw comparisons to Mark Teixeira, I thought, so should we. Let’s get back to our roots a little bit and throw up some graphs. This is Teixeira and Gonzalez’s performance by age, plotted against each other.

As you can see, the comparison isn’t a bad one. Teixeira walked a little bit more until last year, when Gonzalez took 100 free passes for the first time in his career. Their contact rates have basically been the same. Teixeira showed significantly more power at 24 and 25, but Gonzalez caught him at 26 and sustained the power burst last year. That allowed him to close the early career gap in wOBA, and for the last two years, Gonzalez has matched Teixeira’s development path. He got off to a slower start, but his more recent performances make this comparison valid.

So, Paul Boggs has a pretty good case when he says he wants a Teixeira like contract for his Gonzalez, since they are pretty similar, right?

Wrong.

There’s one huge difference that was a significant factor for Teixeira ending up with $180 million that won’t be a factor for Gonzalez – the Yankees. Put simply, it’s quite unlikely that New York will spend the money to have Gonzalez DH when they already have huge money committed to Teixeira long term. And, as free agents out found out this winter, when the Yankees aren’t involved, your ability to demand a huge contract dries up. Yes, the Red Sox will almost certainly be interested in Gonzalez when he hits free agency, but if they’re not getting pressured by the Bronx Bombers, they simply won’t have to try and compete for his services with their bitter enemies. And that will hurt Gonzalez’s ability to demand a mega contract.

I’d imagine Boggs is fully aware of this, so my guess is that Gonzalez will never get to free agency. Whatever team is willing to give up the truckload of prospects it will take to get him will also want a contract extension as part of the deal. Whether its Boston or somewhere else, I’d expect Gonzalez to be signing a long term contract this winter, but for significantly less than what Teixeira got. His agent can talk up that $180 million comparison all he wants, but at the end of the day, if the Yankees aren’t in the bidding, that’s not a realistic number. Expect him to settle for quite a bit less.

As we roll into March, I thought it’d be interesting to see what kind of team you could put together with the remaining free agents. Here’s the 25-man squad.

Catcher: Paul Bako
First Base: Hank Blalock
Second Base: Rich Aurilia
Shortstop: Ramon Martinez
Third Base: Joe Crede
Left Field: Garret Anderson
Center Field: Darin Erstad
Right Field: Jermaine Dye
Designated Hitter: Gary Sheffield

Bench: Rob Bowen, Rocco Baldelli, Ryan Freel, Chris Gomez

Starter: John Smoltz
Starter: Pedro Martinez
Starter: Jarrod Washburn
Starter: Braden Looper
Starter: Bartolo Colon

Closer: Kiko Calero

Bullpen: David Weathers, Joe Beimel, Ron Mahay, Eric Milton, Duaner Sanchez, Troy Percival

Not surprisingly, the team is weak up the middle, as catchers, shortstops, and center fielders have generally found jobs. The Martinez-Aurilia double play combination would be the worst in the game by a country mile. Erstad as a regular center fielder isn’t exactly anyone’s idea of a good time either.

At the corners, though, this team could give some other clubs a run for their money. At least in name value, if not so much on the filed. Blalock, Crede, Dye, Anderson, Sheffield… you could do worse, honestly.

But, the strength of this team would be pitching. In fact, I’d dare say that the rotation might actually be league average, at least when those five are all healthy. They’d run into problems due to a lack of depth, but just on paper, it’s not a terrible rotation. The bullpen wouldn’t be a disaster either.

Just eyeballing projected WAR for this group, I’d think you’re looking at something like a true talent level 60 win team. They’d be bad, no question, but given the premise of limiting yourself solely to free agents who haven’t signed even after spring training has already started, I’m actually a little surprised at how decent of a roster you could put together.

Who has the best bullpen in baseball? Boston’s is the most famous, filled with big arms and a big personality at closer, but the Red Sox have some competition for the title down in San Diego, where the Padres have four guys coming off ridiculous 2009 seasons, even if you may not have ever heard of them.

Okay, so, Heath Bell you know. He’s been an all-star and racked up 42 saves a year ago after spending several years as a premier setup guy. But before you get to Bell, the Padres throw out three no names, each of whom was terrific last year, and are among the hidden gems in baseball; Mike Adams, Luke Gregerson, and Joe Thatcher.

Among relievers who threw at least 30 IP last year, Adams had the third lowest xFIP (2.57) of any pitcher in the game, behind just Jonathan Broxton and Mariano Rivera. Gregerson (3.11) came in at #14, while Thatcher (3.31) was #27. In fact, all three actually had higher strikeout rates than Bell, the all-star closer, though when you’re picking between four guys with a K/9 over 10.00, you can’t really go wrong.

Perhaps most interesting of the group is Adams, who has battled through health problems but been dominant of late when on the mound. He racked up some crazy numbers in the 37 innings he managed to throw a year ago: 1.95 BB/9, 10.95 K/9, 50.6% GB%. Rarely do you see a guy who can miss so many bats while also throwing strikes and getting ground balls.

But, Adams is unique in another way; throughout his short major league career, he’s actually demonstrated a reverse platoon split.

Vs LH: 323 TBF, 2.39 BB/9, 9.11 K/9, 49.3% GB%, 5.6% HR/FB, 2.56 FIP, 3.15 xFIP
Vs RH: 371 TBF, 3.13 BB/9, 9.10 K/9, 36.7% GB%, 10.7% HR/FB, 3.84 FIP, 3.80 xFIP

The walk rate is significantly lower and the ground ball rate significantly higher, yet he has suffered no corresponding drop in strikeout rate when facing opposite handed hitters. It’s not like they’re hitting rockets off of him when they do make contact either, as his lower HR/FB rates show. If you didn’t know better, from looking at this line, you might think Adams was a lefty. His results would suggest that, at least.

But no, Adams is an RHP. He isn’t your typical situational reliever, though, as he mixes in five different pitches, including two breaking balls and a change-up in addition to his fastball and cutter. This expanded pitch mix gives him weapons against both RHBs and LHBs, and from the results, it seems like the pitches he features against lefties are a bit more advanced than his standard fare.

Given how well he’s able to control hitters from both sides of the plate, Adams is a natural fit for the 9th inning. If the Padres fail to contend, as expected, they’ll almost certainly be shopping Heath Bell at the deadline. As long as Adams’ arm is still attached to his body, expect him to end up as the Padres closer. Given his performance as a setup man, expect him to not only succeed, but to thrive.

Last week, Red Sox GM Theo Epstein did an in-depth interview with WEEI, focusing mainly on the topic of the winter – defense, defensive statistics, and how most of the stat-friendly teams have made moves to improve themselves defensively in recent years. During the interview, he made one specific comment that we feel is worth addressing, since it was aimed our way. In response to a question about whether Jacoby Ellsbury had defensive problems in center field last year, Theo said this:

I think that he is an above-average center fielder now, who is going to be a great center fielder. I know there is a certain number we don’t use that is accessible to people online that had him as one of the worst defensive center fielders in baseball last year. I don’t think it’s worth anything. I don’t think that number is legitimate. We do our own stuff and it showed that he is above average.

Since we publish that “certain number” – more often referred to as UZR – let me weigh in with a few thoughts.

UZR, with its -18.6 rating for Ellsbury in center field in 2009, isn’t exactly out on an island here. John Dewan’s +/- metric had him at 9 runs below average. Sean Smith’s Total Zone system had him at 10 runs below average. Tom Tango stated that his With Or Without You system had him between 14 and 18 runs below average. This isn’t a case of UZR delivering a strange result that other systems don’t agree with. Pretty much all of the publicly available defensive metrics show Ellsbury had some issues last year.

Now, Theo might lump all of those metrics together as inferior to their proprietary internal metrics, and indeed, they may be. However, we need to keep two things in mind here: first, Epstein making positive public comments about his own players is a classic case of a statement made in self-interest, and second, the Red Sox moved Ellsbury to left field. Theo’s not going to come out and trash any of his own players, and it’s in the Red Sox best interest to fight any perception of Ellsbury as a defensive liability. If they engage in trade negotiations with another team, it would not be helpful if the league comes to a consensus that Ellsbury really does have some defensive issues, considering that is the biggest selling point for his particular skillset.

The Red Sox decision to move Ellsbury to left reinforces that idea. If Theo had left it unchallenged, it would essentially amount to a tacit acceptance of the rating, which would not be good for Jacoby’s trade value. Even if the Red Sox internal metrics had not shown Ellsbury as above average, it would still behoove Theo to publicly defend his player against the perception that his defense in center field may be questionable. Once the Red Sox decided to shift Ellsbury over, it became necessary for Epstein to make a statement to this effect, whether he believes it or not (and I’d bet that he does – this is not intended to question his integrity).

Finally, this is a big point – Jacoby Ellsbury played 1,302 innings in center field last year, basically one full season’s worth. As has been noted many times, one season’s worth of any defensive metric is not a very large sample size. Due to the amount of marginal plays that a player is judged on over the course of a single season, a few bad breaks here or there can make a pretty significant impact on a player’s overall rating. We have always suggested that you want more than one year of data before you start making judgments about a player’s true worth defensively. No one should look at Ellsbury’s 2009 UZR and state definitively that he is a poor defensive center fielder.

In fact, UZR doesn’t even support that assessment. In 2007 and 2008, Ellsbury racked up a +14.4 UZR in 777 innings between left and right field. That equates out to about 20 runs above average, if you extrapolate out over a full season. UZR loved Ellsbury in the corners, and historically, the defensive gap between a CF and a corner OF is about 10 runs. Given how well UZR rated him as a corner outfielder (again, in a very small sample), we can use that data as information about how well he should be able to handle center field. An overall view of Ellsbury through UZR, including all of the data from 2007 to 2009, would have him as a barely below average CF, not anything close to a disaster, and not that far from what Epstein is claiming.

There is a school of thought that these swings suggest an underlying flaw with UZR, but I’d suggest that it may be evidence that the perception of perfectly consistent defensive value is a myth. We know that hitters and pitchers often see wild swings in their performance, but no one thinks its proof that home runs are bunk when David Wright gets out-homered by Ichiro Suzuki. Wright obviously has more power, but over one season, he didn’t show it. It is certainly reasonable to believe that a player that Epstein believes to be “a good defensive center fielder” could simply have a bad year.

In the end, there’s no huge disagreement between FanGraphs and the Red Sox on how to evaluate defense, even if they prefer their internal metrics to UZR. We love the defense that Mike Cameron and Adrian Beltre provide and, obviously, so do the decision makers in Boston. Additionally, that Ellsbury was shifted to left field to make room for a 37-year-old suggests that the Red Sox may agree that he’s not yet an elite defender, even if they think he may become one. In this instance, I think that actions may speak louder than words, and I don’t think that Theo sees Ellsbury all that differently than we do.

I always look forward to the release of the Vegas over/unders from the great Vegas Watch. My friend Derek Zumsteg did a great piece on odds in Vegas a few years ago, and due to the bookies fanatical desire to make money, they’ve always struck me as a nice stand in for what they see public perception of each team being. They aren’t predictors of final record, but instead, numbers set to even out the bets, so that they book will make money no matter what happens. To do this, they have to be pretty good at projecting where the money will fall at a given number of wins.

Apparently, Vegas thinks that people with money hate the Twins. If there’s one over/under that stands out like a sore thumb, it’s Minnesota at 82 wins. 82 wins – the same as the White Sox, one win more than the Tigers, tied for the seventh best record in the American League. Really? Seriously?

The Twins had a tremendous winter, as we’ve discussed. They added quality talents in J.J. Hardy, Orlando Hudson, and Jim Thome, plus retained Carl Pavano for a full season (or however much of it he’ll be able to stay healthy for). They got more good news when Francisco Liriano found his fastball and dominated the Winter Leagues, and for those who are into this sort of thing, uber bust Delmon Young showed up at camp 30 pounds lighter.

Their losses? Joe Crede and Carlos Gomez, who accounted for +1.9 wins combined a year ago. They didn’t take a significant hit at any position, unlike their rivals in Michigan, who lost Curtis Granderson, Placido Polanco, and Edwin Jackson. And yet Vegas shaved an equal number of wins off both the Twins and Tigers records from 2009, despite very different off-seasons.

Honestly, I don’t get it. Sure, there’s expected regression from Mauer (it’s really hard to repeat that kind of season, no matter who you are), but they aren’t likely to get a brutal performance from Alexi Casilla again. CHONE has the Twins as an 86 win team, and there’s certainly upside beyond the expected performances of guys like Young, Liriano, and Hardy. My back of the envelope calculations have them at something more like 87 or 8 88 wins.

Could the Twins win 82 games? Sure. Anything is possible. But smart money will go heavily over on that number, because the Twins are better than a true talent 82 win team. I don’t know what Vegas thinks the perception of Minnesota’s team is, but it’s certainly not the same one I have. And I don’t know too many people who think the Twins are in a dead heat with the White Sox and Tigers for the AL Central. They’re a clear favorite in my books, and I’d expect them to finish well north of 82 wins.

Last week, I asked you guys to list the players who had been the subject of the great spring training cliche – reporting in the “best shape of their life.” It is remarkable how many times this story has been written. Here’s the list.

Jonathan Sanchez – San Francisco
Carlos Zambrano – Chicago
Geovany Soto – Chicago
Daisuke Matsuzaka – Boston
Mike Pelfrey – New York
Brian McCann – Atlanta
Tim Hudson – Atlanta
Bobby Jenks – Chicago
Delmon Young – Minnesota
David Price – Tampa Bay
Andruw Jones – Chicago
Russell Martin – Los Angeles
Matt Stairs (!) – San Diego
Oliver Perez – New York
Corey Hart – Milwaukee
Aaron Rowand – San Francisco
Jonathan Albaladejo – New York
Ricky Romero – Toronto
Aaron Cook – Colorado
Kyle Blanks – San Diego
Matt Harrison – Texas
Aaron Harang – Cincinnati
Miguel Cabrera – Detroit
Kyle Kendrick – Philadelphia
Nick Swisher – New York
David Wright – New York
David Ortiz – Boston
Martin Prado – Atlanta

That’s 28 guys, and there were a few in the comments that I omitted, because the cited articles were more about rehabbing from an injury than getting in better shape. Needless to say, that’s a big list. The most notable changes seem to belong to Delmon Young, Jonathan Albaladejo, Matt Stairs (hilariously), and Matt Harrison, who were each reported to have dropped 30 pounds.

Of all the guys on the list, perhaps those four best serve as examples of when this story should be written. Someone drops 30 pounds in a winter, well, that’s newsworthy. A lot of the rest of it, though… it’s just filler. Not that you guys need to be reminded of this, of course.

It will be interesting to look back at this list at the end of the year and see how many of these guys beat their projections. If I don’t do that post by November, someone remind me.

Lots of good comments in the post yesterday about things we’d like to learn about baseball. I’d like to expand on a few of the ideas, and maybe we can flesh out some thoughts to pursue, or at least plan to pursue them once we figure out how. The most intriguing ones, to me, were based on the concepts of performance being affected by teammates.

There were three suggestions that got at this kind of relationship, in different ways.

1. Catcher defense/pitch sequencing
2. Defense’s impact on developing a pitcher
3. Line-up synergy

In all three of these concepts, the idea is that one player is significantly impacted by the presence of another player. In general, statistical analysis doesn’t really account for any scenarios like that at the moment. We kind of throw our hands up in the air when it comes to catcher defense, and we create player projections in a context neutral environment and then add minor adjustments for things like park effects, but leave it at that.

From a practical standpoint, that’s okay for now. We don’t have any evidence that we should be doing anything differently, and you can’t just make up an adjustment for something that may or may not exist. But it’s not much of a stretch to think that there may be some kind of effects here that we’re missing.

The catcher/pitcher stuff is obviously ripe ground for study. With the accumulation of Pitch F/x data, we’re starting to get to the point where we can get some legitimate sample sizes, and start comparing what one catcher calls to others. We can look at trends of pitch usage and look for sequences of pitches that may be more effective than others. I think there’s a lot to be discovered in this area, and I’d expect it to be one of the major areas of study for statistical analysts in the next few years.

The interaction between a pitcher and his defense may be a little harder to study, but is also worth doing. Vince Gennaro, a professor at Columbia and a consultant to a lot of MLB teams, has recently done some work on the secondary effects of defense, quantifying the change in pitching staff usage for teams that flash the leather. They shift a lot of innings from their bad relievers to their good relievers and their starters, allowing for the distribution of innings to be more heavily skewed towards the top end of their talent pool.

However, there’s even further to drill on this issue. Do pitchers change their pitch selection based on the quality of their defense? If they have a bunch of gold glovers behind them, do they pitch more to contact? Does the resulting drop in baserunners result in lower stress pitches, which allow them to work deeper into games? These are benefits to the pitcher that have not yet been explored, but should be.

Finally, there’s the line-up synergy suggestion. This one, I’m a little less sure of, but would still think its worth our time to dive into. The protection theory has been studied to death and mostly debunked, but it isn’t hard to come up with scenarios where the performance of one hitter does affect others. It’s well known that nearly everyone hits better with men on base than with the bases empty, so anyone hitting behind an OBP machine should get a boost in performance, simply from that effect.

But there’s also other possible synergies, I would think. Having a balanced line-up of LH and RH hitters should limit a manager’s ability to play the match-ups late in games, reducing the amount of times a hitter has to face a same-handed pitcher in higher leverage situations. This would be especially important for a guy like Curtis Granderson, who should almost certainly hit between two RHBs. You could also argue for putting a left-handed groundball hitter behind a high on-base guy in order to take advantage of the hole created when the first baseman has to hold a runner on. These may not be huge changes, but they may add up enough to be worth considering.

While baseball is the most individual of team sports, it is not solely a one-on-one match-up at all times. If we look hard enough, I’d bet we’ll find ways that teammates do, in fact, influence the performance of those around them.

Here at FanGraphs, we attempt to answer a lot of questions. How good is this guy compared to that guy? Who throws the hardest? Which pitches are effective against different hitters? What should I expect from that rookie?

For the next few days, however, I’m going to take a slightly different approach. As baseball analysis has begun to explode on the web, there is no shortage of answers to common questions. However, I think that we may have a shortage of questions. So, rather than attempting to figure out something that we want to know, I’d like to spend a few days trying to figure out what else we should want to know.

I’m not going to have any answers on this. My hope is that this would turn into a discussion where we can stimulate some ideas for what things may be worth answering in the future, even if we can’t answer them now. What don’t we know that may be important, and that we maybe haven’t even attempted to answer yet?

The main area in baseball that still strikes me as something of a mystery is pitching. We understand some things about the art of pitching. We know that, in general, more velocity is good, and it helps to be able to throw the ball in the strike zone with regularity. But do we have any idea why some guys have good command and other’s don’t?

Really, this seems like a fairly basic thing, but I don’t know if we have an answer. We could throw out a word like “mechanics,” but what does that tell us, really? For all the talk about good and bad mechanics, there doesn’t seem to be a “do-this-thing-and-you’ll-succeed” blueprint. Different stuff works for different guys. So what is it that drives a pitcher’s command? Arm angle? Muscle memory? Practice?

I don’t know. Maybe you do – if so, great, let’s hear it (with proof, please). But this seems like something we’d like to know, right? So, this is my question – what else should we want to know that we don’t? What parts of baseball have we just not given attention to?

I’d like to personally thank Russell Branyan for signing with the Indians about an hour after my post speculating on his fit with Tampa Bay was published. Thanks man.

Carlos Pena trade speculation aside, let’s turn our attention to Branyan. He reunites with his original organization after traveling the world, as Cleveland finds a bargain at the end of the winter. He’ll get just $2 million in guaranteed money for 2010, with incentives offering the chance to make another $1 million depending on how much he plays. That’s almost certainly less than he turned down to return to the Mariners at the beginning of free agency, a move that Branyan likely regrets now.

What should the Indians expect from Branyan? Well, besides a lot of strikeouts, he’s actually one of the tougher players in the game to project. In the first half of 2009, Branyan was among the game’s best hitters, posting wOBAs of .444 in April, .430 in May, and .400 in June. However, a huge chunk of that success was built on flukey high BABIPs, as he just strikes out too much to maintain an average close to .300.

Sure enough, his BABIP regressed in July and August, but it didn’t just stop at the mean. It fell to .173 and .255 in the final two months respectively, but a herniated disc in his back makes it a challenge to figure out whether that was bad luck, injury, or a combination of both. He sustained most of his power, even while playing in pain, but it certainly makes sense that a guy with a bad back would be less likely to get hits on balls that don’t leave the yard.

Branyan claims he’s healthy, but he didn’t have surgery this winter, and the Mariners backed away from retaining him after he tweaked his back earlier in the off-season. There are some pretty big red flags here, obviously, but at the price, it seems to be worth the risk for the Indians.

As a 1B/DH (given the back problems, asking him to play anywhere else isn’t a great idea), he’ll likely split time with Matt LaPorta and Travis Hafner, giving the Indians a rotation of three guys to share two spots. Hafner’s no specimen of health himself, so having a guy capable of swatting home runs when he needs a day (or month) off is a good plan.

If Branyan stays healthy, this is certainly a nice move for the Indians, but I’d suggest that its beyond our powers to guess how much he’ll be able to play this year. He’s a cheap lotto ticket, though, and he’s certainly a lot of fun to watch when he’s going well.

Everyone’s talking about Adrian Gonzalez as the first baseman that everyone will be chasing this summer, once the Padres finally decide to make him available for bidding. However, with the recent rumblings of the Rays interest in Russell Branyan, I have to think that Carlos Pena is more likely to be the big power hitter getting moved at the deadline.

The Rays are always planning ahead. Branyan is a very similar player to Pena, with all the same strengths and weaknesses (plus one additional weakness – a herniated disc in his back). While he could certainly split time with Pat Burrell at DH, I have to think that the Rays are looking to give themselves the flexibility to move Pena this summer.

If they fall out of the race, it’s a lock he’s getting moved. Headed towards free agency and turning 32 in May, Pena is not the kind of player that Tampa Bay will be paying full market value for. They don’t have the payroll to pay aging sluggers for their decline years.

However, I’d suggest that they may move Pena this summer even if they’re contending, especially if they add Branyan to the fold. If they’re convinced that Branyan is healthy, a platoon with him and Willy Aybar at first base is not a huge step back from what Pena provides. The combination of cost savings and the ability to get value back for him may prove too enticing to pass up, because if they keep Pena until the end of the year, they’re likely to have to let him leave for nothing.

Due to how arbitration and free agency have diverged the last few years, it will be almost impossible for the Rays to offer Pena arbitration, the necessary step to receiving draft pick compensation for a free agent that signs elsewhere. Pena would be able to take his HR and RBI numbers in front of an arbiter and ask for $15 to $20 million, easy. Yet, given how the market has shifted, he won’t be able to come near that AAV as a free agent. The Rays can’t take the risk that he accepts and eats up 30% of their payroll.

So, the Rays face a choice. Deal Pena this summer for value, or let let him leave as a free agent without compensation. As long as he’s still hitting bombs and driving in runs, it’s going to be hard for them to not listen to offers, especially if they have a suitable replacement in house.

If the Rays sign Branyan, I’d suggest it’s the first step towards Pena being traded this summer.