When browsing the headlines at Baseball Think Factory this morning, one jumped out – Why Haven’t Sabermetrics Gone Mainstream? My first reaction was “they have”. I mean, really, let’s take a look at the baseball world today.

The Wall Street Journal started a sports page about a month ago. I have a piece in there today, and Carl Bialik wrote about Matthew’s work on Ryan Madson’s change-up. I’d imagine most people would consider this to be something of a sabermetric website, and the Wall Street Journal to be fairly mainstream.

The media is definitely on board – ESPN employs Rob Neyer and Keith Law as two of their main baseball writers. Karl Ravech was talking about PECOTA the other night. John Dewan has had numerous features done while promoting The Fielding Bible II. Sports Illustrated just did a story on the rise of defense in baseball. You can’t get away from mainstream media coverage of ideas that were generated in the sabermetric community.

It’s even more pervasive in MLB itself. Obviously, everyone knows about how the A’s operate thanks to Moneyball, but the links between the organizations and this community of baseball analysts are growing tighter by the day. The Tampa Bay Rays now employ James Click and Chaim Bloom, who got their start at Baseball Prospectus, along with former FanGraphs writer Peter Bendix and Pitch F/x guru Josh Kalk. The Seattle Mariners hired Tom Tango over the winter, and have created an entire department of baseball research that they’re filling with sabermetrics kids. The Indians have Keith Woolner, among others. The Pirates hired Dan Fox. The list goes of people hired by MLB organizations from the internet baseball community is remarkably extensive.

The struggle for legitimacy is over. Sabermetrics has been accepted as a fairly large part of baseball. Maybe not by everyone, but by most of the people who are in positions of influence. For better or worse, this isn’t a bunch of outsiders struggling to get their voice heard over the shouting mob anymore. This little brand of baseball analysis that we all enjoy has crossed over.

This is probably deserving of a longer post, but I wanted to spend a few minutes to talk about the ethics of service time manipulation. Baltimore and Tampa Bay have both elected to send two of their best players to Triple-A to begin the season, opting to go with a sub-optimal roster for the beginning of 2009 in order to create a long term financial advantage by delaying the free agency for Matt Wieters and David Price.

From an organizational standpoint, there are all kinds of reasons why it makes sense. The value of having an extra year of club control over one of the elite talents in the game is tremendous, and far outweighs the incremental gains the team would get from having their best line-up on the field for the first six weeks of 2009. From a cost/benefit perspective, trading six weeks of Price or Wieters’ production in 2009 for an entire season of their production in 2015, it’s an easy call.

As fans, we usually want the organizations we root for to do whatever they can to better the organization, both short term and long term. In most cases, the fans are in total agreement with the organization and are willing to trade the benefit of seeing a player like Wieters or Price for six weeks now to get an extra year of their abilities down the line.

However, I have to wonder how we would feel if we were in the players shoes. There is no question that Wieters is the best catcher in the Orioles organization right now. No one would argue otherwise. He has done everything necessary to establish himself as the guy who can offer the most at his position, but he’ll begin the season in the International League so that the Orioles can deflate his future earnings. If this happened to you at your job, wouldn’t you be outraged? Can you imagine your boss looking you in the eye and telling you that he’s purposely giving you an undeserved negative performance review so that the company won’t give you the raise you’ve earned?

I mean, really, wouldn’t most of us want to take a swing at that guy? Somehow, though, because Wieters and Price are operating at a higher pay grade, they’re supposed to be okay with it. Why?

I’m not blaming the teams. They really are making the best decision for their own franchise, given the current rules. But isn’t it time to admit that these rules suck? Thanks to how service time and salaries are correlated, MLB is actively encouraging some teams to put an inferior product on the field to start the year. Isn’t that fantastic?

There are a lot of things in baseball that just don’t live up to common sense, unfortunately. Having rules that discourage teams from putting their best players on the field should be near the top of the list of things to get fixed.

On Tuesday, the Colorado Rockies announced that they were going to choose talent over whatever it was that they thought Scott Podsednik offered them, and as a result, they handed their starting backup center field job to 23-year-old Dexter Fowler. After a breakthrough performance in Double-A last year, he continued to open eyes in spring training, and the Rockies correctly decided that he’s already one of the best outfielders in the organization.

However, Fowler has the kind of skillset that often goes unappreciated. He’s got the power and speed of a leadoff hitter, but he strikes out a fair amount and isn’t a prolific base stealer, so he’s unlikely to post gaudy numbers in any one area. With his contact issues, he probably won’t hit .300. He hits the ball on the ground a lot, so double digit home runs are also unlikely. And, with a career stolen base success rate of just 66% in the minor leagues, he probably won’t swipe 40+ bases this year. For fans who look for big numbers in a given category, Fowler is likely to disappoint.

However, for Rockies fans who simply want to win baseball games, Fowler offers a broad base of skills that will allow him to help Colorado in various ways. His offense isn’t going to be great until he cuts down on the strikeouts, but as a guy who can play center field, he doesn’t have to hit like Matt Holliday to be productive.

CHONE projects his bat to be worth -15 runs over a 150 game season – for a rookie center fielder with range, that’s actually not bad. Assuming he plays average or better defense and stays relatively healthy the Rockies find a way to get him in the line-up, Fowler projects to be something like a +1 to +2 win player as a 23-year-old. Guys who can step in and provide average-ish production while still adjusting to the majors often become stars, and Fowler has a bright future ahead of him.

Don’t count on huge numbers from him this year, but the Rockies made the right call going have depth with Fowler in center field, and his talent will pay off for years to come.

My mistake on the original story, which had Fowler starting in CF.

Yesterday, the Detroit Tigers announced that 20-year-old Rick Porcello had won a spot in their starting rotation. He will open the season with the Tigers despite having never pitched above Single-A, as Dave Dombrowski and Jim Leyland are betting on talent being more important than experience.

Is Porcello ready to make a three level jump and hold his own in the big leagues before he’s legally allowed to drink? There are reasons to think so.

When most people look at his 2008 line, the 5.18 K/9 jumps out – that’s a remarkably low strikeout rate for a guy with top notch stuff in the minor leagues. Most elite pitching prospects strike out more than a batter per inning, especially in the lower levels. Porcello simply wasn’t missing bats all that often, and that is seen as a red flag by many.

However, there can be different ways of dominating minor league hitters, and while Porcello wasn’t racking up the strikeouts, he was among the most dominating groundball pitchers in the minors. 65% of his balls in play were hit on the ground, easily leading the league. Porcello got a ton of ground balls while also avoiding walks, posting a very good 2.38 BB/9. He showed excellent command of his sinker, which allowed him to succeed without racking up a lot of strikeouts.

The combination of no walks and lots of ground balls is a recipe for success in the majors. It might not be as flashy as racking up huge strikeout totals, but it’s still a good combination. If Porcello can continue to command his sinker, he has the tools to pitch in the major leagues right now. Chris Volstad had a very successful run last summer with a similar skillset, and Porcello has better stuff than Volstad.

It’s certainly possible that Porcello will struggle, as a lot of 20-year-old pitchers do when thrust into the majors. However, don’t make the mistake of assuming that just because he didn’t rack up a lot of strikeouts in the Florida State League, he doesn’t have what it takes to succeed in the majors. Strikeouts aren’t the only way a pitcher can dominate. Porcello has the strikes and ground balls skillset, and that combination works in the big leagues.

Well, it didn’t take long for Gary Sheffield rumors to start flaring up. The Philadelphia Phillies just released outfielder Geoff Jenkins and GM Ruben Amaro confirmed that they have spoken to Sheffield’s agent. Sheffield has already said that his preference would be for an east coast contender, and the Phillies fit the profile on both marks. However, there’s one thing the Phillies can’t give Gary Sheffield – a DH spot.

Gary Sheffield played 47 innings in the outfield last year. He played 106 innings in the outfield in in 2007. He played 165 innings in the outfield in 2006. Over the last three years, he’s worn a glove for 318 innings, or about 25% of one season.

The idea that a 40-year-old Gary Sheffield is still capable of playing the outfield regularly without breaking down is pretty wacky. If the Phillies sign him, he’ll be listed as an outfielder on the roster, but in reality, he’d be a right-handed pinch hitter. Now, he’s not a bad right-handed pinch hitter, and in the National League, that’s a role that could have some value. But, given the construction of the Phillies roster, I have to wonder how this would all work.

As it stands, the Phillies have Shane Victorino, Jayson Werth, Raul Ibanez filling the outfield, with Matt Stairs as the fourth outfielder. Maybe I should put quotes around that last word, because Stairs is 41 years old and not really capable of running after fly balls anymore. In the last three years, Stairs has amassed 515 innings in the outfield… and posted a -30.0 UZR/150. Negative Thirty. Given his age and body shape, we shouldn’t really be surprised that Stairs is a cover-your-eyes defender, but he’s not exactly anyone’s definition of a classic fourth outfielder.

Now, if you add Sheffield to the roster, you essentially are going with an outfield of Victorino, Werth, and three guys who belong at DH. You could put Ibanez, Stairs, and Sheffield side by side in left field and still have a below average defense out there. And Ibanez, at 37, is the spring chicken of the bunch. What do you do in late game situations when you have the lead – you won’t be using Stairs or Sheffield as a defensive replacement for Ibanez, that’s for sure.

Worse, what do you do if Werth or Victorino get banged up? Now you’re starting Ibanez and Stairs or Sheffield in the outfield corners. That’s… it’s hard to imagine a team chasing a World Series title would leave themselves with those kinds of options. And we’re not talking about long shot reserves who won’t see the light of day, here – Werth and Victorino aren’t exactly the new age Cal Ripken.

Given that Ibanez is starting in one outfield spot and the fourth OF spot is filled with a guy who shouldn’t ever wear a glove, it would seem to be that the Phillies are more in need of a legitimate defensive player than another pinch-hitter. Sheffield could still make sense for the Phillies, if he’d agree to a reduced role and they’d kick Miguel Cairo to the curb to make room for him, but if he’s actually going to fill the spot vacated by Jenkins and masquerade as an outfielder, I feel really bad for the Phillies pitching staff.

As the last days of spring training wind down, teams will begin to pare their rosters down in order to finalize their 25 man opening day roster, and sometimes, those cuts are rather interesting. Today, the most interesting of all comes down, as the Tigers decided they’d rather pay Gary Sheffield $14 million to go away than to keep him around in 2009.

Sheffield, at age 40, might have a tough time finding another job. He hit .225/.326/.400 last year, good for a .323 wOBA. As a DH-only, that’s not particularly valuable. His 2008 season was worth 0.3 wins above replacement, and given his personality, teams aren’t going to be knocking down his door to get that kind of production when his mouth comes along with it.

After all, this is a market where Jim Edmonds, Frank Thomas, and Ray Durham can’t find a job, and all three were more productive and less annoying than Sheffield last year. Upon being released, Sheffield claimed “this isn’t it” for him, but he’s not in a position to make that call. This very well could be it for Sheffield – he’s now joining a glut of Hall Of Famers looking for work and finding slim pickings.

So, if this is it for Sheffield, the question now becomes whether he’s accomplished enough to get into Cooperstown. He’s a career .292/.394/.516 hitter, racking up an impressive 570.9 wRAA and a 62.80 WPA/LI. His wRAA total ranks 34th all time, just ahead of Larry Walker and right behind Jim Thome. According to Sean Smith’s Wins Above Replacement from 1955-2008, Sheffield ranks 52nd among position players in that time frame.

Sheffield was a great hitter in an era of great hitting. Did he do enough to get into Cooperstown? I’m going to guess the answer will turn out to be no. Much like Larry Walker and Edgar Martinez, I think he’ll be viewed as a good but not great player, and the baseball writers will keep him sitting on the sidelines.

Does he deserve to get in? If you had a vote, is Sheffield going to Cooperstown?

Mediocrity is the new black, at least on the west coast. After last year’s debacle of a division called the NL West, where the Dodgers won the division by finishing 84-78, the parity-by-lousiness looks to be shifting to the American League West this year. The Replacement Level Yankees blog just finished up their simulation extravaganza for the American League, and the aggregate of the CHONE/PECOTA/ZIPS/THT/CAIRO/MARCEL simulations (6,000 in all) has the Angels leading the division with an average of 85.4 wins. The A’s come in at 81.1, the Mariners at 77.8, and the Rangers at 72.1.

That’s not good, and it gets worse – these projections are likely too optimsitic for the top three teams.

The Angels are going to open the season with John Lackey, Ervin Santana, and Kelvim Escobar on the disabled list. There are legitimate questions about how well and how often those three will be taking the hill, and an Angels rotation without those three isn’t much of a rotation at all.

Justin Duchscherer is undergoing arthroscopic surgery next week – how long he’ll be sidelined is up in the air, and it wouldn’t be surprising to anyone if his innings pitched for the season was something approximating zero. With Duchscherer out indefinitely, the A’s are essentially counting on five starting pitchers who have never pitched a full season in the big leagues.

The Mariners ability to take advantage of the injury bug hitting the two division favorites took a hit yesterday when Brandon Morrow announced that he wanted to head back to the bullpen and the team shipped Jeff Clement back to Triple-A to start the season.

The only team that hasn’t experienced a recent bout of bad news is the Texas Rangers, but they’re also the only team who the projection systems didn’t think had a real shot at winning the division this year – their simulated playoff odds were 3%.

This division is bad. Four flawed teams fighting for one playoff spot that none of them will deserve. Bad rotations, bad line-ups, bad defense… there’s no shortage of problems floating around the American League West this year. The only thing the division currently has an abundance of is injured pitchers.

Now that we’ve completed the Organizational Rankings series, I wanted to spend a few posts talking about some of the points raised about different organizations. Specifically, it became clear to me that a couple of teams are wildly overrated and are likely to finish with a significantly worse record than a lot of you believe. No team fits the bill more than the Florida Marlins.

It became clear in the comments that a lot of you think the Marlins might actually be pretty good this year. They won 84 games last year, after all, and are full of young players, so the immediate future is bright, right?

Sorry, but no.

CHONE projects the Marlins to finish 75-87. PECOTA says 70-92. THT has them going 72-90.

Why the 10+ win drop-off from last year? Regression to the mean.

Dan Uggla, Jorge Cantu, and John Baker all performed at offensive levels last year that they simply can’t be expected to repeat. The projected regression from those three will cost the Marlins 30+ runs off of their ’08 total. That’s a big deal.

On the pitching side, Scott Olsen, Joe Nelson, and Kevin Gregg have all been shipped off, and while none of them should have been counted on to repeat their performances, it’s also unlikely that the Marlins will be able to replace those 320+ innings with a similar performance. The increase in innings given to Josh Johnson, Chris Volstad (another guy whose performance will regress), and Anibal Sanchez will simply attempt to compensate for the useful performances that they lost from last year.

Last year, the Marlins outscored their opponents by three runs while getting unsustainable performances from a lot of players. The idea that the Marlins have any real shot at contending for a playoff spot this year is a myth. They’re an also-ran, far closer to the Nationals in ability than the Mets, Phillies, or Braves. It’s more likely that they finish last in the NL East than first.

Don’t buy into the hype of the Marlins as a young team that could surprise. The only people who will be surprised by the Marlins this year are those that expect them to contend.

And we reach the end – the healthiest organization in baseball.

Rankings So Far

#30: Washington Nationals
#29: Florida Marlins
#28: Houston Astros
#27: Kansas City Royals
#26: Pittsburgh Pirates
#25: San Diego Padres
#24: Cincinnati Reds
#23: Colorado Rockies
#22: Detroit Tigers
#21: St. Louis Cardinals
#20: Toronto Blue Jays
#19: San Francisco Giants
#18: Minnesota Twins
#17: Chicago White Sox
#16: Baltimore Orioles
#15: Seattle Mariners
#14: Philadelphia Phillies
#13: Los Angeles Dodgers
#12: Texas Rangers
#11: Oakland Athletics
#10: Los Angeles Angels
#9: Arizona Diamondbacks
#8: Atlanta Braves
#7: Chicago Cubs
#6: Milwaukee Brewers
#5: New York Mets
#4: Cleveland Indians
#3: New York Yankees
#2: Tampa Bay Rays

#1: Boston Red Sox

Ownership: A

There are lots of not-so-flattering stories about John Henry and Larry Lucchino that make the rounds, and given Henry’s involvement in the shady three way sale of the Red Sox/Marlins/Expos and Lucchino’s issues with Theo Epstein, they’re pretty easy to believe. However, those stories don’t undo the fact that Henry’s ownership group has breathed life into the Red Sox franchise – upgrading Fenway Park, adding new revenue streams, and investing in the team in ways that simply weren’t happening before. They flex their significant financial power every winter, and have leveraged the Red Sox brand to give them non-monetary advantages as well. They want to win, they back it up with significant capital, and they’ve built the Red Sox into a team that can sustain high level payrolls and make a profit.

Front Office: A

Theo Epstein gets a lot of credit for building the Red Sox roster, and he should, but more than that, he should get credit for building a front office that brings many different voices together. It’s far from a one man show in Boston. Allard Baird and Bill James, Jed Hoyer and Ben Cherington, Tom Tippett and Craig Shipley – lots of voices with different ideas, all working for the same goal. The Red Sox aren’t just an organization of stat-nerds pushing their Ivy League degrees on people – they look for every advantage they can find, and will go to anywhere from Japan to the Independent Leagues to find talent. Having a significant amount of money certainly helps, but the Red Sox spend it well, and the results are a franchise that is run as well as any in baseball.

Major League Talent: A

The offense is going to be one of the best in the league. The starting rotation is strong and deep. The bullpen is even stronger and deeper. There are question marks about the roster, but they aren’t the kinds of fatal flaws that will sink a team. There’s depth behind the question marks, and so much excess pitching that swinging a deal to patch a hole won’t be particularly hard. The core of the team isn’t exactly young, but they don’t have any onerous contracts on the books that will keep them from reloading in future off-seasons, and the ’09 roster is certainly good enough to win right now.

Minor League Talent: B+

The system has more quantity than high level quality, with Lars Anderson as the elite prospect and then a bunch of good but not great prospects after him. Michael Bowden, Daniel Bard, and Josh Reddick are talented players but not likely to become stars. Junichi Tazawa opened some eyes in spring training, but questions about his role linger. Ryan Westmoreland, Michael Almanzar, Casey Kelly, Nick Hagadone and Ryan Kalish provide some long term hope. The farm system is good but not great, but when this is the weak spot of your organization, you’re doing a lot right.

Overall: A

Well capitalized owner who wants to win and invests in the product? Check
A cohesive front office that combines scouting and statistical analysis? Check.
A major league team that can win immediately and has pieces to build around? Check.
A minor league farm system that will replenish the major league roster? Check.

The Red Sox are the cream of the crop in baseball right now. There’s a reason players are taking discounts to sign with them, that they aren’t experiencing a brain drain in their front office, and that they win a lot of baseball games. They’ve built a baseball juggernaut, and it’s going to take some pretty large mistakes to bring down the Evil Empiore 2.0. Get used to the Red Sox winning, because it’s going to be a frequent theme going forward.

As we reach the top three, you’ve probably noticed that they’re all coming from the AL East. It really is remarkable how strong that division is. One of the three best teams in baseball isn’t going to make the playoffs this year, and probably for the next few years. These teams are all set up for long term success, and over the next few years, we could see the strongest division in the history of baseball.

Rankings So Far

#30: Washington Nationals
#29: Florida Marlins
#28: Houston Astros
#27: Kansas City Royals
#26: Pittsburgh Pirates
#25: San Diego Padres
#24: Cincinnati Reds
#23: Colorado Rockies
#22: Detroit Tigers
#21: St. Louis Cardinals
#20: Toronto Blue Jays
#19: San Francisco Giants
#18: Minnesota Twins
#17: Chicago White Sox
#16: Baltimore Orioles
#15: Seattle Mariners
#14: Philadelphia Phillies
#13: Los Angeles Dodgers
#12: Texas Rangers
#11: Oakland Athletics
#10: Los Angeles Angels
#9: Arizona Diamondbacks
#8: Atlanta Braves
#7: Chicago Cubs
#6: Milwaukee Brewers
#5: New York Mets
#4: Cleveland Indians
#3: New York Yankees

#2: Tampa Bay Rays

Ownership: C+

Since buying the team, Stuart Sternberg has completely changed the culture of the franchise. He instituted significant pro-fan initiatives such as free parking to help lure in an alienated fan base, put Andrew Friedman and Gerry Hunsicker in place to oversee a forward thinking baseball operations team, and began investing in the on field product. The Rays are never going to match Boston or New York in payroll, but TB is in a growth phase of their franchise – by putting on a quality product, they’re bringing people to the park, and the attendance surge will lead to expanded budgets. Their market will always make them compete on a budget, but they’ll be funded well enough to keep their team together.

Front Office: A+

Andrew Friedman and his gang have done tremendous work in putting this franchise back on it’s feet. The people who crow that they are living off of high draft picks from years of losing are just showing their ignorance. The front office has been brilliant at picking up quality role players, they’ve pieced together an elite bullpen from retreads and waiver claims, and the team’s best hitter was signed as a minor league free agent. They continually work to add depth to their organization, giving themselves multiple options to cover for injuries and unexpected declines in performance. They scout well, draft well, develop well, value their players correctly, and have locked up the core of their franchise to long term deals that add significant value to the franchise. The Rays are winning for a reason – this success is the residue of great planning and hard work.

Major League Talent: A

It’s really hard to find a weakness with this team. They’re the best defensive team in baseball. They supplemented their line-up by adding Pat Burrell to an already strong core of young hitters. Their rotation is excellent and deep. Their bullpen, while lacking a true proven closer, is full of good arms who get high leverage outs and preserve leads. Their backups could start on most MLB teams. The backups to the backups are even useful. They’re loaded with talent, most of it young, and there’s no reason to think that last yaer was a fluke. They’re a force to contend with both in 2009 and going forward.

Minor League Talent: A

Wade Davis, Desmond Jennings, and Reid Brignac would be a fantastic top three in any farm system. Most teams would kill to have a trio of guys that talented. And those guys aren’t even close to the team’s top spot, which is owned by David Price, the best pitching prospect in the game. Don’t forget last year’s #1 overall pick Tim Beckham. Or, the ridiculous pitching depth offered by Matt Moore, Jeremy Hellickson, Nick Barnese, and Kyle Lobstein. Just like the major league team, the system is deep and talented, and the waves of talent hitting Tampa aren’t going to end any time soon.

Overall: A

A smart front office, the best young group of major league talent in baseball, and a top notch farm system gives the franchise an embarrassment of riches. They don’t have room for all their quality players. Their depth is ridiculous, yet there are few weaknesses on the major league roster that could use an upgrade. The team’s revenue streams aren’t up there with the big boys, but their remarkable talent overcomes that limitation. The Rays are for real, and they’re going to put a contending team on the field for the next half decade at least.