Jayson Stark, ESPN:

Nominate any scandal in the history of sports. My vote is that this is worse.

Geoff Baker, Seattle Times

This might be the worst scandal in the history of sports.

Ted Keith, Sports Illustrated

A-Rod controversy spoils entire 2009 campaign before it begins.

Alex Rodriguez taking steroids is the worst scandal in the history of sports. This revelation has ruined baseball for 2009. The world is coming to an end.

Here on FanGraphs, we’ve introduced people to a lot of new metrics over the last few years. Whether its been WPA or wOBA or FIP or UZR, we’re constantly quantifying things and giving them acronyms. So, today, I’d like to introduce you to a new one.

HI.

No, I’m not saying hello. Welcome to our newest metric – the Hyperbole Index. This measures the hilarious (and simultaneously sad) overreaction of sports writers to every event that now occurs on earth.

Santonio Holmes makes a nice catch to give Pittsburgh a Super Bowl win in a game they were hardly ever trailing? The Greatest Super Bowl Ever.

Manny Ramirez hits well for two months in Los Angeles? The Best Clutch Performance Of All Time.

Alex Rodriguez admits steroid use five years ago. The Greatest Scandal In Sports History. The 2009 Season Is Ruined.

Using the Hyperbole Index, we can quantify just how ridiculous these claims really are. There’s no more wondering how the high horses of today compare with the bully pulpits of yesteryear. Using this handy tool, you can now compare the dead horses currently getting beaten to the whipped carcasses (carcii?) of long ago.

So, stay tuned*. As your favorite writers compete to make the most ridiculous claims in the history of the universe (this sentence fragment has an HI of 183), we’ll be right here to tell you just how ridiculous their hyperbole really is. Who will win the battle to be the writer with the most HI? We won’t know until next week, which I’ve heard is going to be the most fantastic seven day stretch since living things populated the planet.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the weekend, Andruw Jones signed a minor league contract with the Texas Rangers that will pay him $500,000 if he makes the opening day roster and has incentives that could push his total compensation up to just over $1 million. This is, obviously, a huge fall from last winter, when he coaxed an $18 million per year salary out of the Dodgers based on his strong performance history.

However, as we all know, Jones’ career track has been on a noticeable downward trend. Let me show you four seasons of performance:

Age 26: .321/.390/.561, .403 wOBA, 679 PA
Age 27: .282/.346/.467, .348 wOBA, 675 PA
Age 28: .252/.333/.449, .344 wOBA, 555 PA
Age 29: .172/.261/.253, .235 wOBA, 253 PA

That’s a pretty nasty downward trend in what should be the prime of a career. From superstar at 26 to worst hitter in baseball at 29… that’s quite the fall from grace. Except, you may have noticed, those numbers don’t belong to Andruw Jones. Those numbers come from the career log of Jermaine Dye.

It has seemingly passed the memory of some, but it wasn’t too long ago that we saw a prominant right-handed power hitting outfielder collapse entirely at a young age. In what should have been the best years of his career, Dye posted one of the worst seasons in recent baseball history.

And then he came back.

Since that awful 2003 season, Dye has posted seasonal wOBAs of .338, .417, .343, and .346. In fact, his five seasons since his disaster season are actually better than the five seasons that led up to his collapse. Not only did he return to previous form, but he raised game even beyond previously established levels.

Now, in Dye’s case, there was obviously extenuating circumstances – he fouled a ball off his leg in the 2001 playoffs, fracturing his tibia, and faced significant knee problems for the next few years. There is no doubt that Dye’s health was a significant issue during his collapse. Once Dye’s knee regained full health, so did the thunder in his bat.

Should we consider Andruw’s weight problems to be similar to Dye’s knee problems? Well, we might have a lot less sympathy for Jones, who caused his own physical issues, when Dye was the recipient of some bad luck. However, whatever caused them, the underlying fact is that both had significant physical problems that limited their ability to hit a baseball, and that Jones’ problems are no less fixable than Dye’s were, given he puts in the effort to get himself back into shape.

Make no mistake – I am not saying that Andruw Jones, heading into his age 32 season, is about to rip off five seasons that match what Jermaine Dye has done since 2004. However, I think we should all keep Dye in mind when we jump to conclusions about what 250 terrible plate appearances mean in the context of a player losing all abilities to hit a baseball.

For the Rangers, this is a pretty terrific move. The Ballpark in Arlington is a great place to hit, and a little confidence goes a pretty long way when you’re trying to convince someone that their hard work has a payoff. If Jones really does commit himself to getting back in baseball shape to try and save his career, the Rangers could easily find themselves with a guy who reminds everyone that he can still hit a baseball.

Just like we shouldn’t have written Dye’s eulogy in 2003, neither should we kill off the career of Andruw Jones prematurely. He’s going to have to work his tail off, but there’s upside here.

We’ve spent the past week talking about the projected level of production teams could get in 2009 from various minor league free agents at different positions. After all, since we talk about replacement level so frequently, we want to be able to give examples to people of exactly who these freely available, somewhat useful players are.

Next week, we’ll dive into the pitchers, but for today, I want to talk a little bit more about some things that came up during the discussion of the position players.

One point of wOBA is worth about half a run per 600 PA.

I’m assuming that this became pretty obvious to most of you as we did the run value formula in each post, but I wanted to reinforce it here, because I think it’s useful to grasping the relative importance of offense, especially as it compares to defensive value. Because we know how wOBA relates to runs, and we have defensive metrics expressed in runs, it’s easy to compare how different skill sets are valued.

For instance, we pointed out that the .306 wOBA/+7.5 defense group that we called center fielders weren’t finding jobs any easier than a .315 wOBA/-12.5 defense group (left fielders). However, since we know 11 points of wOBA is worth 5.5 runs offensively, and UZR suggests that there’s a 20 run gap in defensive ability, the weaker hitters are obviously better players. It’s not even close.

Even if you think our assumptions about the groups relative defensive abilities are off, you could (at best) close the total value gap to something like +5 to +10 runs, instead of the +15 we’d conclude based on the projections of these handful of players. There’s just no way to argue that the center fielders that are settling for minor league contracts are equal in value to the corner outfielders who are getting minor league contracts. The CFs are clearly better players. Why can’t they land major league contracts?

Honestly, I think this is just an incorrect evaluation of the offense/defense split by MLB clubs, which is most obvious in the outfield. As we talked about in the Three CF post from a few weeks ago, several clubs have caught on to the fact that using a okay bat/great glove guy in a corner OF spot can be an extremely effective use of resources.

This idea that the corner outfield spots are the dominion of large power hitters only, and that any skillset in those spots besides the lumbering oaf is a weakness on a major league roster, is left over from days of less knowledge. As we move forward, it will become readily clear to major league teams that they have been, and continue to be, significantly undervaluing the okay bat/great glove types and overvaluing the good bat/bad glove types.

As long as guys like Chris Duffy and Ryan Langerhans continue to have to settle for minor league contracts, there are market inefficiencies that smart teams will take advantage of.

Okay, so, now that we’ve gone through all eight positions and looked at what the CHONE projections expect from the guys who are signing minor league contracts this winter, let’s put together a roster and see what it would look like. We’ll fill out 13 spots with position players, allocate playing time, and come up with a projected offensive and defensive level for these freely available talents.

Starting Catcher: Toby Hall – 375 PA, .292 wOBA, -5 defense
Starting 1B: Josh Phelps – 600 PA, .355 wOBA, -15 defense
Starting 2B: Chris Burke – 600 PA, .318 wOBA, +10 defense
Starting SS: Ivan Ochoa – 600 PA, .300 wOBA, +5 defense
Starting 3B: Jose Castillo – 600 PA, .299 wOBA, +0 defense
Starting LF: Corey Patterson – 600 PA, .304 wOBA, +10 defense
Starting CF: Chris Duffy – 600 PA, .313 wOBA, +0 defense
Starting RF: Laynce Nix – 600 PA, .338 wOBA, +0 defense

Backup Catcher: Jamie Burke – 275 PA, .282 wOBA, +0 defense
Backup IF: Brad Eldred – 350 PA, .321 wOBA, -5 defense
Backup IF: Omar Vizquel – 350 PA, .278 wOBA, +5 defense
Backup OF: Trot Nixon – 250 PA, .337 wOBA, -5 defense
Backup OF: Ryan Langerhans – 300 PA, .330 wOBA, +0 defense

Totals: 6,100 PA, .314 wOBA, +0 defense

A .314 wOBA would translate to about 81 runs below average, or ~650 runs scored over the course of a full season. Now, there’s a pretty good case to be made that these guys wouldn’t perform as well in full-time play as they do as part-timers (especially guys like Phelps, who would then be subject to facing a lot of RHPs), so a .314 wOBA is probably too optimistic. If we knock 10 points of wOBA off for all the guys we’re projecting as starters, that brings us down to a .307 wOBA, or 117 runs below average.

So, replacement level position players, we’d be looking at something like 620 to 650 runs scored with league average defense. You could adjust this roster a bit to go more offense/less defense (stick Jonny Gomes in LF, for instance) if you’d like, but this gives you a pretty good picture of what a league minimum, freely available talent roster for 2009 would look like.

As most of you know, the Win Values we present here on FanGraphs are wins above a replacement level player. Replacement level, essentially, is the expected performance you could get from a player who costs nothing to acquire and makes the league minimum. That’s the baseline that players add value over – performance over their no-cost substitute.

However, I know examples can be extremely helpful, so starting on Monday, we began looking at some players who currently personify replacement level, and what their respective organizations should expect from them in 2009. We’ve already covered catcher, first base, second base, shortstop, third base, left field, and center field. We’ll do the pitchers tomorrow. For now, we finish off the positions.

Right Field

A few of the LF guys could be listed here as well, as we noted that there’s significant overlap between the two corner OF spots.

Laynce Nix, Cincinnati, .338 wOBA
Jeff Salazar, Pittsburgh, .332 wOBA
Trot Nixon, Milwaukee, .337 wOBA
Chris Aguila, Unsigned, .324 wOBA
Brad Wilkerson, Boston, .312 wOBA
Jacque Jones, Cincinnati, .313 wOBA
Emil Brown, Unsigned, .322 wOBA

That’s a projected .325 wOBA for the group – nearly as good as the projected offensive level for first baseman. Besides Jones and Brown, though, it’s mostly a collection of below average defenders.

((.325 – .330) / 1.2) * 600 = -2.5

-2.5 offense, -5 defense, -7.5 position adjustment gets us -15 for this group, and I could be talked into a lower defensive rating for these guys, considering most of them are aging and well past their primes. So, after the little hiccup in center field, it looks like we’re right back to the -15 to -20 range for all the rest of the positions.

As most of you know, the Win Values we present here on FanGraphs are wins above a replacement level player. Replacement level, essentially, is the expected performance you could get from a player who costs nothing to acquire and makes the league minimum. That’s the baseline that players add value over – performance over their no-cost substitute.

However, I know examples can be extremely helpful, so starting on Monday, we began looking at some players who currently personify replacement level, and what their respective organizations should expect from them in 2009. We’ve already covered catcher, first base, second base, shortstop, third base, and left field and we’ll move on through all of the positions the rest of this week.

Center Field

Unlike the LFs, these guys are mostly the same skillset – flycatchers with range and questionable bats.

Reggie Abercrombie, Houston, .301 wOBA
Corey Patterson, Washington, .304 wOBA
Chris Duffy, Milwaukee, .313 wOBA
Jason Ellison, Philadelphia, .298 wOBA
Ryan Langerhans, Washington, .330 wOBA
Scott Podsednik, Colorado, .305 wOBA
So Taguchi, Chicago (NL), .291 wOBA

Besides Langerhans, pretty similar projections for most of these guys, and the group gets a .306 average wOBA projection for 2009. That’s quite a bit better than the C/SS, just slightly better than 2B, and not that much worse than 3B. For a premium defensive position, this is a decent level of free offense.

((.306 – .330) / 1.2) * 600 = -12

This group is -12 offensively, and considering they’re mostly above average defenders, we might have our first deviation from the norm. With a +2.5 position adjustment for CF, these guys would have to be something like -10 defenders in center field to be two wins below average. But there’s no way to make that argument – Patterson, Abercrombie, Duffy, Ellison – these guys are good defenders. Using their historical UZRs, we’d conclude that they’re probably +5 with the gloves.

-12 offense, +5 defense, +2.5 position adjustment = -4.5 runs.

Half a win. The CHONE projections suggest that you could get a center fielder who is half a win worse than league average for free.

What’s going on here? Are teams really undervaluing this skillset? Is our position adjustment off? Is this just a banner crop of freely available center fielders? I don’t know, honestly. This is definitely an area that needs more research.

As most of you know, the Win Values we present here on FanGraphs are wins above a replacement level player. Replacement level, essentially, is the expected performance you could get from a player who costs nothing to acquire and makes the league minimum. That’s the baseline that players add value over – performance over their no-cost substitute.

However, I know examples can be extremely helpful, so starting on Monday, we began looking at some players who currently personify replacement level, and what their respective organizations should expect from them in 2009. We’ve already covered catcher, first base, second base, shortstop, and third base and we’ll move on through all of the positions the rest of this week.

Left Field

Splitting up the outfielders who sign minor league contracts is somewhat arbitrary. An outfielder is an outfielder. They all do the same thing – chase fly balls and throw it back in. Now, because there are some differences between the throws between RF and LF, the guys with better arms end up in right field, while the fastest guys end up in CF to get the most opportunities to enhance their defensive value. However, the fundamentals of the positions are all the same, and anyone who can play one outfield spot could play all three. Not equally well, necessarily, but they really aren’t different positions in the way that the infield has different positions. I say all that because I don’t want people to fall into the trap that these are the only options a team had available to fill their LF hole. We’ll cover CF and RF tomorrow, but really, any of those guys could also have been acquired to play LF. Like with 2B, the pool of potential replacements also includes SS – the pool of potential LFs includes all CFs and all RFs as well.

Chip Ambres, Boston, .323 wOBA
Justin Christian, Baltimore, .299 wOBA
Jonny Gomes, Cincinnati, .354 wOBA
Nathan Haynes, Texas, .274 wOBA
Rob Mackowiak, New York (NL), .318 wOBA
Paul McAnulty, Boston, .339 wOBA
Craig Monroe, Pittsburgh, .315 wOBA
Dan Ortmeier, Colorado, .298 wOBA

Now this is a variety of players. Ambres has been tearing the cover off the ball in Triple-A for a few years, but at 30, he’s got the Quad-A bat label and his defense is pretty lousy. Haynes, on the other hand, can’t really hit much at all but is an outstanding defender. There are more okay bat/no glove types on the list (Gomes, in particular, should never be allowed to play the OF), but there are a mix of skillsets represented here. The average wOBA is just .315, though, not that much better than the average third baseman that we looked at. Converting to runs:

((.315 – .330) / 1.20) * 600 = -7.5

-7.5 runs on offense, -5 runs on defense, -7.5 run position adjustment gives us a -20 run total compared to average. That makes this group of replacement level outfielders -2 wins. The beat goes on.

As most of you know, the Win Values we present here on FanGraphs are wins above a replacement level player. Replacement level, essentially, is the expected performance you could get from a player who costs nothing to acquire and makes the league minimum. That’s the baseline that players add value over – performance over their no-cost substitute.

However, I know examples can be extremely helpful, so starting on Monday, we began looking at some players who currently personify replacement level, and what their respective organizations should expect from them in 2009. We’ve already covered catcher, first base, second base, and shortstop, and we’ll move on through all of the positions the rest of this week.

Third Base

As we talked about earlier this winter, there’s a lot of crossover between second base and third base. Of the players below, most of them have experience at both positions, and several of them were signed for their potential versatility to play multiple spots. Their availability continues to show that the gap between 2B and 3B isn’t as large as is normally perceived.

Jose Castillo, Washington, .299 wOBA
Brooks Conrad, Atlanta, .295 wOBA
Chris Gomez, Baltimore, .294 wOBA
Andy Phillips, Pittsburgh, .341 wOBA
Terry Tiffee, Philadelphia, .328 wOBA
Jesus Guzman, San Francisco, .303 wOBA
Joel Guzman, Washington, .316 wOBA

That’s an average wOBA of .311, a bit better than the second baseman. Let’s put that through the run conversion formula:

((.311 – .330) / 1.20) * 600 = -9.5

That’s not bad – they’re about one win below average as hitters. However, what they have extra in offense they give back in defense. This is a pretty lousy group of defenders. Castillo is probably league average at third, and Gomez is somewhere in that vicinity as well, while the rest are somewhere between bad and cover-your-eyes terrible. I’d say the upper and lower bounds of defensive expectations for this group would be -5 to -10, so we’ll split the difference and call it -7.5

So, that gives us -9.5 offense, -7.5 defense, and +2.5 position adjustment for a total of -14.5, or about 1.5 wins below average. The theme continues.

As most of you know, the Win Values we present here on FanGraphs are wins above a replacement level player. Replacement level, essentially, is the expected performance you could get from a player who costs nothing to acquire and makes the league minimum. That’s the baseline that players add value over – performance over their no-cost substitute.

However, I know examples can be extremely helpful, so starting yesterday, we began looking at some players who currently personify replacement level, and what their respective organizations should expect from them in 2009. We’ve already covered first base and catcher, and we’ll move on through the positions this week.

Shortstop

So far, we’ve looked at three positions, and all three have been a mix of decent hitters/bad defenders and bad hitters/good defenders. That’s about to change. Take a look at this group.

Angel Berroa, New York (AL), .292 wOBA
Juan Castro, Los Angeles, .261 wOBA,
Brandon Fahey, Toronto, .277 wOBA,
Luis Hernandez, Kansas City, .263 wOBA
Ivan Ochoa, Boston, .300 wOBA
Omar Vizquel, Texas, .278 wOBA
Jorge Velandia, Philadelphia, .271 wOBA
Chris Woodward, Seattle, .290 wOBA

That’s an average wOBA of .279 – almost as bad as the catchers. Ochoa is the best projected hitter of the bunch, and he just put up a miserable .200/.244/.267 mark in 135 PA in the majors for San Francisco last year. There isn’t a good hitting/mediocre defender in the bunch. There’s a couple of bad hitter/mediocre defenders (Berroa, Woodward) who really don’t belong in the majors, but really, the replacement level shortstops are all the same thing – good glove, no bat types. Whether teams are artificially selecting out offensive shortstops and moving them to other positions prematurely or offense at shortstop is so highly valued that it’s just not available for free is up for discussion, but it’s pretty clear that you can’t get free offense at the position.

Running it through the run value formula, we get the following:

((.279 – .330) / 1.2) * 600 = -25.5

These guys project to be about 25 runs worse than a league average hitter over a full season. As a group, they’re about average defensively (Vizquel/Castro/Ochoa are canceled out by Woodward/Berroa/Velandia), so we’ll call defense neutral. +7.5 runs for the position adjustment, and that leaves us with -18 runs – just slightly better than two wins below average. The trend continues.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at third base and then move to the outfield. But, given how this is going so far, I’d imagine I can already start writing the conclusions now.

As most of you know, the Win Values we present here on FanGraphs are wins above a replacement level player. Replacement level, essentially, is the expected performance you could get from a player who costs nothing to acquire and makes the league minimum. That’s the baseline that players add value over – performance over their no-cost substitute.

However, I know examples can be extremely helpful, so starting yesterday, we began looking at some players who currently personify replacement level, and what their respective organizations should expect from them in 2009. We’ve already covered first base and catcher, and we’ll move on through the positions this week.

Second Base

I thought about just combining all the middle infield spots into one big pool, because let’s face it, a minor league FA shortstop is perfectly capable of playing second base in the majors. However, there are some differences in skills between SS and 2Bs that I figured we should not ignore, so I split them up by the position. Here’s the list.

Chris Burke, San Diego, .318 wOBA
Jason Bourgeois, Milwaukee, .313 wOBA
Jolbert Cabrera, Baltimore, .296 wOBA
Andy Cannizaro, Cleveland, .303 wOBA
Callix Crabbe, Seattle, .324 wOBA
Ryan Roberts, Arizona, .321 wOBA
Luis Maza, Los Angeles, .304 wOBA
Argenis Reyes, New York (NL), .274 wOBA
Pete Orr, Washington, .299 wOBA

The average wOBA for the group is .306. For the most part, they have a common skillset – some contact ability, below average power, decent but not great range, and some speed but not a huge stolen base threat. As usual, let’s convert wOBA to runs.

((.304 – .330) / 1.20) * 600 = -13

13 runs below average with the bat, -5 defensively (Reyes and Burke are good with the glove, the rest not so much), and a +2.5 run position adjustment leaves us with these guys being right around 15 runs below average. So far, so good – all three positions we’ve looked at at have been between -1.5 and -2.0 wins per 600 PA, right in line with generally accepted replacement level.