Just as late February and early March brings forth the seemingly endless puff pieces centering on players arriving in Arizona and Florida and what kind of physical shape they are in, the last few days of March and first few of April brings us a slew of injuries and DL placements.

Whether it’s because the start of the season is right around the corner and teams that were hoping a certain player would get healthy in time for Opening Day or perhaps because the end of Spring Trainings brings about actual warm up games and some players aren’t as physically ready as thought, there always seems to be a lot of injury movement leading up to Opening Day. With so little other news to focus on, this tends to cause overreactions in the various fan bases.

Who are the latest players down for the count? Jeff Francis who was slated to take the two-slot for the Rockies, like Cliff Lee for the Mariners, was “sore and unable to play flat-ground catch Friday” after his five-inning start on Thursday. Francis is coming off a 2009 season lost to labrum surgery so the Rockies need to be extra cautious anyways. Hearing things like “It’s hurting pretty bad” is enough to make one want to short non-existent stock in the Rockies 2010 championship chances, but the prudent thing is to keep calm and wait for further news.

Coco Crisp fractured his pinky finger sliding into second base during a game on Friday and will begin the year on the disabled list as well. How long he is out likely depends on exactly where the fracture is. No matter what, Crisp might be out for close to a month, possibly two if he elects to let the finger heal totally before returning to play. Several players such as Michael Young and Nelson Cruz have played through the injury in the past, but it all depends on the severity and location.

Also, just as I finish writing this, word comes through Twitter that Milton Bradley left the Mariners game today with what is being called tightness in his right quad, but Mariner officials are saying that it was purely a precaution and, though he will be re-evaluated tomorrow, so far nothing has jeopardized Bradley’s starting in the cleanup spot on Monday.

Get used to it folks. Opening Day is right around the corner and for early April, that means lots of nicks and minor injuries.

In the last post, I mentioned some pitchers that had taken good advantage of their opportunities to face other pitchers in the batter’s box. I don’t have any information on how repeatable a skill, if you even want to call it that, dominating other pitchers is. It doesn’t strike me as an independent skill like getting ground balls. Rather, I imagine there’s a giant correlation between how good a pitcher is against all hitters and how good he is against pitchers.

So how about the other side of the coin? Who are the pitchers who performed poorly against other pitchers, relative to our expectations? Daniel Cabrera and Scott Olsen are two big outliers each only striking out three pitchers in 26 attempts, over five fewer Ks than average. Of course, both Olsen and Cabrera were mediocre in getting strikeouts in general, so it would be unwise to call them unlucky by the full five strikeouts.

In order to figure out roughly how many strikeouts lucky or unlucky a pitcher was, I devised a quick formula based on the following variables and stats:

KH = Percentage of non-pitcher hitters struck out
PF = Batters faced that were pitchers
KP = Number of pitchers struck out
17.5% = League average percentage of non-pitcher hitters struck out
32% = League average percentage of pitcher hitters struck out

The formula is:
( ( ( KH / 17.5% ) * 32% ) * PF ) – KP

Here’s an example sticking with Scott Olsen above. He struck out 14.8% of non-pitcher batters, which was 85% as good as the league rate. Therefore, I expect him to strike out pitchers at a rate that is 85% as good as the league rate, giving us a 27% expected K rate on pitchers. He faced 26 pitchers so we expect seven strikeouts (26 * 27%), but he actually only got three so in this case we would have expected Scott Olsen to record four more Ks than he did.

Is this perfect? Of course not. If I were constructing this for serious study, I would need to see if this “skill” is actually independent or not, regress the strikeout rates and do some other tweaks. I’m not proposing a modification to tERA or WAR though. I wanted an easy way to rank pitchers “luck” on this matter. Again, this is not perfect.

Using this as a guideline, the same four pitchers I mentioned before appear at the top of the “luckiest” rank with the addition of Roy Oswalt who killed opposing pitchers but was below average against all other hitters.

Looking at the other side, the most unlucky pitcher under this rank was Tim Lincecum. The Cy Young Award winner had a strikeout rate nearly double that of the league average but was only about average against other pitchers, suggesting that he missed 12 expected strikeouts. Other pitchers breaking the five strikeout barrier were Jason Hammel (9.5), John Johnson (9.5), Ricky Nolasco (8.2, boy is there anything this guy was lucky at last year?), Chris Carpenter (7.9), Carlos Zambrano (6.0) and Chad Gaudin (5.3).

Hard numbers? No, but fast ones and good enough to paint the broad strokes of a picture.

It turns out even the Yankees have a budget. After years of steady increases in payroll, the Yankees have topped out around $200 million for each of the past five seasons, the most recent of which saw them reclaim a championship. At an estimated $212 million though, the Yankees 2010 payroll looks to be their highest in history trumping 2008 by a couple million.

The Yankees clearly had a successful season last year with 103 wins and a playoff championship. Our varied projection systems do not expect much of a drop off this year. You the readers ended up with 98 wins for the Yankees, four more than any other team in baseball. CHONE pegs New York at 99 wins, six more than any other team. CAIRO agrees with 99 wins and once again, six more than any other team.

What’s there to say about the Yankees current talent? Given the nature of the team, it’s not like there are any big surprises lurking on the roster that people haven’t heard of. It’s hard to find fault with players the like the Jorge Posada, Mark Teixeira, Robinson Cano, Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez around the infield, but one issue that might come up for New York is their depth behind the starters. Aside from Cano, none of the starting five are young pups.

Teixeira is probably a good bet to stay healthy, but he’s also the one with the best backup, either Nick Johnson or Nick Swisher. Ramiro Pena, currently the backup 2B, SS and 3B overproduced last season thanks to his .340 BABIP. He isn’t bad as a backup but would be highly exposed if pressed into a starting role due to injury. Francisco Cervelli looks like a fine enough insurance policy on Posada that catching shouldn’t be much of a concern.

The outfield will depend a lot on how Gardner does with a full time role for the first time at the big league level. His bat strikes me as mostly average, but he’s a good fielder that can play in center and that will help overcome the positional hit in left field and should make him a roughly average player overall. Granderson is a nice upgrade over Melky Cabrera and with Randy Winn as a roving backup, the outfield defense should be very good this season.

In the rotation, the Yankees brought in Javier Vazquez for another go-around hoping that it works out better than the first time. even if it doesn’t, Vazquez should provide his steady 200 innings. For the “oh” decade (2000-2009), Vazquez was second only to Livan Hernandez (by 38 IP) for total innings pitched. Joba Chamberlain is out (for now) and Phil Hughes starts the year as the fifth starter.

Mariano Rivera, Joba Chamberlain, Sergio Mitre, Damaso Marte, Alfredo Aceves and David Robertson were all above average last season in relief and should provide the bulk of the relief innings. Whether a Boone Logan or others fills out the back end is entirely negligible. It will be a solidly above average unit provided they do a better job avoiding the Jonathan Albaladejo’s and Jose Veras‘ of 2009 this time.

Great hitting, improved fielding, improved starting pitching and a decent bullpen. $200 million helps a lot, but the Yankees have assembled a great team with that money.

It is no secret that National League pitchers get the benefit of facing the opposing team’s pitcher instead of a designated hitter. It should also come as no surprise that starting pitchers get much more of this benefit than relief pitchers as relief pitchers are far likelier to see pinch hitters (still a pretty big advantage over the standard DH) than the other pitcher. In fact, while the gap between the league average starting pitcher in the AL and NL is about a third of a run per nine innings, the gap for relief pitchers shrinks to about half of that. If you are considering a pitcher switching leagues, remember that the switch affects starters about twice as much as it does for relievers.

Which pitchers took advantage of facing other pitchers most often? I may eventually get into a far more complete answer to this, but I originally was just poking around strikeout numbers I had on hand when I decided to parse the data in this fashion. First, here are some general numbers. Looking at 2009 and only at pitchers with at least 100 batters faced, the average strikeout rate was 18% of all batters and 17.5% of all non-pitcher batters. Pitchers struck out an average of 32% of opposing pitchers that they faced.

Which pitchers boosted their strikeout rates the most against other pitchers? Over the small sample of 109 batters faced, that distinction goes to Eric Milton who had 20 strikeouts totals but just 14 against actual batters so 30% of his strikeouts came against other pitchers. Taking away those pitchers, his strikeout rate falls from a slightly above average 18.3% to a notably below average 14% giving just one example of the important of context.

Amongst slightly bigger sample sizes (300 batters faced or more) comes names like Chris Young (24% of strikeouts came against pitchers), Ross Detwiler (23%) and Craig Stammen (23%). Looking at full time starters only (greater than 600 batters faced) beings up John Lannan (21%), Zach Duke (21%), Ted Lilly (19% thanks to a whopping 58% K rate against pitchers) and the person I wanted to highlight, Joel Pineiro (19%).

Why did I focus on Pineiro when I sorted the list? Because he’s the top pitcher in this ranking who is switching leagues to the AL, where he is no longer going to get the regular benefit of facing other pitchers. Obviously people have already factored that in, but most likely in a more general sense based on the average league translation. I’m pointing out that Pineiro is a prime candidate (low strikeouts to begin with) to be hit harder than most.

Pineiro struck out just 10.6% of “real” batters last season. Any regression in his strikeout rate that fans expect should be tempered by the lack of pitchers that he will get to pitch against in 2010 which is part of the reason I agree much more with the CHONE and ZiPS projections for Pineiro (~2.75 WAR in 2010) than the Fans (3.4 WAR).

The Mariners spent an all time high on player payroll in 2008 and spent it so atrociously that they won only 61 games with it and got a brand new front office. As it turns out, it was probably worth it as they now employ one of the better-run offices in baseball and are heading back into contention far faster than anyone possibly could have imagined. Still, the new regime has to bear some crosses from the past one in terms of reduced financial flexibility. After that peak in 2008, the 2009 Mariners dropped about $20 million in payroll and this year’s team is down a little over another $10 million.

The Mariners went from 61 wins to 85 last year. Will the loss of an additional payroll project to hurt the Mariners this season? According to our notable projection systems, it looks like it will have some impact though perhaps not a great one. FanGraphs readers and CAIRO both have the Mariners at 83 wins for 2010 while CHONE is more pessimistic at just 78 wins.

Run prevention is going to be the name of the game for Seattle this season. Fronted in the rotation by Felix Hernandez and Cliff Lee and possibly joined later on by Erik Bedard, the Mariners can boast some seriously good arms. The bullpen is no slouch either with power arms galore and breakout candidate Brandon League, discussed previously on FanGraphs with regards to his added splitter.

Kenji Johjima departs from the catching platoon, replaced by Adam Moore, which should make pretty much no difference. Casey Kotchman at first base will get a chance to get his career back on track and at the least will provide more solid defending than the Mariners have seen there in a long time.

Newly signed Chone Figgins is making the switch back to second base where he’ll be an asset and Jack Wilson mans shortstop from now until he–no, wait, he just got hurt again. Jose Lopez moves from second to third where the Mariners say that his body type plays better but more likely meant his trade value as they await Dustin Ackley.

Franklin Gutierrez and Ichiro Suzuki need no more fanfare, except they do, but I will not take time here to add on. Left field is a sticky situation, along with DH, with several mediocre candidates vying for time in between Milton Bradley suspensions.

The Mariners, as built on paper, are going to contend in what looks to be a slightly watered down AL West division. Given the savvy front office and talent in house, do not be surprised if the Mariners hang around contention for the foreseeable future.

It’s been a busy weekend for the Giants front office. I think they’re currently trying to extend Christy Mathewson as well, but nobody has the heart ot tell Brian Sabaen that Bix Six has been dead for 85 years. The latest victim to the extension craze sweeping through the Bay Area is Matt Cain.

The Giants already held a club option on what was to be Cain’s last club-controlled season, 2011, for $6.25 million (with some possible escalators), but reportedly his new deal guarantees that year and the one after that, what was to be his first free agent season. Early leaks of the money have Cain’s 2010 salary remaining fixed ($4.5 million) with his 2011 salary rising to around $8 million and something above $15 million for 2012.

I’m not sure exactly how to value this deal since it replaces one year of a remaining contract but leaves another intact. It’s compllicated by the fact that Cain’s 2010 salary relative to his arbitration status (second year) values him around $7.5 million on the open market, while the 2011 and 2012 years value him much higher. Were the Giants willing to offer him so much later in the deal because they were getting him cheaply in the first? I don’t like to arbitrate motives so I will analyze both with and without 2010 factored in.

With 2010, this acts like a three year deal that places Cain at about $11.5 million in free market dollars. Without 2010 involved, that goes up to about $13 million. It’s not a huge difference but it is a meaningful one, somewhere around one-third to half a win’s worth of outlay. Lucky for me, no matter which you choose the end result is the same, this is a good deal for the Giants. Matt Cain has been worth over $16 million a year for the past three seasons.

Cain is unlikely to repeat his low 2009 ERA, but he doesn’t need to. All of his core stats and his resulting FIP have been stable and above average for some time now. For this to stay good for the Giants, all Matt Cain has to do is keep being the pitcher he has been since 2005. There’s even some encouraging signs for future success as he has been slowly getting hitters to swing at more and more pitches outside the strike zone. If that continues, he may see some bumps upward in his strikeout rate.

The Cardinals cruised to the NL Central last season with a 91-71 record, 7.5 games ahead of second place Chicago. They did so despite an $11 million cut in payroll from the previous year down to around $90 million. They are maintaining that level in 2010 even with the addition of Matt Holliday.

Just as the payroll is remaining fairly static, the projected win totals for the Cardinals is close to their 2009 actual totals. FanGraphs readers have the Cardinals at 88 wins for 2010, a massive ten games over the second place Cubs. That is twice the separation of any other division. CHONE agrees as well with the Cardinals topping the NL Central at 91 wins, ten games ahead of the Brewers and Reds.

Around the infield, Yadier Molina, Albert Pujols, Skip Schumaker and Brendan Ryan all return. They’re all reasonably young and none really had outrageously fluke-filled seasons so St. Louis fans should have a pretty good idea of what is in store for 2010. I might expect slightly less offense from the right side, but Schumaker might make up for that with increased defensive prowess at second base with more experience there. What is less known is at third base where David Freese and Felipe Lopez will battle for the majority of playing time.

Matt Holliday, Colby Rasmus and Ryan Ludwick all return for the Cardinals outfield though there appears to be some questions as to who will be providing depth behind the starting three. Holliday and Ludwick are roughly average gloves in the corners but Rasmus provides an opportunity for a plus defender in center and obviously all three can swing the stick a little bit.

While Joel Pineiro is unlikely to repeat the success he had in 2009 for the Angels this coming year, his loss still hurts the Cards some. They did import Brad Penny to ease some of that pain however. The fifth spot was Kyle McClellan’s to lose and he apparently has as Jaime Garcia appears to have been named to the post. Nevertheless, his hold is tenuous and McClellan along with Rich Hill and others are lurking. Still, it should remain an above average unit for St. Louis.

The bullpen returns largely intact and that’s less of a positive as they were unimpressive in 2009. Still, they were not a disaster and if that’s the worst unit on the team, it’s not bad enough to prevent the Cardinals from playing postseason baseball.

When it comes down to it, the 2010 Cardinals look a lot like the 2009 Cardinals and for a team that’s not overly old and won the division last year, that’s a good thing.

Not content with just one contract extension with a relief pitcher, the Giants nabbed another on Friday with a deal for Jeremy Affeldt that tacked on another guaranteed year plus a club option. Affeldt was originally under contract for 2010 at $4 million and then scheduled to become a free agent but under his new deal will make $4.5 million both this year and next and the Giants hold a team option for 2012 at $5 million with a $500,000 buyout.

The thirty-year-old was flat out terrific for the Giants last year as long as all you care about is ERA. 1.73 was the number in question and it’s hard to get over just how low and good that is until you notice the 12.5% walk rate and .240 BABIP. Affeldt’s FIP was 3.59 which is still decent and actually the best mark of his career, but hardly earth-moving in it’s wonderfulness.

One thing he did do was become even more of an extreme ground ball pitcher. His 65% ground ball rate ranked second in the majors for qualified relievers behind only Sean Green’s 66.2%. The thing is that with such a high ground ball rate, it makes the deflated BABIP all the more lucky and unlikely to repeat itself. 2008 Jeremy Affeldt did a superb job on limiting his walks and generating strikeouts. If he could combine that with his 2009 level of ground balls and average home run prevention, he’d be a star.

That’s a lot of wishful thinking though and in reality what is expected him from his by nearly unanimous consent of the various projections systems is about 65 innings pitches with a maintained strikeout rate, barely decreased walk rate and twice as many home runs allowed. That’s a receipe for a worse season than the one he just threw and the one he just threw made him worth about a single win, or roughly $3.5 million in value. The Giants just gave him a half million dollar pay rise up to $4.5 million and tacked on some extra years.

No, it’s not the best extension deal out there but at least it’s not an awful one either. It looks to be an overpay by about $1 million or so, but Affeldt does have his uses and it is a relatively short commitment. Call me unenthused but overly uncaring.

On January 30 of this year Brian Wilson and the Giants came to an agreement on a one year deal for $4.4 million to avoid Wilson’s first year of arbitration. Based on our standard expectation of arbitration value, that would value Wilson at around $11 million for 2010. Now, Wilson was legitimately fantastic last season with a 2.50 FIP and a 3.23 xFIP. He had over three strikeouts for every walk and was a even moderate ground ball pitcher.

The issue is that even with all that, Wilson totaled 2.4 wins worth just under $11 million under last year’s economic conditions. In other words, the Giants paid out roughly as if 2009 was magically going to repeat entirely.

Obviously that’s a bit wishful as this past winter has seen a reduction in the valuation of players on the whole and on top of that, Wilson does not have a long history of dominance. Some regression to the mean from his 2009 level is to be expected and you readers agree, projecting Wilson for 1.8 wins in 2010.

In today’s dollars, that projects to be worth a tad over $8 million. That means that while the Giants are almost surely going to see a net savings when it comes to Brian Wilson, they’re unlikely to see a net savings compared to other 4th year players. Overall, that’s not such a big deal, but then the Giants went and extended Wilson for another two years covering 2011 and 2012 at a total of $15 million. Given the expected arbitration figures, that actually constitutes a slight pay cut for Wilson, valuing him at about $10.7 million for those two years.

Given that the 2010 salary had already taken place, I don’t have a huge beef with the monetary figures of the two-year extension. I think the initial deal was a mediocre one for the Giants, but they did much better here in terms of money alone. My issue with this deal is the why. I have a hard time seeing the scenarios under which the Giants saved themselves money here.

If Brian Wilson did repeat his 2009 performance, how much of a raise was he really going to get in arbitration? Compared to the downside that is always present with relief pitchers and that’s where I find fault with this extension. Wilson had a great season and he keeps that up for the next three years then the Giants might come out slightly ahead here. But they’re locked in no matter what, Brian Wilson’s performance isn’t.

The Mets doled out roughly $150 million in player salaries during the 2009 season and managed to win only 70 games. Suffice to say, that was a poor season. Due in large part to injuries, are the Mets ready to move on and compete in this year’s NL East? It is worth noting that according to current estimates, the Mets are dropping their payroll quite a bit for the 2010 season. Cot’s estimates that the Mets are presently set to outlay a little over $120 million, about an 18% drop from last year’s figure. What have the Mets assembled for that cost?

You the loyal readers and forecasters have pegged the Mets for a modest eight-win improvement in 2010, up to 78 wins and a repeat of their fourth-place finish inside the division. If true, at least they would be much closer than last year finishing 11 games back of the Braves rather than 23 games back of the Phillies. CHONE agrees on the division-leading Braves at 89 wins but it is slightly more optimistic on the Mets picking them for 80 wins and a third-place finish.

The infield is loaded with questions for the Mets, starting behind the plate with some sort of conglomeration of Rod Barajas, Henry Blano and Omir Santos. Barajas, of course, is coming off a season in which he posted a .258 OBP over 460 plate appearances. Santos isn’t much better and Blanco is like 90 years old, not that either Barajas (34) or Santos (soon to be 29) are young guns.

Daniel Murphy at first base is an interesting choice and by interesting, I mean punt-worthy. If the Mets get a league average performance out of him it will be amazing but that’s okay because they have Fernando Tatis backing him up.

Luis Castillo returns at second base. He even managed to hit at an above league average clip last year for the first time in five seasons, but he managed to make up for that with some really poor UZR numbers. Alex Cora is the likely backup both here and at short stop. Luckily the Mets are paying him $2 million to offer replacement level services up the middle.

The Mets are likely to need Cora because Jose Reyes has a thyroid condition of all ailments and might miss time in 2010 on the heels of playing in only 36 games last season. For the Mets to have any realistic shot at the playoffs, they need Reyes to be back on the field and his old five-win self because a full season with Castillo and Cora up the middle would make the rest of the questions moot pretty fast.

Speaking of those questions, is David Wright going to rebound and start hitting for power again? His .447 slugging percentage was a career worst by almost 100 points. Citi Field is not entirely to blame as Wright struggled both at home and on the road to hit long balls.

Carlos Beltran and Jeff Francouer return in the outfield joined by new addition Jason Bay and backed up by Anaheim castoff Gary Matthews Jr. Moving from Fenway Park to Citi Field is going to be a story to watch for Jason Bay.

In the rotation, the Mets are planning to not give Livan Hernandez so many starts which is good, but a certain number of those starts are going to go to Oliver Perez so who knows if that’s actually an improvement or not.

The bullpen was decent overall last season, though that might just be because the Mets were so bad that they didn’t give them a chance to blow a late season division lead. Even though they were close to average overall, the bullpen was nowhere near the revamped unit that the acquisitions of Francisco Rodriguez and J.J. Putz were supposed to provide and 2010 doesn’t look to be much different.

The Mets suffered beyond their fair share of injury bad luck last season but looking over the roster up and down, I agree with the projection systems; the realistic ceiling for this team is around .500 and I’m not sure 2011 looks any rosier.