The Phillies agreed to terms on a three-year deal with Joe Blanton today. The salary breakdown is reportedly $7 million this season and $8.5 million in each of 2011 and ’12 for a total of $24 million.

There are obviously going to be some people talking about the Phillies’ trade of Cliff Lee, primary for financial reasons, and then subsequent retention of Joe Blanton. Cliff Lee makes $9 million this year, just $2 million more than Joe Blanton will be paid. Obviously Blanton now comes with a three year commitment while Lee is on just a single year and is destined for a big payday next winter. I still think I would have held onto Lee and gone with a Cole Hamels, Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee front of the rotation.

Focusing on Blanton, though, he has consistently been a slightly above-average pitcher, aside from his very good 2007 campaign in which he really limited the walks. CHONE projects some improvement in Blanton’s home run rate, driving his FIP to the low 4s, but given the ballpark that he calls home, I am not so sure that regression is going to come. Blanton is still young, having just turned 29, so his contract only covers the age 29-31 seasons.

The first year of the contract was to be an arbitration season, so from Philadelphia’s perspective they are paying for about 2.8 market seasons of Joe Blanton. Given roughly a 2.5-win projection, I would have called a three-year deal fair at around the $26 to $28 million mark. Coming in at $24 million strikes me as a win for the Phillies, though not by so much as to make Joe Blanton and his agent the butt of any jokes.

In fact, given the short term of the deal and Blanton’s youth, he gets to re-hit the market at age 31, still enough time to land another big money contract. All in all, and from a strict vacuum, I like this deal for both sides. I just still don’t get why it seems like the Phillies chose Blanton over Cliff Lee.

I was having a debate a few days ago across twitter with some folks and figured it worth bringing up here. Evan Longoria is likely the best contract in baseball. It’s just obscene, in a good way, for the Rays. But who is the worst? Not talking about ever, or worst at the time, just worst as it stands right now in January of 2010. Which player would you least like on your team going forward, or who do you think would be the most difficult to trade?

I would have nominated Carlos Silva, but apparently he wasn’t that difficult to trade, thank you Cubs, and it would have been more of a biased suggestion than a real one. It’s an awful contract, but it does only have two years left on it. No, I think in the debate for worst contract left in baseball, it comes down to three contenders.

Barry Zito has four guaranteed years left on his contract with a total payout of $76 million and then either an $18 million club option or a $7 million buyout for a minimum for $83 million left to be paid. He also comes with a full no-trade clause. Zito, as mentioned yesterday, has produced 5.3 WAR so far for San Francisco. At least he is sort of trending upwards?

Going back to the Cubs, Alfonso Soriano has five years, a full no-trade clause and $90 million left on his deal. He started off promising with a 5.6 win season in 2007 but fell to 3.1 wins in 2008 and then a horrendous -0.7 last year. The defense has taken about a 15-run hit each consecutive year and the offense has been trending downward as well.

Vernon Wells also has the benefit of a full no-trade clause and due to his protracted signing bonus, is actually owed a whopping $107 million over the remaining five years of his contract. Since his 5.8 win 2006 season, after which his extension was signed, Wells has been worth 0.9, 1.3 and -0.1 wins. His offense has always been sporadic, but his fielding has really taken a hit lately, being well below average the last two seasons.

So, weighing those, who is worst, Zito, Wells or Soriano? Or is there someone else that you think is even more of a dead weight?

Looking back on it, the winter of 2006 might go down as the worst offseason of all time concerning free agent pitchers. A smattering of the contracts signed that winter:

Danys Baez – 3 years, $19 million. Produced -0.5 WAR.
Miguel Batista – 3 years, $25 million. Produced 1.3 WAR.
Adam Eaton – 3 years, $24.5 million. Produced 0 WAR.
Keith Foulke – 1 year, $5 million. Didn’t throw a pitch.
Orlando Hernandez – 2 years, $12 million. Produced 0.9 WAR.
Kei Igawa – 5 years, $20 million plus $26 million posting fee. Produced -0.2 WAR so far.
Daisuke Matsuzaka – 6 years, $52 million plus $51 million posting fee. Produced 7.7 WAR so far.
Guillermo Mota – 2 years, $5 million. Produced 0.1 WAR.
Mark Mulder – 2 years, $13 million. Produced -0.4 WAR.
Vicente Padilla – 3 years, $34 million. Produced 4.5 WAR.
Jason Schmidt – 3 years, $47 million. Produced 0 WAR.
Scott Schoeneweis – 3 years, $10.8 million. Produced -1.5 WAR.
Justin Speier – 4 years, $18 million. Produced -0.2 WAR, released in 2009.
Jeff Suppan – 4 years, $42 million. Produced 1.6 WAR so far.
Jamie Walker – 3 years, $12 million. Produced -0.6 WAR.
Jeff Weaver – 1 year, $8.5 million. Produced 1 WAR.
Woody Williams – 2 years, $12.5 million. Produced -0.1 WAR.
Barry Zito – 7 years , $126 million, full no trade clause. Produced 5.3 WAR so far.

Kudos to the Cubs for Ted Lilly, and half kudos I guess to the Royals for Gil Meche. Though based on their subsequent track record, and given the information known at the time, I’m betting that they simply got lucky with Meche’s 2007 and 2008.

That’s a grand total of 18.9 wins, thanks in large part to Barry Zito and Daisuke Matsuzaka, who have produced 13 WAR so far. For that, teams have paid roughly $440 million dollars in contract value so far, with Zito, Igawa, Matsuzaka and Suppan still active. That’s a whopping $23 million per marginal win. If you take out Zito and Daisuke then you’re left with 5.9 wins and about $314 million spent for an earth-shattering $53 million per win.

Carlos Beltran had arthroscopic surgery yesterday on his right knee and, as a result, seems likely to miss the month of April. Needless to say, the Mets are not pleased about Beltran missing time. They appear to be even less pleased that Beltran apparently did not inform them that he was undergoing surgery. Whoops!

According to the Mets assistant GM John Ricco, the team was expecting to continue discussing options about treatment with Beltran, Boras and the team’s medical staff. To the contrary, according to Beltran’s agent, Scott Boras, the Mets consented to pay for the surgery beforehand and it had been discussed with Omar Minaya on Tuesday. There is obviously either some mis-communication or mis-information going on, but I doubt it leads to anything serious in the long term.

Furthermore from Boras, Beltran had been feeling pain in the knee since November and it was inhibiting his ability to perform conditioning drills in the lead up to Spring Training.

Losing an entire month of the season reminds us all again to always be skeptical on playing time estimates in player projections. Coming into today, CHONE had projected Beltran for 514 plate appearances, which seemed quite low to fans, who had Beltran projected for 606. That latter figure now already seems unreachable.

The missed time, if as bad as being initially reported, looks to cost the Mets somewhere between 5 and 10 runs of value. So while it’s easy to be overly dramatic about the surgery and repercussions, if it stays at this one isolated rehab then the magnitude of the effect to the Mets is not too damaging. I’m sure the New York media will realize that and handle this with a reasonable amount of understatement.

Click here to update your projections for Carlos Beltran.

A tweet from Jeff Sullivan this afternoon sparked my curiosity into batters faced totals and I headed to Baseball-Reference to dig around. I enjoy using batters faced rather than innings pitched for two main reasons. One, because I think it’s a better measure for durability. Number of pitches is actually even better, in my opinion. Secondly, I think it makes for a much better denominator in rate stats than the more standard per nine innings.

On the subject of the tweet itself, how many people know or remember that Tanyon Sturtze led the American League in batters faced in 2002? He also led the league in losses, hits allowed, earned runs allowed and walks. Not all sunshine for Tanyon down in Tampa that season.

Less surprising is that Livan Hernandez led the National League in batters faced multiple times. Three straight seasons, from 2003 through 2005, in fact. Livan faced 3,085 batters during those three years, logging 734.2 innings pitched. The next highest for that same time period was Greg Maddux at 2,709 batters faced (over 300 fewer than Livan) and 656 innings pitched (nearly 80 fewer). Maddux’s achievement was possibly more impressive given that he was between 37 and 39 years old at the time while Livan was in his late 20s/early 30s.

It pales a bit in comparison to Phil Niekro between 1977 and 1979, however, as Niekro’s 4,253 batters faced was 847 more than second place J.R. Richard. Some of the other names on the 2003-5 combined National League list are a hoot. Brian Lawrence, 5th most batters faced. 11th through 15th were Jason Schmidt, Dontrelle Willis, Woody Williams, Matt Morris and Russ Ortiz.

2005 marked the last year so far that a pitcher has repeated an appearance atop the batters faced leader board, and it happened in both leagues as Mark Buehrle in the AL joined Livan Hernandez. Since then it’s been Barry Zito, CC Sabathia, Roy Halladay and Justin Verlander in the American League and Aaron Harang, Brandon Webb, Johan Santana (he never led while with Minnesota, weird) and Adam Wainwright in the National League. So who takes over in 2010?

I caught a brief glimpse of last weekend’s Cowboys-Eagles football game and seeing Michael Vick reminded me of a thought from many moons ago. I think most sports fans root for laundry first. We root for the team over individual players. Getting jerseys is one way of demonstrating said interest and I think, on average, the logo on the front means much more than the name and number on the back.

That being said, obviously there are cases where the purchasing and wearing of a jersey is meant as a sign of support to both the player and the team. In those cases, what happens when the conditions under which the jersey was selected change? For instance, owning an Atlanta Falcons Michael Vick jersey, as I saw someone wearing about six months ago outside San Francisco of all places, has had its meanings changed in the last few years. Maybe not to the person who bought it, but to others, and the owner is probably aware of that.

I do not own many personalized jerseys. I prefer to stick to blank ones. The very first personalized jersey I bought I got to enjoy for a whole year before the player whose name graced the back of it threw a fit in the locker room, demanded a trade, alienated the entire fan base and eventually forced his way off the team in a terrible trade. I don’t much like wearing that jersey anymore. No matter how much I know that I root for the team, not the player, it’s a constant reminder of that episode every time I see that jersey. Would you continue to wear it?

What about other altering circumstances? What about a player that changes his number? Does that annoy you? What about players that choke away an important game? How many were proud to wear their Jake Delhomme jerseys the last couple seasons? Or Brad Lidge Houston Astros jerseys? Or a Bill Buckner (if they had a name on the back) Red Sox jersey in the winter of 1986?

There are plenty of other events that could drastically alter the perception of a jersey as well. If golf was a team sport and there were Tiger Woods jerseys, would you feel different now about wearing it? At what point, if any, do you start feeling uncomfortable about the name on the back of the jersey that you wear and to what length — getting a new jersey, altering the current one, etc — would you go to rectify it?

Randy Johnson announced his retirement today. There are thousands upon thousands of words that could, and should, be written about Randy Johnson. His career numbers are remarkable. The mark he left on the fan bases of Seattle and Arizona, huge. I don’t have the time or skill to do justice to either.

Instead, I just wanted to point that, personal reasons Randy might have aside, there’s little baseball reason for Johnson to be retiring at this point. The average Major League pitcher allows about 6% of his non-ground balls to go for a home run. Last season, Randy had twice that amount on his way to a 1.78 HR/9. That such an extraordinary rate was a completely new phenomenon for Johnson suggests that going forward, regression back toward league average would be reasonable to expect. Granted, it might have been the case of him simply not having Major League skill anymore, but given that none of Randy’s other stats struggled, I deem that unlikely.

The fastball velocity dipped a bit more, as to be expected as he ages, but his swinging strike rates didn’t dip and his batted ball rates actually improved a touch. Aside from the obvious health concerns impacting him in 2010, and they should not be trivialized, I am hard pressed to find a reason why he would not have continued to be useful as a starting pitcher.

Randy’s xFIP was 3.79 last season. His regressed tRA was above average. He was a four-win player as recently as 2008. If he was healthy, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to look forward to three wins or so. He’d also be 46 years old for most of the season. That he was as good of a pitcher as he was, and likely could be, at that age, is flabbergasting. It’s too bad that his health, or motivation, or whatever has pushed him to retirement, because, who knows, he might have held on into his 50s in a relief role should he have wanted one.

How things have changed in so short a period of time. The idea that the Mariners were this winter going to attempt to lock up Franklin Gutierrez to a contract buying out his arbitration years was known for months. However, how the news finally broke on the details of the contract speaks a lot to the information age in 2010. A Venezuelan reporter, Francisco Blavia, tweeted on the deal around noon Eastern Time. The news spread quickly, helped by the Mariners-focused presence on Twitter, and within just a couple hours we had confirmation from Ken Rosenthal. What advances await us this coming year in Twitter as a news broker?

Vague questions aside, lets look at this deal. Four years for $20.5 million, with a team option for a fifth year, is the word that came from Blavia and later confirmed.

Gutierrez obviously broke out with a 5.9 WAR season in 2009, powered by his super human exploits roving center field in Seattle. While that season was a new career mark for Franklin, Gutierrez was worth 1.8 wins over 301 PAs during 2007 and worth 2.3 wins in 440 PAs in 2008. On a per 600 PA basis, Gutierrez’s last three seasons, in order, then look like 3.6 WAR, 3.1 WAR and 5.6. Granted, just pro-rating the WARs out to full seasons isn’t exact, but just used as an example that Gutierrez’s 2009 season did not come completely out of nowhere statistically, even if PR-wise he was in Grady Sizemore’s shadow in Cleveland.

Even entering his prime years (Franklin turns 27 in February), expecting six wins going forward would be optimistic. Given his age, numbers and track record, though, I believe four to five wins per year is entirely reasonable. I am going to stick with four WAR to try to be conservative. Wins on the open market have been going at $4.25-$4.5 million per win for the last couple years up until this winter, but have been down to about $4 million now. So roughly $17 million per season is what Gutierrez would be worth on the open market.

Franklin was entering his first arbitration year, so this deal buys out all arbitration years plus a free agency year, and likely a second year as well with the option. Four years at the standard 40%/60%/80%/100% arbitration award weighting comes out to 2.8 free agent seasons. With a 10% discount for the security that the length of the deal gives the player, at a four-win projection, Franklin Gutierrez would be a touch over $40 million for this service time span.

Interestingly enough, Grady Sizemore received about the exact same amount of money ($20.7M) for the same four service seasons, but that was signed four years ago. Curtis Granderson signed a deal two years ago that pays him about $7 million more for these same years. Both of those are good contracts for their teams and this one should be no exception. Another fabulous move for Jack Zduriencik and Seattle.

Before the start of this season, I wrote a piece that mentioned the toughest pitches to hit in 2008. I them promptly forgot about the data that I had pulled to write that. Now fast forward to a few days ago, when I was again curious about the pitches that garnered the highest percentage of swings and misses. I ended up re-doing my work, but in a vastly more efficient manner (it’s nice to know that I’ve gotten smarter in at least some areas) this time around, so maybe I won’t forget and let this go to waste.

Anyways, last year’s toughest pitch was Ryan Madson’s changeup thrown to same-handed (that is, right-handed) hitters. Back then I broke each pitcher-pitch combo down into four groups, separated by role, starter or reliever, and batter handedness, same or opposite. This time, I am less inclined to do so, preferring to focus on bigger samples and effectiveness spread across platoon situations. I can still break it down like that in the future should the need arise, but for this year’s hardest pitch to hit award, I’m keeping it on the level.

And the winner of that award for 2009 goes to Brandon League. It’s a rather remarkable win, because the pitch in question, a changeup — or, possibly, a splitter — was a new one for League, who up until 2009 was a dominant fastball pitcher that tossed out a slider once in awhile. In 2009, League introduced the splitter pitch and relied on it, using it roughly 35% of the time. And boy did it work. 35% of the time that Brandon League threw that splitter, the hitter swung and missed. It was five percentage points better than the person-pitch in second place, an old friend, Ryan Madson’s changeup, at just under 30%.

Third and fourth place went to Jonathan Broxton and Huston Street‘s sliders, in that order, and Francisco Rodriguez’s changeup rounded out the top five.

Instead of going team by team this off season, I will review the divisions as a group. And whereas last year, I used a version of BaseRuns, with some modifications for strength of schedule and the like thrown in, to determine the ranking of teams’ true talent levels, this year I will use WAR as provided here on FanGraphs.

Part Six: The AL East

Last year the AL East reigned king over everything. The Red Sox were kings of baseball, the best team according to BaseRuns. The Rays, no slouches themselves and eventual AL Pennant winners, were 2nd, at 2nd. The Blue Jays followed in the 4th overall spot just ahead of the Yankees in 5th. The poor Orioles were left out of the love fest however, finishing 23rd overall.

In 2009, little changed. The Yankees climbed up from fifth to take the top spot both in the division and in baseball overall. A fitting rank for the team that took home the World Series crown. The Rays once again were bridesmaids in 2nd, and this time didn’t see a pennant flag out of the deal. The Red Sox completed the AL East trifecta with a 3rd overall ranking.

The Blue Jays were unable to hang so tight with the big boys this season and fell down a few spots to 10th while the Orioles remained the Orioles, slipping from 23rd to 25th.

The overall rating for the Yankees is likely to change significantly a few years from now after we have enough data to build out a better park effect for New Yankee Stadium. For now though we have to go with what we have, and that leaves the 2009 Yankees as a supremely powerful group of hitters. Other than that, not much changed in the AL East last year and given the strengths of Boston, New York and Tampa, not much should change in 2010 either except a further decline for Toronto now that Roy Halladay is gone.

Here’s a summary of the ranks for the AL East teams, with 2008 first.
BOS: 1, 3
TAM: 2, 2
TOR: 4, 10
NYY: 5, 1
BAL: 23, 25