As explained in the overview post, here, this is part of a series looking at the best and worst defensive performers over the past three combined seasons. Rankings are done by adding a player’s UZR with his aggregate positional adjustment so as to level the playing field with regards to difficulty. Essentially, it’s removing the grading curve.

Tonight, the fifth best player from 2007-9: 3B Ryan Zimmerman.

Zimmerman reached the fifth spot thanks to his 2007 and 2009 seasons, during both of which he posted UZRs over 17. He was no slouch in 2008, but it goes to show why we need to rely on more than just one season of defensive data to draw any decent conclusions.

A full time third basemen for the Nationals, Zimmerman received the same positional adjustment (pro-rated to his overall playing time) each year. In four reasonably full seasons so far, Zimmerman’s defensive numbers seem to yo-yo, alternating between slightly above average and extraordinary.

When his bat shows up to match a good year with the glove, as it did this year with career highs in both wOBA and UZR, Zimmerman is a superstar, eclipsing seven wins of value. Even in his worst season to date, last year, he’s managed to be above average both at the plate and in the field, and reduced playing time because of injury only managed to keep him at a 2.2 WAR, still an above average player.

Ryan Zimmerman is one of the stars of the game today. With the arrival of Stephen Strasburg next year, maybe some of the spillover spotlight will find its way to him and he’ll finally start getting his just due.

It is often quoted that a single year of UZR data is equivalent to about a 1/3 of a year of hitting data as far as representative sample size is concerned. With that in mind, I recently combed through our database and compiled the UZRs of every player from the past three seasons along with their rank in each of the past seasons individually.

Upon seeing the finished product, I immediately came to the conclusion that UZR alone wasn’t good enough. After all, what was I trying to rank? My hope was to compile a list of the relative fielding performances of each player. The issue standing in the way is that UZR is position-adjusted. Yuniesky Betancourt has been a horrible, horrible shortstop the past few years, but he’s still a better defender than David Ortiz. So I added the positional adjustments back in and arrived at a result that I think does a good job at capturing the best and worst fielders overall.

Over the next week and change, I will be detailing the individuals that stand out on the list. For now, here’s a few who just didn’t quite make the cut.

On the good side was a flurry of infielders, as you might expect. Pedro Feliz, Jack Wilson, Brandon Phillips, Nick Punto and Jimmy Rollins all just fell outside the top five. Nyjer Morgan finished 12th overall and was one of only three outfielders to make it into the top 20. Carlos Gomez finished exactly 20th and the other (can you guess who?) cracked the top five.

On the negative side, we find a whole bunch of outfielders who really should not be playing anywhere. Congratulations to Bobby Abreu, Delmon Young, Jack Cust, Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder. You all narrowly avoided being singled out as one of the five worst fielders of the past three seasons. Manny Ramirez, Jason Kubel, Vladimir Guerrero, Jose Guillen and Mike Jacobs round out the next worst five and mark the edge of players that totaled more than 50 runs of negative value with their UZR and position.

In the top of the sixth inning, with two outs and the score 4-2, Casey Blake stood at first base with the pitcher Randy Wolf up at the plate. Curiously, Casey Blake would steal second base during the at bat, moving into scoring position fruitlessly as Randy Wolf would proceed to fly out to end the inning.

It was curious because as a general rule of thumb, you want to avoid having your pitcher bat. They are, on average, quite poor at the task. By attempting a steal of second with two outs, Casey Blake was highly increasing the risk of a third out on the base paths. An out that would result in the pitcher’s spot still being up to plate when the seventh inning came around.

Further curiously, the move was praised by the TBS broadcasting crew as a good chance to take by Joe Torre. Ignoring for a moment whose decision it actually was for Blake to attempt second base, I could not help but wonder immediately what that same crew’s reaction would have been had Blake been thrown out. They even mentioned how unusual of a move it was given Wolf at bat, but didn’t go any further than that.

This is a small example, but I think an important one, that illustrates my major beef with broadcasting crews. Where is the attempt to educate the viewer? First of all, taken in a vacuum, this was a terrible play. There was not enough emphasis on that, explaining why it’s such a risk generally. Secondly, there are a couple exceptions to that, and none of those were mentioned either.

Did Torre or Blake or whoever notice, because a steal attempt is so bad a move in that situation, that the Phillies were not paying enough attention to Blake? If Philadelphia were thereby allowing Blake a bigger lead and/or jump, his odds of making it second base successfully would rise, possibly tipping the play into a good risk.

Randy Wolf had thrown 73 pitches at that point in the game. If Torre had determined that the most likely outcome of the bottom of the sixth would be that Wolf would throw enough pitches that his day would be finished, then Torre would be utilizing a pinch hitter in the top of the seventh. With no fear of having the pitcher bad to start the seventh, the risk of the play would be decreased.

Neither of those possible explanations were mentioned — explanations that would help bring to the viewer’s attention some of the tactical considerations that goes into managing a baseball game. Nope, instead the uninformed viewer is left with an increased respect for some nebulous mystique for Joe Torre and his incredible judgment of when to send the running game into motion. Come on, TBS, you are not a representative of either team and you get to pick your best people for this.

“Clutch” as used on FanGraphs is defined as the following:

Clutch – How much better or worse a player does in high leverage situations than he would have done in a context neutral environment.

Does anyone have a problem with that as a non-mathematical definition for what people mean at the highest level when they talk about being clutch? Generally, they actually mean “players that do well,” but generally those are good players. Good players doing well are not “clutch,” they are just good. To truly measure the ideal of “clutch” you would have to compare the person’s performance against what you would expect normally. That’s what gets done here.

With that in mind, check this out.

Alex Rodriguez, postseason clutch score 2002-present: 0.73
Derek Jeter, postseason clutch score 2002-present: -0.80

I only included 2002-present because that is what FanGraphs currently has and I don’t have historical postseason WPA. That being said, here’s some numbers covering the years not mentioned above.

Derek Jeter postseason batting line 1995-2001: .304/.377/.448/.825
Derek Jeter regular season batting line 1995-2001: .321/.393/.471/.864

Alex Rodriguez postseason batting line 1994-2001: .340/.375/.566/.941
Alex Rodriguez regular season batting line 1994-2001: .311/.378/.571/.949

That A-Rod, boy he sucks in the postseason. If only he were more like The Captain.

Perhaps the most interesting fact that I learned while researching this series came right at the time of writing, which is that for Game One of the NLCS, which begins in roughly seven hours, there are still tickets available. And I am not even talking about the exceedingly expensive seats going unsold. I just checked, and at this moment I could still buy seats at the cheapest price level ($51) in the upper deck behind home plate. What’s up LA?

Anyways, as far as the series goes, the Dodgers get an added boost with the return of Hiroki Kuroda, who was unavailable in the Divisional Series. He will slot into the third spot in the rotation with Clayton Kershaw getting the nod tonight and Vicente Padilla in Game Two. Randy Wolf will get the start in Game Four.

The Dodgers had a huge bullpen advantage over the Cardinals in round one and they still maintain that here against Philadelphia. In fact, their rotation is going to be stronger as well, so look for the Dodgers to hope to contain the potent Phillies offense. Contrary to others, I am less sure that the Dodgers need some solid performances from lefty specialists to do that. The lefties in the Phillies lineup have shown roughly neutral splits this season while facing a left-hander has greatly helped their right-handed hitters. I still anticipate that George Sherrill will be used against the likes of Ryan Howard and Raul Ibanez though.

The Dodgers hold the edge in pitching, the Phillies in hitting, and I think their defenses are a toss up. In the end, I see LA as the better team by a couple wins per 162 games and even though we only have a maximum of seven here and anything can happen, my best estimate is that the Dodgers get revenge for 2008 and that we’ll have a New York vs LA World Series.

Well, that was easy. The Dodgers rolled through the Cardinals in the minimum three games and now face the Philadelphia Phillies for the NL Pennant in a rematch of last year’s National League Championship Series.

How did the Dodgers so easily defeat St. Louis? Clearly they must have wanted it more. Or perhaps have been seething for revenge ever since their defeat to the same club back in the 2004 NLDS. Except that was an almost completely different Cardinals team. And a nearly completely different Dodgers team for that matter as well.

The truth is, and this applies to pretty much all individual playoff series, even the seven-game variety, is that there’s no significant reason why one team triumphed. It’s way too small of a sample. Were the Dodgers the better team? Probably. It’s not a surprise that they won, but they also won the first two games by a combined three runs. Game Two was solidly in the Cardinals’ hands until Ryan Franklin, yes Franklin, not Matt Holliday, blew the lead. This was not as much of a thrashing as the 3-0 result by wins might have you believe.

The Dodgers didn’t shut down Albert Pujols or Matt Holliday. No, they won because Andre Ethier had a great series, Ryan Franklin allowed two walks, two fly balls and two line drives to the six batters he faced with a one-run lead and because Vicente Padilla of all people delivered a great start.

Unfortunately, and this can be the downfall of such strict statistical rigor, there’s not much drama in that explanation.

The Dodgers four best starting pitchers, the quartet that given the choice should be making up the rotation for the playoffs are Randy Wolf, Chad Billingsley, Clayton Kershaw and Hiroke Kuroda. Unfortunately that is not going to happen as Kuroda is out of the first round with a herniated disc. As it stands, it appears that Vicente Padilla will slide into that rotation slot and Jon Garland will get relegated to relief duties. Because of the way the rotation closed out the season, the order for this first round series will be Wolf, Kershaw, Padilla and if needed, Billingsley and then Wolf again.

In terms of match ups, the Cardinals present a formidable one because although the two rotations ended up about equal over the course of the 2009 season, the Cardinals is much more top-heavy with good seasons from Chris Carpenter, Adam Wainwright and Joel Pineiro, and thus they see a bigger benefit of the shortened postseason load.

The Dodgers have an edge in the lineup, although they do not possess anything like the duo of Matt Holliday and Albert Pujols, their lineup top-to-bottom is more balanced, much like their pitching staff, but without the part where that becomes less important in the playoffs. Teams don’t get to avoid using their worst regular batter in postseason play so full depth at hitting still plays a role.

Figuring out a way to neutralize those the Pujols and Holliday will probably be a big focus on this series. Of course, baseball doesn’t actually work that way since it’s a series of individualized battles dominated by random chance over small samples. But that’s what I predict a bunch of media types to be stressing about the series.

The big mismatch in this series, for the Dodgers favor, is in the bullpen where Los Angeles was among baseball’s best, led by a dominant season from Jonathan Broxton, who much to Albert Pujols‘ dismay, is not Brad Lidge. Completely the opposite, the Cardinals were among baseball’s worst relief corps with only Ryan Franklin providing much in the way of quality innings. So in reality, the big focus of the series should probably be on how the Dodgers are going to try to work through the tough Cardinals starting pitching and into their vulnerable relief corps. Doing an effective job of running up pitch counts for the starters would really increase the favorable odds for the Dodgers.

One has to wonder if the failure to move Roy Halladay this past deadline was the straw that broke the proverbial back of Ricciardi’s job security, or perhaps even was the primary motivator, but either way, Ricciardi is out as the General Manager of Toronto, a mere hours after it was first leaked that the Padres were axing GM Kevin Towers. Curious that both came on the final weekend of the season rather than after it.

The Blue Jays have made a habit the past five seasons of hovering around .500, but never breaking through the barrier high enough to actually compete for a playoff spot. Despite winning 80 or more games every season since 2004, the Blue Jays have finished 15 games (2005), 8, 11 and 9 games out of the playoff race between 2005 and 2008 and they are 18 games out this season. Ricciardi’s overall record reflects that as Toronto has gone 642-652 while he served as GM.

Aside from the record, or rather just as you might imagine, during Ricciardi’s tenure, the Blue Jays were labeled as a team that would draft ultra-conservatively. That strategy led to a decent crop of role players, but rarely any homegrown elite players and thus Ricciardi was forced to foray into the free agent market, which turned out to be the source of some of his biggest blunders like the B.J. Ryan and Frank Thomas contracts.

Extensions of the few good players inside the organization rarely went well either as evidenced by Alex Rios (luckily dumped on the White Sox this season) and Vernon Wells. For the time being, Assistant General Manager Alexander Anthopoulos takes over Ricciardi’s duties though there’s not likely to be much to do between now and the time when a permanent hire is made.

With New York and Boston mainstays in the AL East more than ever thanks to a growing financial competitive advantage as team-owned cable networks skirt around revenue sharing policies and the well oiled Tampa Rays now poised to remain in the conversation for years to come, the future looks as difficult as ever for Toronto to make a name for itself in postseason play.

Yesterday, Kevin Towers was the longest standing General Manager in baseball in his 14th year with San Diego as their GM. Today that mantle belongs to someone else as Kevin Towers has been sacked as GM of the Padres.

It was not utterly unexpected given the new change in ownership and the record by the Padres over the past couple seasons, 99 losses last year and between 86 and 88 this year, and with a bleak outlook for the next couple seasons due to a severe lack of talent on the roster. However, much of this was due to extreme cost cutting measures put in place by the previous ownership preceding a successful sale of the club and its hard to fully blame Towers for the Padres results on the field.

Towers has even continued to make some shrewd trades, the hallmark of his tenure, just this season unloading Jake Peavy and his $56 million contract to the White Sox, actually getting value back for Peavy who was on the disabled list at the time and who several analysts believe will not even be worth the value of his contract in the coming seasons.

Under Towers, the Padres won the NL West in 1996, 1998, 2005 and 2006. They also game oh so close to making the postseason in 2007, losing a heartbreaking 13-inning tiebreaker game at Colorado in which they had a two run lead in the bottom of the 13th. The Padres made the World Series in 1998, only to be swept by the Yankees. The team was 1107-1159 while Towers was GM.

Who is going to step into Towers role? Obviously the first speculation is going to point at Assistant GM Paul DePodesta, who certainly deserves another shot after being railroaded out of Los Angeles. For the few devout Padres fans out there, hope that they don’t go in the direction of Randy Smith, former GM (he was actually the GM before Towers) and current Director of International Scouting.

Last time we looked at the possible (and almost certain) playoff matches in the American League. With about five games left, lets turn to the senior circuit which has a surprising amount of spots left in flux.

Technically the NL East is still in play with the Braves being five behind the Phillies with five games remaining. We can go ahead and chalk that one up to Philly though. St. Louis has already clinched the NL Central and the Dodgers have clinched at least a Wildcard berth giving us two teams for sure and another baring a Mets-style collapse. The last spot is between Atlanta and Colorado for the most part with San Francisco technically still in consideration at five back with, again, five to play.

So what are the likely matchups? They are a lot harder to predict than the AL as the division leaders are all within 2.5 games of each other, but the current trends would have the Dodgers playing the Cardinals and the Phillies grabbing the Rockies. That basic structure will hold as long as the Dodgers hold onto their 1.5 game lead as the best record in the NL and the Rockies (or Giants I suppose) take the Wildcard.

Other scenarios would necessitate the Rockies dropping their current three game lead over the Braves, who would then being paired up with the Dodgers, should they maintain the best NL record. If both NL West teams collapse and the Braves prevail in the Wildcard and the Dodgers lose out on the best record, then things again become a toss up depending on who prevails between the Cardinals and Phillies.

Confused yet? Luckily, we’ll all know what’s what by the end of the week, but in a final few games in which the playoff participants are all almost figured out, at least there’s something worth watching for in the NL.