51 games in and the Anaheim Angels are 26-25. Considering the injuries that they had to deal with in the first two months, being .500 at this point should be considered a success for the defending AL West champions. The Angels were the favorite to repeat this season, with a slight acknowledgment that Oakland might give them a run at the title. That threat has vanished as Oakland has completely fizzled and but for an outside shot that the Seattle Mariners return to their early season form, the AL West will be decided between the Angels and the Texas Rangers.

The Angels might be the better team on paper now that they are healthy, but there’s the matter of a 4.5 game lead to make up and primarily for that reason, the Angels are listed at about a 40% chance of making the post season. The next four to six weeks will say a lot in this division.

What is interesting for the Angels is that they have a lot of soon to be free agents that are likely to command significant attention in the off season and if the Angels were to so choose and sell this year, they might be able to thoroughly re-stock a farm system that has been light on producing hitting talent. Vladimir Guerrero, Chone Figgins, Bobby Abreu and Robb Quinlan all have expiring contracts. The pressure for the Angels to keep Guerrero around might result in them making a bad financial decision, ditto on Figgins.

On the pitching front, John Lackey and Kelvim Escobar along with swing man Darren Oliver are free agents after this season. Lackey might be in the same situation as Guerrero, a team and fan favorite who looks to be on the verge of being paid far too much money for a significant decline phase.

If instead the Angels decide to giddy up and go for it one more time and are buyers this summer, the question of where to add is obvious, as always in the line up. The rotation, even with the injuries, has been fine and the bullpen adequate, but the offense is once again impotent especially on the right side of the infield.

The Seattle Mariners never seemed a likely team to contend this season. They were coming off a 61-win season last year that was not even a success from a losing standpoint, as they blew a chance at the first overall draft pick in the final two games of the season. New M Jack Zduriencik spent the winter overhauling the team’s inept defense and bringing in as many low cost relievers and veteran hitters as he could find.

For a while, it worked. Racing out to a 15-10 start, the Mariners at one point stood atop the AL West by 3.5 games and had a PECOTA-predicted chance of postseason play over 40%, at the time, the highest in the AL West. Since that peak though, the Mariners’ bats have gone silent and the bullpen fell apart en route to a 6-16 stretch that left them seven games back of the Texas Rangers. Their latest two wins against Baltimore have the Mariners’ playoff odds back up to around 15%, but still it seems likely that they’ll be sellers before July is up.

Lucky for them, they have a lot to sell. In the rotation, Erik Bedard is the big candidate, but Jarrod Washburn and his 3.22 ERA (backed up by an improved 3.59 FIP) should also tempt a pitching-starved team. In the bullpen, David Aardsma’s eight saves and 2.13 ERA will also likely find a buyer. As far as the bats go, Endy Chavez can hold down center field and that coupled with his .283 batting average might have him heading out of town. Adrian Beltre is the obvious trade candidate, and he seems to be breaking out of his early season slump.

Another possible bat that could be dealt is Russell Branyan who, given his first chance to play regularly, has responded magnificently and would certainly garner some interest. The question then would be if Branyan and Zdurencik would have some loyalty to each other enough that Branyan sticks around in Seattle.

Either way, with a host of actual talent up for graps form July should they fall far enough back, plus picks 2, 27, 33 and 51 in the upcoming June draft, the Mariner farm system is about to get one giant boost upwards.

Last night, the Yankees completed their 18th consecutive game without a recorded error, breaking the Major League record which was set by the Boston Red Sox in 2006. Ramiro Pena was the last Yankee to get charged with an error when he misplayed a grounder at short stop against Toronto.

Errors and fielding percentage are loved by the mainstream media as the marks by which to measure team defense. It is not hard to understand why, given that on the surface they seem like such concrete and easily understood numbers while formulas like UZR, RZR, PMR and the likes are technical and confusing and because of that, many will see them as arbitrary. The problem with that line of thinking is that in actuality, errors are perhaps equally as confusing if you were being exposed to the game for the first time.

A right fielder catches a ball and throws to third attempting to nail a tagging runner. The throw is in every way perfect, but actually hits the runner and caroms away from the fielder. The scoring decision? Error on the right fielder almost to a fault. A shortstop makes a dazzling play in the hole and fires to first only to have the first baseman drop the ball. Error on the short stop. A left fielder loses the ball in the lights and it drops two feet away from him. No error there. And people complain that advanced fielding metrics are hard to understand?

Looking at the UZR numbers here on FanGraphs shows the Yankees at 14th in baseball with a 0.4 UZR/150, which isn’t much to write home about. They have taken a nice step forward from last year through, when they ranked 25th. The key driver is the increase in range among their fielders. It is, of course, no surprise considering the departures of noted slugs Jason Giambi and Bobby Abreu and the importation of Mark Teixeira. All in all, errorless streaks are cool and make good talking points on TV, but don’t fall into the easy trap of evaluating a defense solely on that stat.

Two months into the season and we start to enter trade season in which teams are separating themselves into those playing for this year and those not. Starting today, I am going to go through the teams and evaluate their 2009 playoff prospects and for those falling far enough to one side or another, look at players that are candidates to be dealt or positions to be filled via trade.

The series starts off with Oakland in the AL West. Coming into the year, Oakland seemed like a potential favorite for the division, especially after the Angels’ early injuries. The starting rotation seemed to be the potential pitfall and that has certainly borne fruit with the 6th worst FIP in baseball. They have made up for that with their bullpen, ranked 5th in baseball and their defense is adequate as well. With that, it would seem like Oakland would still be in the midst of the weak AL West race, but 48 games into the season the Athletics are ten games out of first and have just a 5.55% chance of making the playoffs according to PECOTA.

What has gone wrong is the offense, ranked completely last in baseball. Winter imports Jason Giambi, Matt Holliday and Orlando Cabrera have not much to boost the A’s as now all three are certain trade candidates as all three are free agents at the end of the season, though the A’s do have an option on Giambi. The question would be what Oakland might be able to get for those players. Cabrera’s offense has been so bad that he seems unlikely to return any value. Ditto Giambi because of his offense and position. Holliday will almost certainly return something, but it just as certainly going to be far less than Billy Beane hoped three months ago.

Other trade candidates include Russ Springer, Bobby Crosby and Adam Kennedy. Springer and Crosby don’t seem set to garner much either, especially Crosby with his salary. Adam Kennedy though, gotten for cheap from Tampa, who got him for nothing from St. Louis, is boasting a 1.084 OPS through 82 at bats. He’s not going to hang onto that line, but do not be surprised if he’s on the move shortly along with Holliday.

It is rapidly approaching the month of June, nearly a third of the way through the baseball season, and there are still some highly notable players, especially veteran pitchers, without jobs. That story has been oft repeated to date. Most of the unemployed suffer from a vastly inflated sense of worth (e.g. Pedro Martinez) or an injury (e.g. Ben Sheets). However, the release of Daniel Cabrera recently sprung up a name in my mind that I realized I had not heard from lately, Odalis Perez.

In case you forgot, here is a quick summary of this travails with Washington this past February. On or about February 5th, Perez agreed to a minor league contract with Washington that would pay him $850,000 were he to make the big league roster. About two weeks later, perhaps coincidentally soon after Livan Hernandez got a better deal from the Mets, Perez declared that he wanted a guaranteed Major League deal and refused to report to Spring Training. A few days of not returning calls later, he was granted a release.

Perez planned to showcase himself during the World Baseball Classic, but never got the opportunity. And as far as I can turn up, that is the last that has been written about him. He tossed just under 160 innings last year, is left handed, turns 32 in a week, has no known injury that I can ascertain and has been worth between 1.4 and 1.6 wins each of the previous four seasons. He has been by no means stellar, but he has been useful and seeing as his price tag seems to just be a Major League deal, even one under $1 million guaranteed, I find it a little baffling as to why no team has gone after him.

It is probably too late in the season now, as teams would likely be skeptical of how fast someone like Perez can get back up to MLB readiness, but why didn’t a team like the Angels go after him when they suffered all those injuries to their rotation before the season began? Or what about a team that knew it was a long shot this year? They couldn’t have thrown him $1 million, stuck him in the rotation and waited for the inevitable rash of pitcher injuries and then tried to trade him between now and July? Maybe they were all scared away by the way Perez handled the situation with the Nationals, and perhaps there was more to it than the public has learned, but it was also the Nationals, hardly the pinnacle of well-run organizations at the time.

Over the Memorial Day weekend, it was leaked that Alfonso Soriano had told Cubs manager Lou Piniella that he would be willing to play second base if it meant that Micah Hoffpauir could get more playing time.

So far for the Cubs, second base has been manned primarily by Mike Fontenot when he’s not playing third filling in for the injured Aramis Ramirez, and Aaron Miles. Essentially, if they made this sort of move, the Cubs would be saying that they are not happy with the offensive output of either of those two to date and are looking for ways to get more punch in the batting order. Is that reasonable?

First off, Mike Fontenot probably deserves the nominal starting job. He’s been hurt by a bad BABIP this season that seems mostly due to bad luck. Based on his core numbers, he seems likely to positively regress to somewhere above his 2007 numbers. ZiPS sees him at a .328 wOBA for the rest of the season. He also provides a glove worth about +5 runs a year at second.

If we consider that the base case, would the Cubs be better off shifting Alfonso Soriano to second base and Micah Hoffpauir to left field? Soriano is already in the everyday lineup, so all we have to do for him is compare the impact of his defensive shift. Based on prior UZRs, Soriano is about 20 runs less proficient at second base than in a corner outfield spot. He would gain 10 runs back in scarcity value, but that still leaves a net negative of 15 runs (factoring in Fontenot’s +5) and that’s assuming that Soriano hasn’t gotten any worse at second base in the 3+ years since he last played there regularly and that his hitting wouldn’t deteriorate playing a tougher position.

We do not have enough defensive sample for Hoffpauir to say anything about his defense, so assuming for now that he would be an average left fielder (the scanty evidence we do have suggests he’s below average), Hoffpauir’s bat would have to be at least 15 runs (over a full season) more valuable than Fontenot’s in order for the net benefit to be positive. ZiPS sees Hoffpauir as worth a .357 wOBA the rest of the season. Over 600 PAs, the difference between a .357 wOBA and a .328 one is about 15 runs.

On a strict numbers basis, it looks like a neutral move for the Cubs, but that comes with a lot of assumptions about Hoffpauir’s defense and Soriano’s ability to transition back to second base. Even with those assumptions, the net gain for the Cubs only looks to be on the order of about nothing. Hardly seems worth the risk.

Normally, you expect players that excel at defense to lack offense and vice versa. It is rare that a player can be excellent at both, that group makes up our small core of annual MVP candidates. That makes our (very) early season leaders in UZR so interesting. They are, by and large, an exquisite group of hitting talent. Let’s go through the positions, as outlined by R.J. Anderson a few days ago.

I lead off with the worst example, Chris Davis at first base. Davis has just a .313 wOBA on the year, though he is certainly projected to hit a lot better than that. Of note is that right behind him on the defensive side of things is Ryan Howard and his .381 wOBA. At second base, we stay in Texas and have Ian Kinsler leading the league and pairing his defense with a .415 wOBA.

At shortstop we have the breakout Marco Scutaro who has nearly eclipsed his 2008 totals in home runs and walks already, in just a third of the games he played last season. His .379 wOBA gives up one potent middle infield. At third, Ryan Zimmerman is certainly no slouch with the bat this season. Just off his 30 game hitting streak, Ryan’s wOBA still stands at a robust .434 figure.

Our outfield is perfectly aligned with Jay Bruce in right, Mike Cameron in center and Nyger Morgan in left. Bruce hasn’t been much in terms of batting average, hitting just .239, but his 12 home runs and 13 walks give him a .358 wOBA. Mike Cameron was almost given away this winter by the Brewers who are very content that they resisted. His .282/.392.550 line is good for a .408 wOBA. Finally, Nyger Morgan is no power threat, lacking even a single home run on the year, but his great speed (three triples) and eye (17 walks to 26 strikeouts) give him a .339 wOBA.

All combined, the seven hitters currently leading their respective positions in UZR possess a total figure of 12.6 WAR already this season. Over a full season were these rates to hold, as unlikely as that is, they would accumulate roughly 45 wins.

Having lived in Seattle for the last couple years it has been my curse to watch a lot of Mariners baseball. A hallmark of that baseball has been aggressive hitters getting themselves out on pitches out of the zone. This season, however, has brought forth an example that has been hitherto missing from my viewing experience. Franklin Gutierrez has come to bat with a seeming plan to make the pitcher work each and every time, even if it meant taking strikes and it struck me that I could not recall seeing a hitter on the Mariners called out on strikes as often as he has so far this season.

With that thought in mind, I decided to look at which hitters had taken the most strikeouts looking this season. I wanted at least semi-regular hitters so I limited my sample to batters with over 50 plate appearances. I ended up with plenty of hitters who just rarely ever struck out at all, such as Juan Pierre. That didn’t spark much interest, so I decided to further splinter my sample size into hitters who had been rung up in at least 20% of their plate appearances to date in order to get a decent sample size of strikeouts. Here then are the five hitters in the Major Leagues who meet both criteria above and have had at least half of their strikeouts been of the called variety.

John Baker, Florida, 69.6%
Travis Hafner, Cleveland, 55.56%
Milton Bradley, Chicago(N), 52.6%
Ian Stewart, Colorado, 51.7%
Carlos Gomez, Minnesota, 50.0%

Baker is playing like your prototypical doesn’t swing much power hitter, but he also makes contact at the rate of a more traditional slap hitter, hence the massive lead in called strikeout percentage.

Travis Hafner’s line is quite interesting and potentially disturbing for an Indians fan. He is offering at way more pitches outsize the strike zone than previously and a markedly greater percentage of pitches that he takes are within the zone. That’s putting him in more strikeout counts and suggests a breakdown in his ability to read pitches.

Milton Bradley’s contact rates are up and he has shown positive improvement in laying off balls and swinging at strikes so his placement on this list strikes me as a fluke based on the numerical evidence.

Ian Stewart landing on this list is no real surprise once you take a look at his plate discipline numbers. Last season he swung at 47.8% of pitches thrown his way. This year he is down to 39.3% which includes just a 56.9% rate of swinging at pitches inside the strike zone. That is going to lead to a lot of called strike threes.

Gomez previously had a hard time finding a pitch he doesn’t like to swing at, but has dramatically reduced the number of pitches he offers at, with the side effect being a rise in called strikeouts, but he has cut his swinging strikeout rate almost in half.

By the way, I was right in my intuition. No regular Mariner hitter over the past few seasons has had a greater portion of their strikeouts been of the called variety as Franklin Gutierrez has.

Justin Verlander came into the 2009 season working off of a 2008 campaign that saw his ERA rise from 3.66 coupled with an 18-6 record to 4.84 with a corresponding 11-17 record. That’s the impression most people would hold when judging how Verlander performed. More stat savvy fans would instead point to Verlander’s FIP barely moving at all, going from 3.99 in 2007 to 4.18 last year as proof that he wasn’t actually much different last year. Both view points are partially right.

Verlander was indeed worse in 2008. He had 20 fewer strikeouts with 14 more batters faced. He walked 20 more as well. A slight dip in home runs allowed (two) helped keep the FIP jump to a minimum. However, beyond the troubling strikeout and walk numbers, Verlander also lost a sizable chunk off his fastball velocity. His average fastball in 2006 and 2007 was right at 95 miles per hour. In 2007 that dropped all the way down to 93.6.

2009 has seen a marked reversal in all the above mentioned categories. Justin Verlander’s fastball is up to a 95.3 mph average, the highest sustained speed of his career. Correspondingly, he is missing fat more bats than ever before as well and seeing his strikeout rate jump to over 12 per nine while his walk rate has returned to the 2006-7 level of right around three per nine innings. Verlander’s ERA is still 4.29, but his FIP is 2.39, illustrating just how big of an improvement he has made.

The only area Verlander has not seen gains in is in his batted ball profile. Verlander’s ground ball percentage dropping under 40% for the first time, to 39.9%, in 2008. It is currently at just over 28%. That’s a significant decline. Verlander has been keeping away from the home runs thanks to just 5.4% of his fly balls landing over the wall, a figure that is not sustainable.

Still, Verlander has been on a roll. Over his last four starts, he has recorded 9, 11, 11 and 13 strikeouts. He is a big reason why Detroit finds itself in first place in the AL Central.

When Brandon Webb went down, so went most of the hope in Arizona for a competitive season. Already trailing the Dodgers in talent level by a healthy margin, the Diamondbacks needed a repeat season of greatness from Webb and Dan Haren to realistically have a chance of keeping pace. That clearly has not and will not happen this year and the Snakes have stumbled out to a 13-20 record that he seen 2009’s first managerial change.

Somewhat lost amongst that sad shuffle though is Max Scherzer’s early season emergence as a replacement for Randy Johnson’s role as the third spoke in the Arizona rotational wheel of excellence. Arizona’s first round pick (11th overall, the pick after Tim Lincecum) in 2006, Scherzer was mightily impressive last season in his brief stint in the rotation, logging 48 strikeouts to just 14 walks over 37 innings.

Getting the chance to be a starter from the get go this season, Scherzer has continued to succeed with a 4.33 FIP coupled with a bounce back in his ground ball rate. While the strikeout rate has diminished, that comes as no surprise as it’s nigh impossible to maintain a 30% K rate in the Major Leagues as a starter. Scherzer’s rate of 20% so far this season is still very respectable and as long as he keeps the walks around the 10% or lower mark he should continue to be valuable.

Importantly for his future success, Scherzer’s rate of missing bats is down only a touch, further increasing his sample size and showing that he just might be able to stick at his current level of around 12%, a very impressive figure. That he has been able to generate those types of results while throwing fastballs around three-quarters of the time speaks to how effective his fastball is and how well it sets up his change and slider.

If Scherzer can keep it up, he’s going to be able to use this likely lost season for Arizona to build up his arm strength and be ready to help the Diamondbacks work back toward contention in 2010.