On a list of the highest single season infield hit totals since FanGraphs began tracking the statistic in 2002, Ichiro Suzuki occupies the first seven spots. Across all seasons, Ichiro’s 391 infield hits totally dwarfs every other hitter in baseball. The next highest is Luis Castillo with 248. By sole dint of his impressive cumulative total, it is tempting to award Ichiro as the best infield hitter in baseball, but is that a reasonable conclusion?

Ichiro bats leadoff and is incredibly durable, routinely garnering among the top number of plate appearances among hitters each season. That translates to lots and lots of opportunities to rack up infield hits. Instead of looking just at raw totals this illustrates a need to look at rates so that I can attempt to control for Ichiro’s advantage in opportunities.

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Gil Meche’s career appears to be over, a casualty of his shoulder injuries. The news comes a decade after Meche first went under the knife for his shoulder, having labrum surgery in 2001. It would take him until 2003 to make it back to the Majors. I bet that today is a rather bittersweet day for Meche, but that he made it back at all was a tremendous success for him. Sticking around for eight seasons and getting to land a giant paycheck is remarkable.

It’s not a surprise that Meche has run into further injury problems. Certainly one can question some of his usage patterns in 2009 as well. He never seemed to be the same after the complete game shutout against Arizona that took him 132 pitches to finish. Not that anyone should point to that as definitive proof of anything. Still, it is a sad way for it to end and only at 32 years old as well.

The ending of Gil Meche’s tenure with the Royals also provides an opportunity to look back on the contract that he signed with them after the 2006 season. At five years and $55 million, it was a stunner of a deal, a huge investment in a notoriously talent fickle pitcher with an extensive injury history. While Meche pitched superbly for Kansas City during the first two years of the deal, he fell apart after 2008 with –who could have guessed?—injuries.

According to our WAR and salary equations, Gil Meche amassed nearly $41 million worth of value in 2007-8. He seemed a lock to prove a great investment for Kansas City. The sad end to the story reminds us all that multi-year contracts require us to think about them over multiple years. The tendency is to remember only the deals signed over the most recent off-season. That is a large blind spot, especially since the likelihood is that due to health and age, a newly signed free agent will have his best season in the one immediately following his signing.

Remember to keep perspective on contracts that span multiple seasons. You never know when they will go off the rails. As for Meche, he ends his career with decidedly average career numbers, but for Mariner and Royal fans, he will not be soon relegated to the dustpan of forgettable players. He will always be present in my mind when I think of frustratingly talented pitchers who can just never seem to put it all together. Whether it’s because of his contract, his many injuries and comebacks, his tantalizing potential or his tragic end, Meche will be remembered.

The last post introduced the topic at hand and looked at the San Francisco Giants as they were the team with the biggest overall spread between their team FSR and UZR ratings. They happened to have much higher UZRs than FSRs in both years.

The two other highly outlying dots on the same side as the Giants are the 2009 Mariners and 2010 Diamondbacks. On the other side of the disagreement line are the Colorado Rockies. Read the rest of this entry »

When attempting to judge a player’s defensive skills, I prefer to look at a couple different metrics. Chief among them is the Fans’ Scouting Report (FSR) and Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR). Both are on the same scale, runs relative to average, but come to their conclusions in disparate ways. The FSR ratings come from surveys filled out by fans while UZR is entirely algorithm-driven. They take such different paths, but how close do they come to arriving in the same place?

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The Texas Rangers finally found a player in Adrian Beltre to take their obscene amount of money this winter. Throughout their pursuit of Cliff Lee earlier and Beltre recently, writers mentioned the new cable television contract that the Rangers locked in this winter as a motivator for the Rangers to spend money this offseason. Knowing how persuasive initial reports can be in forming long-term memories of facts, I wanted to address this deal by itself. The first news came from USA Today and stated that it was $3 billion over 20 years. That turned out to be grossly inflated, and, within a few days, we had multiple reports of a more reasonable figure of actually about $1.6 billion.

That is still a very large number and easily sticks in your mind. Furthermore, it seemed to represent a dramatic increase in revenue for the Rangers. A number I saw quoted often was that the Rangers currently make only $20 million from television right now, which would make this new deal a fourfold increase. That certainly would be a huge raise, but it does not appear to be accurate.

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Cliff Lee spent all of 2010 in the American League earning 7.1 WAR. Now in the National League, Lee swings a lot of value from the AL to the NL. If you thought an American League team was, on average, say five wins better than a National League team in 2010 then Cliff Lee could have lessened that gap to four wins all by his lonesome had he spent the year in the NL.

That thought got me thinking about the rest of the transactions this winter concerning players switching leagues. Read the rest of this entry »

Ricky Nolasco was headed into this third arbitration season after achieving Super 2 status in 2009. That is no longer his concern after inking a three-year contract with the Florida Marlins. Per MLB.com, the terms of the deal call for $6 million in 2011, $9 million for ’12 and $11.5 million for ’13. There is also an innings bonus of up to a half million per season.

He was under team control for 2011 and 2012 before being free agent eligible. The general model is that arbitration-eligible players are expected to earn around 40% of their free agent market value in their first year, 60% in their second and 80% in their third and final year of arbitration.

Super 2s complicate that, but with the base salaries listed it is clear that Nolasco will be underpaid. If you figure $11.5 million as the free agent base value, then Nolasco is getting 52% for his third year of arbitration and 78% in his fourth.

On top of that, $11.5 million is paying Nolasco as if he’s approximately a 2.5-win pitcher. Nolasco easily exceeded that in both 2008 and 2009 and even matched that in an injury-shortened 2010 season. All the Marlins need is for him to do is repeat 2010 three more times and they’ll have broken even. Is that feasible for Nolasco?

After one of the most unlucky seasons in 2009, Nolasco posted similar core numbers in 2010 and saw his atrociously unlucky 61% strand rate in 2009 rebound to a much more usual 72%. And though his strikeouts dropped a little, he reduced his walks proportionally and even upped his swinging strike rate. He missed some time with a knee injury, but non-arm injuries are less worrisome and he remains a fair bet to log at least another 150+ innings of mid-3 xFIP in 2011 and beyond.

The Marlins got themselves a good deal here that could turn into a fantastic deal if Nolasco stays completely healthy.

Tidbits started floating around yesterday that to some extent the Angels were out of the running for Adrian Beltre. Those rumors coalesced as the day wore on and the story appears to be that Boras and Beltre have rejected the Angels latest offer and that negotiations are at a standstill currently, but not off entirely.

This was a bit of a surprise since as the free agent market has settled it appeared an almost lock that Beltre would end up in Anaheim. They are one of the few remaining teams with adequate payroll room and they have a definite need at third base where Maicer Izturis is better suited as an all around backup infielder. The Angels also lack a top tier 3B in their near term minor league pipeline and a rough guess of their projected win totals have Anaheim sitting a few wins behind the Texas Rangers. In short, they have more means, more motive and more opportunity than any other team.

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While Lee’s deal is certainly large, when it was first announced, it slightly surprised me that it wasn’t a lot larger. Given the lack of other elite pitching talent this offseason, the seller’s market so far and the known interest from the Yankees and the recently flush Rangers, Cliff Lee getting a record-setting contract for a pitcher would not have surprised me. The reports of Lee leaving $50 million on the table made Philadelphia’s offer seem almost small though.

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After losing most of 2008 and all of 2009, Jake Westbrook bounced back to his old self this past season with a 200-inning, low-4 FIP effort. And today the Cardinals rewarded him with a new two-year contract for $17.5 million guaranteed.

A reliably 4-win pitcher from 2004-6, Westbrook took a hit with the injuries starting in 2007 causing a loss almost entirely just of playing time, not of production. In fact, Westbrook’s key performance markers have been quite stable ever since he broke into full time play in 2003. His strikeouts have always been meager, hovering right around five every nine innings with little variation. The same goes for the walks and ground balls too. No pitcher is a sure bet, but Westbrook has a case for being predictable for as long as he’s on the mound.

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