Contract extension talks between catcher Miguel Montero and the Arizona Diamondbacks reportedly ended without a resolution this spring. Montero is said to be looking for something like the four-year, $50 million contract Victor Martinez received from the Tigers in free agency prior to the 2010 season. The Diamondbacks do have Montero under contract for 2012 (the last of his team-controlled arbitration seasons), but at the moment it looks like he will become a free agent after the World Series. Is Montero’s desire for such a contract reasonable?

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Read the methodology behind the ratings here. Remember that the grading scale is 20-80, with 50 representing league average.

2012 Organizational Rankings

#30 – Baltimore
#29 – Houston
#28 – Oakland
#27 – Pittsburgh
#26 – San Diego
#25 – Minnesota
#24 – Chicago White Sox
#23 – Seattle

Kansas City’s 2011 Ranking: 25th

2012 Outlook: 45 (20th)

For the first time in a while, the Royals’ hitting pre-season hitting projects to be pretty good. The offense was quietly above average in 2011 (102 wRC+), and while regression is to be expected from player like Alex Gordon and Jeff Francoeur, one can also expect improvement from exciting young players like Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas.

The loss of Salvador Perez for a large chunk of the season will probably hurt defensively as well as offensively, but if Hosmer can start living up to his reputation in the field to go along with the strong defensive work expected from Alcides Escobar and Lorenzo Cain, the fielding should also good on balance.

So is Kansas City ready to take a shot at Detroit in 2012?

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The Orioles are reportedly looking to trade “third baseman” Mark Reynolds and reliever Kevin Gregg. You think so, doctor? It would be strange if the team really waited until this late to start shopping these two veterans, who are rather pointless on a team that is at the beginning of what looks to be a long rebuilding process. To be fair, while the rumor is just coming out now, they may have been shopping these guys for a while. Gregg is a pretty generic reliever (other than having that oh-so-valuable “closer experience”), but Reynolds is an interesting case. His problems making contact with both the bat and glove make him a flawed player, but his monstrous power makes him playable in the right situation. But are there any teams on which that situation exists?

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Royals closer Joakim Soria left a spring training game on Sunday with a sore right elbow, a frustrating development for a player looking to rebound from a sub-par 2012. As of this writing, there is no word on whether the issue will cause Soria to miss any time to start the season. If Soria does miss time, it may not have that much of an impact on Kansas City because the team has a deep bullpen. However, this raises a further question regarding whether Soria should have been traded a year or two ago to maximize the return.

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For an explanation of this series, go ahead and read the introduction. All the posts in the series can be found here.

First base, unsurprisingly, has the best hitters out of all the positions in baseball, although what separates the very first basemen according to the ZiPS and Fan projections is fielding. Obviously, the “true talent” side of things is not my work, I just adjusted playing time and depth charts, prorated, and so on. Just a couple of notes before we get started. Obviously, this a more of a subjective exercise, as I am not a doctor who can tell you want is going to happen with player injuries with any expertise. More importantly, I am not a mind reader who can say how a certain manager will react if his young first basement has a nasty slump in June. I view this charts sort of like subjective versions of projectinos — I am simply trying to reduce the error. by listing potential players who might play at the positions and rough playing time amounts. I have no doubt that there will be some things in here that look pretty silly in retrospect, and perhaps even now. With that out of the way, let’s get to the rankings.

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As Aaron Gleeman noted yesterday, it has been a rough week for Sizemores. Oakland third baseman Scott Sizemore tore his ACL, and much less surprisingly, yesterday it was reported that Cleveland center fielder Grady Sizemore will be out 8-12 weeks after a procedure on his back. Grady Sizemore’s story is probably well-known to most FanGraphs readers: from 2005 to 2008, he was one of best players in baseball.

Since then, he has been hampered by injuries and increasing ineffectiveness when he was able to take the field. It was not as if Cleveland was expecting a return to super-stardom for Sizemore when the team declined his 2012 option and then re-signed him for 2012 ($5 million deal with incentives). The team simply needed another outfielder as they try to make a run at the playoffs. But Sizemore is out for at least a couple of months, and probably at least half of the season. No player stands out as the obvious replacement. Let’s take a look at a few options, and what Cleveland stands to lose.

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The always-excellent John Perrotto recently reviewed some of the Spring Training position battles in the American League. He helpfully includes comments from scouts on each situation. One quote that caught my eye was with respect to the Angels’ third base situation:

This is very interesting. Callapso is a pretty good hitter, but he doesn’t profile as a third baseman. Trumbo has holes in his game, but he does have pop and I think he’ll play a passable third base. It would be hard to take a kid that hit 29 homers last year, send him back to Triple-A, and try to sell that to the fans. But I know Mike Scioscia, and I know Callapso is his kind of player, so I’d be really surprised if he started Trumbo ahead of Callapso.

What struck me was the idea that Callaspo does not “profile” as a third baseman, apparently (judging from the context) because of his offense. The scout is probably thinking of power. Callaspo had a .086 ISO last season (.108 career), while Trumbo had a .223 ISO and 29 home runs while playing first base for the Angels and coming in second in the American League Rookie of the Year voting.

The scout thinks that Mike Scioscia will prefer Callaspo, probably largely based on fielding, as Trumbo has no professional experience playing third. But does Trumbo’s offensive “profile” really gives him any edge over Callaspo?

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By a simple count of singles, walks, and hit by pitches, Paul Konerko was on first base 192 times last season. He attempted two steals, and got caught once. Obviously, not all of those situations had second open or were otherwise good situations for stealing, but it is fair to say that he had more than two good opportunities. In addition, according to UBR, Konerko was about 10 runs below the average runner in terms of taking the extra base, and other “non-steal” base running categories.

Michael Bourn got on first only about 10 more times than Konerko in 2011, but stole 61 bases while only getting caught 14 times. UBR rated him at about 7 runs above average. Overall, Bourn was roughly two wins better than Konerko in general base running last season.

Imagine if Paul Konerko had Bourn’s abilities on the bases. Too bad there is nothing to be done about it. After all, it is not as if the league lets someone else hit for the pitcher, right? Oh, wait… Actually, around the time that the designated hitter rule was proposed and implemented in the American League, a “designated runner” rule was also proposed, although obviously it was never adopted. What if it were adopted now? This is the sort of thing we sometimes on “Rule Change Friday.”

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Athletes that I would call both “fast” and “huge” are relatively common in football. I will try not to embarrass myself by talking about football at length, but take a guy like the 49ers’ Vernon Davis — a very fast tight end who weighs around 250 pounds. Some baseball players are that heavy and heavier, but they are not known as “fast” players. That is obviously connected to the different skills required for “game speed” in the respective sports.

Like many fans, I find “big-boned” baseball players quite entertaining. For example, Adrian Gonzalez and Pablo Sandoval are both wonderful players. Overall, Adrian Gonzalez is probably superior, objectively speaking. However, subjectively, I would much rather watch Pablo Sandoval, and I would be lying if I said that his “body type” had nothing to do with it.

While special events sometimes happen, the big guys in baseball rarely pull off “speed moves,” especially the main move — the stolen base. Leaving the (obvious and no-so-obvious) reasons for this aside, I thought it would be fun to look at the the top stolen base seasons by “big-boned” players in baseball history.

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As you undoubtedly know by now, Gary Carter passed away yesterday. The Hall of Fame catcher had an outstanding career as a big part of the star-crossed Montreal Expos’ only playoff team and later a World Champion Mets team. My own first awareness of Carter was one Christmas or birthday long ago, when, although I did not collect baseball cards, someone gave me a pack, and a card bearing the image of a young Gary Carter was included.

Many pieces have been and will be written about Carter in the wake of his passing, pieces that will tell various stories of his memorable on-field exploits. Different people will have their own particular favorite Gary Carter “moment” for which there is no substitute. As a contribution to the ongoing tribute to Carter around the Web, here are Carter’s three biggest regular season hits as according to Win Probability Added (WPA).

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