On Friday, I posted about how Miguel Olivo’s horrific August dramatically changed his seasonal line, and what should (and shouldn’t) be concluded from that situation. Today, I want to look at a player whose seasons has taken the opposite path: the Detroit Tigers’ Ryan Raburn.

Back at the end of June, I suggested that the Tigers should be prepared to give some of Brennan Boesch’s playing time to Raburn. To put it mildly, that statement did not meet with universal agreement. It is easy to see why that was the case. Through the end of June, Raburn’s seasonal line was .211/.290/.358, and Boesch’s was .332/.380/.602. I can’t take credit for figuring anything out, really. But CHONE still had faith in Raburn’s bat on the strength of previous performance, he hadn’t had that many PA so far in 2010, and Boesch’s overall minor league track record and major league BABIP in 2010 both suggested that he was playing over his head. This isn’t a post about Boesch, so I won’t belabor the point, but almost immediately after that post (at which point his wOBA well was over .400) he put up a .265 wOBA (.209/.311.253) in July and a .234 wOBA (.185/.227/.304) in August. Boesch’s seasonal wOBA is still a respectable .336, but expectations have probably been tempered quite a bit.

As I wrote above, though, this is about Raburn, not Boesch. While Raburn was okay in April (.333 wOBA), he was absolutely dreadful in May (.117), recovered a bit in June (.339), but was still horrible in July (.247). Then August rolled around, and Raburn busted out a .408 wOBA (.308/.357/.606), including 8 home runs. The hot streak hsa continued into the first few games of September, and raised his previously putrid seasonal line to a respectable .339 wOBA (.257/.323/.457). It’s worth noting that Raburn got about twice as many plate appearances in August (112) has he did in any other month. This isn’t to say that “consistent playing time” are what caused his streak, but simply that it is the reason one hot month was able to change his seasonal line so dramatically from the where he was at at the end of July: .211/.287/.329.

This isn’t about cherry-picking August as Raburn’s true talent or dismissing it as a “fluke.” Rather, it’s about a) accepting whatever a player’s “true talent” may be, his performance will be distributed more or less unevenly through time, and b) the old “small sample size” issue (in this case, in relation to impatience with Raburn after his first ~200 PA this season). It isn’t as if Raburn had never hit in the majors before. Yes, in 2008 he was terrible in the majors (.295 wOBA), but in only 199 PA, and the year before he was good (.365 wOBA) in almost as many PA (148). The most recent sample in 2009 was also the largest (291 PA), and he had an impressive .378 wOBA (.291/.359/.533), showing a decent amount of walks and very impressive power (.241 ISO).

Despite his ups-and-downs early in the season, Raburn’s overall 2010 line shows that 2009 was not simply a fluke. Yes, it was probably above his true talent level, but if he had a 8.9% walk rate in 2009, a 7.1% rate isn’t hard to believe for 2010. Just because most of his power came in August doesn’t mean that his very good .200 ISO in 2010 is less believable than his .241 in 2009. Taking into account his performance so far in 2010, both ZiPS RoS and CHONE’s August 28 update see Raburn as a solidly above-average hitter.

Raburn isn’t a long-term solution in the Tigers’ outfield. He’s 29 years old. He has been platooned pretty heavily in the majors, although not so much this season, and properly estimating his platoon skill shows that his split isn’t much larger than average and that he can hold his own against RHP. He’s been moved around defensively, he’s probably about average in left field — average left fielders are generally in left field because they aren’t impressive looking defensively.

Still, Raburn’s bat is good enough that combined with his outfield skills he’s probably about an average player (~2 WAR over a full season), and could make a decent stopgap starter or very good fourth outfielder. He’s going into his first year of arbitration, and probably will get an award that makes him quite affordable for at least one year. One great month isn’t enough to radically change our evaluation of any player, but in context, it should be enough to keep Raburn from being an automatic non-tender.

Miguel Olivo is having a nice season at the plate (if you believe in defensive metrics for catchers, he’s also having a good season behind the plate, but this post is about offense) for the Colorado Rockies. Leaving aside the Chris Iannetta issue (sigh), Olivo has given the Rockies slightly-above average offense (101 wRC+), very good for a catcher. In a surprising twist, Olivo, well-known for his hacktastic ways, has slightly decreased his swings at pitches outside of the zone in 2010 (although he’s still one of the most free-swinging hitters in baseball), which partly explains his best seasonal walk rate since he became a regular player. While a .323 on-base percentage is nothing to get excited about for most players, for Olivo, it is not only the best on-base percentage of any season in his career, but it’s the only time he’s ever had a yearly OBP over .300.

Still, while a .335 wOBA is good for a catcher, even in Colorado, a quick glance at Olivo’s monthly wOBAs through July (.398, .403, .352, .351) might lead one to wonder how it got so low. Well, in 58 August plate appearances, Olivo hit .140/.155/.158 for a .141 wOBA. That’s simply a stunning line. After walking more than ever before through July, Olivo walked once in August, and that was an intentional walk. His BABIP for August was .211, which probably reflects some bad luck, although he hit very few line drives (7.9%) during the month. He hit a good deal of fly balls, but none of them went out of the park for home runs during August.

To be clear — it would even more foolish to cherry pick one month of Olivo’s season to represent his true talent or to dismiss it as an “outlier” as it would to do so for a whole season. One has to take the season as a whole into account and properly weight it, regress it, etc. It is simply stunning how bad the one month was, so bad that it can take the seasonal line down that far. Olivo has had some months almost this bad this before — a .234 wOBA in July 2009 and a .201 wOBA in July 2008, to give just two examples. All players have bad stretches, naturally. One shouldn’t attribute “consistency” or its opposite as a particular “skill” to any player. Understanding that performance will fluctuate around a players true talent is just part of accepting randomness.

While Olivo’s August performance in-itself should not be singled out as a reason to worry, it did alter his 2010 line in a way that does matter. It turns Olivo’s 2010 season from a very good offensive performance to one that is slightly above-average. It makes the Rockies decisions about playing time 2011 a bit more interesting given Olivo’s club option and Iannetta’s contract.

As the “real” trade deadline approached last night, the New York Mets finally got rid of their 2010 team mascot, Jeff Francoeur, trading him to the Texas Rangers in exchange for Joaquin Arias. Dan Szymborski has already issued a brilliant analysis of the trade, but I want to focus on what Francoeur might bring to the Rangers over the last month of the season.

It depends on his role. Obviously, Josh Hamilton and Nelson Cruz are far superior to Francoeur, but as Rob Neyer notes, they’ve each struggled with injury issues this season, so Francoeur provides a bit of depth in case those come into play again. Still, Francoeur has been close to worthless for two seasons, so it’s not clear why the Rangers would need to trade for a replacement-level bench player at this point, especially one who can’t play center field (assuming the Rangers don’t want to play Julio Borbon and don’t want Hamilton in center). In any case, the Rangers already have David Murphy, who does play center occasionally, although he isn’t very good there.

Assuming Murphy and Francoeur are roughly equivalent in the field (and some quick number crunching has them in the same general area), the main skill Francoeur supposedly brings to the Rangers is as a platoon partner for Murphy. When Francoeur’s abilities have been (rightly) criticized this season, his alleged usefulness as a right-handed platoon bat is usually brought up as a way he might be made useful. Francoeur does have a fairly big observed split: .302 wOBA versus RHP and a .344 versus lefties. However, as most readers of FanGraphs know by now, there’s a difference between observed performance and true talent. We have to properly regress Francoeur’s split against league average to get an idea of what his real platoon skill, i.e., what it will likely be going forward.

As is covered in the linked post, there is less variance among right-handed hitters with regard to platoon skill, so while Francoeur’s observed split is bigger than average, his 961 career PA versus LHP is regressed against 2200 of league average RHH versus LHP. In other words, his estimated hitter platoon skill is still far closer to league average than to his past observed performance. ZiPS overall rest-of-season projection for Francoeur is a .311 wOBA, which is pretty useless for a corner outfielder who isn’t exceptional defensively. Applying the split estimate to that figure gives us an projected wOBA of .304 versus RHP, and .330 versus LHP — terrible versus RHP and a bit above average versus LHP. Murphy’s ZiPS RoS wOBA is .344, and his estimated splits are .319 wOBA vs. LHP, .353 vs. RHP. *

* I realize that the ZiPS RoS projections currently assume Francoeur playing in the Mets’ pitcher-friendly park and Murphy playing in the Rangers’ hitters’ paradise. There isn’t a simple way of working around that, so I’ll simply note a) the park differences aren’t as big as one might think, especially over the few games left in the season (in terms of run values), and b) they are somewhat offset by the AL’s superior pitching.

Over a full season of 700 PAs, the difference between Francoeur’s .330 vs. LHP and Murphy’s .319 is about six runs. Of course, there isn’t a full season left, but about a fifth of a season — so it’s one or two runs over 140-150 PA. But even that is too much, since Francoeur would be the lesser part of a platoon. Assuming one third of the PAs go to the right-handed batter, the expected offensive difference between Murphy alone and a Francoeur/Murphy platoon would be less than a run over the remainder of the season. Yes, they’ll have Francoeur in the playoffs, but that’s (at most) 19 games. The expected difference is miniscule.

From the standpoint of creating a productive platoon, Francoeur’s expected platoon skill isn’t enough to overcome his overall lousiness at the plate, and can’t reasonably be expected to make much of a difference over the remainder of the season over just playing Murphy. If an injury does occur to one of the starters, forcing a backup into a full-time role, then Francoeur will have to face right-handed pitching. In that case the Rangers would be better off playing Julio Borbon (superior defense) and keeping the recently-designated Brandon Boggs around as depth.

It might not be a total wash. Francoeur might get a big hit in the playoffs and that, combined with his apparent ability to charm the press corps, will lead to some indignant newpaper columns when he gets non-tendered in the off-season. Fun for everyone!

I’m not sure who started it (perhaps Rany Jazayerli?), but a few years ago many internet writers began to call Gregg Zaun the Practically Perfect Backup Catcher. However, as people looked more closely. they began to realize that a catcher who was close to league average offensively (Zaun has a career 94 wRC+) and non-horrible defensively would actually make a Pretty Good Starting Catcher. The Toronto Blue Jays noticed and were the only team to really give Zaun a full season of playing time in 2005. By that time, Zaun was in his mid-30s, durability issues started to set in, and he’s never seen that much playing time again. However, the nerdosphere’s like affair with Zaun continued, and although he’s been more of a half-time player since then, he’s hit well enough to be an above average player (relative to his playing time).

Zaun’s 2010 with the Brewers ended early due to injury, and it’s an open question whether he’ll come back for his age 40 season in 2011. But there may be a new candidate to take up his role: Atlanta’s David Ross. Of course, barring unforeseen circumstances befalling Brian McCann, it makes sense that Ross isn’t going to be a starter in for the Braves any time soon. Despite his backup role, however, it seems to me that he could ably start for someone.

Ross has a good defensive reputation, and both DRS and TotalZone rate him as above-average. But let’s leave that aside and focus on his bat. We know that that most catchers don’t hit well. One of the handy things about wOBA is that it is just linear weights in rate-stat form, so we can convert it to runs above/below average. At FanGraphs, the full-season positional adjustment for catcher is +12.5 runs. So prorated 700 PA, to be average a catcher has to be worth -12.5 runs or better to be average or better (assuming average defense). In the 2010 run environment (.322 league average wOBA), that means a defensively-average catcher with about a .300 wOBA will be league average.

How does Ross stack up? Over the last three seasons (2008-present), he has a .349 wOBA (.249/.369/.421), which clearly puts him above the .300 “average line” we set above, as well as better than many starters over the same period, some of are rightly considered to be good players: Russell Martin (.324), Carlos Ruiz (.323), Yadier Molina (.319), and Kurt Suzuki (.315). While Ross’s 2009 power outburst (.234 ISO) was likely far above his true talent, and he’s probably had a fair bit of BABIP luck the last two season (.341 BABIP in both 2009 and 2010 so far), Ross has also thrived on an very good walk rate (15.1% from 2008-present) due to his consistent ability to lay off pitches outside the strike zone. Of course, there’s a sample size issue here, as Ross hasn’t even had 500 plate appearances total the last three seasons. A good bit of regression (particularly for BABIP) is called for here. After doing so, ZiPS RoS projects Ross’s current true talent as a .322 wOBA hitter — about MLB average, which, as a catcher makes him an above-average player.

In a league where Bengie Molina and Jason Kendall have full-time jobs, one wonders why more teams didn’t offer Ross a bit more money and playing time when he was last a free agent. His .286 wOBA in 2007 probably didn’t help, and perhaps teams felt he couldn’t handle even a half-time workload. However, in 2006 he played almost as much and had a .386 wOBA. Whatever the case may be, we probably won’t get to see what Ross could do with more playing time. Not only is he playing behind McCann, but the Braves have Ross locked up through 2012 at a bit more than $1.5 million a year — a bargain given that Ross still been delivering them about a win a season in less than 200 PAs. If McCann does go down for a while, Atlanta knows they won’t suffer too much in the hands of the new Practically Perfect Backup Catcher Who Could Probably Be Starting Somewhere.

Brad Hawpe, who cleared waivers after recently being designated for assignment by the Rockies, has reportedly been signed by the Tampa Bay Rays. The Rays are currently deadlocked with the Yankees for first place in the American League East, and designated hitter is one spot were they could use some help. The Rays have struggled to get decent production from the DH spot all season: Pat Burrell disappointed before finally being let go earlier this season, while Willy Aybar, Hank Blalock (remember him?) and, most recently, Dan Johnson all hitting poorly in the chances they were given.

Hawpe was primarily a right fielder in Colorado, but advanced metrics saw him as awful out there, perhaps the worst in the game. Moreover, the Rays are set with Carl Crawford in left, and a combination of Ben Zobrist, Matt Joyce, and Gabe Kapler in right. I guess Hawpe could always play center if B.J. Upton gets into “trouble” again, that would be fun!

Hawpe can probably still hit, assuming his injury issues from earlier this season aren’t bothering him. Yes, his .255/.343/.432 2010 line (.336 wOBA, 101 wRC+) in what is still probably the most favorable home park to hitters in the majors is less than impressive for a DH, but Hawpe did hit very well in full-time play the four seasons previous, posting wRC+s of 120, 130, 126, and 130 from 2006-2009 respectively. His ZiPS RoS projection for the rest of the season is for a .382 wOBA. That assumes he’ll still be in Colorado the rest of the season, but after (crudely) knocking off about about 10 points of wOBA for the change in parks and another 10 for moving to the AL, he’s still at around .360.

Willy Aybar and Dan Johnson have been sharing the Rays DH spot lately. Aybar is having a down year (.297 wOBA), as well , but has been a useful bat in previous seasons and is also a helpful right-handed backup at first and third. His ZiPS ROS is only .323, which suggests he’s best deployed as productive lesser half of a DH platoon with Hawpe. Johnson is a bit more interesting. Johnson first came to the Rays in 2008, and while he was already 28, the .425 wOBA (in 486 PA) he put up in AAA was still impressive. After spending 2009 playing in Japan, Johnson re-signed with the Rays for 2010, and again raked in AAA with a .445 wOBA in 426 PA. However, upon getting his call to the majors, Johnson has been pretty bad in 59 PA, with only a .295 wOBA. ZiPS RoS is not impressed, seeing only a .304 wOBA from Johnson the rest of the way. So if Johnson is the one who gets the axe in favor of Hawpe, that would be understandable given these projections.

CHONE’s August update, which takes into account current-season minor league numbers (I don’t think ZiPS RoS takes 2010 minor league numbers into account) paints a different picture, however. CHONE’s “R150” column is park- and league-neutral offensive linear weights above average per 150 games. CHONE projects Hawpe as a +5/150 true talent hitter, while Johnson, likely on the strength of his minor league performance, is projected at +17/150. So on one hand, one has ZiPS’ translations of Johnson’s minor league numbers from previous seasons and his meager (almost irrelevant) major league results from 2010, and on the other, CHONE’s translations of his minor league numbers including this season giving drastically different results. Both CHONE and ZiPS are excellent projection systems, but this enters into the tricky and much-debated ground of minor league translations, which is an issue beyond the space to pursue here.

Rather than “choosing” between projection systems, my inclination (assuming that Johnson is out), is to say that the Rays are probably making the right choice given their situation: neck-and-neck with the Yankees and with the Red Sox not completely out of the Wild Card picture. They have good reason to think Hawpe can still hit fairly well, while Johnson is a wild card given the uncertainty involved in projections based on minor league performance. The Rays’ scouts might also have seen some things in Johnson that concerned them. The Rays are probably only on the hook for about $100,000 for Hawpe over the rest of the season, so even though it’s probably only a few runs difference at most the move seems like a smart one for Tampa Bay given what is at stake. As Jonah Keri would say, it’s about the extra 2%.

Having said that, here’s hoping Dan Johnson gets a fair opportunity (i.e., at least a couple hundred PAs) in the major leagues somewhere soon. In a league in which Mark Kotsay was part of a DH platoon, he surely deserves it.

One of Friedrich Nietzsche’s many frequently quoted lines comes from a posthumously published notebook: “Nihilism stands at the door: whence comes this uncanniest of all guests?” Whatever one makes of this in relation to Nietzsche’s thoughts on modernity, etc., the occasional gloss on the translation of “uncanniest” as “most unwelcome” brings to mind nothing more (for me, at least) than the Giants acquisition of Cody Ross from the Marlins via waivers, an acquisition which might understandably lead some to begin speculating that former Nationals and Reds GM and legendary outfielderophile Jim Bowden is working as a consultant for San Francisco GM Brian Sabean.

It has been speculated that the Giants put a claim in on Ross to prevent divisional rival San Diego from filling their own need at center field in the wake of Tony Gwynn, Jr.‘s injury. However, as Rob Neyer rightly points out, the Giants are far enough behind the Padres at this point in the season that they should be less focused on the division than on the wildcard. Moreover, with Andres Torres taking the bulk of Aaron Rowand’s playing time in center field away, Pat Burrell filling the Mark DeRosa-sized hole in left field, and Jose Guillen coming over from the Royals in a waiver trade, the Giants seem to have really put themselves in a playing-time bind. This is particularly so because other than Torres (the only clearly good player of the bunch), all of the above-mentioned outfielders hit right-handed, which makes getting some sort of platoon system out of all these players problematic.

It isn’t clear at the moment exactly how the Giants intend to deal with the playing time situation. Still, although the move is initially puzzling, it is defensible. In purely monetary terms, Ross will cost them about a million dollars over the remainder of the season, but that isn’t too much given that the Giants are still in the running for the playoffs and the marginal value of a win is higher than usual for them.

While Andres Torres has shown that he should be getting all the starts he can handle in center (I’ll leave aside the disastrous Aaron Rowand situation for the sake of space), there’s plenty of room for Ross to play on the corners. They are currently manned by Pat Burrell and Jose Guillen, two players DFAed by the Rays and Royals, respectively, earlier this season. Burrell has hit well (.380 wOBA) in his 220 PA with the Giants, but FanGraphs readers should know by now that simply looking at a player’s current-season statistics isn’t a wise way to project future performance. ZiPS Rest-of-Season projection sees Burrell as a .350 wOBA hitter for the rest of 2010. Jose Guillen started the season with a bit of a bounceback in Kansas City, but to the surprise of almost no one, receded into mediocrity, and is projected for a .327 wOBA by ZiPS for the remainder of 2010. Ross, on the other hand, despite having a down (.319 wOBA) year in 2010, is younger and coming off of two decent seasons in 2008 and 2009, and ZiPS sees him as a .340 wOBA hitter going forward.

Even if one doesn’t think Ross offers much offensively, few would doubt that Ross might get to a few more balls in the outfield than the other two. Burrell and Guillen were primarily DHs in their recent time it the AL, while Ross spent more time in center than right, which should tell us something about what their respective teams thought of their defensive abilities. The statistics support this, and my projections have Ross as about 15 runs better in the field over either Burrell or Guillen over a full season, which at least makes up the offensive difference between Ross and Burrell, and making Ross the clear choice over Guillen.

One remaining factor in all this is that Ross is still eligible for arbitration for 2011 if the Giants want to keep him around. Whether or not he would be worth his likely arbitration number is open to question (even with the thin 2011 class of free agent outfielders), of course, but it’s worth noting. In any case, despite the Giants; uncanny scouring of the waiver wire for outfielders, it seems that the acquisition of Ross gives them more than nothing.

When the “rebuilding” San Diego Padres started 2010 well, most thought they wouldn’t stick. However, with with less than fifty games to go, the Padres are still in first place in the National League West. Predictably, various explanations have been given for this, and talk of how they are “staying within themselves” and being “consistent” is cropping up, as in this recent entry by Buster Olney (Insider) quoting a scout to the effect that the Padres don’t have a very good offense outside of Adrian Gonzalez, but are winning more due to their willingness to move guys over and play their “roles” in an intelligent way to maximize their plate appearances.

It is probably true that the Padres are outplaying their “true talent” to an extent, but teams and individuals overperform and underperform their true talent all the time. What is more interesting is the implication that the Padres are getting “more bang for their buck” offensively by doing the “little things” that just help a team win. My interest is not in taking Olney or the scout he quoted to task. Rather, I want to see if the numbers bear out the idea that the Padres are getting more wins out of their offense than they “should” because of their execution, because of the “little things.”

The “little things” are often brought up in reference to teams who outperform their run differential, e.g., some recent Angels teams. The first thing to note about the Padres, however, is that they are not outplaying their Pythagorean expectation: they are actually two wins under what their run differential suggests. So one could argue on that basis alone that the Padres are being “inefficent” in their wins.

But that does not specifically address whether their offense has generated more wins than they “should.” This implies that the Padres have a poor offense. At first glance, one would say “yes,” as the Padres’ team wOBA of .311 (43 linear weights runs [a.k.a. wRAA] below average) is the among the worst in baseball. However, that needs to be understood in context. The Padres have one of the most hitter-unfriendly home parks in the major leagues. In addition, runs above/below average is baselined against all of the MLB, and includes pitchers hitting. To get a better picture, let’s use the park-adjusted linear weights runs from the team value pages and compare to the rest of the NL. In this light, we see that the Padres’ offense is actually four runs above average, and the only team in the NL West above average. So the Padres’ offense has been one of the better in the NL, and the picture of a team miraculously scraping out runs with inferior hitters is already a bit distorting.

Still, even if the Padres offense has been good, is it doing things to deliver more wins than than traditional linear weights measures?

One way of trying to quantify this is to measure their traditional “context-free” linear weights (wRAA, Batting Runs, etc.) against the difference in run expectancy based on base-out state, as I discuss for individuals here. In short, we can subtract a team’s traditional linear weights (“Batting”) from their RE24 to see how much run value is added by hitting “to the context.” Doing this for the Padres (35.84 RE24 – 4.2 Batting) gives a “situational” added value of about 36 runs, which is obviously good.

However, if we’re going to emphasize “context” when discussing a situational hitting, shouldn’t we go all the way, and include not just base/out state, but inning and overall game situation? This is what WPA/LI does. For more detailed explanation of the following, click here, but a brief example can illuminate the difference. Take the following situation: tie game, bottom of the ninth inning, bases loaded, two outs. In this situation, wRAA and RE24 consider a walk and a home run to have very different linear weights values, whereas for WPA/LI it has the same, since it adjusts linear weights to game-state contexts. So if we subtract traditional linear weights (converted to a wins scale) from that, we see how many contextual wins they’ve added beyond the average value of events. And when we do this for the 2010 Padres, we get -0.79 wins. In other words, their offense has actually helped their team win fewer games than one would expect by just looking at the events out of context.

The 2010 Padres are a good team. Their pitching (particularly in relief) has been very good, although that praise should be tempered for the same reasons that we should realize that their offense has actually been better than one might think: the park. They also have been excellent in the field. Those are the reasons that should be given for their success this season. I don’t know whether or not the “little things” stat used above represents a repeatable skill, but whatever the case may be, it is not true that the Padres are getting more wins for less offense.

The Toronto Blue Jays have had a fun year for a team many picked to be among the worst in baseball before the season started — a short burst of pseudo-contention to start the season, tons of home runs, and they are still above .500. However, given where the team is at in the “success cycle,” most assumed that before the deadline they’d trade away some of their veteran relievers who will be free agents after the season: Jason Frasor, Scott Downs, and Kevin Gregg (the Jays hold a club option on Gregg). Surprisingly, all three relievers are still with the team. Jayson Stark reports that Toronto GM Alex Anthopoulos decided that relative the offers they were getting for these pitchers, Toronto would be better off offering the relievers arbitration (which Anthopolous is confident they’ll turn down) and getting compensation draft picks in return.

In the cited article, Anthopolous sounds confident that the relievers would turn down arbitration if it was offered to them, thus netting the Jays compensation picks if they were signed by another team. Assuming that the Jays would have made a fair trade for both sides, and the players will turn down arbitration, is Anthopolous right that the draft picks are likely to be worth more than the prospects in return? My seven longtime readers will know I’m about to refer to Victor Wang’s research on the trade value of prospects and draft pick compensation as summarize by Sky Kalkman. The average surplus value of Type A compensation picks (meaning this takes into account the average of all the players who “made it” and “busted”) is around six million dollars. The average value for Type B picks is about three million dollars. How does that compare to what the relievers would have brought back in a fair trade?*

* Calculating pitcher WAR is a bit involved, so I won’t be going through each step (see Dave Cameron’s primer here), I’ll simply cite each Pitchers ZiPS RoS FIP and then their projected “true talent” WAR assume that.

Gregg, who is currently projected to be a Type B free agent in the offseason (assuming the Jays decline his option) has a ZiPS RoS FIP of 4.01. Over a full “relief season” of about 65 innings and with decent “setup” leverage, that’s not quite a 0.5 WAR player, or at best about $2.5M worth of value over a full season. Gregg is getting paid $2M this season, and has a $750,000 buyout on his contract (all quoted salaries are according to Cot’s). Assuming the Jays didn’t throw any money in, there really isn’t any surplus value to be had here, so they shouldn’t have received any prospect of note. The draft pick would certainly be better, although I must say that Gregg would be crazy to turn down arbitration of the Jays offered it to him.

Jason Frasor has a ZiPS RoS projected FIP of 3.22, which comes to between 1 and 1.5 WAR over a full season, or between four and six million sollars of value. His 2010 salary is $2.65 million. Over a the half-season after the deadline, a team would project to get (again assuming the Jays don’t send any money along) between about one or two million dollars in surplus value. Frasor also projects as a Type B free agent (with a projected value of three million on the compensation picks), so so even at best the C prospect the Jays would get in a fair trade wouldn’t be as potentially valuable as the compensation pick.

Scott Downs is even more interesting, as he looks as if he will qualify for Type A status. (I highly recommend reading Mike Axisa’s piece on the implications of Type A status for Down’s free agent prospects). Downs actually doesn’t project as that much better than Frasor (both are good relievers): 3.17 FIP, between 1 and 1.5 WAR over a full season. Downs is making four million dollars this season, however, so he actually had less surplus value than Frasor. Over half a season, that’s probably one million dollars of surplus at most, which Wang shows to be about the value of a younger C propsect, and not worth nearly as much as even Type B compensation, and certainly not Type A compensation (as Axisa discusses, the Jays will still get a decent pick the team that signs Downs doesn’t have to give up a first rounder).

On this rough outline, it appears that the Blue Jays are making the right choice. The picks project as more valuable the Jays would have received in fair trade return. That’s a good sign for Jays fans. It might also show that the league is getting smarter about what they are willing to give up for half a season of a reliever.

The Orioles have had a nightmare season (to put it mildly). Their off-season moves were not particularly brilliant, but given the young talent on the team — as well as on the farm — there were reasons for optimism. Prior to the season, I wrote about the enviable collection of outfielders the Orioles had assembled: Nick Markakis, Adam Jones, Nolan Reimold, Felix Pie, and Luke Scott. It seemed that Scott was likely to go. Little did anyone suspect that midway through August, Scott would not only still be on the Orioles, but be perhaps the team’s most valuable position player.

Given that Scott is 32 years old, heading into his third year of arbitration in 2010, and that the Orioles are a mess, one has to wonder why he’s still around. Sure, his trade value was probably hurt by his dreadful April but it was to be expected that he’d pull out of it, as he did with a May that was as monstrous as his April was terrible. While Scott’s current .396 wOBA is almost certainly far above his true talent, ZiPS RoS projects a .369 wOBA (.267/.345/.504) for Scott for the rest of the season. Even has a full-time DH, over a full season that would make him about a 2.5 WAR player in the current run environment. Moreover, Scott was a actually a pretty decent outfielder who was pushed to DH and 1B more because of the Orioles’ crowded outfield situation. One could make an argument for Scott currently being a 3.0 WAR player.

I suppose that some will say that I’ve answered my own question: Scott is still in Baltimore because he’s good. Funny thing about that, though… when it comes time to acknowledge that a fire sale is in order, we fans often start by saying that the team needs to get rid of its bad players who clearly aren’t helping the team, like, say, Miguel Tejada. However, if a team in a bad state actually wants to get a decent return, it is going to have to give up something of value. And in the case of Scott, they have something of value… at least to other teams. Scott is in his second arbitration year, and making about four million dollars. He is team controlled for both 2011 and 2012; my guess is that he will get somewhere between six and eight million dollars for 2011 if he goes to arbitration in the upcoming offseason. That’s still a very good deal for the team if we think he’ll be at least a 2 WAR (probably more like a 2.5 WAR) player in 2011. Adding in the surplus value he has for the remainder of the season, the Orioles could have expected at least a B prospect back, or a combination of lesser prospects. While Scott is currently good, by the time the Orioles might be good again, he probably won’t be — and the prospects might.

Different teams were, of course, rumored to be interested in Scott at the deadline (I’m not sure if he’s cleared waivers or not for a potential August trade). Perhaps the Orioles simply didn’t receive an offer to make it worth their time — Scott is worth more than a couple of fringe prospects, a la Scott Podsednik (and the Dodgers could certainly use Scott — Luke, that is). One has to wonder if Scott wasn’t a bit overlooked. For example, he would be a good alternative for a team that can’t pry Adam Dunn loose from the Nationals. Scott isn’t the hitter Dunn is, but with 50 or so games left, it isn’t that big a difference, Scott can play the outfield, and he’s under team control for 2011.

It is very possible that a good match for either side could not be found. Maybe the teams with the right prospects for Scott don’t need an LF/DH, maybe the contenders that could use him don’t have the the prospects. However, given Scott’s abilities and likely surplus value in 2011 as well as 2010, it’s hard to think that there isn’t some fitting trade partner out there, and thus wonder what Scott is still doing in Charm City.

With first baseman Kevin Youkilis out for the the season, the Boston Red Sox have been giving Mike Lowell starts at first base. Lowell hasn’t hit well this season (.300 wOBA so far). However, it has only been a bit over 100 plate appearances, and ZiPS RoS projects him for a .335 over the rest of the season. That is a far cry from what Youkilis had been producing (.419 wOBA) or was projected by ZiPS to produce over the rest of the season (.399 wOBA). Assuming 200 PA over the rest of the season (leaving aside the relatively minor difference in PA given their likely batting order placement), the difference between Youkilis and Lowell over these last 50 games or so would be about 10-11 runs, or about one win. (Youkilis is also defensively superior at first base, although over 50 games it’s probably only a couple of runs.) With the Red Sox still not out of the hunt for the playoffs with less than a third of the season to go, the difference is significant.

Boston has been giving catcher Victor Martinez occasional starts at first, but recently signed former Blue Jay, Marlin, and Met first baseman Carlos Delgado to a minor league deal with hopes he can help the team soon. The underrated-in-his-prime Delgado was unsigned in the off-season and spent the first part of the season rehabbing from off-season hip surgery. He doesn’t have a ZiPS RoS projection given that he hasn’t played in the majors yet this season. Given his layoff and rehab issues, I think it’s fair to use his CHONE pre-season projection of .337 wOBA true talent (ZiPS projected .364 prior to the season), which, his poor defense at first base aside, would make him about as valuable offensively as Lowell over the rest of the season assuming he could start right away — about a win or more worse than Youkilis.

A wOBA in the mid-.330s for a first baseman is not very good. However, with two players like Lowell and Delgado, a platoon is a good idea (at the moment, I’m not sure what the Red Sox plan on doing). As I discussed earlier this year in a Book-inspired post, one can’t just apply observed splits to players, one has to regress them against league average, etc., to get a useful platoon skill estimate. In a different post, I actually used Delgado as an example. Delgado’s larger-than-average splits actually make him more useful in a platoon role than players with smaller splits. Based on his .337 CHONE projection, I estimated Delgado’s true talent versus right-handed pitchers to be .352 wOBA. There is less variation (and a smaller split) among right-handed hitters with regard to platoon skill, but Lowell’s estimated skill vs. LHP is about the same as Delgado’s versus RHP: .351 wOBA.

Over a full season (700 PA), a Lowell/Delgado platoon is worth between nine and ten runs more than either one of individually — one win. Over the remainder of the season, of course, it’s only worth about 3 runs more than either one of them individually. It isn’t much of a difference over the last 50 games relative to the loss of an underrated superstar like Youkilis, but with the Red Sox not completely out of it yet, platooning Delgado (if he is ready to play) with Lowell at first would be a smart move.