As you’ve almost certainly read by now, former Arizona outfielder Eric Byrnes signed with the Mariners this past Friday after having been previously released by the Diamondbacks. There’s plenty to read about Byrnes’ current abilities (for example here, here, here, and my favorite here). Briefly: he’s an oft-injured 34-year old outfielder with a bad bat and a good glove. He’s probably 0-0.5 WAR, but at the league minimum, it’s a virtually risk-free signing.

What is more interesting is that the Diamondbacks are still on the hook for almost $11 million dollars of the last year of the three-year, $30 million dollar contract to which they signed Byrnes in 2007. During Byrnes’ disastrous, injury-plagued 2008 and 2009 seasons, many a snide comment about “grit” and “veteran leadership” was made about Arizona’s decision to lock up a corner outfielder in his early 30s during a “career year,” especially since they then traded Carlos Quentin, who immediately started mashing for the White Sox.

It is easy (and fun!) to mock a decision after it has obviously turned out badly. The more interesting question is how the contract looked when it was signed — hence my occasional series of “Contract Retrospectives.” Step into the time machine…

We all remember where we were when we heard heard the big news: Rosie O’Donnell was forced off of The View. But that shouldn’t overshadow other happenings from 2007: The Phoenix spacecraft left for Mar’s North Pole. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released, inspiring millions of children all over the world to read and have terrible literary taste. Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry” made us all wonder if we would be better off dead. And on August 7, Barry Bonds, ever the narcissist, hit home run number 756, deliberately overshadowing Byrnes’ contract signing on the same day.

What were the Diamondbacks paying for? The market was very different “back in the day.” During the 2007-08 offseason (Byrnes contract was for 2008-2010), the estimated market price for a win above replacement was about $4.4 million. Figure in 10% annual salary inflation and a half-a-win a season expected decline, and one gets this chart. Looking across the top row of the chart for years and and then down for closest figure to Byrnes’ contract, you will see that 3 years, $28.7 implies a 2.5 WAR player for 2008. Add in the $400,000 per year league minimum (“replacement salary”), and you have a nearly perfect match with Byrnes’ contract.

Was 2.5 WAR a reasonable expectation? From the standpoint of 2007 (it’s difficult to split up the season for “retrojections”), from 2004-2007 Byrnes had put up WARs of 3.4, 0.6, 3.3, and 4.0. The four year average is about 2.8, and the three year average is about 2.4. So Arizona wasn’t (necessarily) sucked in by Byrnes’ 2007 performance. Let’s break things down a bit more precisely.

In past installments, I’ve done my own, deliberately crude “retrojection.” This time I’ve utilized archived projections from CHONE, ZiPS, and everyone’s favorite monkey, Marcel. Converting Byrnes’ projected 2008 lines to the appropriate linear weights, over a full season (700 PA), CHONE projected +16 runs, ZiPS projected +14 runs, and Marcel (ever the pessimist) projected +5 runs. The simple average is about +12 runs. Arizona’s ballpark is very hitter-friendly, so the adjusted value of those projections is about +7/700 PA.

Fielding is more complicated, since Byrnes played multiple positions. Fortunately, the adjustments for CF(2.5) and RF/LF (-7.5) is meant to reflect the relative difficulty of the positions. Thus, I simply added Byrnes’ UZR fielding runs to his positional adjustment for each season to get a “position neutral” fielding rating. After weighting, regressing, and adjusting for age, the projected 2008 position-neutral defensive value for Byrnes is +3 runs (i.e., average in CF, +10 on the corners).

Putting it altogether: +7 offense +3 fielding + 20 NL replacement level = 3 WAR times 85% playing time = 2.6 WAR. Pretty much right on the money.The Quentin issue aside (and it isn’t has if he had torn it up prior to the trade), perhaps one can quibble over details such as the no-trade clause. Still, while the contract looks bad now, it was right in line with the market at the time it was signed.

“Overrated” and “underrated” are overused terms in the blogosphere, particularly the sports blogosphere. Thank goodness I never fall into the trap of using them. But hey, it’s Friday, I can loosen the tie a bit.

What makes a baseball player underrated? It can be a number of things: not playing for a contender, not playing in a big market, not being verbose with the media, and, of course, not having skills that are commonly remarked upon. While I don’t know about Kurt Suzuki’s clubhouse witticisms one way or the other (one interview can be found here), I do know that he seems to meet the rest of the requirements.

Oakland has neither contended nor had excess national media coverage since Suzuki became their full-time catcher following Jason Kendall’s trade to the Cubs during the 2007 season. Given the As’ recent performances, Suzuki might seem to be just another cog in the machine of the seemingly endless (to casual observers, anyway) rebuilding process in Oakland. But the whole point of an “underrated” post is to show that he isn’t just another player. Suzuki isn’t just another player. But to see this, one has to look a bit more closely than usual.

Offensively, Suzuki has been just slightly below average over his major league career with a 97 wRC+. CHONE has him slightly better than that at 99 wRC+, and the other projection systems see him as about the same. That may not be too inspiring, but one has to keep in mind that Suzuki is a catcher, and not many catchers can produce near-league average offense. Combined with his ability to play almost 150 games a season, in each of the last two seasons, Suzuki has been around three Wins Above Replacement. Not bad for a pre-arbitration player.

But wait, there’s more! While catchers like Mike Napoli and Jorge Posada have superior bats to Suzuki, not only do they play fewer games at catcher than Suzuki, they also have poor gloves. While FanGraphs doesn’t have catcher defense (yet), there are some sources for it. Rally’s Wins Above Replacement has Suzuki at +11 defensively in 2008, and +1 in 2009 (which matches my 2009 figure). That bumps his 2009 figure just slightly, but makes him about a 4 win player in 2008. CHONE projects Suzuki at +3 defensively for 2010.

Adding it all together, one gets a 3+ win player, which is about how the Fans have him projected. This again illustrates how valuable a player’s pre-arbitration seasons are to a team, and again, as I wrote earlier this week, it is particularly clear this off-season in light of the contracts recently given to below-average veteran catchers. While the As’ crazy-range outfield may get the bulk of the publicity, Suzuki is just as important to a team that might sneak up on their competitors in AL West in 2010.

Then again, if 42 fans understand how good Kurt Suzuki is, how underrated can he be?

Reportedly, Carlos Ruiz has resigned with the Phillies for three years and nine million dollars, which covers his remaining years of arbitration. Since these are arbitration years, figuring out what the Phillies are paying for isn’t as straightforward as in a free agent signing. The standard way of accounting for arbitration years is to assume that the team will be paying 40, 60, and 80 percent of the player’s actual value. So, spreading the contract evenly over three years and dividing the three million dollar annual salary by 40, 60, and 80%, the “real value” of the contract is about $16.3 million. While earlier in the off-season I assumed something like $4-$4.4 million a win, the market has been settling at closer to $3.5 million. Assuming slight yearly salary inflation and a half-win-a-season decline, the Philadelphia is paying Ruiz as if he’s 1.8 WAR player for 2010. Let’s see if Ruiz stacks up.

Offensively, Ruiz had a good 2009, especially for a catcher, hitting .255/.355/.425 for a .337 wOBA. That was by far his best recent year; Ruiz had a .319 wOBA in 2007 and .279 wOBA in 2008. Moreover, despite this being the first year he was elgible for arbitration, Ruiz just turned 31, an age at which most players are pretty clearly on the decline slope, even if they aren’t dealing with the wear-and-tear of catching. CHONE projects Ruiz for .255/.337/.401, or 8 runs below average per 150 games in context-neutral linear weight, while on his FanGraphs player page you get his nominal linear weights (wOBA/wRAA) at a bit below average (.327 wOBA). ZiPS is less optimistic: .251/.341/.391, which I translate to .324 wOBA, about -2/150. Marcel says: .313 wOBA, -8/150. The fans are the most optimistic: .259/.358/.401, .333 wOBA, +3/150. And, just for the heck of it, my own “system” (I’m wavering between FREDO, GOB, and DAYTON) agrees with Marcel: .313 wOBA, -8/150. That’s a lot of messy numbers! Let’s take something in the middle and call Ruiz a -4/150 hitter.

Defensively, the Fans Scouting Report had Ruiz as one of the better catchers in 2009, and my own defensive rankings of 2009 catchers also place him near the top at +5.4 runs. CHONE and the Fans both project Ruiz for about +3/150 in 2010.

A proper WAR estimate involves playing time. While most of the linear weights/runs figures I’ve given above are prorated for 150 games, Ruiz is a catcher, he’s 31, and he’s never played more than 117 games in a season. The Fan Projections are particularly useful for this, and have Ruiz projected for 108 games in 2010.

Putting it together, -4 offense, +3 defense, +12 prorated positional adjustment, +20 replacement level, all prorated for 108 games = about a 2.2 WAR player. As we saw above, the Phillies are paying for a 1.8 WAR player, so they got a bit of a bargain, although not as much of a bargain as I initially thought it might be.

Ruiz isn’t Brian McCann or Joe Mauer. Still, while taking arbitration into account lessens the bargain the Phillies are getting, given what teams have been paying for the likes of Bengie Molina, Jason Kendall, and Ivan Rodriguez this offseason, it again illustrates the advantage clubs accrue when they have “merely” average-ish players under club control.

Earlier this week, I discussed the Three True Outcomes leaders for 2007-2009. Briefly, the “Three True Outcomes” are the walk, the strikeout, and the home run, since they reflect the batter-pitcher relationship without the interference of defense, batted ball luck, and the like. While Three True Outcomes masters like Jack Cust, Adam Dunn, and Carlos Pena are rightly revered, and all the players on that list are or have been good hitters, the players on the other end of the list — those who, over the last three seasons, have the fewest percentage of true outcomes — are a more diverse group. Some baseball fans (and executives) might even prefer this kind of hitter, as they “put more pressure on the defense” by putting the ball in play more often.

Without further ado, here are the give leading “pressurizers” of 2007-2009, ranked from the one with the highest amount of true outcomes to the lowest.

5. Ichiro Suzuki
TTO%: 15.4
TTO: 328
PA-iBB: 2123
HR: 23
uBB:92
SO: 213

No big surprise here. Ichiro’s gotta get old eventually, but he keeps hovering around 5 WAR. Ichiro’s ridiculous BABIP skills make him one of those guys that give projection systems all sorts of problems. Royals fans are hoping Rick Ankiel magically turns out to be like that, too. He’s super-duper fast like Ichiro, right?

4. Miguel Tejada
TTO%: 15.3
TTO: 289
PA-iBB: 1894
HR: 45
uBB: 69
SO: 175

Now here’s a guy who aged quickly (thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week). Tejada was signed as a free agent by Baltimore and had an outstanding first season there in 2004 both at the plate (+30) and in the field (+8 defense at shortstop). He was never as good as that again, and was predictably offloaded to the Astros after the 2007 season. He’s still got value, and his price will probably be right for a team that needs to fill a gap at third base.

3. Placido Polanco
TTO%: 12.7
TTO: 247
PA-iBB: 1939
HR: 27
uBB: 101
SO: 119

Polanco, one of the more underrated players in baseball during his prime, shows that the three true outcomes aren’t everything. Case in point: Player A has 21.0 WAR during the “FanGraphs Era.” Player B has 28.1. Player B is Placido Polanco. Who is Player A?

Click here for the answer.

2. Yuniesky Betancourt
TTO%: 12.5
TTO: 206
PA-iBB: 1654
HR: 22
uBB: 50
SO: 134

There isn’t much to say here other than to update what I wrote about this time last year: If anyone knows why it’s important to put pressure on the defense, it’s a shortstop who put up a -21 season in the field in 2009.

1. Juan Pierre
TTO%: 10.7
TTO: 167
PA-iBB: 1556
HR: 1
uBB:78
SO: 88

Pierre was a really good player back in 2003 and 2004 with the Marlins, and his 2006 in Chicago was good as well. Nyjer Morgan and Brett Gardner might be decent contemporary comparisons. Now, like Scott Podsednik, he’s sort of an anti-Ichiro. His (past) speed and baserunning can convince a GM that he’s an ideal candidate to be a “center fielder put in the corner who will make up for his bat with his defense.” Unfortunately, his range isn’t what it used to be, his arm can’t make up for it, and his speed is no longer adequate to sneak on base on dink hits, which means his flagging baserunnig skills also aren’t as useful as they used to be. I guess he’s in the AL Central now, so that means more games against middle infielders like, um, Yuniesky Betancourt.

In honor of these players, I leave you with last year’s Beyond the Box Score Graphs Contest Winner, which seems fitting.

Pitchers and catchers are reporting soon, and we’ve got plenty of players who need more Fan Projections! Are you keeping up your end?

Today’s projection targets are from the most neglected group of Fan Projectees: relievers.

The Rangers’ C.J. Wilson inexplicably turns up in the press fairly frequently.

The Padres’ closer, Heath Bell recently settled to avoid arbitration.

The As’ Brad Ziegler was the ground-balling surprise story of 2008, but was even better in 2009.

Click here to enter your 2010 projections for Wilson, Bell, and Ziegler.

The embattled executive liked the older performer. He’d done well for them in the past. Sure, the “critics” were getting sick of the older guy’s schtick, but the executive appreciated all that he’d done for the organization. Still, it was clearly time to move on. After all, they had a much more talented younger guy waiting in the wings as a replacement.

Once the younger guy did get his chance, onlookers (and the younger guy himself) probably thought it was a permanent arrangement. The older guy seemed resigned to his fate and was moving on. Sure, his new spot seemed like it was going to be a total disaster, but you take what you can get, and the money certainly didn’t look too bad. While some older fans might have wanted to old guy back, the younger, hipper crowd certainly understood that the younger performer was the wave of the future. Maybe the executive, who had squandered his resources so often in the past, was finally getting it.

And then, seemingly out of nowhere, the executive decided to bring the older guy back in a way that could only mean a demotion for the younger guy. And the hipper crowd was understandably up in arms. The once-proud organization quickly became a laughingstock (again).

At least NBC and Jeff Zucker could point to the ratings. What is Brian Sabean’s excuse?

While the rough analogy to the Late Night situation could apply to the Giant’ whole Ryan Garko–Adam LaRoche–Aubrey Huff fiasco, it is more apt with regard to the decision to bring catcher Bengie Molina back for a reported one-year, $4.5 million, months after Giants General Manager announced that the ‘ship has sailed‘,” thus (apparently) paving the way for the promising young catching prospect Buster Posey to be the starter in 2010. It was not to be.

It’s not as if Molina is without his uses. CHONE’s context-neutral projection for Molina is .259/.286/.419, or 15 runs below average per 150 games in context-neutral linear-weights. That seems to be the general consensus: ZiPS projects Molina at .271/.298/.424, and I have him at .259/.287/.417. The line is ugly, but not that unusual for a catcher. CHONE’s projection for Molina’s defense is also below average at -3. Altogether: -15 offense -3 defense + 12 positional adjustment +20/150 replacement = 1.4 WAR, adjusted for 130 games to account for a catcher’s playing time, we get 1.2 WAR. After removing the replacement salary (about $400,000), the contract implies about $3.5 million per marginal win, pretty much in line with the market this off-season. So, in a vacuum, this is a decent signing.

The problem is, of course, that Molina is projected to be worth the money… but only if he gets about 130 starts in 2010. And the Giants already have someone in the 11:30 slot: Buster Posey, the fifth overall pick of the 2008 draft. Based on impressive minor league performances, CHONE’s 2010 projection for Posey at is .265/.341/.402 (ZiPS has Posey roughly the same at .263/.343/.398), or -5/150. Defensively, CHONE projects him at -1. Over the same 130 games as Molina: -5 offense, -1 defense + 12 position +20/150 positional = 2.6 WAR, over 130 games that’s about 2.3 WAR.

In other words, San Francisco can get their (projected) money’s worth out of Bengie Molina, but only at the cost of giving him the majority of starts and blocking the younger, more talented, and, yes, less expensive player.

Maybe this makes sense of a level I haven’t explored: given the average age of the 2010 Giants’ starting position players, perhaps Brian Sabean simply prefers Jay Leno’s demographic.

[Authors Note Added, 7:42 p.m. EST: Thanks to the commentators below who spotted the obvious error… You all are great. Fortunately (for me) the revised standings for the top five remain almost the same. It was a simple Excel mistake on my part, silly and embarrassing. Some good came out of it: there is now a bidding war between San Francisco, Houston, Kansas City, and New York (NYN) to hire me as Head of Research and Analysis.]

The so-called Three True Outcomes are the walk, the strikeout, and the home run. They are called “true” outcomes because they reflect the pitcher-hitter relationship without the mediation of defense, luck on balls in play, etc. The celebration of three true outcome (TTO) hitters is a classic staple of sabermetric writing on the internet. In that tradition, let’s take a look at the leaders in TTO rate from 2007-2009. The pool of players are those defined as qualified over the past three calendar years by the FanGraphs leaderboards. The definition of Three True Outcome rate I’ll use is (HR+K+BB-iBB)/(PA-iBB). I’ve excluded intentional walks since they are out of the hitter’s control.

In reverse order, your top five members of the Rob Deer Fan Club from 2007-2009:

5. Jim Thome
TTO%: 47.0
TTO: 728
PA-iBB: 1549
HR: 92
uBB: 232
SO: 404

Although Thome is a sure DH-only at this point, I’m surprised his name hasn’t popped up more frequently this offseason in hot stove rumors. Thome still has something to offer, but teams seem to be more circumspect regarding the relative value of designated hitters than in the past. Moreover, it’s one thing to have old player skills, and another to simply be old.

4. Carlos Pena
TTO%: 48.0
TTO: 845
PA-iBB: 1761
HR: 116
uBB: 258
SO: 471

It bears repeating: for all the (uninformed) talk of Tampa Bay’s rapid ascent being due to years of high draft picks, smart acquisitions like that of Pena have had as much or more to do with their recent success. I’ve heard that during the 2006-2007 offseason, one of his suitors was the Kansas City Royals, and that part of the reason he didn’t sign with the Royals was that they wanted him to complete with Ryan Shealy for a starting spot.

3. Adam Dunn
TTO%: 48.4
TTO: 926
PA-iBB: 1914
HR: 118
uBB: 302
SO: 506

For all the (justified) talk of Dunn’s dreadful performance in the field, there is no doubting his offensive value. Dunn is arguably the most miscast player in baseball — he’s one of the few guys who could actually carry the DH spot, yet he’s stuck in the NL… Remember way back in 2008, when then-Blue Jays GM J. P. Ricciardi put down Dunn’s abilities, leading to general mockery and vilification of Ricciardi all over the internet? A fired up Adam Dunn responded by finishing 2008 with monstrous 1.2 WAR and following it up with an equally impressive 1.2 WAR in 2009. Interesting.

2. Mark Reynolds
TTO%: 48.5
TTO: 815
PA-iBB: 1682
HR: 89
uBB: 170
SO: 556

Reynolds may not be much of a defender on the hot corner, but he’s Adrian Beltre compared to the rest of this group. Particularly interesting in this context is that Reynolds is the only member of this group not in his 30s, and as the youngest of the five, he reflects much what we generally known about player aging: he has the most defensive skill, the lowest walk rate, the highest three-year batting average (.257), the most steals, and the highest speed score.

1. Jack Cust
TTO%: 54.4
TTO: 929
PA-iBB: 1707
HR: 84
uBB: 299
SO: 39.3

What, you were expecting Howie Kendrick? As has been said before, perhaps they should rename this category the “Three True OutCusts.” Cust outstrips even Dunn in his extremity. Cust is known for his old player skills, and his down year in 2009 did nothing to change that perception. However, CHONE projects Cust’s 2010 context-neutral runs above average per 150 games at +23, second-highest in this group to Pena’s +30. Oakland recently resigned Cust for $2.65 million guaranteed as part of their goal of fielding one Adam Dunn and eight Endy Chavezes, and if he’s anywhere close to +23 as a hitter, that will be a bargain.

Later this week: The 2007-2009 trailers

As Dave noted yesterday, Adam LaRoche’s recent deal with the Diamondbacks puts the remaining first base/DH types still on the market on notice: there aren’t many spots left, and the contracts aren’t going to get any bigger. It’s not the most “scientific” method out there, but let’s use LaRoche’s contract and projected value as a baseline for some of the 1B/DH types remaining on the market. It might be illuminating in its own way, particularly given the ambiguity in the free agent market in general this offseason.

For offensive projections, I’ll use CHONE’s context-neutral linear weights per 150 games. For defensive, I’ll use Jeff Z.’s (Jack’s long-lost cousin) UZR projections.

Starting with our “baseline”: LaRoche’s contract is reportedly $4.5 million with a $1.5 million buyout for 2011, so six million dollars guaranteed. CHONE has LaRoche as a +7/150 hitter for 2010, and defensively Jeff has him at -1/150. +7 hitter, -1 defender, -12 prorated positional adjustment for 1B, + 20 replacement level = 1.4 WAR player. Both CHONE and the Fans project LaRoche for almost 150 games. Dividing the six million guaranteed dollars by 1.4, we get about four million dollars a win.

So who are the rest of our contestants on the first base/designated hitter game of musical chairs? [To avoid repetition, simply assume -12 position and +20 replacement for each player.]

Russell Branyan: +15 hitting, average defense. Of course, if Branyan was likely to play 150 games, he would have been signed for pretty big money by now. Fan Projections have him playing 118 games; CHONE is less optimistic, projecting 103. Splitting the difference, let’s call it 110, which would mean about 1.7 WAR — the best player here. Given our “LaRochian baseline,” 1.7 WAR would cost about 1/$6.8M or one year. He might make sense for the Mets if they are serious about contention this year. They have the money and could get Branyan for one year — even 100 games of Branyan is probably worth one marginal win over Daniel Murphy at first, and with Carlos Beltran missing the first month of the season or so, the Mets will need every win they can get. I wonder what he turned down from Seattle?

Jason Giambi: +8 hitting, -6 fielding = 1 WAR, but the fans project him for 80 games, and CHONE for only 100, so he’s closer to 0.5 WAR. I’d be surprised if anyone gave him two million dollars guaranteed. His fielding stats imply that he’s better off as a DH. How many platoon DH spots are there?

Jim Thome: +11 hitting, no defense (DH-only -17), 1.4 WAR. Closer to 1 WAR after adjusting for playing time. Thome is better than Giambi, but won’t play first under any circumstances. He’s definitely near the end of the line, but I’m a bit surprised there hasn’t been more talk about him. If he’s willing to take a big pay cut (to around $4 million), Thome might actually make sense for the White Sox, unless they really think Andruw Jones is going to hit enough to DH full-time (or play in the outfield full-time while Carlos Quentin DHs, which seems unlikely).

Ryan Garko: +8 hitting, -3 fielding = 1.3 WAR. CHONE projects him for 130 games, so 1.1 WAR. LaRoche’s contract implies 4 million dollars. We’ve been over the Giants’ foolish decision to non-tender Garko before. No, Garko isn’t a star, but he’s at least a decent stopgap. At 29, he’s probably not going to fall off of a cliff. If you are surprised he projects as a better hitter than LaRoche, keep in mind that Garko has spent most of his time facing the superior pitching of the American League, while LaRoche has been (aside from a few weeks in Boston) an NL guy. Given that Garko was just going into arbitration for the first time this off-season, the team acquiring him would also have him under control for the following season. Once that is factored in, Garko might end up being the best “value deal” left on this list, and could fit into plans for a variety of teams.

Carlos Delgado: +1 hitting, -2 fielding = 0.7 WAR. Over 120 games, 0.6 WAR. I’ve always liked Delgado, but given his age and injuries, I’m not sure he’s worth it at this point unless he’s willing to take a minor league deal. Some team will probably pay him for his “veteran presence.”

Hank Blalock: -3 hitting, -2 fielding = 0.3 WAR. Do you really think Blalock’s going to play 150? Six years ago, it seemed like he and Mark Teixeira would be torching the AL West for years to come. Tex is a superstar in pinstripes, while Blalock looks like he’s done. I’d say he’ll be lucky to get a major-league deal, but you never know.

Fernando Tatis: -3 hitting, +1 fielding (TotalZone) = 0.6 WAR. Over 120 games, 0.5 WAR. Tatis has also played left field, so might be closer to a 1 WAR player. He fit on a team that needs a right-handed bench bat that can play 1B and some OF, and has been mentioned in connection with Seattle.

… because alliteration = good writing.

Just before Christmas, Mike Lowell was almost traded to the Rangers for three million dollars and Max Ramirez (a C+ Prospect according to John Sickels) . The trade didn’t go through because Lowell ended up needing thumb surgery. He is expected to be ready around Spring Training.

In any case, the trade never made much sense for the Rangers, even at the relatively minimal cost. Michael Young is set at third, and first baseman Chris Davis projects as a good hitter for 2010. I suppose Texas could have moved Davis to DH and had Lowell play first, but it isn’t clear how Lowell’s defense would translate to first base, and that ship has sailed anyway with the Rangers signing of Vladimir Guerrero to be their full-time DH.

Lowell is still a decent player. Despite his poor 2009 (in which he still produced 1.2 wins above replacement in 119 games), CHONE projects Lowell as a .273/.328/.429 hitter, or 3 runs above average per 150 games. My projection is similar: .275/.327/.451, +1/150. Lowell had the worst-fielding season of his career in 2009 according to UZR, but this has to be weighed against his excellent fieldin in the past. Jeff Z. (no relation to Jack) projects Lowell’s 2010 UZR/150 as +1/150. Rally’s TotalZone projection has him at +3/150. Naturally, playing time is a concern due to Lowell’s injury issues and age. The Fans project him for 116 games in 2010. Taking a rough average of the projections and prorating: +2 offense +2 fielding + 2 position + 20 replacement = 26 runs above replacement times 116/150 = about a 2 WAR player for 2010. Even if you bump him down to 100 games, he’s still a 1.7 WAR player.

Boston clearly wants to trade Lowell, particularly after signing Adrian Beltre. But it’s not clear who a good trade partner would be. Lowell’s age makes him a poor fit for a rebuilding team, and most potential contenders have third base filled. Even in cases where Lowell might improve a contender, even for just the three million dollars, he would need to be an upgrade big enough to make a significant difference in their win curve. For example, Texas does have a shot in the West next season, but without a place to play Lowell regularly, he probably doesn’t add enough to their significantly increase their chances of making the playoffs. So we need to look for a team that 1) is a potential 2010 contender; and 2) would get a decent upgrade by acquiring Lowell.

Last week I spent some time plugging projections into a big spreadsheet to get a crude sense of what 2010 might hold. It’s nothing definitive, of course, but is of interest here. Without going through every team and division, a possible fit for Lowell might be Minnesota. At the moment, the Twins look like the favorites to win the AL Central, but they aren’t running away with it. While the 2010 Tigers and Royals are among the worst teams in the AL, Minnesota’s “lead” over Chicago and Cleveland isn’t dominating. It’s also fair to say that the AL Wildcard will be coming out of the East. If Minnesota wants to go to the playoffs, they need to win the Central.

While there are questions around every team, Minnesota’s biggest hole at the moment appears to be third base. Perhaps they could slide Nick Punto’s terrible bat and great glove to third, but that may create another hole with the near-replacement level Alexi Casilla as a full-timer at second. At the moment, the Twins’ other options at third base are Matt Tolbert and Brendan Harris. Tolbert projects as about a -13 hitter and -4 defender — a 0.5 WAR player over a full season. Harris is better, but not much. CHONE has his bat at -5/150, I have it at -7. His glove is terrible — probably about -7/150. Harris is about a 0.8 WAR player.

Boston didn’t ask for much from Texas, and in the wake of his surgery the asking price for Lowell will be even lower this spring. The Twins are right at the spot on the win curve where even one marginal win can make a big difference, and Lowell is enough of an upgrade to give them additional marginal win (hardly trivial given the Twins situation) even if he only plays 100 games. They also have a new stadium opening this season, and, yes, probably want to impress Joe Mauer a bit. Minnesota seems like a logical landing spot for Lowell.

It’s been a crazy day. I’m busy working, writing various things. Then, because I’m a real genius when it comes to hitting “reply all,” I realized that I didn’t let people know I wanted to post, and what I wanted to write on got (rightly) taken. To top it off, there’s big happenings afoot in Rumorland that may dramatically affect the outcome of The Contest, but I don’t want to jinx it (whatever “jinxing it” would involve).

So today, I want to do something different and look at some “low reliability” offensive projections for 2010. From time to time, I reference “my” projections for a particular player. Believe me, I’m no statistical or programming guru. I simply started with Colin Wyers’ MySQL script for a Marcel-type offensive projections, then added in some tweaks for different aging curves and amounts of regression for different components. Like Marcel, it doesn’t adjust for parks or leagues or include minor-league data. Marcel isn’t intended to compete with the “big boys” (e.g., CHONE, ZiPS, PECOTA), but rather to be a baseline against which they are judged — in fact, Marcel does pretty well. I just hope I’m not doing something worse. In any case, it’s just a toy for my personal enjoyment at this point; it would take a fair bit more tweaking before I published the projections as a whole or even gave the “system” a name (although I admit having some ideas for the latter).

For each player projected, my system, like Marcel, generates a “reliability score,” which, in Tango’s words,

shows how much of the forecast is based on his performance, and how much was regression towards the mean…. [for example] Bobby Abreu shows a .87. That means that I regressed towards the mean 13%. Using that, it should be easy enough to figure out a confidence interval for each of the stats. If I show a reliability of .00, this means that it is an absolute pure guess on my part.

Generally, you want to look elsewhere than Marcel’s or my system when the reliability score is under .72 or so.

But that’s where today’s “fun “starts, because the way the projection system is set up with the Baseball Databank, if a player (pitchers are excluded) even has 1 plate appearance in last three years, it generates a projection for him. So let’s take a look at four goodies my mystery projection system has in store for in 2010. I’ll give the “three slash,” then runs created above average per 150 games, and then the reliability score for each player and some commentary. At the very least, this might provide a weird corollary to Dave Cameron’s point about regression “fixing” problems.

Morgan Ensberg, .250/.332/.408, -2/150, .505 r. I just read that he retired last spring due to lack of interest from major league teams. It’s not surprising, I guess, but I have to say that it seems like just yet yesterday he was a decent-fielding, three true outcomes machine for Houston. Then, after 2006… nothing. But my system says he’s not a bad bat if he can field decently.

Neifi Perez, .251/.315/.402, -8/150 .141 r. Perez was the return for one of the worst trades in recent history, but at least the team that got him never repeated that sort of mistake again. That’s not a bad line for a shortstop. Indeed, Neifi’s due for a career year at the plate (regression!). I mean, you wouldn’t hit him first or anything.

With the signings of Vladimir Guerrero and Jack Cust this weekend, here are two DH candidates.

Jay Gibbons, .254/.305/.403 -12/150, .412 r. Last seen playing for the Newark Bears, Gibbons, like Ensberg, retired in 2009 after being unable to find a job for a major-league team. I used to regularly take a certain well-known fantasy guru’s advice and put Gibbons on my roto team. It never worked, not even once. I was never really not sure what the guru or the Orioles saw in him. I guess he put up a decent season in 2005, and even played the outfield pretty well. But he never really seemed to have the patience or contact skills to back up his lack of defense.

Barry Bonds, .261/.410/.478, +16/150, .536 r. You had to know it was coming, right? Not bad for a man who hasn’t played the past two seasons. Perhaps you’d expect better linear weights for a guy with a .410 OBP, but keep in mind that the lwts don’t include intentional walks, which Bonds had a lot of (like Marcel, my system current projects iBBs). Still, there are plenty of teams that could use a +16 hitter at DH. I wonder how permanent that retirement is?

Until the next installment!