We have had to deal with a lot of speculation about the Rangers’ infield this off-season. It is not as if the Rangers are in trouble, they have the “problem” of a looming logjam. Shortstop super-prospect Jurickson Profar is knocking on the door. The Rangers also have Ian Kinsler at second and under contract through 2017, and Elvis Andrus, who is only 24, at shortstop and under contract through 2014. Most teams would love to have this sort of problem. This is not going to be another post about what the Rangers should do with these players. Instead, prompted by Evan Grant’s discussion of how the Rangers might want to think about a long-term extension for Andrus depending on how he plays this year, I want to look at how Andrus’ bat might develop over the next few years by looking at similar players. They are actually rather scarce, as Andrus has a rather unusual combination of skills.

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Last summer, I wrote a little post titled 2009 Was a Million Years Ago that discussed how fortunes had changed greatly for a few players over just three years. Obviously, I could not cover everything, but I really missed something by not including the Blue Jays’ Adam Lind. In 2009, Lind finally got full season of playing time in Toronto and broke out at age 25, hitting .305/.370/.562 (140 wRC+) with 35 homers. Sure, he was a lousy defender in the outfield, but his bat looked like it would be good enough going forward so that it would play anywhere. The Jays certainly thought so, and bought out the rest of his arbitration years with a four-year, $18 million contract through 2013 that also included club options for 2014-16. It seemed like a no-brainer.

Fast forward to the present: Lind is in the last guaranteed season of that contract, and given his hitting over the last three seasons (combined with a lack of defensive value), it is probably a safe bet that his option for 2014 will not be picked up. Hope springs eternal, especially at this time of year. Lind is hoping that new (old) manager John Gibbons‘ approach with his players and coaching staff will lead to better communication, and thus to better results at the plate for Lind. There may be something to this, but after three consecutive seasons and more than 1500 plate appearances of poor hitting, this sort of seems like grasping at straws. Toronto made some big moves in order to turn itself into a contender, but while their lineup looks different in many ways, Lind is still set to be the team’s primary DH as they make a run at the playoffs in 2013. It is a conspicuous hole on a team clearly built to win now. Is there really any point to running Lind out there again?

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The impossible finally happened. Miguel Cairo retired. Cairo hung on for 17 seasons — he made his debut the season after Mariano Rivera. One would be hard-pressed to find one season in which he was much good. His highest seasonal WAR came in 1998 with the good ol’ Devil Rays at 2.7, and that was mostly due to 22 Total Zone fielding runs. That season and 1999 were the only seasons in which Cairo received more than 500 plate appearances, and he only got more than 400 in one other season — 2004 with the Yankees. Cairo could not really play shortstop, he was no defensive whiz at second, and as his career .264/.314/.361 (77 wRC+) line shows, he was, outside of a few lucky seasons, a pretty lousy hitter. Yet he hung on. And on. And on. And now he is going to be a working for the Reds. I think it is safe to say that teams liked and like having Cairo around.

Despite his limitations, over 17 years Cairo managed to have some very dramatic hits. In honor of his passing on to the next phase of his career of baseball, here are three of the biggest.

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Craig Calcaterra made me do something I have not done for a long time yesterday: think about Deion Sanders. Calcaterra’s post is worth reading in itself (at least click the link to see an incredibly time-bound photograph), as it is reflection on Buster Olney’s (annual) reflection (how meta!) on some interaction Olney had with Deion Sanders years ago as a rookie reporter. Okay, that sounds equal parts boring and confusing, but Craig makes it funny, at least to me. Leaving aside the mystery of why Olney makes this his annual Spring Training Kickoff Tradition and what it is supposed to mean (nothing against Olney; like Craig, I am simply baffled by the whole thing): man, it has been a long time since I’ve thought about Deion Sanders, especially Deion Sanders the baseball player.

My memories of that are pretty hazy, so others can recall various cool, fun, or just ridiculous Deion Sanders stories. I do not want to take that approach and end up with a car wreck of a post. Sanders had his moments on the diamond, and the whole part-time football/baseball thing is itself a curious artifact of the past. (The latter is worth a long post in its own right. “Well, sure, I could make millions guaranteed, but I think I’d rather spend part of the year doing something far more dangerous for non-guaranteed money.”) Leaving all of that aside, I was struck by just how unusual, especially these days, Sanders combination of skills was. What players recently have had seasons like Neon Deion at his best?

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In 2008, Mike Aviles was a 27-year-old minor league infielder in the Royals’ system who had to get a lucky break for the club to play him over this historically terrible Tony Pena, Jr. Yesterday, the soon-to-be 32-year-old Aviles got his first multi-year, guaranteed deal with Cleveland, which bought out his last two years of arbitration for $6 million and a club option for 2015. It has been quite the odyssey for Aviles, who was drafted by the Royals seventh round in 2003, in large part because he would sign for a $1,000 signing bonus (David Glass is great, isn’t he? Let’s give a hand to David Glass, folks!), has seen himself passed over for the likes of the aforementioned Pena, Yuniesky Betancourt and Chris Getz, and was traded twice this winter, including once for a manager.

Despite all that, Aviles has shown himself to be a useful player — and while this contract is hardly huge in itself — it might have interesting implications for how Cleveland’s roster might shake out in the near future.

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The Angels have spent the last few off-seasons pursuing superstars and signin some of them, but even with the wallet open, they cannot fill every position in that manner. Prior to the 2011 season, one of their primary targets was Adrian Beltre, who ended up going to Texas. The Angels got revenge by taking C.J. Wilson and Josh Hamilton away, but I would imagine the Rangers are not regretting the signing of Beltre one bit, as he has spent his post-Seattle years building a potential Hall of Fame resume.

The Angels would love to have Beltre, too, but they have not exactly been hurting at third base. Alberto Callaspo, while not a Beltre-level superstar, has been pretty good for them the last couple of years. Callaspo was going into his last year of arbitration, but the team and player instead agreed on on a two-year deal for just under $9 million. The deal clearly fills a need for the Angels. Of more interest is how Callaspo demonstrates how it can take a little while for a player to get slotted into the right position in the field and can become a usable hitter despite only having one good skill at the plate.

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As of this writing, it sounds like Travis Hafner is going to sign a contract with the Yankees, after (surprise!) Cleveland turned down his $13 million club option for 2013. Pronk Bars are a distant memory, but Hafner still has his uses. For all of criticism he has received because of his play (or lack thereof) relative to his contract in Cleveland, Hafner has actually been a pretty good hitter the last few years. Over the last three seasons, he has had a higher wRC+ than the departed Raul Ibanez. When healthy (a big question), Hafner projects to be a better hitter than Ibanez. With Alex Rodriguez out for who knows how long, Kevin Youkilis will be needed at third, so signing a full-time designated hitter to a low-risk deal is something the Yankees needed to do. One might question the Yankees’ off-season strategy as a whole, but at this point, Hafner makes sense. But what are the Yankees getting with Hafner at this point?

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It has been a rough week for the population of former Montreal Expos in the major leagues. On the heels of Nick Johnson’s retirement, former Expos, Nationals, Mets, and Phillies catcher Brian Schneider announced that his baseball playing career was over. Schneider started his professional career after being drafted by the Expos back in 1995, when they still may have seemed to have a viable future in Montreal (remember that 1994 team?). Schneider was never a star or even a “what if” guy like Johnson, but he he did manage to play 13 seasons in the majors. Schneider was hardly a career backup, either, as he started at least 95 games at catcher every season from 2003 to 2008. He was not ever an average bat (other than in his 48 plate appearance stint in 2001), but he was not terrible, especially considering his position. Schneider was good defensively. He threw out more base runners than average, and the limited records we have show Schneider to have been good at framing pitches.

Schneider was on two teams (the 2010 and 2011 Phillies) that made the postseason, but never got a plate appearance in the playoffs. Schneider may not have been much more, at least by the numbers, than an adequate catcher with a diverse combination of skills, but even players like that can have some pretty exciting hits. As we often do on these occasions, let’s take a look at Schneider’s three biggest hits according to the “story stat,” Win Probability Added (WPA).

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Buster Olney has been doing a series of Top 10 lists on his blog at ESPN this week. He even solicited suggestions from Twitter. It has been a fun exercise, I am not here to nitpick the method. One that was particularly enjoyable to think about was Olney’s list of the top ten outfields in MLB history. It is on Insider, but I do not think I am ruining anything by telling you that he rates the 1961 Yankees outfield of Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Yogi Berra as the best outfield ever. It is not a terrible choice or anything, although there are arguments to be make for others, which is the fun part of this sort of thing. I wonder, however, was whether the 1961 Yankees outfield is even the best Yankees outfield of all time. What about 1941? (No, not the star-studded Spielberg/Belushi movie.)

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Last week, I took a look at year-to-year correlations for hitting metrics. This post follows up by doing the same thing with pitching metrics. Here, with a bit of commentary, are the results.

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