Yesterday was the deadline for arbitration-eligible players and their teams to exchange dueling salary figures in advance of arbitration hearings in February. The San Francisco Giants set a record in their $17 million offer to Tim Lincecum, the highest such amount ever offered a player with fewer than six years of service time. Lincecum countered with his own record-setting figure of $21.5 million.

Those numbers are close enough to lay the groundwork for a deal between Lincecum and the Giants, somewhere in the $19-$20 million range. That’s right where our own Matt Swartz pegged Lincecum’s 2012 salary ($19.2 million) in his arbitration predictions published at MLB Trade Rumors.

If the two sides don’t reach agreement before an arbitration hearing, who has the better case?

Baseball arbitrators are to make their decision based on the player’s performance, his prior salary, and the salaries of other players in his service-time class. The arbitration rules, however, do contain a “special accomplishments” provision which allows players to compare themselves to other players who’ve achieved similar accomplishments in the same time frame.

To the numbers.

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Yes, I admit it. That’s a pretty neutral headline. Doesn’t tell you whether I think Lee Smith is worthy of the Hall of Fame.

Because I don’t really know.

Smith appears to be more qualified than Bruce Sutter, who was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2006, the eleventh year his name appeared on the ballot. But Sutter doesn’t really match up to Hall of Fame standards. So what to do about Smith?

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There are some crazy-good ballplayers who ply their trade at second base. There’s Dustin Pedroia, Ian Kinsler, Chase Utley, Howie Kendrick, Brandon Phillips, Robinson Cano, and Ben Zobrist. There are other good — if not crazy-good — second basemen, like Rickie Weeks and Danny Espinosa. None of these good-to-crazy-good second basemen plays for a team in the National League West.

Which raises two interesting questions:

• Who will play second base in the National League West in 2012?

• How do you think they’ll perform?

In other words, it’s time to get in your 2012 Fan Projections for NL West second basemen.

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Flash forward a couple days from now.

It’s New Year’s Day, around 6:00 p.m. You’re on the couch or in your favorite comfy chair. You’ve watched too much football — for which you care little. You’re hungry but too tired or lazy to do anything about it. You switch on the local news and find the most obvious, repeated story of New Year’s Day: “Who was the first baby born in [your city] in 2012?”

It’s a thing. I don’t know why it’s a thing, but somewhere, someone decided it was interesting and important to keep track of the first baby born in each community every year. As if that distinction made the baby special for reasons other being born a few minutes after Dec. 31, thus preventing his or her parents from claiming an extra tax deduction for the prior year.

But this is America, and we keep track of these things. And since baseball is as American as apple pie and wireless surveillance, let us do the American thing and take note of the major league baseball players who were born on Jan. 1.

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I can’t. Make sense of the Giants’ off-season moves, that is.

Last season, the Giants were 28th in the majors in wOBA (.294), 29th in wRC+ (83) and 29th in runs scored (570). Yes, the Giants lost Buster Posey at the end of May and Freddy Sanchez in June to season-ending injuries, and they lost Pablo Sandoval — their most effective hitter — for six weeks in the early part of the season. But the Giants added Carlos Beltran at the end of July, and after a slow start due to a wrist injury, Beltran posted a .404 wOBA over his final 161 plate appearances. The Giants simply couldn’t overcome career-worst seasons from Aaron Rowand and Miguel Tejada, who were released at the end of August, and poor offensive performances from Aubrey Huff and Andres Torres.

The only other teams with sub-.300 wOBAs in 2011 were the Mariners, Padres, Twins and Pirates, all of whom ended the season with losing records. The Giants finished 86-76 on the strength of their pitching. Obviously. So heading into 2012, the Giants were sure to focus on significantly upgrading the offense, right?

Not really.

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In 2011, the Dodgers scored 644 runs, ninth in the National League. The offense was powered, of course, by Matt Kemp, who just missed the batting Triple Crown. The next most significant offensive contributions after Kemp came from veteran infielder Jamey Carroll, a somewhat-injured Andre Ethier, and a second-half surging James Loney. And that was pretty much it.

Carroll’s gone, having signed with the Minnesota Twins. Ethier and Loney are in the final year of their contracts. Kemp will continue to anchor the offense. Who else will get on base and score runs for the Dodgers in 2012?

This off-season, the Dodgers signed free agents Matt Treanor, Mark Ellis, Jerry Hairston, Juan Rivera, and Adam Kennedy. Rivera is the youngest of the bunch; he’ll be in his age-34 season in 2012. Treanor, Hairston and Kennedy will all be in their age 36-season. That’s a lot of players on the downside of their careers.

Let’s take a look at the 2012 Dodgers by position.

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Last Saturday, Jon Heyman mused via Twitter that he hadn’t yet seen any trade interest develop in Astros’ first baseman/outfielder Carlos Lee. The tone of Heyman’s tweet was one of surprise; he noted “Guy did have 90-plus rbis for awful team.”

Putting aside Heyman’s reliance on RBI to make his point, the question remains. Is there a trade market for Carlos Lee? He will turn 36 next June and is in the last year of six-year/$100 million contract with the Astros. According to Cot’s Contracts, the Astros still owe Lee $19 million.

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Over six seasons with the (now) Miami Marlins, Hanley Ramirez proved to be a mediocre defensive shortstop. If history is any guide, he will likely be a worse defender at third base.

With the Marlins signing Jose Reyes to a six-year contract worth $106 million, Ramirez will no longer be the Marlins shortstop. Every indication is that he will be moved to third base, although Ramirez is expressing his extreme displeasure with the move.

Reyes is by far the better defender at short. In more than 8,800 innings at short, Reyes has a cumulative UZR/150 of 2.1, with 8 Defensive Runs Saved. Ramirez, by contrast, has logged more than 7,150 innings at short, amassing a cumulative UZR/150 of -9.1, with -49 Defensive Runs Saved.

Reyes is six months older than Ramirez — Reyes turned 28 in June and Ramirez will turn 28 at the end of this month. But Reyes has maintained more of a shortstop’s physique. He’s 6-1/200 pounds. Ramirez is 6-3/229 pounds.

For these reasons, playing Reyes at short makes the most sense for the Marlins. The question is what kind of defense they’ll get out of Ramirez at third.

If history is any guide, Ramirez will be an even weaker defender at third than he was at short.

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He didn’t win a Gold Glove. He didn’t win a Fielding Bible Award. But Pablo Sandoval may be the best defensive third baseman in the National League, if not the majors.

Yes, I’m a San Francisco Giants fan. A season-ticket holder, in fact. So I do see a lot of Sandoval at the hot corner over the course of the season. But neither my fandom nor my eyes have blinded me. Sandoval is just that good. And not “good for a guy who looks like the Kung Fu Panda”; just flat-out good.

Let’s start with the numbers. Sandoval only played 904 innings at third base in 2011, as he missed about six weeks with a broken hamate bone in his right hand. Adrian Beltre — who won the American League Gold Glove and Fielding Bible Award for his play at third base — logged 980 innings at third. Placido Polanco — the winner of the National League Gold Glove — manned the hot corner for 1,044 innings. Evan Longoria was at third for 1,124 innings. Those were the top four defensive third baseman in the majors in 2011.

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Yes, you read the title correctly. Bobby Abreu of the Los Angeles Angeles was Mr. Clutch during the 2011 season. He ended the season with the highest clutch rating in the majors, as measured here at FanGraphs.

I stumbled across this nugget while writing this Thanksgiving-themed post for our friends at Baseball Nation. I was hunting for players who’d accomplished little-noticed feats last season. I revved up the leader boards, sorted for clutch, and found, to my great surprise, Bobby Abreu’s name at the top of the chart.

I’ve always been intrigued by the concept of “clutchness” in sports and otherwise. People who can take their game to the next level in the most pressure-packed situations. Indeed, not just ones who can do it; ones who must do it; ones who thrive doing it.

At FanGraphs, clutch is defined as how well a player performs in high leverage situations in comparison to how well he performs in non-high leverage situations. It’s calculated using WPA, pLI and WPA/LI, as explained here. So if a player is a .330 hitter in non-high leverage situations and a .330 hitter in high leverage situations, then he may be considered a good hitter, but he wouldn’t be considered clutch.

Bobby Abreu’s clutch rating for 2011 was 2.70. Read the rest of this entry »