Today, we’re writing up affirmative arguments for each of the three primary MVP candidates, and I get to make the case for Jacoby Ellsbury’s candidacy. On the surface, arguing for Ellsbury is something easy case to make – after all, he led the majors in WAR, and even though it is not a precise measure of value that should be taken as gospel, the guy with the best WAR in baseball is obviously a serious candidate for the award. That said, you don’t have to buy into WAR to see that Ellsbury was probably as good as anyone else who played the sport this year.

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It seems that the Atlanta Braves are intent on dealing Martin Prado this offseason. So far, Prado has been mentioned in trade talks with Kansas City (along with Jair Jurrjens for Lorenzo Cain and Wil Myers), with Colorado (for Seth Smith and a prospect) and with Detroit (for Delmon Young). Braves GM Frank Wren hasn’t found the right match for the 28-year-old yet — the Young rumor was shot down quickly — but a number of teams are likely to be interested in Prado if Wren continues to shop him. In fact, ESPN’s Buster Olney quotes an AL team’s official who favorably compares Prado to free-agent outfielder Michael Cuddyer. Trading Prado surely should be easy, but it begs the question: Why is Wren so anxious to get rid of his super-utility player?

The answer perhaps is difficult to understand, considering that Prado is a versatile defender who also has been productive offensively. He has a career wOBA of .337 and has compiled 10 WAR in three-and-half seasons of full-time play. He’s serviceable at both second and third base and is an above-average left fielder when you look at data from this past season. Prado is under team control for at least two  years, and he’s projected to make a budget-friendly $4.5 million in 2012. Additionally, the Braves don’t have an immediate replacement for Prado in the outfield — or in his other role as a  third base fill-in when the aging, oft-injured Chipper Jones needs time off. The Braves were in the bottom half of the N.L. in runs scored in 2011 and their outfielders’ combined .300 wOBA was last in the league. Needless to say, it’s not like the Braves are overstocked with productive outfield bats.

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The Arizona Diamondbacks re-signed free-agent Willie Bloomquist on Tuesday, agreeing to a two-year, $3.88 million contract with the 33-year-old utility player after Bloomquist had rejected his side of his mutual option for 2012. Yes, you read that correctly, the Diamondbacks voluntarily committed almost $4 million to a player who has compiled a total of 1.3 WAR in his 10-year major-league career — more than half of which was accrued when Bloomquist hit a torrid .455/.526/.576 over 38 plate appearances in September 2002.

Given that Bloomquist appears to be a walking definition of replacement player, why did the Diamondbacks think it was a good idea to pay him approximately $3 million more the league minimum over the next two years? Having a guy like Bloomquist on the roster is not necessarily a bad idea. He is a versatile defender and potential roster expander who has played all four infield positions and all three outfield positions at various times in his career. He doesn’t offer much in the way of power, but he is not totally inept with the bat (.297 career wOBA) and he did steal 20 bases last year in 97 games.

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The Braves and Indians consummated the first trade of the off-season today, with the Braves trading Derek Lowe to the Indians for a minor-league pitcher Chris Jones. As a 23-year-old reliever who spent the year in A-ball, Jones is not exactly a premium prospect – this deal was all about money, as Atlanta also agreed to pay $10 million of the $15 million owed to Lowe for the 2012 season.

For the Braves, Lowe was a surplus part given their existing rotation members (Tommy Hanson, Jair Jurrjens, Tim Hudson, and Brandon Beachy) and their quartet of MLB ready pitching prospects (Julio Teheran, Mike Minor, Randall Delgado, and Arodys Vizcaino). In addition, Lowe’s 2011 did nothing to endear him to Braves fans; he was arrested for DUI in April, went 9-17 with a 5.05 ERA in 187 innings of work on the season, and contributed more than his fair share to the Braves’ September collapse by allowing 25 runs over 23.2 innings in his last 5 starts.

For the Indians, Lowe represents a relatively low cost addition to a rotation that includes Ubaldo Jimenez, Justin Masterson, and Fausto Carmona. Clearly, Cleveland likes ground-ballers, but what can the Indians expect out of Lowe in 2012?

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Former Red Sox GM Theo Epstein received a hero’s welcome in Chicago on Tuesday as he took the reins of the moribound organization. Epstein’s exploits in Boston – most notably two World Series rings – have Cubs fans hoping that Epstein will end the curse of the goat and deliver the Cubs’ first World Series championship since 1908. The parallels between the Cubs of 2011 and the Red Sox of 2002 that Epstein inherited are numerous. Both are large markets, with high revenues. Both play in revered, but decrepit and small ballparks. Both are allegedly cursed, with excruciatingly painful postseason scars – Bartman, Buckner, Bucky “Bleeping” Dent – intermingled with decades of mediocrity or worse.

Unfortunately for Cubs fans, the parallels between the 2002 Red Sox and the 2011 Cubs end when comparing the talent on hand. The 2002 Red Sox won 93 games and finished 10.5 games behind the New York Yankees in the A.L. East and missed the wild card by 6 games. As the table below indicates, Epstein inherited a roster that included a trio of starting pitchers – Pedro Martinez, Derek Lowe, and Tim Wakefield – that combined for 17.6 WAR in 2002, and a core of offensive players led by Manny Ramirez (5.4 WAR), Nomar Garciaparra (4.8 WAR), Johnny Damon (4.1 WAR), and Jason Varitek (2.5 WAR). Out of this group only Garciaparra (0.5 WAR) failed to make a significant contribution to the Red Sox 2004 World Series winning team.

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Oh, put me in, Coach – I’m ready to play today;
Put me in, Coach – I’m ready to play today;
Look at me, I can be Centerfield

Unfortunately for teams in need of a center fielder, very few free agents can sing along to this 1985 John Fogerty classic with conviction. This is a group of aging, injury prone guys who either never were very good, or now are in steep decline.

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In my previous post on Tampa Bay’s attendance woes, I established that the Rays attendance has not responded to the team’s on field success as well as we would expect. Most teams see large attendance bumps when they win a lot of games and reach the postseason, but this has not been true for the Rays. Potential explanations for the attendance discrepancy vary widely. Many point to the stadium’s poor location and the newness of the franchise, others blame Florida’s snowbird population for keeping their [old] hometown allegiances, some cite the economy and low median income in the area, while others claim Tampa Bay is just not a baseball town. All of these and more could be factors, but we can simplify the attendance problem by lumping all potential explanations into one of two categories: (1) the location/ambiance of Tropicana Field and (2) the size of the fan base.

If the biggest problem is the stadium, it is fixable. Getting a stadium built is certainly not an easy or cheap process, but most teams — even the Marlins — manage to get it done through some combination of public and private financing. If the problem is the lack of fans though, the team could be facing years of low attendance, low television ratings, and as a result, low payrolls even if they get a new stadium.

How can we know if a new stadium would solve the Rays’ attendance problem? Ideally (warning: entering social scientist mode), we’d randomly assign half the Rays’ home games to a new, centrally located stadium, while playing the other half at Tropicana Field. We could compare attendance across the two venues and be able to make accurate causal inference. A controlled experiment such as this would allow us to parse out the “true” effect of Tropicana Field on the Rays’ attendance. Unfortunately, my proposed experiment would likely cost in excess of $500 million dollars and is entirely unfeasible.

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The Tampa Bay Rays have been remarkably successful on the field the past four seasons. Despite playing in the most competitive division in baseball, they have averaged 92 wins per season, won the AL East twice, and appeared in the playoffs 3 times. Despite this run of success, in an interview, principal owner Stuart Sternberg was pessimistic about the Rays following their elimination from the playoffs on Tuesday. He lamented the lack of connection between winning and attendance noting, “When I came here, I was confident we could put a winning team on the field, and that would do it. We won, and we won, and we won and we won … and it didn’t do it.” He went on to claim that the Rays, “…just don’t have the $12 million to put into a hitter” and predicted that at some point MLB “is going to vaporize this team.”

Whether the Rays truly can afford more bats is a question for another post, but Sternberg is correct that Rays fans have not voted with their feet in response to the team’s recent success. The Rays finished 28th in attendance for 2011 with slightly more than 1.5 million fans turning up at the Trop. Only the Florida Marlins and Oakland A’s had fewer fans show up this year and neither had as good a current product or recent track record of success.

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