Of course the internet baseball community hates Barry Bonds. Despite being clearly one of baseball’s greatest players, his career will always be overshadowed by his presence as Mr. BALCO, as the center of the steroids scandal which loomed over baseball for much of the last decade. Not only that, but he had a tendency to come off as short and angry with the media. A combination of cheating and nastiness hardly endears people to your cause.

But, naturally, I am not fully satisfied with anything until I can quantify it. Luckily, the Baseball-Reference Elo player rater exists. With the help of the users of Baseball-Reference, who have cast over one million votes rating players, we can see just how the internet baseball community (at least, that rather large part that uses Baseball-Reference) view players. Voters are welcome to use objective criteria from WAR to batting average, and obviously nothing is preventing them from hitting one player’s button if they simply like that player better. To me, finding a subjective measure of the opinions of greatness to put next to our objective measures is incredibly interesting.

Make no mistake: Barry Bonds is clearly one of the top hitters — if not the top hitter — to ever play the game. Between the home run record, 175 career wRC+, 168 career fWAR, and 172 career bWAR, it is impossible to argue with his on-field accomplishments. So when we see the Baseball-Reference crowd has him rated as the 26th best player of all time, right between Cal Ripken Jr. and Ken Griffey Jr., we know it goes beyond what’s on the field. Observe, the massive difference between how Bonds is rated by the people and how we would predict he would be rated simply by WAR (using the Baseball-Reference version as it is the one presented to the voter), looking at the top 50 players in the rankings:

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As soon as Ryan Howard went down with a ruptured Achilles tendon to close out the National League Division Series, the Phillies were left with two clear options to replace him in the short-term. On one hand, they could pursue an above-average, starter-quality first baseman like Michael Cuddyer — a player who would require significant financial and time commitments. Or, the Phillies could rebuild with scraps — playing platoons on the cheap until Howard returns, perhaps as late as May or June.

Sunday night the Phillies opted for the latter, acquiring Ty Wigginton from the Phillies in exchange for cash or a player to be named later. Instead of paying Cuddyer multiple millions — possibly eight figures — over two to three years, Philadelphia will merely owe Wigginton $2 million for the next season as the team works through the early parts of 2012.

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Clayton Kershaw has been one of the most hyped up young pitchers in the league since he made his debut as a 20-year-old in 2008. In 2011, he made that next step toward becoming one of the league’s true aces. With 21 victories, 248 strikeouts, a stellar 62 ERA-, a 2.47 FIP, 6.8 WAR — whichever way you slice it, Kershaw was an elite pitcher in 2011 and truly deserving of recognition, regardless of age. The fact that he has accomplished so much by age 23 is phenomenal.

At age 23, Roy Halladay was setting the MLB record for the highest ERA in a season, posting a 10.64 ERA in 67.2 innings with the Toronto Blue Jays. So much has changed since then, of course, with Halladay bringing in two Cy Young Awards over the past 10 years. This season marks Halladay’s second runner-up finish. If not for Kershaw taking home the pitching Triple Crown (leading in wins, strikeouts, and ERA), one could have imagined a closer vote.

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For the second year in a row, Mark Kotsay has received a major league contract. The Padres agreed to a one-year deal worth $1.25 million with the 35-year-old (about to enter his age-36 season) on Tuesday.

For the second year in a row, Mark Kotsay does not deserve a spot on a major league roster — at least, not on his merits as a baseball player.

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It was clear, at least at first, that the initial acquisition of Aaron Hill by the Arizona Diamondbacks was a short term move. With Kelly Johnson floundering, Kirk Gibson needed a different option at second base. Hill’s fresh face was just what the doctor ordered: he would go on to hit .315/.386/.492 in 33 games with the Diamondbacks and key their surge well past the San Francisco Giants for the NL West Championship.

Still, the Diamondbacks were by no means ready to commit the $8 million on Hill’s option for 2012 — after all, despite the late-season resurgence, Hill is still coming off wOBAs of .291 and .292 respectively. Late Sunday night, the Diamondbacks and the 30-year-old Hill managed to find a dollar amount that works for both sides. With a new two-year, $11 million dollar contract, Hill will remain a Diamondback through the 2013 season.

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Only a few days ago, it seemed as though the Phillies would be going into the 2012 season with the bullpen set just as in 2011: with Ryan Madson as closer. The rumored four-year, $44 million dollar deal between Madson and the Phillies blew up nearly as soon as it was “confirmed.” Less than a week later, the Phillies have reached an agreement with a new closer. According to Jim Salisbury of Comcast Sports Philadelphia, Jonathan Papelbon will be the Phillies new closer after inking a four-year, $50 million contract on Friday. The deal also includes a $10 million vesting option for a fifth year.

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Brian Sabean has fired his first salvo of the 2011 offseason, acquiring outfielder Melky Cabrera from the Kansas City Royals in exchange for starting pitcher Jonathan Sanchez and minor-league pitcher Ryan Verdugo.

Before we can even begin to analyze this trade, I believe we have to divorce the names of the players from their actual production. Melky Cabrera has been something of a punching bag among writers and analysts for a variety of reasons, ranging from his poor shape to his lousy attitude to awful production in 2008 and 2010.

Cabrera is, of course, coming off the best season of his life. He finished a remarkable fourth in hits in the American League. Part of this is the less robust production of singles hitting as opposed to high power or on-base percentage, but he still finished with a .349 wOBA, a 118 wRC+ and 4.2 WAR in his age 26 season.

There are certainly reasons to believe Cabrera will regress in 2012. His BABIP of .332 is a career high and there is little reason to believe he is like an Ichiro Suzuki or a Matt Kemp and can routinely sustain such good results on balls in play. His power level (44 doubles, 18 home runs, a .162 ISO) was also previously unseen, blasting his old career highs out of the water.

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Previous entries:
Primer
The Full Story
Batters

In a series with a 16-7 game and an 11-10 game, and one in which the big moments were dominated by the hitters, it can be easy to forget about the pitchers. And although the performances of Chris Carpenter and Derek Holland pale behind those of David Freese and Lance Berkman, they deserve to be remembered.

On the other side of the coin, Jason Motte, who was so excellent in the first two rounds of the playoffs, was bailed out by his teammates in the final two games. As poorly as Motte pitched, it was the entire Rangers bullpen that collapsed, with Scott Feldman, Neftali Feliz, Alexi Ogando, and Mark Lowe all coming up well negative for Ron Washington and the Rangers.

Observe, the leaders and trailers in pitcher series probability added for the 2011 World Series:

Click to see the fully functioning visualization and follow the jump for more.

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Previous entries:

Primer
The Full Story

If you looked through yesterday’s graph of every single play from the 2011 World Series thoroughly, you noticed David Freese making a huge impact, as he was responsible for three of the five biggest plays of the series. I mentioned he earned his MVP award; here, we can quantify it. Observe, the leaders and trailers in overall batter series probability added:

Click the image for the full tableau visualization and follow the jump for more analysis.

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In yesterday’s primer, I introduced the basics behind World Series win probabilities. Today, we begin looking at the 2011 World Series through this lens.

The first natural use of win probabilities, especially on FanGraphs, is the win probability graph. Observe, the graph of series win probability for the St. Louis Cardinals throughout the World Series:

Click to view the graph in a new window with all the bells and whistles provided by the Tableau software.

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