It should be no surprise that a light hitting, great fielding third baseman with back problems is having trouble getting play in this market. Joe Crede hardly warrants a second look, after all, compared to Chone Figgins, Adrian Beltre, Mark DeRosa, Troy Glaus, and Pedro Feliz. Figgins, Feliz, and Beltre are all great defensive players. Figgins and Beltre are better hitters than Crede, and Feliz isn’t as injury prone. DeRosa and Glaus can outslug Crede.

This means that Crede could once again be a great target for some team to swoop in and steal for cheap. Despite only playing in 90 games last year, his great fielding (+12.5 UZR) was enough for him to be worth nearly 2 wins, making him well worth the 2.5 million dollar contract the Twins signed him to. FanGraphs has UZR data dating back to 2002. Crede has posted a positive UZR in each of those 8 seasons, and has never posted a UZR below +3.8.

His hitting is more suspect. Crede’s career BABIP is .249, well below the major league norm of .300. Part of this can be attributed to his fly ball tendency, as the fly ball has the lowest BABIP of any batted ball type. He also has minimal speed — as his 4 SB/12 CS and 5 career 3B in 10 ML seasons suggest — which would lower his BABIP on the ground ball. Still, 2007 and 2009 were still unlucky years for Crede, as both years saw BABIPs near .230. 2007 also saw an extremely low HR/FB rate for Crede. 2008 is probably the more representative year for Crede, as his .242 BABIP and 10.8% HR/FB were right near career norms, and his wOBA was .330.

In summary, Crede is certainly capable of posting wOBA’s near average. Bill James projects him at -7 RAA/600 PA, and CHONE projects him at -3. Either way, Crede’s fielding at a premium position makes him average at worst. Even if he only manages 300 plate appearances, he can provide nearly 5 million dollars worth of value. It’s unlikely that he sees a substantial raise over his 2009 salary. Given his skill and his lack of leverage given this year’s 3B market, that makes him a perfect candidate for a low-risk, incentive-laden deal for a team that needs to shore up its 3B situation.

How do you think Joe Crede will do in 2010? Tell us! Cast your fan ballot projection here!

We saw the first big move of free agency late last night, as the Atlanta Braves signed closer Billy Wagner. With the potential losses of Rafael Soriano and Mike Gonzalez looming large, Frank Wren felt the need to fill the gap in the bullpen. Per Rosenthal, the terms of the deal include 7 million dollars for 2010 and a vesting option for 2011.

How does this deal look for the Braves? From a pure production standpoint, we saw some very promising things from Wagner last year with the Red Sox. He struck out 26 of the 63 batters he faced, and looked completely back from the injury that ended his 2008. At his best, Wagner is capable of putting up sub-2.00 ERAs and FIP/tERAs in the low 2s. Over 60-70 innings of closing, that can be worth about two wins above replacement. A season like that would put Wagner’s deal at slightly below his market value.

Of course, there’s another element to this signing. The Red Sox offered arbitration to Wagner, who was one of the type A relievers on the market this year. That means that the Braves will have to give their first round draft pick, 19th overall, to the Red Sox. Given Wagner’s injury risk, as a reliever just coming off of injury and about to enter his age 39 season, there was enough risk involved to question a 7 million dollar deal before considering his type A status.

Victor Wang’s research on the draft has found that the average “tier 1” compensation pick – that is, a pick between number 16-30 overall – is worth roughly 5.5 million dollars in surplus value. The Braves had to sacrifice the #19 overall pick in order to sign Wagner. This means that the Braves had to sacrifice 12.5 million dollars in value in order to make this move happen.

At least, that’s 12.5 million dollars in a vacuum. The Braves are a team poised to make a run, with one of the best starting rotations in the league, two superstars in Chipper Jones and Brian McCann to build around, and few major holes to fill. Wagner’s production in 2009 may be of greater importance to the Braves than whatever wins this draft pick would be worth in 2012 or 2013 or whenever he would make the majors, if at all. It’s also possible that they receive a first round draft pick in return for Mike Gonzalez or Rafael Soriano, the type A relievers to whom the Braves offered arbitration.

Still, I don’t think this is a great move for the Braves. Re-signing Mike Gonzalez or Rafael Soriano would’ve eliminated the need to sacrifice a draft pick. Relievers are tremendously fungibile. One or both of Gonzalez and Soriano could accept arbitration, leaving the Braves in a tough budget situation. Left field is a much larger need for the Braves, who saw almost no production out of Garret Anderson at the position in 2009.

The deal could work out quite well for the Braves, if Wagner can stay healthy for the entire year. If Wagner doesn’t feel the effects of aging. If Wagner doesn’t have an unlucky year in the small sample of innings a reliever sees. If the Braves can fill their hole at LF. If their system can handle the lack of a first round draft pick. If they actually get a first round pick back for Gonzalez and/or Soriano if they leave. Too many “if”s for me.

With the debut of our Fan Projections this week, the Marcels have been a topic of discussion among our analysts. The Marcels are a very appealing system to me because of their simplicity. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the Marcel projection system, it’s not a total black box like PECOTA and it doesn’t use special aging curves or player comps like other systems such as CHONE or ZiPS. Here’s the rather simple basis behind the monkey, and these can certainly be expanded to our fan projections here. For a more detailed (and better) explanation of what Marcel is, check this out.

– Recent performance matters the most

Nobody is going to go onto these projections and project Pedro Martinez to have a 1.95 FIP season just because he did it in 1999, and nobody’s going to project Andruw Jones as the +20 run centerfielder that he was earlier in his career. We’ve seen both of these guys perform at much worse levels. Conversely, it’s a much better bet for Joe Mauer to hit 20 HRs now that we’ve seen him hit 28 in 2009. Marcel handles this by using 3 years of performance, weighting them 5/4/3 respectively. That is, the most recent season gets 1.25 times the weight of two years prior, and 1.66 times the weight of three years prior.

– Players regress

This is the point of using player comps in other projection systems – different players regress to different means. When you are entering your projections, consider that Albert Pujols is probably not going to regress to a league average, .260/.330/.425 type line. He’s going to regress to his superhuman .333/.425/.630 line. Still, most players either don’t have enough experience to define their own mean to regress to or are close enough to said mean that a regression towards the overall league mean will do quite nicely. Along with the 5/4/3 weighting mentioned above for recent seasons, Marcel weights average performance as a “2” to handle regression.

-Age matters

Players peak around 29. They probably won’t improve in their 30s, and the decline phase comes soon after. We can also expect improvement out of players who have yet to reach their physical peaks, although this doesn’t necessarily apply with defense. Marcel doesn’t use any fancy, academically researched aging curves, but it does use an aging factor – younger than 29, the player’s projection gets bumped up, and older, it slides down, and the magnitude is higher based on how far away the player is from 29. It’s not perfect, and certain body types and skillsets age differently, but the goal is to hit on the whole population, not on individual data points.

-Marcel doesn’t take a close look

Marcel misses a lot of the little things that we can use to predict breakouts or attrition. It doesn’t know injury histories. It doesn’t know about BABIP or K% or HR/FB or any of the other stats that can be used to explain anomalous years. It doesn’t know anything about the minor leagues. It doesn’t know anything about the lineups surrounding a player or the defense surrounding a pitcher. It doesn’t adjust for parks. It can’t come anywhere near projecting playing time. These are the things that the various projection systems should attempt to solve, and what we hope to accomplish with our fan projections.

Prior to the 2009 season, the Atlanta Braves signed Derek Lowe to a four year, 60 million dollar contract. One year and 15 million dollars later, the Braves seem to be having second thoughts, as Lowe has been repeatedly mentioned in trade rumors.

It’s not that Lowe wasn’t a productive pitcher last year. His 4.06 FIP makes him an above-average SP, and in 195 IP that makes him worth 2.7 wins above replacement. His ERA of 4.67 probably is part of the reason the Braves are willing to shop Lowe, but he’s not as bad as that would suggest. His tRA of 4.61 suggests an ERA (or tERA) of 4.24 – not quite as good as his FIP but still above average, and 195 IP of above-average pitching is valuable. Unfortunately for the Braves, it’s not worth 15 million dollars.

Still, Lowe is only one year removed from a 3.26 FIP/3.27 tERA, the third of three straight sub-4.00 FIP/tERA seasons. He has shown the ability to be an ace-quality pitcher, and even if he doesn’t return to his five-win form from 2008, it’s possible that he could post some four win seasons and be worth his contract.

There are three red flags that come up for Lowe when projecting his future. The first of these is his age. The next three seasons, for which he’ll be paid 45 million dollars, will be his age 37, 38, and 39 seasons. Pitcher attrition happens often at age 30, and the risk becomes even higher at this advanced age. Lowe did see a dip in velocity last year, but he did make 34 starts, and didn’t spend any time on the DL, which would likely be the biggest warning sign that age was catching up with him.

The other two red flags have to do with patterns we see in Lowe’s results this year. First, Lowe’s ground ball rate fell 4% from last year’s 60.3%, already a career low. With statistics like BABIP, we can’t make conclusions based on one year’s worth of data because these statistics don’t stabilize over the course of a season. However, ground ball rate stabilizes after only 200 plate appearances, and this substantial drop of 4% means we’ll see more fly balls and line drives out of Lowe, meaning more home runs and more hits.

The third red flag is probably the most alarming, and that’s the fact that Lowe’s K/BB fell from 3.26 in his fantastic 2008 to a poor 1.76 in 2009. His strikeout rate fell by a point and his walk rate rose by a point. Although it is possible that both of these rates return to form in 2010, given Lowe’s age and the fact that both statistics also tend to stabilize over the course of the season, it’s probably more likely that we see Lowe’s K/BB remain closer to 2.00 than 3.00.

Thanks to his ability to induce ground balls, which even after the drop is still above average, Lowe can still be a productive pitcher, but there are three very good reasons for the Braves to try and get something in return for Lowe’s unfavorable contract, especially when combined with their abundance of starting pitchers. If a team can get the Braves to eat some of Lowe’s salary, they could be getting an asset, but thanks to the red flags mentioned above, it’s unlikely that Lowe will be a 15 million dollar pitcher over the course of his contract.

Word from Ken Rosenthal is that Jermaine Dye is open to moving from his primary position of right field to first base in order to land a job in 2010. This is coming on the heels of some especially brutal defensive seasons from Dye. From 2006-2009, here are Dye’s respective UZRs: -22.5, -21.6, -19.4, -20.0. With the RF positional adjustment at -7.5, it’s pretty apparent that Dye is a liability in the outfield. Considering that first base is the easiest position to play (something that I can back up with personal experience), Dye’s openness to the move should help him get work. But can it make him a productive player?

The first question is whether or not Dye’s transition to first base would actually make him a better defensive value. Right now, he’s worth roughly 27 runs less than the average fielder over 150 games. I haven’t scouted Dye; I wouldn’t know if Dye has the necessary skills to become adept at picking throws or stretching off the base, or fielding ground balls.

We saw with Skip Schumaker’s move to 2nd base from center field that the transition certainly wasn’t smooth at the outset. Schumaker’s situation is similar because Schumaker hadn’t seen any time in the infield in his professional career, much like Dye, who’s played all of one game in the infield over his 15 major league seasons. Dye just hasn’t shown much athleticism in the outfield, so it would seem that he would still be a below-average defender at first base anyway, even without considering the effects of the positional move. Because of that, I personally wouldn’t expect Dye’s transition to go nearly as smooth as Schumaker’s seems to have worked out.

Of course, we can entertain the possibility. Let’s say that Dye somehow ends up as a semi-respectable fielder at first base, somewhere around a -2.5 first baseman. Then his value relative to the average defensive player is -15 runs, which adds around 12 runs to his value and makes him even slightly more valuable in the field than at the DH position. How will his bat play?

Dye will be 36 next season. As such, it’s hard to imagine any sort of dramatic increase over his .344 wOBA from 2009, although his 2008 wOBA of .376 is encouraging. A good estimate would probably lie on the low end of that range, in the +7.5 to +12.5 wRAA per 150 games, which would make Dye a 1.25-1.75 win player per 150 games.

Honestly, though, I find it really hard to believe that Dye will be any sort of productive defensive player. His transition will likely mirror Adam Dunn’s play at 1B for the Nationals moreso than Skip Schumaker’s, and Dye will probably continue to be a huge liability on defense. It’s possible he could be a slightly above replacement DH, but unless he’s willing to take a huge paycut, he’s not worth taking the spot of a prospect or some sort of freely available talent like a Brian Myrow or Jeff Fiorentino.

Jay Bruce so far, in two major league seasons, has a .328 career wOBA in 839 plate appearances. As such, one might be surprised to see the following Bill James projection on his player page:

.274 AVG, .340 OBP, .537 SLG, .373 wOBA

Given what we’ve seen of Bruce in the majors, this projection seems a little bit ridiculous. James projects Bruce to pick up 45 points of wOBA. His projections have been known to be a bit optimistic for some offensive players. Is this another one of those cases?

Let’s compare Jay Bruce’s 2009 to his projected mark for 2010.

2009: 9.9 BB%, 21.7 K%, .303 OBP, .470 SLG, .246 ISO, .222 BABIP, .329 wOBA
2010: 8.9 BB%, 22.0 K%, .340 OBP, .537 SLG, .263 ISO, .290 BABIP, .373 wOBA

There’s really only one major difference there, and that’s his BABIP. Bruce’s BABIP is one of the more interesting anomalies in the game, as I explored over at Beyond the Boxscore earlier in the season. As a quick summary, Bruce’s BABIP on line drives and fly balls in particular has been particularly low for his whole career, and he’s had more than 20 fewer hits on those two types of batted balls than we would expect. This has dealt a pretty substantial blow to his value, as these hits would add up to more than 11 runs in value.

BABIP luck and skill is one of the more interesting topics of conversation in the sabermetric world. The league average is around .300, and we don’t usually see much variation in the statistic, but that isn’t to say that batters don’t have an inherent skill as far as reaching base on balls in play. However, with a sample of 840 PAs with Bruce, we can’t really say for sure if there’s something about Bruce’s batted balls that lead to outs or if he’s just had poor luck. James’s projection system is operating on the assumption that there’s a large amount of luck at play with Bruce, and as such he projects a breakout year for the young outfielder.

Jay Bruce will be one of the most interesting players to watch in the majors in 2010. He has incredible power and is a very toolsy player. The question is if he shows the potential he flashed in the minor leagues (AAA slugging percentage over .600) or if he continues to hit like a league average player.

It wasn’t too long ago that Edwin Jackson was considered a bit of a bust after failing to produce with the Los Angeles Dodgers and his early career with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Through his first five minor league seasons, Jackson made 46 starts between both teams in question, mostly in a 2007 season marked by a 5-15 record and a 5.76 ERA. Although Jackson’s peripheral stats indicate that he pitched much better than his basic stats show, his 4.90 FIP still didn’t suggest the major league ace that some had claimed Jackson could become.

When the Devil Rays changed their name, their fortunes changed. So did Edwin Jackson’s. Despite a nearly identical K/BB rate and HR/9 rate, Jackson turned his brutal 2007 into a respectable 14-11 and 4.42 ERA season, apparently making him worth enough to be traded for highly regarded Tigers farmhand Matt Joyce.

Jackson’s basic stats saw even more improvement in 2009, as he went 13-9 with a 3.62 ERA for Detroit and held a sub-3.00 ERA for much of the season. But this year, we did actually see improvement in his peripherals, as his K rate landed between his ’07 and ’08 marks while his BB rate continued its downward march.

That’s a very encouraging trend for a pitcher who will be 26 for most of the upcoming season. With a K rate below 7, however, it is unlikely that Jackson will emerge as an ace. Even with the encouraging control he showed in 2009, Jackson’s FIP still was a modest 4.28. That’s above average, and for a pitcher that’s under team control, that makes him a very solid asset. However, Jackson’s likely to be overvalued in this market due to his ability to throw a 94 mile an hour average fastball and his great ERA.

That isn’t to say that teams should avoid trading for him, or that the Tigers should unload him at the first half-decent offer. At his age, it’s still possible that we see the improvement that turns him into a sub-4.00 FIP pitcher. Still, most projection systems will likely peg Jackson for a FIP around 4.40. We can’t say that Jackson is an elite pitcher based on what we’ve seen from him, and he shouldn’t be treated as such by major league front offices.

The Reds have entered the offseason looking to trim payroll, according to multiple sources. The Reds have multiple contracts which could offer immediate relief if unloaded, specifically those of Bronson Arroyo ($14.25M guaranteed through 2011), Aaron Harang ($14.5M guaranteed through 2011) and Francisco Cordero ($25.25M through 2012).

In order to unload these contracts, the Reds will probably have to include somebody who is more likely to provide surplus value to a club. Joey Votto fits that bill perfectly, as a pre-arb all-star caliber player. Unfortunately for the rest of the league, when asked if Votto could be included in a trade this offseason, Reds GM Walt Jocketty replied “Oh God, no!”

And for good reason. In Votto, the Reds have a threat with the bat and a stopper with the glove. Votto improved on his stellar rookie season of 2008 by 45 points of wOBA, posting an incredible .418 mark. His UZR fell below average, but he has a career UZR/150 of +4 runs. The Fan’s Scouting Report also rated Votto as a slightly above-average overall fielder. Overall, in roughly two years of MLB service, Votto has put up 8.2 wins. A 4 win season basically defines all-star, and that’s exactly what Votto has done in his short career.

A .418 wOBA again might be too much to expect of the young Votto. His BABIP in 2009 was an unsustainable .373, even higher than his 2008 mark of .330. Votto does have a well above average LD rate, which dropped to a still excellent 21.7% in 2009, making his 2009 BABIP seem even odder. Still, a BB% increase from 10.3% to 13.0% is a great sign for the Reds, and at the least, Votto seems capable of maintaining a wOBA between his .373 mark of 2008 and his 2009 mark of .418.

Even at the bottom ends of his production, a .373 wOBA and merely average fielding, Votto is roughly a 3 win player. Votto will enter his age 27 season in 2010, and the Reds will hold him through his age 30 season in 2013. The Reds will be paying only about $500K for his services in 2010, and his OBP-heavy hitting skillset is likely to be undervalued in arbitration. He likely will not receive the awards that Ryan Howard ($10M, $15M, $19M) received, nor what Prince Fielder ($7.5M, $11.5M including signing bonus first two years) received in arbitration. With Votto producing as he has through his career, he is one of the best assets in the MLB. Jocketty’s response was right on the money.

As we inch closer and closer to the impending free agent signing period, rumors are picking up over some of the big name free agents. On the hitting side, we have guys like Matt Holliday and Jason Bay. On the mound, the closest thing to a superstar we have is John Lackey.

Recently, reports have come out linking Lackey to teams like the Brewers, Mariners, and Rangers, not to mention the obvious links to both New York teams, Boston, and a possible return to the Angels. Of course, unsubstantiated claims will abound until Lackey actually picks a team. What kind of value will Lackey be bringing to the table in 2010 and beyond?

A quick look at Lackey’s career shows arguably three or four all-star caliber seasons, despite the fact that he only made one all-star game, in 2007, when his 3.01 ERA led the league. Indeed, 2007 was an excellent season for Lackey, but so were 2005, 2006, and 2009, all seasons where Lackey posted 175+ IP and an FIP under 3.75. He suffered in 2008 due to an abnormally high HR/FB of 15.3% but still maintained an excellent 3.25 K/BB ratio.

There just isn’t a whole lot not to like about Lackey’s performance. His K/9 hasn’t dropped below 7.00 since 2005, and his BB/9 hasn’t been above 3.00 in that same time frame. Even in 2008 and 2009, seasons in which he suffered injuries, he managed to pitch over 160 innings and make at least 24 starts, much more than can be said about such injury-prone pitchers as Rich Harden, Erik Bedard, and Ben Sheets, who will be competing against him on the SP free agent market.

That being said, Lackey is 31. Although he’s averaged over 4 wins above replacement the last four seasons, expecting that out of a pitcher from his age 31 through age 35 or 36 seasons is irresponsible, and he has suffered injuries twice in the last two years. Lackey is likely looking for a four or five year deal. Over four years, a contract that expects 4 WAR worth of performance is worth roughly 18 million dollars. With the slight discount we usually see on long term contracts, that comes out to a 4 year/64 million dollar deal, or maybe a 5 year/80 million dollar deal.

That’s an awfully substantial risk for a team in any market. We know that Lackey can be a great pitcher, but for any team willing to sign him, they have to be ready to absorb the risks that are incurred with a 4 year commitment to any pitcher, much less one in his mid-30s.

In a market with such injury prone aces as Rich Harden and Erik Bedard available to teams this offseason, it can be easy to forget about one ace who missed all of 2009 on the shelf. That would be Ben Sheets, the former ace of the Milwaukee Brewers, who spent the entire season recovering from an elbow injury suffered at the end of the 2008 season, and whose elbow injury negated a two-year contract he had signed with Texas.

As a fan of the Milwaukee Brewers last season, I really missed Ben Sheets, as the Brewers starting pitching staff combined for a miserable 13.1 runs above replacement. Still, it had been nearly as disappointing watching, year after year, as Sheets missed more and more time due to injury. From 2005-2008, Sheets only averaged 150 innings per season. He missed significant time each season, only making more than 30 starts once, in 2008, before his season-ending injury which caused him to miss all of 2009.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that Sheets doesn’t bring value to a team. He has legitimate ace stuff. He has a career K/BB ratio of 3.85 and a career FIP of 3.56. His fastball and curveball combo is deadly, as both pitches have been worth nearly +.60 runs above average per 100 pitches over his career.

Much like with J.D. Drew, we have an example of a very talented player who just can’t seem to play a full season. Still, Sheets has potential provide value at the level of a John Lackey type pitcher. Since 2002, Sheets has provided 29.8 WAR, or 3.8 per season (excluding 2009). That total WAR mark ties him for 16th of the win value era with Tim Hudson, who has thrown 200 more innings over that time frame. It’s 1.5 more wins than Carlos Zambrano has in 350 fewer innings.

The thing with Sheets is that the best predictor of future injury is past injury. Because of this, it would be irresponsible of any team to expect more than 150 innings out of the former Milwaukee ace. However, unless this latest injury took all the life out of Sheets’s arm, it’s a good bet that they’ll be excellent innings, and I would expect that major league teams understand this. The question is which one is willing to take the biggest chance.