The Astros released Bill Hall last week to make room for the returning Jason Bourgeois. The 31-year-old Hall had been awful this season for the Astros, producing 0.9 wins below replacement. His fielding has eroded in recent years, and his offense, aside for what appears to be a fluky uptick last season, has left much to be desired for almost five seasons. His wOBAs since 2006? Try .317, .297, .261, .342, .269.

Sure, there was some reason to think that the .342 might be more indicative of his offensive proclivities, but the signing was odd for a team like the Astros. To guarantee $3 million at the major league level and include an option for next season suggests that the team believed Hall had some upside. They still have Jeff Keppinger under control, but his injury opened up a spot. Since Hall isn’t a puts-butts-in-seats kind of guy, it probably would have made more sense to use some farmhand in the spot until Keppinger returned.

Where did his -0.9 WAR rank, you ask? Good question, I say, as the original theme of this post changed from why signing Hall made little sense for the Astros when a realization was made scanning the leaderboards. The default setting on our leaderboards filters only for batters that qualify for a batting title. Sorting the players by WAR from the bottom up, I expected to see Hall’s name toward the top of the list. It wasn’t there. The list went:

– Chone Figgins (-1.2)
– Aubrey Huff (-0.9)
– Miguel Tejada (-0.9)
– Dan Uggla (-0.8)
– Orlando Cabrera (-0.8)
– Hideki Matsui (-0.8)

Hall was nowhere to be found, even though his -0.9 was the same as Huff’s and Tejada’s mark. Hall has been so bad this season that he doesn’t even qualify for most leaderboards.

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Rumors swirled this offseason about whether or not, and to whom, Michael Young might be traded. The Rangers didn’t seem to have a real position for him and his bat wasn’t projected to profile in the designated hitter spot. Young had accrued 9.134 years of service entering the season, meaning he was on the cusp of attaining 10 and 5 rights. If the Rangers intended to make a move, it was about to get very difficult given what these rights entail.

Anyone with ten years of service time, of which at least the last five were spent with the same team, earns the right to veto any trade. Here we’ll look at some players who previously earned the rights; some who have earned them this season; and some who will earn them this season barring circumstances unforeseen.

On May 7, Young attained these rights. For service time purposes, a full season is considered to be 172 days. With 134 already logged for his tenth year of service (the 134 in 9.134), he needed only 38 days on the active roster to reach this point. Fortunately for the Rangers, Young has played very well this season, producing a .376 wOBA and 1.4 WAR in 55 games. He has remained above average even in his decline year and appears to be on pace for his best season since 2006. Young is owed $16 million in each of the next two seasons, which would make it tough to move him in the first place.

Now that he has the ability to veto any trade it seems to be a virtual lock that he will finish out his contract with the Rangers. He isn’t the only player to earn 10 and 5 rights over the last couple of weeks.

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The month of June marks the unofficial beginning of the trade season, and so we thought it would be helpful to run down a list of which players might be for sale at some point this summer. But, rather than just run down a list of potential trade targets, we thought that we would spend the week discussing the most interesting players at each position and have compiled a list of the best players available at each spot, along with their expected production going forward and notes about which teams might be possible fits as buyers. We hope you enjoy the series.

Kicking off our week of looking at trade targets are the players who will be acquired primarily for their work with the bat: first basemen and designated hitters. Note that there might be some overlap across the posts as some players can handle multiple positions.

Here are five realistic trade candidates at the position(s), based on projected WAR over the rest of the season, contract status, the state of their current employers and the needs of various potential contenders.

PLAYER: Billy Butler
TEAM: Royals
POSSIBLE DESTINATION(S): Angels, Rays
CONTRACT STATUS: Four-year, $30 million deal through 2014
PROJECTED WAR: 2.1

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Players switching their representation to Scott Boras in order to maximize earnings isn’t uncommon. Jayson Werth felt it prudent to do so last season in anticipation of his big upcoming contract. Robinson Cano acted accordingly in February. Around the same time as that Yankees slugger, Astros center fielder Michael Bourn followed suit and dropped SFX Baseball for the biggest agent in the game.

Bourn doesn’t necessarily profile similarly to Werth or Cano, but a player does not seek the help of Boras to offer hometown discounts or sign at a below-market rate. Just like the aforementioned triumvirate of new Boras representees, Bourn’s change in agencies likely signifies that he feels his money is coming. He avoided arbitration and signed for $4.4 million this season. Next year will mark the end of his arbitration eligibility, as he reaches free agency for the first time in 2013.

Is Bourn, 28, really a big contract type of player? Upon revisiting this story and reviewing his numbers it seems that, while he may be vastly underrated as a player, three issues loom with respect to his pending contractual status: the perception of players whose value is heavily derived on defense, his offensive numbers relative to the new league averages and not those from 2006-08, and the current status of the Astros franchise.

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The Phillies entered the season relying heavily on the pitching staff after several seasons of scoring runs at will. Jayson Werth signed with the Nationals and Chase Utley was thought to be sidelined for an undetermined amount of time. The downgrade from Werth to some combination of Ben Francisco, Domonic Brown, and John Mayberry was substantial. Even more significant was the dropoff in performance from Utley to the three-headed monster of Wilson Valdez, Pete Orr, and Michael Martinez.

The outfield situation remains in flux, especially with the recent injury to Shane Victorino, but the second base situation is now solved as the Phillies welcome Utley back tonight.

The Phillies are averaging 3.83 runs per game, worse than all National League teams aside from the Pirates, Giants, Padres, and Dodgers. However, the pitching staff has been so effective that the Phillies have the best record in the league at 28-18.

The idea was always that, if the team could hold down the fort until a healthy Utley returned, his supplanting of the replacement level second base triumvirate early enough in the season would help cement their bid as a serious contender.

Though it has gotten to the point that a nifty fantasy strategy might involve adding whoever faces their lineup, the aforementioned sentiment remains true: replacing Valdez, Orr, and Martinez with Utley makes a big difference. Utley’s return invites two questions:

1) What can the Phillies expect from him over the rest of the season?
2) Is his return enough to stave off the Marlins and Braves?

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As long as Jose Bautista continues to hit like this it is our duty to write articles in his honor. Earlier in the week Dave Cameron analyzed how much of a bargain Bautista’s 5 yr/$65 mil extension with the Blue Jays will represent even if he sustains just a semblance of his current performance. Dave also offered up a pu pu platter of statistical nuggets summarizing Jose’s nutty season. Today I’ll look at where Bautista’s rise to superstardom ranks historically to answer the titular question.

We all know the man can hit. In just 35 games he has 4.0 WAR to his name, slashing .360/.509/.816 and with 16 home runs in the process. His rest of season ZiPS projection is .267/.388/.567, which is better than most players are hitting right now. Seriously, his regression-riddled wOBA for the rest of the season is .419 — only six players currently boast a mark greater than that.

Everything about his turnaround defies logic. This isn’t the case of an upper echelon prospect like Brandon Wood figuring something out. Bautista was always patient at the plate and played decent defense, but he was the epitome of a player whose value was linked directly to his team-controlled status. He was a stopgap solution, a non-tender candidate, not a stud in the making. He wasn’t going to make $65 million in his entire career, and now that amount over five years is considered a massive bargain. But is his drastic improvement unprecedented? In the annals of baseball history, has anyone ever improved as much and as quickly?

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Pitchers can succeed without striking batters out, but a failure to whiff shifts more of the burden to the defense. Based on what we know about pitchers and their controllable skills, limiting the number of balls in play increases the likelihood of a good outing. Strikeouts might not guarantee an out due to the dropped third strike rule, but they result in outs virtually 99 percent of the time.

Successful pitching lines lacking strikeouts are strange to the eyes. They’re even stranger when high-strikeout hurlers post them. You’d think a pitcher like Colby Lewis could easily record one punchout in seven innings of work, but in a May 10 start, he held the Athletics to one run over 7 1/3 innings. And he didn’t record a strikeout.

In honor of Lewis’ odd line — 7 1/3 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 0 K — I decided to research two items: the best non-strikeout games in the Retrosheet era, and the highest percentage of non-strikeout starts in a season.

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The top prospect label is a form of baseball tenure. No matter if the player is deemed a bust, what once vaulted him to the top of prospect lists will continue to earn him big league opportunities.

Players aren’t considered to be the best of the best by prospect mavens unless their skills project extremely well at the major league level. When a player of this ilk fails, analysts can usually point to a specific flaw preventing his success. If a former top prospect is struggling to stick in the big leagues, many organizations will take a flier on the player to try their hand at solving his problems. If successful, a team can reap the rewards of a cheap and effective player. Otherwise, the investment was minimal, and the team can cut ties without any real risk.

This is why players like Lastings Milledge, Brandon Wood, and Jeff Francoeur will continue to get signed. In covering all three of these players over the last month, I got to thinking about how frequently these prospects-turned-busts turned things around at the major league level. Does it happen?

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Jeff Francoeur is off to a great start and appears ready to reach his full potential.

It’s now May 9th, and Francoeur is hitting .302/.345/.581. He leads the league in total bases with 10 doubles, a triple and eight home runs. He adds value in the field and on the basepaths. His .279 ISO ranks fifth in the American League, and he ranks fifth from an overall production standpoint with 1.7 wins above replacement. His sharp uptick in productivity is surprising, especially since there is at least one real sign that the improvements might stick.

One of the most interesting aspects of his overall line is how he isn’t walking any more frequently than in years past. The improvement is entirely attributable to a power surge. His batting average on balls in play is by no means otherworldly at .310. His line drive rate is a fairly unimpressive 16%, and nearly 50% of his balls in play are on the ground. Add in that his strikeout rate is a touch higher than it was last year, and it becomes easy to wonder how he is displaying so much power.

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First impressions are important. But they aren’t everything.

The sentiment rings especially true in sports: An impact player might not meet expectations in his first game with a new team, and a mediocre player can initially outperform his true talent level by miles. Heck, if first impressions were really that important, Jeff Francoeur would be a perennial MVP contender, and the Phillies would have sought to rescind the Roy Oswalt trade last summer. What happens on the field often lends itself to narratives both preformed and developed, but taking a step back and examining what fuels a hot or a cold start can help keep everything in perspective.

In other words, Brewers fans shouldn’t be overly concerned about Zack Greinke’s shaky debut on Wednesday.

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