Going into the 2007 draft, all the buzz was about David Price. The left-hander from Vanderbilt was a veritable lock for the #1 pick in the draft, giving the Tampa Bay Devil Rays — fresh off a 101-loss season — a top arm to go along with 2006 top pick Evan Longoria. Price was a bona fide ace, an All-Star in the making that already had two plus pitches in his fastball and slider.  As was expected, he rose quickly through the minors and has already established himself as one of the top pitchers in the majors in only his second full season.

But this story isn’t about David Price. Instead, this story is about the best pitching prospect selected in the 2007 draft. It’s about the best pitching prospect the Rays have ever had. It’s about Matt Moore.

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Every year, there’s at least one player that has an absolute fail-tacular year in the field. Jermaine Dye in 2009 (-22 UZR). Ken Griffey Jr. in 2007 (-29 UZR). Brad Hawpe in 2008 (-36 UZR). These players all had good years at the plate, but their defense was so excessively poor that they ended up negating a large portion of the value they provided to their team.

This year’s candidate to join this illustrious group? Mark Reynolds. After spending most of the season at third base or first base, Reynolds currently has the worst UZR score in the majors: 22 runs below average.  And not only that, but Reynolds also has the lowest Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) rating of the year (-32 runs), he’s tied for the most amount of errors in the majors (26), and his Fielding Percentage is by far the worst in the majors (.897). I don’t like using Fielding Percentage as an evaluative tool, but when the next worst person is a full 50 points better than you, your glove is pretty darn bad.

When looking at these numbers, two questions pop into my head. How often is it that DRS and UZR both agree like this? And should the Orioles put Reynolds at DH once Guerrero is gone?

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Every year without fail, the MVP debate stirs up controversy. It’s all too predictable, considering the Baseball Writers Association of American (BBWAA) doesn’t define what they mean by “Most Valuable” and leaves that distinction up to each individual voter’s discretion. Each voter has their own interpretation, leading to different ballots and debates that go around in circles. It’s old and tired, and yet we can’t help but fall for it every time.

I’m assuming the vast majority of you already know this, but there are two schools of thought on what “valuable” means: the old-school belief that a player’s team needs to make the postseason for them to have been “most valuable”, and the new-school thought that value is value regardless of if a player’s team makes the playoffs or not. Why penalize a player having a spectacular year simply because the rest of their team wasn’t any good?

So how should we define valuable? Value is a word intrinsically tied up in sabermetrics — what else is WAR supposed to be measuring? — so you’d think we’d be able to properly define it. Oh, the English language — that so much controversy can be caused over something as mundane as an imprecise definition.

But this weekend, I had an epiphany. As much as it pains me to say it, you know, those old-school baseball writers might actually have a point.

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Earlier this week, I spent some time explaining an alternative way of evaluating power: Weighted Extra Bases (wXB). It’s not a statistic you’ll find in the FanGraphs pages as I made it up — although I am not the first to do so — but I like to think it does a better job at capturing the value a player creates through power than Isolated Power or Slugging Percentage.

That’s not to say that wXB is better than ISO or SLG — simply that it’s answering a different question. While ISO and SLG concern themselves with a player’s extra bases and total bases, wXB focuses specifically on the value a player adds through their extra base hits. The formula uses the coefficients for each hit from wOBA, so doubles are given slightly more weight than in ISO, and home runs slightly less.

Using this stat, we’re able to see which players are over- or undervalued by ISO, compared with how much value they have actually contributed through their extra base hits. There are a few notable names on both sides of the coin, so let’s check them out.

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The Texas Rangers just can’t stop making trades. After acquiring Mike Adams and Koji Uehera (yes, another Oriole) at the trade deadline, the Rangers went out yesterday and traded for pitcher Mike Gonzalez from the Orioles for a PTBNL.

On the surface, this is a relatively minor move. Ooo, the Rangers add another veteran arm to help them shore up their bullpen down the stretch — not such a big deal, right? For some reason, though, this move has sparked off about 10 different simultaneous thoughts in my head. So if you’re looking for gratuitous, over-the-top coverage of relatively small baseball moves, you’ve come to the right spot today.

I’ll run through this team by team, to help keep my thoughts from becoming too chaotic. First the Rangers, then the Orioles, and then…the Angels?

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What exactly is “power”? Is it the ability to hit home runs? Doubles? Triples? Should we consider how far a player hits a ball, or are we just concerned with the outcome? How would you define it?

If we were to try and define power from the ground up, obviously you’d have to start with home runs. Power hitters are guys that mash lots of home runs, right? When I think power, I think of players like Jose Bautista, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, and Barry Bonds. Home runs are so flashy, they steal the show.

But there’s more to power than a player’s raw home run total. You can’t completely ignore other extra base hits, which is why there are statistics like Slugging Percentage and Isolated Power. Slugging Percentage measures a player’s total bases and Isolated Power measures a player’s extra bases*, so both statistics count doubles and triples as well as home runs.

*Quick refresher course for everyone. Slugging Percentage = Total Bases / At Bats ; Isolated Power = Extra Bases / At Bats

Or if you prefer to think about it another way, Jose Bautista has a .330 ISO this season. That means he averages nearly one extra base every three at bats. 

Both these stats have the same problem, though: not all bases are created equal. If a player has accumulated 30 extra bases in 100 at bats, isn’t there a big difference if those extra bases were accumulated through 10 home runs versus 30 doubles ? Both players have the same Isolated Power, but which one has provided their team with more value through their power production?

Good question, I’m glad you asked.

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Earlier this season, I re-introduced the two statistics Shutdowns and Meltdowns. In short, these two stats are an alternative way of evaluating relief pitchers, providing an alternative from the age-old standbys Saves and Blown Saves. If a pitcher enters a game and makes their team more likely to win, they get credit for a Shutdown; if they make their team more likely to lose, they get a Meltdown. It’s a simple enough concept, no?

Shutdowns and Meltdowns are a great way to look at which relievers are under- or overvalued based on their Saves total, and it can also be a useful tool for evaluating middle relievers. So which relievers have are being sneakily good or bad this year? Let’s take a look.

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Coming into today, I can’t say I had more than a surface-deep opinion on Jim Hendry. I don’t follow the Cubs as closely as I do other teams, and while  I knew that Cubs fans didn’t like him, I’d never done enough research to form an opinion more than, “Eh, he’s not the best.” And now that Hendry has been fired by the Cubs, I’ve done plenty of research and spent the day reading around…yet I still don’t know exactly what to think about him. Hendry is a tough knot to untangle.

I don’t think you’ll find any Cubs fans out there that criticize Hendry’s character. From all reports, he’s a stand-up guy that cared deeply about his players and the Cubs franchise. Heck, he stayed on for multiple weeks after he was fired, for the sole purpose of helping the Cubs sign their draft picks and transition smoothly. If that’s not dedication, I don’t know what is.

But the Cubs are currently adrift without any real focus or direction. They are on pace for their second straight fourth place finish in the NL Central, and they haven’t had a strong, competitive team since 2008. And yet, Hendry built this team as if he intended to compete this season, signing Carlos Pena and trading for Matt Garza. Did Hendry misevaluate the Cubs’ place on the win curve? What was his plan going forward? Did he necessarily have one? With all these questions swirling around him and the Cubs, it’s about time Hendry moved on.

So what exactly was Hendry? A good GM? Bad GM? As you’d expect, the answer is somewhere in between.

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I was lucky enough to be in attendance for last night’s game between the Rays and Red Sox, where I got to see something rather rare: a triple play. In the fourth inning of the game, the Rays had runners on first and second with no outs, and Sean Rodriguez hit a sharp grounder right to Jed Lowrie at third base. Lowrie took two steps to the base and then started an easy 5-4-3 triple play. But as fate would have it, this play wasn’t even the first triple play turned this week. The Brewers turned an impressive 4-6-3-2 triple play on Monday against the Dodgers, the first time that sort of triple play has happened since 1972.

So naturally, these two plays have now turned my mind toward all things triple-play-related. Looking for some odd tidbits of information on these triple plays, or on triple plays in general? I’ve got you covered.

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If you’re a baseball fan — and if you’re not, why are you reading this? — you’ve undoubtedly been bombarded these past few days with stories about Mariano Rivera. I swear, every time I log onto Twitter, I see another five articles taking a stab at answering the same question: Is Mo declining? He’s been hit around three times this week, allowing four runs in only 1.2 innings pitched, and he’s both blown a save and lost a game. Judging from the media attention these struggles have been given, it sounds as though Mo should just hang up his spikes now and call it quits.

But of course, that’s absolute rot. In the battle between Mo and age, it looks like even Father Time can’t catch up with his cutter.

For the past five seasons, people have been overreacting to every blown save by Mariano, assuming that, this time, his struggles are signs that age is finally catching up to him. But guess what? So far, he’s still as dominant as ever. His 2.40 ERA is slightly high for him, but there are still only five closers in the majors that have a lower ERA than him this season. His strikeouts are up from last year (7.8 K/9) while his walks are down (1.0 BB/9), and he’s still allowing home runs at a rate well below league average. His 2.81 SIERA is better than he produced last season, and suggests he’s going to be just fine going forward. He may not be quite as dominant as he was in his early 30s, but hey, who is? That doesn’t mean he isn’t still great.

I’d get tired of this yearly drama regarding Mo, except it actually serves an important function: it reminds us just how amazing Mariano is. At 589 saves — only 12 behind Trevor Hoffman’s record 601 saves — he has already locked up the title of Best Closer of All-Time, and he’s still going strong. But at 41 years old, is Mariano the best old closer in history as well?

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