Here on the site, we’re currently doing a series called the Positional Power Rankings, going through each team’s strengths and weaknesses at each spot on the field. Well, this is also a positional power ranking of sorts. The position is each team’s financial health. The ranking? More like placing the teams in tiers: the teams most constrained by their finances; the teams in the middle; and the most financially-successful teams.

We can’t get to the same level of precision on team finances because we have to rely on publicly-available information that we haven’t generated, and that publicly-available information lacks the kind of details we’d need to really flesh out the small differences between franchises in the same tiers. However, we do have enough information to paint with broad strokes, so as part of our attempt to give an overview of where each team stands as 2013 begins, we’ll look at their access to monetary resources for the upcoming season.

Today we begin our look at the financial health of all thirty major-league teams, starting with the bottom ten. Tomorrow we will look at the middle ten and on Friday the top ten. We will focus on ticket-generated revenue (attendance), local TV revenue, and player payroll. That leaves some holes, to be sure, particularly where team owners are carrying significant debt. Some of that information is publicly-available, but not all, and even the publicly-available information may not accurate or verifiable. This isn’t precise, but hopefully, it’s still informative.

With those caveats, let’s begin.

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Due to an unfortunate data error, the numbers in this story did not include park factors upon publication. We have updated the data to include the park factors, and the data you see below is now correct. We apologize for the mistake.

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What’s all this, then? For an explanation of this series, please read the introductory post. As noted in that introduction, the data is a hybrid projection of the ZIPS and Steamer systems with playing time determined through depth charts created by our team of authors. The rankings are based on aggregate projected WAR for each team at a given position.

Third base is a little deeper than it used to be, and only a handful of teams have little to no hope of being productive at the position. The devil is in the details at the hot corner, as there has been very little turnover among the top 20 teams here. Teams that have quality reserves or prospects coming up the pipeline see a bump here, as we’re looking holistically at the position and not just at the nominal starter. This is an important consideration across the diamond, but particularly so at third given how physically demanding the position is. Only six third basemen suited up in 150 or more games last year. Compare that to 13 at second base and 11 at first base and shortstop, and it becomes clear that depth is important at third base. Unfortunately, most teams don’t have adequate depth, hence the bump for the teams that do.

Let’s get on to the rankings!

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Carlos Gomez will be a Brewer for another four years, it looks like.

With 3 year $24 million extension thru 2016 #Brewers have committed 4 years and $28.3 million to Carlos Gomez over next 4 seasons.

— Tom (@Haudricourt) March 13, 2013

There aren’t many players that fit his contract situation perfectly — Gomez is being extended for three years with one year of arbitration left, and not at a superstar rate — but we can talk about him as a player and whether or not the Brewers will remember this deal fondly anyway.

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In Milwaukee, Hunter Morris will battle former shortstop Alex Gonzalez and fringe big leaguer Taylor Green for the opening day nod at first base. On paper, it seems like the odds are in his favor. However, Morris’ arbitration clock and Corey Hart’s timetable for returning to the lineup will weigh heavily in the Brewers decision. For a three-to-four week stopgap, it might not be worth it to the organization — Especially when the Brewers are projected to finish with a .500 record.

Recently, Marc Hulet ranked Morris as the 11th best prospect in the Brewers system. He was the third best first baseman I scouted in person in 2012, but this was more indicative of a weak group at the position than Morris being a top prospect. Oliver projections have the left-handed hitter posting a .256/.302/.476 triple slash line and 1.7 WAR if given everyday reps, but this strikes me as generous. While Morris’ power is not in question, the rest of his skill set is.

Video after the jump

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For at least three franchises, this offseason could have taken a very different path. When Justin Upton vetoed a trade to the Mariners, he altered the direction of Seattle, Arizona and Atlanta, at the very least. Such negated transactions make for fascinating what-if’s, and now that we are edging into the time of year when all we will read is “best shape of my career” posts, I thought we could step back and take a look at some of these.

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I have a theory about front offices, and about baseball organizations in general. It seems to me that everybody’s trending in the direction of getting smarter about the game. There are fewer things within the game to exploit, because everyone’s got better awareness and understandings. I believe that, over time, front offices will come to closely resemble one another, strengthening the correlation between team success and team payroll. The front-office extremes will be closer together, and teams will depend more on money and luck. It’s just a theory and we’re not there yet, but it seems to be a sensible conclusion.

About those extremes, and about better understandings — today, we’re still trying to nail down evaluations of defensive performance. When people complain about WAR, they almost always begin by complaining about UZR, because UZR isn’t perfect or even anywhere close to it. But while we’ve still got a ways to go with regard to defensive quantification, over the last several years tremendous progress has been made. I probably don’t need to explain it to you, because you are smart. We’re getting numbers, the numbers usually aren’t dreadfully inaccurate, and people better understand that defense is important and can make a whale of a difference. Finding good defenders is no longer something to be exploited; defense isn’t nearly as underrated as it used to be.

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Brewers first baseman Corey Hart will miss the next three to four months — or about six weeks of the regular season — as the former outfielder requires surgery to repair a meniscal tear on his right knee. Hart thrived through a transition from right field to first base after Mat Gamel suffered a torn ACL attempting to run down a foul ball last year. Now, presumably, Gamel will get to take a turn as the injury replacement at first base in Milwaukee.

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Tim Lincecum’s resume contains the following items: 2 time Cy Young award winner, 4 time All-Star and twice World Series Champion. With all the achievements over the last 5 seasons, he was relegated to a long relief once the Giants made the playoffs because he was no longer effective as a starter. Lincecum’s problem is he can no longer just throw the ball across the plate and hope a batter just swings and misses. If he wants any hope of returning to be the starter he once was, he now needs to learn how to pitch.

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Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.

1. FAN Projection Targets: Basically Every Brewers Starter
2. Action GIF: Mark Rogers’ Slider
3. SCOUT Leaderboards: Australian Baseball League

FAN Projection Targets: Basically Every Brewers Starter
As is made apparent by the very recently released 2013 ZiPS projections for the Milwaukee Brewers, the starting rotation for said team contains a considerable amount of uncertainty — due either to a change of roles in the not-very-distant past (Marco Estrada, Mike Fiers) or injury (Chris Narveson, Mark Rogers).

In situations like this, where information not included in the ZiPS algorithm might be of some import regarding a specific player, it’s possible that the Wisdom of the Crowds might have some advantage in producing an able projection for said player.

To that end, the author encourages the readership to complete FAN Projection ballots for the following five pitchers — all candidates for Milwaukee’s rotation in 2013.

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Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, which have typically appeared in the pages of Baseball Think Factory, are being released at FanGraphs this year. Below are the projections for the Milwaukee Brewers. Szymborski can be found on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other 2013 Projections: Angels / Astros / Athletics / Blue Jays / Cubs / Giants / Nationals / Phillies / Rangers / Royals.

Batters
Milwaukee’s is not a stars-and-scrubs offense, per se. It is, however, a stars-and-something offense — owing largely to the presence, first, of left-fielder Ryan Braun and then, second, everyone else on the team, none of whom are as good as left-fielder Ryan Braun. A year after winning the NL MVP award (in 2011), Braun posted the second-highest WAR in the National League last season. Unsurprisingly, he’s projected to be quite good in 2013, as well.

Elsewhere, the team is almost uniformly average. ZiPS is skeptical about Aramis Ramirez‘s capacity to approximate what was actually a career year in 2012. On the other hand, young shortstop Jean Segura’s failure to play any better than replacement level after arriving in Milwaukee (by way of the Zack Greinke trade) doesn’t appear to entirely mar his projection for 2013.

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