He didn’t win a Gold Glove. He didn’t win a Fielding Bible Award. But Pablo Sandoval may be the best defensive third baseman in the National League, if not the majors.

Yes, I’m a San Francisco Giants fan. A season-ticket holder, in fact. So I do see a lot of Sandoval at the hot corner over the course of the season. But neither my fandom nor my eyes have blinded me. Sandoval is just that good. And not “good for a guy who looks like the Kung Fu Panda”; just flat-out good.

Let’s start with the numbers. Sandoval only played 904 innings at third base in 2011, as he missed about six weeks with a broken hamate bone in his right hand. Adrian Beltre — who won the American League Gold Glove and Fielding Bible Award for his play at third base — logged 980 innings at third. Placido Polanco — the winner of the National League Gold Glove — manned the hot corner for 1,044 innings. Evan Longoria was at third for 1,124 innings. Those were the top four defensive third baseman in the majors in 2011.

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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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Earlier this week I posted about the best bunts of 2011. Taking some of the comments to that post into consideration, the obvious follow-up is the worst bunts of the 2011 season according to Win Probability Added (WPA).

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News broke late Tuesday that the Philadelphia Phillies were on the verge of signing Ryan Madson to a 4-year year/$44 million deal. By Wednesday, there was news that the deal was “waiting approval” by Phillies ownership or “only a deal in principle” or “falling apart.”

However this plays out, the idea of a 4-year/$44 million deal for a top-line closer is likely to set the standard against which other closer deals are negotiated this winter. We’re looking at you, Jonathan Papelbon.

What should we make of a possible 4-year/$44 million deal for a pitcher like Ryan Madson?  Several things.

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On Tuesday, we took a quick look at the competitive balance in the MLB, and I made the claim that baseball may have more parity than most leagues, but it also has want of greater balance. During the course of the piece, I made this statement:

The NFL has decided it wants payroll to have essentially no impact on winning, so teams basically trot out the same amount of money every Sunday and hope their money was better-spent. Is that what the MLB wants?

Aft’wards, Paul Swydan pointed out to me that indeed NFL salaries are not flat. Despite their hard cap, their hefty revenue sharing, and their tight spandex pants, the NFL still exhibits nearly a $77M gap between the biggest and lowest payroll — impressive, but still nothing compared to the MLB:

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Yesterday afternoon, Jayson Stark considered the question, “Is the MLB’s competitive balance a joke?” His answer was a rather blunt no:

MLB’s competitive balance is NOT a joke.

It beats the NFL.

It beats the league formerly known as the NBA.

And … I can prove it.

Stark’s method of proving it — plucking facts from the recent playoff series and comparing them generally to the NFL and other major leagues — was less than rigorous. In general, I agreed with his assertion: Parity in the MLB exists naturally far more than any other sports league.

HOWEVER, if my foot has less gangrene than your foot, does that mean I don’t need a doctor? No. I probably still need a doctor, and I probably need to stop playing barefoot tag on Rusty Nails Pier.

Relative success does not necessitate absolute success. And frankly, I feel the “parity” in the MLB indeed has a gangrene of sorts, a disease that is causing only specific segments of the league to rot while the rest hum along uncaring.

Of course, it is one thing to suspect something and demand more research, but it is another to pull the sabermetrician stocking over your head and answer that suspicion with a Falcon Punch of data.

Let’s do just that.
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The Giants organization under General Manager Brian Sabean is known for fielding veteran big league ball clubs, with the occasional influx of high-level talent like catcher Buster Posey and pitcher Madison Bumgarner. The club went all-in in 2011 with the trade of top pitching prospect Zack Wheeler to the Mets for aging outfielder Carlos Beltran. Sadly, the team did not even make the playoffs and will now have to watch New York develop a killer 1-2 punch at the top of its starting rotation with Wheeler and Matt Harvey.

The organization played it relatively “safe” in the 2011 amateur draft with a high number of college players taken but it did gamble on some higher ceiling, larger bonus college picks with question marks, such as C Andrew Susac, LHP Josh Osich, and RHP Ray Black. The Giants’ Top 15 prospect list features a high number of ’11 draft picks due to a lack of minor league depth and because the scouting staff make some intriguing selections.

1. Gary Brown | CF
BORN: Sept. 28, 1988
EXPERIENCE: 2 seasons (Reached A+ in ’11)
ACQUIRED: 2010 1st round, Cal State Fullerton (24th overall)
2010-11 TOP 10 RANKING: 5th

SCOUTING REPORT: I’ve been a little more conservative on my rankings of Brown than a lot of people but I’m starting to warm up to him. With that said, I’m not reading too much into his stats in 2011 because he played in a potent offensive league. Double-A will be a huge test of his talent. Brown’s best tool is his game-changing speed, which ranks as a pure 80 on the 20-80 scouting scale. He also shows above-average bat speed but his offensive game – which should be built around his foot speed – is hindered by his over-aggressive nature. Defensively, he has the tools to be a plus defender, but he’s still learning center field after bouncing around the field in college.

YEAR IN REVIEW: As mentioned, Brown’s ’11 season has a big ol’ asterisk beside it due to the league he was playing in and the odd decision not to challenge him with a mid-season promotion to double-A. Even so, you cannot scoff at a .411 wOBA and he showcased his blazing speed with 53 steals. He did get nabbed 19 times to he’s got a little bit of work to do in terms of success rate. The most encouraging number for me was the strikeout rate of just 12.1%. If he can get his walk rate (7.2%) up above 10% then he will be that much more dangerous.

YEAR AHEAD: Brown will face a stiff test at double-A in 2012 but he has the tools to succeed – he just needs some polish. He’s flashed some power in his career, both in college and in ’11 with a .182 ISO, but his game needs to revolve around his strongest tool. If everything goes well at double-A, Brown could see the Majors by July.

CAREER OUTLOOK: A lot of fast players with occasional pop have fallen prey to the allure of swinging for the fences. If Brown can avoid the temptation and work on “the little things,” then he will no doubt succeed as the Giants’ leadoff hitter and center-fielder of the future. Andres Torres is by no means a road block to playing time but the club will also have to avoid the temptation to commit too much money and too many years to veteran outfielders either on the open market or via the trade front.

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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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From 2008 to 2011, Jonathan Sanchez has the fourth highest strikeout rate (24.1%) of any starting pitcher in baseball (500 IP minimum), ranking behind only Tim Lincecum, Clayton Kershaw, and Yovani Gallardo. Given this ability to consistently miss bats, Sanchez is often lauded as a pitcher with a lot of untapped potential. Pitchers who can post those kinds of strikeout rates are often quite successful, and if Sanchez could just refine the other parts of his game, he looks like he could turn into a dominant starting pitcher.

There’s just one problem – Sanchez isn’t even close to refining those other parts of his game, and we simply can’t ignore that he’s a massively flawed pitcher. Over the same time period (and again, 500 inning minimum), no starting pitcher has posted a worse walk rate than Sanchez’s 12.3% mark, and it’s not even all that close. The next worst mark is Gio Gonzalez, more than a full percentage point behind, and he is then followed closely by Barry Zito.

Sanchez’s high walk and high strikeout rates are the product of his propensity for pitching up in the strike zone, where contact is less frequent but so is the likelihood of getting a called strike. By pitching up in the zone, Sanchez is essentially choosing a strategy that increases the likelihood of deep counts, thus increasing both his walk and strikeout rates. Unlike some other high walk/high strikeout pitchers who simply need to improve their command of premium stuff, Sanchez is getting his whiffs through location, and if he began to throw more strikes, he’d likely see a significant drop in his strikeout rate as well.

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With a classic World Series — the most exciting in a long time, if not the best-played or best-managed — now over, it is time to hand out individual awards for the 2011 regular season. Sure, some people are anticipating the Cy Young, MVP, and Rookie of the Year announcements, but I bet true baseball fans really pumped for stuff like today’s award, which attempts to measure how much a hitter has contributed to his team’s wins beyond what traditional linear weights indicates. Who is 2011’s King of Little Things?

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