It appears that the Giants are preparing to cut their losses. Paying Miguel Tejada $6.5 million to produce -0.9 WAR won’t rank among Brian Sabean’s career highlights, but at this point it appears wiser to write off the sunk cost than continue the experiment. When the team activates Pablo Sandoval from the disabled list later this week, chances are we’ll see the Giants release one of three worst regulars in the league.

Tejada, however, is not the worst hitter in the league. Two players have managed to outdo his .223 wOBA. One is Alcides Escobar, though he at least provides value with the glove. WIth a UZR of 6 he ranks seventh in the league, and fourth among infielders; his DRS also ranks near the top of the league. But not even Escobar’s .218 wOBA sits in the league’s cellar. That dishonor belongs to Chone Figgins, with a .207 wOBA. While his leash is understandably longer than Tejada’s, I do wonder exactly how far it extends.

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Every season, there’s always one thing in demand at the trade deadline — starting pitching. Nearly every contender outside of Philadelphia is in the hunt for another rotation arm, and the demand always outstrips the supply. While there’s no Cliff Lee on the block this year, there are still some interesting arms who could make a difference down the stretch. Here are the best candidates:

PLAYER: Edwin Jackson
TEAM: White Sox
POSSIBLE DESTINATION(S): Yankees, Red Sox, Reds
CONTRACT STATUS: $8.35 million, free agent at end of year
PROJECTED WAR: 1.8

The White Sox might end up trading Jackson even if they get back in the race for the AL Central title, as they currently have six starting pitchers for just five slots. Jackson is no stranger to changing teams, as he’s been dealt by Los Angeles, Tampa Bay, Detroit, and Arizona since arriving in the Major Leagues. Given the White Sox surplus of arms and his impending free agency, he’s a good bet to be packing his bags once again.

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The following data is current through 5-30-2011.

If you, dear reader, are like me, then you agonize unnecessarily over every lineup on every team in every game. Aaron Rowand leading off?! Yargh! No! Carlos Gomez batting second for the Brewers?! WRONG. Aaron Miles batting anything?! Unforgivable.

Holding egos constant, inefficiency is the greatest enemy of success. With regards to lineups, however, teams can really only lose a handful of runs over the course of full season, but a handful of runs, in real terms, can mean the difference between the division or a boring October. So it’s a dicey proposition. A mismanaged lineup on the Royals team does not mean a whole lot because they will lose the division by several trillion runs. A few lost runs for the Rays, Yankees, or Red Sox, though, can mean the season.
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Continuing our Trade Targets series, here are five middle infielders who could be available at (or before) the deadline.

PLAYER: Jose Reyes
TEAM: Mets
POSSIBLE DESTINATION(S): Giants, Reds, Brewers
CONTRACT STATUS: $11 million, free agent after the season
PROJECTED WAR: 3.3

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In spite of a lineup featuring Suzuki, Smoak, Death To Flying Things and scrubs, the Seattle Mariners sit just one game under .500 at 24-25 and trail the first-place Rangers by a game-and-a-half.

The offense is still wheezing along, besting only the Twins in park-and-league-adjusted batting, and the M’s have been the worst defensive club in the AL thus far, according to Ultimate Zone Rating. The starting pitching, on the other hand, has been superb and has kept the Mariners in AL West contention to this point. With a collective 3.40 xFIP from its starters, Seattle is neck-and-neck with Oakland for the top honors in the league.

Felix Hernandez, as always, is dominating. Jason Vargas and Doug Fister are pitching fairly well, and Zombie Bedard has been fantastic this May. King Felix isn’t the only royalty in Seattle’s rotation, though — Prince Michael Pineda is making major league hitters look like mere paupers during his rookie season.

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Yesterday, the great Mitchel Lichtmen gave us a look into how FanGraphs’ latest toy, Ultimate Base Running (UBR). This nifty base-running stat is now on the player pages and a part of WAR. As Dave Appleman noted, UBR (or Bsr, short for base running, on the player pages) has a rather small effect (though not insignificant) on a player’s WAR.

Although small on a player level, UBR (henceforth called Bsr) does help us spot organizational trends, identifying which teams prioritize bag-dashing and the like. Unsurprisingly, the relationship between base running and runs scored is not very meaningful. This should make sense because base running is great, but teams cannot run the bases if they are not getting on base — and they cannot run the bases if they clap a homer.

Looking at the MLB through the 2002 and 2011 seasons, we encounter more than one surprise:
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I noticed last night that the Mariners were the only team left in baseball that had yet to play an extra-inning game this season. Division-mate Oakland has already played eight. Sometimes I am content to let a little nugget like that pass off into the twitter-verse and let it die, but in this case I got intrigued enough to head to Retrosheet and see if I could dig up some context. I restricted the search to seasons starting in 1962 when the expansion to 162 games took place and started the season earlier in the year.

The best that I could do was to go by calendar dates. I would prefer to go by game counts, but that was not available to my database at this time. Luckily, calendar dates are a reasonable proxy for how many games a team has played. And the winner for the longest it has taken to play extra innings goes to the 2005 Boston Red Sox who didn’t go beyond nine until their 99th game of the season on July 25. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mariners offense is comfortably in baseball’s bottom third. And while they are getting positive offensive contributions from Ichiro Suzuki, Adam Kennedy and Milton Bradley, who knows where they would be without Justin Smoak, who, after a 7-for-12 performance against the Rangers this week, is beginning to look more and more like the potentially great player many thought he was when he was traded last season. Read the rest of this entry »

It happens every year. A manager gets an itchy trigger finger early in the season and buries a guy before he even gets a chance to earn the faith the manager put in him to start the season. This year is no different, and with an idea sparked from Eric Seidman’s piece yesterday on Brad Emaus — an article that the Mets completely ignored when they waived him today — I present the 2011 Brad Emaus All-Stars.
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Yesterday, Tommy Rancel wrote about Alexi Ogando’s impressive start to the season, but while Ogando pitched well and his team won, he wasn’t the big story in that game. His counterpart on Tuesday was Michael Pineda, a highly touted prospect who was making his Major League debut for the Mariners. At 6’7 and 250 pounds, Pineda looks the part of a dominating frontline starter, and after he showed off his mid-90s velocity and dispatched the Rangers on 10 pitches (despite racking up two strikeouts) in his first inning of work, it was easy to see why his arrival was so highly anticipated.

The Rangers were able to get to Pineda a couple of times later in the game, notching four extra base hits that led to three runs off the young hurler in his six innings of work, but it was certainly a successful debut overall; there’s no shame in giving up a few hits to the Texas Rangers, after all. However, while Pineda dominating the right-handed bats in the Texas line-up – they combined to go 2 for 16 with a walk and a sac bunt in their 18 attempts against him – his one big flaw was on display on Tuesday, and it’s one of the reasons why I’m not quite sure that he’ll be able to live up to the hype this year.

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