By now, surely you’ve seen the bad news for San Francisco: standout young catcher Buster Posey suffered a left leg injury (assumed to be a broken left ankle and torn ligaments) as a result of a collision with Marlins outfielder Scott Cousins in last night’s game. The injury appears to be season ending, leaving the Giants without one of the best catchers — and players — in the game.

Even though the 24-year-old Posey hadn’t completely hit his stride yet, with a meager .389 slugging percentage, he was still productive for the Giants. His .368 on-base percentage represented a marked improvement over last season’s .351 mark, and his 113 wRC+ ranked fourth among qualified catchers. Throw in his significant defensive contributions — 15 CS against 27 SB, a solid 36% rate — and Posey’s 1.8 WAR ranks only behind Rusell Martin’s 2.0.

According to ZiPS, Posey was primed to get back to last year’s numbers, a .366 wOBA and roughly 4.0 WAR over the latter four months of the season. Replacing that kind of production is nearly impossible; it becomes even harder from the catcher position, as very few players will be available and the internal options are less than impressive. Eli Whiteside will crouch behind the dish for San Francisco today, and the Giants can only hope he can improve on his career .283 wOBA. ZiPS is not confident, projecting a .281 wOBA. Such a mark would place Whiteside marginally above replacement level over 300 or so plate appearances. Thus, it seems fair to say Posey’s injury looks to cost the Giants somewhere between three and four wins without some sort of move for a replacement catcher.

The Giants currently hold a 2.5 game lead on Arizona, a team which will likely regress, and a three game lead on their real competitor, Colorado. According to Baseball Prospectus’s playoff odds, the Giants entered today with an 86.3% chance at the playoffs, including 82.8% odds of winning the NL West. Those odds, however, assume the Giants are a .564 true winning percentage team, or just over a 91-win team. Without Posey, the Giants’ would then be closer to an 86-win true talent team, or a .531 true winning percentage team.

Even with that adjustment, the Giants project as slightly better than Colorado (.525 according to BP) going forward, largely thanks to the tremendous ability of San Francisco’s pitching staff. The Giants will remain favorites by a decent margin, but instead of winning the division 8 out of 9 times, it will be more like 5 or 6. For example, the Cardinals have a .010 expected winning percentage lead on Milwaukee and a 2.5 game lead in the division, and are division winners 66% of the time.

There is still time for the Giants to pick up a worthy replacement for Posey, but given the scarcity at the catcher position, a match may be difficult to find. In the current situation, the Colorado Rockies once again have hope, despite their horrid month of May. Luckily for San Francisco, they built up a head start with Posey. It’s enough of a head start for San Francisco to retain their position as favorites, but chances are the race in the NL West will be tight down the stretch.

Through seven starts last season, Ubaldo Jimenez was the best pitcher in baseball. In 48.1 innings pitched, Jimenez allowed 28 hits while striking out 49 batters en route to a miniscule 0.93 ERA. This season, things have changed for the 27-year-old hurler. In his first seven starts this season, Jimenez hardly looks like the same pitcher. Over that same period, Jimenez carries an unsightly 6.14 ERA. Expected to be entrenched in a fight for the division crown all season, the Colorado Rockies need to figure out what’s wrong with their ace before it’s too late.
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Matt Holliday is one of the best players in baseball. Joey Votto currently has a so-slight-it-is-meaningless lead in Wins Above Replacement among National League players over Holliday despite Holliday missing time at the beginning of the season recovering from an appendectomy. Holliday (201) is second only to his teammate Lance Berkman in wRC+ (213), and plays superior defense to Berkman.

Holliday’s excellence isn’t a recent development. From 2007 to the present, Holliday has accumulated more WAR (27.6) than any other position players in baseball other than acknowledged-best-in-the-business Albert Pujols (34.3) and the similarly underrated Chase Utley (28.6). Of course, there is a distinction between true talent and observed performance, and the uncertainty involved, e.g., with defensive metrics means that we don’t know “for sure” where Holliday ranks, but you get the idea. It is easy enough to see how good Holliday has been and continues simply by looking at his player page. He’s been just about as good or better than Carl Crawford each of the last few years; Crawford has been an excellent player (and very probably still is, despite his dreadful start in Boston), yet, unless I missed it, despite the big eventual payday, Holliday’s free agency did not receive the hype that Crawford’s did. Indeed, relative to his peers-in-performance, Holliday has not received much national attention lately. Why might that be?

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Chris Ian–, I mean Ian Stewart (26) has been horrible in almost every way possible at the plate so far this season. The Colorado Rockies obviously thought so right away, and optioned him to Triple-A after only 28 plate appearances. He came back last week, and has thus far on the season has accumulated a terrifying .073/.174/.098 (.137 wOBA) line. There’s no doubt it has been ugly, and manager Jim Tracy has had it, saying that it is “time for Stewart to fish or cut bait. He’s either going to play his way in or play his way off the team.” Tracy is understandably frustrated, with the first-place Rockies losing four games in a row, including three to second-place San Francisco. However, as might be implied by Stewart be called back up after only a couple of weeks in the minors, it is not clear that the the Rockies really have any better alternative than playing Stewart at the moment.

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In a way, this is all Ian Stewart’s doing. After spending the beginning of spring training on the shelf, he opened the season in abysmal fashion, hitting .074/.138/.074 through his first 29 PA. Of course, anything can happen in 29 PA, but Stewart was getting nothing done. He either struck out or hit the ball on the ground in 20 of his PA, and hit no line drives. He might have been out of whack, having missed the start of spring training, so the Rockies optioned him on April 19th. But by then he was hardly playing anyway. That’s at least in part because Jonathan Herrera was capturing Colorado’s attention.

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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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Troy Tulowitzki’s been on a tear this season. But this isn’t some small-sample, month-long streak. He’s been raking since last July, after he returned from a wrist injury that sidelined him for nearly five weeks.

Usually when a hitter returns from these types of injuries it takes awhile to hit at pre-injury levels. It’s pretty obvious to understand why: Batters use their wrists to swing through the ball. In Tulo’s case, though, it’s almost as if he never suffered the injury.

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At least Nick Punto could fly.

Today’s edition of One Night Only contains:

1. Previews of two games, with sexy, updated Team NERD scores and sexy, updated ZiPS projections.

2. Notes on a third game you shouldn’t watch.

3. A poll on what’s the most depressing thing about the current iteration of the Twins.

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