“Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.”

-ye olde Bill Shakespeare (Friar Laurence from Rome and Juliet)

After waiting many hard winter months without any baseball, it seems unfair to ask us sabermagicians to wait even longer to saberize our favorite teams and players. Unfortunately, that is what we must do. One of the core principles of sabermetric thought is the value of sample size.

We cannot do as our detractors think we do: We cannot resort to looking for greater truths from lesser findings.

So, this early part of the year features a lot of articles about players’ plate discipline numbers and pitchers’ pitch f/x changes — small slivers of reality that give us clues to how the big reality will start to look.

One such thing we can look at early in the season: batting average on balls in play (BABIP). Why? BABIP stabilizes slowly, but tends to stay in a particular range for hitters (somewhere between .250 and .350, with most hitters being quite near to .300). So, early in the season, we can usually take a gander at the Luck Loserboard (those hitters with BABIPs at or beneath .200) and get a good idea about which players are poised to rebound.
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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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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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I guess the Royals just had to give yet another foolish contract to a washed-up ex-Mariner: Mike Sweeney signed a one-day contract with the Royals this past Friday so that he could retire as a member of the team that originally drafted him. A number of thoughtful Sweeney tributes were already posted before the weekend, and I'm sure there are more to come. Nothing will, of course, ever top this outstanding website preserving the memory of Sweeney’s forgotten 83-home-run campaign in 2003.

Sweeney inspires polarizing reactions, particularly among Royals fans. The pieces above cover the underlying issues — his performances, his personality, his big contract, his back injury — so I won’t rehash those issues here. In addition to the pieces linked above, I’m sure Joe Posnanski and Rany Jazayerli will be along to share their favorite Sweeney stories soon, and you can look up at his player page for the basic statistics. For my part, I’d like to take a look at some of Sweeney’s biggest hits in terms of the stat that tells a story: Win Probability Added.

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A pair of great, Kansas City-based writers, Sam Mellinger and Joe Posnanski, both weighed in recently on Jeff Francoeur and his role with the Royals. Mellinger discusses Francoeur’s new physique, and how dropping 25 pounds could help him regain his lost mojo. Poz focuses on Frenchy’s WINNING! personality, and his lack of success as a big league hitter.

High-quality discussion, to be sure. But all the discussion of Francoeur’s amazing start as a rookie, his complete lack of plate discipline, and his new Humpilates regimen ignores the key point here: He’s a warm body. That’s all Dayton Moore and the Royals wanted, or needed.

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