Jim Hendry has been relieved of his duties as general manager of the Chicago Cubs. We’ll have plenty of time to look back on his place in GM history, but for now, let’s look forward. Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts gave us the checklist today, when he said that he was looking for a candidate who had analytical experience in a winning front office and who would focus on player development. Time to rank the potential replacements using those requirements.

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The American League Central is pretty weak. Of all the teams in the division, only Cleveland has a positive run differential as of today, and that’s by only one run. A number of factors probably contribute to the divisional weakness: lower average budgets than some of the coastal divisions, poor decision making, and perhaps some bad luck. The division, however, is surprisingly strong this season in one area: shortstops. Can any other division compare?

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The saber prescription for the bullpen seems clear: identify your best relievers based on their component skills and use them in the right matchups according to their handedness and arsenal. Ignore the inning and instead use your best pitcher in the highest leverage moment. Basically, have a relief ace who pitches in the most important moment in the game — and then find role players to fill in the blanks.

There’s some agreement that this would be an improvement over the current set-up man/closer plan. There might never have been a ‘pen that was truly run this way.

Well, until now. Check out Chicago’s South Side.

Is Ozzie Guillen running a saber pen right now?

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Ozzie Guillen is not a happy man. He hasn’t been all season, really. His team figured to play a big part in the AL Central race this year, but instead they’re the poster boys for the division’s mediocrity. The pitching staff has been fine¹, but the offense has fallen far afoul of expectations². Still, only five of their regulars are currently hitting worse than their ZiPS projections. Of those, one is close, one is a rookie, and one is performing about in line with 2010³. The Sox offensive deficiency stems mainly from two culprits who have dragged down the entire unit: Adam Dunn and Alex Rios. It’s because of these two that the Sox aren’t enjoying more of a competition with the Tigers for the NL Central crown.

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Edwin Jackson is a pitcher everyone wants to acquire, but then seemingly can’t wait to unload as soon as possible.

Or at least, that’s the impression you get from looking at his trade history. Jackson has been traded six times over the course of his career, with five of those trades happening within the last three years. He’s been traded for exciting prospects, not exciting prospects, an enigmatic center fielder, a powerful outfielder with platoon issues, and a multitude of relief pitchers. He’s 27-years-old and has yet to become a free agent, but he’s already been on seven different teams in his career. For comparison, Ricky Henderson — the prototypical man-of-many-hats — only played on nine different teams over the course of his entire career.

As Jackson was at the heart of the recent Colby Rasmus trade, I wanted to take another look at all the place he’s been. So without further ado, I present to you my pitiful, Paint-tastic attempt to visualize Edwin Jackson’s full trade history (click to enlarge):

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White Sox General Manager Kenny Williams is notorious for being active around the trade deadline. Yet with his team only three games out of first place the morning of the deadline — for the first time in years — all was quiet on the South Side. Williams’ silence was a big change from previous seasons, when he made big splashes for Alex Rios, Manny Ramirez and Jake Peavy (Rios and Ramirez were technically waiver claims). With the AL Central still up for grabs this season — and his division rivals making some big splashes of their own — Williams’ failure to act seems even more puzzling.
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Ichiro Suzuki is getting old. In life, that’s not a bad thing. In baseball, it is.

He is now in season 11 of the MLB portion of his career and season 20 of his professional career. Despite his age, he has played in 102 of the Seattle Mariners’ 103 games this year (not counting today). Moreover, he has more plate appearances (457) than anyone over age 35 in 2011. The next closest, Paul Konerko, is over 30 PAs behind him.

Ichiro may look as healthy and athletic as ever, but his numbers this year have been very un-Ichiro-like:

wOBA: .285
wRC+: 80
UZR: -8.4
Bsr: 2.3

All, except for the base-running (UBR) numbers, are career lows for Ich-dawg. We have long-anticipated Ichiro would slow down his ageless mastery of baseball at some point, but the depreciation in his 2011 statistics seem rather sudden. Worth noting:

BABIP: .289
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The talks started last winter, but they didn’t seem serious. Why would the Cardinals consider trading Colby Rasmus? He’s young, he’s cost-controlled, and he’s a center fielder who has some pop. But he clashed with manager Tony LaRussa, and we’ve seen other players depart St. Louis after such spats. Those talks have heated up again in the past month, gaining momentum as the trade deadline approaches. Today it all came to a head. Early this morning word broke that the Blue Jays were set to acquire Edwin Jackson, whom they’d then flip to the Cardinals in a Rasmus deal. A few hours, everything came together as planned.

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For all the chatter surrounding this year’s trade deadline, we’ve seen a dearth of activity. To date only three transactions of note have crossed the wire: Wilson Betemit to the Tigers, Francisco Rodriguez to the Brewers, and Jeff Keppinger to the Giants. Other than that we’ve had a lot of words and no trades. The words you’re reading are no different, in that it’s more trade speculation with no actions guaranteed to follow. But it might be the most entertaining rumor to date. Yesterday ESPN Chicago ran some quotes from White Sox GM Ken Williams, and the implications have transaction hounds licking their chops.

“On one hand, you can look toward potentially adding. We’d have to add creatively because of the financial situation right now. On the other hand, maybe this is the most opportune time to turn over the entire roster and get some young, exciting player in here and go that route.”

And away we go.

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…since 1974, when our play-by-play database begins.

On Monday, I posted about the three worst double plays ever according to Win Probability Added (WPA). From 1974 through yesterday’s games, there have been 89072 double plays caused by groundouts (I’m leaving out other sorts of double plays as, from the hitter’s perspective at least, they have more to do with dumb luck). Of those, only 51 have a positive WPA. However, it does happen from time to time, and while the shifts aren’t as dramatic in terms of WPA, the circumstances make them more interesting (at least to me) than the negative WPA occasions.

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