Offseason Notes for November 11th

Pat Burrell, seen here strangling a defenseless elderly man, might retire soon.

Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Offseason Notes.

1. Assorted Headlines
2. SCOUT Leaderboards: Arizona Fall League
3. Projecting: ZiPS for the Detroit Tigers

Assorted Headlines
Equal parts fact and fiction.

Burrell Leaning Towards Retirement
Pat Burrell said Thursday that his baseball career is likely over owing to a right foot injury, the Associated Press reports. The (recently) 35-year-old Burrell was limited to 219 plate appearances in 2011, but still managed a 114 wRC+ — which still makes him better than Delmon Young (whose ZiPS projection you can find below), for example. In all, the former No. 1 overall pick by the Phillies in 1998 has posted 21.9 WAR over his 12-year career.

Carroll to Sign Deal with Unknown Team
ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick is hearing that middle infielder Jamey Carroll is close to signing a multi-year deal “in [the] next few days”; however, again per Crasnick, the identity of the team is unknown — even to Carroll himself!!!

Amaro Refutes Reports on Madson Deal
Philly GM Ruben Amaro denied that he ever had a four-year, $44 million deal in place with closer Ryan Madson, David Murphy of the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. “It was more like 17 years and closer to a billion dollars,” Amaro did not add.

SCOUT Leaderboards: Arizona Fall League
Batting Leaderboard
Here is the SCOUT batting leaderboard for the Arizona Fall League. SCOUT represents an attempt to derive something meaningful from small samples and is the average of a player’s standard deviations from the AFL mean in three important (and regressed) stats: walk rate, strikeout rate, and home-run rate. (Click here for more on SCOUT. SCOUT leaderboards for the Arizona Fall League appear here on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Leaderboards for the Venezuelan and Dominican Winter Leagues appear on Tuesday and Thursday, respectively.)

Notes
• Boston outfield prospect Alex Hassan, 23, rejoins the top-10 AFL SCOUT batting leaders, largely on the strength of his plate discipline. Hassan had one of the highest walk rates (13.9%) in the Double-A Eastern League this season while also only striking out in 14.5% of his plate appearances. His 13 home runs (in 545 PA) point to a decent, but not excellent, power tool.
• Cincinnati Red minor-leaguer Brodie Greene, 24, is listed as a shortstop but played about two-thirds of his Double-A games at second base this season. Reports on his defense are more difficult to find than anyone who’s ever used the internet would imagine.

Pitching Leaderboard
For pitchers, SCOUT is the average of a player’s standard deviations from the AFL mean in (regressed) strikeout and walk rate.

Notes
Cincinnati left-handed minor-leaguer Travis Webb has some of the proverbial warts, in that he’s 27 and appears not to have posted a walk rate below 10% since rookie-league ball in 2006. His K rate spiked to 28.7% with a move to relief in 2011 at Double-A Carolina. Approaching that peformance against more advanced competition remans for him.

Projections: ZiPS for Detroit
Dan Szymborski has published his ZiPS projections for the Detroit Tigers. Below is the Delmon Young projection, with some brief notes on same. (Numbers assume major league competition. OPS+ and ERA+ are park-adjusted.)

Delmon Young, LF, 26: .283/.317/.441, 102 OPS+
Detroit GM Dave Dombrowski has indicated that he views Young as the team’s starting left fielder for 2012. A league-average hitter — which Young has been over the course of his career and, per ZiPS, will likely continue to be — a league-average hitter in left field is worth 1.2 or 1.3 WAR. That presumes league-average defense, too, though. Over his 6000-plus career innings in outfield corners, Young has been worth about -10 runs per 150 games played. In sum, Young is just hair better than replacement, probably.