Jayson Stark reported Thursday that the Phillies are kicking the tires on Grady Sizemore. The team also has interest in former Twins outfielder Jason Kubel. The news came on the heels of the Ryan Madson–Jonathan Papelbon hoopla and the Phillies’ meeting with another former Twins player, Michael Cuddyer.

The list of Philadelphia’s targets changes daily, but Kubel and Sizemore pique interest for various reasons. Sizemore is notable from a risk-versus-reward standpoint, since the Phillies’ current left fielder is John Mayberry — who works better as the right-handed half of a platoon; the team has clearly stated it prefers that Dom Brown remains in Triple A for the season. Kubel will be an interesting case study in terms of how teams value his breakout/outlying 2009 performance. Will he get paid handsomely, despite consecutive mediocre seasons?

Obviously, both players are risky for different reasons.

Sizemore, though, represents a good risk, since the potential reward is substantial. With Kubel, the likeliest scenario has a team paying $6 million to $7 million per year for a .335 wOBA, poor defense and below-average base-running.

In both cases, a heck of a lot has to work out to justify a team’s investment.

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According to Jordan Bastian of MLB.com, the Indians are expected to decline the $9 million 2012 option on Grady Sizemore. The Tribe is also expected to exercise the $7 million 2012 option on Fausto Carmona. Bringing back Carmona is considerably less risky than exercising Sizemore’s option, however, taken together, the transactions tandem speaks to the Indians evaluation of risk and reward.

Is the team making the right choices with these two longtime employees?

The kneejerk reaction with Sizemore is to pan the organization. How could they decline a relatively low-valued option for a player who averaged close to 7 WAR from 2005-08? At $9 million, even an injury-prone Sizemore would seem worth the risk because the reward is substantial. By declining his option, the team is effectively saying one of two things: that it would rather pay him $500,000 for the right to bring him back on an even lesser deal, or that it thinks so little of his long-term health and performance prospects that it’s unlikely he hovers around the league average moving forward.

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“Batting average, unfortunately for a lot people, and it’s only been really noted in the last five or 10 years, that it is somewhat of an overrated stat. There are so many other numbers that are more important to a team winning a ballgame – that’s all that matters.” – Eric Wedge, Manager, Cleveland Indians

Thank you, Eric Wedge, for this response to the question of whether or not Grady Sizemore’s declining batting average over the last few seasons set off alarm bells. Sizemore hit .289-.290 in 2005-06, his first two full seasons, before dropping to .277 in 2007 and .268 last season. His wOBAs in that span: .359, .386, .376, .384. Grady’s proportion of hits to at-bats may have dropped a bit, but his overall offensive productivity is extremely high. His batting average may have been .268, but Sizemore hit 33 HR, 39 2B, stole 38 bases, and earned 98 free passes.

Oh, and Grady plays a mean centerfield, as well. His UZR marks since 2005: +3.7, +14.3, +2.6, +6.1. Averaged together, Sizemore has been a +6.7 runs/season fielder. He is also the model of durability, amassing 157+ games in each of his full big league seasons. As evidenced by his four consecutive 20/20+ seasons, Grady also runs the baseball very well. Our wOBA includes stolen bases, but if you subtract the EQSBR from the EQBRR at Baseball Prospectus, Grady looks worthy of an additional two or three runs per season on the basepaths.

Add everything together and we have win values of +5.3, +7.7, +6.0, +7.0 (his posted win values plus a couple additional baserunning runs). That is a grand sum of +26 wins in four big league seasons, and Sizemore is still just 26 yrs old, suggesting that continued improvement is not out of the question. Grady has made $4.2 mil in his young major league career while producing at levels valued around $102 mil, a mind-boggling number. Has anyone who previously did, stopped caring that he posted a .268 batting average last season?

I’m not here to bash the batting average statistic. I think it has uses, and it works well in a slash line, but it is not the barometer many make it out to be. In the case of Grady Sizemore, who adds to a team from so many different areas, batting average falls even further down the list of metrics of interest. I’m very glad that his manager understands this fact and realizes he has a very special player on his squad, not one who needs to fix his mechanics to hit for a higher batting average.