skyking162

I’ve contributed a lot to my new home this week. If you haven’t been over there or haven’t created an account, what are you waiting for? I mean, you’re reading this right now…

What I’ve written about this week:

• Carlos Delgado is so obviously not the NL MVP. Heck he’s at best the fourth-best option from his own team. And Carlos Beltran, well, he actually a pretty good pick if you disqualify Albert Pujols for some dumb reason.
• What if RBIs measured real offensive production? Well, for one, you wouldn’t see Ryan Howard’s name on the leader board.
• I’m quite proud of this pseudo-study of pitchers who have posted low ERAs with crappy K/BB ratios over the past five years. As you might expect, it’s tough to do and even harder to repeat. That’s bad news for Edwin Jackson and Gregory Smith, and I would be shocked not to see Jackson traded this off-season (and maybe even Smith).
• One of my favorite activities is to pivot-table my way through Justin’s position player stats. Here’s the September 5th version.
• The Padres pitchers are actually much more to blame for the team’s struggles than the hitters. PETCO Park, anyone? And their offense has been just as productive as the Rockies’. Bet you didn’t expect that, huh?
• I tracked down five interesting football articles.
• As mentioned by others, Cliff Lee’s faced much easier competition this year than most other AL starters, including Roy Halladay.

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We need more people to do more things like this: a reader over at Lookout Landing compiled a nice list of links to well-written articles about smart baseball analysis. These articles are good refreshers for uber geeks, great primers for newbies, and (mostly) excellent examples for everyone about how to write well. Head on over, unless you can’t stand the Mariner slant.

Mike Fast’s PITCHf/x article database over at The Hardball Times should also get more use.

Popularity: 53% [?]

Those Super Duper Better-Than-VORP Stats I mentioned last week have been updated. (That link will always take you to the most recently updated numbers.) Justin also has some Cy Young and MVP lists in his most recent blog post. Grady Sizemore is the only runaway leader at this point.

Popularity: 53% [?]

I have an article over at Dugout Central on the most underrated players in MLB. I didn’t actually know I was writing an article — I just wrote a response to an email they sent out asking for opinions from all the contributors to that site. It’s nothing I haven’t written about here, but still moderately interesting. And yes, Mark Ellis, Carlos Beltran, and Grady Sizemore were all mentioned.

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Let’s say you want to look up which players have been the most productive so far this season. Your best option is probably VORP, but then you have to go somewhere else for fielding data. And VORP has, well, some geeky technical issues, too.

However, what if I told you there’s a stat out there that’s better than VORP (buh-bye Equivalent Runs) and includes the best publicly available fielding data? I’m not pulling your leg — Justin’s put it together for you. Oh, you want to know how everything’s computed? I don’t blame you — read away. Don’t have time to read all that right now? Here’s the quick version:

• RAR is offensive runs above replacement, which uses team-level linear weights based on BaseRuns. It’s park-adjusted and league-adjusted (the AL rulz!)
• Fielding is an average of BIS and STATS zone rating data from, respectively, Hardball Times and ESPN.
• PosAdj is an adjustment for position. You can either combine it with RAR to get a VORP-like number (offense compared to position), or combine it with Fielding to get a total defensive value number. It’s needed because Fielding compares players to positional average, and the average first baseman is obviously not as good of a fielder as the average center fielder.
• TotalValue is, well, the overall Super-Duper Better-Than-VORP stat.

Here are some interesting observations based on the data as of July 23…

Mark Ellis and Ryan Braun, two players I’ve discussed incessantly as under- and over-rated, respectively, have both been worth 34.5 runs above replacement this year.

Carlos Gomez and his .287 OBP have been more productive than Melky Cabrera (12 runs to 8) thanks to Gomez’s awesome fielding ability. Of course, the Yankees aren’t dumb enough to bat Cabrera leadoff.

Grady Sizemore has been the AL MVP and it’s not really close. The three mainstream media front-runners are third, eleventh, and eighteenth. Ian Kinsler can’t field (Brian Roberts has been just as valuable), Josh Hamilton’s not a true center fielder, and Milton Bradley’s a DH lacking a full slate of plate appearances. Everyone worth at least 25 runs above replacement is listed below:

Player		RAR	Field	Pos	Total
Sizemore 	45.8	6.2	2.3	54.2
Rodriguez 	40.9	1.5	0.5	42.9
Mauer 		27.6	4	5.2	36.8
Markakis 	36.9	3.4	-3.7	36.6
Kinsler 	41.7	-6.1	0.6	36.2
Roberts 	33.7	1.8	0.6	36
Beltre 		18.1	16	0.6	34.8
Rolen 		16.2	18.1	0.5	34.8
Longoria 	26.8	5.6	0.6	33
Youkilis 	31.5	5.5	-4.2	32.9
Hamilton 	33.2	-1.7	0.3	31.9
Ellis 		12.3	17.6	0.5	30.4
Dye 		32.9	0.4	-3.3	30
Drew 		32.4	0.3	-3	29.7
Pedroia 	26.4	1.9	0.6	28.9
Granderson 	23.8	2.5	1.8	28.1
Guillen 	23.4	4.7	-0.7	27.4
Bradley 	37.1	-4	-7.7	26.9
Upton 		23.1	0.1	2.3	25.6
Damon 		27.2	0.2	-2.1	25.2
Suzuki 		24	0.6	0.5	25.1

Even though he’s stuck at 154 plate appearances on the season, Rafael Furcal has been the fourth most productive shortstop in the major leagues. Ouch.

Freddy Sanchez, Mike Lamb, and Tony Pena Jr. are in a tight race for Least Valuable Player, all at about 15 runs below replacement level.

Bobby Abreu is at an impressively bad -26 runs defensively. Mike Jacobs and Brad Hawpe (-18 runs) look like Troy Tulowitzki in comparison. You think Joe Girardi might want to play Xavier Nady in RF?

Here are the best and worst fielders at each position:

CA: Jose Molina (+8), Saltalamaccia (-6)
1B: Teixeira (+11), Jacobs (-14)
2B: Ellis (+18), Easley (-12)
3B: Rolen (+18), Cantu (-13)
SS: Scutaro (+11), Crosby (-9)
LF: Crawford (+8), Manny (-11)
CF: Gomez (+10), McLouth (-13)
RF: Gutierrez (+13), Abreu (-22)

Derek Jeter is having a career year with the glove, coming in at +2 runs at shortstop.

Here are the most productive offensive players in the majors:

Berkman 54.3
Pujols 49.6
Jones 49.4
Sizemore 45.8
Ramirez 42.7
Kinsler 41.7
Rodriguez 40.9
Burrell 40.3
Holliday 39.5
Utley 38.4
Bay 37.2
Bradley 37.1
Markakis 36.9
Wright 36.5
Ludwick 34.7
Quentin 34
Morneau 33.8
Roberts 33.7
McLouth 33.7
Ramirez 33.4
Hamilton 33.2
Dye 32.9
Drew 32.4
Reyes 32.4
Dunn 32.3
Giambi 32.1

Why have the Tampa Bay Rays been so good this year? Not only do they have an awesome starting rotation, but they have the 9th (Longoria), 19th (Upton), 24th (Navarro), and 37th (Iwamura) most productive position players in the AL.

Here are some position player power rankings by team. (Tot is relative to replacement, Off and Def are relative to average.) Those Royals are horrible. There appears to be a pretty strong correlation between offensive and defensive value on each team — is that because teams who are good at identifying talent are good on both sides of the ball?

Team	Tot	Off	Def
STL 	212	54	39
CHN 	185	47	18
DET 	184	63	0
PHI 	174	26	28
BOS 	167	66	-21
MIL 	164	30	15
ATL 	160	11	26
TB 	155	24	9
NYN 	152	27	1
TEX 	152	62	-33
BAL 	135	28	-12
CHA 	135	31	-15
NYA 	135	28	-31
FLA 	121	22	-33
TOR 	115	-34	28
CLE 	110	-7	-2
SD 	110	-31	20
LAA 	109	-27	16
COL 	108	-11	-9
HOU 	105	-25	9
OAK 	105	-48	36
CIN 	103	-10	-6
MIN 	93	1	-34
LAN 	93	-41	15
PIT 	91	0	-27
ARI 	65	-41	-13
SF 	58	-59	-2
SEA 	51	-58	-14
WAS 	35	-69	-19
KC 	15	-60	-49

Remember how trading Adam Jones to the Orioles in exchange for Erik Bedard was going to lead the Mariners to the promised land? Well, that same Adam Jones has been the tenth most valuable center fielder in the majors this year.

I haven’t mentioned anything about pitchers, but Justin’s rated them, too.

Update: Justin just posted the numbers through games of August 4th.

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