Some really bad starts to the season

After the first week of the season, we are all smart enough to know not to make a big deal out of extremes in performance both up or down. Batters and pitchers will start the season hot or cold and generally will end up somewhere around where they usually do. Perhaps you can see a trend after only a week. But doing so should be with the utmost caution. 

Here are some players who have really started the season in a bad, bad way. 

Zack Cozart. Cozart has walked to the plate twenty times thus far. He has one successful sacrifice bunt. That is the entire sum of his offense. He has hit four ground balls, seven fly balls, three line drives and all have led to outs. He struck out the other five times. He has not walked. He is the only regular player who has no average, no on-base percentage and no slugging. 

Raul Ibanez. Old Raul does have a homer and has driven in four runs. Compared to Cozart, he looks giddy with his .211 batting average. But his BABIP is .375. It's a good thing, because in his twenty plate appearances, he has struck out ten times. In twenty plate appearances, Ibanez has put seven balls in play. Fortunately for him, four of them landed safely somewhere.

   

Mike Moustakas. The Royals were hoping that this was the year that Moustakas started to come on as a player. It could still happen, but is off to a really bad start. In seventeen plate appearances, he has walked twice...and that's it. He has only struck out twice, so he is the opposite of Ibanez. Moustakas has put thirteen balls in play and none of them found a happy home and all turned into outs. He has not yet hit a line drive. Oh, and he's made two errors already. 

Allen Craig. Somewhere, George Harrison is singing, "Roll over Beethoven." Craig has come to the dish 24 times. He has struck out three times and walked once. So he has put the ball in play twenty times. Seventeen of those have been ground balls. Naturally, only two of them have gone through for hits. 

Ryan Flaherty. Flaherty notched his first hit last night in nineteen plate appearances. His strike zone awareness is a problem. He has swung at only 43.3% of pitches IN the strike zone and 40.9% of pitches OUT of the strike zone. 

Ian Desmond. Desmond's numbers do not look too bad. How he got there is a little strange. He leads the Majors in swinging at pitches out of the strike zone at 52.8% and is second overall in total swing percentage. He is not getting cheated up there. He also leads the Majors in swinging strike percentage. Settle down, young fellow. And how can we forget.

B.J. Upton. The poor guy seems just as lost as last year. His contact percentage on swings is the lowest in baseball at only 56%. He just can't seem to get the bat on the ball.

Projecting the five least valuable players of 2014

Without much else to do in this dead zone waiting to see where the last remaining free agents wind up and Spring Training games, looking at projections is a fun way to pass the time. Whether you do this for fantasy baseball purposes or--if you are like me and do not play fantasy--just for the fun of it, There is a lot of stuff to sort through and ponder. Projection systems are difficult to wrap your head around because some project actual playing time and others assume everyone is going to get 550 plate appearances. The latter, I suppose, is helpful in case a player breaks out in Spring Training and ends up as a starter (which rarely happens). What I thought I would do on this Sunday afternoon was cull through the various projection systems and determine who the five least valuable players would be in 2014.

Such an exercise is harder than you think. First, I have an artificial number of projected plate appearances of 450. I want to consider starters and not part-time players. Secondly, I have to figure out which of these players will actually get the playing time he is projected to obtain. For example, one of the lowest rated was Brett Wallace. But he was just DFA'd by the Astros and doesn't figure to catch on with a full-time gig anywhere else. And lastly, most of the projection systems have to agree on the lack of value a player will have in 2014.

After making my list, a discussion on the merits of each will occur. Think of it as sort of an over/under type discussion. For disclosure sake, I used PECOTA, Steamer, Oliver and Fans projections. I used MLB Depth Charts to confirm possible playing time.

Okay, the list:

1. Garrett Jones - Average Projection of 0.23 WAR
2. Raul Ibanez - Average Projection of 0.3 WAR
3. Mitch Moreland - Average Projection of 0.55 WAR
4. Adeiny Hechavarria - Average Projection of 0.65 WAR
5. Ryan Ludwick - Average Projection of 0.78 WAR

Garrett Jones - Jones holds one of the most extreme L/R splits in the Majors with less than a .600 OPS against left-handed pitching and in the high .878 against right-handed pitchers. He is penciled in as the platoon partner with Jeff Baker at first base. That would be a good thing for Jones as he is capable of hitting more than twenty homers. If he can field first base at near league-average level, he could score 2.0 in WAR. If he plays full time or spends any time in the outfield, all bets are off.

Raul Ibanez - The projections are logical since Ibanez is 41 years old and should never wear a glove. But the Angels only need him as a DH and have plenty of outfielders. So unlike last year in Seattle, Ibanez should only be a DH. That said, will he get 400 plate appearances? He won't if he is platooned (and he should be). Based on offense alone, he could get 1.5 in WAR.

Mitch Moreland - Moreland has no home at first base with the Rangers' addition of Prince Fielder. MLB Depth Charts has him listed as the Rangers' DH. Plus, he has spent plenty of time in the outfield too. Moreland's career doesn't seem to be going anywhere and I think these projections are pretty money.

Adeiny Hechavarria - Not only is his name a bear to spell, but he was awful for the Marlins last season. And still, he is pegged as their starting shortstop again this year. I don't think he will ever hit and a sub-.300 on-base percentage could be his norm. He gets bonus WAR points for his "important position" on the field, but doesn't score all that well as a fielder. If he reaches 1.0 in WAR in 2014, it will be a surprise.

Ryan Ludwick - I kept hearing last year that the Reds will be okay once Ludwick comes back from injury. And it made me scratch my head. Yeah, he had a pretty good 2012, but that is the anomaly for him over the past five seasons. The Reds have him penciled in as the starting left-fielder. I think it is a pie-in-the-sky scenario for them. He is not great in the field, and 2012 aside, his bat has been missing since his days with the Cardinals. I think his projection is fair. His positional ranking hurts him, his fielding hurts him and I don't see him repeating 2012 for offensive production.

There you have it. The projections have spoken. But of course, nobody knows how any player's season will go until he actually plays the games.

Seeking Rationality on Raul Ibanez

Last week, Bill over at The Platoon Advantage had a fun article on players whose fan base cannot remain rational. And it was so true. Many players are lightening rods of either blind love or blind hate and rational thinking does not apply. Raul Ibanez isn't the player Bill picked for the Philadelphia Phillies. Ryan Howard was. And it's hard to argue with that pick. Howard is a player that draws either rave reviews or antipathy depending on who you ask. Ibanez, though, is just as prone to cause affection or antipathy, but not only from Phillies' fans. He's also a moth to the flame for analysts on television and from keyboards. What's to make of all the debate?

Ibanez is saddled with the affliction of being called a clutch player by many broadcasters. That misnomer causes a lot of the angst among those with keyboards and rightly so. His clutch stats as listed by FanGraphs are no better than the average Joe in baseball. The angst is also directed to the cold hard facts that at the age of 39, Ibanez isn't a very good baseball player anymore. His strikeout rate is the second highest of his career. His walk rate is the lowest of his career. His on base percentage is under .300 and his defense isn't...well...defensible. Ibanez has a .671 OPS against lefties and the facts remain that Baseball-reference.com gives Ibanez a big fat zero for WAR this season while FanGraphs has him with a negative value.

And yet, there he is in every Phillies' game. When the Phillies received Hunter Pence in a trade from the Astros, it was widely assumed that Pence would be installed in left to take Ibanez's place and that Mayberry or Dominic Brown would play right. But manager, Charlie Manuel, seems to see Ibanez as his security blanket and leans on him heavily in spite of evidence that he shouldn't. Dominic Brown will never get a full shot as long as the Phillies are contenders. That's just the way it is with successful teams. They simply do not let young players work things out on a major league level. Either they pay off big and get to stay, or they are discarded faster than a kid's writing assignment full of red marks from the teacher.

And yet, Manuel's decision-making seems to be rewarded. Ibanez almost by himself saved the Phillies' game against the Pirates in the last game of their series on Sunday. Ibanez hit a two-run homer to tie the game and a double to win it. The double was the tenth time an Ibanez hit put the Phillies ahead this season. The double was also against a left-handed pitcher.

Ibanez and his season reminds this writer a lot of Paul O'Neill's last season with the Yankees in 2001. O'Neill was certainly at an age that season where he couldn't produce like he had in the past. Again, the cold, hard facts were that O'Neill that season was a player that did not add value to the Yankees according to his rWAR and fWAR. And yet O'Neill had sixteen hits that put the Yankees ahead that season and his team came within a well-placed hit by Luis Gonzalez from winning the 2001 World Series.

The Phillies are assured a post season spot in 2011. In a vastly successful season by the team, it must be left to others to decide if Raul Ibanez was a help or a hindrance in that success. For this writer, trying to figure that out leads to a headache.