BBA Link Fest - General Aviation

Our writers in the General Chapter of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance have taken flight for another week of terrific posts. Like we do every Thursday here in the FanDome, what follows are links to pieces around the country and around the world. Please be so kind as to click the links. Our writers would be much obliged. But more than that, you'll enjoy yourself on this wintry January day.

First up, we all want to congratulate Michael Clair on his Old Time Family Baseball "blogathon" this past weekend. Working for a great cause, Michael went the distance for 24 hours and then followed that up with some great guests posts from a whole slew of writers. Most importantly, the blogathon was a rousing success and Michael met his contribution goal. Thanks to everyone in helping make that possible. Apparently, Michael doesn't require sleep as even after his big weekend, he keeps churning out content like this.

Secondly, we have a brand new member this week! We'd like to welcome Justin Jabs and his Baseblog. Check out his recap of the past year in Tampa Bay Rays bobbleheads. Very cool.

Meanwhile, over at his X-Log site, Michael Cardano doesn't think Tim Lincecum is $6.5 million better than Cole Hamels. Agreed!

Scott Annis over at Through The Fence Baseball tells us why Pablo Sandoval's new contract is great for the Giants.

Hehehe. Sully over at Sully Baseball compares Yankee fans to the fans of the Twilight movie series. Oh, that Sully...

In a fantastic post, Replacement Level Baseball Blog gives us the All-Harmony Game in honor of Martin Luther King Day.

Bill over at The Platoon Advantage is back to being @Bill_TPA after roaming the earth as Saber Boy for a while. But he's still writing like a super hero. Here's his great piece on Jamie Moyer and links him back to Babe Ruth!

In somewhat a break in form, let's celebrate our friend, MTD, from Off Base Percentage who had a great guest post on the great Baseball Prospectus. Way to go, Mr. Lloyd!

Chris Papas of NumberOneBaseball takes us back to the beginning. Check it out.

Over at MLB Reports, Doug Booth has a cautionary tale for those considering Prince Fielder. Great post! The Fan wrote a post a long time ago but can't find it now that postured that big guys have at best eight good years in them.

Andrew Martin of MLB Dirt has a terrific article and interview with Anthony Ranaudo, the Boston Red Sox prospect.

In one of the Fan's favorite posts of the week, Left Field gives us the greatest leftfielders not in the Hall of Fame. Super!

If you love baseball trivia, you've got to check out Theo's latest quiz. Love these and also check out his work on retired numbers and help him pick the next team he should do over at Hot Corner Harbor.

A pitcher's daughter was on American Idol! The Hall of Very Good gives us all the details. Cool! And, golly, can that gal sing the National Anthem!

Grubby Glove is bored with Bud Selig and isn't celebrating Selig's recent extension by MLB.

Dee Clark's great prospect series on The Golden Sombrero has been terrific from beginning to now. But the latest one on Jesus Montero cut this Fan's heart in two. Sigh.

Curley Bender over at Crum-Bum Beat calls Kerry Wood the post-modern Mr. Cub. Great post and the spot on.

Our friends across the sea at MajorBaseball.fr comment on the Yu Darvish deal. 

The Baseball Index has a great breakdown of the Seth Smith deal.

The OCP over at For Baseball Junkies gives us one of the best Montero-Pineda analysis this Fan has yet seen. Great job.

In another great post, Dugout 24 presents five myths about baseballs. 

TheNaturalMevs of Diamond Hoggers doubts that 2K Sports can ever make a great baseball game.

In a timely piece, Mario Salvini of Che Palle! talks about Jackie Robinson.

The always terrific Blaine Blontz gives us the scoop on the latest Fidel-ity over at Call to the Pen. What is a Fidel-ity? You'll have to read this Fan's post on new baseball lingo. Heh. Shameless Self Plug there.

The Post of the Week this week goes to Baseballism for a great post on Paul O'Neill!

Ryan Sendek of Analysis Around the Horn has a great reply to another post on things the Pirates should be doing. Read both the original article and Ryan's response. Both are terrific. 

And finally, the Fan leaves you with one terrific piece of note, this one on 85% Sports on Roy Halladay. Truly superb. And love the wordplay in the post's heading.

New Baseball Lingo

Over the years of writing in this space, posts have included outdated lingo ("can of corn") and cool lingo ("yakker"). But we really haven't added much in the way of new lingo over the years. Oh sure, there are the new statistical jargon such as WAR and wOBA. That's off the field stuff. What about on the field? This long-time Fan remembers when, "Big Fly" was relatively new (did Joe Morgan bring that to the table?). But what else has been added? How many others can you think of off the top of your head? This writer is coming up empty except perhaps, "concussion syndrome." Who wants that to be our centerpiece? Exactly.

With so little happening in the world of baseball lingo, perhaps we need to invent a few of our own. If we use a little imagination, we can freshen up the place a little bit. The easiest way to create new lingo is to base it on stuff certain players become known for. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. Take Daric Barton, for example. And after last season, the A's would probably let you have him. But he was pretty good in 2010. He led the majors in non-intentional walks, for example. But in the first half of 2010, Barton was inexplicably bunting every time he came up to bat with runners on base. He had ten by the end of the first half.

This writer doesn't know a whole lot about market inefficiencies that are the crux behind the whole Moneyball story, but bunting every at bat with a runner on base couldn't have been one of them. If this writer remembers correctly, his frustrated manager said that Barton was doing that "sacrificing" on his own. Barton must have gotten the message (and a few manager spikes up his butt) because he only had two sacrifice bunts the rest of the season. Derek Jeter has been known to do the same thing on occasion. But we'll leave Jeter out of this and use Barton for a new bit of lingo.

From now on, every time a batter bunts for a sacrifice on his own volition, we can name the action after Daric Barton. The Fan's first thought was to call it a "Bart On." That separates his last name to make it a lingo. But that doesn't have the right pizzazz to it. A player bunts and the play-by-play guy would say, "Why would he bunt there? He must have got his Bart On." Nah. Doesn't work. Perhaps the Fan is dating himself, but some time ago, there was a bombshell named Bo Derek in Hollywood. She was the featured actor along with Dudley Moore in the movie, Ten, since that's what she was. With that memory in mind, the Fan suggests that every time a batter bunts when he really shouldn't, we'll call it a "Bo Daric." Fan in the stands can watch a National League pitcher bunt with runners on first and second with one out and groan, "Oh man, not a Bo Daric!"

But our new lingo can be named after good things too. When a second baseman dives in the hole to make a great stop, we can call it an Alomar. But to make it cool, you'd have to stretch out the syllables like this: "AL-Oh-Mar!" We could call a triple a "Rollins." That would be cool. It's far sexier than calling it a "three-bagger."

What else can we come up with? This writer doesn't know about you, but, "Loogy" is fairly new jargon (hey, the Fan thought of one!) but to be frank, it's already gotten old. We have to name it after somebody. How about if we call Loogys, "Jaycees," instead? The name is in honor of J.C. Romero. But there could be better ones out there. Usage: "The Astros are going to bring their Jaycee in now to face Fielder."

Here is a list of a few more the Fan can think of. Add in your own suggestions in the comments. We can then create a poll of the submissions to see what should stick.

• A Fidel-ity - A Cuban defector. It's got to be better than calling such a player, "defected," right?
• Futilla - Bad hitting catcher. It's a combination of Futile and Butera. Or perhaps A Shoppage would be better in honor of last year's Bay Rays' catcher.
• A Soriano - Any swinging strike on a slider way wide of the plate and in the dirt. Usage: "Oh man, Burnett got him to Soriano that thing." If you have any questions about this one, just watch the 2003 post season series between the Red Sox and the Yankees.
• A Laffey - This replaces "Laugher" as the definition of a one-sided contest. Why? Because those are the only games Aaron Laffey pitches.
• A Yu - Any Japanese post-er. Speaks for itself.
• A Macoris - Any of the three dozen players that hail from San Pedro de Macoris in the Dominican Republic. It's just too much to say. Pronunciation: "Mack-or-eee." The fear here is that this would turn into, "macaroni" in no time.
• A Hairball - Named after any Hairston, a family whose players are like cats because their careers have nine lives.
• A Halladaze - Named after the Phillies' pitcher and used for any batter walking back to the dugout after a particularly baffling curve.
• An Oxy - Any ballplayer whose name is an oxymoron such as Fielder, Outman, etc. Or it could be Angel Pagan, whose very name is an oxymoron.
• Donkeyed - Any player who suddenly loses all ability to play the game. Named after Mr. Dunn of course. Usage: "He was a pretty good player before he donkeyed.."
• An Albert - Any player who fails to run out a ground ball. Named after Pujols, of course."Geez, A-Rod pulled an Albert out there and trotted to first."
• A Gardener - Any batter that looks at two fat strikes in a row to start an at bat. Named for Brett Gardner.
• A Huffer - Any player signed to a stupid contract based on one surprising year. In honor of Aubrey Huff, of course.
• Crawful - Any player signed to a big contract who fizzles with his new team. This comes courtesy of @soxanddawgs who used it all of 2011 for Carl Crawford. Could have been Werthless too.
• An Ichiro - Singles.
• A Yunick - Any Betancourt-type player you wish wasn't on your team.
• Bronsoned - Any homer-prone pitcher that gives up a homer. 

Those are the Fan's suggestions. Can you think of any more?  Let's spice this thing up a bit!

***Update*** Just thought of another one: A Posey-do. Where a catcher ole's the runner at home to avoid a collision.

Yankees Should Extend Russell Martin

The arbitration deadline looms for the New York Yankees and Russell Martin. And if this writer was a betting man, the odds seem high that the team and its catcher are already in negotiations for a long-term deal. Now that the Yankees have determined the fate of Jesus Montero, there is no reason not to try to tie up Martin for the next three years. This will allow the team to bring Austin Romine along at a slower pace (back up catcher) and if that doesn't work out, Gary Sanchez--one of the team's best prospects--should be ready in two years.

All the latest research this author has found makes Russell Martin even more valuable than his valuation on Fangraphs.com ($13.8 million in 2011). Mike Fast's work at Baseball Prospectus on the value of framing pitches (and thus getting extra strikes), along with Bojan Kopravica's work at The Hardball Times on blocking pitches has allowed Kopravica to piggyback on Fast's work and come up with an adjusted value for catchers. From his work Martin's new WAR total would be 4.6 WAR instead of Fangraphs' 3.1. Such a study lifts Martin's true value to the Yankees last year at $20.47 million.

Obviously, you don't want to max out a contract equal to a player's actual worth. But a three year deal in the ball park of $35 million makes perfect sense. The Yankees have offered him $7 million in arbitration and Martin is asking for $8.5 million. Back load the deal so that it only costs the Yankees $8 million or so this year and the Yankees can tie up the sixth most valuable catcher in baseball for three years.

Martin's somewhat draggy offense in 2011 did dim his value. His offense was only worth about 1.9 wins in 2011. When the Fan downloaded Kopravic's spreadsheet and sorted the catchers by defensive value, Russell Martin was the second best defensive catcher in baseball last season. And most of that value is tied up in how well he frame's pitches and gets his pitchers extra strikes. That is exactly the kind of skill the Yankees need with their latest acquisitions on the pitching side of things.

Obviously, the Yankees are crying poverty right now. Translated, you can read that as being tired of being penalized for being so high in salary. But the team made a big splash to go out and get pitching. Wouldn't you want to back that up to get the second most valuable defensive catcher and the top-rated "framer" of pitches in the game? That's a no-brain decision on this end. Romine is loved by the Yankee brass for his defense. But let him learn for awhile behind Russell Martin, one of the best in the game.

If John Elway Played For the Yankees

The weekend was awash with playoff football as four games were played to decide which four teams would play for the league championships. One of the games on Saturday featured the New England Patriots at home against the Denver Broncos. That game, of course, held everyone's attention because of the match up between Tom Brady and Tim Tebow. Brady destroyed the Broncos and Tebow struggled. And during the game, mentions were made of John Elway, now a senior executive with the Broncos. Elway was once the hero of such Bronco playoff games as one of the top ten quarterbacks to play the game. With that fresh in the memory bank, Kevin Goldstein--a writer for Baseball Prospectus and ESPN and something of a Twitter hero--had the following tweet interaction:

That was all it took to fire the imagination and led to the investigation of what exactly Mr. Goldstein was talking about. This writer had vaguely remembered the power play that occurred when Elway was drafted by the then Baltimore Colts in 1983. But the details weren't remembered, nor was the baseball angle. Here is a brief recap of what occurred.

Elway, of course, was one of the most heralded quarterbacks in college football history. Playing his career at Stanford, he set several Pac-10 records for a team that never managed to make it to a bowl game. But still, Stanford played an NFL-like offense and Elway became the number one prospect in the draft. Meanwhile, he was also a terrific college baseball player at Stanford and despite the football angle, The Yankees took a flier on him and chose him at the end of the second round of the 1981 draft. 

Naturally, Elway was selected with the first overall pick in the draft by the Baltimore Colts, a team he most decidedly did not want to join. The Colts were led by a head coach long forgotten by time named, Frank Kush. Kush was dreaded taskmaster for a team nobody wanted to join because of his hard-nosed reputation. Elway said there was no way he would play there. The Colts knew this ahead of time and still drafted him with the first pick. 

Normally, this would have made Elway a villain of sorts in much the same way J.D. Drew became when he pulled the same scenario when he was drafted by the Phillies and refused to join them. But Elway's move pitted him against Robert Irsay, the unpopular owner many claimed had ruined the Colts in the early 80s. Irsay would go on to cement his bad name when he moved the beloved Colts out of Baltimore in 1984. Plus, Elway had all the leverage.

Elway could play baseball. As mentioned, the Yankees had drafted him in 1981 and Elway had a highly encouraging baseball start at Oneanta, the Yankees minor league outlet in the summer of 1982 (more on that later). Elway made it clear that if Irsay kept his football rights, he would play baseball. The ploy worked. Irsay caved and traded Elway to the Broncos for a quarterback, Mark Herrmann, rights to the Broncos' first round pick and a first round pick in the 1984 draft. The rest, of course, is history. John Elway became a superstar and Hall of Fame quarterback, author of the legendary "Drive" and two-time Super Bowl champion.

But what if Robert Irsay didn't cave? What if he had stuck to his guns? If Irsay called Elway's bluff, two things would have happened. Either Elway would have to cave and would have played for the Colts or he would have stayed and played baseball for the Yankees. History might have been very different for the Colts if Elway had played there. During the Ron Meyer years, the team was close to being playoff caliber with a running back named, Eric Dickerson. But they scored few points. Throw John Elway into that mix and the Colts could have been highly successful. But how would history be different if Elway has played for the Yankees?

Goldstein's comment found earlier in this post and the one record we have of Elway's minor league career are tantalizing. The record shows that he batted left and threw right and played 41 games for Oneanta. His slash line was, .318/.432/.464. The 41 games hint that John Elway was already an accomplished baseball player with excellent plate discipline. He only struck out 16.5 percent of the time and walked at a rate of 15.1 percent. He was an excellent base runner and stole thirteen bases in just sixteen attempts. Plus, he seemed to be a terrific right fielder. He made 69 putouts in 71 attempts (89.9 percent) and the arm that made him a quarterback was on display in the outfield where he made eight assists in just those 41 games. He didn't make a single error.

Surely, the Yankees, with George Steinbrenner at the helm, would have realized the marquee value they had in John Elway. Elway was one of the most recognizable athletes of his day. He was already 22 years old by his 1981 minor league season and many considered college baseball like the minor leagues. The Yankees would have fast-tracked him and certainly, he could have been in the majors by 1984. How would that have changed the Yankees? After titles in 1977 and 1978 and though the team made the World Series in the strike-shortened 1981 season, they famously then went zero for the 1980s and a long drought occurred until the 1996 team.

Would John Elway have made a difference? Elway didn't show much power at Oneanta, but as he matured, surely that would have come, especially as a left-handed batter at Yankee Stadium. He already had all the other tools to succeed in plate discipline, base running (he wouldn't have ruined his knees in baseball) and defense. He easily could have been a .300/.400/.500 player with positive value on the bases and in the field. 

The Yankees had some bad teams in the 1980s, but were in the mix in 1985 and 1986 (the Lou Piniella years). In 1985, the Yankees won 97 games and finished just two back of the Toronto Blue Jays. The Yankee outfield consisted of Dave Winfield, Rickey Henderson and Ken Griffey (Sr.). Griffey was on the downhill slide but was still a pretty good player, but he platooned with Billy Sample. Elway could have possibly been a two-win better player than the combination of those two. Two wins would have been enough to catch the Blue Jays.

In 1986, the Yankees were an outfielder short of being a great team. Henderson slid a little that season, but Dave Winfield was still productive. But the third outfield position was a wasteland filled with the likes of Danny Pasqua, Gary Roenicke, Claudell Washington and Henry Cotto. Griffey had been traded after 59 games to the Braves. The 1986 Yankees finished five games behind the Boston Red Sox, who would go on to the Bill Buckner World Series. Could John Elway have made a difference? Certainly.

The Yankees fell on hard times after 1986. They went a few years with their best players being guys like Steve Sax, Roberto Kelly and Scott Sanderson. It's not hard to imagine that John Elway would have been a star during those years and the Yankees' WAR leader board during those years would be different. Elway would have still been playing in 1993 and 1994. The Yankees finished well back of the Blue Jays in 1993, so Elway couldn't have made that difference himself. And there was no wild card back then. But you'd like to think he would have been a better outfield option than Dion James and Hensley Meulens. The Yankees came in first place in 1994, but the strike ended that season and no post season was the sorry result.

Speculations lead down another path too. What if the Yankees hadn't drafted Elway? Selections in that draft after Elway included such guys as a young David Cone and Tony Gwynn. How would history have changed in the Yankees had drafted one of those guys instead? Well, that will have to be another article for another time.

According to Kevin Goldstein, John Elway could have been a superstar. While the 1980s were George Steinbrenner at his worst and most manic, Elway could have brought the Yankees at least one title and maybe two if he had been a Yankee. He could have been a perennial All Star. As a baseball player, it's not hard to imagine him as a Larry Walker kind of player. But it was not to be. John Elway made his name in football as the quarterback for the Denver Broncos. History is what it is. But just imagine if John Elway had been a baseball player! The thought is tasty to ponder.

Sources: 

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2776891

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Elway

Players to Celebrate in 2012: Omar Vizquel

This is the fourth part in a series of celebrating long-time players who we might see for the last time in 2012. This post and the one before on Pudge Rodriguez are difficult because the players in question have yet to sign deals for the 2012 season. The first three in the series also focused on what this writer figures to be Hall of Fame careers. Adding Omar Vizquel to this series runs into two problems then. First, we don't know if he'll get a job in 2012, and secondly, his career really doesn't seem like a Hall of Fame career. So why include Vizquel then?

For one thing, Omar Vizquel has been around forever. His career started six years before Jeter's. In Omar Vizquel's first season, Junior Griffey was nineteen years old, Edgar Martinez was not yet an every day player and Randy Johnson was not yet a full-time starting pitcher. Omar Vizquel was born in the 1960s. And he played his twenty-third season in Major League Baseball in 2011 at the age of 44.

But there is more to celebrate with Vizquel than just the fact that he's hung around forever. He is arguably the best fielding shortstop of his generation. Vizquel is third all time in shortstop assists. And, if you don't count Troy Tulowitzki--who has just begun his major league journey--Omar Vizquel has the highest fielding percentage of any shortstop in history. If you consider fielding percentage to have any value at all, Vizquel has had four of the top ten shortstop fielding seasons in that category. He also has a 22nd, a 26th, a 28th and so on. He has played more games at shortstop than any player in history.

But maybe defensive percentage is not your cup of tea. It's a statistic that has fallen out of favor in recent seasons. Baseball-reference.com rates Vizquel with the fourth highest shortstop in total zone runs of all time. The three ahead of him are Ozzie, Belanger, Ripken and Aparicio. Yes, those guys were pretty good.

Here's kind of a mind-boggling thing. Both Fangraphs and B-R rate Vizquel's 2007 season as his best season defensively. According to Fangraphs, he was 23 runs above average that season. B-R has him at 23 as well. Vizquel was 40 years old at the time. Oddly enough, that was the first year in a long time that he didn't win a Gold Glove. He won thirteen of those awards before that. 2007 was also his last season as a shortstop in a full season.

This writer's recollection of him was as a shortstop diving all over the place getting to balls one thought were by him, hopping up and making a lollipop throw to first to just barely get the runner. Vizquel never had a cannon for an arm. In fact it was more of the opposite. But he had a quick release and he was deadly accurate.

The thing that will keep Vizquel out of the Hall of Fame was his offense. In his twenty-three seasons in the majors, his OPS+ was only twice over 100. And he had only four other seasons where it was in the nineties. His career OPS+ sits at 82. He has a career OPS of .690. He's never lead the league in any offensive category except for sacrifice bunts (four times).

He was a throwback kind of shortstop to the era when shortstops were played because of their defense and not their offense. Earl Weaver would have loved him. But there are two things you have to love about Omar Vizquel's career. First, you could absolutely tell that he loved to play baseball. When he made a great play, his smile told you that he relished such moments. There was joy in his game. He never lost his little-boy thrill of playing baseball and you could see it. You don't hang around twenty-three years and long after you're a regular player without that. Lastly, Omar Vizquel made the very most out of his meager baseball skills. He was never a great or even a good hitter. But at least he made himself not to be an easy out. He had no arm and yet he's one of the great shortstops of this or any generation. And in a game where players are six foot, two inches tall or taller, he was, "Little O."

Just to leave you a taste of what this writer saw watching Omar Vizquel do during his career, we leave you with a patented Omar play, recorded when Vizquel was 43 years old. Imagine how good he was when he was in his prime. Yeah, he could pick it alright.

Domonic Brown Ready for Duty

Twitter exploded last night with the big news of the deal between the Yankees and Mariners. It kept on going with the news the Yankees had also signed Karaoke Kuroda. Such news would provide the easiest route to creating a blog post. But, geez, there have already been a million posts on the topic already. What can be said that Dave Cameron, Brien Jackson and Buster Olney haven't already written? This writer's take in a nutshell is that the Yankees performed a masterstroke for their rotation which should already improve what was a 92-win team. However, Montero is a special talent and that may hurt for a long time. Thinking about a prospect like Montero led to thoughts of another "can't miss" prospect that has had trouble getting started in the big leagues: Domonic Brown of the Philadelphia Phillies.

Brown was only a 20th Round draft pick (2006) so he sort of came out of nowhere. But since that time, he's landed on Baseball America's top fifty prospect for the last three seasons. Each year on the list came lower and lower until he was ninth on the list before the 2011 season. But Brown's start to his major league career have been bumpy.

That beginning began at the end of July in 2010. Domonic Brown made his debut on July 28, 2010 against Edwin Jackson and the Arizona Diamondbacks in Arizona. Brown went two for four with a double and two RBIs in his first game. Nice debut! He was a late replacement in the next game and went hitless in one at bat. The following day, he went two for four and after three games was hitting .500. Let the fun begin! Except it didn't.

Brown played fairly consistently the rest of the season but he looked more and more lost. By the end of 2010, in 35 games, Brown finished with a slash line of, .210/.257/.355. Ugh. That wasn't what the Phillies were expecting. The Phillies did keep Brown on the post season roster but he only got into a couple of games and was zero for three in the post season. What was doubly disturbing about Brown's performance was that he struck out 35 percent of the time. The whispers were that he was totally lost at the plate and pitchers had found flaws in his approach and were exposing them. The strikeouts and lack of walks were totally uncharacteristic of Brown's minor league statistics where he was seen to be a patient hitter who made consistent contact.

Brown didn't make his 2011 debut for the Phillies until May 21 and after his first ten games was batting .333. And Brown played regularly through June and into July. But by the end of the month of July, his average was down to .246 and the Phillies made a big push for playoffs by acquiring Hunter Pence from the Astros. Pence took over Brown's spot and Domonic Brown was sent to Triple A where he finished the season except for a brief couple of games at the end of September.

So why would such a middling campaign of 2011 be interesting for Domonic Brown? First, his high strikeout rate disappeared. After fanning 35 percent of the time in 2010, he cut that down to 16.7 percent in 2011. The lower rate was a result of more discipline at the plate where he brought his rate of swinging at pitches out of the strike zone down from 30.8 percent in 2010 to 28.9 percent in 2011. Plus, his swinging strike rate went down from 13.5 percent in 2010 to 7.7 percent in 2011. Combine all that to improving his walk rate from 7.1 percent in 2010 to 11.9 percent in 2011 and it seems to show a young hitter much more comfortable in his approach and putting up numbers much closer to his minor league performance. The other promising sign from Brown's 2011 season was that he fared very well against left-handed pitching (he bats left-handed).

But he still only hit .246. That might be a reflection of his .274 BABIP which almost certainly will improve in 2012. And that's where we are now. The Phillies have (it appears) finally gotten over their absurd love affair with Raul Ibanez. Ibanez had some big hits for the Phillies at opportune times, but overall, he was a drag on the Phillies' offense and an millstone to the team's defense. The negative fielding metrics for Ibanez were nearly historic in 2011. Domonic Brown hasn't shown a whole lot defensively either, but he has to be better than Ibanez.

So what should we expect in 2012? Shane Victorino will play center and Hunter Pence will be in the line up all year. That would seem to open up the third outfield position to Domonic Brown. And projections from Bill James believe Brown will respond and have a fine season. Other projections such as Fans and RotoChamp aren't so sure. James believes Brown will be an every day player where the other two only predict 300 plate appearances or so.

And that's the rub here. The Phillies seem slow to believe in Domonic Brown as a full time option. Yes, he's been their most talked about prospect, but the Phillies don't act like they are sure he's the real deal. From this writer's perspective, the Phillies really should give Domonic Brown a full time shot and see what happens. If he blossoms, then all the better. If he fails to shine, then at least they will know and can make other plans. Domonic Brown looks like a great player and needs to be given a full opportunity to show what he can do.

Players to Celebrate in 2012: Ivan Rodriguez

This is the fourth segment in a series on players we've watched for a long, long time who we might get to enjoy in 2012 for the last time. In the first three segments, the players covered have a definite home in 2012 and can count on playing time. The fourth player in our series is still a free agent, he's still unsigned and it's not guaranteed that he'll catch on with a team in 2012. His name is Ivan Rodriguez.

If you put two serious baseball fans in the same room and told them they had to argue the merits of Ivan Rodriguez's career, the two would have a lot to talk about. And one would probably sound a lot like Fred Flintstone with a lot of "yeahbuts" thrown in the conversation. Rodriguez does that to people. You are either wildly impressed by his career or thrown cold by certain aspects of it. Here's a sample of how that conversation might go:

• Fan1: Ivan Rodriguez is the only catcher (80% at that position) in history with more 500 doubles for his  career!
• Fan2: Yeahbut, he's also the only player in history who has more than 500 doubles that has more career doubles than walks.
• Fan1: Seriously? Well of all catchers who have ever played, I-Rod has 500 more hits than the nearest guy.
• Fan2: Yeahbut, he's played the last six years without being a league average hitter.

And on and on it would go. There are three things that cloud the career of Ivan Rodriguez. First, he has played long past his prime. Many would argue that he should have retired five years ago. Second, the catcher's allergy to taking walks have lead to some very famous numbers. Lastly, he's been implicated in the great PED debate. Let's talk a bit about all three.

First, when a player retires should be based on the market and on the player's desire to play. Many will say that Willie Mays hung on too long. Many will say that Greg Maddux hung around too long. To those arguments, this Fan says, "Bull." Baseball players have been playing the game since they were little boys. It's all they have ever known. If their enjoyment for the game far outstrips their ability and teams are willing to pay the player to do what they still love to do, then who are we to tell that player he shouldn't play? But what if they are just hanging on for the paycheck? Well, geez, does that make them any different from those of us who stay at our jobs long enough to collect our retirement? Why the double standard?

Plus, there is a value/payment proposition involved here. As long as the team doesn't pay the player too much money and the player adds some value to the team, why is there a problem? If you go to Willie Mays' B-R page, look at his Player Value section. Are there any negative WAR numbers for Willie Mays? Nope, not a single one. Are there any negative WAR numbers next to Greg Maddux's Player Value section? Nope. The same holds true for Ivan Rodriguez. He has provided value in every one of his seasons.

Our problem is that we want our superstars to only keep playing as long as they are superstars. As soon as they are physically unable to perform at their previously high level, we want them to get out of there. Jason Giambi is 41 and is still playing long past his prime. Many fans hate that. Why should they? The guy is enjoying himself and getting paid. Why shouldn't he?

The walk issue for Ivan Rodriguez is a problem we can't talk around. It's certainly a fact well documented. He does have more doubles than walks for his career. His 2007 season was record breaking. It is the only documented season ever where a catcher had more than 500 plate appearances and less than ten walks. The only other position player to have less walks in a season with more than 500 plate appearances since 1949 to have less walks than I-Rod that season was Shawon Dunston who famously only had eight walks in 1997. So yes, this writer will grant that Ivan Rodriguez didn't like to take a walk.

As for the last argument against Ivan Rodriguez that he was implicated (by Jose Canseco) as a user of PEDs, you already know that this writer doesn't care. He certainly wasn't alone. You can all have your fun if you want and poke holes and call him a cheater if you want. Not this guy.

As most of you know, value also comes from other places than hitting. There is also base running and fielding. Base running is something that has only been calculated since 2002. Ivan Rodriguez had already been catching and squatting for eleven years to that point. That he's only cited by Fangraphs as a -3.8 runs in base running since that time isn't half bad for a guy who has been getting into the crouch that long. But fielding? That's another story entirely.

According to Fangraphs, nobody has saved as many runs defensively as a catcher than Ivan Rodriguez. According to that site, he has saved 159 runs for his career. The closest to him is Jim Sundberg at 115. Baseball-reference agrees, giving Rodriguezz 167 runs saved for his career to Sundberg's 114. Rodriguez has the most assists of any catcher since 1961. Of all modern catchers, he has the highest career caught stealing rate which sits currently at 45.68. His only modern rival is Yadier Molina who sits at 44 percent. Even at the age of 39, Ivan Rodriguez threw out 52 percent of those that tried to steal against him. It was the ninth time in his career that his percentage was over 50 percent.

Mike Fast's work on how effective catchers are at getting strikes for their pitchers covered the years when Ivan Rodriguez was between the ages of 36 to 39. And even so, Fast rated Rodriguez above average in that category. An earlier study on the subject by Dan Turkenkopf rated Rodriguez even higher.

Plus, Ivan Rodriguez has been just fine at limiting passed balls over his career. All facets of his defense lead this writer to believe that Ivan Rodriguez was the elite defensive catcher of his generation. Add that to his offense, which up until six years ago, was among the best at his position, and you have what this writer believes is a Hall of Fame career. He was the lead catcher for two World Series champions, his arm was a cannon (and still is) and he's always been great fun to watch.

We don't know if Ivan Rodriguez will find a job in 2012. If he does, celebrate his career. There have been few we've seen better at his position. This writer will celebrate him, warts and all.

BBA Link Fest - Generally Giving

Welcome to another week of links from around the General Chapter of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance. What follows are some of the best baseball writers around the country and the world. Plus, we have a very special event taking place this weekend that you really need to know about. So please be a good egg and gives some of these links a click and some comments. You won't be sorry you did.

- We start with a very special event happening this weekend. Old Time Family Baseball will host a "blogathon" to raise money for Doctors Without Borders. The event has received national recognition (see here) and as that link indicates, there will be at least one big name that participates. As this is a terrific organization being supported, please stop by this weekend and do what you can to help. And just so you don't think the site has been sitting around waiting for the weekend, here's one of their current posts. It's hot.

- Another one of our General Chapter sites has received national attention of a different sort. The Platoon Advantage lost their Sweet Spot affiliation with ESPN.com because they tell and spoof the truth. The same day that was announced, Bill, questioned a BBWAA member and got called, "Saber-Boy." So Bill became Saber-Boy and gained more followers than anything the site ever garnered at ESPN. What a mixed up world, eh?

- It's hard to follow acts like that. But on we go. 85% Sports reports on some interesting comments by Barry Larkin on suspected PED users and the Hall of Fame.

- Analysis Around the Horn analyses (hey, that's what they do) fantasy draft results from several different sites. By the way, this Fan voted for Mechanical Brains as a preference for AATH's fantasy league name. 

- Sooze at Babes Love Baseball thinks the Ozzie and Zambrano show should be reality television. The Fan would watch that. It would be more entertaining than that baseball wives travesty.

- Probably this Fan's favorite read this week is this excellent post by Stevo-sama over at The Baseball Enthusiast. It concerns what everyone calls, "The Ryne Sandberg Game," but the post is oh, so much more than a memory.

- Baseballism reports on and celebrates the election of Barry Larkin to baseball's Hall of Fame. The Fan adds his congratulations here as well.

- Aaron has a great read over at Blogging From the Bleachers on how the San Diego Padres are slowly revitalizing their team. Great stuff.

- Call to the Pen loves the deal the Giants just game Ryan Vogelsong. Couldn't agree more.

- Our Italian site, Che Palle! celebrates forty years of Sal. Who is Sal? You'll just have to click the link and read the entertaining post to find out.

- Matt Whitener of Cheap.Seats.Please took a stab at his own "ballot" of Hall of Fame votes and wrote a very good piece supporting his picks.

- It would truly be a surprise if Diamond Hoggers didn't celebrate Barry Larkins vote into the Hall of Fame. So this Fan looked forward to their post. It was not a disappointment.

- Dugout 24, our German entry, has some thoughts on the news that Jorge Posada is hanging up his spikes.

- For Baseball Junkies also reflects on Jorge Posada's career and this Fan pretty much agrees with their conclusions.

- Projecting a team's line up in the coming season is always a fun idea and The Baseball Index runs with the idea for the Toronto Blue Jays. 

- Going Yard has some very interesting thoughts about what the Brewers will do if Ryan Braun is suspended. Great read.

- Golden Sombrero continues its excellent prospect series, so you are all encouraged to read that. But this week's link for them is one of this Fan's favorite site features, the lookalikes. This one features Mike Quade with fun results.

- Love, love, love Grubby Glove's "What's Wrong With This Card" series. Last week, we gave you the puzzle. This week, the puzzle is solved.

- Curley Bender of the Crum-Bum Beat builds the case for Edgar Martinez for the Hall of Fame. Couldn't agree more.

- Our French friends at MajorBaseball.fr contemplate Manny Ramirez's return to baseball. 

- A Tyler Beede rap? Who would imagine such a thing from the only first round draft pick not to sign. The Hall of Very Good fills us in with style.

- In a terrific post by Theo over at Hot Corner Harbor, he compares the BBA Hall of Fame voting with the BBWAA. Yes, we are way smarter.

- The Fan's good buddy over at Left Field continues to write great posts no matter what he is writing about. This week, he ties some of his favorite music for 2012 to some of those artist's favorite baseball team.

- MLB Dirt has so much great content, it's really difficult from week to week to pick a favorite. Between Jonathan's superb prospect series and Andrew Martin's terrific interviews and that other guy from Maine who writes over there, how to choose? This week, the Fan is going with Mike Schwartze's prospect pitching duos because the Fan really liked that one.

- What is WAR all about? And how is the statistic useful? Look no further than this terrific article on the subject over at MLB Reports.

- J-Doug over at Rational Pastime gives us that site's picks for the Hall of Fame. Great stuff!

- It really bugs a writer at the Replacement Level Baseball Blog that no player has ever received a 100 percent vote for the Hall of Fame. So the writer gives us thoughts on which players should have been unanimous. The Fan picks this post as the best post of the Generals this week.

- The consistently entertaining Sully of Sully Baseball has ten thoughts on the recent Hall of Fame vote. Terrific read.

- In another candidate for the best post of the week, Logan Lietz of Through the Fence Baseball explains Theo Epstein's real value to the Cubs. 

Thank you again for supporting our sites. We certainly appreciate you, our readers. And please, stop by Old Time Family Baseball on Saturday and support a great cause (and view some terrific blog posts!). Have a great weekend, everyone.

Players to Celebrate in 2012: Todd Helton

This is the third part of a series celebrating players we have enjoyed watching for many years who we might be seeing for the last time in 2012. Today we celebrate Todd Helton. Helton actually has a contract that runs through 2013, but the Colorado icon is 38 and the contract was front loaded and he wouldn't be leaving a large sum of money on the table to walk away after this coming season. In light of his physical struggles the past few seasons, it's not out of the range of possibilities that 2012 could be Helton's swan song.

Placing Todd Helton's career in historical context is difficult for the same reason it has been to do so for Larry Walker. Helton has played his entire career for the Rockies and Coors Field is about as bad a stigma to baseball writers as PEDs seem to be. To this writer, judging Helton's numbers due to his home ballpark would be a large mistake. After all, Helton has a career on-base percentage of .421. Thin air does not aid taking a walk. Even if you took away his massive amount of intentional walks (183), Helton would still have an on-base percentage over .400 for his career.

What is often forgotten concerning Rockies' players is that despite playing half of their games at Coors, a large part of their road travels take them to tough hitters parks in San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Todd Helton has played 1,039 games at Coors but has also played 333 games at those three sights. While that totally doesn't alter perceptions for his career splits from a home/road perspective, it certainly makes it somewhat understandable. And Helton's .869 career road OPS is nothing to sneeze at. That's a very good number. Yes, the home stats are incredible, but we can't say he was nothing on the road.

Helton's back problems have sapped his power in recent seasons. He hasn't slugged .500 since 2005. But he continues to hit and four of the six seasons since 2005 have been over .300. Plus, only one of those six seasons saw his OBP drop below .385. We all want first basemen who hit a lot of homers. Helton isn't that player anymore. His loss of power is similar to that of Don Mattingly who also struggled with back problems. But unlike Mattingly, Helton had a peak longer than Mattingly's but has managed to be quietly effective for a longer period beyond the peak.

And what a peak it was. Between 1999 and 2005, his OPS figures were in order: .981, 1.162, 1.116, 1.006, 1.088, 1.088 and .979. Between 2000 and 2005, his OBP was never lower than .429 and his batting average was never lower than .329. Between 1999 and 2005, Helton averaged 34 homers a season and 48 doubles! During those six seasons, Helton scored 741 runs and knocked in 807! Those were amazing seasons. Helton's teams were never very good through those years. But despite that, between 2000 and 2005, Helton had three top ten finishes in MVP voting and top twenty finishes in the other two seasons. He also won three Gold Gloves Awards and four Silver Slugger Awards.

Throughout his career, Todd Helton has also been a very good fielding first baseman. Baseball-reference.com gives Helton 9.8 dWAR for his career and Fangraphs gives him 56.7 runs above average for his career in the field. Add his defense on top of a great offensive career and you have had a treat of a career. It's hard not to like that Helton has struck out more than two hundred times less in his career than he's walked and Coors or no Coors, a lifetime slash line of .323/.421/.550 cannot be dismissed lightly. OPS+ takes into account park effects and Helton still comes out with a 136 OPS+ for his career.

Helton has been a class act and a graceful performer. Celebrate his career in 2012. It might be your last chance to do so.

Kevin Youkilis - Brittle?

Last night and this morning, yours truly had a short conversation with Chris McBrien of the terrific Dear Mr. Fantasy website and Chip Buck, the creative contributor for the awesome Fire Brand of the American League and it was astounding that Chris from a fantasy perspective and Chip from a Red Sox team-based site had little faith that Kevin Youkilis will play 100 or more games in 2012. The conversation proved just how fickle the game of baseball can be. Youkilis, a major player in the 2007 championship run, a featured story of Moneyball and a guy just recently named one of the top fifty players (35th) active in baseball has now become an afterthought.

It is easy to understand Chris McBrien's stance. It's part of his job for his readers to assess fantasy baseball risk on players. This Fan doesn't play fantasy baseball and so there is no expertise in that area. But to think that you wouldn't want to touch Kevin Youkilis with one of your picks in that world just blows the mind. According to Fangraphs, despite only playing 222 games the past two seasons, Youkilis has still achieved a value of just over $33 million with his play. Despite only 120 games played in 2011, Youkilis still hit 32 doubles, 18 homers and drove in 80. The guy is a stud, isn't he? His batting average did dip inexplicably to .258 in 2011, but he still got on base a little more than 37 percent of the time.

It's also easy to understand Chip's point of view. He called Youkilis, "brittle," and despite emotional objections to that word, the facts bear it out. Since Youkilis became a fixture on the Red Sox in 2006, he's never played 150 games in a season. Seeing that in his player card was a total surprise. Kevin Youkilis has never played a full season. His 147 games played in 2006 were his tops in that category. Well, holy A-Rod! Who knew? Does that make Youkilis the current incarnation of John Valentin? Valentin was another on-base machine for the Red Sox in the 1990s who couldn't find a way to stay healthy. His career was basically over by age 32. Youkilis will be 33 in March.

There have been reports that the Red Sox were considering trading Youkilis for pitching or other needs. Looking at the value proposition of such a deal, the pitcher better be pretty darned good for that to happen. As mentioned earlier, Youkilis, as a part-time player the last couple of years has been worth over $16 million a season and has a very reasonable contract that pays him around $13 million. That contract does run out after 2012 (with an option for 2013), so perhaps that factors into such a strategy.

Kevin Youkilis is not as good a third baseman as he was a first baseman. But saying so discounts how few real options there are in the majors for third basemen out there. Even playing 120 games, Youkilis was the third most valuable third baseman in baseball last season. It seems to this author at least that 120 games of Youkilis at third would be a better option than 160 games from anyone else not named Adrian Beltre (why the heck didn't the Red Sox re-sign that guy?) and Evan Longoria.

There is one other statement this author would like to make concerning Youkilis: His .944 OPS in the post season and the way he grinds at bats, there are few other batters a contending team would rather face in big situations than Kevin Youkilis. This Fan has never really liked the guy, but there is a lot of respect for him as a batter. If the impossible happens and Youkilis can stay on the field for 140 or more games, that can only be a benefit for the Red Sox. Yes, folks, that was an understatement. To this observer, Kevin Youkilis is a big key to the team's success in 2012. And yeah, if the Fan played fantasy baseball, Youkilis would be grabbed in the first round if those two other guys weren't available.

Players to Celebrate in 2012: Mariano Rivera

The 2012 season may be the last for some of the best players of this generation. Yesterday we focused on Chipper Jones in the first part of a series celebrating these players. Jones has a contract possibility of playing in 2013, but it seems likely that this will be his swan song. Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees is another player who we could be seeing for the last time. Despite seeming ageless and continuing his dominant pitching even at the age of 41, his current contract runs out after this season and the gut feeling here is that this will be it.

And it seems astounding to actually type that. He's been such a fixture for so long that it's hard to imagine Major League Baseball without him. Love or hate the Yankees, everyone respects Rivera. Despite the bad rep "closers" have an the analytic community, all number-crunching writers have nothing but positive things to say about the Sandman. He is the exception to the antipathy of the save rule. To some, he is the number one reason the Yankees won five titles since 1996. To others, he's just a great player in a great situation. Despite which side of the fence you sit, no one will say that Mariano Rivera doesn't have a spot guaranteed for him in Cooperstown.

Let's forget about the save record for a moment. Very few people like that statistic. This writer doesn't happen to be one of them, but understands the displeasure others have for the save. So this post will only this one time mention Rivera as the all time save leader. He also holds the record for games finished. But if you'd rather have another statistic rather than the save, consider that since he started in 1995, Rivera has the highest WPA of ALL pitchers (starter or reliever). And since 1961, only Roger Clemens has a higher WPA. That Rivera, a "closer" has the second highest WPA in the last fifty years has been remarkable.

A relatively new measurement is the weighted pitch value. We can now rate pitchers fastballs, cutters, curves, sliders, split-fingered, change ups and knuckle balls. While the statistic only goes back to 2002, since that time, Mariano Rivera's cutter has been the fifth most valuable pitch in baseball behind only Roy Oswalt's fastball, Randy Johnson's slider, Johan Santana's change up and Roy Halladay's curve. You'll notice all those guys are starters.

Mariano Rivera has faced 4,814 batters in his career. They have a combined batting average of .210, an on-base percentage of .262 and a slugging percentage of .290. Right-handed batters have a career OPS against him of .583. Left-handed batters have an OPS against him of .522. In his last 404.2 innings pitched, he's walked a total of 60 batters. He walked only six batters in all of 2008 and only eight batters in all of 2011 (two were intentional). Rivera's home run per nine inning rate for his career is 0.48.

Rivera has had a season ERA under 2.00 in eleven of his seventeen seasons. In five seasons, his FIP has been under 2.30. His career SIERA is 2.58.

It didn't matter where Mariano Rivera pitched. His ERA at home is 2.48. His ERA on the road is 1.99. His OPS against in day games is .571. In night games, it's .540. In domes, it's a surreal .464. It also didn't matter what part of the season you faced him. There isn't a single month of the season when his OPS against was over .600 in his career.

In nine of Rivera's seventeen seasons, his WHIP has been under one. He has a streak going of four straight such seasons. His career WHIP is 0.998. People always associate Mariano Rivera for save situations. But he's actually pitched 327 times when there wasn't a save situation. In those games, Rivera is 54-32, a .628 win percentage. And he's compiled an ERA of 2.35 in such situations. His OPS against in non-save situations is .567. Rivera didn't just close out wins the Yankees needed, he also won games at the end of the game. He's been a multipurpose weapon.

And we haven't even covered his post season records. In the biggest games of all, he has a 0.70 ERA with 42 saves and an 8-1 record. His WHIP in the post season is 0.759. Sure, the Red Sox stole a run off of him in 2004 and the Diamondbacks dinked their way to a win off of him in 2001. But otherwise, he's been money.

There has never been a pitcher like Mariano Rivera. Among a skill-set often discounted, he is the exception. He's been so good for so long that it's big news when a team scores a run off of him and he blows a save. His pinpoint control, his ability to repeat his easy motion time and time again have set him apart from all peers. There have been relief pitchers who have had better years than Rivera. But Mariano Rivera's overall body of work will stand the test of time and sets him apart from all others. Take the time to celebrate his career in 2012. It might be the last time we get to do so.

Players to Celebrate in 2012: Chipper Jones

Baseball is, among all major sports, the game most suited for reflection. Thirty teams play 162 games a season and that's a lot of baseball. The game is also one most tied to the fabric of generations as children play catch with parents and inherit team loyalty and a love of the game. Whether you are young or old, there have been players we've watched who have built a body of work that exceeds those of their peers. We know who they are and we follow them from their rookie seasons until they hang up their spikes for good. With all these thoughts in mind, today begins a series of articles about players who we might watch for the last time in 2012. These are players we've seen in All Star Games and post season games and this coming season will probably be last of their play on the field. Such occasions should be celebrations. Try to forget that they can't run like they used to and miss an occasional fastball they used to crush. Celebrate the memories, the moments these players gave us as fans as they play out their swan songs. Today, we start with Chipper Jones.

It took a long time for this writer to come around to Chipper Jones. He played for a team this writer didn't particularly like. His Atlanta Braves teams always seemed to come in first place and Jones seemed like an arrogant guy on an arrogant team. But it takes a certain amount of arrogance to succeed in sports and all the great players have a touch of it. Baseball is a constant battle between the pitcher and batter, the offense against the defense and the team against another team. You have to believe you are better than the other guy(s) to win. And Jones has softened with age and perspective (as many of us do). His recent conversation recorded here shows a humble player who knows he is nearing the end and his words are frank and touching.

But put all those feelings aside for a moment and simply consider the performance on the field. That's what it's all about when all is said and done, isn't it? While we often know that a player like Albert Pujols is in the midst of a terrific career, it isn't over yet. It's not until a career nears its end can you put it fully in context. Chipper Jones will go down as one of the best players of this generation. His numbers stack up with anyone and even if he never played another game, he should be a first ballot Hall of Fame vote.

One of the things this Fan likes to do is to compare current players with players from the past. And as others have written, to consider a Hall of Fame case, you not only compare a player with the peers from his own generation, but also to those who came before this generation. Such a comparison as the latter becomes difficult because the game changes. Fortunately, stats like WAR and OPS+ help because it puts seasons in perspective as well as park effects and competition. Still, it's a bit of a slippery slope. But, it's fun anyway or else people wouldn't have been doing it since the sport became as huge as it is.

Comparing Chipper Jones' career to other great third basemen of years past finds few peers. Yes, we know that Chipper played a year or so in left field. But primarily he was a third baseman, just like the great Mike Schmidt of the Philadelphia Phillies also played quite a bit of first base toward the end of his career. Mike Schmidt might be the best third baseman this writer has seen in fifty years of watching baseball. Yet Chipper Jones compares favorably with the great Hall of Fame player. Let's take a look:

• Games played - Schmidt (2,404), Jones (2,387)
• Batting Average - Schmidt (.267), Jones (.304)
• OBP - Schmidt (.380), Jones (.402)
• Slugging - Schmidt (.527), Jones (.533)
• OPS+ - Schmidt (147), Jones (141)
• Homers - Schmidt (548), Jones (454)
• Doubles - Schmidt (408), Jones (526)
• Triples - Schmidt (59), Jones (38)
• Runs Scored - Schmidt (1,506), Jones (1,561)
• Runs batted in - Schmidt (1,595), Jones (1,561)
• Stolen bases/Attempts - Schmidt (174-92, 65.4 percent), Jones (149-46, 77.6 percent)
• oWAR - Schmidt (94.4), Jones (82.7)
• Post season play - Schmidt (36 games, .236/.304/.386), Jones (92 games, .288/.411/.459).

That's some pretty good comparisons, are they not? Schmidt gets the final nod plus, Schmidt is acknowledged the superior fielder (by a wide margin). The bottom line is that if Mike Schmidt is one of the best ever, Chipper Jones isn't too far behind him.

Chipper Jones is limping into the final chapter of his career and despite battling bad knees and other health issues, still managed an .814 OPS last season. The last three seasons of his career have fallen behind his previous standards, but all have been above .800 in OPS. Schmidt was done by the age of 39 and finished with .742 and .668 OPS seasons. Jones has been to the post season in eleven of his eighteen seasons. It would be nice to see him get one more shot at it. But whether that happens or not, celebrate Chipper Jones this coming season. He's been among the best of his generation and his career stacks up well with the greatest third basemen of all time.

Who Should Play Short for the Rays?

Except for the lack of fannies in their seats and dollars in their coffers, the Tampa Bay Rays are the darlings of baseball. The front office is continually feted and they sport the current American League Manager of the Year in their dugout. The Bay Rays are a talented team with the kind of young pitching that can again push them to battle for the AL East title. But, they are not without question marks. They do not yet know who will play first base or which bat will be the designated hitter. But perhaps their biggest question mark heading into the spring is who they will employ at shortstop.

Shortstop was a disaster last year. As a team, the shortstops did perform a tick above league average in the field, but at the plate, it was a wasteland. In 596 total plate appearances, the Bay Rays' shortstops threw up this amazing slash line: .193/.256/.282. They combined to strike out 147 times and walked only 35 times. They hit only 26 extra base hits all season. Now, it's not like the majors are brimming with great hitting shortstops. Major League shortstops combined for a total slash line of .263/.317/.380, which is pretty pathetic. But those league numbers sure look a whole lot better than what the Rays did in 2011.

According to the depth chart, the same three candidates to play the position in 2011 are still in place: Reid Brignac, Elliot Johnson and Sean Rodriguez (who is on the depth chart for every position including KP duty). Out of those three, who should get the job? In other words, who has the best chance to succeed? Let's look at them one by one.

Reid Brignac: This Fan has always liked Brignac. And last year about this time, this Fan pushed for Reid Brignac to be given the job to play for 155 games. And the Rays did just that to start the season. Brignac was pretty much the regular shortstop until mid-May. By May 21, Brignac was sitting on a slash line of .170/.210/.180. Ugh! Things couldn't get any worse than that. His playing time was limited after and he never recovered. He ended the season at, .193/.227/.221. Like many of the Bay Rays, his troubles were magnified at home. He actually hit .286 on the road but only .153 at home.

While Brignac's defense remained solid and while he has the most range of any of the candidates, there is certainly a question of if he will ever hit big league pitching. Brignac was the 39th highest rated prospect by Baseball America in 2008 and he's still only 25 years old. But he has little discipline at the plate, strikes out nearly 25 percent of his at bats and has lost any pop he showed in his bat in the minor leagues.

There are a couple of iffy positive signs for Brignac. For one, his line drive percentage was at 22.5 percent and sits at 21.1 for his career. When he hit line drives, good things happened. But when he hit grounders and fly balls, nothing ever fell in. His absurdly low .254 BABIP is surely a factor in that when his hit trajectory was on the ground or in the air, he went a combined 18 for 139 at the plate. That's either pathetic contact or terrible luck.

Elliot Johnson: Johnson was inserted after the Bay Rays could no longer handle Brignac's daily struggles. And by the end of June, Johnson was holding his own at the plate. He wasn't spectacular, but his slash line on May 23, 2011 was, .258/.306/.409. Compared to Brignac's numbers, that was great. But he faded, and by August 11, 2011, was down to batting .179. He never fully recovered either and ended the season with a slash line of, .194/.257/.338.

Johnson did play excellent defense according to all fielding metrics. That's a bit of a surprise as he was never considered that great a fielding shortstop in the minors. His entire minor league career is uninspiring. He never made a top prospect list and has never projected to be anything more than a role player.

Sean Rodriguez: Rodriguez became the Rays' shortstop by default after Brignac and Johnson failed to produce. He ended up playing sixty games at the position. Though shortstop was Rodriguez's natural position in the minors, he's not quite the fielder there as the other two. He's a league average shortstop with the glove who seems better suited at second base in the majors. But at least he did a few more things with his bat than the other two. While his final slash line of, .223/.323/.357 won't thrill any analyst, it was a darn sight better than the other two. The one area of concern is that the right-handed bat of Rodriguez seemed totally ineffective against right-handed pitching. His splits that way showed an OPS difference of almost 300 points.

Sean Rodriguez showed consistent power in the minors and his hitting there blows the other two out of the water as far as what he could potentially hit in the majors. While he isn't uber-selective at the plate, he has more discipline than the other two. The feeling here is that of the three, Rodriguez can be a consistent force in the majors on offense. But realistically, you'd prefer to see him at second permanently with Zobrist in right.

Others:  The Rays' Triple A shortstop is the journeyman, Rey Olmedo, who at the age of 30 doesn't appear to be much more than minor league filler. Tim Beckham is a highly touted prospect who did well at Double A but regressed a bit once he hit Triple A last season. He's probably another year away.

Conclusions: The lack of Brignac and Rodriguez (and even Upton to a degree) to develop as hitters in the majors thus far leads to questions of how good their hitting instructions are at the major league level. That may not be fair, but you would think one of these guys would hit as well in the majors as they did in the minors.  Well, okay, there is always Zobrist, but still. This Fan doesn't personally see Elliot Johnson as an answer. So unless Brignac can show some life in Spring Training, the Rays might be forced to install Sean Rodriguez as their everyday shortstop until Tim Beckham is ready. One thing is for sure, 2012 Rays' shortstops can't possibly be as bad at the plate as 2011.

Nonplussed by the Career of Jorge Posada

When this site was created in 2003, the intent was to write about baseball from a fan's perspective. And while that may or may not have held true over the nine years of this site's activity, to be truthful, the writer here has too many journalistic aspirations and inspirations to really allow the fan side of things to take over completely. As a writer that writes about all baseball teams and players, a level of objectivity has long been maintained as this writer's goal. Jorge Posada defeats all of those high and lofty objectives. And because of the problems he brings to this writer's emotions, summing up his career (that reports have indicated is now over) is difficult. What kind of player was Jorge Posada?

First, the fan side problem. Since this writer was a little boy, the New York Yankees have been the favorite team. That sentiment has been avoided as much as possible in the words of this site. In fact, to this day, people on Twitter still ask about the Fan's favorite team. Which means that the goal of objectivity has been achieved somewhat successfully. Perhaps we are blowing that out of the water today with Jorge Posada. But it's not what you think. Though the 1996 to 2000 run was perhaps the most gratifying span in this Fan's history, Posada has never been a favored part of that warm and toasty memory bank. Jorge Posada has never been a Fan favorite. In fact, it's been just the opposite.

To be totally out front about things, MLB.TV has been a part of this writer's world for as long as that feature has been available. Writing and rooting from northern Maine makes watching a lot of baseball impossible except for daily Red Sox games on NESN. The money spent on MLB.TV has been largely spent to watch the Yankees. And as such, more of that team's games have been watched than any other. The overriding feeling watching Jorge Posada day in and day out was that he sucked as a catcher. Not only did this Fan feel he sucked as a catcher, he seemed like a bully, especially to young pitchers.

The bullying part will have to be explained later, but the fact that Posada was a lousy catcher, especially the last five years of his career are backed up by defensive metrics. According to baseball-reference.com, Posada only had five seasons of his sixteen total where his defensive metrics were not in the negative category. Both B-R and Fangraphs give him similar fielding numbers with B-R coming in at -32 runs for his career and Fangraphs at -22.1 runs. But it's even worse than that.

In Mike Fast's seminal work over at Baseball Prospectus, he confirmed what this writer had thought for a long time. Jorge Posada cost his pitchers a lot of strikes. Fast has a chart of his findings and put Posada third from the bottom (ahead of only Ryan Doumit and Gerald Laird from 2007 to 2011. Fast put his findings into a run format as well, and if his work is correct, then Posada cost his team slightly over 50 runs in just that four year span. So in four years, he nearly doubled the amount of runs he cost the Yankees with other facets of his defense for his career.

Add up all that negative stuff and add in that he led the league in passed balls twice and racked up 142 for his career, PLUS, he wasn't good at throwing base steal attempts out and was only successful 28 percent of the time for his career, the total picture is of a catcher that wasn't very good at his position.

The defensive beliefs of this career are easy to prove via the numbers we have available to us. There is no such defense for the bullying charge other than watching hundreds of games over the years. It is this writer's belief (that will be awfully hard to shake) Posada was a bane to young pitchers like Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes and others. They were going to throw Posada's pitch choices and that's all there was to it. There were an awful lot of complaints about the amount of times Posada trotted out to the mound to talk to his pitcher. And indeed that happened with maddening regularity. They almost always happened after a pitcher shook off the catcher's sign.

There were numerous times when this Fan literally screamed at the television to a particular sign given the pitcher in big situations. One that seems etched in this brain forever is a pitch to the Tampa Bay Rays' Dan Johnson. Johnson simply couldn't hit big league pitching. But the Rays always seemed to bring him up to face the Yankees and it always seemed to work. Dan Johnson hit 58 homers in his big league career. The eight he hit against the Yankees were his most against any other team. This writer can't remember the game, but at the time the Yankees and Rays were battling for first place in the division. Posada called the pitch and as soon as that finger was put down, this Fan started screaming and soon enough, Johnson was rounding the bases and the Rays had won the game. Perhaps it was the game on September 10, 2010 when Johnson hit two off of Phil Hughes.

Anyway, as you can see from this post so far, there is a lot of antipathy concerning Posada's career with the Yankees. And yet, when the numbers are compiled, they will show that since 1901, Jorge Posada was the fifteenth most valuable catcher by fWAR. Almost all the names in front of him are Hall of Fame players and others will be (Mike Piazza and Ivan Rodriguez). By those same measurements, he was the twelfth most valuable offensive catcher since 1901. Those are hard numbers to argue.

And Posada had some memorable hits during the Yankees' post season history. But as this writer has said before, when you get that many chances, good things will happen on occasion. His post season offense wasn't particularly spectacular. His .745 post season OPS is pretty good but not terrific. He has been called a clutch player, but no numbers bear that out.

There is no chance for this writer to remain objective about Jorge Posada. He was an old friend on a favored team that maintained excellence from 1996 to the present day. He'll get a lot of attention when he is eligible for the Hall of Fame. Many will vote for him. He's got five rings on his fingers. But for this simple writer, give this Fan Joe Girardi or Russell Martin behind the plate any day of the week and not Jorge Posada.