The Futility Infielder

If you played fantasy baseball in an AL league last year, you probably already know about Bobby Kielty, the Twins outfielder who's fighting for at-bats in Ron Gardenhire's lineup. The Twins are awash in talented young hitters, so Kielty was limited to about 350 PA while posting a .405 OBP and a .484 SLG -- a frustrating situation to endure for such a productive hitter. He's not a defensive liability (he serves as Torii Hunter's backup as a CF in addition to platooning in RF) and he's a switch-hitter, so he justifiably should see more playing time in the coming year.

John Bonnes, the Twins Geek, takes a look at some comparisons for Kielty based on Baseball Prospectus' new PECOTA projection system. PECOTA is designed to predict the chances of whether a player will "breakout" or "collapse" based on age and physical comparisons. I've got only passing familiarity with that new system, but it stands to receive a lot of attention as BP rolls out its new book and upgraded, subscription-based website in the coming weeks (about which I'll write soon). Anyway, Bonnes runs some comparisons and notes that a player such as Kielty who has a high number of walks and strikeouts doesn't project as well as a traditional stathead would expect. "It's not clear that low-contact, average-power players will succeed when pitchers start throwing more strikes until they have a lot more at-bats than Kielty has," writes Bonnes. "Kielty had a monster year last year. But to claim with any kind of confidence that he'll repeat that effort, it appears he would need at least 300, and maybe 500, more at-bats." Worth a read.

ESPN's Jayson Stark penned a column this week in which he suggested twenty-five rules changes ranging from the good (adding instant replay, toughening up the save rule) to the bad (adding a designated fielder to the roster, ditching the phantom DP tag -- you want to see a generation of middle infielders ruined by torn ACLs? I didn't think so) to the ugly (penalizing the intentional walk and limiting pickoff throws). In his inimitable style, Mike C. of Mike's Baseball Rants takes apart Stark's list with some handy research regarding intentional walk rates as well as some good old common sense. Check it out.

Not to be out-ranted (did somebody say stark, raving mad?), our friends at Elephants in Oakland have a more bilious take, as well as a few suggestions for Stark.

As for what I'm working on, DIPS 2002 will be up this weekend, and hopefully I'll return to the land of the occasionally original thought soon...