The Futility Infielder

My recent chat with Jon Weisman caught the attention of the L.A. Observed blog, which is focused mainly on "[m]edia, culture, books and the politics of Los Angeles and California". In particular, our discussion of L.A. Times writers Bill Plaschke and T.J. Simers seems to have whetted the Observed's appetite for more. Cool.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers generated more headscratch-inducing headlines on Monday with their three-year, $9.9 million contract to shortstop Cesar Izturis. In the discussion following our Big Blue Bull Session, I had noted a couple of things about Izturis:

• He'll be 25 this year, he took a great leap forward as far as his hitting goes last year, and is still at an age where he might continue to improve in that department. Using Baseball Prospectus' numbers, he went from being an average of 10 runs under replacement over the previous two years to 18 runs above last year -- a huge turnaround. While he might regress a bit, he also might continue to improve given his age.

• From a defensive standpoint, BP's numbers put him at +1 run last year, +11 the year before, and -8 the year before that. Those numbers seem a little low given the perception of him as a Gold Glove-worthy defensive whiz. The Ultimate Zone Rating numbers, which are based on play-by-play data, put him at +5 in 2000-2003 (of which he played about 2 seasons total) -- again solid but not sterling. Unfortunately, UZR numbers for 2004 aren't publicly available because their creator, Mitchel Lichtman, has granted his employers, the Cardinals, exclusive access to them, but per Moneyball, it's likely that Dodger GM DePodesta has similar numbers to UZR that tell him a similar thing.

I then stuck my foot in my mouth by declaring that this slightly below-average hitter and slightly above-average defender was still relatively affordable and not arbitration eligible yet, and I was clearly dead wrong on that last note, as this contract is a product of DePodesta avoiding arbitration and adding cost certainty. D'oh!

I don't think it's a great contract by any stretch of the imagination, but it does cover the shortstop's age 25-27 years, which are likely to be his best from a hitting standpoint, and from a market standpoint, it can be argued that he's a bargain when the following contracts are considered:

                 WARP  Age   Contract

Orlando Cabrera   3.2   30   4/$32 mil ANA

Cristian Guzman   5.7   27   4/$16 mil WAS

David Eckstein    4.2   30   3/$10.25 mil STL

Edgar Renteria    3.7   29   4/$40 mil BOS

Jose Valentin     5.0   35   1/$3.5 mil LOS

Omar Vizquel      6.3   38   3/$12.25 mil SFO

Cesar Izturis     5.5   25   3/$9.9 mil LOS

WARP is Wins Above Replacement Player, a stat that takes into account both offense and defense and is normalized for park, league, and era -- in other words, the playing field has been leveled. Izturis is the youngest of these players, the only one, with the possible exception of Guzman, who's not past his statistical peak age (25-29), and he's also the cheapest on this list. The two most expensive players here, Renteria and Cabrera, had off years but were still rewarded with contracts only slightly more reasonable than the Derek Lowe pact. In that market, Izturis doesn't look like the worst idea in the world.

That said, this is a guy with a .293 career OBP (.330 last year), some speed (25/34 steals last year) and no power (career SLG of .342, with a .381 last year). Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA forecasting system puts his 2005 weighted mean projection at .261/.304/.353, with a zero percent chance of breakout (improving his per-plate appearance productivity, in Equivalent Runs, by 20% above his three-year baseline) and only a 9.9 percent chance of improvement. In other words, we may well have seen the best of what he has to offer with the stick.

Furthermore, batting him first or second, as Dodger manager Jim Tracy did all year, is a pretty awful idea -- about as bad as Tracy, who often used catcher Paul Lo Duca in that role a few years back, is capable of mustering. He and DePodesta should know better. Still, the Dodgers outperformed their Pythagorean projection by 3.4 games and beat their second-order win projection (which examines the team's performance based on run elements) by 5.8, so it's tough to argue that the strategy truly hampered them.

It seems clear that this move -- locking up the team's defensive anchor -- has a lot to do with the decision to invest heavily in groundball pitchers such as Odalis Perez (career G/F of 1.68) and the extreme wormkiller Lowe (career G/F of 3.34), a controversial move that at best appears to have the Dodgers overpaying 2-3 times what they should for something resembling a League-Average Inning Muncher (LAIM). But as tied together as the two players' fates are, it's likely that the Izturis signing will be hailed by the same L.A. media that's unwilling to cut DePodesta some slack for his other moves. Funny how that works.