The Futility Infielder

It's that time of the month again, as my Prospectus Triple Play (now bylined in a welcome improvement) is up over at Baseball Prospectus. Because I was hosting out-of-town guests over the weekend (for my bachelor party, which started with an hour of hacking at the Chelsea Piers batting cages), I had to prepare the bulk of this one a few days ahead of time, and so missed an opportunity to discuss the players from these teams who made BP's just-released Top 50 Prospects List. As such, I've got a few outtakes and bonus tracks (so to speak), though I'll save most of the prospect-related talk (and number-gathering) for my next shot:

• The Dodgers placed four players in the Top 50, along with catcher Dioner Navarro, who was an honorable mention:

7. Joel Guzman, SS
20. Chad Billingsley, RHP
34. Willy Aybar, 2B
45. Edwin Jackson, RHP

Jackson was on last year's list as well, ranked at #6, but his stock fell considerably with a lousy year in Las Vegas (a 5.86 ERA in 90 innings) and an even worse one in LA (7.30 ERA in 24.2 innings). Repeat after me: There's No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect.

• The Twins placed two players in the Top 50:

43. Jesse Crain, RHRP
46. Jason Kubel, OF

Kubel will miss the entire season with a torn ACL, setting off a lengthy debate in the Outfielders Roundtable as to whether to include him in this year's list.

• The Giants had one player in the Top 50:

28. Matt Cain, RHP

Not surprising, given the points I made about the team's focus on developing pitchers at the expense of producing hitters.

• My analysis of the Dodger catchers could have been a bit more complete, as a couple of readers have already pointed out to me. First off, I neglected to include Mike Rose, a non-roster invitee who hasn't gotten much of a mention anywhere. He's almost certainly slated for Las Vegas, and his defense is not loved (PECOTA says -10 in minimal playing time) but he might get a look if Dave Ross falters, and given that he put up a .407 OBP at Sacramento last year, he fits in as a DePodesta/Beane type. Still, he's no Tom Wilson, and given that the Dodgers didn't even take advantage of his presence in the second half last year, I'm not sure that Rose is more than a contingency plan.

Also, one of those early-spring stories has Dodger utilityman Jason Grabowski, who was drafted by the Rangers as a catcher in 1997, taking reps behind the plate. I'll wager that at least part of the focus is simply because there's no shortage of work for a catcher in spring training (look, it's Lenn Sakata!); somebody always needs to throw somewhere, and as a good utilityman, Grabowski's lending a helping hand. He was probably worth a tangential mention, though I don't think he's any threat to get significant playing time behind the plate, and he doesn't add a lot beyond late-inning/emergency flexibility.

Here's a revised chart of their PECOTAs with these two included:

          Age   AVG   OBP   SLG   MLVR   VORP   Break   Imp
Bako       33  .220  .299  .321  -0.261  -1.0   31.4   52.2
Navarro    21  .244  .306  .366  -0.173   3.9   12.7   28.2
Ross       28  .227  .317  .420  -0.095  10.4   53.1   64.5
Rose       28  .242  .353  .383  -0.068   8.4   31.9   49.2
Grabowski  29  .241  .323  .411  -0.087   3.4   26.4   51.2

Still looks like they'll be bleeding runs here.

• Keith Woolner has revamped the Reliever Evaluation Tools for Baseball Prospectus 2005, reintroducing a measure called WXRL (Win Expectation, adjusted for Replacement-level and Lineup), which is based on the game state context (outs, baserunners, and score margin) in which a pitcher is used and the impact his performance had on a team's chances of winning a game.

My editor had a joke about country music in upstate New York that fell on the cutting room floor along with this chart, which shows how freshly-retired Robb Nen ranks over the course of his 1994-2002 run as a reliever:

Pitcher           WXRL
Trevor Hoffman    42.5
Mariano Rivera    35.5
Troy Percival     34.3
Robb Nen          32.3
Armando Benitez   30.2
Jeff Shaw         26.9
Mike Jackson      26.4
Todd Jones        26.1
Jose Mesa         25.8
Keith Foulke      23.7
John Wetteland    23.7
Billy Wagner      21.9
Roberto Hernandez 21.8
Bob Wickman       20.7

Not too shabby. But sad to say, I called Nen's demise just over a year ago in a discussion with Fogball's Tom Gorman, who's a certified Emergency Medical Technician and somebody who knows his way around the shoulder (and the elbow too). Three months into rehabbing my own surgically-repaired labrum, I told Tom, "From what you've said, Nen's got a real salad going on there, and the cuff is only part of the problem. I hate to rain on Giants fans' parade, but the bottom line from what I know is that you'll be lucky if he's ever a productive pitcher again." Ouch.