The basic premise is straightforward: in order to get an in-depth look at the team, I'm going to look at the organization position-by-position and evaluate the strength of the group relative to other organizations.
As I am prone to do, I'll be using an inflation-less grading scale. I'm using a scale of 0 to 10. 0 represents complete, abject failure where there is only the slimmest of fanciful hope of a remotely useful major league regular coming from in house. Think the Rockies pitching situation for much of their existence or the Cubs third base situation in the years prior to the acquisition of Aramis Ramirez. 10 represents baseball's elite, with a star level major league player and talent in the pipeline. Think the Phillies when Ryan Howard was biding his time in the minors behind Jim Thome.
I'll discuss the players based on where the primarily played last season. For example, although Dave Sappelt had a cup of coffee in Chicago in September and ended the year there, I'll refer to him as the AAA centerfielder given the vast majority of the season he spent there. This area can get fuzzy, but we'll discuss all of the relevant players regardless.
Finally, a (long) note on statistics. For offensive players, I'll use the basic counting stats (HR, 2B, 3B, XBH, SB), the triple slash line with OPS thrown on for good measure (Batting Average/On-base Percentage/Slugging Percentage/On-base Plus Slugging), and a couple of additional numbers that need a bit of explanation:
1. BABIP. Batting Average on Balls in Play. League average tends to be around 30%, although batters tend to experience more variation than pitchers. Some of this is due to a player's particular skill set. For example, Adam Dunn has an exceptionally low BABIP (.270) for his career given that he is very slow and a large number of his hits - home runs - are not actually in play and thus not factored into BABIP. Conversely, slap hitting Emilio Bonifacio has a sky-high .335 career BABIP. However, for many players, a notable amount of BABIP variation is due to luck. Thus, when a player who traditionally bats .260 unexpectedly turns in a .320 season, an unsustainable BABIP is often the source.
2. wRC+. To poach almost verbatim from Fangraphs, Weighted Runs Created Plus attempts to quantify a player's entire offensive value and measure it by runs. The wRC metric uses the traditional stats and spits out a synthesized number for easy consumption. wRC+ compares a player's wRC with league average with each point above or below 100 (league average) representing one percentage point above or below league average. For example, a 125 wRC+ means that the player created 25% more runs than league average. By way of illustration, this list shows players who were within one point of each threshold number:
166: Miguel Cabrera, Mike Trout (they actually tied)
125: Adam Jones, Carlos Beltran, Andre Ethier
110: Jose Reyes, Ryan Doumit
100: Rickie Weeks, Brett Lawrie, Starlin Castro
90: Jesus Montero, Mike Moustakas
75: Darwin Barney, Yunel Escobar
64: Drew Stubbs
Put simply, wRC+ gives us a good sense of a player's overall offensive production and a way to provide context for the more traditional numbers. It also speaks to positional value: while Starlin Castro's 99 wRC+ is effectively perfectly league average, that production as a shortstop plays up because of the scarcity of quality offensive shortstops. The bottom of this list is, unsurprisingly, littered with middle infielders and free-swinging corner outfielders with low BABIPs.
For pitchers, I'll use a number of easily understood statistics and a pair of slightly more confusing ones. I'll look at a quartet of rate stats: K/9, BB/9, and HR/9. I'll also look at BABIP from the other perspective (pitchers tend to be closer to the .300 average than hitters). I'll even include ERA. As for the less familiar numbers:
1. FIP. Fielding Independent Pitching likes to examine how well a pitcher does getting positive results over the plays for which he has the most control, specifically strikeouts, walks, hit by pitchers, and home runs. FIP is used more as a predictive tool. To steal the calibration directly from Fangraphs:
2.90: Excellent (MLB's four sub-3.00 FIPs in 2012: Gio Gonzalez, King Felix, Kershaw, Verlander)
3.25: Great (Johnny Cueto, R.A. Dickey)
3.75: Above Average (Jake Peavy, Jered Weaver)
4.00: Average (Paul Maholm)
4.20: Below Average (James McDonald, Mark Buehrle)
4.50: Poor (Barry Zito)
5.00: Awful (Ubaldo Jimenez)
(Ervin Santana brought up the rear at 5.63)
2. xFIP. Expected FIP is much like FIP, only different in that it replaces a pitcher's home run total with an estimate of how many home runs he should have allowed given his fly ball rate and the league average fly ball rate. xFIP helps when looking at pitchers in parks where the ball never leaves (San Diego) and those where it always leaves (Arizona).
The very last statistic is one that many of you will be familiar with: WAR. Wins Above Replacement has been popular for some time now and multiple outlets have their own version. The simple idea is that WAR is a complete measure of a player's value, combining offense, defense, and baserunning to show how many wins that player added above a bench player or minor leaguer, the comparative replacement player. For example, a player with a 3.5 WAR provides his team with 3.5 wins more than a fringe major leaguer would be expected to provide. One win correlates with roughly ten runs. To be clear, WAR is NOT predictive; it only measures the actual value a player has already provided in a given season. Additionally, it is not a rate statistic. For example, Matt Garza produced just 1.2 WAR last season even though he had a 4.17 FIP because he missed half of the season with an injury. Players with similar FIPs like Justin Masterson and Mark Buehrle produced 2.3 and 2.1 WAR respectively by virtue of pitching the full season. The basic concept being illustrated: two players of equal production on a per game basis are not equal; the player who contributes more innings at that rate contributes more overall to the team. This isn't necessarily always better. If the Marlins were giving starts to Buehrle instead of R.A. Dickey or Justin Verlander, it's a poor allocation of innings. However, the Cubs pitching Garza instead of Chris Volstad is an unquestioned success.
I'll use the following basic format for evaluating each position group:
Position
2012 Overview: A look back at what happened during the 2012 season in the position group including on-field performance, injuries, transactions, and scouting reports.
2013 and Beyond: I'll lean more heavily on scouting reports here and examine the overall health of the position group, particularly its depth in the minor leagues.
Final Rating: A number to give a good sense of the position.
Please refer back to this post in the future if you have questions. We'll get started with the catchers shortly.
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