• Cards: Pagnozzi, Greene, Jay, Robinson, P.J. Walters, Hill
• Astros : Berkman, Barzado, Arias, Shelton, Cash, Borguios, Bogesivic, Banks, Switzer
• Pirates: Pearce, Hanrahan, Ascancio, Hart, Pearce, Vazquez, Jones, Ford, Tabata, Sanchez, Jakubauskas, Yates, Lincoln
• Cubs: Lilly, Guzman, Castro, Hoffpauir, Scales, Fuld, Gray, Vitters, Jackson
• Brewers: Suppan, Riske, Butler, Naverson, Gamel, Lucroy, Salome
• Reds: Volquez, Chapman, Wells, Janish, Miles, Castillo, Burke, Cairo, Sutton, Wood, Lehr, Maloney, Miller, Dorn, Heisey, Anderson, Valaika

This offseason the Cubs made a real short sighted deal, trading for one year of Kevin Gregg for about 5 years or more in closing prospect Jose Ceda (who was thought to be untouchable in deals). It will be no surprise when the decision is made. What happened this offseason with the trade, and the selection today, sure seems like it has Piniella’s fingerprints are all over it.

As those of you who participated in the early season blog voting, it was apparent that the award selections is not an easy thing to do . It had more to do with the body of work, rather than who was performing the best out of the box on a week to week basis. Hello Evan Longaria and Soto of the Cubs as winners.

I  find it hard to believe that Piniella is happy with a platoon situation which is being discussed for CF.  It seems Lou  would be intrigued by  a more established situation in CF.

One thing I thought is interesting about Peavy, is he is a balanced flyball/ ground ball pitcher.

For example, his teammate Chris Young who had a real nice season in 2007 had only 131 ground balls (GB) on the season, where as two other very good pitchers in Brandon Webb and Hudson had over 400 ground balls on the season.

The balls that are put in play on the ground are much harder to turn an out with than fly balls are as indicated by higher BABIP.

With Ground ball pitchers, the success the pitcher exhibits depends highly on the defense. Where as, fly balls are easier to make an out with. If a pitcher that is balanced like Peavy, he gets the benefits of getting the easier outs with the fly balls, and have the infield defense to help you out on the ground balls. A stat that measures this is Defensive Efficiency Ratio (DER ) :

measures the percentage of times balls in play are turned into outs by the team’s fielders, not including homeruns. There are different versions of the formula for DER but one most commonly used is (BFP-H-K-BB-HBP-0.6*E)/(BFP-HR-K-BB-HBP) where BFP = batters faced pitcher, H=hits allowed, K=strikeouts, BB=walks allowed, HBP=hits batsmen and E=errors

Thus, for these ground ball pitchers in 2007, How did their defense help them is worth taking a look at.

So, all these pitchers with the high number of ground balls, are backed with defenses that are good at making outs when the ball gets in play. Take some of these pitchers, and place them with a bad defense, it would be interesting how there numbers would turn out.

One last thing I decided to do was take a look at the Range of the infielders involved in these good ground ball pitchers. I used Dave Pinto’s PMR:

uses play-by-play data to determine the probability of a ball in play being converted to an out based on six parameters: Direction of hit (a vector), The type of hit (Fly, ground, line drive, bunt), How hard the ball was hit (slow, medium, hard), The park, The handedness of the pitcher, The handedness of the batter.

Arizona (99.87 19th)

Braves (100.66 10th)

San Diego (100.08 17th)

Los Angeles (99.87 20th)

In fact, I happened to be visiting friends in New York and witnessed the Pine Tar Incident Game on the Yankee broadcast. Recently, I was thinking about a baseball related user name for some account I was creating. I gave it the name of The Pine Tar Incident since that game was one of the most memorable games that I ever watched.

More Blasts From Around the Web:

Piniella  predicted number of wins:  89 wins. Chone has the NL and AL predictions too. 89 wins for my Rays!

We’re Talking Squawking Baseball on  Cone for Ed Hearn

Brock for Broglio has PrOPS .

A great week of content at Greeny’s site. with DIPs, Contact Rate rate, Home / Road standouts.

If you own Hanley like I do, check out the Disabled Informer on HRam

Jason Stark covers the history making arbitration win for Ryan Howard. Will Phillies slugger ask them to “Show me the Money” with a  136 Million next?

I thought Heyman’s GM  list was ridiculous. Glad someone else does too.

I did not Know Topkin of Times wrote for Melnick and Greco?

After a long while, the Fire Joe Morgan fellows have unmasked themselves. Sorta like when Kiss took off the makeup.

Kevin Goldstein does double duty counting down the prospects at SI.

This season Piniella is tasked again with another young outfielder in Felix Pie. This season Lou will make use of Pie the way he did with Crawford and take the pressure off him and dropping him in the batting order. As, last year he started him at lead off and it was a bust.

Now, like i implied, Carl Crawford was rushed through the minor leagues. They were quite fortunate how it worked out. I always thought Pie reminded me of Crawford, as I had saw Crawford play in the minors for the Durham Bulls. I decided to compare their minor league careers, and see if this might give an indication of what we might expect with Pie.

Rookie Ball
Pie 17: .321/.385/.569 2002
Crawford 17 .319/.350/.404 1999

A Ball
Pie 18 .285/.346/.388 2003
Crawford 18 .301/.342/.410 2000

AAA
Pie 2006 21 .283/.341/.451 2006
Crawford 20 .297/.335/.456 2002

Minors Summary
Crawford .295 /.334 /.400
Pie .300/.355/.469

Despite the bad year last season for Pie with Cubs last year, the prediction systems seem to have a favorable outlook for him.

Chone 08
PA,Run,H,Dbl,Tpl,HR,RBI,SB, BB,SO,BA,OBP

536,65,135,27,7,13,65,22, 38,107, 0.272,0.326 Pie

603,97,171,31,9,14,70,45, 34,87,0.303,0.347 Crawford

Pecota

429,62R,113H, 25,4,14,53,13,31,84K,0.291,0.344 Pie

I am not sure what to think. I Know Pie was a joke last year, but I think with the experience under his belt he might surprise. His glove is what they need out of him, and anything after that is gravy!

Now, fast forward one year and the journey continues, but the story has changed a little bit. This off-season Josh Hamilton was the subject of trade rumors, and eventually he was traded to the Texas Rangers for Right handed starter Edinson Volquez and near MLB ready left handed reliever Daniel Herrera.

The good thing about this deal for Josh is he heads to Arlington as the CF starter for the Rangers. Although the numbers say Texas is not as great of a park for MLB hitters, I still think Texas  is a good hitters park. Josh is walking into a good place for him with the year of success under his belt and a nice array of quality young players. Hamilton’s competition Marlon Byrd is the subject of trade rumors, and more than likely could be playing elsewhere in 2008.

five different situations when an outfielder’s throwing ability comes into play: Single with runner on first base (second base unoccupied), Double with runner on first base, Single with runner on second base, Fly out with runner on third base, fewer than two outs, Fly out with runner on second base, fewer than two outs (third base unoccupied).

They’re back! The Hardball Times release they’re 2007 version of this metric. What was interesting to me is Upton and ex-Ray Delmon Young showing up on the top of the list. Again, just like last year Soriano is surprising near the top. He just can’t get much respect with his glove, but he again is solid. On the bottom side, Barry Bonds once considered one of the best left fielders in the game in the bottom fold.

Btw, what is this baseboogle thing?