As casual baseball fans know, a pitcher wins the “Triple Crown” when he leads his league in wins, ERA, and strikeouts in the same season. The more-than-casual baseball fan realizes that only one out of those three categories truly represents the talents of a pitcher, as opposed to the combined talents of a pitcher and his team. Whereas a pitcher’s ERA depends upon the defense behind the pitcher, and Wins depend upon the defense and the offense supporting the pitcher, only strikeouts truly represent the ability of the pitcher independent of his supporting cast.

A pitcher’s Triple Crown occurs so rarely in baseball that these distinctions are hardly worth quibbling. However, these three statistics play into another element of pitcher evaluation far more frequently: these three statistics have dominated Cy Young Award analysis for as long as that Award has been given out.

The instances in which the voters have placed too much emphasis upon all or any of these statistics, particularly Wins, in picking the Cy Young Award winner are too numerous to count, but here are some good examples:

- In 1990, Doug Drabek of the Pittsburgh Pirates led the NL in wins with 22, ahead of Ramon Martinez (20) and Frank Viola (20). Martinez and Viola each pitched more innings than Drabek, faced more batters, and had better K:BB ratios than Drabek. At best, it could have been described as a very close race. Nevertheless, Drabek managed to get 98% of the Cy Young Award vote.

- Also in 1990, Bob Welch famously and historically won 27 games for the juggernaut Oakland Athletics. While he topped Dave Stewart, Roger Clemens, Dave Stieb, and Chuck Finley in wins, he ranked behind all four other pitchers in ERA (2.95), homeruns allowed (26), and runs allowed (90). Stewart finished with nine more complete games, two more shutouts, 29 more innings pitched, over 100 batters faced, and 39 more strikeouts than Welch. Meanwhile, Clemens pitched four shutouts, allowed only seven homeruns, had 209 strikeouts, and lead the league in ERA (1.93), strikeout to walk ratio, homeruns allowed, and shutouts. Nevertheless, Welch was the easy Cy Young Award winner.

- In 2002, Barry Zito won the AL Cy Young Award with a 23-5 record and a 2.75 ERA. This stopped Pedro Martinez, who went 20-4 with a 2.26 ERA, 239 strikeouts, 38 fewer walks and 11 fewer bases on balls than Zito.

- In 1980, Steve Stone went 25-7, topping the 22-9 Mike Norris for the AL Cy Young. This despite the fact that there was no other statistic in which Stone topped Norris, Norris allowed nine fewer hits in 34 more innings, and pitched 24 complete games compared to Stone’s nine .

In this era of baseball statistical valuation, there is no reason for Cy Young Award voting to reflect the traditional Triple Crown method of player valuation. Ideally, Cy Young voters would spend time to learn about all the major statistics of all the major candidates, but quick-glance statistical methods will probably never go out of style.

With this in mind, I propose a new quick-glance method for picking Cy Young Award winners: the New Triple Crown Method. Fans and voters can still do a quick-look analysis by looking at three major statistics, but we’ll just change the statistics.

Wins

Starting with Wins, we can no longer live in a world where Wins are used as a proxy for a pitcher’s success. Now more than ever, with abundant offenses and situation-specific bullpen usage, a pitcher’s performance is loosely tied to whether the pitcher is rewarded in the Wins column. As long ago as 1987, Nolan Ryan went 8-16 while leading the National League in ERA; in the 21st Century the best pitcher in the league almost never leads his league in wins.

I propose using Innings Pitched to determine a player’s value instead of Wins. There’s no such thing as cheap innings in baseball, but there are cheap wins.

Perhaps the most useful asset a pitcher brings to the table for his team in the modern era of baseball is durability, and while Wins loosely measure the number of times a team won when the pitcher was on the mound, Innings Pitched gives a more accurate view of how well a pitcher contributed to his team’s success in the form of providing stable and consistent starting pitching.

For the sake of illustration, let’s look at two seven-inning outings by two major league pitchers.

Pitcher A pitches seven innings, gives up five earned runs on ten hits and two homeruns, but gets the Win when his team scores eight runs to support him.

Pitcher B pitches seven innings, gives up no runs on three hits, buts gets the no decision when his team loses 1-0.

Which pitcher pitched better? Which pitcher is the better pitcher?

If you look at Wins, you’d think Pitcher A had the better game. If you look at innings pitched, you see them as equal. It appears to me that if we are going to judge a pitcher on just three statistics, innings pitched is a better measure of a pitcher’s value than wins. This is just one example, but it seems that the number of times a pitcher gets a cheap Win without pitching well overwhelms the number of times that a pitcher gets cheap innings in a game in which he is clearly pitching poorly.

Put another way – mediocre pitchers rarely rack up innings, but often rack up wins.

ERA

A pitcher’s earned run average can tell you whether a pitcher is a good pitcher or a bad pitcher. Comparing ERA’s within a run of each other is often a less-than-useful task because of the importance of the pitcher’s defense to the pitcher’s ERA.

For example, suppose Pitcher A has a 2.91 ERA, while Pitcher B has a 3.01 ERA. Naturally, we might suppose Pitcher A to be the better pitcher. But what if it is revealed that Pitcher A’s team has a 3.66 team ERA, while Pitcher B’s team has a 4.35 team ERA. Now the possibility exists that, if Pitcher A and Pitcher B switched teams (or more importantly, defenses) Pitcher B might have the better ERA.

Fortunately, we now know how to deal with this – thanks to Voros McCracken’s DIPS analysis, which measures a pitcher’s value through his statistics that are independent of the defense behind him, we can more accurately measure what part of a pitcher’s ERA is attributable to the pitcher’s individual abilities. A pitcher’s defense independent ERA has several incarnations, but I like The Hardball Times version, called Fielding Independent Pitching or “FIP”, which The Hardball Times defines as:

“Fielding Independent Pitching, a measure of all those things for which a pitcher is specifically responsible. The formula is (HR*13+(BB+HBP-IBB)*3-K*2)/IP, plus a league-specific factor (usually around 3.2) to round out the number to an equivalent ERA number. FIP helps you understand how well a pitcher pitched, regardless of how well his fielders fielded.”

Strikeouts

Nolan Ryan’s best statistic does represent a pitcher’s ability independent of the defense behind him but, just as with Nolan Ryan, it doesn’t tell the whole story. Ryan famously leads all major league baseball players in career strikeouts, but what is less well known is that he is also the all-time leader in bases on balls, which are also a defense independent statistic. Indeed, there is a valid argument that a walk hurts the team more than a strikeout, because if a batter doesn’t strikeout he can still be retired on a batted ball, whereas a batter who walks definitely gets on base.

If a pitcher’s value is to be measured by the number of batters he is able to retire without the help of his defense by striking them out, then the pitcher’s value should also reflect the number of batters he puts on base without requiring the hitter to hit the ball.

Strikeout-to-walk ratio, then, should be considered a better measure of a pitcher’s defense-independent abilities than total strikeouts.

Applying the New Method to the 2009 Season

Applying what we have learned, our “New Triple Crown” quick-look Cy Young Award analysis would look like this:

National League Cy Young Award

National League Wins Leaders (thus far):

1. Adam Wainright , 18

2. Chris Carpenter, 16

3. Jason Marquis, 15

4. Josh Johnson, 15

5. Jorge de la Rosa, 15

National League Innings Pitched:

1. Adam Wainright , 219.0

2. Danny Haren, 217.1

3. Tim Lincecum, 211.1

4. Bronson Arroyo, 205.0

5. Ubaldo Jimenez, 205.0

Switching the focus from Wins to Innings Pitched eliminates three pitchers who have racked up wins pitching for very good teams – Carpenter for the Cardinals and de la Rosa and Marquis for the Rockies. As for Adam Wainright, well it would appear that he is legit. Bronson Arroyo, who has been a rock for a bad Cincinnati Reds team gets a look he wouldn’t have otherwise gotten.

National League ERA Leaders:

1. Chris Carpenter, 2.34

2. Tim Lincecum, 2.47

3. Adam Wainright, 2.59

4. Matt Cain, 2.71

5. Jair Jurrjens, 2.75

National League FIP Leaders:

1. Tim Lincecum, 2.35

2. Javier Vazquez, 2.76

3. Chris Carpenter, 2.78

4. Josh Johnson, 3.03

5. Joel Pineiro, 3.05

This analysis shows us two different things. First, it thins out the list of guys with ERA’s between 0.00 and 2.75 from five to one, and widens the gap between Tim Lincecum and the rest of the league. It also shows us just how important the defense of the St. Louis Cardinals has been to the success of their pitching staff, as Chris Carpenter drops from first to third, and Wainright falls out of the top five.

National League Strikeout Leaders:

1. Tim Lincecum, 247

2. Javier Vazquez, 222

3. Danny Haren, 208

4. Yovani Gallardo, 204

5. Adam Wainright , 193

National League Strikeout-to-walk Ratio Leaders (amongst qualifiers):

1. Danny Haren, 6.12

2. Javier Vazquez, 5.16

3. Ted Lilly, 4.21

4. Ricky Nolasco, 4.20

5. Joel Pineiro, 4.17

Well, that’s just a whole different list, isn’t it? Goodbye, Tim Lincecum and Adam Wainright , hello . . . Ted Lilly and Ricky Nolasco? Plus, Danny Haren, whose 208 strikeouts look humble compared to Lincecum and Vazquez, jumps to the head of the pack.

American League

American League Wins Leaders:

1. C.C. Sabathia, 18

2. Scott Feldman, 17

3. Justin Verlander, 16

4. Felix Hernandez, 16

5. Jered Weaver, Roy Halladay, Josh Beckett, 15

The top five leaders in the AL for innings pitched in 2009 are:

1. Roy Halladay, 221.0

2. C.C. Sabathia, 220.1

3. Justin Verlander, 217.1

4. Felix Hernandez, 216.1

5. Zack Greinke, 210.1

The most obvious effect of this analysis is that Scott Feldman (176.2 innings) is no longer in the conversation, while the under-supported Zack Greinke (14 wins) takes his place with the elite pitchers of 2009. In truth, Scott Feldman’s success in 2009 is more of a compliment to his team than to his own abilities; though his season has been a good one, he is not an elite American League pitcher.

American League ERA Leaders:

1. Zack Greinke, 2.14

2. Felix Hernandez, 2.45

3. Roy Halladay, 3.01

4. C.C. Sabathia, 3.31

5. Jon Lester, 3.33

American League FIP Leaders:

1. Zack Greinke, 2.41

2. Justin Verlander, 2.96

3. Felix Hernandez, 3.19

4. Jon Lester, 3.22

5. Roy Halladay, 3.24

The effect here is clear – we have validated Zack Greinke while revealing Verlander to be better at preventing runs from scoring than Sabathia, Hernandez, Halladay, and Lester, all of whom rank ahead of him in ERA.

American League Strikeout Leaders:

1. Justin Verlander, 245

2. Zack Greinke, 224

3. Jon Lester, 215

4. Felix Hernandez, 196

5. Roy Halladay, 193

American League Strikeout-to-Walk Ratio Leaders (amongst qualifiers):

1. Roy Halladay, 5.85

2. Zack Greinke, 5.09

3. Justin Verlander, 4.15

4. Carl Pavano, 3.74

5. Josh Beckett, 3.67

Again, the effect here is clear – strikeouts make Verlander look better than Greinke, and both better than Halladay, but K:BB ratio makes Greinke look better than Verlander, and Halladay better than both of them. And . . . why, hello Mr. Pavano!

Conclusions

Traditional Triple Crown analysis shows that C.C. Sabathia may be the next American League Cy Young Award winner whose wins misstate his value with respect to the rest of his league. In the New Triple Crown analysis, Sabathia doesn’t look quite so great as he fails to rank in the top five in either FIP or strikeout-to-walk ratio. The New Triple Crown analysis benefits Zack Grienke, however, as his rankings in FIP and strikeout-to-walk ratio only validate his rankings in ERA and strikeouts, and his innings pitched ranking more accurately represents his value when compared to his team-influenced wins total.

But the big winner here is Roy Halladay. His league leading innings pitched make up for his tied-for-fifth wins total and his league leading strikeout-to-walk ratio makes up for his fifth ranked strikeouts total. The American League Cy Young Award should be a battle between Zack Greinke and Roy Halladay, a conclusion not at all clear from our traditional Triple Crown analysis.

Meanwhile, in the National League, the main point of the New Triple Crown analysis is the discrediting of some dubious wins totals. After Adam Wainright , who leads the league in both wins and innings pitched, our new analysis sheds Jason Marquis, Jorge de la Rosa, and Chris Carpenter from our list of elite pitchers. Carpenter also appears to be a paper-tiger in the ERA category as well; our FIP analysis shows him behind Tim Lincecum and Javier Vazquez, two pitchers he leads in ERA.

But the real revelation in the National League is Dan Haren, who doesn’t rank amongst the top five NL pitchers in Wins or ERA and ranks third in strikeouts. Under our New Triple Crown analysis, we find that Haren is second in National League in innings pitched and actually leads the NL, by a substantial margin, in strikeout-to-walk ratio. Dan Haren actually appears to make a better Cy Young candidate than Wainright , which tells us a lot about the traditional Triple Crown analysis can be deceiving, since Wainright leads the NL in wins, is third in ERA, and is fifth in strikeouts.

At the end of the day, a truly educated pick for this year’s Cy Young Award winners would rely upon all of these statistics and several others in order to pick the year’s best pitcher (to say nothing of looking at more pitchers overall). But voters will be voters, and those voters will continue to depend on quick-look analyses to decide how to cast their votes. If this is going to be the case, then the New Triple Crown analysis is far preferable to the traditional Triple Crown analysis, and will allow Cy Young voters to accurately pick the best pitcher in each league.

Asher B. Chancey also writes for Baseball Evolution and you can read his work there by following this link.

Runs Created or RC is a tool created by Bill James in an attempt to calculate how many runs an individual player creates for his team. If you follow James, then you probably know of RC already, but if you don’t and you are tired of the same old stats then you may want to pay close attention to this post. Here is how important RC is in Bill James own words:

With regard to an offensive player, the first key question is how many runs have resulted from what he has done with the bat and on the basepaths. Willie McCovey hit .270 in his career, with 353 doubles, 46 triples, 521 home runs and 1,345 walks — but his job was not to hit doubles, nor to hit singles, nor to hit triples, nor to draw walks or even hit home runs, but rather to put runs on the scoreboard. How many runs resulted from all of these things?¹

Statistically speaking, RC is the player’s ability to get on base (his on base factor ) multiplied by his chance of advancing (his advancement factor) divided by his overall possible opportunities (his opportunity factor). To get these figures, James took a players hits plus walks (H + BB) total and multiplied that by his total bases (TB), then divides that by the total of his at bats (AB + BB) in it’s most basic form. To see the variations at which James takes into consideration, just follow this link or the previous one. The basic version of this stat gives the user an accurate measurement with a 5% margin of error and with the more complex variations that number decreases (see note # 3).

Runs created, if used correctly, can assist those looking for an edge (that is if your competitors aren’t already using it also) in player evaluation. This tool helps you to see the true value of a player’s offensive prowess in the most important stat of scoring runs which is what wins games. Right? After all, you could have the best pitching and defense on the field but if you don’t score any runs you can’t win the game.

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe in defense and especially good quality pitching, but as far as offense goes RC is one of the most important stats on the market.

For some external links on RC, please follow the previous link provided by Baseball-Reference.

All links and Notes found in this post come from Wikipedia on Runs Created.

Note 1: James, Bill (1985). The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (1st ed.), pp. 273-4. Villard. ISBN 0-394-53713-0.

Note 3: James, Bill (2002). Win Shares, p. 90. STATS, Inc. Publishing. ISBN 1-931584-03-6.

I am Peter Schiller, the owner of Baseball Reflections and I am also a writer there, too. To read more of my work at Baseball Reflections just click HERE!

It’s time to give the set-up men their own statistic again. Let’s reinstate the Major League Hold. After all, ESPN still lists it in their box scores. Seriously though, something needs to be done, statistically speaking, to differentiate a set-up man from a specialist (in just to face one batter). In some cases, a Hold can be even more important than a save (in my opinion). Look at it this way, what situation would you rather have your best reliever pitch in? A ninth inning against a team’s 7-8-9 hitters or in the 7th or 8th inning of a close game with the 3-4-5 hitters due up? Which scenario is more important? Unless you’re facing the 2008 (don’t laugh, wait until it gets warmer) Tigers, Indians or Yankees; I’d rather bring in my best RP to face the 3-4-5 hitters and then throw my second or third best RP for 9th inning clean up duty.

By now, some of you might be asking, “What on God’s green earth is a Hold anyway?”. Well, according to Baseball Prospectus, “A Hold is credited any time a relief pitcher enters a game in a Save Situation, records at least one out, and leaves the game never having relinquished the lead.” (as found in their Glossary; also seen as “HOLD”, “H” or “Hld”).

Others, after reading that definition, might then be led to ask, “Ok, not I know what a HOLD is, but can you clarify what a save opportunity is while you’re at it?” Sure, but this time we’ll look to ESPN’s MLB Statistics Glossary which states, “A Save opportunity is when a pitcher 1) enters the game with a lead of three or fewer runs and pitches at least one inning, 2) enters the game with the potential tying run on base, at bat, or on deck, or 3) pitches three or more innings with a lead and is credited with a save by the official scorer”. Does that help? Good! Now let’s move on.

This is where guys like San Diego’s Heath Bell, the Dodger’s Jonathan Broxton (before they became closers), Boston’s Hideki Okajima, the D’Back’s Brandon Lyon, Washington’s Jon Rauch and the Indian’s Rafael Betancourt stand out above the rest. This will probably mean higher salaries for these men, but it may just be worth it. They may start getting close to “closer” type money if this happens. Another option, written about by ESPN’s Jason Stark last year entitled, “Time to amend the save stat” (look for it in his archives, Here) would call for the tweaking of the Hold and calling it a STOP, but I tend to like calling it a Hold. I also do not agree with most of what Mr. Stark writes in this article, but it did get me thinking on the topic, which is a good thing. I do, however, think that the Hold stat, as it is currently, could be improved upon.

Another good piece, this time written on the “Save”, also led to me writing this article. “Evolving the Save Rule” by then Baseball Prospectus author David Pinto was written back on August 8, 2007 in his weekly spot called, “The Big Picture”. David Pinto’s Baseball Prospectus archives can be found by clicking Here. He now writes periodically for The Sporting News Online, Here as well as on his own blog, Baseball Musings.

I am Peter Schiller, the owner of Baseball Reflections and I am also a writer there, too. To read more of my work there at Baseball Reflections just click HERE!

Prior to last season, I predicted good things for the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays, and the reason for these predictions was simple – improved defense. The Brewers and Rays both had excellent pitchers being undermined by their defenses in 2007, and had both made moves to drastically improve their defenses in 2008.

How do we measure the degree to which a defense is undermining its pitching staff? In part, by looking at hits derived statistics: hits per game and BABIP for example – hits are almost completely (hmm, too strong a phrase; how about “mostly”) dependent upon the defense behind the pitching (except of course for homeruns), so when you see a team giving up lots of hits per game, chances are it has more to do with the defense than with the pitching.

A more telling stat, however, is a stat that several outlets, including ESPN.com, keep track of, and which I have been following for three years, called “DIP%”. In brief, it is the ratio of a team’s defense independent ERA (or FIP in some parlance) and a team’s defense dependent ERA (or “ERA” to all you fans out there). This statistic was the inspiration behind my prediction that Tampa and Milwaukee would surprise people in 2008. In 2007, those two teams ranked among the worst teams in baseball in DIP% according to ESPN.com. In the off-season, however, each team made important improvements to its defense – Tampa jettisoned several players and brought in James Bartlett and Evan Longoria to patrol the infield, while Milwaukee moved Ryan Braun to leftfield, took Bill Hall out of the outfield, and brought in Mike Cameron to patrol centerifled. In 2008 those teams finished first and second in baseball in DIPS% and enjoyed major turnarounds.

The trend has continued into 2009 as well. In 2008, the worst team in all of baseball in DIP% was the Texas Rangers. This off-season, the Rangers moved Michael Young, one of the worst gold glove shortstops ever, to third and replaced him with Elvis Andrus. The Rangers also rid themselves of Milton Bradley (intellectual honesty moment – he was mainly a DH, so that doesn’t affect things) and missed Josh Hamilton’s overrated defense for most of this season, and voila – the Rangers are fourth in all of baseball in DIP% and have already topped last season’s wins total with 20 games to go.

While we have a moment, when are Gold Glove voters going to stop voting for Gold Gloves based on the errors statistic. At some point a connection is going to have to be made between the SABRmetric community, which recognized several years ago that a low errors total generally means a player is getting to fewer batted balls than other players at his position, and the Gold Glove voting community, which generally writes in the name of the player at the top of the Errors Committed column on their stat sheets. This explains the Gold Glove Award going to two very limited fielders in 2008 – Michael Young and Nate McLouth – probably explains how Derek Jeter has won multiple Gold Gloves, and probably also explains why Rafael Palmeiro won the Award in 1999 despite playing most of the season at DH where he likely committed very few errors.

But I digress.

Anyway, there are other teams for whom DIPS% tells a story. Surprised by San Francisco’s success in 2009? Don’t be – in 2008, the Giants finished 25th in the majors in DIPS%, but in 2009 the team’s much improved defense has them at third place overall. Detroit’s turnaround, too, has been fueled by improved defense – Brandon Inge is playing full time at third base, Carlos Guillen, Gary Sheffield, and Edgar Renteria are out of the lineup, and Miguel Cabrera is now at first base, and the Tigers have moved from 22nd to 8th in DIPS%. The Tigers pitchers are also reaping the benefits individually – Edwin Jackson and Rick Porcello are both arguably overachieving while Justin Verlander is a great pitcher again. Other teams riding defensive turnarounds as they improve upon last season include the Yankees (28th in 2008, 13th in 2009), Colorado (from 29th to 22nd), Seattle (from 20th to 1st), and Atlanta (from 24th to 14th).

Every season has one or two curiosities on its DIPS% leaderboard, and 2009 is no exception. Nine of the top ten teams in DIP% in 2009 have winnings records and made at least a nominal run at the playoffs – those nine teams are Seattle, the Dodgers, San Fran, Texas, the Cubs, St. Louis, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Tampa Bay. The exception? The Cincinnati Reds, who are currently in fifth place in the majors in DIPS% but currently stand 64-79 and in fifth place in the NL Central.

How do we explain the anamoly? The probable explanation for the Reds’ season is this: defense can take you pretty far, and it is essential to winning games, but you also have to be able to hit the ball, and when having an excellent defense means putting Willy Taveras (45 OPS+), Adam Rosales (58 OPS+) and Alex Gonzalez (44 OPS+) in the lineup everyday, you’re not going to win many games regardless of your defense. Add to that the fact that Cincinnati’s pitchers are largely a mediocre group undermined by a hitter’s ballpark, and defense becomes the only thing the Reds really have going for them.

It is also surprising to see the Boston Red Sox coming in at 28th on this year’s DIPS% board after finishing 10th in the majors last season. The Red Sox give up the third fewest runs per game in the AL, behind only the Mariners and the Rangers. Humorously, though, the Red Sox have an almost unique combination of great pitching and poor hitting. The Red Sox rank second in the AL in strikeouts, have allowed the fourth fewest walks, and somehow have managed to give up the fewest homeruns in the league (sixth fewest in the majors) despite pitching at Fenway Park.

Nevertheless, the Red Sox chief defense-dependent statistics look pedestrian – the Red Sox rank eighth in the AL in hits allowed, which despite their great walk rate makes them seventh in WHIP, and, from Fangraphs, the Red Sox currently rank dead last in major league baseball in BABIP, or batting average on balls put in play.

Shocking.

So what the Red Sox DIPS% represents is quite the opposite of what the Reds DIPS% represents – a team with great hitting and great pitching can overcome its defensive inadequacies.

These two exceptions aside, the overall lesson here is that team defense can be an incredibly predictive tool, and it can also explain sometimes seemingly unexplainable things. DIPS can make teams with strong offenses and seemingly talented pitching staffs quite bad, as in the case of the 2008 Detroit Tigers and 2007 Milwaukee Brewers. DIPS can also make teams with very good pitching staffs and seemingly weak offenses quite good, as in the case of the 2009 San Francisco Giants. Perhaps the most important thing here is that DIPS can tell you if changes on defense will turn an underachieving team into a winning one.

Looking ahead to next season, DIPS% puts several teams on our radar in terms of predicting improvement or disappointment. For example, the Washington Nationals are currently sixth in the National League in runs scored per game, but dead last by a great distance in runs allowed per game. Not surprisingly, the Nationals are 24th in the majors in DIPS%. If the Nationals can shore up their defense – something they are already on track to do with Adam Dunn moving out of the outfield, Nyjer Morgan taking over centerfield full time next year – and add a quality pitcher or two to the rotation, they could be poised for a major jump in the win-loss department.

The Minnesota Twins are currently sporting two of the elite players in baseball in Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau, and have several solid young pitchers in their rotation. However, Carlos Gomez still hasn’t emerged as a regular position player despite his elite defense, and the middle infield is in disarray. The result – the Twins are a talented team ranked 25th in DIPS% and floating around the .500 mark. Can they solidify their up-the-middle defense in 2010? If so, we should see a playoff contender in Minnesota.

The Arizona Diamondbacks are a team loaded with young offensive talent and great pitching, but suffering through their second straight disappointing season, partly induced by injury to Brandon Webb but also brought about by their 22nd overall ranking in DIPS%. In 2010, when Webb makes his return and re-joins rotation-mate Dan Haren, if the D’Backs can somehow improve their defensive weaknesses the Diamondbacks could surprise some people.

Perhaps the team with the greatest potential for a turnaround in 2010 is the Kansas City Royals. The Royals have the worst DIPS% in major league baseball in 2009, and it is not hard to see why – the team is littered with injuries, guys not playing their natural positions, and bad defenders. Having already proven to have an elite starter in Zack Greinke and an elite closer in Joakim Soria, the Royals also have several potentially adequate starters in Gil Meche, Brian Bannister, and Luke Hochevar. It’s not like these guys are nobodies – Meche and Bannister both have demonstrated that they can be solid major league pitchers with upside in recent years, and Hochevar was the number one overall pick in the 2006 draft.

The Royals have their bright spots looking forward – the return of Alex Gordon likely means that Mark Teahan gets to play first base and Billy Butler gets to go the outfield while Mike Jacobs stays at DH. The Royals will also have a very good defensive centerfielder in Mitch Maier playing everyday in 2010, which can only help. Unfortunately, the Royals also have on of the worst defensive players in baseball in Yuniskey Betancourt, and an underachiever at second base in Alberto Callaspo; until that situation is resolved, the Royals potential for improvement will remain just that.

For those of you who are sabermetrically challenged, here is an introductory look into this basic stat.

Here is the textbook description of VORP thanks to Baseball Prospectus.com.

VORP stands for Value Over Replacement Player, which is broken down as the number of runs contributed beyond what a replacement-level player at the same position would contribute if given the same percentage of team plate appearances.

However, Wikipedia defines value over replacement player (or VORP) in a slightly different way.

In baseball, value over replacement player (or VORP) is a statistic invented by Keith Woolner that demonstrates how much a hitter contributes offensively or how much a pitcher contributes to his team in comparison to a fictitious “replacement player,” who is an average fielder at his position and a below average hitter.[1] [2] A replacement player performs at “replacement level,” which is the level of performance an average team can expect when trying to replace a player at minimal cost, also known as “freely available talent.”

Although VORP sounds funny, it can be a very useful tool for the Sabermetrician or the fantasy baseball player/owner. It can help you to decide if a player is just on a hot streak or if he’s the real deal. Compare his VORP to others at his position and make wiser decisions in your league. What VORP does not take into consideration is a player’s defensive ability. This is one of the flaws I see in this statistic.

Here’s what Wikipedia says about the usefulness of VORP.

VORP’s usefulness is in the fact that it measures contribution at the margin (as in marginal utility). Other statistics compare players to the league average, which is good for cross-era analysis (example: 90 runs created in 1915 are much better than 90 RC in 1996, because runs were more scarce in 1915). However, league-average comparisons break down when considering a player’s total, composite contribution to a team. Baseball is a zero-sum game; in other words, one team can only win if another loses. A team wins by scoring more runs than its opponent. It follows, then, that a contribution of any runs helps a team toward a win, no matter how small the contribution. However, the Major Leagues are highly competitive, and talent distribution in baseball does not resemble normal distribution’s traditional “bell curve”; rather, the majority of players fall within the category of “below-average” or worse. Therefore, the so-called “average player” does not have a value of zero, like in Pete Palmer’s Total Player Rating, but instead is a valued commodity. One alternative is to rank players using “counting stats” — simply their gross totals — but this is unacceptable as well, since it is likely that the contribution a marginal player makes, even if it does help a team win one game, is not enough to justify his presence in the Majors. This is where the concept of the replacement level enters the picture.

As far as fantasy value goes, I think that VORP is a good tool for evaluating offensive talent given the above matrixes, but for MLB in general, I’d prefer to see a statistic developed that combines VORP with one’s deffensive aptitude. What do you think?

Next time out we will discuss the Sabermetric stat by the name of Runs Created which was mentioned above.

Peter Schiller also writes at his personal baseball blog, Baseball Reflections.com.