[Editor's Note: Promoted from the FanPosts, for some good ol' offseason discussion.  We've already had some good comments and conversation on this post, so let's open it up to the front page. -- Ian]

Yeah, I know; everyone is doing this right now.  But with a dearth of interesting, baseball-related news right now (at least for those of us still too heart-broken to care about the World Series), I needed something to occupy my time. 

Admittedly, I'm not a prospect expert like John Sickels (those of you who pay attention to his site may recognize the format of my list).  Therefore, I am sure that I have left some deserving players off the list or made vast over- or under-estimations of others.  So what do you think?  (And don't forget to take the poll!)

1. Casey Crosby, LHP, Grade B+

Anyone surprised?  Didn’t think so.  Despite concerns after undergoing Tommy John surgery, Crosby blew hitters away at West Michigan.  He had one rough stretch around June/July, but was stellar for the rest of the year.  He’s only 21 years old and will almost certainly start next season at Lakeland or Erie.  Don’t expect big-league impact until 2011, at the earliest.

2. Jacob Turner, RHP, Grade B+

The Tigers first round pick from 2009 has yet to pitch in professional ball, but from all reports, this kid has a boat-load of potential.  Don’t be surprised if he moves to the A-list after next season, but absent any professional data, I think a high B is a good grade for him right now.

3. Scott Sizemore, 2B, Grade B

I went back and forth between B and B+.  Sizemore appears to be the heir apparent to Placido Polanco in 2010, depending on how his ankle heals.  From all reports, his fielding is roughly average, but his bat should be above average for the position.  He shows good on-base skills and has developed some extra-base and home run pop, as well.  2010 prediction: Sizemore finishes no worse than third in the Rookie of the Year vote.

4. Alex Avila, C, Grade B

In 2009, Lord Avila blew away any expectations Tigers fans and prospect watchers had for him.  He reminded Tigers fans what it’s like to have a catcher who can actually hit (see Laird, Gerald; Treanor, Matt; and Sardhina, Dane).  Expect him and Laird to split time behind the plate as Avila continues to improve his defense.  If his defense continues to develop well, we can probably look forward to him as a full-time starter in 2011.

5. Ryan Strieby, 1B, Grade B-

Strieby has improved every year that he’s been in the minors.  His AVG, OBP, and SLG have gone up every year despite moving up one level each year.  Last season at AA Erie, Strieby posted a .991 OPS, 19 HR, and a .303 AVG before he went down with a wrist injury.  Those are monstrous numbers.  So why is he only a B-?  He’s 24 years old, he has a history of wrist injuries, and he’s blocked at 1B by Miguel Cabrera.  If his wrist doesn’t fall off and if he can become a serviceable left fielder, he could give the Tigers’ offense a boost really soon.

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I need some help with a project I'm working on for an MBA class on baseball and statistics.  For my final project, I'm exploring whether or not any 1984 Tigers deserve to be in the Hall of Fame (particularly Trammell, Whitaker, and Morris).  Does anyone know where you can find statistics (both fielding and batting) by position?  For example, if I want to find statistics for all shortstops from 1980-1990, where would I find that?  I tried baseball-reference.com, but I haven't been able to find anything there.  Any help I could get would be great.  Thanks!

A few days ago, APIAS's TheGoldfishCowboy posted a table analyzing how much value each Tigers player has this season.  There were two glaring problems with his analysis, however.  First, he used the ESPN fantasy rating, which gives an inordinate amount of weight to essentially meaningless statistics.  Second, he multiplied this fantasy rating by each player's salary to obtain his "value."  This multiplication makes no sense to me, as it gives players a value bonus for making more money.  When assessing value, division (not multiplication) is necessary in order to understand how much production the Tigers organization is getting per dollar spent.

With these deficiencies in mind, I set out to do my own assessment of the values of every player to have an at bat for the Tigers so far in 2009 (the data is a few days old now).

*If I couldn't find a particular player's salary, I just plugged in $400,000 for lack of a better guess (see "Ramirez")

In this table, I used Bill James's Runs Created formula (TECHRC) to get an estimate of each player's offensive contribution so far.  I then divided their 2009 salary by this value to find roughly how much the Tigers organization was spending per run created for that player so far this year.  Small numbers here are obviously a good thing, since it means that the Tigers are getting their runs for a smaller price.

Unsurprisingly, Cabrera leads the Tigers with nearly 41 runs created so far this year, followed by Granderson (34.51) and Inge (29.80).  As far as I can tell, there are very few surprises in the Runs Created category.  When we begin to look at the players' dollars spent per run created, however, we find Cabrera towards the bottom of the list.  This is also unsurprising when we consider that he is one of the highest paid Tigers and is therefore more expensive per run.

There are a few caveats here, of course.  First is the small sample size.  The Tigers have played less than a third of the season, so these numbers could change significantly.  Second, I do not intend for the "dollars/run" values to be an indictment of how valuable a player is.  Even though Clete Thomas has provided the cheapest runs so far, a team of nine Clete Thomas's would not stand a chance at making the playoffs, even though the team would be getting its runs relatively cheap.  Premium run production comes with a premium price tag.  Thus, even though Cabrera's runs are relatively more expensive, he's producing more runs than anyone and hence his value is very high.

In short, these numbers are meant to be more interesting than informative.  It's nice to see Clete, Anderson, and Larish producing runs at small price, and it's good to see Granderson and Cabrera are as good as advertised, but beyond that, the importance of this data is certainly questionable.  Though I think we can all agree that it would be nice to get some more run production out of our backup catchers (0.1 run created combined!).

Any thoughts?