More photos » by Duane Burleson - AP

Baltimore Orioles' Aubrey Huff walks to the dugout after discovering he was just compared to a recliner in a terrible analogy. He is not happy. (AP Photo/Duane Burleson)

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Dave Dombrowski cleaned out his basement and decided to rid himself of the recliner he had been meaning to get rid of for a few weeks because he didn't have a couch. His neighbor Andy McPhail was walking out of his house with a recliner to leave by the curb as well. After some heated discussion on which shade of orange looks better, Dombrowski agreed to take the recliner off of MacPhail's hands. "This'll go great in my basement! I could really use a nice, new recliner down there!"

In reality where Major League Baseball General Managers don't live on the same street and amidst all of the hoopla on what draft picks will or won't sign, Dombrowski pulled the trigger on a deal to acquire left-handed "slugger" Aubrey Huff from the Baltimore Orioles in exchange for relief prospect Brett Jacobson. This would be a great deal if, you know, there weren't already numerous in-house options to pick from.

Aubrey Huff's value gets explored after the jump (and I promise, no more made up story lines in my mind)...

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Please welcome Mike Rogers to the BtB family.  Mike's been around in the comments sections a lot recently, and writes for two other blogs, Fire Jim Leyland and Friar Forecast.  I'm a big fan of Mike's ability to talk baseball from a smart angle without making the smart angle the subject of his writing.  He'll be tackling current events, with the occasional unique research piece tossed in for good measure.  Say hi, readers...

The San Diego Padres managed to get Jake Peavy to OK a deal sending him to the Chicago White Sox minutes before the trade deadline expired at 4 p.m. EST last Friday. Peavy nixed virtually the same deal back in May.  Sky valued him at about 3.8 Wins Above Replacement with some generous assumptions going in Peavy's favor two months ago.

Then Peavy tore the posterior tibialis tendon in his right ankle, and is on the shelf until the end of August at the earliest. But that doesn't stop the unpredictable Kenny Williams from doing, well, the unpredictable.  What's the verdict, monetarily, on this deal? Win or loss for the White Sox?

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After posting a fanshot of the WAR for hitters who have had their numbers retired by the Detroit Tigers, Sky noted he'd like something regarding all MLB teams. That's what I've done and have a few graphs handy.

Predictably, the New York Yankees have retired the most hitters among all current Major League franchises with 12. Even as a Tigers fan, it caught me off guard that the Tigers were 2nd with 10 hitters retired. Click all images to enlarge.

via img7.imageshack.us

More after the jump...

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James' post prompted me to look into the scoring environments that each of the top 20 in PPG from his post and adjust them. So, I've done that.

Basically, I've gone through Hockey Reference and gotten the average Total Goals Per Game for the league in each year from 1960-2009. I then averaged out the scoring environments for a player's career span.

For instance, Wayne Gretzky played from 1979-80 until 1998-99. From 80-99, the average scoring environment was exactly 7.00. For someone like Mario Lemieux who had his career interrupted, I simply took the average scoring environment from 1984-85 to 1993-94, then from 95-97, and then 2000-2006. I then averaged those together to get a total scoring environment of 6.28 total goals per game during his career.

I believe the way to adjust this is to take a player's points per game total multiplied by the current scoring environment, then divided by the player's career scoring environment. I used the "current environment" to be the scoring environment to be from 2005-06 through the 2008-09 season.

An example is Dale Hawerchuk and his 1.186 PPG. He played from 1981-82 through 1996-97. The average scoring environment over that period of time was 7.17 total goals per game. To adjust to today's (06-09) rates, it's simply this (someone correct me if I'm wrong):

1.186*5.86/7.17 = 0.969.

The 5.86 is the total GPG from 06-09 and the 0.969 is his new scoring rate adjusted to now-a-days.

The new Top 20, sorted by an Adjusted Point Per Game Total:

Environment is the scoring environment during the career of the player. Adjusted is a player's PPG totals adjusted for todays scoring rates and Prev Ranking is their ranking in unadjusted PPG while New Rank is their, obviously, current ranking in adjusted PPG. The final column, Diff, is the amount a player rose or fell by adjusting for the environment. Like I had thought in my comment on James' initial post, Eric Lindros' 1.14 PPG total (actually 1.138) and Bernie Federko's 1.13 (actually 1.130) were not that close. Federko's adjusted rates put him last on this list, dropping his PPG total 0.238 -- which over the course of 82 games is just about 20 points. Meanwhile, Big E played during a defensive-era ushered in after the strike-shortened season in the middle-1990's, and gives his PPG rates a boost. His PPG totals were pretty much on par, as the scoring environment he played in (5.79) isn't that much lower than it's been since the lockout. However, he does move up the list 9 spots due to guys like Marcel Dionne, Peter Stastny, Kent Nilsson and Guy Lafleur dropping due to playing in high offensive eras.

At the very least, this is an interesting way to look at players from different eras in a more favorable light.