I was planning on using RE24 as a way of getting runs allowed by a pitcher for an rWAR-style measurement of pitcher WAR, but I've been running into a bit of a roadblock. Given that RE24 is defined as runs above/below average, I figured I could find the average runs allowed via the park-adjusted R/G and multiply it by (innings/9) to get the league average runs allowed in that number of innings. Then I could take the runs above average away from that total to find that player's total RA by that method.

I'm wondering if there's anything I'm missing in that step. Is RE24 somehow park-adjusted in a way that does not allow this sort of calculation? I ask only because testing these results got very high numbers for all elite pitchers, higher than those found in either fWAR or rWAR (using fWAR replacement level, btw). Thoughts?

Over at Marlin Maniac, I wanted to try a little thought experiment regarding the impending Dan Uggla extension. How will it affect the budget the team will have? Is this a good move? What will Uggla be like in three or four years, if we have signed him?

Of course, that's not what the thought experiment is really about. What I'm looking to do is ask the loyal Marlins fans of both Marlin Maniac and FishStripes to see what they think the Marlins will sign Uggla for this season (if the team does). In the form in the link provided, I ask two simple questions:

1) How many years will the Marlins sign Uggla for?

2) What will the average annual value of Uggla's extension be?

Vote once, and I'll average out the votes and see what us smart Marlins fans think. So click and tell me what you think, and feel free to discuss your votes both here and at MM.

I come to you, humble FishStripes frequenters, with a simple request for help. I am currently writing Marlin Maniac's Impending Stanton Arrival Guide, an ongoing series all about the 20-year old super-prospect. I wanted to get the fan's perspective on what Stanton was likely to do in the majors this season. What I ask from you frequenters is to vote for what you believe will be Stanton's performance.

Here we'll ask for SLG. Vote on what you think Stanton's SLG will be in 2010? Note: Please DO NOT USE PROJECTIONS or other tools of that nature. Go with your gut.

I come to you, humble FishStripes frequenters, with a simple request for help. I am currently writing Marlin Maniac's Impending Stanton Arrival Guide, an ongoing series all about the 20-year old super-prospect. I wanted to get the fan's perspective on what Stanton was likely to do in the majors this season. What I ask from you frequenters is to vote for what you believe will be Stanton's performance.

Here we'll ask for OBP. Vote on what you think Stanton's OBP will be in 2010? Note: Please DO NOT USE PROJECTIONS or other tools of that nature. Go with your gut.

I come to you, humble FishStripes frequenters, with a simple request for help. I am currently writing Marlin Maniac's Impending Stanton Arrival Guide, an ongoing series all about the 20-year old super-prospect. I wanted to get the fan's perspective on what Stanton was likely to do in the majors this season. What I ask from you frequenters is to vote for what you believe will be Stanton's performance.

Here we'll start with batting average. Vote on what you think Stanton's BA will be in 2010?

The Beyond the Box Score Saber-Slanted Fantasy League drafted last Saturday, and there was a request for rosters for each of the teams involved. I went ahead and made a Google Spreadsheet of all the rosters as of the draft date, but then I took it a step further.

With the projection systems out there, I thought it would be cool to see projected standings for this points league based on one of the systems (OK, actually, somebody suggested this directly after the draft, so it wasn't my idea). Here's what I did.

- I downloaded CHONE's projected stats from FanGraphs.

- For each player, I turned those counting stats into rate statistics per PA for position players and per IP for pitchers.

- I used those rates and the Community Playing Time forecasts from Tom Tango's site to come up with projected lines, calculating numbers for projected starters for each fantasy team only (I may have missed out on a few guys).

- For closers, I used the FANS projections for saves and some guesswork for holds.

The results are there on the spreadsheet as well, but I figured I'd show them conveniently here.

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OK fine readership, the Beyond the Box Score Saber-Slanted Fantasy League, brought to you by CBSSports.com, drafts tonight at 8 pm. live! I'll be keeping track of the picks round by round here. For those of you who want to follow along and comment, please do so!

Again, here is the draft order for tonight's draft:

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OK people, this post will be short. Tomorrow is the BtB Saber-Slanted Fantasy League's live online draft, as hosted by CBSSports.com. Those of you who are in the league, prepare to be owned, as in one of us will win and thus "own" the others presumably. Here are a few tidbits that need to be cleared up before tomorrow.

- Justin asked and I'll repeat it here, we are going to officially go with 6 SP/3 RP and 3 pts. per save, 1 pt. per hold. This is experimental, hopefully it turns out halfway decent. People had some concerns about not having any points, and the community voting yielded this as the most desired result. We'll see how it turns out.

- The draft will be held tomorrow, Saturday, March 27th, at 8 p.m. Make sure you head over to the league home page to access the draft. Feel free to go ahead and pre-rank your players prior to the draft and make sure everything's OK technology-wise.

- OK, for those of you who missed the draft order message, here's the order for tomorrow night's snake draft:

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I am happy to say that the Beyond the Box Score Saber-Slanted Fantasy League, brought to you by CBSSports.com, is filled to the brim and ready to draft! In this short piece, I'll detail a little bit more about the scoring system and investigate the impact of changes to the saves/holds categories.

But first, let me make a few quick announcements.

- The following people are officially in the league:

BtB Authors/Alumns

- Yours truly, Michael Jong

- Sky Kalkman

- Erik Manning

- JinAZ

- Jack Moore

These are the esteemed gentlemen with whom the BtB readers will be competing. And who are these readers?

Readers

- billp

- Zach Sanders

- viktor06

- I miss Jack Buck

- JBrew

- Alex

- Shane

- LeeTro

- kidlondon

- Nathan Holmes

Congrats to all who got signed up. Viktor, I'm missing a team name from you, unless you would like to have your team known as Team 3.

- The second announcement is a slight rules change. You will now require 6 SP and 3 RP for your active roster.

- The tentative draft date is set for next Saturday at 8 pm. Please talk to me if there are any issues with that time, I'm very flexible on this.

Now, onto the rules talk.

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UPDATE: With the amount of trepidation about auction drafts with regards to both time and experience, I'd figure it might be best to let everyone do a regular draft. Thus, we will officially be doing a STANDARD LIVE DRAFT for the BtB Saber-Slanted Fantasy League.

On Monday, I introduced the Beyond the Box Score Saber-Slanted Fantasy League, run via the CBSSports.com Commissioner Fantasy Baseball League tool. I opened up the league to anyone in our loyal BtB readership, and there has been some interest and a few questions. Today, I'll go through a more thorough rules list and ask a few questions for discussion about the rules and the draft for the league.

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SB Nation, in its infinite wisdom, has paired up with CBSSports.com to provide SBN fans and blogs like BtB an intriguing opportunity. As you may have already gathered from the title, BtB is hosting a new fantasy league this upcoming season! But this won't be your dad's rotisserie league. No sir, there are two primary differences between this league and your usual ones.

1. This one is a CBSSports.com Fantasy Baseball Commisioner League.

2. Well, it's not called "Saber-Slanted" for nothing. Allow me to explain.

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Continuing our series from yesterday announcing our 2009/2010 Sabermetric Award winners (more commonly known, I suppose, as the "Sabers"), we now arrive at the Best Sabermetric Primer or Review Article/Series. Being someone relatively new to the sabermetric community this year, I feel like these articles and reviews offer the most to those who are new to the community. Sure, delving into the valuation of prospects or the run values of pitch types is intriguing and important to the community's continuing understanding of the game we love, it is the role of the various primers to introduce and cultivate a new slew of baseball fans interested in the objective analysis of America's pasttime.

That having all been said, let's first review the category description.

Articles that provide excellent introductions to, or summaries of, important fields of sabermetric research. When published online, these are often, but not always, broken up into series because of their necessary length.

There were six entrants into this category, and I'll reveal and review the top three. Let's begin.

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As we continue our trip through the year's best in sabermetrics as voted internally by Beyond the Box Score and by its loyal readers and fans, we arrive today at the Best Applied Research Article/Project category. Before we move into the voting, let's once again define the category in question.

Research that takes established sabermetric principles and applies them to help understand a specific case (typically a player, a team, a transaction, etc). The difference between novel and applied research is newness of approach and scope of impact.

You'll find that the pieces that follow will work out quite well with regards to this criterion. Keep in mind also how the voting was tabulated, as explained by JinAZ in the first post. Without further ado, let us unveil the top four spots in our inaugural voting for the Best Applied Research Article/Project!

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Various sources point to Adam LaRoche joining the Arizona Diamondbacks on a one-year deal worth between $4-5M. This would otherwise be a minor news story (and it still sort of is), except for two interesting things:

1) LaRoche apparently turned down a San Francisco Giants offer of two years and $17M in part because he was looking to get himself a three-year deal. Now he'll receive somewhere around 50-60% of what he would have earned in accepting the Giants' offer.

2) It signals the continuing trend of cheap wins in the market, compared to recent seasons. The market so far has been very light on dollars/projected WAR, and LaRoche's case is not much different. Let's look at a "wisdom of the crowds approach" for the projection here. Let's assume some 600 PA for ease of measurement; for your reference, CHONE has him at 588 and the Fans have him at 608. Taking the average of three projections (CHONE, Marcel, and the Fans), we have a projected wOBA of .346, some eight runs better than average in those 600 PA.

Let's take the same approach on defense. CHONE has him at -3 runs in 147 games; the Fans have him at just about average in 148 games. Our own Steve Sommer's projections are at -1.3 runs per 150 games. I'd say he gets those 600 PA in about 145 games of defense. Taking the average of the three projections, you can see a value of something like one run below average. Plug those in for WAR:

8 wRAA + -1 Defense + -11 position + 20 replacement = 16 Runs Above Average Replacement, or 1.6 WAR

CHONE has LaRoche at 1.2 WAR according to FanGraphs' replacement/position adjustments, while the Fans have him at closer to 2 WAR. This I believe is a solidly happy medium. And for this 1.6 WAR the Diamondbacks are paying at most perhaps $3.1M per win. For a one-year investment, this is probably par for the course, as such one-year contracts are usually discounted off the normal WAR rate. All-in-all, a solid move by the Diamondbacks.

Additionally, we should consider how this set the market for the first basemen remaining. There are still plenty of quality players at first base available, but few teams particularly interested. If those players want jobs for this year without having to wait for injuries in Spring Training to occur, they'd better follow suit and take discounts, as it seems the market will not be awfully kind to first basemen. Expect a similar offer for Russell Branyan, the best first baseman left available, and lesser contracts for guys like Carlos Delgado, who are quickly running out of choices.

You may have heard the news that free agent outfielder Jason Bay has joined the New York Mets. After the Mets had placed an offer and waited what seemed like an eternity while Bay waited an equally long time hoping another offer would come his way, the two sides came together for a deal that seemed destined to happen (at least in my eyes).

By now, you all have heard what Jason Bay is all about. He has a traditional "old-players game" of power and patience. According to FanGraphs, over the past three calendar years, Bay has a .225 ISO and a 12.4% walk rate, 23rd and 24th respectively in each category. As a hitter, he's posted excellent numbers each of the last three seasons, compiling a .267/.362/.493 slash line that's good for a .371 wOBA.

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(Note: Aha, see what I did there with the title? Aren't I grand with the humor? Speaking of humor...)

Here's the relevant source regarding what I'm talking about.

I'm going to skip the charade of whipping out the TVC and giving you a nice introduction about Milton Bradley, Carlos Silva, and how Seattle GM Jack Zduriencik has turned around the situation with the Mariners. Instead, I'll say this.

This is a straight-up robbery. There's no reason for such a tragedy to happen. Silva was the largest remaining noose on the Seattle Mariners' collective necks, the sole remaining byproduct from the Dark Ages of Bill Bavasi. Bradley was a positive offensive player (.345 wOBA) in the corners last year. He was a 1 WAR player last year in one of his worst offensive seasons in recent times. Silva struck out 10 batters and walked 11 in 30 innings last season (he also hit three batters). Before that, he was average at best (4.64 FIP for Seattle in 2008, though coupled with a poor defense, it turned into a 6.46 ERA), and horrendous at worst (5.76 FIP in 2006 for Minnesota, when he allowed almost two HR/9).

Silva hasn't pitched well since arriving in Seattle, one of the better pitcher's parks in baseball. He's now moving to Chicago, a hitter's haven in comparison. Bradley is now moving to Seattle, to a fanbase that actually respects his offensive skillset. There is no rumored additional parts to this trade. It's a simple one-for-one, and I think it made everyone outside Seattle cringe a little. I know I did.

Remember when Juan Pierre used to be good? I do. As a Marlins fan, I remember him being an amazing asset to our 2003 World Series team. He was fast, covered a lot of ground in center field, and consistently hit .300 or better.

I was right and wrong back then. Pierre was never a great hitter, though his baserunning and the fact that he had a solid OBP around .360-.370 kept him around the league average when he was with the Marlins. He did cover ground in center field, but he had one of the worst arms in baseball, and he still does. Overall, back in the day, he had seasons of 4.3 and 3.6 WAR for the Marlins before dipping below average in 2005. He had a fine season for the Cubs in 2006, though he did not hit at all for them. Then he signed with the Dodgers and bottomed out, offensively and defensively.

What's the point? Well, Pierre doesn't project for much this season, even after a "renaissance" season filling in for Manny Ramirez. But Chicago White Sox GM Kenny Williams seems to think that this is the Pierre is still in his 2006 form, maybe even his 2009 form, when the reality is that Pierre is probably still the man he was in 2007 and 2008.

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In our previous Reward Retrospective article, Erik Manning discussed the last time the NL Cy Young award was as close as it turned out. Today, I wanted to talk about another race in another year that was fairly close, though perhaps not involving the right players.

But first, I wanted to point out something of interest to me. The Baseball-Reference Play Index may be one of the coolest tools on the net if you're a baseball nerd like me. If you're like me and are too lazy/lack the computing power to tinker around merrily with a Retrosheet database, the Play Index is made just for you. One of the cool functionalities of the PI is the ability to make lists of individual player seasons using various criteria of your choice. This allows you to make up your own "clubs," if you will.

For example, everyone knows about the 40-40 club, consisting of the four players who have hit forty home runs and stolen forty bases in one season. But do you know about the other 40-40 club, consisting of players with over 40 doubles and 40 steals in a season. There are 30 such players in the time between 1901 and 2009. I figured this isn't exclusive enough. How about the 50-50 club, comprising of the two players who had over 50 doubles and 50 steals in a season.

The two player seasons were Tris Speaker's 1912 season and Craig Biggio's 1998 season. According to Rally's Historical WAR database, Speaker was worth 11 WAR that season, an impressive season indeed. Biggio's 1998? Worth 6.6 WAR, according to the database. No small feat, but no 11-win one either.

What's the point? Well, even though these seasons are the only ones in the illustrious 50-50 club, the two are not created equal. Which brings us to another illustrious club that consists of only one member, the 2007 season of Jimmy Rollins.

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Recently, Crashburn Alley's Bill Baer did a piece on Game Score and consistency which found its way onto resident chief Tommy Bennett's No Pepper links. Apparently, Tommy's not a fan of Game Score, and neither am I.

I had been recently trying to come up with a way to adjust Game Score for defense and park, maybe attempt a shot at a new Game Score formula for batted balls. This seemed like an interesting side project to tackle until VEP posted this one-line gem:

I just use Game WAR.

I was floored. What an simple yet elegant concept. I decided to have some fun with the data and throw out some Game WAR numbers for the BtB readership. Here's what I did.

Methodology

I took all non-Interleague starts this season with a Game Score over 80. I decided to exclude Interleague games to eliminate the need to determine average run support in an Interleague game (in retrospect, I suppose I could have used NL/AL average runs/game in Interleague play, but I already did the work, so take that). For what it's worth, I had to remove seven games from the sample of total starts with a Game Score above 80. This left me with 121 starts, ranging from Jonathan Sanchez's no-hitter (Game Score of 98) to Randy Johnson's April 19th start against the Arizona Diamondbacks (Game Score of 80). Of the 9276 starts made outside of Interleague play this season, this supposedly represents the best 1.3% of starts this season.

For my methodology for pitcher WAR, I used FIP as the run-determining metric to separate defense from pitching, mostly because of ease. I took all the relevant FIP statistcs (strikeouts, walks, hit-by-pitches, intentional walks, and home runs) and calculated FIP, using 3.19 as the scalar to ERA (the NL should have been 3.18 and the AL should have been 3.20, but these points shouldn't matter all that much). I park-adjusted the pitcher's FIP according to Patriot's five-year regressed park factors and stuck the inputs into Pythagenpat. Since all of Patriot's factors are already adjusted to account for players playing half their games at their home park, I reversed the adjustments for this exercise by doing the following:

PFGmWAR = [(PF-1)*2] + 1

This was done to get pure run inflation/deflation values for each park.

I used NL and AL non-Interleague average runs scored as the run support component. I used a .380 win% pitcher as replacement level.

Just for fun, I also decided to look at an old question brought up by Jeff of Lookout Landing, regarding A.J. Burnett and the myth of inconsistency. I grabbed game logs for three Yankees, Burnett, Andy Pettitte, and C.C. Sabathia, during the 2009 season and calculated Game WAR. I also took a look at [Game +1 WAR - Game WAR] (difference between consecutive starts).

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