I predict three stars will be between this statement and my analysis

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So if you had to guess who was leading the American League in base on balls who would you pick? If you said Marco Scutaro it means you were cheating and guessing him because his name is in the headline. You would also be wrong (Carlos Pena is,) but Mr. Scutaro is in second place in the category. Now Marco's great year in part to a strong start might not be news to you depending on how much you follow baseball, but 9th best position player in baseball is just not something you expect to hear about Marco Scutaro because afterall, this is the same 33 year, whose been waived by two seperate teams, and traded for the immortals Graham Godfrey and Krisitan (Whose parents must have really hated to name him with a K) Bell.

So how is Marco Scutaro pulling this off? Well part of it can be attributed to the fact that its really only the 2rd year in his career that Marco Scutaro has been the number one guy. Last year Scuataro was shuffled around the diamond a lot because of injuries to Aaron Hill, John McDonald, and Scott Rolen. The only time prior to this year that Scutaro go was the man was way back in 2004 manning 2nd base for the Oakland A's. I personally suscribe to the idea that a player performs at his best when he is the everday guy and I think for the most part the numbers back that up. 

Scutaro has been getting the job done with the glove and is 4th among qualified shortstops in UZR. His BABIP is up this year while his LD% is down; his infield fly ball % is WAY DOWN from his career average (Interesting side story, Mauer, Jeter, and Hawpe have yet to hit an infield fly this year, Mike Jacobs has hit 19.)

So can Scutaro keep this season up? When I started writing this I had the conclusion no before going through the numbers, now I am not so sure. After a home run happy start (5 homers in April, 1 since,) Scutaro is now 19% below his career HR/FB% while his FB% is up so he should actually being displaying more power than he has. He has already surpassed his single season walks record but he has already had pretty good discipline and I have a hard time believing in fluky walk rates for powerless middle infielders. His swinging% is down while his contact% is up across the board. His doubles might be a little flukey, his defense might regress a tick or two, but I would no longer be suprised if Marco ends up as a top 20 positional player when the year is said and done.

While not as under the radar as Joe Crede, nor with additional likelihood of improving over his season to date, Casey Blake has quietly been a force for the Dodgers this year. The former Indians part-time player is hitting a very respectable .285/.366/.485 this year for the boys in blue.

Now Blake has been lucky to an extent, but nothing out of the realm of insustainability. His .851 OPS would be the tops for his career if the season ended today, but only by about a dozen points. His BABIP is sitting at .327 against a career of .307; his walks are up this year but not by leaps and bounds, his strikeouts are a tick under his career rate. On the defensive side of the ball for the career Blake is slightly below average at -2.3 a year. This year he is 2.9 above to date which is abnormal but not screaming for regression either. Overall, Blake has had a nifty little season

To date Blake's WAR sits at 2.6 wins, which puts him behind only Matt Kemp on the Dodgers squad (Manny will make knock him down to third in the not too distant future.) On a team that has succeeded with good all around effort Blake has certainly held up his share. And while Blake probably won't justify the trade for Carlos Santana and will be pressed to continue his performance through his contract expiration at the age of 37 so far Blake has done his job

Without looking, how has free agent pick-up Joe Crede played this year? I knew he had been hitting for power, I knew his on base skills were still lacking, and I figured he was playing pretty good defense because he historically has been good with the glove. Well Mr. Crede is hitting .234/.297/.452, not the best line in the world by any means but there are some positives hidden in there.

First, Crede is walking at a rate he rarely has, and by rarely I mean he has a BB% of 8% against a career average of 6.0

Next Crede is sitting with a BABIP of .231; now that looks a lot worse then it is because Crede only has a career BABIP of .260 because he hits a lot of infield flyballs and his LD% for the career isn't particullarly good. But so far this year his LD% is up from the previous two years and his infield fly ball percentage is the lowest of his career. ZIPS projects his BABIP to be .252 but it should probably go even higher then that.

And we haven't even gotten to the best part yet. Crede is a good defender at the hot corner, as far back as UZR goes he has never rated below average and he has averaged 10.2 runs above average UZR/150 for his career. All in all he has been consistently one of the best defenders in the game. Well, this year he is kind of outstripping his career rate to the tune of already being 11.7 runs above average on the year ranking 4th overall in the game in runs saves and on pace for an incredible 24.8 UZR/150

So where does that put Crede for the season? Well FanGraphs has Crede has producing a 2.1 WAR so far putting him on pace to be a 4 win player as it, but with the improvements that could/should occur that could kick up another half a win or so. Regardless Crede has been the 4th most valuable player for the Twins this year behind Mauer, Morneau, and Nick Blackburn. The Twinkies are going to need a little help if they are going to make the playoffs, but if they do Crede's production will have been a big part of getting there, not bad for a guy who signed a 1 year, 2.5 million dollar base contract

I am posting this because I believe that the argument I made during this fanpost (scroll down) was incorrect and I believe accountability is something sorely lacking on the internet and journalism in general. To the point, I was wrong about what I thought it would take to get Marco Scutaro from the Blue Jays. I believed that because of his journeyman status and career long journeyman production he could be had for Mark Lowe because of Lowe's pedigree and the Jay's relative lack of relief pitching depth.

What I incorrectly took into account was his free agent compensation level. For those of you who don't know a Tiger's blog reversed engineered the Elias Bureau free agent classification formula last year. USS Mariner recently posted the updated information here and low and behold Marco Scutaro was sitting at 7th overall in the 2B/SS/3B group (page 5) making him a Type A free agent.

This new information means that Scutaro's trade value is higher then I had it at because I believe that Riccardi also has this information as well as most GM's in baseball. However, I also believe a player like Scutaro holds a Juan Cruz or Orlando Cabrera situation where he would be a difficult sell on the free agent market because of that risk. It is possible a team does the whole Frank Catalanotto stupid signing with him but I don't think that is likely either. Regardless, I now believe an additional player would be necessary to acquire Scutaro. Depending on what Riccardi values that player would be anything from Rob Johnson to Noregia to Tyson Gilies or something beyond the Mariner's price range.

Either way my apologies to seattlebruin and olesalty who might have had a better read on the situation then I did whether or not they took this information into account

Salud

So this all started after I was trying to explain to one of my good friends that ESPN baseball analysts are terrible and I showed him the USS Mariner article about where Vegas evaluated all of the ESPN and Pecota analysts and only Pecota, Rob Neyer, and Keith Law beat a projection where every team went 81-81

This link can be found here

So last night him, a couple other of my fraternity brothers and I went through all of the major league teams and projected their wins for the coming season and wrote them down to evaluate at the end of the year to see if A: we could beat the null projection of everyone at 81-81 and B: to see if at the very least we could beat Steve Phillips.

I figured this was something the Lookout Landing community could get behind too so if you want to submit your projections on teams for the coming season in this thread I will record them in excel and we can play against Steven Phillips and ourselves to see who had the best projection come the end of the season.

I will put my projection in the comments but one quick note of advice is that there are 2430 wins up for grabs in a normal season so you might want to adjust your projections to meet that number

Good Luck on the Steve Phillips Challenge!!!!!!!!

Good ole' BP unfiltered has a mini-interview of Ben Broussard, currently languishing in AAA Scranton for the Yanks

http://baseballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=892

He may not be very good, but he gets the whole baseball is nothing personal and seems glad just to be playing the game

It was going to be the first time in my career that I was given an opportunity to play every day, but it didn’t work out.  The team got off to a bad start, and they had to do what they had to do.  That’s just the way that baseball works.

I wouldn’t care if I was in A-ball right now; I just want to play baseball.  I love the game and I love getting out here and getting dirty and being around the guys in the clubhouse.

so you just have to have thick skin and a short-term memory.  You just have to believe in yourself.  But I have nothing bad to say about any of them.

Good luck Ben and I hope you find talent you never had before and end up getting another shot at starting someday

I was an outfielder picked in the first 5 rounds out of an east coast college. My progression through the minors was slow due to splitting time between baseball and playing in the NFL. I broke camp with my Major League team at the age of 25 before being sent back down mid-July after struggling. It wasn't until I was 28 that I claimed my first full time job with a 20/20 season. My major league  and minor league numbers were incredibly similar and I played in parts of 15 major league seasons.  I was a solid power/speed player with solid batting average but poor plate discipline .

who am I?

So what do you all think he is going to do next year? It looks like he has little shot of breaking camp with the big league team and will be sent back to AAA starting the year at the age of 23.

Here is some things to ponder
2005 539 PA 160 strikeouts  29.7 K%  6.1 BB% 49.6 XBH%
2006 522 PA 140 strikeouts  26.8 K%  13.4 BB% 45.1 XBH%
2007 544 PA 105 strikeouts  19.3 K%  9.9 BB% 37.4 XBH%

The trend of strikeouts dropping at every level is encouraging and I expect to drop moderately next year to 16% or so since he will be repeating the level. The walks look above average but nothing special. The Extra base hits in 2005 and 2006 looked pretty special and 37% is still nothing to sneeze at.

So what does everyone think Wlad has in store for this year? Will he have a killer spring and take Wilkerson or Ibanez's job (pushing Raul to DH)? will he rake the first couple months and force himself on to team late May, will he have a credible consolidation year and be poised to take the starting job in 2009, or will he regress

I am a Mariner fan and hate all things Angels with a passion, but I am intrigued by Reggie Willits. His contact and plate discipline were excellent, but his power was non-existent. At 26 his power potential is pretty much fulfilled, but can a hitter really succeed with his skill set? I mean, at some point don't you just have pitchers throw it right now the pipe a la Sean Burroughs strategy knowing the worst that can happen is a single? I was just wondering if anyone thought he could could have a prolonged career hitting .290/.390/.340 or something similar. Just guess searching for comps using BR the best I could really find was Julio Cruz. Their secondary skills are pretty similar, but Cruz rarely hit .250 let alone .290; What do you all think?