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No prospect in the Red Sox system has seen his stock plummet more in the last 2 years than Lars Anderson. Coming into the 2009 season as the system's top prospect, the California native struggled mightily to hit AA pitching and went from being ranked Baseball America's 17th best prospect to the 87th. He wasn't even the organization's top prospect anymore: Ryan Westmoreland and Casey Kelly became the "top dogs" in the system. In  the 2010 season, he continued to face adversity, as he struggled to hit AAA pitching. For the first time in his Minor League career, the first baseman wasn't in the organization BA's Top-10 Prospects list and questions about his skill set started to emerge: He lacks loft in his swing, poor contact skills, lack of athleticism...Some prospects commentators started even to question his make up: Thinks too much, too "cerebral" (the kid was committed to Berkley after all), Some of them--commentators,that is--even questioned his commitment to baseball...  

The Adrian Gonzalez trade, locking the corner infield positions, made Lars Anderson the most expandable top prospect in the system but the question now is "Should the Red Sox move him to acquire some bullpen help or other pieces of need?". I think they shouldn't because trading him now is selling low. I also think  that he's due for s big rebound soon and could be, by the end of next season, a serious candidate for the 1B/DH spot.

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Earlier today, ESPN Deportes' Ignacio Serrano reported from Venezuela that the Detroit Tigers and Victor Martinez were close to a 4 year, $50 million deal.

Ken Rosenthal would later confirm the report. The Red Sox weren't comfortable in giving that kind of years to the switch-hitting catcher as they offered him a 2 year contract during the season.

The Red Sox will get the 19th Pick of the 2011 Draft (a really deep one) and a Supplemental rounder as long as the Tigers don’t sign Lee, Jeter, Rivera, Werth or Soriano before the arbitration deadline. The 19th pick will be the 2nd highest Pick of the Epstein Era.

Good luck to V-Mart: A classy player.

One of my favorite non-Red Sox blogs is certainly Baseball Time in Arlington: I think Joey Matches and his crew provide some of the best Texas Rangers analysis out there. Anyway, 2 days ago I came across this story by Josh Garoon. It was, in the author's words, "a speculative, cynical, and entirely tongue-in-cheek look ahead" and it left me thinking "What would be the equivalent for my beloved club?".

We'll find out after the jump.

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In a season marked by injuries and bullpen meltdowns, Jed Lowrie's play in the 2nd half has been one of the very few bright spots.

Since being activated from the 60 days DL, the Red Sox 1st round pick (45th overall) in the 2005 draft has posted a gaudy slush line of .287/.381/.526 over 197 PAs good for a weighted On Base Average (wOBA) of .393 while playing some solid infield defense leading to an overall production of 1.8 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) according to FanGraphs and 2 WAR according to Baseball-Reference. Clearly, he's been an asset for this team and considering his age/cost/versatility, he could offer a lot of solutions going into the next season and be a "safety net" if the negotiations with Adrian Beltre come non-conclusive. However, there's few questions that need to be asked:

We'll try to answer those questions after the jump.

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Lately the name of Che-Hsuan Lin has been been discussed a lot in the comments boards with different opinions and I thought, as the self proclaimed President of Lin's Fan Club, I need to write a lengthy post (again) about him, I'll try to be neutral during that analysis, mixing in numbers and scouting reports.

First of all, let's try to get a picture of what the skills set is, starting with the approach at the plate:

Maintaining your strengths against a better competition is good, improving those strengths make you special! Let's crunch some numbers

Eastern League OBP Leaderboard (Minimum 400 PA)

1. Tagg Bozied   .402

2. Darin Mastroianni   .390

3. Che-Hsuan Lin   .386

4. Ray Chang  .384

5. Nate Spears  .380

I don't know about you but this is pretty impressive to me especially when you consider that Tagg Bozied is 30 years old, that Mastroianni is 24, Chang's 26 and Spears is 25. He's the youngest player in the Top 20 (The 2nd youngest is New Britain's OF Ben Revere who's 22). With 72 BBs, he ranks also 3th in the EL, trailing Mastroianni and teammate Nate Spears (25 years old). He's also the only hitters of all those I mentioned to have a 1+ BB/K, how he does it?

Lin knows the strike zone well and rarely chases bad pitches.  Very good at working himself into hitter's counts.  Doesn't get himself out and has no problem taking a close pitch.  His batting eye is right up there with Kalish.  Lin has the bat control to spoil pitches and makes pitchers consistently throw him strikes to get him out.                                                                                                                                                                                                   Chris Mellen at SoxProspects.com

I also need to mention that 57.1% of Lin's strikeouts are from the K looking category. So there you have it: His skill set at the batter box is centered around patience and high contact rate...and he kept improving those skills!!!

Let's talk about the defense and the arm and who's better than close freind and former teamate Ryan Kalish to give us a scouting report?

"He is unbelievable," said Sea Dogs outfielder Ryan Kalish, who has played with Lin the past two years in Class A. "If it's a nice, easy, routine ball, he makes it look so smooth.

"If someone is running on him, that's when it's fun. Then you get to see his arm, which is unlike anything you've ever seen."

Lin has been voted:

• The best defensive OF in the Sox system this off season by Baseball America.
• The best defensive OF in the Eastern League in Baseball America tools survey,
• The Minor Leagues defensive player of the year award (his 2nd in the last 3 years)*

*The fact that the Sox FO gave the award to Che-Hsuan this year is pretty important IMO and here's why: Our OF prospects start playing with the same defensive OF alignement as the big club when they reach AA, rewarding CHL with a second award as the best densive player in the Farm system is a hint that they are confident that he can play the position at the ML level, or maybe this is just me trying to read too hard between the lines!

Those awards are given using inputs from scouts and managers (For the first 2) and minor league instructors (for the 3rd) but even advanced stats loves his work with the leather too as TotalZone (the only advanced MiL defensive metric at our disposal) rated his defense as a +12 runs for last year. On a personnal level, I listen to Portland radio cast at least 4 times a week and I can tell you that the words "smooth", "He makes it look so easy" were mentioned regulary by Mike Antonellis when a ball was hit his way

Centerfielder Che-Hsuan Lin was recognized as the "Best Defensive Outfielder" in the poll.  Lin, 21, has a strong arm and a knack for getting great jumps on balls out to the outfield.  The native of Hwa-Lian, Taiwan has made just three errors in 107 games this season for a .990 fielding percentage.     Inside The Clubhouse with Mike Antonellis

Defensively, he showed his range on a couple of balls hit his way that were more difficult plays than he made look.  Chris Mellen scouting report

"The instincts and the jumps in the outfield go beyond his raw speed," said Hazen. "I mean, he's off and running when that ball's hit. I think when you watch these games, he'll probably have a chance to make a coupe of circus-style catches and show you what we're talking about."      Sox Farm Director Mike Hazen

  Basically, he plays defense like Drew...at a more demanding OF position.

Let's talk about that arm a little bit so here's Ryan Kalish again:

Various minor-league scouting reports, including Baseball America, consistently have judged the arm of Ryan Kalish to be average. Kalish has one idea why that might be.

"To be honest, I’ve been with Che-Hsuan Lin for a while," said Kalish, referencing the Double-A outfielder widely believed to have the best throwing arm in the organization. "Having him out there downplays everything else. He’s so spectacular. … It gets really overshadowed by an arm like that because he’s so special."

Last year he led Carolina League outfielders with 18 assists and an infielder-like 7 double plays and this year, it's business as usual as he led all CFers in the Eastern League with 14 OF assists and 3 DPs and came 2nd in OF assists among OFers with 15 assists :'(

Now let's talk about the hitting part of Lin's game:

So... um...yeah Power is not part of his game...yet:

• He has the patience and the pitch recognition (Elite BB rate)
  

• He has the bat speed and the contact skills (Very low K rate and even lower swinging K rate)

• He's a spectaculary gifted athlete:

Che-Hsuan Lin would have played linebacker in high school if he grew up in Walpole instead of Hualien, Taiwan. He’s an impressive looking athlete. They had the players pulling sleds with weights on them today and he was effortlessly sprinting. 

Peter Abraham after seeing Lin in the Annual Development Rookies Camp

 

• He has a terrific make up:

Lin, like any minor-league hitters, has had his ups and downs. But when Lin has had his ups and downs, even an 0-for-4 game or two, he’s had a tendency to go straight to the cage and the film room to try to fix the flaw that cost him the hits he expected.

This my freinds is what I call a solid foundation: When he came to the system, CHL was a raw athlete with a lot of moving parts in his swinging mechanics, those flaws were mostly exposed by opposing pitchers off speed stuff. He worked on them and his swing now is very different from where he used to be:

Everything looks pretty good mechanically and he is a lot more quiet in the box than he was when he entered the system.  Lin looks like he still needs to be more consistent with keeping his hands back as he commits and using his quick wrists to do the rest.  There isn't much lower body in his swing right now as he is mostly upper body.  That, to me, is the area of improvement as to how his power is going develop, mostly consistently driving line drives into gaps to produce extra base hits.

Chris Mellen

I, for one, prefer reading a scouting report about a prospect in which it's written; "He needs to use his lower body when swinging" or "needs to be more agressive in hitter counts" than reading one saying "has tremendous power potential but needs to work on his pitch recognition" or "needs to be more selective at the plate": It's easier to fix the first flaws then the 2nd ones, don't you think? And you know what? This is what happening with Che-Hsuan as he's been tweaking with his stance.

On July 22nd Mellen has this observation:

Lin has opened up his stance slightly and has his back elbow a little bit higher.  Looks like he has made some adjustments at the plate.

And the results are showing up: Since July 1st, Lin has 245 PA, his line is .303/.416/.395

BB%: 13.9%

K%: 10.2%

LD%: 21.6%

I'll leave with that quote of Mike Hazen:

"It’s probably a little more of a line drive stroke right now. He’s got plenty of power to hit home runs right now. It’s just hasn’t translated yet," said Hazen. "We do think in time [it will come]. And obviously with impact defense and the chance to get on base, that’s an extremely interesting package."

He fields like Drew, Walks like Youk, Throws like Beltre and I can't wait till he starts hitting  like Pedroia!

This Saturday in Syracuse, Josh Beckett will be pitching what could be his last rehabbing start in AAA. If everything goes well, he'll be slotted into the Red Sox rotation at some point during the West Coast trip next week.

Albeit his apparently rocky start highlighted by an ERA of 7.29, a proper analysis lead me to think he will be a major addition to our pitching staff and here's why:

• Josh Beckett was terribly unlucky with balls put in play against him (BABIP of .365) and stranding runners on base (LOB% of 55.9): Those are unsustainable numbers and they will come down because we're not talking about a skill here!
• In his 8 starts this season Beckett has faced 212 batters, a sample too small to have an opinion on his increased BB rate (3.74 BB/9 compared to his career mark of 2.77 BB/9). That sample though is significant enough too asses his K/9, who at 7.88 remains very good.
• When we're dealing with SSS, there's other numbers we can refer to so we can have a clearer picture: Here's a table that could help us

• Year	FB Velocity	Contact%	First pitch Strike%	Whiff%
  2007	94.6	87.8%	62.7%	8.8%
  2008	94.3	88.0%	63.4%	8.6%
  2009	94.3	87.6%	63.7%	8.5%
  2010	93.5	87.1%	63.7%	8.6%

Looking at those numbers, I see the same exact pitcher who racked up 6.5, 5.0 and 5.3 WAR in the last 3 season while pitching in toughest division in baseball: He's throwing high heat (quick note here: The 0.8 mph decrease in FB velocity could be attributed to the beginning of the season starts where pitchers generally are building arm strength), he's getting ahead of hitters and he's missing the same amount of bats.

He's no John Lackey!

The starters have been performing pretty well: They lead the AL in FIP and with the return of Clay Buchholz and Josh Beckett, I can see this trend continuing but let's dig into the numbers and see if we can find some interesting nuggets.

I'll start with the cream of the corp: Jon Lester.

The amazing thing about Lester is that he kept improving every year:

• In 2008 he cut down the free passes: He went from a 4.43 BB/9 in 2007 to an outstanding 2.82 in 2008
• In 2009, while keeping the same BB rate, he added the strikeouts as he went from a solid 6.5 K/9 to an elite 9.96
• This year, he kept improving by adding the ground balls: His GB% is 51.8% Heck even his increased BB/9 this year is due to his horrible April where he walked 4.71 betters per 9 and has been on a steady decline since: 3.48 in May, 2.36 in June and 2.08 in July!

He's the total package but how he does it? 

First, let's break down some PitchFX data to do that:

His Cutter has a negative horizontal movement of - 0.68 Inches on average and his four seam fastball averages a break of 5.08 Inches. I'll let Mike Silver, in his awesome piece "Game calling, pitch sequencing and reading hitters' timing" explain to you how a deadly combination those 2 are when Jon is facing RHH:

In the last couple years, Lester’s cut fastball has become one of his go-to pitches against righties. It’s really an incredible pitch to watch, as time and again he coaxes whiffs on pitches over a foot inside – at the ankles, no less. That Major League hitters can’t lay off the pitch is truly incredible and goes a long way in showing how polished a pitcher Lester has become, how good his stuff is, and how well developed the chemistry has become between he and his catchers.

In the case of Lester’s cutter, he uses it in a fashion that is very similar to the aforementioned use of a slider.

On the one hand, Lester sets up his cutter with the use of the inside fastball. When he is painting the inside corner for strikes, the batters get defensive and begin to anticipate inside fastballs. Since the cutter has a very similar trajectory to the straight fastball – and thus looks like a fastball – these batters will swing at the inside pitch to avoid another called strike.

However, Lester’s cutter moves inside at the last second – too late for batters to recognize the break, resulting in a helpless whiff for strike three.

On the other hand, his change up (85.6 mph versus 93.5 mph for the FF) has a 9.41 Inches horizontal break forcing RHH to roll-over the pitch (if they make contact) resulting in a weak grounder (54.4 GB% vs RHH).

Now let's see what those pitches generate when hitters decide to swing at them:

3 pitches with a double digit swing-and-miss rate? This is unfair! 

I can go on and on on that subject but I'll finish with this: On May 20th last year, FanGraphs introduced Pitch Type Linear Weights and what it does is that it uses linear weights by count and by event and breaks it down by each pitch type so you can see in runs the actual effectiveness of each pitch. A look at the leader board in pitch value shows that Jon Lester has the best Cutter (2.86 runs per 100 pitches) AND Change up (4.37 runs per 100 pitches) among starters not only the AL but in the Majors !!!! Just think about it for a second: He throws 5 pitches and 2 of them are baseball's best !

Hey Tampa, he's one year older than David Price! Hey NY, he's a product of our farm system and he'll be ours for a long, long time at a team friendly contract!

I shamelessly stole the idea of this post from Lookout Landing. After last night loss, I wanted to write something that brings you some joy and sometimes laughter so here we go:

• Marco Scutaro is leading all the Majors in Contact% with 96.1%, has been sporting the AL 3rd best O-Swing rate at 15.4% and having a gaudy 20.8% LD%: Long story short, he's been very unlucky and his regressed wOBA (wOBAr) should be .331 (league average bat combined with a solid glove at the SS position is an asset to any team): Things should get well for him if he sticks with his approach.
• Manny DelCarmen Splits:

• In his last 3 starts, Salem's Stolmy Pimentel has pitched two no-hit 6 innings ball before being pulled. So far this season, he's striking out more LHH (7.06 K/9) than RHH: Meaning that Change up is filthy!
• Robinson Cano hasn't draw a walk since May 13th!
• According to HitTrackerOnline.com, BJ Upton is leading the AL in the luckiest HRs category with 2. He has 5 "Dingers" so far.
• The Angels have a combined OPS+ and ERA+ of 183.
• 75Bandwagon is not posting.

Let me start this post by asking you a question? Are you familiar with what Confirmation Bias is? Here's Wikipedia's  definition:

Confirmation bias (or myside bias) is a tendency for people to prefer information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses, independently of whether they are true.People can reinforce their existing attitudes by selectively collecting new evidence, by interpreting evidence in a biased way, or by selectively recalling information from memory

  Ok, now why am I bringing this up? It's because all winter long, the so called experts kept pounding the fanbase with the idea that this team is in a dire need of a "big bat" to "anchor the lineup" and be a "menacing force in the heart of the lineup". Those same called experts kept spinning the idea that the Front Office chose to take the Run Prevention route instead of the Run production route and we should be expecting 2-1 scores all season long.

Although, we kept saying here that the FO was looking for a balanced team at both sides of the plate and that they mastered the art of building a consistent offense (In the last 6 years, the Red Sox O  has put FIVE .352 weighted On Base Average (wOBA): Talk about consistency!) and that we shouldn't be worried about that aspect but as soon as the team has hit a rough patch, the uneducated fans started crowding the message boards demanding that Epstein and Co trade for Adrian Gonzalez or Prince Fielder or this team is doomed, why this kind of reaction manifested itself? Because their expectations are met and they inaccurately conclude that they “knew” something was going to happen. There are very few things in life that we know – the rest is different levels of speculation.

Sample size matter and looking at any small sample of data and deciding that it is “real” because it conforms to what you believed before it happened is simply faulty, and underestimates the uncertainty that was involved (or should have been involved) in your original thinking.  

With a relatively significant sample size that we have at our disposal, we can have an In depth look at the Sox offense and see what makes it so good.

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I shamelessly stole the idea of this post from my favorite blog Lookout Landing, I'll try to give the MFY roster an in depth look.

Blog: Pinstripe Alley

PSA's team preview

Position players:

C: Jorge Posada

1B: Mark Teixeira

2B: Robinson Cano

SS: Derek Jeter

3B: Alex Rodriguez

LF: Brett Gardner/Randy Winn

CF: Curtis Granderson

RF: Nick Swisher

DH: Nick Johnson

Bench-C: Francisco Cervelli

Bench- IF: Ramiro Pena

Bench-OF: Randy Winn

Bench-OF: Marcus Thames

Depth:

C: P.J. Pilittere, Jesus Montero

1B: Juan Miranda

2B: Kevin Russo

SS: Eduardo Nunez

OF: Jon Weber, Colon Curtis

Regression to the mean and the aging curve: Read them, learn them and love them because if they don't occur, we're screwed! And we should be calling it quit for the AL East race and just focus on the Wild Card.

From an offensive stand point they were a fantastic run producing machine: They led the league in OBP, SLG, ISO and wOBA: They were patient, they run the bases well and they hit for power so they led the league in runs scored. Does that reflects a 103-59 record? No, because they allowed 753 due to a so-so defense (-18.5 UZR) and a middle of the pack bullpen (4.33 FIP). In fact, they outperformed their Pythagorean record of 95-67: That's what a league leading 15 walkoffs wins can do for you!

They got career years from a bunch of players on the wrong side of their 35s, let's take Posada's case for example: He's one of only 9 catchers in baseball history to catch more than 100 games in their age 37 season! and he'd done it with a fashion: Among catchers with at least 430 PA in 2009 Jorge led the way in ISO, and ranked second, to Mauer, in wOBA with .378! Well, I'm going on a limp here and I'll say that he'll not repeat that kind of season because history have shown to us that this kind of performances is impossible to repeat:

On the age-37 list, the only other catcher to post an OPS of .800 or above was Carlton Fisk, who posted a .348 wOBA in 1985.In 1986 he played in 125 games, but started only 65 behind the plate and posted a lowly .600 OPS! Injuries too must be a concern as he missed 133 days over the past 2 seasons* (soulder issues in 2008 and a hamstring injury in 2009).
* Sorry CW, but I have to salivate when I read meaningless news from ST saying that Posada was scratched from a game due to Shoulder Soreness. What can I say? I'm a jerk ;)
How about Captain clutch-true Yankee-the greatest SS of all time...Derek Jeter? who posted the best season of his career (7.4 WAR) at the young age of 35? He posted a career numbers on both sides of the ball:

- He wOBA'd a gaudy .390 (career wOBA .375) with his bat.

- At an age where most the SS are moved to 2nd base, LF or DH, captain clutch, who always has been a reliability with the glove (-33.2 UZR over the last 8 seasons), "reinvented" him self and posted a 6.6 UZR!!!

I don't care what new training regimen/diet/Lasik/best shape of your life you go through,  you don't turn a butcher into a wizard, certainly not at age 36!

- The list of the players outperforming their career lines is extensive: Hideki Matsui (a career HR/FB rate 13.4%) has a 17.4% at age 35 (and no, The Yankee Stadium has nothing to do with that). Nick Swisher posted a career high wOBA helped by the Yankee Stadium (His ISO reached a career high .249!!!) Robinson Cano posted a career year too (although his young age and the fact that he plays in that bandbox might help him repeat).

What I want to say here is that the Yanks have an awesome collection of talent but those guys, every single one of them, posted a career year at an age where they're supposed to decline! Not only that but as a team, they've had some serious situational hitting: 15 walk off wins seasons are hard to come by, just ask the Rays!

Now, this team should still be one of the best offenses in the majors: They've added Curtis Ganderson (a clearly superior player to Juda) who should profits from that porch in RF and Nick Johnson who should get on base at a very good clip and hit for some power. Their 3-4 hitters are still in their prime years (although, A-Rod is reaching the end of the road) and Jeter should get on base at an elite level but that opposite field power, Yankee stadium or not, should regress to the mean!

There's other aspects that should worry the MFY fans: Injuries! Last year, the MFY lost only Xavier Nady, Wang and Alex Rodriguez to injuries for extended periods of time: After a hip surgery that made him go to the DL for 42 days, Rodriguez was the only player to return from that DL trip and contribute immensely to his team success. They get lucky (I can't find another word to summarize their 2009 season! Magic maybe?) with the other two as Nick Swisher went to put a career year and Andy Pettitte to defy the aging curve by putting a 3.3 WAR season at age 37.

This year, as you saw in the depth chart below, if a player hits the DL, they're in trouble: Marcus Thames and Randy Winn are not even Bench players on a championship team! In the infield, things get murkier: if say, Jeter breaks a pinkie sliding into second base! I mean...Ramiro flicking Pena is their UIF! Sure, he can field but no way he can repeat his .2009 career year (that word is redundant isn't it?) of... .699 OPS! Look for Cashman to make a trade for depth by mid-season.

Starters

CC Sabathia
AJ Burnett
Andy Pettitte
Javier Vazquez
Phil Hughes

Depth:

Sergio Miltre

Joba Chamberlain

Alfredo aceves

Kei Igawa

With addition of Javier Vasquez in this off season, the Yankees have the 2nd if not the 3rd best rotation in the league behind the Red Sox and maybe the Rays. Why am I saying this? After all the MFY DIPs are as good as their counterparts in the Red Sox rotation and better than the Rays'! Well not when you include defense into the picture! here's the Yanks projected UZR/150 picked from TYU.com:

All the UZR/150 figures are based on a three-year period (collected via FanGraphs), though there were some players that simply did not offer much in the way of fielding data at their respective positions. For instance, prior to 2009, the last time Nick Swisher was a regular right fielder was in 2005, during his tenure in Oakland, therefore, three-year UZR/150 measures were difficult to compile. In such cases (Swisher, Gardner, Scutaro, Ellsbury), which are demarcated via an asterisk (*), I opted to utilize Jeff Zimmerman’s UZR/150 projections for the upcoming season. Not sure if that was the best method to employ, but the numbers are fairly conservative, so it seems to work.

They should be OK when the ball is hit toward the outfield but when your best projected infielder is your 1st baseman, you're in trouble when the BIP is a sharp grounder!

Let's bounce back to those starters: CC Sabathia is an elite pitcher but he has a Bartolo Colon-esque body type to go with 1894.2 IPs mileage in his arm and apparently he looked like he added some additional fat (I trust our friend Alskor on that one) and you know when Colon started to break down? The answer is: In his 2006 season with the Angels, at that time he has pitched 1876.2 innings. I would worry about that if I was, Pedro forbid, a MFY fan!

AJ Burnett is a solid pitcher who throws hard and has a knee buckling breaking ball. He used to be an injury prone pitcher but apparently he's been fine for the last 2 seasons when he has thrown a lot of innings 221.1 and 207.0 IPs. The problem is: He doesn't like to throw to Jorge Posada! Here's the numbers:

Burnett K/9 with Posada catching:  7.2

Burnett K/9 with Molina catching: 10.1

Burnett BB/9 with Posada catching: 4.2

Burnett BB/9 with Molina catching: 3.8

Molina is now playing backstop for the Jays.

Javier Vasquez used to be one of my favorite pitchers before going the Bronx: He strikes a lot of people and walks very few and he's a lock to throw 200+ innings every year: I mean... the man is made of steel: His only 15 day DL trip was for....Orbital bones fracture (yeah it's a facial injury!). Here's the thing with JV, he always fail to match his ERA to his FIP:

Career ERA: 4.19

Career FIP: 3.83

He always played with meh defenses behind him (it's not going to change now that he's in NY) with a career .302 BABIP and he has his problems when working from the stretch:

Career K/BB with bases empty: 4.26

Career K/BB with men on base: 2.63 (!!!!!!)

This is a 38% K/BB drop!! For instance the league loss is 22%.

Relivers

Mariano Rivera
David Robertson
Joba Chamberlain
Damaso Marte
Alfredo Aceves
Chan Ho Park
Sergio Mitre

Depth:

Zack McCallister

Jonathan Albaladejo

Mark Melancon

Boone Logan

Well, I love the Yankees bullpen: Anchored by the forever young Mariano Rivera (to whom the aging curve doesn't apply), they rest of the relievers are serviceable: David Robertson K's a lot of people (~13 K/9!!!), Sergio Miltre's sinker is effective (60.9% GB last year), Aceves is a good long reliever (3.59 FIP) with a good arsenal of pitches (Cutter, Fastball, curveball and change up), Damaso Marte is a good LOOGY with a 2.80 career FIP versus lefties. Park don't allow HRs...Oh wait! The only problem is the set up man (see Chamberlain, Joba): Since his shoulder injury in Texas last year, he's been struggling to gain his mid-90s velocity making his Slider irrelevant. All in all, this is a solid group that should do well.

Overall:

This is a very solid group: The best group money can buy, If everyone stays healthy an produce at a career level, they should be considered as the favorites: The guys at Replacement Level Yankee blog posted their season simulation blowout on Tuesday, using the inputs of five different projection systems and running them through Diamond Mind’s baseball simulation engine 1,000 times each to produce projected standings for the 2010 season. They come up with the MFY winning the division 40.7% of the cases and clinching the WC in 22.3%. They're projected to log 96 wins. That's how good they are!

Why You Should Root For Them If The Sox Drop Out:

The Yankees are baseball most heralded organization (Ruth, Di Maggio, Mantle and a bunch of dead people): They make money and they spend it (most of the time) wisely, to put a good product on the field year after year. They're the largest contributor to the luxury tax, this money helps small market teams blah blah blah...For Allah sake guys, help me out here! OK, if you hate the Yankees and you root against them, you hate capitalism and you hate America so you must be an unpatriotic fella and a communist!!!

I can't go more that that...really, my nose started bleeding!

Why You Should Root Against Them If The Sox Drop Out:

If I have to explain this to you then you're like the worst Red Sox fan ever*.

* I picked this one from Jeff Sullivan ;)

 Now that all experts have given their prospects and system ranking (except our regretted USG), I thought it would be appropriate to sum up all those rankings in terms of prospects and the whole system. But before I start this, let's see what has been the front office blueprint in the draft and on the International Free Agents market and how that's impacted the talent pool in the minors:

After years of drafting polished, fast-to-the-big-leagues-type players (Pedroia, Lowrie, Ellsbury, Papelbon...), there was a shift to focus on higher impact younger players (by not hesitating to go over-slot as it was the case for Kelly, Westmoreland, Renfroe and Lars or large signing bonuses as it was the case for Almanzar and Iglesias) that left a void in the upper levels of the minors and depth in lower levels. Here's what Theo and Hazen has to say:

"I think the clear strength of our farm system is in a group of very high-ceiling players that we feel great about, most of whom are 18-20 years old,’’ said general manager Theo Epstein. "How we as an organization can impact those players and help them with their development and reach their ceilings will be a hugely important factor in our success starting in probably about 2012 and beyond.’’

"That’s where the biggest gap is right now, at Triple A,’’ said director of player development Mike Hazen. "Hopefully over the course of next year that’s going to change, but right now there aren’t enough ready players, and that’s obviously our big challenge and our problem right now, that there’s not enough major league-ready-now players sitting [there] to take positions at the major league level.’’

  So basically, the ranking of the system will be impacted by: How talented  those blue chips are and how deep the talent pool is? After the jump, we'll see what the experts think.

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Apparently Jon Lester is a slow starter. At least this what Peter Abraham thinks (an most of the fan base actually): In his today piece for the Globe, PA wrote this:

Jon Lester finished last season as one of the best pitchers in the American League. But he was one of the shakiest early on, compiling a 6.07 ERA in his first 10 starts as opponents batted .307 against him.

  You see the flaw in his analysis from the get go: ERA and BAA are not stats that reflects the true talent level of a pitcher because they incorporate aspects, mainly defense, that are out of the pitcher control. A better test would be using his xFIP, Batted Ball Data, BABIP and Pitch f/x and that's what we'll do after the jump:

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The analysis of Baseball unlike any other sport have made huge strides in recent years: Forward thinking and new metrics have lead us to look at the game from a whole new angle. Think about it for a second:

Before "Moneyball", Average and Slugging were perceived as the only ways to evaluate a hitter performance, then we started looking at OBP then OPS and GPA which opened the way to a whole new set of metrics: wOBA, VORP, FIP, tRA...

With Pitch f/x, we can analyze the pitcher stuff: The breaking of his Slider, the velocity of his 4 seamer, the movement of his 2 seamer...and not only that! We can also attribute values to those pitches and see what pitch is effective and witch one is not, we can also judge the hitter plate discipline:

• If he's a "hacker" (think Francoeur) swinging at anything outside the strike zone; or
• A disciplined hitter waiting for "his pitch" to cross the plate.

Changes didn't stop there: UZR and other new defensive metrics are helping us to distinguish which fielder is good when it comes to "flashing the leather" and who's not...RIP Fielding percentage and errors, position adjustments and WAR are helping to appreciate the true value of a player.

Why I'm telling you all this? Because there's still a lot a myths and dogmas when it comes to analyze the game and construct a roster. I'll tackle this after the jump.

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