According to a tweet from MASN’s Ben Gosseling, the Nats have released Elijah Dukes and, shockingly, it has nothing to with off-the-field issues. Dukes was expected to start the season as the right fielder for the D.C. club but now he’ll look for a new team.

Dukes’ story is pretty well known, but here’s the highlights: drafted in the 3rd round of the 2002 draft by Tampa Bay, in 6 minor leagues seasons he owns a batting line of .280/.369/.451, had off-the-field issues in 2007, was traded to the Nationals in December of ‘07 for LHP Glenn Gibson, and had a breakout season in 2008 followed by a down year in 2009.

In 970 plate appearances in the majors while mostly playing right field, Dukes owns a career wOBA of .335 — making him a slightly better than league average hitter. He walks at a better than league average rate (13.3%) and hits for above-average power (.180) while striking out more than your league average hitter (23.9%). On defense, he owns a career UZR/150 of +2.8 runs in RF over 1152.1 innings. He’s played some CF in the majors, too, but profiles better in the corners.

CHONE has Dukes projected at a .354 wOBA, which if he played on the Giants, would make him the 2nd best projected hitter on the team behind Sandoval. That’s a projection of nearly 20 points better than Aubrey Huff. Dukes’ main knock, besides any off-the-field issues, is his durability. He missed a large chunk of the ‘08 season with hamstring, calf, and knee problems. He had hamstring problems again in ‘09. He appeared in just 81 games in ‘08 and 107 games in ‘09.

Even if you consider that he’s an outfielder and the Giants roster is crammed with outfielders, few represent the upside that Dukes has. He’ll be just 26-years-old next year for the 2010 season and his track record in both the minors and majors suggests that he can hit at league average — for the Giants, that would be quite the boost. The more I think about it, the more I think that it wouldn’t be all that crazy to try and sign Dukes and play him at first base. It would be an unorthodox move for the Giants, and unlikely to happen, but Dukes’ profile is much better than Huff — an already bad fielder at the position with declining offense. Of course, it’ll never happen. The Giants seem much more likely to try Bowker at first base again before ever signing someone like Dukes. The money they’ve already spent on Aubrey Huff (try reading that without tearing up) insures that he’ll play first for at least the first 2-3 months. If he struggles, we’ll he’s a veteran that knows how to play and he’ll be sure to snap out of it. If he succeeds, or appears to succeed by being “a good RBI guy“, then he’ll be cemented at the position.

“We’re extremely excited to add a player of Aubrey’s caliber,” said Sabean. “He’s a middle of the order presence, who has proven to be a top RBI producer.”

The Giants have a lot of options in the outfield, but none of them are really long-term pieces. Rowand will start in center because he’s getting paid, but the corners should be open for someone like Dukes. It’s likely that he could end up out-playing Schierholtz in RF while costing the league minimum. He doesn’t fit The Giants Way ™ or the team’s historical precedent of player acquisition, but that doesn’t mean the Giants shouldn’t kick the tires on Dukes. A team this weak on the hitting side of things just can’t afford not to pick up league average production on offense when given the opportunity.

They are: SS Ehire Adrianza, OF Wendell Fairley, C Johnny Monell, OF Thomas Neal, IF Nick Noonan, C Hector Sanchez and C Jackson Williams.

All of the 7 above players were reassigned to minor league camp and Brett Pill was optioned to AAA Fresno. Nothing too surprising out of the first wave of cuts. Schulman states that with Huff’s defense looking so bad this spring, he was a little surprised to see the heralded defensive first baseman, Brett Pill, get cut so soon. Realistically, Pill had little chance to break camp in the majors. His slash-line from 2009 in AA looks nice — .298/.348/.480 — but his track record on offense leaves something to be desired. As a 25-year-old, he’ll start the season in Fresno.

Thomas Neal is the best prospect of the group and he’ll start this year in AA Richmond as a Flying Squirrel — I love minor league team names. Neal had a breakout season in ‘09 with the San Jose Giants. Neal, finally healthy, showed power (ISO .242) and patience (BB% 11.6) while terrorizing California League pitchers. Any way you slice it, Neal is a Top-5 prospect in the Giants’ farm system at the moment.

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Lincecum Freakout-’O-Meter: In his start yesterday against the Indians, Lincecum pitched 4 innings, gave up 4 earned runs, 4 hits, walked 4, and struck out 4 batters.

Nameless NL scout says:

One NL scout at Tuesday’s game said that Lincecum’s fastball ranged between 87 and 91 mph with one touching 92 — about three to four mph slower than Lincecum used to throw routinely.

Excuse me while I shuffle off to my panic room. In all seriousness, I could quote you a thousand different reasons why you shouldn’t care about Spring Training Stats (STS), but I’ll save both you and me the time: don’t worry about them. It’s silly.

Stepping aside from whether or not it’s normal for a 20-year-old to lose 4-6 mph on his fastball, we should ask the question, does velocity really matter all that much for a pitcher? I took this chance to continue my scatter plot kick of late to try and find out. I took every starting pitcher in the majors that tossed at least 100 innings between 2008-09 and then plotted their average velocity on their fastballs by their FIP. All data was pulled from FanGraphs.

A quick note of procedure, I omitted Tim Wakefield from the numbers because as a knuckle-baller, he’s his own creature. He rarely throws a fastball — 10% of the time on average — and when he does, it’s closer to BP fastball at 72 mph. Also, this isn’t meant to be a final statement on velocity and pitcher quality, but more of a sketch than the final word. Quick and dirty.

The graph’s results should be pretty self-explanatory. The harder a pitcher throws, the more likely he is to strikeout hitters, which means less chances for his defense to muck things up. I’m not sure if FIP is the right way to go about this, since it’s already rewarding guys who strike hitters out but I wanted to remove defense from the equation when trying to value a pitcher. I’m open to any suggestions. Still, I think the graph does make a good point. Throwing hard is almost always going to help your average starting pitcher. There are some exceptions: Johnny Cueto of the Reds is a hard-thrower, on average his fastball was clocked at 93.4 mph, but his FIP of 4.9 isn’t particularly appealing. Clearly, velocity only does not a pitcher make. But, overall, we can see that a relationship does exist. It’s  not the only relationship (I assume batted-ball types, control, other pitch-types, LOB%, etc. come in to play) but throwing hard does have it’s advantages.

Two guys I wanted to note are Mike Mussina and Jamie Moyer. Neither throw hard: Mussina at 86.4 mph and Moyer at 81.2 mph. But, should we hold them up as examples for Bumgarner? I don’t think so. Mussina and Moyer might not throw hard, but unlike Bumgarner, they’ve got diverse repertoires. They both have at least 4 pitches — maybe more — that they can use against hitters. Mussina’s curveball was rated well by FanGraph’s pitch-type values, as was Moyer’s changeup and cutter. Bumgarner has been able to locate his fastball well, and there is some deception in his delivery, but the pitch becomes a lot less sexier with the drop in miles-per-hour. Outside of that particular pitch, Bumgarner is still learning to throw his slider and his changeup is a 3rd best pitch in a predominately 2-pitch arsenal.

It seems to me that unless Bumgarner can regain some of his lost velocity with his current set of pitches, he’s going to be in for a bumpy ride in the present. Not may pitchers can thrive off of 1-pitch in a starter’s role and Bumgarner should be no different. If his slider develops and if he can hone his change some more and if he’s healthy, then he could be starting in San Francisco sometime this season for an extended period even without the velocity. But it’s quite clear, at the moment, he should start the year in Fresno. Hopefully the Giants can figure out what’s going on in his very talented arm. If they can, we could be in for a treat.

A: Andres Torres

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Torres was a weird bird for the 2009 Giants. He was a 31-year-old minor league journeyman with a scant 285 career plate appearances in the majors before the season started. Originally drafted by the Tigers in the 4th round of the 1998 First Year Player Draft, Torres had logged over 469 games in the minors since 2004. He caught the Giants’ eye after his 2008 season with the Cubs — being Torres, this was the Iowa version of the Cubbies — in which he hit: .306/.391/.501

Before the season started, the Giants ended up signing Torres to a minor league deal with an invite to Spring Training. Putting myself in Torres speedy shoes, I imagine he was prepared to start his year in Fresno. However, things turned out differently. Torres impressed the Giants while in camp and opened the season with the team in San Francisco. It was the first time since 2005 that Torres had been on a major league roster. I was slightly pessimistic about Torres’ odds, but across the board he had a fine season, which when tabulated by WAR, added up to +2 wins.

The biggest surprise with Torres was his hitting. Torres was never a masher in the minor leagues, but he showed up to the Giants and made hard contact all year long. In 170 PA’s, Torres hit 6 home runs, 8 triples, and 6 doubles. That’s an ISO of .262. But it wasn’t just his hitting that made Torres stand out, his fielding was exceptional. By UZR, in an admittedly too-tiny-sample to take seriously, he was +7.8 runs above the average CF in just 351 innings fielded. Pro-rated to 150 games in CF, that’s a +30 run season. That’s probably not going to happen, but with Torres’ footspeed, he should be able to play CF around +5 runs over a full season, making him a very good defender.

This Spring Training, Torres must feel like he’s repeating history. He’s back in camp and again fighting for a job. The Giants have 2 open OF positions to split among Fred Lewis, John Bowker, Eugenio Velez and Andres Torres. Because of Torres’ ability to handle CF adeptly, he should have somewhat of an inside track to make the team. Out of the Lewis, Velez, and Bowker group, none of them can really play CF — even though the Giants have stuck Velez there from time-to-time. I don’t think anyone should expect Torres to repeat his .379 wOBA from last year. His BABIP (.347) and success on flyballs should make us skeptical of his chances in 2010. The BABIP of .347 is high, but it’s not totally outrageous, the one thing that Torres shouldn’t be able to repeat was his success when hitting the ball in the air. When talking about batted balls, flyballs are turned into outs more often than groundballs, but they do more damage when they land for hits (or go over the fence). It’s hard to hit a groundball out of the park. Thanks to the handy Baseball-Reference, we can see just how fortunate Torres was in ‘09 when he hit the baseball in the air. The average NL batter hit .224/.218/.595 on flyballs. Torres hit .378/.378/1.111 on flyballs. Or, by using sOPS+ — the split based version of OPS+, compares the current batter by split to the league average by split — of  259. That means that Torres hit 159% better than your league average hitter when it came to flyballs.

That’s unreal.

And, very likely unsustainable. Looking ahead, It’s hard to try and project Torres. His footspeed and range make me think his defense is for real, but trying to get a handle on his hitting is tough. His development as a player is all over the place. After struggling in the minors he put together a few nice seasons later in his career — namely his 2007 split between AA/AAA with the Tigers and his 2008 with the Iowa Cubs. Of course, age-to-level caveats apply, but it’s not impossible that Torres learned something in the minors that helped him on offense. CHONE has Torres projected as a .319 wOBA hitter for 2010 which is quite the drop off. You might think that if Torres is a .319 wOBA batter, then he’s not very valuable. Not true. Torres would be a below average hitter, but his defense is a plus in CF and his baserunning should chip in a few runs as well.

Unless Rowand is hurt by slamming into a wall, the Giants won’t need Torres to be a starter. His defense and baserunning make him a nice candidate as a 4th OF. And he’s the only player on the roster that can honestly handle CF in an above average fashion. Those reasons should make him the go-to guy to start the season with the team in the majors. Torres has taken a long path to the majors, but if he can stay healthy and defend in CF, he should be able to find some work at the major league level as long as his legs are healthy.

I’ve probably uttered the following phrase on this site a million times, but Pablo Sandoval really did have a terrific year at the plate last season. He started the season off a little rough, neither hitting for power or getting on base, but he corrected himself pretty quickly. Around game #20 his BA, OBP, and SLG all improved and he never really let up, kicking it up another notch around game #60 — especially in the power department — as he coasted to the end of the year as one of the best hitters in the National League. One of my biggest concerns with Pablo last year was his power, but he sustained a > .500 SLG for most of the season. And he’ll only be 23-years-old next season.

Rowand wasn’t as fortunate as Pablo in ‘09. He started off hot, cooled down a little, and was moved to the leadoff around game #37 to somewhere around game #87. Rowand’s success as a hitter while batting leadoff shouldn’t be considered a cure for his hitting problems — more than likely it was a happy coincidence. But, Rowand will be heading into 2010 as the most likely candidate to hit leadoff for the G’s. He’s been a streaky hitter in his career and you can expect more of the same in the upcoming campaign. After watching Rowand limp to the finish line (hello, sliders!) it’s hard to imagine that around midway through the season he was hitting .295/.355/.478.

I’ll be editing the spreadsheets as changes occur. Each player is also color-coded based on their Opening Day status. Red means unavailable for Opening Day, yellow is questionable, and green is ready-to-go. You can also filter each column by your desired criteria.

Editgrid Link: http://www.editgrid.com/explore/user/xanthan/InjurySheet

“Velez attacks flaws in hopes of sticking”

Eugenio is like the bad habit the Giants just can’t quit. Giving Eugenio playing time should be lumped in between picking your nose and forgetting to turn off your cell ringer during movies. Yet, he runs fast and the Giants like guys that run fast because speed doesn’t slump, unless you’re Eugenio Velez and you can’t get on base. Then speed kinda slumps. But he’s still fast! And he’s kinda funny looking which is nice because every baseball team needs a guy that’s funny looking.

Worst article quote:

Third-base coach Tim Flannery, the Giants’ bunting guru, estimated that the fleet Velez could boost his batting average by 15 to 20 points if he became proficient at tapping the ball up the third- or first-base line or dragging it by the pitcher.

Hmm, the arbitrariness is delicious. The only skill between Eugenio Velez and competency on offense is bunting. Yup.

I don’t have to tell you that Eugenio Velez isn’t a very good player of baseball. Of the 5 tools that scouts like to use to asses players, Velez has 1 tool, he’s very fast. And unless you count hilariously crazy defensive clanks as a tool, it’s the only that he has to work with. He’s played almost every defensive position on the diamond. In the minors, he played 116 career games at SS (which is still a funny image to me) 201 games at 2B, 74 games in CF, and 52 games in LF. This gives Eugenio the illusion of being a versatile utility man when he should probably only being playing LF in the majors.

What I think shocks me — and maybe you — the most about Velez is that he’s not young, either. Despite his scrawny, gangly and youthful appearance, he’ll be 28-years-old next season. His minor league numbers should give us the slightest hope, but each day they seem more and more unlikely. Velez might be out of baseball in 2 years or he might still be playing, who knows. But even though I don’t think he should be playing too much on this year’s team, I’ll always appreciate him for this:

Yeah. That was pretty cool.

If a player is not traded, and clears waivers, he may be released from the team. The player is then a free agent and may sign with any team, including the team that just released him. The team that releases him is responsible for the salary the player is owed, less what he is paid by the team that signs him. In practice, that amount is usually a pro-rated portion of the Major League minimum salary.

A quick word on Ramirez and why he might interest the Giants. Ramirez is a 6′3″ right-handed reliever out of the Yankees organization that has also spent time in his earlier years with the Angels. He works off of a 88-89 mph fastball that he’s thrown 53% of the time in the majors and a plus-changeup (that’s sometimes been called a “Bugs Bunny Change”) that he’s thrown a hair under 38% of the time. He has a slider but it’s usage has been minimal. By FanGraphs pitch-type linear weights, his changeup has been an above average pitch for him in his 98.1 career innings in the majors — over that time-frame his changeup has been worth a total of +7.6 runs above average. He sells the change really well and it’s his best pitch. He’s not a hard-thrower, but his fastball and changeup combo has devastated minor league hitters.

Ramirez’s career minor league numbers:

Note: some of his years cover different levels and leagues. To get a more specific breakdown of Ramirez’s number in the minors, check out his BB-Ref page.

Yup, those numbers should be enough to interest any team. Ramirez hasn’t had the same level of success in the majors as the minors. He’s still had the ability to K hitters with a career K/9 in the majors of 10.62, but his BB/9 at 5.13 is well above his minor league control numbers. CHONE is projecting him as a 4.37 FIP reliever for the 2010 season — making him more of a back-end bullpen guy than a late inning reliever. But Ramirez does offer plenty of upside, especially in the NL. His minor league numbers are fantastic and a smart team needing to round out their bullpen should check in on Edwar. If the Giants picked him up, I’d rank rank him above Brandon Medders, and maybe even Waldis Joaquin or Dan Runzler.

Other links on Ramirez: Neyer | THT | River Ave. Blues

My feelings about relievers stem from the the following:

~ Generally speaking, anyone can relieve. The list of starters-turned-to-relievers is long. You rarely see anyone go in the other direction from reliever to starter. Therefore, the potential population to draw relievers from is enormous.

~ They just don’t pitch that much. Having a relief ace is great, but he’s only going to pitch in 60-some innings for your team. There just isn’t a lot of available PT for a reliever to influence a game. I think you could make the case for shifting back to multiple inning usage, a’la Goose Gossage, but with specialization in the ‘pen, I’m not sure that’s going to happen anytime soon.

Because of these two reasons, I have a hard time justifying paying the going rate for relievers, which admittedly has taken a hit lately. You can still find good buys (Jeremy Affeldt being one of them) but in general, paying for relief help through the FA market seems risky. Tom Tango in his seminal post on calculating WAR ran the numbers behind roster construction and found that by WAR, you should only use around 10% of your entire payroll on relievers. That’s by far the smallest percentage of any portion of your roster. It’s even lower if you consider pitcher risk.

Switching gears a little, after trying to think about how to sum up my feelings re: relievers, I then started to think about how teams manage their bullpens. We’ll often hear the phrase in the press or on the TV that a certain manger “really manages his bullpen well.” Managing a bullpen can be a catch-all term but to me it normally means when in-game a manager calls on his relievers. You want to use your best reliever in the best possible spots based on leverage — or the state of the game. We give relievers credit for working in tight late game situations. Example: Brian Wilson comes in a 1 run game in the 8th innings, 2 outs, and the bases are loaded. That’s a much higher leveraged situation than Brandon Medders working mop-up in the 4th inning of a blowout. Wilson will get credit for his hard work and Medders will not. Seems fair, right? In theory, managers will use their best relievers in the toughest leveraged situations. It makes no sense to bring in Wilson during the 5th inning when the Giants are up by 6 runs.

Therefore, I wanted to look at every qualified reliever (by FanGraphs) by 2009 and examine their FIP vs the average leverage index they pitched in. The theory remains that the higher the leverage, the better the reliever should be. Nobody wants the worst member of the bullpen pitching the 9th inning in a close game.

There seems to be on obvious relationship between pitcher quality and use. Managers aren’t going to throw a 5.00 FIP pitcher into the 9th inning and expect him to wiggle out of tight jams. You can see a few relievers that posted very high FIP scores but still worked very high 2+ leverage situations*. The players who posted poor FIP’s but were still give high leveraged situations are the Established Closer ™ types. Brad Lidge had a down year posting a 5.45 FIP but he still pitched in tough situations. Brian Fuentes was very similar. The graph also shows how good Brian Wilson was last year. He pitched in extremely high leveraged situations while posting a FIP of 2.50. His success by FIP combined with his usage adds up to a 2.4 win season. For a reliever, that’s an incredible sum. Brian Wilson’s work out of the bullpen was one of the highlights of the Giants’ 2009 season. But, as his price rises through arbitration, the Giants might want to start combing their system for their next great relief arm.

*A quick word about leverage, 1.0 indicates a neutral situation. Closers tend to work around 1.8 and guys who are mopping up will be below 1.0. Read more about leverage at FanGraphs.

Phil Hughes’ success as a reliever has been well documented but despite his sub-2.00 FIP score, he was leveraged pretty low. You can chalk that up to team composition. When you’ve got Mariano Rivera in front of you, you’re probably not going to get the high leveraged situations. Also of note is Luis Perdomo, former Rule 5 pick by the Giants. Perdomo is notable not because he performed well for the Padres, but because his average leverage index of 0.28 was by far the lowest of all our relievers. In order to keep a Rule 5 pick, he must remain on your active roster for the entire season and it’s pretty obvious that the Padres hid Perdomo in their bullpen, only letting him out when the situation allowed.

Managers seem to have an idea of who their best reliever is and how they should use him. Which makes me think that the idea of managing a bullpen is overrated to an extent. Should we give credit for a manager realizing who his relief ace is and when to use him? Even if managers are judging relievers by things like ERA or scouting reports, it seems that by and large, they make the right call. Which makes me think, is it all that hard to do?

I’m between a few things but this has to be watched. Jim Bowden interviewing Dayton Moore about advanced stats? Pure gold.

(H/T to Marcello!)