They often say that the biggest transition for a prospect is between A and AA baseball. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but it often seems that way. By all accounts Crawford’s glove was still terrific — BA ranked him the best defensive infielder in the system, here — but you’ve got show at least something offensively to carve out a starting role in the majors. Stat-watchers should have expected Crawford to have a rough transition from San Jose to Connecticut. Why? Crawford’s BABIP in San Jose was a staggering .493. We know that hitters can have a larger affect on their BABIP than their pitching counterparts, but a near .500 BABIP is an outlier. Crawford was hitting for a ton of power in San Jose (ISO .229) but he was striking out in nearly 1/3rd of his at-bats (K% 30.48%). When he got to AA, he walked even less (dropping from 8% to 4%) and his BABIP dropped to a more reasonable .334.

It was a rough stretch in AA for Crawford. The Giants left him in AA to start the 2010 season and so far the early returns have been great. Some numbers:

Year	Tm	        Lev	PA	BB%	K%	ISO	BABIP
2009	2 Teams	        AA-A+	542	5.54%	26.56%	0.132	.364
2009	San Jose	A+	119	8.40%	30.48%	0.229	.493
2009	Connecticut	AA	423	4.73%	25.51%	0.107	.334
2010	Richmond	AA	166	16.29%	24.44%	0.148	.294

Data pulled from 5.23.10

I’ve listed 4 pretty important statistics for hitters above. How much they walk (BB%), strikeout (K%), how much power they hit for (ISO), and their batting average on balls in play (BABIP). The most impressive development about Crawford’s second crack at AA baseball has been his BB% — it currently stands at 16.29%. After posting a 4.73% in AA last year, Crawford has nearly quadrupled his walk rate this year. He’s still striking out at the same rate, but strikeouts are less egregious if you can supplement them with other skills — namely getting on base via the walk and hitting for power. Overall, the Eastern League is a pretty tough place for hitters. For example, the league average hitter in the EL right now is hitting .251/.328/.378 (OPS .706). That includes slugging first basemen, outfielders, and other offense first positions. Comparatively, Crawford is hitting .252/.364/.400 (OPS .764). And that’s as a SS with above-average defense. Crawford’s ISO isn’t in the .200+ range that it was in San Jose, but at the current .148 he’s showing moderate power.

The biggest caveat is that it’s still early in the year — just 166 plate appearances to this point — but if Crawford’s change at the plate is for real, his ceiling adjusts a little from bench glove to potential starter.

If we call Crawford a .310 wOBA batter in the majors — think Orlando Caberera’s 2009 season or about any .700 OPS batter in the majors — we could value Crawford as follows:

Batting Wins Above Average (.310 wOBA, league wOBA .332): –1.28 wins
Defensive Wins Above Average: +0.5 wins
SS Positional Adjustment: +.75 wins
Replacement Level: +2.25 wins
-——————————————————————-
= 2.22 wins above replacement * .8 (or 80% playing time ie: 560 PA’s) = +1.78 wins

Under our assumptions above he projects as a 1.78 win player for the Giants in 80% playing time. I’m calling him a +5 run defender at SS, which is very good when you consider he plays in the most athletic player group in baseball. Also, keep in mind that this WAR valuation is without any baserunning component. Crawford should be mobile enough to chip in a couple of runs with is legs each year.

Depending on how Crawford finishes out this year — and if his new plate approach is for real — the Giants should have a couple of decisions on their mind. Edgar Renteria and Juan Uribe are both free agents after this season and Crawford is the only prospect in the minors that you could consider for the opening at SS. From the looks of it, the best available ’11 SS FA will be J.J. Hardy. The Giants might want to consider signing a SS that can play half the year at the position before turning it over to Crawford. Again, it’s still very early in the year, but Crawford’s progress is quite encouraging. He’s probably the #5 prospect in the Giants system right now.

I would break down the Top-5 as follows:

1. Buster Posey
2. Madison Bumgarner
3. Zach Wheeler
4. Thomas Neal
5. Brandon Crawford

With Brandon Belt around #6-8.

Comment Starter: What do you make of Crawford’s season so far? Is it too aggressive to pencil him into the 2011 Giants team?

I guess it’s supposed to be a rhetorical question. One I would rather not spend any more time thinking about. The Giants dropped to 8-6 on the young season last night after losing 1-0 to the San Diego Padres. Jonathan Sanchez pitched brilliantly but made a fatal mistake when he allowed a single to Chase Headley, who eventually came around to score on a stolen base, a pop-out that moved him to third, and then a sacrifice fly off the bat of evildoer Scott Hairston. It’s obvious to me that Sanchez has yet to learn how to win a major league game. A grittier, guttier pitcher would have never allowed such a sequence of events to take place.

On the topic of Sanchez, he’s pretty flipping good. In 19.1 innings pitched this year he’s already struck out 27 batters. That’s an eye-popping K/9 of 12.57. Sanchez was sharp for most of the night outside of the 2nd inning. Sanchez’s 2nd inning is classic Sanchez. If you could distill him into one single inning to represent him as a player, it would have been that 2nd inning. He threw 27 pitches, walked 3, and struck out 3 — leaving the bases loaded on a Matt Latos K to end the frame. Sanchez’s ability to miss bats is quite rate.  How rare you ask?

From 2008-2010, starters ranked by K/9 with a minimum of 300 IP over that span.

Rich Harden, Tim Lincecum, and Jonathan Sanchez are your top-3 pitchers that have been the hardest to hit since 2008. That’s a danged good list to be a part of. It’s amusing to see Jorge de la Rosa right behind Sanchez. He’s a hard-throwing lefty with control problems much like Sanchez and I think they are almost mirror images of each other as players. I think this list might surprise the average fan. And it goes to show what a talent the Giants have in Sanchez. Whether or not he ever “puts it together” and reduces his BB/9 is anyone’s guess, but on the level of raw talent, he’s up there with some of the top pitchers in baseball.

Unfortunately for Sanchez and the Giants, the game boiled down to the 8th inning.

Facing reliever Mike Adams, Nate Schierholtz tripled to christen the eighth before Whiteside grounded out, pinch-hitter Bengie Molina popped up and Velez took a called third strike.

In my opinion, this is a pretty poor job of managing by Bochy and it might be the 2nd time within the last week that he’s cost the Giants a game. With a runner on third base and zero outs, why let Eli Whiteside hit? Whiteside may possess supernatural magical game-calling abilities, but if it’s one thing we can be certain about Whiteside, it’s that he’s a poor hitter. How do we know this? Over thousands of minor league at-bats he owns a career slash of .244/.288/.393. As a 28-year-old in AAA, he was posting an OPS of .600. He’s just not good. And to let him hit, and then let Molina pinch-hit in the next at-bat is confusing to say the least. Why not let Molina hit for Whiteside? You end up not giving an at-bat to the poorest hitter on your team.

It seems clear that the Giants are still going to struggle to score runs. Renteria hit into two double plays in the game which helped him rack up a WPA of -.257. Since his HR off of Billy Wagner, Renteria has gone 5-38, .132/.171/.158. With Rowand and DeRosa banged up, the Giants have to hope they can tread water for a little bit until they get them back in the lineup. I’m still a little worried about DeRosa’s health. He hasn’t, to my knowledge, had hamstring problems before, but he seems to be hitting everything to RF softly.

The Giants will wrap up against the Padres tonight when Todd Wellemeyer (6.97 K/9, 6.10 BB/9, 8.82 FIP) takes the mound.

*There is some debate at which rate certain statistics stabilize. But nothing that you can reliably draw from is going to happen at under 50 plate appearances for any statistic.

It’s the cold logic of sample sizes that should keep us grounded in reality — or at least we should want to see more, much more, before we can any proclamations.

Enter Edgar Renteria and his current slash-line of: .688/.737/1.000 (11 hits, 16 at-bats)

In yesterday’s game against the Braves, Renteria cracked a 1-2 Billy Wagner slider over the LF fence. That 2-run HR that tied the game was Renteria’s first HR of the year. He hit 5 total HRs in 2009. It was an awesome moment in Giants baseball. The team had struggled for most of the day to hit Tim Hudson and Renteria — who is coming off a horrible, horrible ’09 — became the hero. Our first instinct, I think, is to place a huge amount of weight on that single swing. It was a great swing, but in truth, it doesn’t tell us much — if anything — about Renteria’s path for the rest of the season.

It’s possible that Renteria’s elbow problems from ’09 are completely cured and it’s the reason why he struggled so much on offense. It’s possible that he’s primed for another high BABIP season and ready to be a competent hitter for the Giants. It’s also possible that he’s had a great start to the year and he just ran into a 1-2 slider from Wagner, hitting it into the seats. It’s all possible, but we don’t know where Renteria will end up by year’s end. That shouldn’t detract us from the results he’s provided so far, but before we try and make any declarations of where he’ll be — and if he’s back/finished/holding steady — by the end of the season, we should be patient.

I don’t know if Renteria is going to a positive for the Giants this year. But I sure enjoyed that at-bat against Wagner and that’s something I think we can all agree on.

—

Bumgarner Update: Madison Bumgarner made his first start of the year for the Grizzlies and things did not go well. He pitched 3 innings, gave up 11 hits, 4 runs, 4 earned runs, walked 2, and struck out 2.

Dollars still have not been announced, but Uribe has passed his physical and the deal should be finalized today. I would expect the deal to be worth between $2-3M for a year. Part of Uribe’s return to the Giants makes me wonder how much of a leash the team will give Edgar Renteria? Sabean has stated a few times in the press how much he admired Renteria for playing injured (and ineffectively) for most of the 2009 season. If Renteria’s collapse in ’09 continues next year, could the Giants start Uribe at SS?

Food for thought: Uribe’s UZR scores at SS over the past 6 years.

2004: +4.5 (287.1 innings fielded)
2005: +7.1 (1293.1)
2006: +6.2 (1130)
2007: -2.2 (1305.1)
2008: +0.3 (15)
2009: -1.2 (318.2)

Uribe has no doubt gained some weight since his Chicago days (2005 version of Uribe vs. the 2009 version) and I’m not sure we can call him a +6-7 run defender at shortstop anymore. But, just how would his defense play at short? This post from Beyond the Boxscore has projected UZR scores for 2010 and Uribe projects (with an age-adjustment) as a -1 run defender at SS for the upcoming season. Even if we think that the -1 run projection is a little optimistic — and want to call Uribe something like a -3 run defender at SS — he would project as something like a 1.5 WAR player at SS given almost 550 PA’s playing time and assuming he hits a .320 wOBA.

Edgar Renteria was worth +0.3 wins to the Giants last year. His collapse on offense (worth -19.8 batting runs below average) totally destroyed his overall value. In his 2008 season with the Tigers, Renteria was a 1.4 win player. Outside of Marco Scuatro, the SS market this year was very shallow. It’s possible that my initial reaction of “Why would Uribe come back to the Giants” was wrong. The Giants get a player that, from the looks of it, should still be able to handle SS in a non-terrible fashion. Uribe gets to come back to the team he found success with and, if Renteria crashes completely, he has the best chance to become a starter again.

Update: Salary confirmed at 1-year, $3.25M.

For example, look no further than Edgar Renteria. In his non-super high BABIP years, he’s been about a +2 win player — ie: entirely serviceable and worthy of a major league roster spot. But, to start this season Renteria has largely struggled. Heading into April 21st, he was hitting a Bockcockian line of : .200/.289/.250. That’s pretty ugly no matter how you slice it. But he compiled those numbers in a scant 45 plate appearances. That’s a drop in the bucket when compared to an entire season’s worth of PA’s. Then, on the night of April 21st, Renteria went 3-4 with a grand slam and 5 RBI’s. His line then went to: .250/.327/.364 in just one night. That’s an OPS increase of nearly 130 points between two games.

That’s why it’s not a good idea to put too much stock (ie: Zito’s finally figured things out! or Fred Lewis’ mighty .500+ OBP is here to stay!) in early season performances. They are very volatile and subject to some pretty big swings. It’s not to say that a player’s first 50 PA’s (or 30 IP if you’re a starter) don’t mean anything. They do mean something — but they probably don’t mean as much as most would like.

With that out of the way, I thought it would be interesting to post some early season Small Sample Size All-Stars or SSSAS by FanGraph’s Win Values.

This All-Star team has some pretty good talent on it. But, there are a couple of SSS guys on here. I think most would be shocked to learn that Marco Scutaro is the best SS in baseball right now. His line of: .262/.410/.525 is no doubt impressive but it far exceeds anything else he’s done in his career in over 2,400 PA’s. Marco has put together that line in just 78 PA’s or about 11.1% of a full season of play for a position player. Or, to think of it another way, he’s got nearly 90% left of his season to hit, field, and run the bases.

Raul Ibanez is a very good hitter, but his terrible fielding — he’s been anywhere from -5 runs to -20 runs in LF over the last three years with no signs of improvement — has brought down his total win values to +2-2.5 over the last three seasons. In just 57 PA’s to start the season, Ibanez has already put up +1 win of value. In large part because his terrible fielding hasn’t caught up to him yet — he’s playing an average LF right now. If you extrapolated his early season +1 win total to a full season of play, he’d end up as a +12 win player. That’s not going to happen.

On the other side, here’s the list of position players by lowest WAR and position.

I’m cheating a little here to make my point. Jimmy Rollins isn’t the worst SS in all of baseball, but he’s in the top three. Some of the names on this list are legitimately bad players. Cody Ransom probably is a AAAA-type at this point. The jury is out on Felix Pie — but his defense should save him to an extent. But, Conor Jackson is coming off a +3 win season and Brian Giles has aged quite well as a player. Sure, he could be on his way out this year, but there’s no way of knowing this early in the season.

—

I’ll spin this back to a Giants context. For the first month or so of the season, try to relax when you’re considering player performances. There’s definitely good signs to look for (and historic context matters, too) but I’ve seen more than one Internet posting about how Tim Lincecum is broken after just two disappointing starts or how Edgar Renteria is the worst signing ever. Just be calm, relax, and things will work themselves out.

Though, it’s OK to think Eugenio Velez is pretty bad.

Something I had forgotten about Spring Training  — it’s really long. The games have been going on for a couple of weeks now and yet, we’re still about 20+ days away from Opening Day. Trust me, I’m happy that baseball is back, but I think I’ve seen enough of random prospects and journeymen. I want the real thing to start. I’m not just anxious for MLB action to resume, but I can’t wait to follow the minor league prospects either.

Now for a couple of news items:

~ Zito got torched by the Kansas City Royals on Sunday. He tossed 5 innings but gave up 10 hits, 2 home runs, and 6 earned runs. He walked 3 hitters while striking out none. His ST ERA now sits at 7.24. Drawing too much from ST is a foolish thing to do, but Zito sure isn’t helping to calm my fears.

Zito blamed a lack of rhythm for his pitching troubles:

“It’s not automatically there right now, where sometimes you slip out of it and then you fall right back into it,” Zito said of his rhythm. “I think here you have to produce it and really get that feel for it again, and when you have some repetition under your belt, then it’s something you can fall back into if you go out there for an inning and you lose your rhythm.”

~ Willie Mays is giving Aaron Rowand some important CF playing tips.

Rowand did not always get great jumps on balls and overthrew cutoff men far more than a seven-year major-leaguer should. Mays had some answers. He told Rowand to close the gap between his fingers when he grips the ball and throw more on a downward slope, as a pitcher does. Mays also said Rowand needs to crouch more as the pitch is thrown, allowing for a more catlike step toward long flyballs.

I’m enjoying that our 77-year-old legend is giving Rowand tips on how to throw a baseball.

~ You can read a nice guest post on Extra Baggs by Dan Brown. Brown has some of the new Fielding Bible (or plus/minus) numbers from John Dewan. He actually touches some on Renteria, calling himi a -7 play defender at shortstop. -7 plays translates to about 5.5 runs below average. That’s not too far off of his bUZR score from last season of -1 run below average.

A few quick bits of information regarding the graph:

1. Everything is pro-rated to 700 PAs.
2. The defense line includes a positional adjustment for the position played. In this case, Renteria gets a bump for playing shortstop.
3. Total Value = Offense + Defense

On to the graph:

You can see some previous Giants depicted using these player value graphs, here. A few things are explained in that post and it might be a decent place to start if you’re unfamiliar with these graphs.

Thoughts:

• Immediately by looking at the graph you can see Renteria’s two great years in 2003 and 2007. In both years, his bat played nearly +30 runs above average. Remember that everything is getting pro-rated to 700 PAs, so Renteria’s actual real world numbers might be a little off if we compared them to his pro-rated numbers. A shortstop putting up +30 runs by his bat alone is a superstar — if he’s not a Michael Young-esque defender. His bat took a dip in 2004, falling to -10 runs below average, but it rebounded over the next three years until it fell again last season in Detroit.
• I found it interesting that Renteria’s bat had more variance than his glove. In his peak hitting years, Renteria’s BABIP was .348 (2003) and .375 (2007). He strikes me as a hitter that will occasionally post a .340+ BABIP and have a very strong season at the plate, but even if he’s hitting closer to his career averages — in regards to BABIP — he’s in the area of an average hitter.
• Renteria’s defense has received a lot of criticism and by looking at our graph, it looks a little unfair. He’s definitely dropped from his 2002-03 years, but he’s remained respectable from 2005-08. If you look at this defensive line from ’05-’08,  he’s held steady. If you look at his bUZR numbers for our time range (non positional adjustments included) you’ll get the following scores: +5.7, +6.8, +0.3, -3.6, -2.3, -3.3, and -1. He’s no longer an above-average defender at shortstop, but when you consider his peer group, he’s definitely respectable with the glove. He’s not going to play defense like Omar Vizquel but he’s also not going to embarrass himself.
• CHONE has Renteria projected as a -6 run shortstop next season which seems reasonable. I wouldn’t be surprised if he beat that projection by a couple of runs.

All things considered, signing Renteria to a 2-year, $18.5M deal wasn’t a bad move by the Giants. He’s got a good chance to be a +2 win player for the 2009 season. If he reaches the +2 win range, he’ll be fairly paid for his services. As we’ve seen with our graph, his defense really isn’t as bad as most have made it out to be. He’s not a glove-man at short, that’s for sure, but he’s been respectable if nothing else.

By looking at the graph, you can see that Renteria’s bat has varied quite a bit over the last 7 years. Most of the projections — CHONE, Marcel, and Oliver — have Renteria projected as a league average hitter — slightly better or slightly worse — for 2009. But, there’s always a chance that he posts a .340+ BABIP season and beats those projections. Even if Renteria hits slightly below his career BABIP, he’s got a good chance to be worth around +2 wins.

Signing Edgar Renteria was a good move that addressed a legitimate issue on the team without committing more than 2-years to fix the problem.

Comment Starter: Your thoughts on Renteria?

Enter Edgar Renteria whom the Giants signed to a 2-year, $18.5M deal in December.

Renteria was coming off a career low in Detroit in ’08 when he posted a wOBA of .308 that was nearly 30 points under his career average. Early in the season, Jim Leyland questioned Renteria’s work ethic and playing shape.  Renteria struggled in the 1st half of the season but bounced back some in the second half. By reading various Giants sites and other MLB sports blogs, I’ve seen a good bit of criticism directed towards Edgar Renteria. Most don’t like the price the Giants paid for Renteria, but the team jumped on him early in the market before prices really started to drop. The other common criticism is that Renteria simply isn’t a good, valuable addition to the team that saw a combined shortstop production of: .228/.295/.281.

We’ll talk about valuation some in the next post, along with a year-to-year trending of Renteria’s skills (both offensive and defensive) by using my player value graphs. But today, we’ll lightly touch on the topic of Renteria’s offensive performance over the last three seasons. The claim is that Renteria’s underlying peripherals haven’t shifted much over the last three seasons and that he should be a decent bet to bounce-back in ’09.

The first plot we’ll be looking at will examine Renteria’s batted ball types over the last three seasons. His career numbers are also included. We’re looking at groundballs, flyballs, line drives, and the ratio of home runs hit to flyballs.

From 2006-2007 Renteria enjoyed two fine seasons with the Atlanta Braves. In particular, Renteria’s 2007: .332/.390/.470 was his 2nd best offensive performance ever — his ’03 slightly eclipses it because he accrued more PAs. You can see that from the three year sample we’re looking at, his batted ball data looks remarkably the same. By looking at this plot, you can get a feel for the type of hitter that Renteria is. He’ll hit lots of groundballs and line drives. From ’06-’08 his LD% doesn’t dip below 22%, even in his down year last season. He won’t hit the longball much, but that’s not really part of his skill-set. The most important thing to take away from this plot is that his batted ball data really didn’t change that much last season. His GB%, FB%, LD%, and HR/FB% are all around his established career numbers.

If the batted ball data didn’t change, what has? Let’s check out our next plot.

This plot looks at Renteria’s ISO and BABIP.

Renteria’s very good 2007 was largely helped by his .375 BABIP. In fact, in all of baseball in that year, Renteria ranked 9th in BABIP. We know that hitters can have more influence over their BABIP and for Renteria’s career he’s posted a .323 BABIP. His ’06 season was closer to this established career BABIP. His ’07 BABIP of .294 was a little on the low side, but nothing criminal — a quick xBABIP calculation says it should have been closer to .302 instead of .294. You can also see a slight decline in Renteria’s ISO but hitting for power isn’t a huge part of his game. If he can continue to hit line drives at 20%+, you can live with the decrease in power.

I think it’s pretty clear that expecting Renteria to post a .370+ BABIP like he did in ’07 isn’t smart because it’s not going to happen. But, if he can bounce back closer to the .320 range that he’s been able to reach over his career, his numbers will improve some.

Renteria’s upside is basically a league average hitter or slightly worse. In our WAR projections, that’s exactly how we’ve projected him for the ’09 season. But, an average hitter playing shortstop does have value. And that’s something we’ll be examinging tomorrow with our player value graphs. Stay tuned.

I like this pie chart because it shows — in my opinion — how much I think teams, fans, sportswriters, etc. can overrate the impact of a bullpen. I really like our improved bullpen, but in the big scheme of things, bullpens don’t add a lot of wins to a team. You tend to get the meat-and-potatoes from your position players — in part because they both create and prevent runs — and your starting pitching — because they throw more innings than your bullpen. If you want to spend on making your team better, you would get the most bang for your buck by improving your starting lineup and rotation. Of course, that assumes that you’ll be spending wisely. The Giants might have had the right idea with Barry Zito, but they missed the mark by miles.

Briefly looking at the wins added by the hitters/position players — this includes defense — we can see that Aaron Rowand is projected to add the most wins above replacement out of our group. For all those that groaned about the signing of Edgar Renteria, they could be groaning just to groan, he’ll add the 2nd most wins to the team among this group. In fact, only Renteria and Rowand are breaking the +2 wins threshold. Randy Winn almost breaks +2 wins with his projection. If I was a betting man, I would put down a bet on him to do so. Also, remember this is based on playing time — you can’t rack up WAR’s if you aren’t playing — so while Nate Schierholtz isn’t adding much to the overall team, it’s mostly because of playing time. Because of this, don’t get confused and believe that Dave Roberts is a better player, he’s just projected to get more playing time.

On to the starters group. Lincecum and Cain are really good. Johnson and Sanchez constitute a nice 1-2 punch, they both are projected to add +2 wins a piece to the team. Zito clocks in as our worst full-time starter and Noah Lowry is projected to chip in a quarter fraction of a win. If the Giants do decide to trade Sanchez, they would lose 2 wins off their team total. That assumes that they would replace him with exactly a replacement level starter — a starter with an ERA of 5.50.

Brian Wilson and Jeremy Affeldt should be the go-to relievers for the team in 2009. Also, remember that the reliever WAR projections include a leverage index which will help boost the wins of certain relievers used in high leverage situations. Wilson and Affeldt are getting a partial boost to their WAR’s because of this. Sergio Romo should be a solid member of the bullpen in ’09 and Bob Howry offers some upside if he can bounceback after a poor 2008 season. Hinshaw, Yabu, and Taschner are the bottom tier of the bullpen and should be used accordingly. The ‘Other RP’ group is responsible for 80 innings of exactly replacement level relief, that’s why they have a score of zero.

The Hardball Times has a nice article on UZR and some other defensive metrics here. You can also read some of MGL’s original posts on UZR which prove to be very informative if you are curious about the inner workings of the system. The bottom line is that UZR is one of the more respected defensive systems out there and to be able to get it for free, is awesome news. Let’s check out some 2008 UZR numbers for the San Francisco Giants.

2008 Giants Fielders by UZR (min. 300 innings)

The table is sorted by UZR/150 or how many runs a player would save over 150 games. I’ve also limited my data to fielders with a minimum of 300 innings played at a defensive position.

A quick note on sample sizes and defensive metrics. Looking at Burriss’ -14.1 runs below average for position might freak you out but understand that 315 innings is but a tiny drop in the bucket. It doesn’t tell us anything about Burriss. It has no predictive value and all we can say is that in 315 innings played at shortstop in 2008, he was below average. Is that his true talent level? We don’t know. The sample size is just too small and ideally you’ll want a few seasons worth of data before you try and figure out the true talent level of a player. Dave Cameron makes a good point on USSM about comparing players across positions. Burriss may have been below average in his brief 315 innings but UZR will compare him to his peers; ie: other shortstops. This is good because we want to know how Burriss stacks up against other shortstops but also remember that shortstops, as a group, are some of the most athletic defenders on the baseball diamond. A -10 shortstop isn’t the same as a -10 left fielder or first baseman, who are on average, less athletic. Burriss is being compared to Omar Vizquel, Cezar Izturis, J.J. Hardy, and Jimmy Rollins. Fred Lewis is being compared to Adam Dunn, Carlos Lee, and Pat Burrell. Context is important when thinking about these rankings.

Is Randy Winn one of the most undervalued players in baseball? Every year he hits about the same, providing league average offense — wOBA+’s of 96, 107, and 108 over the last three seasons — while playing some of the best right field in all of baseball. Last season, Winn was the best defensive right fielder in the game by UZR. He was worth +18.9 runs by his defensive play alone, that’s nearly +2 wins. This isn’t anything new for Winn. From 2006-2007 he was worth +15.3 and +11.9 runs above average in right field. Winn’s game is extremely un-flashy but as an overall player, he’s been one of the better Giants over the last couple of years.

Besides Randy Winn, Omar Vizquel and Fred Lewis are the only other players who scored as above average fielders in UZR. Vizquel’s bat might be dead but his defense is still very good. If Vizquel would have somehow played 150 games — that’s not going to happen any more — he would have saved 13.8 runs. A team who needs a late inning defensive replacement might consider Vizquel, just don’t let him hit too much. Fred Lewis did well in LF in ’08, he was worth +7 runs above average for his playing time and would have been closer to +12 runs in 150 games played. Lewis’ good foot-speed helped him to overcome sometimes awkward routes in LF to be a above average defender.

The Giants have to be worried about Aaron Rowand’s defensive performance in 2008. Rowand has been a good defender in CF but he saw a complete reversal of fortune last year. Check out his UZR’s from 2002-2007: +12.6, +9.2, +9.6, +16.5, +4.6, and +7.9. Those are solid defensive numbers to be getting from your CF. I’m not sure Rowand is the type to age well — plays hurt all the time, runs into walls, GAMER, etc. — and the Giants have to be hoping he’s not hitting a wall (no pun intended) at 30-years-old. If the team does have to move him out of center, I think he’ll be headed to LF. Playing right field in AT&T is almost like playing a second center field and if Rowand can’t hack it in CF, I can’t see him doing much better in RF. Next year will be a big year for Rowand and if he continues to slide, his contract starts to look much worse. I’m hoping he was hurt but we can’t just throw out all of his 2008 data and wish that it didn’t happen. For what it’s worth, CHONE’s defensive projections for 2009 see Rowand bouncing back to a +7 CF.

The rest of the list has the usual suspects. Rich Aurilia is an average defender at first base but takes a dip at third. John Bowker struggled at first base in ’08 and I’m guessing the Giants won’t revisit that expirmanet anytime soon. Velez rated better than I thought he would have, but remember, the sample size is too small to draw any conclusions from. Jose Castillo played better at third than I expected and Durham is closer to an average defender than I expected. Ray might have a couple of years left in the tank if he wishes to pursue them. New guy Edgar Renteria isn’t on my list, but he scored as a +1.1 shortstop for the Tigers in 2008. PMR hated Renteria and plus/minus had him as below average, but he might not be as bad as we thought. If you check out his fielding data over the past four years, you can see he looks to be pretty steady, fielding around average each year.