Times to First: Part 14

1. Sean Rodriguez (Rays): 6.53 (2nd to home)

2. B.J. Upton (Rays): 6.66 (2nd to home)

3. Kevin Youkilis (White Sox): 4.36

4. David Ross (Braves): 3.76 (on a bunt)

5. Andrelton Simmons (Braves): 3.71 (on a bunt)

6. Michael Bourn (Braves): 3.71

7. Jose Costanza (Braves): 10.74 (on a triple)

8. Yadier Molina (Cardinals): 4.60

9. Scott Rolen (Reds): 4.27

10. Ryan Ludwick (Reds): 4.65

11. Marco Scutaro (Giants): 4.12

12. Kurt Suzuki (Nationals): 4.40

13. Buster Posey (Giants): 4.33

14. Lew Ford (Orioles): 3.91 (on a bunt), 4.11

15. Joey Votto (Reds): 7.21 (from 2nd to home)

16. Ryan Hanigan (Reds): 11.74 (from 1st to home)

17. Skip Schumaker (Cardinals): 4.10

18. Tommy Mendoca (Rangers AAA): 8.76 (on a double)

19. Greg Miclat (Rangers AAA): 7.78 (on a double)

20. Jerry Sands (Dodgers AAA/Red Sox): 4.57

All the Times:

Pirates sign McLouth and Morales

The Pirates have signed Jose Morales and Nate McLouth.

McLouth signed a 1 year, 1.75 million dollar deal. In 2011, he had a .7 WAR, and a .6 WAR average over the last 3 years (a terrible 2010 plays into this). This is worth (according to the Halladay Standard) nearly exactly his new 1.75 million dollar deal. He is a terrible defender, with a -3.7 D-WAR for his career, and nearly half of his career O-WAR (7 seasons) came in 2008 (not incidentally, with the Pirates). In that year, he had a .356 OBP, .287 BABIP (his terrible 2010 season was tainted by a .221 BABIP and a relatively small sample size of 288 PA), and .497 SLG. It is hard to poke holes in those numbers, with a 125 OPS +. He has a nice career Secondary Average of .324, 5.3 Runs Created Per Game, and .542 Offensive Winning Percentage. However, the last two years, he has not Slugged very well with a .322 and .333 in 2010 and 2011. This could certainly be attributed to some of the injuries he has suffered, and a healthy McLouth would be expected to have a better Slugging. He is a flyball hitter, although he has less line drives than desirable. Overall, I think this is a decent deal, he was probably undervalued a bit in the market because of his health issues.

Morales got a minor league deal with a spring training invite. He has a career WAR of .6 in 252 PA. In this small sample, he has a .365 OBP, 89 OPS +, and .183 Secondary Average. His Offensive Winning Percentage is just under .500, even though he has a 4.8 Runs Created per game. All the positive statistics are really called into question by a .360 BABIP despite being a groundball hitter. He did walk above average, but most of his Major League Statistics are simply unreliable. Thankfully, Morales has 295 games worth of AAA games in the International League. There he had a .367 OBP, .772 OPS, .8 PPG, and 2.74 PAPP. Through the metric, he has an expected .321 OBP, 3.31 PAPP, and .4 PPG. This is an expected Offensive (Simple) WAR of -.6. Along with his -.1 D-WAR in his brief Major League career, it is doubtful that Morales will turn out to be anything. It is basically no risk though.

Should the Braves trade Prado and Jurrjens?

The Braves have now let it leak that they are interested in trading both Martin Prado and Jair Jurrjens. Prado has a 2.1 WAR average over the last 3 years (worth 6.3 million) and is going to arbitration this off-season (he made 3.1 million dollars in 2011, a 1476 WASP). Despite injury problems, Jair Jurrjens has still managed to put a 3 WAR average together over the past 3 years, which is worth 9 million dollars. He too will be in arbitration and he made 3.25 million in 2011. With the Braves payroll, they can afford about 2 million dollars per ever Win Above Replacement. This means that Jurrjens is worth about 6 million dollars to the Braves, and Prado is worth about about 4 million. I am not an arbitration expert, so I don't know how much they will probably get, but this metric makes the idea of the Braves trading these two less absurd than I thought when I originally heard the news. Prado has a slightly above average OBP of .341, PPG of 1.03, 2.83 PAPP, and OPS of .775. All these numbers are above average or replacement, but not amazing. Prado's well known flexibility defensively is overrated, as he has a -.3 D-WAR for his career. His Secondary Average (.212), and ISO (.141) are very pedestrian and concerning. While his Runs Created per Game is 5.1 and his Offensive Winning Percentage is .540, he walks less than average. His PPS is nothing real impressive at 92.69. As for Jurrjens, even though he was heralded as one of the best pitcher's in the league while healthy, he had a 1.3 PE and 2.33 Adjusted PE, hardly one of the league's best. His career PE is .98, with an Adjusted PE of 1.46. As bizarre as it sounds, he has obviously been helped out by the Braves defense (with perhaps some luck as well). His career TR is 9.68, and in 2011 it was 10.23. This is pretty good, and Jurrjens seems to be a relatively valuable pitcher. I think for either one it depends on how much they get in arbitration, if they go above the numbers listed above, it makes sense to trade them. With that said, it is imperative they don't miss on the trade and get real value back.

The Derek Lowe Trade

Derek Lowe had a -.4 WAR in 2011, and a 1.2 WAR in his 3 years in Atlanta, .4 WAR a year. This is only worth 1.2 million a year. He is scheduled to make 15 million dollars this season, and the Braves gave some cash, but they did not give 14 million dollars. Terrible 2.77 PE (adjusted PE by replacing ERA with FIP of 1.42) in 2011,and a 1.91 PE for his career. In his Career, he has a very nice TR of 11, and a still not bad 9.62 TR in 2011. So according to PE (and WAR frankly), this guy stinks, but according to TR, he is pretty good. What gives? Well to start with, his FIP was lower than his ERA all three years in Atlanta. He also was a sufferer of a .327 BABIP in 2011. He had a .280 BAA in 2011, but if his BABIP would have been at his career number (.295), he would have had a BAA of .252. He was either the unluckiest man alive, was getting the ball crushed (but not for homeruns), or had no fielding help. There was probably a combination of all 3. Lowe is of course an extreme groundball pitcher, and because of that doesn't give up very many homers. Because of this it is pretty surprising his BABIP is only .295 for his career. As horrible as he was (or at least seemed to be) in the second half of 2011, Lowe is not a bad pitcher (I would tend to side closer to what his TR says about him than his PE), with a career FIP of 3.79. But he is definitely not worth 15 million dollars. The Indians are certainly going to be overpaying him, and the main reason the Braves traded him was to relieve payroll. However, they did get minor league pitcher Chris Jones in return. Jones has never been past A ball, and has mainly pitched as a reliever. He spent all of 2011 as a reliever in A+ and that is what we will focus on here. He had a good -1.21 PE there, with an adjusted -.83 PE. His gave up just .75 HR/9IP, but his K/BB ratio was a little disappointing at 2.20. He looks to be a good reliever, but he isn't anything special and is still lightyears away. The trade was simply to free up salary for the Braves. They would be ecstatic if Jones did something, but not disappointed if he didn't. Meanwhile, the Indians simply took on too much money.

Peter Moylan: Arbitration

Peter Moylan's injury problems led to just a .2 WAR in 2011. He has an average WAR of .683, worth about 2 million dollars according to the Halladay Standard. He made 2 million dollars in 2011, and one would think arbitration would give him more money. He has a career -.949 PE, gives up a .324 OBP and .652 OPS. Lets on slightly less runners on than average, and gives up quite a bit less total bases and power than average (with very few homers). He walks too many batters, but he can make up for it with all the groundballs he gets. He has a really solid TR of 11.68, but his FIP is around 3.66 in his career (if you replaced his ERA with his FIP, his PE would be a positive, which is not a good PE for a reliever). It would seem if arbitration increases his salary (as it probably will), then the Braves should attempt to unload him. With his injury problems and questions about whether he will even be ready for Spring Training in 2012, they probably won't get a very good return for him, but their really isn't much sense in keeping him around for the money he will make.

Are the Braves really going to trade Jason Heyward?

There are some rumors on the Internets that the Braves may deal Jason Heyward. Surely this just frustrated Braves bloggers, desperate to pin the failures of 2011 on something. It wasn't a very good offensive season for Heyward, a bad .319 OBP, .708 OPS, 2.8 PAPP, and .89 PPG. With that said, he still put up a 2 WAR, and he only made $497,000, which is a fantastic WASP of 249. 2010 was much better though, as he put up a 5.2 WAR, 78 WASP, .393 OBP, .849 OPS, 2.41 PAPP, and 1.3 PPG. So what was the difference? One would be tempted to say that a book got out on him after his rookie year, and pitchers knew how to pitch to him. There is a rather obvious problem to this. He walked 91 times in 2010, it is not as if pitchers were just throwing meatballs up to him for him to hit. There is a better nonstatistical analysis, he wasn't healthy. He was battling injuries all year, and simply wasn't able to play up to his best abilities. There are statistical explanations as well though. Start with BABIP, in 2010 it was .335, in 2011, it was .260. This could either be luck, or he hit the ball like a little girl in 2011. If he was unhealthy, as it seems he was, it was the latter. The isolated slugging was lower, but not by a whole lot. As far as ratios go, the biggest difference was the percentage of walks per plate appearances, but it was really only about a 3% difference. Most distressing was that he went from 14% of his flyballs being in the infield in 2010, to 20% in 2011. In my opinion, most of these statistics could be explained by injuries. He is going to go through arbitration for the next 4 years, and won't be a free agent until about 2016. You simply aren't going to anyone that can get you that type of value realistically (unless you can get 2 or 3 MLB ready prospects or Mike Stanton). The Braves have made some pretty strange moves in recent years, but they have a pretty solid organization. I would be shocked if they made a move here, because this would make no sense.

An Uggla collapse

During last off-season, the Braves traded pitcher Michael Dunn and infielder Omar Infante for slugging 2nd basemen Dan Uggla. An Uggla delivered, for his old team and division rival Marlins. His batting problems were well documented, his OBP was .058 less than his previous career low. However, it was his defense that was the bigger problem in '11. He led NL 2nd basemen in errors, and posted a horrible -1.5 WAR on D. He actually had more homers in '11 than in '10, but had less RBIs (probably because less runners in front of him on base, which is why RBIs is a very imperfect stat). His other offensive metrics weren't very impressive, 1.29 PPG, and 2.85 PAPP. Those are okay numbers, until you consider his salary. Through 2015, Uggla will average making 12.4 million a year. He posted just a 1.6 WAR in his first year as a Brave (again, mainly because of his horrible defense), giving him a WASP of 7750 with that salary number (with the Marlins, Uggla posted an amazing 928 WASP, he averaged a 3.08 WAR with Florida, meriting a 9.24 million dollar salary). With that big salary number, even the good 2010 would have barely put him under the Halladay Standard at a 2952 WASP. He actually made 9 million in 2011, giving him a still not good WASP of 5825 for the middle of the road salary Braves. He will need a career high 4.3 WAR next year just to meet the Halladay Standard and be "worth it", and he has clearly regressed defensively, so that will be even harder to do. Omar Infante posted a career high 3.4 WAR in Florida, while making 2.5 million (an amazing 735 WASP). He is a free agent this offseason however. Michael Dunn posted a .7 WAR and a great WASP of 591 and won't be a free agent until 2016. Considering that the Braves missed the playoffs by one game, and lost 2.5 wins over replacement (!) in this trade, its not hyperbole or sports talk radio to say that this trade cost them the playoffs. Of course, its again the Marlins ( went nearly .500 this season despite having 24th largest payroll) doing a great job of unloading homegrown players when they get more expensive, and getting good players in return.