All Rooting Interest Team

In an effort to do something softer I have decided to make a team of players that I root for regardless of ability. A common criticism of sabermetricians is that they too often favor numbers over the human element of the game and I think that at times the criticism can be valid, although it is perfectly acceptable to enjoy both.

What follows are my positional picks for players that I support regardless of how good they are. I will include reasoning for why I root for these players. Some of these reasons will be petty or silly but that is part of being a fan. I avoided naming people who play for the Brewers simply because they play for my team and I did not name any players who I root for simply because they are good. Sometimes hoping for someone to do well is as much fun as watching someone do well.

I would encourage my colleagues here to do something similar.

SP - C.C. Sabathia
Reasoning: in a sport so plagued with steroid controversies it is kind of wonderful to watch a 250 lb man; it's nice knowing that there are professional athletes that I can easily outrun; he hit homeruns in each league last year becoming only the third pitcher in history to homer in both leagues in one season, one of those insane, nitpicky records that makes baseball wonderful, his big grin.

RP - David Aardsma
Reasoning: read this if you haven't yet; he is the first player alphabetically in major league history, replacing Hank Aaron and this is funny to me for some reason; his sister is an actress who appeared on CSI. Her character's name? Sexy Mistress.

C - Mike Napoli
Reasoning: was best friends with the man playing in front of him and by all accounts has been really supportive; his entrance song is "I'm On a Boat".

1b - Kevin Youkilis
Reasoning: on his wikipedia page the following phrases are found: "roly-poly", "pudgy", "fat kid"; Terry Francona's response when asked about his nickname (The Greek God of Walks) was "I've seen him in the shower, he isn't Greek God of anything."; holds the major league record for consecutive errorless games at first base, which is the most arbitrary record possible.

2B - Ian Kinsler
Reasoning: he is a small Jewish kid with asthma playing a professional sport; active in community charity work.

3B - Gordon Beckham
Reasoning: Josie's on a vacation far away come around and talk it over so many things I wanna say you know I like my girls a little bit older I just wanna use your love tonight I don't wanna lose your love tonight I ain't got many friends left to talk to nowhere to run when I'm in trouble you know I'd do anything for you stay the night but keep it undercover.

SS - Marco Scutaro
Reasoning: not necessarily stat-based but is supposedly a strong believer in sabermetrics as memorialized here; the entire trivia section of his wikipedia page is awesome but this in particular is incredible: On June 18, 2009, after being issued a walk by Phillies pitcher Joe Blanton, Scutaro immediately took off for second base and slid in safely.

LF - Juan Pierre
Reasoning: as much as he is crapped on my sabermetricians stories of him showing up early to ballparks and throwing balls against the wall to figure out how to play balls are endearing; is named after Juan Marichal; received the Cool Papa Bell award from the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and Cool Papa Bell is tremendous; robbed Barry Bonds of what would have been career home run number 714 on May 9, 2006.

CF - Curtis Granderson
Reasoning: fellow UIC alumnus; charity work; appeared on TNA Wrestling's Slammiversary PPV but I am deciding not to hold that against him.

RF - Ichiro Suzuki
Reasoning: his swing is awesome and I love imitating it during softball; I wish I was left handed so I could actually use his swing; his arm is astounding; he is probably the best current baseball player named Ichiro; his success makes teams continue signing Japanese players for ungodly sums of money in case they found the next Ichiro; they have not.

DH - Jim Thome
Reasoning: second place finisher in 2007 SI poll asking major league players to name the nicest player in baseball (behind Sean Casey who had 46%!!); put all 10 of his nieces and nephews through college; wordupthome.com

Final Vote

The final position of the All-Star game is decided by online vote among five candidates. Go vote now. Wait, not now. After I tell you who to vote for.

NL: Matt Kemp
First things first: if you vote for Cristian Guzman and his .310/.325/.418 then I'm coming to your house and punching you in the head. Matt Kemp (.307/.372/.474) leads all NL OFs with a 4.6 WAR. That is very good. He is fourth among position players in the NL. He's done it on both sides of the ball with 28 BRAR and 25 FRAR. I feel sort of bad for Pablo Sandoval (.328/.381/.564) as he's having a great year and is second in NL 3B in WAR, but the leader (Casey Blake) isn't even on the roster because David Wright is popular and Ryan Zimmerman is the default Nationals representative. No big deal though: Sandoval is 22 and will get more chances. So will Kemp but he deserves this one.

AL: Ian Kinsler
Kinsler should be starting. I understand how people voted for Pedroia (Kinsler: .252/.329/.498 3.9WAR, Pedroia: .290/.370/.392 2.6WAR) seeing as how he is the reigning MVP but why is Aaron Hill (.296/.335/.495 2.8WAR) ahead of him when the Blue Jays already were sending Roy Halladay? Granted, looking at their lines it becomes clear that Kinsler is playing great defense, but that was known anecdotally as he has been featured on all kinds of highlight reels this season for his glove. Anyway, go vote for Kinsler.

In reality I was going to tell you to choose the guy playing kickass defense because I think the All-Star game sucks when the players in the field aren't making plays like it's important. It turned out to be the persons leading in WAR.

2008 Positional MVP Picks: Second Basemen

For this round of positional MVP picks, we move from a traditional power position (first base) to a position where offensive production was long considered a bonus rather than a primary responsibility. Although the days of second basemen being almost exclusively glove men are decades past, there are still far fewer sluggers up the middle of the diamond than at the corners, which made writing Installment #4: Second Basemen more of a “balancing act” than previous positional MVP lists.

Put simply, choosing which metrics to apply to second basemen to determine their relative worth was far more difficult than the “offense is everything” approach I took for first basemen. Middle infielders may be expected to contribute more offensively now than they were forty years ago, but they still have to be strong defensively, so simply scanning the offensive leaderboards won’t tell the whole story of a second baseman’s season. Fortunately for me, there are far fewer top-tier second basemen (both offensively and defensively) in the major leagues than there are first basemen, so the need to account for defense didn’t result in a need to spend an absurd amount of time poring over extra statistics.

In fact, narrowing the field to seven or eight players was actually quite easy, and once I started crunching numbers, the top five pulled away from the rest of the pack pretty convincingly. An honorable mention goes to Mark DeRosa, who had an excellent year at the plate (.285/.376/.481 with 21 HR), and kept pace with numbers four and five on this list offensively, but whose defense (though solid) and VORP (35.7, 6.8 runs lower than my pick for #5 and 15 runs lower than #4) kept him from cracking the top five.

The gap between DeRosa and the rest of the field this year is, in my mind at least, significant, particularly since I still privilege offensive statistics over defensive statistics at second base—both due to their higher reliability and due to my belief that offense, even for middle infielders, is more important to winning ballgames than defense.

Here’s the top five:

5.) Dan Uggla’s batting eye is starting to catch up with his power stroke, resulting in 2008 being Uggla’s strongest season in the big leagues. The Florida second baseman hit .260/.360/.514 for an OPS of .874 (OPS+ 128) with 32 HR, a .296 EqA, 25 win shares, and a VORP of 42.5. He set career marks in OBP, SLG, OPS, OPS+, HR, and BB despite playing in fewer games (146) than in either of his previous two seasons.

Uggla may not have the best glove at second, but he’s not a liability, and he certainly isn’t as bad as he looked during the All-Star Game. Uggla’s range factor (RF) for 2008 was 4.86 (well behind the top glove men, but not exactly terrible), and although his zone rating (ZR) was a bit low at .803, his revised zone rating (RZR), which takes into account plays made outside a fielder’s “zone,” was a slightly more impressive .812, good enough for 11th among qualified fielders.

Uggla is in the Marlins lineup (and on this list) for his bat rather than his glove, and his mediocre fielding marks don’t undo the value he adds at the plate. However, they do prevent him from climbing higher than 5th on this list.

4.) Brian Roberts may not have anything even approaching Uggla’s power, but he’s a better fielder and an excellent top-of-the-order hitter. Roberts’s 2008 line was .296/.378/.450 with 9 HR and 51 doubles for an OPS of .828 (OPS+ 117), a .295 EqA, 21 win shares, and a VORP of 50.6.

The Orioles second baseman also stole 40 bags against only 10 CS for an 80.0% success rate (as opposed to Uggla, who was 5-for-10 in 2008 and is 13-for-25 over the course of his three year career), which was a major factor in pushing Roberts’s VORP 8.1 runs higher than Uggla’s.

Defensively, Roberts really pulls away from Uggla. Roberts’s 4.98 RF, .829 ZR, and .829 RZR were all higher than Uggla’s marks, and, coupled with his superior baserunning skills, made the Orioles second baseman the more valuable player in 2008.

3.) Ian Kinsler continued to develop into one of the top second basemen in the big leagues in 2008, hitting .319/.375/.517 with 18 HR, an .892 OPS (134 OPS+), a .311 EqA, 26 win shares, and a VORP of 54.6. Like Roberts, Kinsler can run, swiping 26 bases with only 2 CS for a 92.9% success rate, and Kinsler has significantly more power than the Orioles second baseman.

What makes Kinsler’s offensive numbers even more impressive is that he ended the 2008 season on the disabled list and only played in 121 games. Had he played in 20-30 more games, he may have overtaken one or both of the players ahead of him on this list, at least offensively.

On the defensive side, Kinsler is a bit more difficult to evaluate. His 5.77 RF led all Major League second basemen, but his .819 ZR and .801 RZR are much less impressive. Kinsler is so good at the plate that he’s an easy choice for #3 on this list, but his defensive shortcomings and partial 2008 season prevent him from climbing any higher.

2.) Dustin Pedroia has a very legitimate shot at the 2008 AL MVP (in fact, he’s my pick to win the award), and although I don’t believe he should be this year’s MVP, he certainly put up some impressive numbers: .326/.376/.493 with 17 HR, 54 2B, an .869 OPS (122 OPS+), a .298 EqA, 26 win shares, a VORP of 62.3 (tops among Major League second basemen), and 20 SB in 21 attempts (a 95.2% success rate).

Pedroia was solid defensively, as well. His 4.75 range factor is unimpressive, but he did a good job at handling what he got to, posting an .854 ZR and .829 RZR, and although I think it is a potentially misleading statistic, it is worth noting that Pedroia was second at his position (behind only Mark Ellis) in FPCT at .992.

My problem with Pedroia’s likely AL MVP award is not that I don’t believe he is a deserving MVP, but that, like Cliff Lee’s all-but-inevitable AL CYA, Pedroia’s award will probably be for the wrong reason (wins for Lee, and Boston’s playoff berth for Pedroia). Pedroia was the most valuable American League second baseman in 2008, and he was the most valuable player on the Red Sox this season, but the AL MVP should be about more than just the most valuable player on a playoff-bound team. However, Pedroia is not a bad pick for the award, so I won’t be terribly upset if he wins it, though I would cast my all-too-hypothetical vote elsewhere.

1.) Chase Utley once again put together a monster year, particularly for a middle infielder, in 2008, posting a line of .292/.380/.535 with 33 home runs (and 78 total XBH!) for an OPS of .915 (OPS+ 135), an EqA of .308, 30 total win shares, and a VORP of 62.2 (only 0.1 behind Pedroia’s). Utley, like Pedroia, was efficient on the basepaths, racking up 14 SB against only 2 CS (87.5%)—not an overwhelming total, but Utley is a 3-hole hitter rather than a leadoff man like Pedroia and Roberts, and he bats in front of Ryan Howard and Pat Burrell, both of whom rack up a lot of XBHs.

Not only did Utley have a better (or at the very least, more multi-dimensional) offensive year than any other second baseman on this list, he had a better defensive year as well. His 5.18 RF was fourth among all second basemen, and his ZR of .844 and RZR of .839 were third and fourth, respectively. Of the other second basemen on this list, only Uggla had a better RF (5.77 to 5.18), and only Pedroia a better ZR (.854 to .844); Utley’s RZR was tops among my top five.

Put simply, no other second baseman excelled at so many facets of the game as Utley did in 2008 (and 2007, and 2006, and 2005…). He hit for power, he got on base, he ran the bases well, and he fielded his position superbly, and was an easy choice for the top second baseman of 2008.