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Fun with Upper Deck: 2008 Box Score Memories: 6 July 2007

Rhubarb_Runner December 28, 2009, at 6:24 am Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired , , ,


2008 Upper Deck A Piece of History Box Score Memories #BSM-35 Justin Morneau [Jersey Red]


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Morneau out 3 mos. with fractured vertebra

socaltwinsfan September 15, 2009, at 12:22 am 19 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired)

This has already been mentioned, but I figured this deserved its own post. Twins announced that Justin Morneau is done for the season after a fracture in his back was discovered. Apparently, he's been hurting for about a month, which goes a long ways to explaining his second-half collapse. Add in his inner ear infection and he hasn't been healthy since July.

This begs the question as to why he hasn't had more days off? Gardy has gone out of his way to make sure Mauer gets his days off even though Mauer has been healthy, or at least as healthy as a starting catcher is going to be this time of year. And yet, Morneau has not been healthy for six weeks and except for a few days when going to see an ear-nose-throat doctor, Morneau has been playing every day.

Gardy is a great players' manager, but he needs to exert more authority and sit guys when they need it. Especially when they're sucking as bad as Morneau has been. Gardy has been complaining about finding playing time for his outfielders. How about play Cuddyer at first and then you can keep Gomez in center?

Another thing that has me going hmmm is this quote:

"It's one of those things it was nagging for a while, and I just wanted to go in and see if it was anything different from last year,'' Morneau said. "I guess it was.''

So, it sounds like Morneau's back was hurting last year as well. I remember Gardy referring to Morneau's legs bothering him, but not anything about his back.

This injury is not good news for this season, but hopefully Morneau will recover completely and then maybe Gardy will realize he needs to be careful with Morneau and give him an occasional day off. Unfortunately, we may not be too far away from Morneau becoming a full-time DH, which would make his contract a lot less pallatible.

At least Morneau won't be playing more than a handful of games on turf anymore. That should help, even though I think the effects of the FieldTurf has been overstated somewhat.

Rating MLB First Basemen, 2007

ubelmann January 28, 2008, at 12:00 pm 23 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired)

Go here the first installment in this series, and a description of my methodology. Previous seasons:

2005
2006

And now on to the 2007 ratings:


# NAME TEAM LG YEAR VORP UZR TOTAL
1 Albert Pujols SLN NL 2007 72.1 9.3 81
2 Carlos Pena TBA AL 2007 68.5 -2.7 66
3 Prince Fielder MIL NL 2007 69.1 -9.3 60
4 Todd Helton COL NL 2007 51.9 2.7 55
5 Ryan Howard PHI NL 2007 53.6 -1.3 52
6 Derrek Lee CHN NL 2007 48.6 0.7 49
7 Adrian Gonzalez SDN NL 2007 38.4 5.3 44
8 Lance Berkman HOU NL 2007 42.1 -4.7 37
9 Dmitri Young WAS NL 2007 35.6 -4.7 31
10 James Loney LAN NL 2007 30.7 0.0 31
11 Scott Hatteberg CIN NL 2007 25.1 4.7 30
12 Casey Kotchman ANA AL 2007 26.2 3.3 30
13 Matt Stairs TOR AL 2007 29.5 -1.3 28
14 Justin Morneau MIN AL 2007 28.8 -0.7 28
15 Kevin Youkilis BOS AL 2007 31.1 -4.0 27
16 Ryan Garko CLE AL 2007 27.8 -4.0 24
17 Adam LaRoche PIT NL 2007 19.6 2.0 22
18 Paul Konerko CHA AL 2007 25.4 -4.0 21
19 Conor Jackson ARI NL 2007 20.5 0.0 21
20 Carlos Delgado NYN NL 2007 15.5 4.0 20
21 Kevin Millar BAL AL 2007 14.4 1.3 16
22 Sean Casey DET AL 2007 9.6 2.0 12
23 Mike Jacobs FLO NL 2007 10.5 -2.7 8
24 Ryan Klesko SFN NL 2007 5.5 2.0 8
25 Brad Wilkerson TEX AL 2007 6.2 0.7 7
26 Dan Johnson OAK AL 2007 8 -1.3 7
27 Nomar Garciaparra LAN NL 2007 0.8 2.7 4
28 Rich Aurilia SFN NL 2007 -4.7 4.0 -1
29 Lyle Overbay TOR AL 2007 -3.6 2.0 -2
30 Richie Sexson SEA AL 2007 -7.1 -5.3 -12

Colors! I color-coded the table as follows:

- Blue: 75+ runs above replacement. An elite season.
- Green: 50-75 runs above replacement. A great season.
- Yellow: 25-50 runs above replacement. A good season.
- White: 0-25 runs above replacement. A meh season.
- Red: Below replacement level. Boo!!

Comments:

- Surprise, surprise, Albert Pujols comes out on top again. His success at the plate is obvious, but he's got a very good glove, too.

- Carlos Pena seemingly came from nowhere, but he's now managed to amass a career OPS+ of 124, which is a bit above average for a first baseman.

- Morneau barely made it above my 'meh' category to slide in the bottom of the 'good' category. He had a very promising first half and a rather putrid second half of the season. It's almost enough to make me suspect he had some kind of nagging injury that threw things out of whack at the plate.

Rating MLB First Basemen, 2006

ubelmann January 27, 2008, at 12:00 pm 3 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired)

Go here for the first installment in this series, and a description of my methodology. Let's get on to the ratings:


# NAME TEAM LG YEAR VORP UZR TOTAL
1 Albert Pujols SLN NL 2006 85.4 6.4 92
2 Ryan Howard PHI NL 2006 81.5 -1.6 80
3 Lance Berkman HOU NL 2006 70.1 -9.6 61
4 Nick Johnson WAS NL 2006 51.0 4.0 55
5 Justin Morneau MIN AL 2006 52.0 0.8 53
6 Paul Konerko CHA AL 2006 47.7 -1.2 47
7 Mark Teixeira TEX AL 2006 37.4 6.4 44
8 Lyle Overbay TOR AL 2006 36.3 2.0 38
9 Todd Helton COL NL 2006 31.1 6.8 38
10 Adam LaRoche ATL NL 2006 33.3 4.0 37
11 Adrian Gonzalez SDN NL 2006 32.8 2.5 35
12 Nick Swisher OAK AL 2006 28.1 6.0 34
13 Carlos Delgado NYN NL 2006 35.2 -2.4 33
14 Nomar Garciaparra LAN NL 2006 27.6 -1.6 26
15 Scott Hatteberg CIN NL 2006 16.9 0.8 18
16 Kevin Youkilis BOS AL 2006 19.6 -2.0 18
17 Kevin Millar BAL AL 2006 15.5 -0.4 15
18 Richie Sexson SEA AL 2006 24.9 -10.0 15
19 Prince Fielder MIL NL 2006 20.0 -5.6 14
20 Mike Lamb HOU NL 2006 16.9 -2.8 14
21 Conor Jackson ARI NL 2006 14.1 -0.8 13
22 Chris Shelton DET AL 2006 9.5 3.0 13
23 Doug Mientkiewicz KCA AL 2006 6.2 5.2 11
24 Mike Jacobs FLO NL 2006 12.2 -3.6 9
25 Ty Wigginton TBA AL 2006 20.5 -14.0 7
26 Jeff Conine BAL AL 2006 -1.7 -2.8 -5
27 Travis Lee TBA AL 2006 -11.4 3.5 -8

Colors! I color-coded the table as follows:

- Blue: 75+ runs above replacement. An elite season.
- Green: 50-75 runs above replacement. A great season.
- Yellow: 25-50 runs above replacement. A good season.
- White: 0-25 runs above replacement. A meh season.
- Red: Below replacement level. Boo!!

Comments:

- Phat Albert comes out on top again, this time more convincingly. Ryan Howard got the MVP, but it's pretty clear to me that Pujols was better.

- Current Twin Mike Lamb and former Twin Doug Mientkiewicz had seasons of comparable value, but different style.

- Richie Sexson got $11.5M in '06 for a season that was roughly as good as the aforementioned Lamb and Mientkiewicz.

- Morneau was the top 1B in the AL in 2006, but that 53 looks pretty small compared to Pujols' 92.

Rating MLB First Basemen, 2005

ubelmann January 26, 2008, at 7:28 pm 4 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired)

In my on-going quest to gauge future performance, I don't always look back in the rear view mirror often enough. So I'd like to take a look at performance from that position over the last three years.

My rating method, which is surely approximate, just like all other rating methods, is pretty straightforward:

- Start with players in a given year that are first basemen. It is difficult to assign a position for some players, so I'm just going with the position assigned to the player by Baseball Prospectus.

- Take everyone with at least 350 plate appearances. This is fairly arbitrary, but it gets me about 30 first basemen each year, so it roughly corresponds to the player who got the most playing time at first base for his team that season.

- Find each player's VORP to get a measure of his offensive value.

- Find each player's total runs above average on defense, as judged by UZR, for seasons T-1, T, and T+1, then average those three numbers to get a measure of his defensive value.

- Add the VORP to the UZR runs to get the overall number of runs above replacement level that a player is at.

I could run those tables for 2005-7 here, but that seems like too much information at one time. So I'm going to start with 2005 and work our way towards 2007. As long as spring training is still off in the distance, I'm not feeling too much urgency to finish this analysis.

# NAME TEAM LG YEAR VORP UZR TOTAL
1 Albert Pujols SLN NL 2005 89 9.3 98
2 Derrek Lee CHN NL 2005 96.4 0.0 96
3 Mark Teixeira TEX AL 2005 62 4.0 66
4 Todd Helton COL NL 2005 58.3 7.3 66
5 Carlos Delgado FLO NL 2005 62.7 -1.7 61
6 Jason Giambi NYA AL 2005 50.7 -6.0 45
7 Paul Konerko CHA AL 2005 46.1 -2.7 43
8 Chad Tracy ARI NL 2005 40 0.7 41
9 Tony Clark ARI NL 2005 39.3 0.7 40
10 Lance Berkman HOU NL 2005 47.1 -7.7 39
11 Nick Johnson WAS NL 2005 34.2 4.0 38
12 Richie Sexson SEA AL 2005 45.8 -7.7 38
13 Chris Shelton DET AL 2005 28.2 2.3 31
14 Sean Casey CIN NL 2005 22.5 6.3 29
15 Lyle Overbay MIL NL 2005 23.6 2.0 26
16 Matt Stairs KCA AL 2005 19.8 -0.3 20
17 Shea Hillenbrand TOR AL 2005 23.2 -4.0 19
18 Dan Johnson OAK AL 2005 14.5 -0.3 14
19 Jeff Conine FLO NL 2005 15.7 -2.7 13
20 Adam LaRoche ATL NL 2005 7.9 2.7 11
21 Travis Lee TBA AL 2005 8.1 2.3 10
22 Olmedo Saenz LAN NL 2005 11.7 -2.7 9
23 Xavier Nady SDN NL 2005 8.7 0.0 9
24 Rafael Palmeiro BAL AL 2005 12.5 -4.0 9
25 Hee-Seop Choi LAN NL 2005 8.7 -0.5 8
26 Ben Broussard CLE AL 2005 9.2 -1.3 8
27 Darin Erstad ANA AL 2005 0.3 7.0 7
28 Eric Hinske TOR AL 2005 8.9 -3.7 5
29 Kevin Millar BOS AL 2005 7 -5.3 2
30 J.T. Snow SFN NL 2005 0.8 0.3 1
31 Daryle Ward PIT NL 2005 0.1 -0.3 0
32 Justin Morneau MIN AL 2005 0.1 -0.3 0

Colors! I color-coded the table as follows:

- Blue: 75+ runs above replacement. An elite season.
- Green: 50-75 runs above replacement. A great season.
- Yellow: 25-50 runs above replacement. A good season.
- White: 0-25 runs above replacement. A meh season.
- Red: Below replacement level. Boo!!

The defensive component here turns out to be pretty conservative as far as defensive rankings go. I would guess that the true spread in defense should be something more like -20 to +20 runs in a given season, but given the relative inaccuracy of defensive metrics compared to offensive metrics, it's probably best to be conservative.

Comments:

- Albert Pujols won the NL MVP in 2005 and looks pretty deserving provided there wasn't a better performance from a different position.

- That season wasn't much fun for Justin Morneau and the Twins fans who followed him. While he sported a reasonable ISO, his batting average was extremely low and his value suffered greatly as a result.