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Brendan Harris and Casey Blake

ubelmann January 30, 2010, at 2:17 pm 30 LTEs , ,

Every time I hear about Harris getting regular time at third base, I think of Casey Blake. Is it a fair comparison? I'm not entirely sure, but here I go (again? on my own?):

.295/.363/.469, .832 OPS -- Brendan Harris, minors
.292/.371/.469, .840 OPS -- Casey Blake, minors

More or less identical, really. And if anything, Harris accumulated his minor league numbers at a younger age.

.267/.324/.396, .720 OPS, 91 OPS+ -- Brendan Harris, MLB, through age 28
.232/.304/.339, .643 OPS, 67 OPS+ -- Casey Blake, MLB, through age 28

Now, of course, Blake didn't get all that many PA in the majors through that point, but it's not as though he really distinguished himself in the PA that he did get. Now, let's add to the Harris and Blake minor league lines a third line:

.295/.363/.469, .832 OPS -- Brendan Harris, minors
.292/.371/.469, .840 OPS -- Casey Blake, minors
.299/.354/.480, .833 OPS -- Danny Valencia, minors

And in terms of strikeouts and walks, we have:

.18 K/PA, .08 BB/PA -- Valencia, minors
.17 K/PA, .10 BB/PA -- Blake, minors
.15 K/PA, .09 BB/PA -- Harris, minors

Anyway, I'm starting to lose focus. Blake wasn't given a chance to start regularly until he was 29. And now years after that, his career OPS of .788 isn't all that different from his minor league career OPS of .840. From age 29-31, Blake was worth about 2.3 WAR/year--a roughly league average player.

I never really believed in Harris as a middle infielder. He was primarily a third baseman in the minors, and if he hits better when given less defensive responsibility, he wouldn't be the first player that did so. (Had he been a Twins farmhand, I have no doubt that many Twins fans would be calling for the Twins to quit jerking him around and give him a chance to hit regularly.) If the Twins go into the year with Harris as the primary third baseman and stick with the plan, I think it could work out pretty well. He's not going to be an All-Star, but he could be a decent regular.

When the Twins kept Jason Kubel instead of letting him walk, they showed faith in a lefty slugger with bad knees and no real defensive position--faith that they didn't show in David Ortiz. By keeping Harris and giving him a chance to play regularly at third base, they would be showing faith in a defensively-challenged hitter who hit well in the minors but has yet to prove himself in the majors--faith that they didn't show in Casey Blake. There are no guarantees that it will work out, but there is reason to believe that it could work. And if it doesn't work, it's a low-stakes gamble backed by the chance that Valencia can fill the role adequately.

Value of Brendan Harris’ Defense

ubelmann November 13, 2009, at 12:00 pm 10 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , ,

In what is apparently becoming an ongoing series, this is in the spirit of similar posts dealing with Denard Span and Nick Punto, although this time we run across someone who is a poor defender.

Even though Harris has been kicking around for a while, because he's been a part-time player, we don't even quite have three full seasons of data on him. I'm going to ignore his 5 games at first base as too small to tell anything, but at 2B/3B/SS, he has 356 total defensive games. Those are the same positions that Punto covers, so essentially everything I said there applies here.

Let's take a look at what we have to work with:

-6.8 UZR/150G -- 2B
-19.6 UZR/150G -- 3B
-9.9 UZR/150G -- SS

This is a bit different than Punto's data in that we could imagine Dirty Harry's got a poor first step that hurts him more at 3B and can run down stuff in the middle infield to make up for a poor first step. And he's worse at SS than 2B, which also seemingly makes sense.

But Harris largely came up as a third baseman, and I'm unconvinced that we have enough data here to really say that he's particularly bad at 3B compared to 2B. So we go with the standard assumptions here that he's equally good at 2B/3B and 5 runs/season worse at SS than 2B/3B, and we'll normalize to 2B/3B.

-6.8 UZR/150G, -4.1 UZR, 90 G -- 2B
-19.6 UZR/150G, -9.2 UZR, 74 G -- 3B (already normalized to 2B/3B)
-4.9 UZR/150G, -6.3 UZR, 192 G -- SS normalized to 2B/3B
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-8.2 UZR/150G, -19.6 UZR, 356 G -- All IF positions normalized to 2B/3B

Then we need to regress this to the mean, which at first seemed kind of generous to me, but I guess enough people have given Harris a shot to play defensively challenging positions that it's not out of the question to regress him to an average 2B/3B. Assuming 94 additional games where he plays league average defense at 2B/3B we get:

-8.2 UZRR/150G, -19.6 UZR, 356 G -- All IF positions normalized to 2B/3B
0.0 UZR/150G, +0.0 UZR, 94 G
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-6.5 UZR/150 G, -19.6 UZR, 450 G -- regressed performance in IF normalized to 2B/3B

That essentially makes Harris 6-7 runs/season below average at 2B or 3B and 11-12 runs/season below average at SS. That's better than I thought he'd turn out when I started this, but still enough worse than Punto that I'd generally start Punto over Harris. (And I still think that Harris could go all Casey Blake on the league if someone let him settle in at third base, but I don't know if I want the Twins to be the team to make that move.)

Now that I've done three of these, I suppose I can start a little ranking list. In addition to the multi-position players I've done so far, I'll include the career defensive rating for single-position players who have more than 450 games at their position. (So no adjustments either way are necessary. Except an aging curve, I suppose, but I don't have a consistent method to do that at the moment.)

Twins defensive rankings so far (position-neutral):
+18.7 R/150G -- J.J. Hardy (+11.2 UZR/150G at SS)
+17.8 R/150G -- Nick Punto
+12.5 R/150G -- Joe Mauer (??? relative to average catcher)
-2.3 R/150G -- Denard Span
-4.0 R/150G -- Brendan Harris
-9.1 R/150G -- Justin Morneau (+3.4 UZR/150G at 1B)
-16.0 R/150G -- Delmon Young (mostly covered here, except regression)

Multi-position players left on the docket: Cuddyer (IF and OF separately, so that'll take a bit more time), Tolbert (probably mostly regression on his SSS), and Kubel (with thoughts on his time at DH.)

DeRosa To Indians/Aaron Miles to Cubs/Improving The 2009 Twins

ubelmann December 31, 2008, at 4:57 pm 46 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , , , , , , ,

per ESPN:

DeRosa has been traded to the Cleveland Indians for minor league pitchers Jeff Stevens, Chris Archer and John Gaub. DeRosa will likely slide into Cleveland's opening at third base.

I'm sure this will irk fans who long for the Twins to do something and especially those who would like the Twins to add someone they've heard of before, but DeRosa wouldn't really be a significant upgrade.

In related infielding news, the Cubs signed Aaron Miles. Elsewhere, I've seen the total value of the contract listed at 2 years/$4.9M.

For these two infielders, some internal options, and other names we've heard this offseason, let's look at projected wOBA (as determined by Marcel the Monkey), and career OPS+.

.394 wOBA, 147 OPS+ -- A-Rod
.350 wOBA, 97 OPS+ -- DeRosa
.335 wOBA, 105 OPS+ -- Blake
.329 wOBA, 97 OPS+ -- Harris
.323 wOBA, 93 OPS+ -- Buscher
.308 wOBA, 77 OPS+ -- Miles
.299 wOBA, 74 OPS+ -- Punto
.290 WOBA, 67 OPS+ -- Cesar Izturis

DeRosa's a little younger than Blake, which is likely the main reason his projected wOBA is better than Blake's. DeRosa has been much better than his career averages over the last three years, which is likely the main reason that his projected wOBA is better than Harris'.

First we see that none of the non-Rods are elite hitters and Punto isn't so bad when you compare him to other guys who have gotten similar 2-year deals this offseason. If we're considering these guys as potential full-time players, let's look at how many runs above average their wOBA would make them over 550 PA:

29.7 -- A-Rod
8.6 -- DeRosa
1.4 -- Blake
-1.4 -- Harris
-4.3 -- Buscher
-11.5 -- Miles
-15.8 -- Punto
-20.1 -- Izturis

DeRosa is better at the plate than Harris and Buscher, by maybe about one win over the course of the season. Then it becomes a matter of how well everyone can field. Defensive stats are a bit of a mess for a number of reasons, but let's take a look at career UZR per 150 games at third base for these guys. There are definitely sample size issues here, and I don't think all of these ratings make sense, but it will give us a place to start the conversation.

18.7 -- Punto
8.2 -- Izturis
0.9 -- A-Rod
??? -- Miles
-3.4 -- Blake
-4.1 -- DeRosa
-12.8 -- Buscher
-18.3 -- Harris

First things first--I think that Punto's rating and Harris' rating are each too extreme. No one else seems to rate Punto that high at 3B and I would guess that he's closer to a +10 defender at 3B. Harris, on the other hand, has started only 39 career games at 3B, so there are extreme sample size issues with that number. UZR has him as a -3.9 runs/150G defender at 2B and a -9.9 runs/150G defender at 3B. Compared to other metrics, I think that's generous, but given his tools and the information from 200 games started at 2B/SS, I think it's reasonable to expect that Harris can be a -5 defender at 3B. Optimistically, I would guess he's average and pessimistically, I think -10 is about right at 3B.

Taking those things into consideration, and rounding to emphasize that these are rough measures, here is how I would rate those players as defenders at third base, in runs above average:

10 -- Izturis
10 -- Punto
0 -- A-Rod
0 -- Miles
-5 -- Blake
-5 -- DeRosa
-5 -- Harris
-10 -- Buscher

Using those defensive estimates, we get, for overall value at third base, in runs above average:

30 -- A-Rod
4 -- DeRosa
-4 -- Blake
-6 -- Punto
-6 -- Harris
-10 -- Izturis
-12 -- Miles
-14 -- Buscher

Of the group, I also have the least confidence in Buscher since he had an awfully weak history before the last couple of years and I'm most concerned about his defense, which could very well be worse than -10.

The more I look at it, the more I would lean towards making Harris the full-time 3B, with Buscher playing against tough right-handed pitchers or when we're not as concerned about infield defense. Harris seems more or less to be Casey Blake from 6-8 years ago, and we doesn't cost us anything to acquire him.

I think DeRosa would have been an upgrade. But he would have been a small upgrade, and for an extra $5.5M in salary, plus giving up more talent than the Indians gave up. I'm not sure at all about how good those minor league pitchers are (I suspect they aren't very good), but I'm sure that they have some value. $5.5M and low-value prospects are more than I would have given up for one extra win.

The Twins did a lot last offseason, and they did have done very little this offseason, but given their performances in 2007 and 2008, I think that makes sense. In 2007 we had a number of below-replacement-level performances. Upgrading from awful to mediocre is the easiest kind of improvement that you can make.

In 2008, a big reason that the Twins improved is that they had barely any below-replacement-level performances. Monroe and Everett, for instance, were annoying, but as a group they were only as far below replacement level as Darnell McDonald, Matt LeCroy, and Chris Heintz were (as a group) for the Twins in 2007. Mike Lamb was all kinds of fail this year (especially when you include his glove), but that's nothing compared to the devastation that Rabe, Garrett Jones, Luis Rodriguez, Rondell White, Alexi Casilla, and Nick Punto brought us the year before.

All totalled, the Twins improved from -76 runs in below-replacement-level performance in 2007 to just -19 runs in below-replacement-level performance in 2008. That's a 5-6-win improvement in just replacing your worst players with barely adequate players. That's very nearly as good as the difference between A-Rod and a replacement-level third baseman.

I think that's a pretty overlooked part of the '07 to '08 improvement, but it also means that we've more or less exhausted the cheap and easy ways to improve the team--at least in position players. We ought to be scouring the waiver wires and looking for interesting NRIs to shore up the bullpen and rotation depth. Even there, I don't know how much you can realistically expect improvement. On results, Bonser sucked last year, but I suspect he'll be at or above replacement level this year. Bass was also bad, but he wasn't even below replacement level based on runs allowed--so I wouldn't expect for miracles in improving the bullpen.

The Twins have a roster that can be substantially improved for 2009 in three main ways:

1) Fleece someone in a trade
2) Trade future value for present value
3) Spend $$$$ to improve spots where we are okay but not great

The first option always sounds great, but you can't always depend on deals with suckers to come through. The second option probably doesn't make sense for the Twins because money is a very scarce resource for them and prospects usually costs less money than players you would acquire in a trade. The third option doesn't work because we're not lucky enough to be sitting on a 25-million-resident gold mine.

I didn't really plan on coming back to this, but here I am again. For as much as some people want to be delusional about the advantage that the Yankees have, it's ridiculous to think that small-revenue teams like the Twins aren't at a significant disadvantage compared to large-revenue teams when it comes to assembling their roster. I can hope that the Twins can turn fool's gold into gold, but it's not reasonable to expect that, and I see no obvious, significant upgrades for this team.

Terry Ryan built the basis for this team by being patient and not trading the future for one wild run at a ring. Bill Smith would be wise to follow that precedent. Our offseasons are bound to be boring not because of our management, but because of our budget. Until MLB decides to do something about that, it's just the way it is.

Looking Back At The Delmon Debacle

ubelmann December 11, 2008, at 2:30 am 15 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , , , , , , , , ,

While responding to greenmachine's thoughtful comment to my look at the Santana trade, the issue came up about whether or not the Twins should have played for this year and a Young/Span/Cuddyer/Kuble OF-DH situation was proposed. My big problem with this is that it would have required us to make the Delmon Young trade in the first place, which I also really didn't like in the first place.

Click here to continue reading Looking Back At The Delmon Debacle...

Casey Blake Is NOT The Answer At Third Base

ubelmann November 8, 2008, at 6:50 pm 9 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , , , ,

If I keep hearing rumors like this, I am going to have no choice but to come out of retirement. There are three main reasons that I'm against signing Casey Blake as a free agent.

1) Blake is barely better than a platoon of Harris and Buscher would be, and might be worse.

2) The Twins would need to pay Blake at least as much as they committed to Mike Lamb last offseason.

3) The Twins already have a player with Blake's exact skillset who is five years younger: Michael Cuddyer.

To expound on these points:

1) Let's look at career numbers, which, given everyone's age, should overstate Blake's 2009 abilities compared to Buscher and Harris:

.297/.354/.411 -- Buscher vs. RHP
.266/.330/.436 -- Blake vs. RHP

.295/.360/.440 -- Harris vs. LHP
.258/.345/.478 -- Blake vs. LHP

Now, Blake only takes up one roster spot, so that helps his value compared to the platoon, but looking at various defensive stats, it looks like Blake is probably about as bad as Buscher defensively, maybe worse, and I think certainly worse than Harris is defensively at third.

Blake could also be a decent backup for Morneau at first base, and even give the Twins a viable long-term backup in case Morneau hits the DL, but I'll talk more about this in #3.

2) Paying Blake even $3-5M this year is too much money to commit to him, and with the number of teams that are interested in him, he's going to get multiple years. It's one thing to invest in a 35-year-old player who is a special player, but Blake is not a special player. He's carved out a nice career for himself, but whoever pays Blake is going to be paying for the 31-34-year-old Blake's performance while getting the 35-37-year-old Blake's performance. This is not a good idea for a team that operates under financial constraints.

Going into 2008, PECOTA had Blake with a 21% attrition rate and a 28% collapse rate. Being another year older is not going to help those numbers. For comparison, Lamb was a bigger risk of fail this year: 30% attrition and 39% collapse. Regardless, I don't know why the Twins would want to bother with the risk that they'll have millions tied up in a guy who has a decent chance of falling apart with a limited upside (league average hitter who is a defensive liability.) It's fairly amazing that Blake hasn't fallen apart yet--unathletic guys tend to age poorly--but I don't think the smart money is on him continuing to be decent.

3) Career stats:

.264/.334/.447 -- Casey Blake
.268/.344/.441 -- Michael Cuddyer

Both of them are not good defensive third basemen and fit better defensively as corner outfielders or first basemen. Any mention of Cuddyer of course brings us to the "problem" of Gomez, Span, Delmon, Kubel, and Cuddyer all being outfielders. An equal rotation of five guys into four spots (LF, CF, RF, DH) would give each of them one day off every five days, but eventually one of them is going to get hurt anyway, at which point they become everyday players and I'm not even sure who the OF backup would be at that point. But Gardy could certainly do better than just having them sit out all game on their days off. If Span or Gomez is on the bench to start the game, he could come on for someone as a defensive replacement. If Delmon, Cuddyer, or Kubel is on the bench to start the game, he could come to pinch-hit in a key spot.

Additionally, it seems quite obvious to me that Morneau needs more days off. Or at least more days where he's not in the field. For his career now, Morneau has hit .296/.359/.533 in the first half of the season and .267/.337/.464 in the second half. In the past it may have made sense to keep him on the field because our backup options suck, but if say Cuddyer was going to DH a number of times anyway, then we could instead put Cuddyer on the field at first base and put Morneau at DH, where he gets a little more rest. Neither one of them is a very good fielder, so that doesn't especially make a difference from where I sit. (And while we're talking about days off, it sure seemed like Delmon and Gomez responded well to the occasional day off, so more days off keeping everyone's legs fresh sure seems like a good idea for a team that depends so much on speed.)

On top of that, I really don't know who you'd get rid of. Obviously, there are things I don't like about Delmon's game, but those are obvious to everyone at this point, and I'd rather not sell low on Delmon. Span and Gomez are both cheap and I'd be fine keeping them around. Kubel is limited, but he's pretty good at what he does well (hit right-handed pitching) and I don't think there's a huge market out there for him. Realistically, I can't see the Twins even considering trading Cuddyer, given his clubhouse leader and general good citizen status. Plus, with his injury last year, we'd be selling low on him, too. This isn't a situation like having a can't-miss prospect catcher at the same time your current catcher just had a career year--whatever surplus current exists in the Twins' outfield isn't that much of a surplus and none of these guys are flawless.

To make a final point: WTF do the Twins do with Harris if they sign Blake to be an everyday third baseman? As far as I can tell, giving up on Harris as a third baseman now would be essentially the same as giving up on Blake as a third baseman back in 2003. The Twins can't undo the Blake Mistake, but they can keep from repeating that particular mistake. Harris should only be used in the middle infield in an absolute pinch. He's a corner infielder. He's not a terribly good corner infielder, but he can be mediocre there, and certainly as part of a platoon he can help the Twins out, and while I'd rather have a defensive guy as the backup SS, you could do worse than Harris as your backup SS.

So I really see no reason to spend some of the Twins' precious little money on Casey Blake. Where the Twins really need help is at SS or 2B. Tolbert at SS or 2B is a bigger problem than Buscher/Harris at 3B, and the Twins have only one guy (Casilla) who I would feel comfortable as an everyday player at 2B or SS. Getting more help in the bullpen should also be more of a priority than overpaying a soon-to-be-washed-up third baseman. I would love it if the Twins had more power, but Blake isn't going to make the Twins a better team, so I'm not interested in his power.

Game 118: Evil Empire vs. Twins

ubelmann August 11, 2008, at 6:00 pm 150 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , , , , , , , ,

Ponson vs. Perkins

I don't know what it is, but I have this impression that pitchers heading to the Yankees--whether through the minors or in a trade--seem to regress when they put on the pinstripes. Ponson, for instance, had a fairly respectable 4.47 xFIP in Texas this season, but now has a 5.09 xFIP in New York. I'm guessing that the media would tell you that it's all about the pressure involved with playing in New York, but I kind of wonder if the Yankees have a problem at pitching coach.

One thing that doesn't come up very often in the talks of canning Gardy is that Rick Anderson would likely be gone if anything happened to Gardy, and I think that would be a decidedly bad thing for this team. It seems fairly rare that we get a pitcher and he totally screws the pooch, at least as compared to the hitters that we acquire. You can't squeeze lemonade out of an onion, but Rick Anderson even managed to help Ramon Ortiz and Livan Hernandez to outperform expectations for a while, delaying the inevitable. And I think he's had a lot to do with the Twins' ability to just pick up guys off the scrap heap and make them reasonable options out of the bullpen.

Anyway, it's probably not a huge deal--while I think that Rick Anderson is good, he probably gets paid about as much as he's worth to the team--but I thought it might be worth mentioning.

In a completely unrelated topic, Adam Everett's shoulder is still a problem. I really, really wish it wasn't a problem, but the state of his shoulder really puts Gardy in a bind. Harris is truly horrible at shortstop and should be stationed there only if a middle infielder gets pinch-hit for in the middle of the game. (I guess I could also see it if the other team is throwing a left-handed pitcher and we had a fly-ball/strikeout right-handed pitcher on the mound.) From limited observation, even with the bum shoulder, I think that Everett is going to save us more runs than Harris, but we're certainly not looking at the elite-level human vacuum that Everett was in the past.

But really, our shortstop options just suck right now and while Gardy might be able to pull some strings one way or another to make the most out of a bad situation--it's still a bad situation. If we had a second baseman, Punto would be the best guy to put at SS, but since Harris can't handle the footwork at second base and Everett has no experience there, it doesn't make much sense to force Punto into the shortstop position.

[SBG: Hey folks, it's the Last Regular Season Series between the Yankees and the Twins before the Yankees move into their new ballpark, so I thought I'd add my $0.02.

Player A: .287/.334/.390 OPS+ 97
Player B: .283/.346/.398 OPS+ 99

Player A is a player that's provided much angst among Twins fans. He's not hitting for power, he plays in the field like he's wearing roller skates, and we gave up a good young pitcher in Matt Garza to get him. Yep, it's Delmon Young.

Player B has been much criticized for his defense, too, although he's got more than his fair share of apologists. Defensive metrics have consistently rated him as one of the worst at his position for a long time. But, he's been able to justify that $20,000,000 a year salary with his hitting, clutchiness, and captaincy. Yep, Player B is Derek Jeter (yes, I realize that position adjustments are important). 2008 has seen a significant drop off for Jetes -- he's not had an OPS+ below 110 since his second year in the league. There was a lot of talk not that long ago about Jeter maybe getting to 4,000 hits. But, if this is an indication of his new level of play and not an aberration, he's still about three full seasons from 3,000 hits, which means he'll start his 38 year old season right about there. 4,000 hits seems out of the question. Still, though, we are talking about a shortstop getting to 3,000 hits. That's a pretty big deal. And my, he sure is dreamy.

Jeter has another two years and $41 million left on his 10 year deal. I would have to believe that the Yankees will sign him up for another five years after that, which would put him in a Yankee jersey through his 41 year old season. One wonders, though, what will happen if Jeter continues to put a line up like he has this year. Will the Yankees give a generally crappy shortstop with a league average or worse bat $100,000,000 or more to watch him head into his 40s? It will be interesting.]

Team Handedness

ubelmann July 7, 2008, at 2:31 am One LTE - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , , ,

Some facts:

.284/.344/.419 -- MN vs. RHP, 10th best OPS in baseball
.266/.332/.413 -- AL vs. RHP

.262/.334/.404 -- AL vs. LHP
.261/.309/.375 -- MN vs. LHP, 28th best OPS in baseball

This might lead one to believe that the Twins have a ton of left-handed hitters on the team, making them especially susceptible to left-handed pitching, but that's not the case:

1731 PA as RHB (through 87 games)
1603 PA as LHB (through 87 games)

Though Mauer has been (unsustainably) good against LHP so far (.366/.413/.524 -- having already faced a left-handed pitcher in 45 games), Morneau has been nothing to write home about (.274/.305/.425), and Kubel has probably been about as unlucky vs. LHP as Mauer has been lucky (hitting just .157/.254/.235).

Many have pointed to Craig Monroe's numbers vs. LHP so far this season (which have improved of late and will likely continue to improve), but the team's right-handed hitters in general have been pretty poor against left-handed pitching. As one can see above, the average OPS against left-handed pitchers in the AL is .738. Only two regulars have an OPS better than .738 against left-handed pitchers--Joe Mauer (.937) and Carlos Gomez (.739). Morneau and Casilla have been just barely below average (.736 and .730, respectively), but Redmond, Young, Cuddyer, Monroe, and Harris have all struggled against LHP. (Harris even has a lower OPS vs. LHP than Monroe does at this point.)

It could be a sample size thing where the Twins have, as a whole, faced better than average left-handed pitching, or it could just be something of a fluke, but given their handedness (and the lack of a history of freak platoon splits), I would expect the Twins' performance against LHP to improve relative to their performance against RHP as the season wears on.

Game 80: Milwaukee at Minnesota

ubelmann June 27, 2008, at 6:00 pm 202 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , , , , , , , , , , ,

McClung vs. Blackburn

Blackburn looked pretty good at the convention, but I'm posting this a fair bit in advance so I can't be 100% sure he's going to make this start. His xFIP of 4.19 would look a little better in recent years gone by. This year, it makes him just a bit above average for a starting pitcher.

Team leaders and trailers in VORP as of June 23rd:

23.7 -- Prince Fielder
23.4 -- Ryan Braun
15.6 -- Corey Hart
13.5 -- Russell Branyan
10.5 -- Gabe Kapler

-1.4 -- Hernan Iribarren
-1.9 -- Jeff Suppan
-2.2 -- Tony Gwynn
-2.2 -- Ben Sheets
-5.4 -- Bill Hall

22.5 -- Joe Mauer
19.9 -- Justin Morneau
7.6 -- Alexi Casilla
7.5 -- Jason Kubel
2.9 -- Nick Punto

-0.4 -- DSPAN2
-0.6 -- Harris
-0.9 -- Monroe
-3.4 -- Adam Everett
-11.5 -- Mike Lamb