Large black and white bear with light-tower power seeks LTR in middle of playoff-contending lineup. In addition to high AAV contract, needs steady supply of bamboo shoots.

Pablo Sandoval enters the off-season as one of the biggest (in every sense of the word) free-agents in the current class. As a star-quality player at a position largely bereft of talent, Sandoval should and will command a top-dollar contract. The Cubs, with money to spend, playoff ambitions (whether premature or otherwise), and a hole at the hot corner, are a logical fit. Kris Bryant has yet to solidify his defense at the position, and there is no one else in the Cubs’ organization ready to seize the position. Yes, they have Luis Valbuena, but, come on, he’s Luis Valbuena for God’s sake. And Panda is a team marketing department’s wet dream; if giant Panda heads have taken over San Francisco, imagine how many could be sold in the Chicago-Joliet-Naperville metropolitan statistical area. Sandoval is just what the Cubs need to turn playoff dreams into reality in 2015.

Or so Sandoval’s agent would have you believe. That is pretty much the case for the Cubs signing Sandoval, but does it hold up under scrutiny? Let’s take the arguments on at a time.

Is Sandoval a star player at a weak position?

“But where are the third basemen of yesteryear?” Francois Villon might well have asked had he been (a) alive today; (b) able to speak English; and (c) modestly knowledgeable about baseball. Consider this: in 1973 three future Hall-of Fame third basement were active (Brooks Robinson, Mike Schmidt, and George Brett), though Brett was just getting his first cup of coffee. Several others (Ron Santo, Graig Nettles, Buddy Bell, Sal Bando, and Darrell Evans) who at least arguably belong in the Hall also played that year. According to Baseball Reference, third base was the most valuable non-pitching position in the majors in 1973, as measured by Wins Above Average.

In 2014, third base tumbled all the way to … second most valuable non-pitching position, albeit well off the front-runner (center field). The talent at the top may be thinner – only Adrian Beltre appears to be assured of a place in Cooperstown – but there are several intriguing younger players coming into their own at the position, including Josh Donaldson, Anthony Rendon, Kyle Seager, and (for now, at least) Manny Machado. This may not be the Golden Age of Third Basemen, but it isn’t exactly the Stone Age either.

Regardless of what one thinks of the current class of third basemen, Sandoval is not at its head. He was 11th on the WAR list for third basemen last season, just .3 ahead of, yes, Luis Valbuena. True, this year was a bit of a down year for the Panda, but on the WAR list for third basemen over the last three years he actually fares worse, falling to 17th. His offense has declined every year since 2011, and while he has been a slightly above average defender, his overall career numbers conceal wild year-to-year swings.

Is Kris Bryant a bad defender?

Let’s get retrostatistical!

Player              Career Fielding Pct at 3B          Career Range at 3B

Mr. X                                  .942                                           2.73

Mr. Y                                  .936                                           2.62

One guy is a minor league hot cornerist known for his glove. The other is Kris Bryant.  Yeah, the traditional fielding stats may not tell us much, but they’re what we have in the minors, and this comparison at least suggests Bryant hasn’t been hideously overmatched at the position. He’s Mr. X, by the way, and his numbers at AAA last year (.966/2.73) actually showed slight improvement over his career marks. (The other guy is Christian Villanueva, by reputation, at least, the best Cubs’ third base glove in the minors.) If the Cubs are seriously thinking of moving Bryant off third, nothing in his playing time shows that. Bryant has played 160 of his 167 career games at third; in the other seven he DH’d.

Is Panda better then Valbuena?

Yes.

Player           Career wRC+         Career vs. R            Career vs. L

Panda                 122                           134                              95

LuValb                88                             89                              88

That said, in 2014 both players had severe platoon splits; they were both good against righties and atrocious against lefties. Against righties Sandoval had a slightly higher OBP, while Valbuena had a higher ISO. The advantage goes to Panda, 136 to 124 in wRC+, But Panda was actually worse against lefties than Valbuena (59 to 75 wRC+). Panda’s collapse against lefties was a BABIP illusion; there is reason to think he will return to his typical middling effectiveness against them next year. A more interesting question is whether Valbuena can maintain his newly found status as a useful platoon player. Scott Strandberg seemed to think so in June, and Valbuena backed that analysis up, finishing the season with just one bad month.

Should signing Panda be a Cubs’ priority?

The Cubs major league payroll is svelte right now, only Houston and Miami pay their major leaguers less. That will change, in part because Wrigley’s rebuild-in-place will provide additional revenue streams, and in part because the Cubs farm system won’t be able to plug all of the numerous holes in the 25-man roster. The Cubs have four ways to spend their increased payroll:

1. To extend the contracts of the young players whose performance warrants it
2. To pay free agent starting pitchers
3. To pay free agent relievers
4. To pay free agent hitters

However one orders these priorities, free agent hitters should probably come last. Hitting is the strength of the Cubs’ system, and while not all their young studs will mature into actual baseball players, many will, and it’s too soon to bring in expensive free agents who would not only eat up payroll space, but also block some of this nutritious farm produce from reaching the store shelves. The Cubs really don’t have this problem on the pitching side, especially with respect to starters – if they’re going to drop big bags of free agent coin, that would seem to be the best place to do it.

Sandoval’s not a bad player, but he’s probably going to get paid like the superstar he’s not. He’d be an upgrade over Valbuena, the current incumbent, but at a hefty price increase, and just when it looks like Valbuena might be getting useful. He’s probably not better than Kris Bryant, unless Bryant has serious defensive woes not visible in his admittedly unenlightening minor league defensive stats.

So Theo probably shouldn’t answer the ad – better to stay home and watch Netflix.  Maybe he can scratch that Giants itch with a little Orange is the New Black.

It was a grim year for the Rockies, with the once proud franchise sagging to 96 losses, just ahead of the woeful Snakes in the NL West. For this Dan O’Dowd, one of baseball’s longest serving GM’s, was finally shown the door, resigning rather than accepting the inevitable blindfold and cigarette. Rockies player development director Jeff Bridich now takes the reins, and he has a daunting challenge as he seeks to reinforce Colorado’s status as a purple state.

Faced with numerous roster holes, Bridich will confront perhaps the biggest decision of his GM career almost immediately: whether to trade Troy Tulowi(t)zki. Tulo was having an epic offensive season (.340/.432/.603, wth 21 HR in just 91 games) before injuries felled him, as they frequently do. In his 9-year career, Tulo has reached 600 plate appearances just 3 times. On the other hand, Tulo has failed to reach 5.0 bWAR (or, for the more traditionally minded, has failed to hit at least 20 HR) just 3 times. He recently turned 30, and is owed $20 million per year through 2019, during which his performance will inevitably decline as time’s relentless march claims another career. His contract will pay $14 million in 2020, followed by what will likely be a $4 million team buyout.

Trading Tulo is probably the only way the Rockies could even attempt to obtain young, impact starting pitchers who are at or near major-league ready. And the Rox staff is bad. Yes, Coors continues to waterboard pitchers, but the Rox were bad on the road too, regardless of your statistical weapon of choice (last in ERA, last in FIP, and 24th in xFIP). Bridich will need to examine innovative options (humidors? animal sacrifices? precision air strikes?) to aid in constructing an effective staff, but he’ll also need to at least consider trading the Rockies only real star.

The Mets, Reds, and Marlins have holes at SS and (perhaps) high-end pitching to trade, although only the Mets have it in quantity. What none of these teams probably has, however, is the will to take on a huge contract. Tulowitzki doesn’t have a no-trade clause, but the high value (both total and average annual) of his contract tends to act like one. If the Rockies could pry one or two of the Mets’ top young starters away, they should probably make the trade, but in the absence of that (and the Mets seem much more likely to trade with the Cubs, who have a glut of young, cheap, and potentially very good middle infielders), the Rockies should hold onto Tulo, and my guess is that they will. He has a legitimate shot at the Hall of Fame and is either still in his prime or just slightly past it.

This puts increased emphasis on finding solutions from the farm; that the team’s owners promoted Bridich, the player development chief, to the GM’s role suggests they have some confidence in the system he has overseen. The reviews this year on the pitching front are mixed: 3 of the Rockies’ top 5 prospects, as ranked by Baseball America during the preseason, were pitchers. Of those, Jon Gray (#1) had a good but not great year at AA Tulsa. His modest 3.91 ERA was worse than the team’s mark, but he was the youngest pitcher on the staff and his peripherals stacked up well. Eddie Butler (#2) on the other hand went backwards, as his strikeouts disappeared. While posting a decent 3.58 ERA at Tulsa, he only managed a 5.2 K/9 rate. Chad Bettis (#5) has already been moved to the pen, where he put up 24 Innings of Horror in the majors. Danny Winkler, not among BA’s Top 30 Rockies prospects, had a breakout year at Tulsa, posting a 1.41 ERA and strikeout and walk rates of 9.1 and 2.2, respectively. This is, however, about it; there aren’t many other horses in this cavalry brigade. It’s likely that none of these guys will develop into a true ace (though Gray still has an outside shot), but as the Orioles have demonstrated this year, it is possible to win without having a starter who even sniffs the Cy Young race.

Another but probably more tractable problem is the Rockies offensive ineptitude on the road. This is isn’t solely because of a drop in power; Rockies hitters on the road this year were last in on-base and 26th in slugging, leading to a wOBA of .278 on the road, better only than the San Diego Padres. Since their last postseason appearance in 2009, the Rox have been rock-bottom in road wOBA.

The good news for Bridich is that the damage isn’t uniformly spread throughout the batting order. Tulowitzki, Justin Morneau, Michael Cuddyer, Corey Dickerson, and Nolan Arenado were all effective on the road in 2014, with Arenado having the lowest road wOBA among that group at .314, a respectable mark compared to the MLB average of .310. The rest of the lineup was … well … let’s just go to the numbers (2014 wOBA):

Wilin Rosario           .235

DJ LeMahieu             .240

Carlos Gonzalez       .242

Ray Oyler                    .252

That’s Ray Oyler’s wOBA for his “career year” of 1967. Alert readers will have noted that Oyler did not in fact play for the Rockies in 2014, but his demon spawn did. Even Kershaw would struggle to win games with a 3-Oyler lineup behind him. Each of these guys presents a slightly different problem, so let’s take them in turn.

Wilin Rosario had a face-plant campaign for most of the year, but rallied at the end to put up batting and on-base averages (.267/.305) pretty close to his career numbers.  His power, however, receded (.435 SLG, compared to a career rate of .483). And oh my oh my oh my was he bad on the road, as Scott Strandberg covered in detail a few days ago. But there is some hope; while Rosario has always been weaker on the road than at home, he’s never been anywhere close to his abysmal 2014 performance. For his career (from 2012-2014) his road wOBAs are .305, .342, and <gulp!> .235 (I’m leaving out 24 PAs in 2011).

As Strandberg noted, Rosario actually improved his plate discipline this year, while dealing with rumors that he would eventually be forced to move to first because of his subpar catching skills. I’d be willing to bet that his late-season surge (.470 wOBA in September) was a sign that the swing-tinkering (if that’s what it was) was beginning to take effect, and that Bridich won’t write off his starting catcher based on 184 road PAs, even 184 as bone-chilling as Rosario’s last year. But the team will need to work with Rosario to either improve his fielding enough to keep him behind the plate long-term, or to improve his hitting enough to justify a move to first.

DJ LeMahieu can’t hit on a train. He can’t hit on a plane. He can’t hit a la mode. He can’t hit on the road. From 2012 – 2014, LeMahieu had the third worst wOBA on the road among players with more than 500 road appearances:

Darwin Barney    .237

J.P. Arencibia      .259

DJ LeMahieu           .260

Like Rosario, LeMahieu had some success on the road in the past, but much less of it. For the last three years, LeMahieu’s road wOBAs are .318, .252, and .240. He’s an excellent defender with plus speed who puts up ok numbers in Coors, but this skill set fits much better on the bench. Unlike Rosario, LeMahieu’s 2014 road performance was very much in character. It’s time for the Rox to look elsewhere for their second baseman. Minor leaguer Taylor Featherston might be able to help by the 2015 All-Star Break.

Carlos Gonzalez is a two-time All-Star who is only 28. He also hit like Ray Oyler on the road this year, which entirely accounts for his disappointing 2014 results. He was still very effective at home, posting a .407 wOBA in what was clearly his worst overall season. His road wOBA in 2014 was a full 80 points below his career road number. Some of this (perhaps a lot) is down to bad luck. CarGo had a miniscule .181 BABIP on the road, and he struggled (as usual) with injuries. It’s possible that he had the bad luck to suffer more from these on the road, or that the Rox medical staff did a better job keeping him healthy at home. In any case, Gonzalez is a much better player than his ghastly road numbers this year would suggest, and the Rockies have few alternatives available, in part because CarGo  will be hard to trade after this down year. Their best bet here is to stay the course, and to give the plate appearances he inevitably misses to Corey Dickerson if Dickerson’s not starting in center.

Bridich starts his new job with a wonderful ballpark, enthusiastic and knowledgeable fans, and a media market relatively free of piranhas. He won’t face pressure to make splashy moves, which is good, because he doesn’t have many to make.

As we hurtle into what promises to be a dramatic postseason, let’s pause a few moments to remember the rake-steppers, face-planters, and prat-fallers who helped make others’ excellence possible. Far from being stars, these players are the space debris that clogged several MLB rosters this year. So without further ado, here is your All Kuiper Belt team for 2015 (and I don’t mean Duane Kuiper). The team features, if that’s the word, the worst qualifying hitter at each position, and the five worst qualifying starting pitchers, by fWAR.

Catcher: Jason Castro, .222/.286./.386, 1.2 WAR

By far the best player on this ignominious team, Castro is here in part because only nine catchers qualified for the batting title. FanGraphs had this to say in Castro’s pre-season player profile:

Castro turns 27 in June, and there’s not much to suggest regression in his future.

Well, not exactly. This year Castro was durable by catcher standards, but he regressed severely, and you could in fact have seen it coming. A stratospheric .351 BABIP propelled Castro’s breakout year in 2013. This season it sank to .293, not far from his carer mark of .307.  Neither as good as he was in 2013, nor as bad as he was this year, Castro should be a solid, above-average backstop, but always be wary of balls in play bearing gifts.

First Base: Ryan Howard, .222/.310/.380, -0.3 WAR

One of the best Baseball Prospectus player notes ever was for Ryan Howard this year. It consisted of just four words: “We told you so.” Howard’s career has become a coal seam fire, and he still has 2 years left on his deal before what will certainly be a $10 million buyout in 2017. Howard will be a pallbearer at the funeral for Ruben Amaro Jr.’s GM career.

Second Base: Aaron Hill, .244/.287/.367, -0.7 WAR

Hill wasn’t the worst Snake this year; that dishonor goes to Mark Trumbo, who managed to cram -1.3 WAR into just 355 plate appearances. There wasn’t a moist eye in the house when Kevin Towers lost his job, but The Gunslinger won the draw that sent Kelly Johnson to the Blue Jays for Hill in late 2011. Since then, Hill has amassed 6.6 WAR, while Johnson has only put up 1.7.

Third Base: Matt Dominguez, .215/.256/.330, -1.7 WAR

The second Astro on this list, Dominguez is here on the merits. Regressing plate discipline and an oddly consistent but abysmal BABIP have conspired to deprive Dominguez of any run production value. Known in his prospect days for his glove, Dominguez’ UZR is -8.7; only Lonnie Chisenhall had a worse rating at third. Dominguez is only 26, but then again, so was Kevin Orie in his last full major league season.

Shortstop: Derek Jeter, .256/.304/.313, -0.3 WAR

I don’t know about you. I always thought the Bob Sheppard thing was kind of creepy.

Left Field: Domonic Brown, .235./.285/.349, -1.7 WAR

One of the more fascinating what-ifs in baseball is what if Domonic Brown had come up with a different organization.  During most of his time in the Phillies organization, manager and front office were much more vocal about what he couldn’t do than what he could. Left to his own devices at last this year, Brown’s power disappeared. His HR/FB rate of 8.1% is 18th out of 19 qualifying left fielders, meaning that his power surge last year is looking more like a fluke than a step forward.

Center Field: B.J. Upton, .208/.287/.333, 0.4 WAR

This near replacement-level guy made $13.45 million this year, which is the kind of fact that gets GMs fired. He’s actually improved over last year, but every rate stat continues to be worse than his career averages. His K rate of 29.9% is the second worst of his career, and the worst of any qualifying center fielder.

Right Fielder: Jay Bruce, .217/.281/.374, -1.3 WAR

Bruce had surgery for a torn meniscus in his knee in early May and was never the same. Except that’s not true. He came back in June and raked to the tune of an .892 OPS, but then completely fell apart. I have to wonder if fatigue in the knee had something to do with it. For his career Bruce has almost exactly the same number of doubles (181) as homers (182). From July to season’s end, he hit 11 HRs, but just 4 doubles, which suggests he was having trouble getting extra bases without putting the ball in somebody’s beer. Bruce is generally a solid defender, but had a UZR of -8.4 this year, by far the worst of his career, which also suggests he was not fully mobile for much of the season. Bruce is the most likely player on this list to be an All-Star next year.

Designated Hitter: Billy Butler, .271./.323/.379, -0.3 WAR

Four of the seven Royals hitters who qualified for the batting title are home grown. Only one of them, Alex Gordon, had a positive wRC+ (indeed, Gordon is the only such qualifying hitter on the team, period). Butler, Hosmer, and Moustakas were going to be part of the the core of the next Royals playoff team. Instead, the Royals have made the playoffs this year largely despite these guys. Butler’s ISO continued to erode this year, and his walks, which spiked last year, plunged into the root cellar in 2014. These are hard times for DHs, slow and massive beasts whom evolution is passing by, and Butler’s mediocre wRC+ of 97 is just two points off the national average. But if the Royals are going to build a team to get past the Coin Flip Game, they will need to upgrade at this position. Butler is the only player on this list on a playoff team.

Pitchers (ERA/FIP, WAR):

Eric Stults, 4.30/4.63, -0.6 WAR

Sproingggggg! Regression to the mean was mean to Stults this year, as his FIP rocketed from 3.53 to 4.63, or 40 points over his career number.  The gopher ball killed him, no mean feet in cavernous Petco. The Pads won’t offer him arbitration, so he’ll look to take his Veteran Self elsewhere. He won’t be this bad again, but at 34 he may not get the chance to prove it.

Roberto Hernandez, 4.10/4.85, -0.5 WAR

Forced in 2012 to change his name by the International Fausto Carmona Association, whose members no longer wanted to be associated with him.

Chris Young, 3.65/5.02, 0.2 WAR

It’s tough to say goodbye. Young hasn’t been an effective starter since 2007, but he grimly soldiers on, desperately searching for signs of pitching life on this barren world. It’s easy to root for guys like Young, but the M’s had a pennant train to catch this year, and their decision to give Young almost 30 starts probably cost them a seat.

Shelby Miller, 3.74/4.54, 0.2 WAR

If you’ve been playing along at home, most of the guys on this list probably haven’t shocked you, but did you see Shelby Miller coming? Let’s start with that yawning chasm between his ERA and FIP. Miller’s career ERA is 60 points less than his career FIP, so the gap is only somewhat worse than that this year, but still disconcerting. His strikeouts disappeared, not because of any velocity drop, but because of the wholesale failure of his off-speed pitches. He’s still just 23 and he still throws hard. If the Cards can’t fix him, maybe they can trade him to a pitching coach who can. Paging Dr. Cooper …

Kyle Kendrick, 4.61/4.57, 0.4 WAR

The phourth Phillie on this list, Kendrick’s rather offputting FIP is actually 8 points better than his career average. A tolerable innings eating presence on a high-scoring team, Kendrick is now a liability on a team chock full of them. This was his walk year, a strange expression to use in conjunction with Kendrick, since that’s the one thing he doesn’t give up.

“It looks like he’s going to be able to stay in an up-the-middle position on the defensive spectrum,” added the National League scout. “When you have a combination of speed, defense and power, like he has, that’s hard to find in the middle of the diamond. In the end, he looks like a player who has a chance to legitimately contribute to a major-league club on both the offensive and defensive sides of the ball.”

No, that scout wasn’t talking about Cubs uberprospect Javier Baez, but rather about Cubs ex-uberprospect Brett Jackson , as told to David Laurila back in March, 2011. Before Baez, and Jorge Soler, and Kris Bryant, it was Jackson who was the Anointed Expurgator of Ruminant Curses. As you probably know, the goat turned out to be too strong for B-Jax, who struck out at an epic 41.5% rate with the Cubs before being exiled to the minors, where his bat continued to avoid contact with the same unerring purpose with which children avoid vegetables. Theo ultimately traded him to the Diamondbacks for a few Jerry Colangelo bobbleheads.

Here’s Jackson’s line from his fly-on-windshield season in 2012 with the Cubs:

144 PA, 41.5% K, .175/.303/.342, 78 wRC+.

And here’s Javy’s line as of September 14:

166 PA, 41.6% K, .174/.229/.387, 68 wRC+.

Scary stuff, kids. Now several caveats obviously apply here, including small sample size. The players themselves are quite different. Jackson was a five tool guy who was good at everything but exceptional at nothing. While Baez has certainly had to rearrange his garage to fit all his tools, his calling card is Sheffield-like bat speed. Baez is almost without doubt the most exciting .174 hitter the game has ever seen. But the question is whether the rapidly bleaching bones of Brett Jackson’s career stand as a warning to Baez, and to those in the Cubs front office that see him as an anchor tenant at Wrigley for years to come.

To examine this, I compared Baez’s progress from high-A to the majors with Jackson’s, and I also threw in two guys that have had immediate success in The Show. George Springer (another high K guy) and Soler (a much more disciplined prospect).

Starting at high-A, the players looked like this:

Baez:          337 PA, 23.1& K, .274/.338./.535, 145 wRC+

Jackson:    312 PA, 20.2%, .316/.422/.517, 170 wRC+

Soler:         236 PA, 16.1% K, .281/.343/.467, 128 wRC+

Springer:   500 PA, 26.2% K, .316./.398/.557, 143 wRC+.

This includes only Baez’s high-A appearances in 2013 — I’m leaving out 86 PAs from 2012 in which Baez was only modestly effective. B-Jax wins this round, although Soler’s advanced approach is already apparent.  All four had good years.

Here’s how they performed at AA:

Baez:          240 PA, 28.8% K, .294/.346/.638, 180 wRC+

Jackson:    297 PA, 24.9% K, .256/.373./.443, 123 wRC+

Soler:           79 PA, 19.0% K, .415/.494/.862, 265 wRC+

Springer:  323 PA, 29.7% K, .297/.399/.579, 174 wRC+

Jackson had two roughly equivalent AA seasons in 2010 and 2011 — I’m showing the latter here. Springer had 87 difficult appearances in AA in 2012 — I’m showing his breakout 2013 season. All four struck out more often in AA, but all except Jackson improved on their performances at high-A. Soler’s numbers were insane, and the Cubs quickly promoted him to AAA to give him some more challenging pitches to work with.

And speaking of AAA:

Baez:         434 PA, 30.0% K, .260/.323/.510, 108 wRC+

Jackson:   467 PA, 33.8% K, .256/.348/.479, 107 wRC+

Soler:         127 PA, 20.5% K, .282/.378/.618, 149 wRC+

Springer:  266 PA, 24.4% K, .311/.425/.626, 175 wRC+

This is Jackson’s 2012 line at AAA. He put up a better wRC+ of 128 in 2011, in 215 appearances. I’m showing Springer’s AAA numbers for 2013; he had 61 arbitration-delaying PAs in 2014, in which he performed even better before being promoted. Springer actually improved his whiff rate in AAA, turning in a dominating season. Soler’s ludicrous AA numbers came somewhat back to Earth, but he still raked, with a K% only slightly worse than in AA.

Baez and Jackson, on the other hand, began shipping water. Their seasons were not horrible, but they performed significantly worse than they had in AA, with rising (and in B-Jax’ case, skyrocketing) strikeout rates. Both would carry their decaying swings to the major league level, where they both have paid a huge price, whiffing over 40% of the time. Springer also added about 10% to his K rate on reaching the majors, but he started from a lower base, and retained enough on-base to be a plus hitter (.231/.336/.468) before injuries sidelined him.

If Jackson represents the sum of all Baez’ fears, Springer represents the hope. Springer actually struck out more frequently than Baez in the lower minors, but Springer found a way to reduce his strikeout rate at AAA, and has found a way to produce at the major league level even while whiffing a third of the time. While Springer may not be able to sustain this productivity unless he once again addresses his contact problems, his strikeout rate isn’t unheard of in the majors. Baez’ rate, at 41%, lies largely outside the realm of civilized baseball discourse.

As of this writing, no qualifying hitter has a K rate anywhere near 40%. Indeed, there are only four hitters with a K rate exceeding 30% (Chris Davis, Chris Carter, Adam Dunn, and B.J. Upton). Two of these guys (Carter and Dunn) are have a wRC+ over 100; the other two do not. The worst career strikeout rate (minimum 1000 PAs) belongs to Tyler Flowers at 34.8%. No player has long survived in the majors beyond this forbidding boundary. The worst career K rate for a player with a career wRC+ over 100 is the aforementioned Chris Carter, checking in at 33.6%. Baez has a long way to go to even reach this dismal rate.

He has perhaps taken some baby steps: after striking out at a 42.2% clip in August, he’s shaved that to 40% in September. His last golden sombrero was on September 5, so it’s been over a week. Umm … yeah … these are the flimsiest of straws to grasp. With Addison Russell, Starlin Castro, and Kris Bryant all staking claims on the Cubs infield, Baez may be running out of time to prove that he can prevent strikeouts from getting his goat.

As of this writing the MLB K/9 stands at 7.7, the highest in recorded history.

>> Here is a list of HOF pitchers with a career K/9 over 7.7:

Nolan Ryan        9.55

Sandy Koufax   9.28

Yep, that’s it.

>> There are 27 active pitchers with at least 1,000 IP and a career K/9 over 7.7.

>> There have been 643 seasons in MLB history in which an ERA-qualifying pitcher put up 7.7 K/9.  Just under half of those (315) have occurred since 2003.

>> The five best 7.7+ seasons by FIP (FIP,ERA,ERA+, K/9):

Pedro Martinez             1999         1.39/2.07/243       13.20

Dwight Gooden             1984         1.69/2.60/137        11.39   19 years old

Clayton Kershaw          2014         1.89/1.70/2.11        10.74   MVP. Yes, I said it.

Sandy Koufax                     1965          1.93/2.04/160       10.24   26 HR allowed

Tom Seaver                      1971          1.93/1.76/194          9.08

>> The five worst 7.7+ seasons:

Brandon Duckworth    2002          4.39/5.41/72          9.22    26 HR allowed

A.J. Burnett                      2007          4.33/3.75/119         9.56    had winning record

El Duque                            2006           4.24/4.66/96         9.09

Tim Lincecum                 2012            4.18/5.18/68          9.19     lead league in losses

Jonathan Sanchez         2009          4.17/4.24/100        9.75

>> The major league strikeout rate has continuously been:

above 7 since 2009

above 6 since 1994

above 5 since 1982

above 4 since 1952

above 3 since 1930

>> The strikeout rate hasn’t decreased since 2005.

>> If the season ended today:

5 playoff teams would have a team K/9 over 7.7

Dodgers        8.4

Angels           8.2

Mariners       8.0

Nationals      7.9

6 playoff teams would have a team K/9 below 7.7

Cardinals      7.6

Athletics        7.5

Giants            7.5

Pirates           7.3

Royals            7.2

Showalters    7.1

>> From 2000-2008, only one World Series champion had a K/9 over 7.7: the 2001 Snakes at 8.0. Since 2008, only one world champ has had a K/9 under 7.7: the 2011 Cardinals (6.8).

I’m not sold on the idea that all these strikeouts threaten Our Way of Life (indeed, this is far more dangerous). But it will be fascinating to learn if some GM will be able to find an underpriced competitive advantage in scouting and developing guys whose bats can locate the ball more often.

Jeff Samardzija will be a free agent this winter after turning down an offer from the Cubs in the range of 5 years/$85m, and being subsequently dealt to the Oakland A’s. One may reasonably assume he is looking for a payday more in the 7/100 range, and one may reasonably assume he’ll get pretty close to that. That’s ace money, but is he worth it?

To assess this question we need to have a good working definition of ace. My definition, unrigorously explored here, is that an ace is pitcher who has a reasonable chance of achieving an ace-caliber season. I didn’t define the latter in my previous post, but one way to look at it is to say that ace-caliber season is one in which the pitcher finishes in the top ten in pitcher WAR. Ten is a bit random — if most humans had six fingers and a thumb I’d probably be talking top 14 – but it at least roughly quantifies the point that ace seasons are something of a rarity.

Under the Baseball Reference  WAR system, a 5.0+ WAR season means an All-Star performance. Unsatisfied with this seemingly arbitrary number, I took the average WAR for the 10th-best pitcher in the majors over the last 10 complete seasons, and after the determined application of math and stuff, came up with … 5.0. So for the purposes of this post, that will be my definition of an ace-caliber season for a starter: a WAR of 5.0 or better.

Samardzija hasn’t come close to that in his career. This year will be his best — he’s at 2.7 right now and presumably will finish somewhere around 3.0. Indeed, Samardzija’s career WAR total is just 5.8. In contrast,  here are the number of 5+ seasons the Shark’s principal trade and/or free-agent competitors have amassed:

Jon Lester: 3

Cole Hamels: 2 (and on his way to a 3rd this year)

Max Scherzer: 2 (including this year)

But things get a bit more complicated when we remember that there is more than one type of WAR, and no, I’m not talking about wars of necessity vs. wars of choice. Rather, I’m referring to the differences between Baseball Reference’s WAR calculation and FanGraphs’, which has its own methodology for calculating WAR. This explains the differences between the two stats; my purpose here is not to laud or condemn either approach, but to use both to get a sense of how ace-like Samardzija might be. To do this, I compared Shark’s three seasons as a starter with the first three seasons of the guys mentioned above. I also devised a remarkably creative name for this stat: WAR(3).

Pitcher                            rWAR(3)            fWAR(3)

Shark                                   5.0                      8.1

Lester                                 14.8                    13.0

Hamels                              10.7                    10.4

Scherzer                              5.9                      9.4

Samardzija is the least impressive of the three, but he is not far off Max Scherzer’s numbers, regardless of which WAR you choose. (Note: I left out Scherzer’s first seven starts, which he made in Arizona in 2008 when he also served as a reliever.) While Shark and Scherzer are about the same age, Shark got his starting career under way three full years after Scherzer. The latter is has turned into an outstanding pitcher during the years you would expect a player to blossom (ages 27-29). The good news is that Shark has less mileage on his arm than Scherzer. The bad news is that Shark has already passed through the years when careers often take off. So this admittedly microscopic sample suggests that the Shark does have a platform, but a shaky one, from which he could launch an ace season or two.

Maybe there are other comps for Samardzija that could shed some light on this issue. A look at pitchers with high similarity scores to Samardzija through age 28 on Baseball Reference reveals a fairly grim list:

Juan Cruz
Calvin Schiraldi
Kevin Correia
Carlos Villanueva
Bill Swift
Dave Stewart
Mark Grant
Ron Schueler
Renie Martin
Willie Fraser

This group amassed a total of 100 pitching seasons, and managed just one ace-caliber season: Dave Stewart’s remarkable age-33 campaign with Oakland. If this list is predictive, it predicts that Shark will be hosting a regional cable network pre-game show within five years. But you may be saying to yourself, “Self, most of the people on that list don’t remind me of the Jeff Samardzija I’ve seen at all. And isn’t Renie Martin some kind of hard liquor?” All true. The majority of guys on this list lurked (or still do, in the case of Correia and Villanueva) at the edge of the rotation’s campfire, just beyond the flame’s light. Whatever one’s view of the Shark, no one would equate him with Calvin Schiraldi.

One problem with assessing Samardzija’s prospects is his highly unusual career trajectory. He bounced between starting and relieving in the minors, and early on in his major-league career was mostly a reliever. He didn’t become a full-time starter until 2012, at age 27. This partly accounts for his low career WAR, although he also put up 54 craptastic innings in 2009 and 2010 that might have killed a lesser man’s career. But that’s part of Shark’s story — so much physical talent that many in the Cubs’ organization were willing to put up with the setbacks, and keep tinkering with him until they found something that worked.

So it’s safe to say that Shark’s future is little harder to predict than most. His defenders may hope that, like Kevin Brown and Curt Shilling, he has a run of early-30s excellence in him, and he might. But Brown and Schilling were already good before age 30, and they had a lot more starts under their belts.  The one guy who does have a career trajectory somewhat similar to Shark’s is the one guy on the list above with an ace season: Dave Stewart.

Stewart walked a very hard road, overcoming a battalion of personal demons to become a rotation anchor in Oakland at age 30. (A good book could be written about the baseball souls Tony La Russa saved — Eck and Stewart would feature prominently, while McGwire would present a more complicated story.) Stewart’s career WAR to that point was an insignificant 6.1, slightly higher than Shark’s is today, but spread over more seasons. In the next four years Stewart would accumulate 17.8 WAR, including the dramatic 1990 World Series year, where he posted a career-best 2.56 ERA in 267 league-leading innings. Stewart would soldier on for four more years, losing effectiveness as the strike zone increasingly eluded him. But flags fly forever, and Stewart’s late-career surge may offer hope for Samardzija. Like Shark, Stewart threw hard and was very durable. Shark gets more strikeouts that Stewart did, but everyone is striking guys out in today’s modern game. It’s like, you know, a thing. Samardzija has not had anywhere near the off-field trouble that Stewart had early in his career, but both are similar in that chance and circumstances conspired to keep them out of the rotation until relatively late along the age curve.

Samardzija does have velo. He is seventh in 4-seam speed for starters, at 94.5 mph. But speed doesn’t guarantee dominance: only two of the top ten WAR pitchers this year are also in the top 10 in velocity (King Felix and Garrett Richards). Two more have very modest velocities in the 90 mph range (Adam Wainwright and Rick Porcello). I’d rather have velocity than not, but past radar gun performance is no guarantee of future ace success. It’s a close call, but I think Samardzija probably isn’t an ace, even though some team is going to pay him like one. You should probably hope it isn’t your team, although there are worse mistakes your team could, and probably will, make this winter.

And if your team does ink the Shark, remember to leave a light on for Dave Stewart.

A major league baseball franchise exists to serve one of only two purposes: (1) win a World Series; or (2) line the owner’s pockets without regard to the quality of the team on the field. Since this post isn’t about the Miami Marlins, I’ll focus on the first purpose. It is almost axiomatic that a championship team needs at least one ace-caliber starting pitcher. Cubs president Theo Epstein has been acting as though he would single-handedly battle a battalion of Imperial storm troopers if that’s what it would take to get an ace. And indeed, many of you felt a minor disturbance in the Force when the Cubs claimed Cole Hamels off waivers from the Phillies tire fire. No trade was consummated, but is Theo right to obsess over finding an ace?

Here are the best starters from each of the last 10 World Series winning clubs, along with their ERA+ for that year, their career ERA+, and age that year. I’m using ERA+ to wash out park effects as well as the effects of the last decade’s gradually desiccating run environment.

Year   Pitcher                     ERA+ (WS season/career)           Age

2004  Curt Schilling (BOS)                   148/127                   37

2005  Mark Buehrle (CHW)                 144/118                   26

2006  Chris Carpenter (STL)               144/118                   31

2007  Josh Beckett (BOS)                     145/111                    27

2008  Cole Hamels (PHI)                     141/125                    24

2009  CC Sabathia (NYY)                     137/120                    28

2010  Madison Bumgarner (SFG)   131/114                   20(!)

2011: Kyle Lohse (STL)                         109/99                     32

2012: Matt Cain (SFG)                          126/117                     27

2013: Clay Buchholz (BOS)                234/110                    28

So while a team can be championship caliber without a dominant starter, it hasn’t happened often in the last 10 years. The 2011 Cardinals were the only team in this (admittedly miniscule) sample to scrape by with a pedestrian #1 starter (and remember, this was the year that Cards managed to win the pennant only by imprisoning the Atlanta Braves in a shipping container). Buchholz is a bit of an oddity in that he pitched only 108 innings, but man, they were 108 damn good innings. Lester and Lackey had weaker rate stats but pitched many more frames.  Every other team had a clear ace who beat the league ERA by at least 25% — most did even better.

What this list also shows is that aces don’t ace it every year. Most of these guys beat their own career ERA by roughly 10-30% in their World Series seasons. These are, for the most part, very good pitchers who had an occasional great season, but not guys who can crank out stifling dominance year after year. Almost nobody can do that. The other thing to note is that 7 of the 10 were under 30, and only Schilling was putting his teeth in a glass at night. Dominance is generally a younger man’s game.

All this suggests that the best way to get an ace season is to get two or three young quality starters with upside, and hope that at least one of them has an explosive season when the rest of the team is also doing well. But for a team like the Cubs, who have a plethora of low-ceiling starters in their system, this big bang approach probably won’t work.

So if they’re going to get an ace season, they need to import. Unfortunately, imported front line starters generally don’t come young, and never come cheap. The big obtainable names include the following (numbers are career ERA+/ current age):

Free agents at the end of this year

Max Scherzer (118/30)

Jon Lester (120/30)

Free agents at the end of next year

David Price (123/28)

Zack Greinke (116/30) (Greinke has an opt-out after the 2015 season, but he’s signed through 2018.)

I’m a celebrity! Get me out of here!

Cole Hamels (125/30)

And here they are ranked by 4-seam velocity this year:

Price             93.4

Scherzer       92.7

Hamels         91.8

Lester            91.6

Greinke         91.6

If I were Theo I’d probably start at the top of this list and work down, but Price may never become available if the Tigers lock him up. Scherzer and Lester will cost lots of money but no current talent, and will both probably be available in 2 months. The Cubs don’t have a front-line starter anywhere in the organization, but they do have around eleventy quillion dollars in payroll space, which will get even larger after the ad revenues from the new jumbotron start rolling in. Buying two of these guys and teaming them up with C.J. Edwards, Corey Black, and what looks likely to be a young, cost-effective, video game offense could finally make Cubs fans forget about 1908. Or the free-agent contracts could be giant albatrosses that make Cubs fans forget about Alfonso Soriano. That’s why they call it gambling.

There’s an old joke about a guy who’s just lost everything — marriage, job, home — and decides to end it all, so he goes to the top of the Empire State Building and jumps. As he’s plummeting to his doom, at the last possible second he performs a triple somersault and lands on his feet, completely unharmed. Two cats are watching across the street and one says to the other, “See? That’s how you do that.”

Since taking over the Cubs front office in October, 2011, Theo Epstein has been carrying out a three-pronged rebuilding plan: (1) acquire a stable of fast-developing power hitters; (2) find a #1 starter; and (3) rebuild the roster with a yard sale. The first prong is coming along well, with Arismendy Alcantara joining Anthony Rizzo in the majors and another wave (including but not necessarily limited to Kris Bryant, Javy Baez, and Jorge Soler) on the way soon. The second prong has borne no fruit yet; there is still no one in the Cubs system that realistically projects as an ace.

The jury is still out on the third prong, which has involved international signings of, and trades for, young players who in some cases are several years away from the majors. But at least on the surface, Theo has made the most out of the tattered wares in his basement. This is especially true of the parade of pitchers (some he inherited and some he acquired as reclamation projects) that he has, for the most part, successfully sold high.  For the most part the folks stopping by Crazy Theo’s Pitching Palace have walked away happy, only to soon suffer buyer’s remorse.

Here’s a list of pitchers Theo has traded away, together with the principal player received in return. In this post, all slash numbers are ERA/FIP – the first pair is the player’s numbers with the Cubs, and the second are his numbers with the team that acquired him.

Sean Marshall  (3.96/4.02 , 3.27/2.67 (CIN))

Swag: Travis Wood

Skinny: Marshall’s thrown just 24 innings since 2012.

Andrew Cashner    (4.29/4.84, 3.08/3.25 (SDP))

Swag: Anthony Rizzo

Skinny: Trade could end up helping both clubs, though Cashner’s durability is still questionable.

Paul Maholm  (3.74/4.14, 4.14/4.09 (ATL))

Swag: Arodys Vizcaino

Skinny: Vizcaino could be a future closer, but the T.J. survivor has logged just 34 IP in the minors this year.

Ryan Dempster (3.74/3.78, 5.09/4.08 (TEX))

Swag: Kyle Hendricks

Skinny: Hendricks is already benefiting from the long Wrigley grass.

Scott Feldman  (3.46/3.93, 4.27/4.13 (BAL))

Swag: Jake Arrieta

Skinny: Arrieta won’t defy gravity forever, but some of his improvement may be for real.

Matt Garza  (3.45/3.45, 4.38/3.96 (TEX))

Swag:  C.J. Edwards

Skinny: Rangers got little from this deal, in which they also gave away Neil Ramirez, Mike Olt, and Justin Grimm.

Jeff Samardzija  (3.97/3.80, 3.19/4.00 (OAK))

Swag: Addison Russell

Skinny: Sharknado 2 is about as good as the original, but his 2014 FIP jumped a run after the trade.

Jason Hammel  (2.98/3.19, 9.53/7.31 (OAK))

Swag:  Addison Russell

Skinny: Might be time to try pine tar, Jason.

Epstein hasn’t been able to spin all the lead into gold: he may have held onto Travis Wood past the sell-by date, and Edwin Jackson, inked to a union-appeasing contract, has been barrel-bomb bad and is now unmovable. Taken together, however, these trades brought 60% of the Cubs’ current rotation, two guys (Rizzo and Reed) who may have numerous all-star seasons in them, and a potential closer of the future. In virtually no case except Cashner did the player traded improve after the trade. (Marshall had one good year in the Reds’ bullpen, but he’s spent the bulk of the last  2 seasons in the trainer’s room.)

See? That’s how you do that.

With a payroll north of $200,000,000, you would expect the Los Angeles Dodgers to field a competitive team, and indeed they have. As we emerge from the All-Star break, they are neck and neck with the hated Giants, heading into a pennant chase that could be one for the ages. The Dodgers have four of the most watchable players in baseball (Kershaw, Greinke, Puig, and Ramirez) and a farm system with enough talent to supply reinforcements either directly or via trades. The team is not without needs, however. Like almost any team, the Dodgers has some bullpen depth issues, but just alleviated those somewhat by recalling Paco Rodriguez, a non-flamethrower who nevertheless generates a ton of Ks. Catching has been a riddle for manager Don Mattingly as well.  He’s had to use four backstops, none of whom have amassed enough appearances to qualify for the batting title, and of whom only the stalwart but venerable A.J. Ellis has provided anything even approaching an offensive contribution. (Well, Miguel Olivo made an offensive contribution of a different kind.)

But the biggest problem has been Matt Kemp, who dug a Tunguskan-size crater in center field before Mattingly more or less permanently shunted him to left. Kemp has the worst WAR (-1.3) for any position player qualifying for the batting title except Domonic Brown. Kemp’s hitting about as well as last year’s (modest) effort, but his defense has gone from bad (-0.6 dWAR) to eye-watering (-2.5). Whether you’re new school (zone rating) or old school (range factor), you will find nothing to like in Kemp’s defensive metrics. The move to left has probably mitigated the defensive damage he’s doing, but mainly by reducing his opportunities to come within proximity of the ball. His range in left is almost as far below the league as his range in center, although he’s making fewer errors. Kemp’s agent thinks he can still play center, and so presumably do Matt and his mom. That about exhausts the list.

In one sense this is a simple problem that the Dodgers can solve without any outside help. They could bench Kemp immediately. Center field prospect Joc Pederson is murdilating the PCL’s beleaguered pitchers to the tune of a 1.045 OPS, and yes, that’s good even in the PCL. Pederson is third in the league in OPS, behind two guys who are at least five years older. To the extent Pederson would struggle against major league lefties, he could be platooned with righty Scott Van Slyke, with Andre Ethier sliding between center and left. This is a rare situation where a manager can (almost) unilaterally boost his team’s playoff chances with a single lineup change.

And yet … Kemp can still hit. His .752 OPS is third on the Dodgers among batting qualifiers, and while that’s over 80 points off his career number, it still represents useful offense. At this stage in his career, Kemp’s value would dramatically increase if he didn’t have to put on a glove. The question is how to allocate that increased value among the Dodgers and their potential trade suitors. There are four playoff-contending AL teams whose DHs are either injured, ineffective, or both:

New York Yankees (Carlos Beltran .698 OPS)

Kansas City Royals (Billy Butler .675)

Cleveland Spiders (Nick Swisher .641)

Seattle Mariners (Corey Hart .611)

Kemp would immediately boost any of these teams’ offenses. The Yankees could take much of Kemp’s anvil-like contract ($20 m/yr through 2019), but have few if any prospects to offer. The Royals and Mariners are in the opposite situation: good talent to trade but limited ability to absorb such a huge financial hit. Cleveland, sadly, can’t really employ either approach, and in any case hitting is not their main need.

Dodgers president Stan Kasten’s general strategy upon assuming command was to throw immense amounts of Guggenheim money at the major league roster first, and then reinforce the farm system to ensure a steady stream of cost-controlled reinforcements for the future. Part I of the plan is working well, and Part II is underway with Corey Seager, Julio Urias and Alex “Van Gogh” Guerrero headlining a good collection of upper level minor league talent (non-Pederson division). The Dodgers could go either way here: begin their slow march away from the payroll tax penalty by banishing Kemp to the Bronx, or recharge the lower reaches of their farm system with talent from either of the smaller market franchises who could be in on Kemp. They may not succeed in moving Kemp, but if they can it would provide at least a small edge in a pennant race that looks sure to go to the wire.

With the simultaneous (if temporary) collapses of the Yankee and Red Sox dynasties, the Baltimore Orioles hit the All-Star break with a very real chance of emerging atop the smoking wreckage of the AL East.  If they miss the playoffs it will be at least in part for one reason the Washington Nationals did so last year: too many bad plate appearances from second base. Jonathan Schoop, the O’s primary second baseman, is slashing  a putrid .219/.257/.322, good for the 16th best WAR among AL second basemen. While dumpster-diving Dan Duquette has found serviceable patches for catcher (Nick Hundley) and left field (the incredibly powerful alien inhabiting Steve Pearce), a solution at second base continues to elude him. Schoop’s head is barely above replacement level water thanks to his stellar defense, but his bat is missing more balls than Julio Cesar.

For now the organization publicly and vigorously defends Schoop, who may yet turn out to be a high-quality two-way player. Ryan Flaherty seems to have taken up residence in Buck Showalter’s split-level dog house, having started just 12 games in June and July. His unimpressive .647 OPS still beats Schoop’s by 50 points. The farm offers little immediate hope; the only O’s middle infield prospect beside Schoop in the team’s Baseball America top 30, Adrian Marin, appears overmatched for now in high-A.

Should the Duke decide look outside the current roster, here’s a review of cellar-dwelling second basemen who may be on the block (contract status from Baseball Reference).

Chase Utley (.297/.354/.452   3.2 WAR) Signed thru 2015, 2 yrs/$25M (14-15) & 16-18 vesting option

Enjoying a Chipper Jonesian late-career resurgence, Utley remains the phace of the phading Phils. He also has a brutal contract and a full no-trade, so he might be cost-prohibitive even if Ruben Amaro was willing to trade him. (Utley has said he won’t waive is no-trade, but most players say that – Baltimore would be about the only place he could be traded and still spend homestands mostly at home.) If Amaro did trade Utley he would need to sleep in kevlar pajamas, so this move seems unlikely.

Darwin Barney (.224/.261./316 0.2 WAR) 1st-Year Arb Eligible, 1 yr/$2.3M (14)

Here’s something about Darwin Barney you might not have known: he doesn’t just do crosswords, he creates them. Here’s something about Darwin Barney you almost certainly know: he just can’t hit. At all. With essentially the same skill set as Schoop is showing this year, he’s not an option for the O’s. Another Cubs middle infielder, Arismendy Alcantara, would probably make Duke salivate, but AA would cost the Orioles at least two of their top three pitching prospects. With Kevin Gausman now firmly entrenched in the rotation (thanks to Ubaldo Jimenez’ heaven-sent trip to the List) he is almost certainly off the block. Dylan Bundy and Hunter Harvey together may be too high a price to pay for a still-raw position player, and one of them alone probably won’t be enough for Theo to pull the trigger.

Aaron Hill (.238/.273/.351 -0.9 WAR) Signed thru 2016, 5 yrs/$46M (12-16)

Aaron Hill’s principal remaining function in baseball is to serve as a warning to others. Disappearing bat speed, immobility in the field, and an albatross contract mean there’s really nothing to see here. Perhaps the O’s think they can fix Hill’s bat, but his 4:1 K/BB ratio suggests otherwise.

DJ LeMahieu (.279/.337/.346 1.1 WAR) Pre-Arb Eligible, 1 yr/$501k (14)

No one has unlocked the secret to winning at Coors yet, but loading up on heavy-groundball starters and assembling a stellar infield defense might be one of the few approaches that Dan O’Dowd hasn’t tried yet. LeMahieu would be a key component of any such strategy. LeMahieu is only 25 and still plays for the MLB equivalent of free; it would almost certainly take a significant package for the O’s to pry him away from the Rox. One problem the Orioles face is that their top-heavy system makes it hard to go after a guy like LeMahieu. He’s not worth any of the top 3 pitchers, and the O’s have little else that would entice a team to part with a solid but unspectacular player. (Christian Walker is raking in AA; maybe he could be part of the answer.) The Rox also have Josh Rutledge, who plays all the infield positions badly but can hit a little. He could form an offense/defense platoon with Schoop, and might be available at a reasonable cost.

Ben Zobrist (.268/.353/.406 2.7 WAR) 5 yrs/$23M (10-14) & 15 team option

In theory, Zobrist is the perfect answer for the Orioles — a short-term rental who could spur their pennant run while Schoop sorts things out at AAA. In practice, of course, he’s in the Orioles’ division. While the Rays have said they are even willing to trade David Price within the division, they have also said they will exact an intra-division premium. The same is presumably true for Zobrist. If he’s traded to a team with orange on their uniforms, it will probably be the Giants.

Brian Dozier (.237/.340/.414 2.7 WAR) Pre-Arb Eligible, 1 yr/$540k (14)

Dozier went from afterthought to asset by jumping his walk rate up this year (12.6% as compared to his career rate of 8.6%). Eddie Rosario’s plan to be the Twins’ starting 2B in 2015 went up in smoke earlier this year, and he has struggled in AA this year after returning from his suspension. (According to one of the better baseball headlines this year, Terry Ryan has offered “high praise” for Rosario since his return.) So Dozier is both more valuable and less expendable now than he seemed in spring training. The Twins minor league system is one of the best in the majors, so it’s hard to see a match here except in the unlikely event the O’s would be willing to part with one of the Big Three for Dozier.

It seems unlikely that any second baseman on the Texas Rangers would be a good trade fit. Rougned Odor, though struggling now, is presumably untouchable. Luis Sardinas has a bright future, but right now it’s unlikely he would be much of an upgrade over Flaherty, who the O’s can start without giving up any talent.

This list is obviously not exhaustive, but it suggests that Duquette’s options outside the organization may be little more appealing than the internal ones. In his tenure as Orioles GM, Duquette has shown a surprising ability to pull rabbits out of his baseball cap. How he solves the O’s second base conundrum will be one of the small but fascinating dramas to follow as this year’s trade deadline draws near.