Hitting The Cutoff Man

2009: 95-67, 2nd in AL East. Pythagorean record of 93-69.
Key Additions: SP John Lackey, 3B Adrian Beltre, CF Mike Cameron, SS Marco Scutaro
Key Losses: LF Jason Bay, 1B Casey Kotchman, RP Takashi Saito, SS Alex Gonzalez
2010 Projections: PECOTA – 98-64, 1st in AL East. CHONE – 93-69, 2nd (Wild Card). CAIRO – 93.8-68.2, 2nd (Wildcard).

Pitching: 2009 – 4.14 FIP (8th in MLB), 4.14 for starters, 4.15 for relievers
2010 – The signing of Lackey was obviously huge, as he will team with Josh Beckett and Jon Lester to give the Sox a great 1-2-3 punch. A resurgent Daisuke Matsuzaka and a blossoming Clay Buchholz would mean the best rotation in baseball.
Hitting: 2009 – .352 wOBA (2nd in MLB)
2010 – The additions of Beltre, Cameron and Scutaro have gotten a lot of attention for being signs of a shift toward defense by Boston's brass, but it's not like these three guys can't hit. The Sox lineup still has plenty of firepower.
Fielding: 2009 – UZR of -16.3 (16th in MLB)
2010 – It's been one of the big topics of the offseason: Boston's defense should be much better with its new free agent signings in tow. Plus, the team already had a brilliant defensive right side of its infield with Kevin Youkilis and Dustin Pedroia.

Reasons to Watch
1. The new guys: How accepting will Red Sox Nation and the media be if the team gets off to a rocky start and Beltre, Cameron and Scutaro aren't hitting much? Offensive prowess is easier to see than steady defense, and the team's new additions could turn into easy scapegoats if things aren't going well.
2. David Ortiz: 2009 was a bizarre year for Big Papi, who was hitting below .200 with one home run entering June before getting things going and finishing the year with 28 homers and a .340 wOBA. These weren't the types of numbers we've been accustomed to from Ortiz, but they were enough to fend off the he's-done talk for a while. But it will be interesting to see what happens if Papi gets off to another snail-paced start.
3. Young flamethrowers: Clay Buchholz finally started to put things together at the Major League level last season, while Daniel Bard made a name for himself in the bullpen with his 97-mph average fastball.

Paint By Numbers: Bard's average fastball velocity last season (officially 97.3 mph) was the second-best in the majors, trailing only Jonathan Broxton. But according to FanGraphs' PitchFx data, even though Bard threw the fastball 73 percent of the time, his slider was actually his most effective pitch, coming in at 5.1 runs above average. ... Jacoby Ellsbury stole 70 bases, making him the first AL player to reach that plateau since 1997. It also meant that Ellsbury swiped more bags than three teams: the Cubs, Braves and Brewers. ... Dustin Pedroia's strikeout rate of 7.2 percent led all qualified hitters, while his strikeout-to-walk ratio of 1.64 put him behind only Albert Pujols.

Blog Jog: Peter Abraham of the Boston Globe's Extra Bases blog examines the rumor that has Mike Lowell headed back to the Marlins. ... Logan Lietz of Over the Monster frets over Clay Buchholz's first Spring Training outing. ... Wicked Clevah provides an illuminating Q&A on what the Red Sox front office is thinking.

Follow Hitting The Cutoff Man on Twitter at HitTheCutoff

First off, sorry for the long delay between posts. I’ve taken a new job that involved moving across the country, and things got a little hectic on me.

But now I’m operational again, and it’s coming at the perfect time, as pitchers and catchers start reporting to Spring Training Feb. 17 (although some teams wait until the 21st). To mark the occasion, I’ll be posting a different list looking ahead at the new season every day between now and when the first camps open.

Since there are six days left until Feb. 17, today's list is "6 Most Interesting Off-Season Moves." These aren't necessarily the biggest or most important moves, just the ones that caught my attention the most.

Phillies acquire Roy Halladay from Blue Jays and deal Cliff Lee to the Mariners
This was the biggest deal of the offseason and also the most interesting because of the Phillies' decision to swap aces. Philly could have gotten Halladay and still kept Lee, but apparently felt that would have left their farm system in bad shape. Still, the prospects they gave up for Halladay are more highly regarded than those they picked up for Lee, and you have to wonder whether the difference between the two pitchers is big enough to make it all worthwhile. The Phillies still look like serious World Series contenders this season, but this pair of trades was a little puzzling.

Red Sox sign Mike Cameron and Adrian Beltre
Neither Cameron nor Beltre has a particularly bigtime reputation, and they're both low batting average hitters. But both players are productive at the plate and superb with the glove -- Cameron in center field and Beltre at third base. These signings indicate Boston's newfound dedication to run prevention, something the organization shares with other cutting-edge teams like the Mariners and A's. Beltre and Cameron figure to be difference-makers in what could be a very tight AL East race.

Cardinals name Mark McGwire hitting coach; Cubs name Rudy Jaramillo hitting coach
Putting aside the hubub of McGwire's PED admission, his hiring and that of Jaramillo are interesting as they relate to the issue of a batting coach's real impact on a team. The importance of these coaches at the big league level tends to be overstated in my opinion, making them easy scapegoats during tough times. But it will be fascinating to see how these two guys do. The Cubs' offense is poised for a rebound regardless of coaching, as it's hard to believe players like Geovany Soto and Alfonso Soriano will be as bad as they were last season, but Jaramillo has a sterling reputation and could provide an extra boost. McGwire has gotten glowing reviews from players who have worked with him privately and might make a difference for Cardinals hitters not named Albert Pujols.

Royals sign Jason Kendall to a two-year contract
The Royals have made a litany of baffling moves recently, but this signing stands out. How does a team that figures to be nowhere near a playoff race justify not only signing the aging Kendall, but to a two-year deal? Of course, the easy answer is some mythical combination of "veteran leadership" and "grit," but the fact is that Kendall hasn't managed an OBP above .331 or a slugging percentage above .324 the past three seasons. In other words, he's an offensive liability, even for a catcher. The Royals could have signed someone younger and cheaper to do just as poorly, but if they did that, they wouldn't be the Royals.

A's sign Ben Sheets
Sheets missed all of last season after having elbow surgery and has started 25 or more games only once since 2004. But the small-market A's, looking to compete in what figures to be a rough-and-tumble AL West, outbid the competition for his services, inking Sheets to a one-year deal worth $10 million plus incentives. Will Sheets help keep Oakland in the playoff race, or at least stay healthy long enough to get flipped for prospects at the trade deadline? That remains to be seen.

Cubs trade Milton Bradley to Mariners for Carlos Silva
This was one of those classic "our problem for your problem" deals. Bradley had worn out his welcome in Chicago, to put it mildly, having been suspended from the team late in the season. Silva was making a lot of money and pitching terribly in Seattle. Basically this trade boiled down to the Cubs taking on the final two years of Silva's horrid deal in exchange for getting rid of Bradley plus acquiring some cash, which went toward signing Marlon Byrd. But while Bradley's situation in Chicago probably was untenable, he figures to produce a lot more than Silva this season and could be a real asset to the M's.

Tomorrow: 5 Intriguing Players to Watch in '10

In his preface to “Moneyball,” Michael Lewis described a conversation he had with J.P. Ricciardi, who had worked with Oakland GM Billy Beane before leaving for Toronto. According to Lewis, Ricciardi illustrated the intellectual gap between Beane and his counterparts around the league by raising one hand as high as he could and lowering the other as low as he could.

At the time Ricciardi made this point, in the early part of this past decade, it was true. Beane really was working on a different level from most everyone else, and the success of those Oakland teams demonstrates that.

Of course, the baseball landscape is much different in 2010. Sure, you still have a handful of guys out there running teams who are still fumbling around in the dark. But these days, Beane has company in his honors classes, and a lot of those guys – Boston’s Theo Epstein and Seattle’s Jack Zduriencik to name a couple – have much bigger budgets at their disposal.

As the people running baseball teams have grown more accepting of advanced statistical analysis, some of the original qualities associated with “Moneyball” have necessarily fallen by the wayside. Of course, the whole point of the book, which many people who never read it failed to accept, was that Beane succeeded by exploiting inefficiencies in the marketplace. In other words, he valued commodities that were undervalued.

When the book was written, that stat was on-base percentage. But times change.

As Dave Cameron describes in this ESPN.com piece (Insider Only), slow guys who draw walks are no longer so undervalued, which has caused sharp GMs like Beane, Epstein and Jack Z to pursue defense and even baserunning as new under-appreciated avenues. With the recent boom in advanced metrics that measure a player’s abilities to run, field and throw, it’s now easier than ever before to target players who will keep runs off the board or tear up the basepaths.

Hence, you have the offseason acquisitions of Coco Crisp by Oakland, Adrian Beltre by Boston and Chone Figgins by Seattle, to name a few. As Cameron puts it, “The results of this shift toward run prevention? The "Moneyball" teams are targeting the type of fast, athletic, fundamentally sound players that scouts have been drooling over for years.”

The question that intrigues me is where we will be at three, five or 10 years down the road. Eventually enough GMs will catch on to the defensive fad, just as they did with OBP, that it will no longer be undervalued. When that happens, Beane and his ilk will have to move on to something else.

But what will that commodity be? I have no idea, but if anyone out there has any thoughts, I'd love to hear them.

Now that Adrian Beltre has signed a free agent deal with the Red Sox, he will spend half his games in 2010 at Fenway Park, with the Green Monster looming far over his shoulder as he stands at third base.

The giant wall will not be the only thing hanging over Boston’s new man at the hot corner.

Beltre, who spent the past five seasons in Seattle, has established himself as a valuable Major Leaguer who plays an excellent third base and hits with some power. But it’s hard to think about Beltre without remembering his 2004 season, which continues to overshadow the rest of his career.

After five seasons tucked away in the Pacific Northwestern at cavernous Safeco Field, that ’04 campaign seems like eons ago. Let’s take a look back.

Beltre entered the 2004 season in the final year of his contract and went into free agency with not so much a bang, but a sonic boom. In one of the finest offensive seasons ever by a third baseman, he batted .334/.388/.629 with 48 home runs.

In the field, he came up with a stunning Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) of 23.1, meaning he saved about 23 runs more than an average third baseman. For comparison’s sake, the best UZR by a third baseman in 2009 was Evan Longoria’s 18.5.

But what’s even more amazing than the season itself or the fact that LA fans took to showering him with MVP chants is how far away that 2004 campaign was from all of his others.

Beltre has spent the past five years in a terrible hitter’s park, but that certainly doesn’t make up for the whole contrast. Plus, Beltre had five full seasons in LA before his breakout.

Here is a list Beltre’s marks in key statistics during his 2004 campaign, then followed by his second-best season and his career average.

AVG: .334, .290, .270

OBP: .388, .360, .325

SLG: .629, .482, .453

OPS: 1.017, .835, .779

HR: 48, 26, 22

The chasm between Beltre’s 2004 and the rest of his career is remarkable. To condense that fact into one statistic, consider WAR, or “wins above replacement.” This stat tells you how many more wins a given player was worth to a team than the average player at that position the team could have taken off the waiver wire or from Triple-A. In 2004, Beltre was worth a stunning 10.0 WAR, making him the only player other than Barry Bonds to reach double digits since 2002. Beltre’s second best WAR total: 4.6.

The whole point of this exercise is not to denigrate Beltre or label him a bust or a disappointment. Considering his defense and factoring in the park adjustments, Beltre was worth the $64 million the Mariners paid him. And barring injury, it’s a good bet he will be worth the $9 million or so the Red Sox pay him this season.

It’s just an interesting example of the effect of perception on a player’s reputation. Many people probably would consider Adrian Beltre an underachiever, but that’s only true if you compare him to 2004’s Adrian Beltre.

And whoever that guy was, he wasn’t Adrian Beltre. He was barely human.