Hitting The Cutoff Man

In Internet time, last year’s headlines might as well be living in a cave, dressed in animal skins and carrying a spear. Time moves quickly, and the recent past is buried under the crushing weight of fresh news.

Out of curiosity, I hopped into my time machine and set out on a dangerous voyage to find those ancient, long-forgotten headlines. My target time: the days surrounding Nov. 16, 2010. My target location: NBC Sports’ HardballTalk, my go-to site for quick takes on the latest news and rumors around Major League Baseball. What follows is the strange bounty of that exploration.

Headline: Royals not willing to “dump” former top prospect Alex Gordon

Result: Kansas City kept Gordon and made him their starting left fielder.

How’d that work out? The Royals, get this, made the right call (cue the marching band and release the balloons!). Gordon broke out, hitting .303/.376/.502 and was worth 5.9 WAR. File this under “sometimes the best moves are the ones you don’t make.”



Headline: Cardinals expected to aggressively pursue Juan Uribe

Result: Uribe signed a three-year, $21 million deal with the Dodgers instead, and the Cardinals traded for Ryan Theriot and signed Nick Punto to bolster their infield.

How’d that work out? Compared with Uribe, Theriot and Punto were Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker. Still, Theriot was pretty bad, and Punto was hurt a lot. At one point, St. Louis’ infield was so thin, Albert Pujols actually played third base, but the team eventually got Punto and David Freese back and traded for Rafael Furcal, and the rest was recent history.

Headline: Athletics interested in Lance Berkman as designated hitter

Result: Berkman signed with the Cardinals instead, and the A’s went with Hideki Matsui.

How’d that work out? Berkman defied critics both by being less than a complete disaster in the outfield and by hitting like the old Puma at the plate (.301/.412/.547) on his way to a ring. With Matsui leading the “charge,” Oakland designated “hitters” “hit” .245/.313/.390. Wrong lottery ticket, Billy!


Headline: Shin-Soo Choo is trying to slug his way out of the army

Result: Choo did in fact lead South Korea to a gold medal at the Asian Games, freeing him of his two-year commitment to his country’s armed forces.

How’d that work out? Choo lived happily ever after! Well, actually, this was basically the last good thing that happened to Choo all season. He played only 85 games between multiple DL stints, hit an extremely disappointing .259/.344/.390 and was nabbed for an embarrassing DUI.


Headline: Brad Penny is going to be in the best shape of his life.

Result: “Best shape of his life,” one of the more amusing off-season cliches every year, is sort of subjective, so you can judge for yourself. Here is Brad Penny on April 28, 2011. Sexy!

How’d that work out? Great shape or not, Penny posted probably the worst full season of his career, giving up 11.0 hits per nine innings with a 1.19 K/BB ratio and a 5.02 FIP for the Tigers. Maybe watching TV and eating Doritos is the way to go this offseason.


Headline: The Cardinals will try to lock up Pujols before Christmas

Result: St. Louis signed its franchise player to a relatively team-friendly contract in early December. What’s that? (Puts fingers in ears). Lalalala can’t hear you, lalalala can’t hear you!

How’d that work out? Great!


Headline: Adam Dunn wants at least three years and $40 million

Result: He got it! A couple of weeks later, Dunn signed a four-year, $56 million deal with the White Sox.

How’d that work out? Rather than throwing out a bunch of stats, I will simply lead you to this visual representation.


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There is no doubt that baseball's greatest Wiki is former big league catcher Wiki Gonzalez.

Wiki (full name: Wiklenman Vicente Gonzalez) was a serviceable backup backstop for seven seasons, mainly with the Padres. What he is not (at least I'm assuming) is a vast resource of mostly factual information about any topic you could think of. For that, you need another Wiki – Wikipedia.

As you might be aware, Wikipedia is good for more than just lazily researching school papers. For example, baseball player biographies. Let's say I want to know more about Wiki. All I have to do is Wiki him to find out that, “A slow runner, González holds the dubious distinction of having hit into a 5-4-3 triple play, while playing for the Padres in a May 17, 2002, game against the New York Mets, on his birthday.” Pure gold!

So Wikipedia can be fun. Can it useful in actually studying baseball players in a meaningful way? Not really. But that doesn’t mean I can’t take a stab at doing so, just for the hell of it.

My idea was to measure the length of various players’ Wikipedia entries and see if I found anything interesting. Obviously you would expect superstars to have bigger pages than scrubs and veterans to have bigger pages than rookies, but I was curious to see if there were any anomalies.

To that end, I picked 50 current players off the top of my head, leaning more toward notable guys but also going for a nice mix of positions, teams, experience levels, etc. I then copied and pasted their entries (not including table of contents, fact box, captions, charts or reference lists) into Microsoft Word and did a simple word count.* I then listed my findings in the chart below, ordered by word count but also including the players’ MLB service time, career wins above replacement (WAR) according to Baseball Reference and finally, words per WAR**.

* 100 percent accuracy, like with Wikipedia itself, is not guaranteed.
** WAR totals as well as word counts as of June 2.

Some highlights:

Alex Rodriguez had by far the highest word count (8,402) of the 50; rookie Michael Pineda had the lowest (101).

The Legend of Sam Fuld extends to Wikipedia. He had the second-longest entry I counted, higher than Ichiro, Derek Jeter or Albert Pujols. His 6,653 words per WAR was easily the highest, about a thousand more than the Mets’ Justin Turner (5,560).

The lowest words/WAR totals belong to: Scott Linebrink (24), Tim Hudson (28), Luke Scott (31), Arthur Rhodes (32) and Carlos Beltran (33). Once again, Beltran is shamefully underrated.

Other interesting or surprising findings included:
-- Journeyman slugger Russell Branyan outpacing Albert Pujols by about 400 words.
-- Bearded sensation Brian Wilson edging out future Hall of Famer Roy Halladay.
-- Injured phenom Stephen Strasburg in a dead heat with Hudson.
-- Casey Kotchman only about 200 words behind Adrian Gonzalez.
-- Shelley Duncan just behind B.J. Upton.
-- Pineda, who has been blowing away the American League all season, trailing relatively unknown fellow rookies Daniel Moskos and Al Alburquerque, who are both middle relievers.

Full chart:

All 30 MLB teams would love to have Albert Pujols, and with El Hombre's negotiating deadline with the Cardinals coming and going Wednesday, it now seems likely that all 30 teams will have a chance to get him.

Well, not really. That's not how things work, of course. The economics of the game dictate that probably no more than a few teams could launch themselves into the payroll stratosphere a Pujols deal would require.

But there was a time when all 30 teams did have a basically equal shot of landing this generation's greatest player. The year was 1999, and Pujols entered the June amateur draft out of a Missouri junior college. And as most people know by now, everyone passed on him -- and passed on him again, and again, and again, and again, and so on.

It wasn't until the 13th round and the 402nd overall pick that the Cardinals selected Pujols.

While nobody would argue Pujols did not turn out to be by far the best pick in the draft, it is stunning to actually go back and look nearly 12 years later.

Here is the clearest way to illustrate the big man's impact: Pujols arrived in the big leagues in 2001 and in 10 seasons has racked up 83.8 wins above replacement (WAR), the second-largest total for a player's first 10 seasons, behind only Ted Williams.

I looked at every team's 1999 draft on Baseball Reference and found that, even including players who have accrued most or all of their value with other organizations, no team came anywhere close to matching Pujols' worth through all their picks combined. The closest was the then-Devil Rays, whose selections (including the now-departed Carl Crawford and since-born-again Josh Hamilton) have accumulated 50.8 WAR in the big leagues.

There are even three teams, including the arch-rival Cubs, whose picks actually have earned negative value in limited MLB action (Cheers, Steve Smyth).

This Joba Chamberlain-sized chasm between the Cardinals' 1999 draft and everyone else's brings up an interesting opportunity for some counterfactual history. In other words, what if one of the 29 other teams took one of its dozen-plus chances to draft Pujols before the Cards did? How would that alter our current reality?

Anyone who has watched Back to the Future knows that changing the past can trigger an unexpected chain reaction of consequences beyond what you could imagine. Maybe if the Orioles had drafted Pujols, he would have torn up his knee in the minors and never been the same. Maybe the Royals would have converted him to pitching.

But the chances seem good Pujols still would have turned out to be Pujols. Talent like that is a bit like a cockroach -- it can thrive pretty much anywhere. What would the effect have been though?

Even historically excellent players cannot will a franchise to glory on their own, but maybe drafting Pujols would have been the boost the Pirates needed to turn the ship around. Or maybe he would have put up five Pujolsian seasons for a fifth- or sixth-place team and bolted for greener pastures at his first opening. It's impossible to know.

Maybe with the Cubs, Pujols, still playing either left field or third base in 2003, would have out-fought Steve Bartman for a foul ball at Wrigley Field, then hit five home runs against the Yankees in the World Series to snap the famous championship drought at 95 years.

The possibilities are endless, and you could tie your brain in knots trying to calculate all of the implications. But what else are you going to do on a warm February afternoon with Spring Training getting underway -- work?

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So I finally got around to seeing Inception. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but since this isn't a movie blog, I'll leave an in-depth review to the professionals.

For anyone who doesn't know, the movie's title refers to the act (a critical plot point) of planting an idea deep within a person's subconscious, through dream manipulation. The goal is to have the person then produce that idea in a seemingly natural way, as if it is their own.

If I somehow came into possession of such an ability, like Leonardo DiCaprio's Dom Cobb, I probably would turn it on something closer to my heart than corporate espionage. If you haven't guessed already, that would be baseball. Let's face it -- there are some concepts in baseball that people within the game cannot seem to get through their skulls, no matter how logical. But what if, with your cliched heist team, you could invade the dreams of GMs, managers, writers, etc., and plant the seed that would make them realize (for example) that wins are a terrible way of evaluating pitcher performance? It wouldn't be as cool as, say, fighting a dude in an anti-gravity hotel hallway. But it would still be satisfying.

So everyone sit back, relax and make sure your totems are handy. Here is our dossier with a list of preliminary objectives:

Target: Producers at media outlets, such as MLB Network
Idea: Let's stop giving a pitcher's stats against a specific opposing team as if that's important information.
Background: I watch MLB Network a lot, and I love it. For one thing, there is 100 percent less John Kruk. On the other hand, there is 100 percent more Dan Plesac, but life is full of trade-offs. Anyway, in reference to a game the next day, you often the host say something like, "Freddy Garcia has owned the Tigers in his career, compiling an 18-6 mark against them." While true, this tells us almost nothing about what we can expect from Garcia in this start. This is not difficult to grasp. For one thing, Garcia in 2010 is a different pitcher than in any other year of his career. For another thing, rosters change so much these days that the Tigers as we know them now are wildly different from the Tigers even a few years ago. The Tigers of April 28, 1999, (Garcia's first career start against Detroit) featured no players still with the organization and only one (Brad Ausmus) who is still even an active MLB player. Even if the roster was the same, all of the Detroit players would be totally different than they were in 1999 anyways. So considering that game as part of a group of games through which to evaluate the White Sox' chances against the Tigers on Thursday is insane. And in most cases when people do this, the sample size of innings is small enough to be largely meaningless. Let's save our breath.

Target: Baseball fans
Idea: "The Wave" is dumb.
Background: There are many ways to be entertained, cheer and support your team at a baseball game. The Wave is one of the worst. It has no meaning and only serves to annoy when it comes around just as a pitch is being thrown, leaving you with the choice to either miss the action or take part in a ridiculous ritual just so you can see. Figure out some other way to achieve whatever it is The Wave does for you.

Target: Albert Pujols
Idea: I should remain with the St. Louis Cardinals for the rest of my career, in return for a fair salary that is affordable for the team without preventing its front office from acquiring other talented players.
Background: Pujols' contract expires after this season (St. Louis holds a 2011 team option for $16 million, which even a complete lunatic would exercise). If he does not sign a new deal with the Cards, a certain blogger who occasionally uses popular movies as a gimmick for posts might throw himself off a bridge. He undoubtedly wouldn't be the only one.

There are so many other potential targets for inception out there: Frank and Jamie McCourt, any number of mostly incompetent general managers, people in charge of the music and concessions at stadiums, members of the Baseball Writers Association of America who base their MVP voting largely on RBI totals, and announcers who use the term "fisted" to describe a weak hit off the handle of a bat. But an architect can design only so many realistic dreamscapes at a time, so we'll have to pace ourselves.

In the meantime, any other suggestions?

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Opening Day provides all 30 teams and 750 players with a clean slate. This is certainly part of the romanticism that surrounds it -- everyone gets a fresh start, a rebirth, if you will.

But the other effect is that it amplifies whatever happens. Doing something particularly good or bad on Opening Day compared with in the middle of July is like the difference between doodling your name on wall that's freshly painted white and doing it on one already covered in graffiti.

Of course, what happens on Opening Day doesn't necessarily mean anything more than what happens on July 17 or September 4 or May 23 or any other day during the season. They're all just one game and to read too much into the results is to fall victim to the allure of small sample sizes.

But that can't stop us from having a little fun with the numbers.

Event: Jason Heyward crushes a huge home run in his first major league at-bat, goes 2-for-5 in debut.
Reaction: He's the Second Coming! If he keeps hitting a home run in every game, he'll break the home run record sometime around the end of the 2014 season.
Reality: About that home run -- if you haven't seen it, you should. It was absolutely crushed, as was the single Heyward picked up later in the game. It's also impressive how Heyward was able to focus enough to perform given all the hype, playing his first big league game at home and catching the first pitch from none other than Hank Aaron. That said, A LOT of players have hit home runs in their first at-bat. In the past few years, the list of guys who have done it includes Mark Saccomanno, Lou Montanez, Charlton Jimerson and fellow Braves outfield prospect Jordan Schafer. The point is, as amazing a moment as Heyward's bomb was, it's fairly meaningless in terms of his long-term outlook. It's quite likely the home run will be the opening chapter of a great career, but as we've seen time and time again, there are no guarantees.

Event: Placido Polanco hit a grand slam and drove in six runs as the Phillies predictably pummeled the Nationals.
Reaction: Polanco is now on pace for a record 972 RBI!
Reality: It certainly was a nice day for Polanco, who is what some might call "a professional hitter." Of course, all of these guys are professional hitters, so I'm not sure what that means. But I think it's getting at the fact that Polanco handles the bat well, makes contact, moves runners over and generally gives you a solid at-bat. He should do all of those things well for the Phillies, and in this lineup, he'll probably put up some good numbers, even at his age. What he almost certainly will not do is finish in even the top three or maybe four on his own team in home runs or RBIs.

Event: Zack Greinke leaves the Royals' game against the Tigers with a 4-2 lead after six innings, only to see his bullpen cough up six runs in the seventh.
Reaction: It's going to be tough for Greinke to repeat as the AL Cy Young winner if he wins zero games this season.
Reality: Well, it's not like the Royals were good last year when Greinke managed to win enough games (16) to convince the stodgy voting corps of the BBWAA to give him the award he clearly deserved. But would it be surprising if Greinke pitched brilliantly again, only to win just 10-12 games this season? No. If he can get his leads safely to closer Joakim Soria, he should be fine. But with an offense that is going to struggle to score and a group of middle relief arsonists, Greinke certainly could have grounds to sue for lack of support.

Event: Carlos Zambrano gives up eight runs in 1 1/3 innings, and the bullpen gives up eight more in the Cubs' embarrassing 16-5 loss to the Braves.
Reaction: Wait 'til next year.
Reality: Take a step away from the ledge, Cubs fans. Two years ago, the Phillies lost to the Nationals 11-6 on Opening Day, then went on to win the World Series. Now, this Chicago team doesn't necessarily compare to that Philly team, but the point stands. One bad game is just one bad game, and even if Monday felt like a continuation of the nightmarish 2009 (minus Milton Bradley), it wasn't. Most projections do have the Cubs falling short of the playoffs, and it's hard to argue that at this point. The bullpen is certainly a concern, and Zambrano might be too, to a lesser extent. But that hardly means the Cubbies will end the season where they are now -- behind the Pirates in the standings.

Event: Albert Pujols goes 4-for-5, homers twice in Cardinals' win over Reds.
Reaction: He's the best hitter in baseball!
Reality: He's the best hitter in baseball!

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2009: 91-71, 1st in NL Central. Pythagorean record of 91-71.
Key Additions: IF Felipe Lopez, SPs Brad Penny and Rich Hill
Key Losses: SPs Joel Pineiro, John Smoltz and Todd Wellemeyer, 3B/OF Mark DeRosa, OF Rick Ankiel, IFs Joe Thurston and Khalil Greene
2010 Projections: PECOTA – 87-75, 1st in NL Central. CHONE – 91-71, 1st. CAIRO – 90.6-71.4, 1st.

Pitching: 2009 – 3.82 FIP (3rd in MLB), 3.61 for starters, 4.30 for relievers
2010 – A lot will depend on Chris Carpenter's ability to remain healthy for most of the season. Penny is unlikely to fully replace Pineiro's production, but you never know what will happen with the Dave Duncan Magic. A bigger concern is the bullpen, which is solid from the left side but shaky from the right, especially if closer Ryan Franklin struggles as he did down the stretch in '09.
Hitting: 2009 – .325 wOBA (19th in MLB)
2010 – When you have the undisputed best hitter in the game, that always helps. But with Matt Holliday remaining in the fold along with Ryan Ludwick and a promising Colby Rasmus, among others, Pujols isn't going to have to do it by himself. The biggest question is if rookie David Freese can hold down the everyday third base job, but Lopez will be there if he can't.
Fielding: 2009 – UZR of -17.8 (18th in MLB)
2010 – With Rasmus in center field and Brendan Ryan at shortstop, St. Louis has a pair of excellent up-the-middle defenders, and second baseman Skip Schumaker made big strides last season in his move from the outfield. Catcher defense is hard to quantify, but there doesn't seem to be any argument against ranking Yadier Molina among the top few at his position.

Reasons to Watch
1. Albert Pujols: As I discussed a while back, it's amazing to actually look at the stats and see just how much better Pujols has been anyone else over the past nine years. And it's not just the hitting. It's also the fact that he's made himself into a plus defender at his third big league position and the way he runs the bases so aggressively. Crude interpretations of his last name aside, there's not a whole lot anyone (even Cubs fans) can say against him.
2. Chris Carpenter: Carp's tenure in St. Louis has been fantastic, except for the pesky detail of almost two full seasons missed due to injury. Yet having pitched 21 1/3 big league innings since 2006, he came back strong last year, making 28 starts with a 2.78 FIP. The fact is, when he's on the mound, Carpenter is one of the best pitchers around. It's probably not wise to count on him for 30-plus starts in 2010, but Cardinals fans are certainly keeping their fingers crossed. Carp missing significant time would be a big blow to the playoff chances of a team most are picking to repeat at NL Central champs.
3. Yadier Molina: As fun as it is to watch a guy like Pujols come into the league smashing pitches all over the park and never stop, there's also something special about watching a guy make himself into a decent hitter through a lot of hard work. Such is the case with Molina. Strong defensive catchers can play 15 years in the big leagues without being able to hit, and Molina is one of the best behind the plate. Seeing him pick a runner off first base with a perfectly placed throw is a thing of beauty. But Molina clearly wasn't content with being all-glove, no-bat, which he most certainly was earlier in his career (2006 NLCS heroics aside). Starting with that '06 season, Molina's wOBA has climbed from .261 to .311 to .323 to .337 last season, a very solid output for a catcher. Yadi still doesn't hit for much power, but he puts the ball in play a lot and takes a fair number of walks. It's been quite a transformation.

Paint By Numbers: Rasmus posted a solid 12.7% walk rate at Triple-A Memphis in 2008, but shed that patient approach upon arriving in the majors last season, walking at a 6.9 percent clip. That included a stretch from May 26 through July 4 when Rasmus did not draw a single free pass. He did walk twice as much in the second half of the season, however. ... Skip Schumaker was easily the most extreme ground ball hitter in the majors last season, when he led all qualified hitters with a 61 percent ground ball rate and finished last with a 17.5 percent fly ball rate. ... In 2009, his third season as a big league starting pitcher, Adam Wainwright improved his strikeout rate by about two per nine innings, to 8.19. One factor might have been Wainwright's terrific curveball, which he threw significantly more than he had previously as a starter. The pitch was worth 23.3 runs according to FanGraphs' pitch value data, making it the second-best curve in the game last season, behind Wandy Rodriguez's.

Blog Jog: At Viva El Birdos, DanUpBaby discusses which Cardinals might really be in the proverbial "best shape of their lives" this season and looks back at the team's recent history with fifth starters. ... St. Louis Post-Dispatch beat writer Derrick Goold shares a humorous anecdote about pitching coach Dave Duncan on the Bird Land blog. ... Over at Fungoes, Pip wonders if the Cards' right-handed relief pitching should really be a concern. ... The Cardinals come in at No. 10 in FanGraphs' organizational rankings, and Dave Cameron explores the reasons why.

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My last post about Eric Chavez was an apt lead-in to yesterday's news that Nomar Garciaparra was retiring. As Rob Neyer phrased it, Nomar's career was "an excellent object lesson in the non-inevitability of immortality."

Garciaparra was on his way to becoming an absolute, no-doubt Hall of Famer until the injuries started chipping away at him.

It's amazing to look back now on the 2000 season. That year was Nomaaaaaaaah's best, as he hit .372/.434/.599, won the AL batting title and punched up a career-high 155 OPS+.

It's funny though -- immortality is certainly not inevitable, but even if Nomar isn't a Hall of Famer, he's a guy people will remember for a long time. If you look at other guys who had great seasons in 2000 (just 10 years ago!) it's stunning how quickly players of a somewhat lower quality become completely irrelevant.

For example, who were the top 10 in batting average in the majors in 2000? Nomar was one, and Todd Helton, Manny Ramirez, Vladimir Guerrero, Carlos Delgado and Derek Jeter appear on the list too.

The rest of that list inspired me to scratch my head and go, "THAT guy?"

In 2000, it's difficult to remember, Darin Erstad and Moises Alou hit .355, Jeffrey Hammonds hit .335 and David Segui hit .334, all finishing in the top 10. This same year, Richard Hidalgo finished fifth in home runs, and the top 10 in ERA included Jeff D'Amico, Chan Ho Park and Rick Ankiel.

The fact is, nothing is inevitable in baseball. If you look at last year's leaders, you can confidently predict that Albert Pujols and Joe Mauer will go down as two of the greatest players of all time, Hanley Ramirez and Miguel Cabrera will eventually cruise into the Hall and Joey Votto and Pablo Sandoval have years of All-Star games and MVP votes ahead of them.

But reality is a lot messier than that. Chances are, injuries will sap somebody's potential before it fully blooms, and someone else's career will fizzle out just as quickly as it erupted in the first place.

We'll just have to stay tuned to find out who.

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Baseball players, particularly ones who have not yet played a Major League game, are often built up to mythic proportions.

It's often said that people fear the unknown, but baseball fans in particular also take the unknown, wrap it in hyperbole and set themselves up for disappointment. Speaking partly from personal experience, I can attest to the fact that fringe prospects can become franchise saviors in a fan's mind.

But what is going on right now with Braves 20-year-old outfield prospect Jason Heyward is something else entirely. Heyward was a first-round pick in 2007, and going into last season, Baseball America rated him the game's No. 5 prospect. Then the 6-foot-4, 220-pound lefty went out and hit .323/.408/.555 at three minor league levels.

Expected to compete for a big league roster spot in Spring Training, Heyward is denting cars in the parking lot of the Braves' facility with his mammoth batting practice shots and drawing comparisons to Hank Aaron.

And so, the myth gains steam.

But is the man equal to the myth, or even in the neighborhood? Jeff Schultz of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wonders if expectations are too high for the rookie, although he finds Heyward possesses an uncommon maturity that so far has left him unfazed by the attention he's getting.

Still, it's worth wondering, what is a reasonable expectation for Heyward this season?

FanGraphs lists two projections for Heyward, from Bill James and CHONE, and they vary pretty significantly. The James system sees a line of .303/.371/.465, compared with CHONE's much more conservative .258/.324/.416.

Of course, you have to take those numbers with a grain of salt, especially with a rookie whose amount of playing time has not yet been decided.

So I thought it might be informative to look at some other prospects who came up around the same age, and see what they were able to do at the plate as rookies.

Ken Griffey, Jr., 1989, 19 years old -- .264/.329/.420 in 455 AB

Alex Rodriguez, 1994, 19 years old -- .204/.241/.204 in 54 AB.
1995, 20 years old -- .232/.264/.408 in 142 AB.

Andruw Jones, 1996, 19 years old -- .217/.265/.443 in 106 AB
1997, 20 years old -- .231/.329/.416 in 399 AB

Justin Upton, 2007, 20 years old -- .221/.283/.364 in 140 AB

Albert Pujols, 2001, 21 years old -- .329/.403/.610 in 590 AB

That's just a sampling, but it gives you an idea of what Heyward is up against.

He could, as some seem to expect, be another rookie Pujols. It's more likely that he will spend some time in the minors this year and struggle a bit in The Show. That's just how it works -- most of the time.

Then again, there are exceptions, which is what feeds to mythology in the first place. And that's part of what makes baseball great.

Now that Jim Edmonds has signed a minor-league deal with the Milwaukee Brewers in an attempt to revive his career, he has for the second time aligned himself with a division of the St. Louis Cardinals, his former club. Edmonds also played for the Cubs in 2008 before finding himself out of work last season.

Of course, there’s nothing new about the Edmonds situation. There is very little “loyalty” between teams that don’t want to be stuck with players they don’t need and players who want to get the most money they can on the open market. It’s just how the game works, and it doesn't bother me much anymore.

But the Edmonds situation did get to me thinking about the first time I saw him wearing a Cubs uniform and how jarring that was. And it made me wonder: What would be the most bizarre or shocking marriages between a team and a current player?

Here’s what I came up with:

1. Derek Jeter, Red Sox. He’s the ultimate Yankee, so if this move happened (yeah, right), it would probably cause a riot in Times Square.

2. Albert Pujols, Cubs. He is scheduled to become a free agent after the 2011 season, so you never know. But it would be disturbing to see him in Cubbie blue.

3. Chipper Jones, Mets. He’s played his whole career for the division rival Braves and has been a particular thorn in the sides of Mets fans, who typically serenade him with chants of “Larry, Larry.”

I think it's telling about the fluid nature of team allegiance today that more didn't readily spring to my mind.

But for all the fans out there: What player wearing what uniform would seem particularly strange or "not right" to you?

It’s always interesting to me how you can know without a doubt something is true but still be surprised by it when the facts are presented in a certain light.

Such is the case with Albert Pujols. I think we can all agree he is the best player in baseball and has been for some time. But how much better has he been than the rest of his peers?

This is a topic St. Louis Post-Dispatch Cardinals beat writer Derrick Goold broached in a recent blog post in which he discussed possible contract negotiations between the Cardinals and Pujols, who is a free agent after the 2011 season. In trying to get a handle on how much dough Pujols could command on the open market, Goold compared Pujols’ career numbers to those of the two highest-paid players in baseball since Pujols started in 2001.

Long story short, Pujols has made about half as much money as Manny Ramirez and a little more than a third as much as Alex Rodriguez in that span and put up considerably better numbers. A-Rod has the edge in home runs, but Pujols’ lead in the much more important rate stats (OBP, SLG, etc) is laughable.

This is what I was saying at the beginning: I already knew El Hombre was better than everyone else, but seeing those numbers in front of me still shocked me.

I’d like to expand a little on Goold’s exercise just to bring even more perspective to Pujols’ dominance. Here are the active leaders in some crucial stats from 2001 to the present, thanks to the invaluable baseball-reference.com (counting only those with at least 1,000 plate appearances):

Batting Average: Pujols .334, Ichiro .333, Mauer .327, Helton .326, Guerrero .321

On-base Percentage: Helton .433, Pujols .427, M. Ramirez .415, Berkman .415, Chipper .415

Slugging Percentage: Pujols .628, M. Ramirez .590, Howard .586, A-Rod .584, Braun .574

OPS+*: Pujols 172, M. Ramirez 157, A-Rod 153, Berkman 149, Thome 149

Runs Created**: Pujols 1,364, A-Rod 1,241, Helton 1,178, Berkman 1,161, M. Ramirez 1,105

These stats give you a pretty good idea of how Pujols has basically been operating on his own plane for the last several years. To put this fact another way, Pujols’ worst OPS+ for one season came in 2002, when he put up a 151. Last season, only four players besides Pujols topped that number, and five did it in 2008. So even Pujols’ “worst” is basically unattainable for just about everyone.

An even better statistic for examining Pujols’ total offensive contributions is wOBA, which stands for weighted on-base average. wOBA appropriately gives more weight to OBP than slugging percentage and also considers stolen bases and caught stealing. It operates on the same scale as OBP. Here are the active leaders in wOBA, via Fangraphs.

Pujols .436, M. Ramirez .419, Helton .419, A-Rod, .412, Thome .406

Finally, Goold used the dollar value calculations on Fangraphs that go back to 2002 in order to get a read on Pujols’ total worth. These calculations take into account batting, fielding and the player’s position (first base is an easy position to play, meaning Pujols is docked a lot of points compared with A-Rod, who has played shortstop and third base). Using Goold’s idea as a jumping-off point, here are Fangraphs’ leaders in value since 2002 for position players (in millions of dollars):

Pujols 230, A-Rod 206.8, Utley 159.1, Berkman 149.7, Chipper 149.1

One more thing to ponder: Derek Jeter has racked up $145.6 million in value during this time, meaning Pujols has been worth 158 percent as much as Captain America. That is close to the difference between Jeter and Randy Winn ($89.5 million).

* Adjusted on-base plus slugging percentage measures a player’s OPS against that of other players in a given season, adjusting for ballpark. An average player has an OPS+ of 100, and better than average players are above 100.

** Runs created measures a player’s contributions to his team’s scoring. Although several other bells and whistles have been added over the years to account for various subtleties, the basic formula is OBP multiplied by total bases.

Since the calendar is about to flip to 2010, we’ve reached the time of year when we solemnly vow to improve in various ways in the coming 365 days. Let’s take a look at the New Year’s resolutions of your favorite Major League baseball teams, starting with the National League.

Arizona Diamondbacks – Persuade everyone on the roster to join teammate and award-winning mustache-grower Clay Zavada in developing a little upper-lip fuzz. To be good, you have to look good, and everyone can agree nothing looks more stylish that a ‘stache.

Atlanta Braves – Stock the bullpen with plenty of blankets. You don’t want free agent acquisitions Billy Wagner (38 years old) and Takashi Saito (39) to catch cold in the early-season chill.

Chicago Cubs – Convince first baseman Derrek Lee, who normally conducts himself with a quiet professionalism, to start acting standoffish toward teammates and like a jerk to the media. That way, when the team underperforms again, fans and lazy reporters will have a convenient scapegoat to replace the departed Milton Bradley.

Cincinnati Reds – For the love of Fire Joe Morgan, stop batting Willy Taveras leadoff. Taveras played 82 games in the No. 1 spot this past season and posted a robust .275 on-base percentage in those contests. In a related note, learn that the most important thing you can do in baseball is not make outs.

Colorado Rockies – Start the season off hot this time, then suddenly collapse late, just to throw people off.

Florida Marlins – Make it to the World Series again so people will actually show up for the games.

Houston Astros – Keep signing mediocre 30-ish relievers to relatively lavish multi-year contracts. Great strategy.

Los Angeles Dodgers – Tell Frank and Jamie McCourt that if they don’t find a way to settle their divorce and ownership dispute quickly and in a way that is best for the team, Tommy Lasorda will sit on them until they do.

Milwaukee Brewers – Now that Brett Favre is persona non grata in Wisconsin, spice up the traditional Miller Park sausage races with an extra participant: someone dressed as Favre in a Vikings Jersey and Wranglers. This Favre imposter should obviously get out to the lead before being intercepted and stopped before the finish line.

New York Mets – Ensconce every player in bubble wrap to try to ward off the injuries that decimated the team in 2009.

Philadelphia Phillies – Make Green Man the team’s new co-mascot. Check out the hilarity that would ensue (skip ahead to about the 0:50 mark).



Supplementary resolution for you, the reader: If you are not already doing so, start watching “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”

Pittsburgh Pirates – Stop delaying the inevitable and trade rising star Andrew McCutchen now, before fans grow attached to him. It’s the humane thing to do.

San Diego Padres – Instead of starting diminutive David Eckstein at shortstop, have him hide in the back pocket of 6-foot-6, 285-pound outfielder Kyle Blanks, only to leap out at crucial times and chase down fly balls in San Diego’s spacious outfield.

San Francisco Giants – Now that super utilityman Mark DeRosa has signed with the team, provide local media with info sheet highlighting how DeRosa is “gritty” and plays the game The Right Way in order to help facilitate fawning articles.

St. Louis Cardinals – Continue furious work on super-secret Albert Pujols cloning project.

Washington Nationals – Petition Commissioner Selig to allow Adam Dunn to use a jetpack in left field. This would increase Big Donkey’s range while also giving people a reason to watch the team play.

Tomorrow: the American League!