For months now, everyone has been talking about how second baseman Akinori Iwamura’s $4.85 million 2010 option might be too expensive for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays to pick up, especially with the explosive emergence of Ben Zobrist (your 2009 MLB leader in WAR). But all the speculation I’ve seen has focused on whether the Rays would pick up Iwamura’s option or let him walk.

Nobody mentioned the smarter move, which would be to simply trade Iwamura to a team that found his $4.85 million price tag acceptable. But of course the Rays and GM Andy Friedman were ahead of the curve on this one, and it’s clear that they have been thinking trade for several weeks now, and never even entertained the idea of letting it get to the stage of picking up the option or not.

Instead, they shipped Iwamura to the Pirates today for cost-controlled reliever Jesse Chavez. This move makes sense for both sides. The bullpen was an issue at several points last season, and the Rays were definitely in the market for an arm, so Chavez is a useful addition, especially when their only viable option with Iwamura was going to be to let him walk and get nothing. Meanwhile, the Pirates get a league-average to slightly above league average at a not-unreasonable price to serve as a one-year stopgap at second while they continue to rebuild.

You remember Aaron Guiel, don’t you? That journeyman fifth outfielder who once hit 15 homers for the Kansas City Royals back in 2003? Who batted .256 in 82 at-bats with the Yankees in 2006? Who posted a major league career line of .246/.338/.447 in parts of six major league seasons?

Sure you do.

Well, three years on since his last major league appearance, Guiel has undergone a mini career renaissance playing in Japan for the Yakult Swallows. In his first year in Japan, in 2007, Guiel (or “Gai-eru” in Japanese) belted 35 homers, which tied for second in the league. After an injury plagued 2008 campaign, Guiel has come back strong with 23 homers and a respectable .262/.361/.512 line.

Along the way, he has earned the nickname “Angel” from Japanese fans, due to his blond, curly hair and his reportedly angelic demeanor, as well as his own cheering section in Jingu Stadium, instantly recognizable by its frenetic waving of Canadian flags whenever Guiel comes up to bat (Guiel is from Vancouver).

And of course, as a starting player on a Japanese team, Guiel has his very own personal fight song, which the fans sing at the top of their lungs whenever he bats:

(Trumpet Fanfare=first several notes of “Oh Canada”)

Oh! Guiel! You hit the ball!
Oh! Guiel! A home run!
Aa-ron Gui-el! The man who works miracles!
Toward the stands you launch, a timely blast!

In tonight’s game between the Reds and the Cubs, Cubs starter Rich Harden had already run up a pitch count of 103 through 4 innings of work, despite only allowing 1 run, so Cubs manager Lou Pinella opted to remove him from the game (wisely, I would say, given Harden’s legendary fragility). Harden left with a 4-1 lead, but obviously could not get the win, since he had not pitched the requisite 5 innings.

Rookie reliever Jeff Stevens thereupon entered the game to start the 5th frame, pitching one inning and earning his first ever career win.

The only problem was, in his one inning of work Stevens gave up two singles and a three run bomb to Johnny Gomes, erasing the Cubs’ lead and leaving the game as a 4-4 tie.

The Cubs promptly came back and scored a run in the bottom half of the fifth, and scoreless relief by three other Cubs relievers, including 2 innings of hitless, 3-strikeout work by Aaron Heilman, preserved a 6-4 victory for Chicago, and saved the “win” for Stevens.

This is one of the worst cases of “vulturing a win” that I’ve seen in a long, long time. Stevens was far and away the worst Cubs pitcher in this game, posting a -.265 WPA whereas all the other four pitchers were positive, and yet he was awarded the win.

I know I’m just beating a long dead horse here, but why again do so many people hang so much of their evaluation of a player (not to mention Cy Young Awards), on this incredibly flawed stat?

Derek Jeter’s career on-base percentage: .387
Lou Gehrig’s career on-base percentage: .447

Derek Jeter’s career total times on base: 3736
Lou Gehrig’s career total times on base: 4274

Jeter has a ways to go.

In what has otherwise been a disastrous season for the Kansas City Royals, 23-year-old first baseman Billy Butler has had a breakout season, with an .842 OPS. But perhaps most impressively of all, Butler is on pace to hit 49 doubles.

The list of players who have hit at least 49 doubles in their age 23 season or younger is very short, and very exclusive. In fact, only seven players have ever done it. Have a look:

Hank Greenberg
Enos Slaughter
Stan Musial
Alex Rodriguez
Albert Pujols
Grady Sizemore
Miguel Cabrera

WPA is the stat that old baseball men have always wanted.

If you believe in Wins and RBIs, if you believe that certain pitchers can “pitch to the score” and certain batters are simply “clutch” and can suddenly step up their game when it’s all on the line while somehow sucking the rest of the time, than WPA is the stat for you.

The problem that so many people have with stats like Wins and RBI is not so much with what they show, as indeed, they only show what they were designed to show, and do so quite well. Rather, the problem people have is with what other people think these stats show, which is actually pretty far from what they tell us.  Namely, which player really did the most to help his team win games.

But if your goal is to find out exactly which player did the most to help his team win games, than WPA is the perfect stat for you.

Actually, it couldn’t be more elegant. WPA, which stands for “Win Probability Added,” is derived by looking at the current game situation – what inning it is, what the score is, how many outs there are, and how many men are on base – and determining what percentage chance each team has of winning the ballgame in that situation, based on a computer crunching the numbers of all previous baseball games for which complete information is available.

In any given game, the two teams each have about a 50 percent chance of winning at the start of the game (slightly more for the home team, and slightly less for the visitors). With each outcome, whether an out or a base safely reached, one team’s chance of winning increases slightly, and the other’s decreases by the exact same amount, always adding up to 100 percent.

What WPA does, is it awards each batter and each pitcher a certain fraction of a win for each outcome they are involved in, in every game they play in.  For example, if a batter gets a single and it increases his teams chance of winning by 2 percent, he is awarded 0.02 of WPA, and the pitcher is docked negative 0.02 of a win. Naturally, getting big hits in crucial situations, or (for a pitcher) getting tough outs with the game on the line, is worth much more of a win than getting hits or outs in blowouts. Over the course of the season, all players’ totals are added to determin exactly how many wins they were actually worth to their team that season. That’s WPA.

WPA differs from WAR in that WAR attempts to assess the overall value a player has provided without reference to game situation.  Basically, WAR assumes that a player has little or control over exactly when he gets hits or outs, and thus attempts to assess true skill level, while factoring out random luck.  WPA, on the other hand, doesn’t care about true skill level at all.  It only cares about how much a player actually helped his team win, based on context. In other words, how “clutch” players were.

Which is why WPA is so perfect for the old school writers and baseball men. Because it is measuring *exactly* what people always thought they were trying to measure with Wins and RBI: how much you helped your team win.

So if we think about the traditional main criteria used by old-school baseball writers to award the two major awards, MVP and Cy Young, which are of course Wins (followed, to a lesser extent, by ERA) for pitchers and RBI for batters (followed, to a lesser extent, by homers), we see that WPA is actually the best way to determine these awards, if these people actually want to measure what they say they want to measure.

Because after all, if you are a crusty old baseball writer, you don’t really care that 50 homers in 1996 was not indicative of Brady Anderson’s “true” skill level – you just know he had a heck of a year.

So, looking at the WPA leaderboards for each league in this particular season (minimum 4.00 WPA), we get the following:

National League
Albert Pujols – 7.22
Prince Fielder – 7.06
Ryan Howard – 5.38
Chris Carpenter – 5.08
Joey Votto – 4.76
Chase Utley – 4.43
Tim Lincecum – 4.27
Andre Ethier – 4.04

American League
Zack Greinke – 4.81
Justin Verlander – 4.31
Johnny Damon – 4.27
Jason Bay – 4.04

No big surprises in the National League, where if you went by WPA, you’d wind up with Albert Pujols as MVP and Chris Carpenter as Cy Young, both of those players being the odds-on favorites to win if the season were to end today.

But the American League is a different story, as WPA shows how Wins and RBI fail to tell the whole story of who happened to be the most clutch. Zack Greinke is first overall in WPA, despite being behind the pack in Wins, and Johnny Damon is your leader among position players in WPA.

Indeed, WPA suggests that Zack Greinke was actually the most valuable player in the American League in this particular season, and probably should be the MVP, but if we adhere to the traditional rules that pitchers should not be MVPs and the MVP has to come from a playoff-bound team, than by all rights Johnny Damon ought to be your American League MVP frontrunner.

But in any case, Zack Greinke is far and away your AL Cy Young this year. Not only is he leading the league in WPA, showing his “clutchness,” but he’s also leading all AL players in WAR, showing his “true” skill level!

After his stellar start against the Dodgers tonight, allowing only one earned run in seven innings of work, Diamondbacks starter Billy Buckner has a 2.37 ERA in three starts against Los Angeles so far this season.

Against all other teams the rest of the year, however, his ERA is an unsightly 7.85.

What should the Mariners do with Ken Griffey Jr. next season? The fans love Junior, and the Mariners love his positive impact in the clubhouse, but his declining performance hinders the ability of an otherwise pretty decent team to contend for a postseason berth.

Steve Kelley of the Seattle Times speaks to some of the value Griffey has had in the clubhouse this season:

He has been the godfather to the parade of young players who have come into the clubhouse. He has been a close friend to the veterans. He has offered advice on pitchers’ and hitters’ tendencies….

He has been good for the club, good for the city and great to have around again.

The thing is, there is a perfectly good way for the Mariners to get all of these benefits without wasting precious at-bats on him: they should simply make him a coach.  They could even pay him the exact same salary, if they think he is that worth it, but please, don’t waste precious at bats on a guy which could be given to better performers just because you like the advice he gives to younger players or his friendly presence in the dugout.

That’s the sensible part of my plan for Griffey. Now here is the slightly crazy part.

The Mariners should sign Griffey to a $1 million “personal services” contract or whatever, and then use him as a coach.  He’s not on the active roster, but he travels with the team, wears a uniform, sits in the dugout, gives advice, etc.  And as long as the Mariners are in contention, they should only put their very best players on the field.

But if Griffey is still interested in playing, here’s what you do.  Let him play in spring training. Let him take batting practice with the team during the season if he wants to. And then, if the Mariners actually do actually fall so far out of contention that they can’t possibly come back, the team should cut its worst player and install Griffey as the DH.  Or else, when the rosters expand in September, add Griffey to the 40-man and put him on the team for a few at-bats down the stretch.

Look, this plan is pretty silly, but if Griffey is already under contract as a coach, the only thing he really costs you is a roster spot, and only a 40-man roster spot at that, if you wait until September.  It’s still probably not the optimal use of resources, but in this darkened age of steroids, Ken Griffey Jr. is the one player who has emerged as still being beloved by pretty much the entire nation, and if he still wants to play a bit, and the fans still love to watch him (which they do), and the Mariners players and staff all love him, I say let him play a bit.

In any case, it’s a decent compromise with the foolishness of giving him so many at-bats this season when the Mariners actually had a shot at contention.