Look, we could talk about how the Dodgers need a second baseman now that Joe Torre completely alienated Orlando Hudson by benching him in favor of an inferior player down the stretch and in the playoffs, or how the Dodgers need another starting pitcher or two, but why beat around the bush when what the Dodgers clearly need, way more than anything else, is new ownership.

Even before the whole divorce saga exploded, Frank and Jamie McCourt had already worn thin their welcome a long time ago. These are people who forced Ned Colletti add the game’s best catching prospect as a throw-in to the Casey Blake trade just to save a lousy $2 million, but who at the same time were dropping tens of millions of dollars annually on at least 7 massive mansions.

These are owners who have refused to sign even a single one of the team’s young talent to any sort of contract at all, despite the fact that this is the obvious way to secure the long-term competitiveness of the franchise while keeping fan favorites in the fold, instead going to arbitration every single year with every single one of them.

These are owners who doubled down on Ned Colletti, giving him a secret contract of undisclosed length and size “in order to prevent speculation,” apparently not realizing that the best possible way to encourage speculation of all types is to give someone a secret contract, and all this in spite of the fact that almost all of the success the Dodgers have had recently is because of Logan White and Kim Ng and Joe Torre, and actually in spite of Colletti’s “efforts.”

Frank McCourt is the kind of owner who likes to show up in the press box in the middle of a game to “chat” with Vin Scully, blathering on and on about nothing, sometimes for innings at a time, when we are all trying to watch the game and would much rather be listening to the greatest sports broadcaster of all time.

These are the kind of owners, who used money they didn’t even have to buy one of the most storied franchises in baseball, with one of the largest fanbases and revenue streams, and proceeded to run it like it had the revenue stream of the Devil Rays, all while extracting as much income out of it as they could to support their lavish lifestyle.

And yet, instead of recognizing what an incredible stroke of luck they had to get their hands on such a team, and doing their best to keep it, they let their marital troubles spin out of control to the point where probably neither of them will keep the team, and in the meantime the a huge cloud hangs over the whole franchise. Because if you thought the McCourts were loathe to spend money on the actual team before, just wait til you see how little they spend now that they need every last penny to pay their lawyers.

In short, what the Dodgers need more than anything is new ownership, as soon as possible.

- What They Need Index -

The Giants are basically set for the next two years at least in the starting rotation, with Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, and Jonathan Sanchez all under team control til at least 2011 at cost-controlled prices. And with the vaguely serviceable Barry Zito signed til forever and closer Brian Wilson still with 4 years left of arbitration, on the pitching side of things GM Brian Sabian’s job consists of little more than plugging in a 5th starter and filling in a few gaps in the back end of the bullpen from year to year.

The offense, however, is another story.

Even with the emergince of Pablo Sandoval as a superstar-type bat, the Giants still put up the following team numbers:

OBP – .309 (last in the majors)
BB% – 6.7 (last in the majors)
wOBA – .305 (last in the majors)

Yes, that is correct. Despite seeing their third baseman post a slash line of .330/.387/.556, the Giants still had the worst offense in the game – that’s just how bad everyone else on the team was.

Of course, the Giants kind of shot themselves in the foot by benching the player with their second best OBP, left-fielder Fred Lewis, for much of the season behind guys like Nate Schierholtz (a putrid .302 OBP), but Lewis’s OBP that was good enough for second best on the team was still only .348, which tells you something about the kind of “talent” Sabean has assembled in the lineup behind Sandoval.

What they really need is to clone Big Panda.

They Giants are not entirely without hope of improvement. The recently resigned Freddy Sanchez improves the offense at second base a bit, and a full season of highly touted catching prospect Buster Posey might provide a boost, but then again that would require actually playing Posey, rather than letting him rot on the bench behind punchless Eli Whiteside the way Bruch Bochy did all last September.

But the problem is that the Giants already have subpar offensive contributors ensconced at too many positions, with Garko at first, Renteria at short, and Rowand in center. Assuming the Giants are committed to giving Posey some sort of shot and letting either Lewis or Schierholtz play one of the outfield corners, their only real chance to upgrade offensively is at the other outfield corner.

But given how good the Giants pitching is, they have a real shot to go deep into the playoffs if they can add only a modicum of defense, and with huge numbers coming off the books this offseason, they should go for it now, while they have pitching a low prices, by signing a star, run-producing outfielder.

Knowing when your team is on the verge of playoff contention and thus that you should spend big to try to get a few extra wins is a key skill in baseball, and for the Giants the time is now. After all, they won 88 games last year despite having the worst offense around.

In sum, what the Giants need is to start Lewis instead of Schierholtz in right field, play Buster Posey full-time, maybe sign Brad Penny if he’s cheap, and do whatever it takes to sign either Jason Bay or Matt Holliday.

What They Need Index

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!