With the season one-third gone now, it’s become pretty clear which players were only slumping and which players actually just suck at baseball. And yet on every team there is at least one player which for foolish reasons, whether it be an over-developed sense of loyalty, a case of GM-player man-love, a reputation for grit and hustle, or a bloated contract, the team just hasn’t been able to pull the plug on yet. In this post, we have a look at each team in the National League with an eye for the one player who really needs to be cut as soon as possible.

Dodgers – RP Guillermo Mota: This guy looks permanently broken: he gives up too many hits, he doesn’t strike enough guys out, and he walks too many batters. His WHIP is an appalling 1.79 and he needs to be shelved somewhere.

Giants – 1B Travis Ishikawa: The main job of a first baseman is to hit, so when your first baseman is the worst hitter on your team, you are doing something wrong.

Diamondbacks – CF Chris Young: Chris Young was supposed to be one of those guys whose power and speed would somehow make of for his complete lack of any ability to get on base.  Well, now you have a guy whose power and speed have fallen off, but who is even less able to get on base.  It is unbelievable that Young is still on pace for well over 500 at bats this season despite his .220 OBP. He needs to be working out his suckiness in the minor leagues.

Rockies – 3B Garret Atkins: I’ve been advocating that the Rockies trade Atkins for two years now, while there was still some perception that he was a good player, but they waited too long, and now he’s basically untradeable. Few players have benefited more from Coors Field than Atkins, and Atkins also had the benefit of his personal peak coinciding with the Rockies high profile Series run in 2007. But he was always an extremely inadequate defender at third, and now his bat has disappeared as well, even at home.

Padres – 2B David Eckstein: GM Kevin Towers calls David Eckstein the MVP of the team so far this year. He couldn’t be more wrong. Eckstein was only barely adequate defensively and offensively when he was at his peak about 5 or 6 years ago, and now at age 34, he’s pretty much got nothing left.

Cardinals – SP Todd Wellemeyer: Todd Wellemeyer shows that maybe there are limits to what pitching coach Dave Duncan can do. Kind of. Actually, it’s pretty amazing that the Cardinals have gotten as much out of Wellemeyer as they have, considering he was nobody’s idea of good starting pitcher material. But with Mitchell Boggs waiting in the wings, there’s really no reason to keep Wellemeyer around.

Brewers – 3B Bill Hall: Bill Hall couldn’t hit his way out of a paper bag right now. Sure, he hit 35 homers back in 2006, but he’s done nothing at all since then, and he still has no real position defensively. For some reason, Hall still has the image of a youngster who is still developing, but when you actually go look at his age you find out he is already 29 years old, and what you see, which right now is total suckage, is probably what he really is.

Cubs – RP Aaron Heilman: Heilman was once a highly touted prospect, and did manage to throw up a few good seasons, but it’s becoming more and more clear that he’s just not all that good. Nothing about his peripherals suggests that anything is particularly wrong. His velocity is the same as ever, as are his FB/GB rates, his home run rate, his K/9 rate etc., and his BABIP is a very modest .299. Heilman simply walks too many batters, posting an unsightly 6.26 BB/9, and until that changes (if ever), he needs to be in AAA somewhere until he can learn better control.

Reds – SS Alex Gonzalez: Gonzalez was once an elite defender at shortstop, which meant that his extremely weak bat could be somewhat justified, but now he is no longer anywhere near that class, and his bat seems weaker than ever at .209/.250/.302. He needs to be cut.

Erstad is still playing?

Astros – OF Darin Erstad: Yeah, I know, Erstad is supposed to be this super-gritty former football player (except he was only a kicker), but we are a decade removed now from his last actually good season in 2000, and I’m almost surprised to see that he is actually still on a major league roster. He’s hitting .137/.211/.196.  Why is this man still anywhere near a baseball diamond?

Pirates – OF Brandon Moss: Lots of people have mentioned how one good side of trading away Nate McLouth was that it has “cleared playing time for blocked prospect Andrew McCutchen.”  But hardly anyone mentions that one of the players who was allegedly “blocking” McCutchen is Brandon Moss, a corner outfielder who has been playing every day this season despite posting a .310 OBP and only a single home run.

Marlins – 3B Emilio Bonifacio: The fact that Emilio Bonifacio, who has no business being in a major league lineup at all, is actually batting leadoff for the Marlins, despite his .294 OBP, is an indictment of the entire Marlins coaching staff and front office.

Bonifacio whiffs again

Mets – C Omir Santos: It’s a joke that the Mets actually traded away Ramon Castro to clear a spot on the roster for this guy. It’s going to be fun watching as the numbers left over from his fluky hot start rapidly sink toward the Mendoza line.

Braves – OF Garrett Anderson: I laughed out loud when I heard that the Braves signed Anderson in the offseason, and I pretty much haven’t stopped laughing since.  The poor old guy has a .289 OBP to go along with a -15 UZR/150 in left field. At this point you could probably drag Bernie Williams out of the recording studio and run him out there for better production.

Nationals – CL Joel Hanrahan: You can anoint a guy your closer, sing the praises of his “live arm,” and run him out there in save situations as much as you want, but that doesn’t mean he is going to pitch like a closer, just because you really really want him to. In what may be the worst bullpen of all time, no reliever has done more damage in more high leverage situations than Hanrahan. His 1.90 WHIP (for an alleged closer!) pretty much says it all.

Phillies – P Chan Ho Park: Park has looked finished for years now, at least when you look at his peripherals. He managed to reinvent himself as a serviceable reliever in the pitcher-friendly NL West last season, fooling the Phillies into taking him on, but it’s kind of an understatement to say that his game does not play well in Citizen’s Bank Ballpark. The Park-as-starter experiment was basically doomed from the get-go, but ironically, Park has pitched even more poorly this year as a reliever than he did as a starter. This man should be enjoying his retirement somewhere, not getting thrown to the wolves every other night.

Game 5 of the NLCS had a few anxious moments, but for the most part the Phillies cruised. After the game, the team looked supremely pleased. It’s clear they wanted to win last night for their manager. Buster Olney explains:

It was tremendous to see the way the Philadelphia players responded to Charlie Manuel after the Phillies clinched the NL championship Wednesday night, each of them giving him a hug. Jimmy Rollins gave him a heartfelt hug, and then the two shared words, and another hug. Having lost my own mother two years ago, I am so relieved for Charlie that he can fly home to bury his Mom without having to worry about baseball the next couple of days.

I’ve Made a Huge, Tiny Mistake has a bunch of pics of Brad Lidge jumping up and down like a crazed monkey.

Phillies Nation links to Phillies Hall of Fame broadcaster Harry Kalas calling the last out of the NLCS, and blogger Tim Malcolm shares this tidbit:

I had a dream last night.

No, no, it wasn’t a dream about winning the World Series. Actually, I dreamed I was at a bonfire, and Charlie Manuel was there. I thanked him for the wonderful managing job he did in 2008, and he accepted it wholeheartedly. Then he taught me hitting — in an office, no less — by tossing cough drops at me as I waited with a bat.

The Good Phight offers apologies to members of the Phillies front office, including the man, the myth, the legend, former GM Ed Wade:

Ed Wade: This team, in large part, is your team.  You always resisted trading away young stars at the trading deadline, and now the team is made up of those young stars in the prime of their careers.  Five of the starting eight — Pat Burrell, Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, and Carlos Ruiz — were all homegrown products of your time as GM.  On the pitching side, Cole Hamels, Brett Myers, and Ryan Madson were part of your drafts and have been key parts of the run in 2008.

Finally, Crashburn Alley sums it all up with the simple opening line, “As hard as it may be to believe, the Philadelphia Phillies are the National League representatives in the World Series. Pinch yourself to validate that this is not a dream.”

The discussion going on in Coley’s post regarding designated hitters got me curious -

Does the American League really have an advantage during interleague and World Series games because of the DH? And if so, by how much?

So I was trying to figure this out by examining who would have been that ninth hitter had each National League team made the World Series in 2007. Then I would take those 16 players and match them up against the DHs of the American League and see how large the difference would be. Problem is, even after a good deal of time spent on the issue, I just couldn’t figure some of these “ninth hitters” out.

Take Cincinnati for example. Would they have DHed Adam Dunn? Who would have played left in his stead? Norris Hopper? Would Jerry Narron have trusted Joey Votto in a World Series game? Would they have DHed Griffey to keep him fresh? Would Ryan Freel have started at third while Edwin Encarnacion DHed? The possibilities were just too much.

Consequently, I’m asking for your help.

If your favorite team had made the World Series in 2007, who would have DHed? And if this guy was a regular starter in non-DH games (like Adam Dunn), who would have replaced him in the lineup?

But there are some rules here so it’s not a free-for-all:

1. This is for the World Series – the end of the season – not interleague, where another 1/2 season remains afterwards.
2. Even if this player was on your team’s roster at the beginning of the year, if he was traded/released/optioned before the post-season, then he’s not eligible. For example, Mark Sweeney can’t be the answer for San Francisco since as of 10/1/07, he was a Dodger. I have to do this or else two teams may claim the same “ninth batter”. Which would just be carayzee.
3. Despite rule #2, I’m counting injured players as eligible. Some guys whose teams aren’t in the playoff hunt shut down their seasons in September. I didn’t want to lose these guys in the exercise.
4. (ADDED) I had three rules, now I’m at four. This isn’t for the 2008 season. It’s for 2007. I’m doing this because I wanted the bigger sample size.

So let me know in the comments! I promise to take all of this information soon and write something up showing the results as well as the AL vs. NL comparison.

Thanks guys and gals!

For years now it has been established wisdom that most of the top-shelf talent in baseball eventually gravitates to the American League, due to the presence of big spending teams such the Yankees, Red Sox, and Tigers. This dominance of the AL over the NL has also been perceived in the AL’s recent maulings of the NL in the All-Star Game, the AL’s manhandling of the NL in Interleague Play, the perceived superiority of the recent AL World Series representatives, and the lists of big-name free agents who defect from the NL to the AL each season.

But even the most cursory of glances at the leaderboards this season yields the surprising impression that most of baseball’s biggest starts currently play in the National League, while most of the big name players in the American League are aging, injured, or both.

For example:

- The top five MLB leaders in batting average are all in the National League, as are 7 of the top 10.

- The top five MLB leaders in home runs are all in the NL, as are 7 of the top 10. Fourteen players in the NL have at least 7 or more homers, compared to a mere 4 players in the AL.

- The top eight leaders in OBP are all in the NL.

- All ten qualified players in the majors with an OPS over 1.000 are in the National League (and that is not even counting non-qualified Micah Owings). In fact, the AL only has 11 players with an OPS that is even over .900, compared to 23 in the National League.

While it is still early in the season and it is still possible that we could be seeing some sort of statistical fluke here, I think we may be seeing the beginning of a trend in which power begins to shift back toward the National League.

The way the American League has sustained its dominance in recent years was by significantly outspending the National League in the offseason free-agent market. But with the new trend which has emerged in the past two or three years of teams locking up all their good young players through their peak years by buying out several arbitration years, the free agent market has become thinner and thinner each offseason, making it harder and harder for the rich AL teams to pilfer all the NL’s hottest young stars by luring them with bigger contracts.

So now the AL teams are stuck with the aging, declining superstars they lured away five years ago, while the NL continues to produce the hot new young stars of tomorrow.

I couldn’t stay quiet. Not after the Phillies swept the Mets AGAIN – this time at Shea. But  Coley’s steadfast endorsement of Jimmy Rollins for MVP absolutely wreaks of homer-ism This is not a reference to the idiocy of Homer Simpson, but rather, the disease that plagues 99.99% (yes, this includes me) of baseball fans - the inability to properly judge the players on the teams for which you root.

I believe that there are 12 hitters in the National League who have had MVP-calibre seasons individually – Chipper Jones, Hanley Ramirez, Jimmy Rollins, Matt Holliday, Albert Pujols, Chase Utley, David Wright, Carlos Lee, Eric Byrnes, Jose Reyes, Prince Fielder, and Carlos Beltran. Rollins does certainly come out looking pretty good even among this bunch:

In the above chart, “Rk” stands for rank, comparing among the dozen players how each of them fare within those categories. Rollins is Top-5 in four categories – Runs, Strikeouts, Total Bases, and Stolen Bases. But look at Matt Holliday. He’s Top-5 in seven. Or David Wright, who is Top-5 in six. So Rollins doesn’t have the most balanced numbers among them.

What Rollins is heads-and-shoulders above his competition in is the number of times he has crossed home plate. His 127 Runs Scored is best in the NL, leading Hanley Ramirez by 12. But how is it that Rollins has this distinction with the lowest OBP among the dozen players (.346)? I’m sure that his number of extra-base hits and stolen bases has a good deal to do with this. But I’m just as sure that having Ryan Howard and Chase Utley behind you doesn’t hurt either. Moreover, look at the column for “ABs”. Despite playing in only three more games than his nearest competitor, Jose Reyes, Rollins has 38 more at-bats which sounds like a lot to me.

In fact, I checked the list of players who had led the NL in Runs Scored over a full season and found something that would make a good trivia question: When is the last time that a player has led the NL in Runs Scored while having a lower OBP than Jimmy Rollins (.346)? The answer is Glenn Beckert of the Chicago Cubs, who accomplished the feat all the way back in 1968, scoring 98 times despite having an OBP of .326. Suffice to say, the general rule of thumb is that in order to score runs, you need to get on base. It’s very unusual for a player like Rollins to lead the league.

Which got me wondering, in what other categories has Rollins benefited from his number of at-bats? I know this isn’t exactly scientific, but for kicks, I projected the numbers for each of the 12 MVP candidates if they too had equaled Rollins’ 656 At-Bats:

Rollins doesn’t look very special in this light. He still keeps up with his peers, but he’s now only Top-5 in two categories.  Now I know this chart assumes that each player performs just as they have throughout the season, but I think the point can still be made. While this certainly does not change how much Rollins has contributed on the field – let’s face it, the guy’s been tremendous – but this does help put things into perspective. He’s performed exceptionally well, but he has also received more opportunities to do so than anyone else.

And if you need more proof, Rollins is ninth in Win Shares with 23 (behind David Wright who has 30) and is also ninth in VORP (behind Hanley Ramirez).

Jimmy Rollins has played at an MVP-level for certain. But when you compare him to his peers, he’s just middle-of-the-pack. To be fair, there’s still two weeks of baseball to be played. With the race for NL MVP so tight, I can be convinced otherwise.

You know what I don’t get? Why is it that when a National League player gets traded to an American League team, or visa versa, he starts from scratch (statistically speaking)?

For example, Julio Lugo was traded at last year’s deadline from the Devil Rays to the Dodgers, and his stats on ESPN.com read like this:

TBD AL  73  289   17  1  12   27  18  4  27  47  .308  .373  .498

LAD NL  49  146    5  1   0   10   6  5  12  29  .219  .278  .267

I understand why, prior to interleague play, we kept a player’s National League and American League stats separate. The two leagues were very different beasts. But why have we kept doing it?

Some of the hits Lugo got as a Devil Ray last year came against National League teams. And some of the (very few) hits he got as a Dodger came against American League teams. So why not just combine his 2006 stats? Does that make too much sense?

Sarah had a post a few weeks ago about how “evil” some teams were because they were pocketing some change instead of spending all kinds of money in free agents (in other words, the NL vs. the AL).

Being a little late to the argument (the entire Umpbump staff except me commented on that post), I can’t say I have the final word, but I did find this website that kind of proves that, not only are some NL teams spending less money, they’re actually winning!

You can drag the date marker to see how each team is doing over time. Check it out here.

Dan Rosenheck has an article in the Times proving what we’ve all long suspected: the NL is much weaker than the AL. (So much weaker, in fact, that without interleague play last year, my Red Sox would’ve been a sub-.500 team. But that’s another story.) Rosenheck marshals a lot of evidence to show not just that the AL is stronger, but why the AL is stronger (hint: it’s not all about the designated hitter):

Some variation in league strength is not uncommon in baseball history, but the magnitude of today’s imbalance is remarkable. The cause is straightforward: A.L. teams have spent more money on players than their N.L. counterparts. In 2005, the average N.L. team had a $71 million payroll, while the average A.L. team’s was $75 million. Since then, N.L. spending has increased only slightly, to $74 million a team, while salaries in the A.L. have soared to $93 million a team.

Surprisingly, the Yankees cannot be directly blamed for this trend. They are one of only two A.L. teams that have reduced their payroll since 2005. The Red Sox, often accused of imitating the Evil Empire, are not the primary culprits, either — their $20 million increase in spending over the past two years is right around the A.L. average.

Instead, it is the small and midmarket A.L. teams that have pumped up their payrolls. The leader, believe it or not, is perennially cellar-dwelling Kansas City, which has more than doubled its $30 million payroll of 2005. The Chicago White Sox and Toronto have also added more than $30 million in salaries over the past two years.

[...]

It may be just as fair to finger the N.L. owners for their parsimony as it is to criticize the A.L.’s titans for their largess. Fans certainly don’t factor in league strength when deciding whether to go to the ballpark or how much to spend. According to Forbes magazine, N.L. teams earn just as much revenue on average as A.L. ones do, despite their smaller payrolls, which makes them more profitable: the average N.L. franchise posted an operating income of $19.9 million in 2006, compared with $12.7 million for the A.L.

And if you’re one of those NL partisans out there who is still clinging to the misguided belief that the NL is still just as good as the AL?

At a team level, an average A.L. squad would probably improve its record by about 10 games if it could face N.L. competition, meaning that last year’s Yankees probably would have been a 107-win juggernaut if they had played the Mets’ schedule. The same is true in reverse: if the 2006 Mets had played in the A.L., they would have won only 87 games and missed the playoffs. This is about the same difference in league strength as the gap between today’s N.L. and Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball.

Eek. Ouch.

Why do I like this article? Because it shuts the door on all this moaning from Coley (and, for that matter, Nick—the other NL fan on UmpBump! aha!) about how the Red Sox are evil. We’re not evil. You national leaguers are just darn parsimonious.