Barring an epic meltdown in the season’s final week, Craig Kimbrel is almost certain to take home the National League Rookie of the Year award, and rightfully so – he’s been the best reliever in baseball this year. However, the picture is much more crowded over in the American League, where Mark Trumbo, Ivan Nova, Jeremy Hellickson, Michael Pineda, and Jordan Walden all lead AL rookies in at least one category, and will likely all get support when the ballots are cast.

While those five each have counting stats that stand out from the crowd, none of them have made the same impact as Tampa Bay outfielder Desmond Jennings. Because the Rays opted to keep him in Triple-A until July 23rd, Jennings has only played in 56 games, far short of the record for fewest games played by a Rookie of the Year winner – Ryan Howard’s 88 games played in 2005. However, since getting called up, Jennings has been one of the best players in the game, and his output has helped push the Rays back into playoff contention.

At the plate, Jennings has posted a 147 wRC+ (meaning his offensive performance was 47 percent better than league average), second best among AL rookies. That mark trails only Toronto’s Brett Lawrie, who managed to play just 43 games in Toronto due to injuries. For comparison, Jacoby Ellsbury is going to get MVP votes, and he’s posted a 148 wRC+ this season. What Jennings lacks in quantity, he has made up for in quality, performing at the same level as most of the game’s superstars.

It’s easy to dismiss Jennings as a viable candidate based on the fact that he’s only played in the majors for the final two months of the season, but the reality is that the voters have a history of rewarding terrific performances in smaller doses. Howard won them over in 2005 by swatting 22 home runs down the stretch for the Phillies, Buster Posey captured the award last year despite not joining the Giants until early June, and perhaps most tellingly, relief pitchers have been heavily represented among recent winners.
If Kimbrel wins the NL trophy as expect, he will join Neftali Feliz, Andrew Bailey, Huston Street, and Kazuhiro Sasaki as relievers to take home the award since the year 2000. In each case, the voters focused on how dominant they were in a smaller sample, choosing them over position players and starting pitchers who played in a far greater percentage of their team’s innings.

Number of Batters Faced in ROY Season

Neftali Feliz (2010): 269
Andrew Bailey (2009): 323
Huston Street (2005): 306
Kazuhiro Sasaki (2000): 265

Closers have routinely been rewarded for their excellence in retiring around 300 batters in a season. With six games remaining, Jennings has already come to the plate 254 times this year, and will end the year with more plate appearances than batters faced for either Feliz or Sasaki in the years their excellence was rewarded. If we include his time spent as a defender as well (he’s made 105 putouts as an outfielder), it’s clear that he’s been directly involved in as many run saving situations as any of the closers who have been won the award.

Voters have established that this level of quantity is sufficient for recognition if the dominance is clear enough in a shorter number of appearances. Well, in the last 20 years, no American League rookie with at least 250 plate appearances has posted a better wRC+ than Jennings 147 mark this year. Even expanding to the National League, the only rookies to post a higher mark than what Jennings has put up are Albert Pujols, Ryan Braun, and Mike Piazza.
Clearly, Jennings has played at a level that would have made him the obvious choice had the Rays called him up earlier. So, now, the question is simply whether a financially motivated decision to keep him in the minors should be held against Jennings, or whether his late season run of greatness should be enough to garner consideration along with those who played at a lower level over a longer period of time.

With Howard and Posey, the voters have clearly shown that they are willing to consider players who spent a good chunk of their season in the minors, only to come up and play well in the second half of the season. They’ve also rewarded four closers for seasons in which other qualified candidates had much larger amounts of playing time. The recent history of the Rookie of the Year balloting shows that quality can trump quantity, and in the American League this season, that should hold true as well.

With the Atlanta Braves starting rotation facing some significant health questions, they are going to need strong performances from their relievers to have a chance of advancing in October. However, no team in 2011 has relied more on their relievers during the regular season – Jonny Venters, Craig Kimbrel, and Eric O’Flaherty rank 1st, 3rd, and 4th in the majors in relief appearances – and these relatively large workloads have created doubts about how well the Braves bullpen will perform in October.

There’s only one problem – these workloads aren’t actually historically unique for relievers at all. Focusing solely on 2011 totals gives the appearance of overwork, but in reality, the Braves are simply using their bullpen in the normal way it has been deployed for most of the past two decades. Instead, it’s the rest of baseball that is seeing a fairly dramatic shift downward in reliever usage.

From 2000 to 2004, a minimum of 20 relievers in each season threw 80 or more innings. In 2004, 27 relievers hit that mark, with eight of those throwing 90 or more innings. Scot Shields even topped the 100 inning plateau. However, in 2005, teams became more judicious with their willingness to use relievers that frequently, and only 10 bullpen arms managed to throw as many as 80 innings that year. Teams continued that pattern until 2009, when only eight relievers threw as many as 80 innings.

Last year, only five relievers were used that frequently, and the same is true this year – though with two weeks left in the season, we’ll likely end the season with seven or eight relievers surpassing that mark. However, that is still well under the average for the previous decade, and continues to show that teams have shifted the way they’re using their relievers.

There are two obvious factors that have driven this shift – a downturn in offense and the expansion of the number of relievers being carried by each team. With run scoring taking a nosedive the last few years, starting pitchers have been able to work deeper into the game, as there aren’t as many offensive rallies which push a manager towards making a call to the bullpen.

Now, even when a manager does make a pitching change, the rise of the seven and even occasionally eight man bullpen gives him significantly more options to choose from. While a six man bullpen was the standard for most of the 1990s and early 2000s, more and more teams have exchanged a bench player for another relief arm, giving them more match-up flexibility and allowing the manager to spread innings around to give more frequent days off during the season.

These two factors have served to all but eliminate the modern day “rubber-arm” reliever, as teams have spread the wealth among a larger pitching staff rather than asking their best relievers to pitch with significant frequency. The Braves, however, are simply bucking the modern trend, and are continuing to use their bullpen in the way that was standard for most of the last several decades.

If you look at the workloads of Venters, Kimbrel, and O’Flaherty from a wider perspective, it becomes nearly impossible to argue that they’ve been historically overworked. If we go back to the turn of the decade, 112 relief pitchers have thrown more innings in a season than Jonny Venters has this year. If you’d rather go by games pitched, 53 pitchers were used more often than Venters has been this season. He’d have to appear in six of the final 12 Braves games of the season to even crack the top 10.

Kimbrel and O’Flaherty’s innings totals are even significantly lower than Venters, and are not remotely out of the norm for quality relief pitchers. For comparison, Mariano Rivera threw 70 innings or more in every season from 2003 to 2008, and it would be impossible to argue that his regular season workloads took had a negative effect on him in the postseason.

The Braves have the best bullpen in baseball, so it’s only natural that they’ve relied on their relievers more than other teams have in 2011. However, there’s nothing in the history books to suggest that the workloads they’ve asked their relievers to carry this year are out of the ordinary or in any way potentially damaging to their potential success in October. Kimbrel, Venters, and O’Flaherty have been used frequently because they’re among the best in the game at what they do, and you shouldn’t expect that to change in the playoffs.

This winter, five franchises will face the same decision — is it time to say goodbye to one of the cornerstones of their team? As Jayson Stark discusses in a piece today, the St. Louis Cardinals, Milwaukee Brewers, Philadelphia Phillies, New York Mets and Boston Red Sox all have a star player on the roster who is eligible for free agency this winter, and if they want to keep their rosters intact, they’ll have to pony up a long-term contract in order to make it happen.

Paying for the second half of a player’s career can often be a dangerous proposition. Using wins above replacement, we’ve decided to look back at similar historical players and see how well they held up after the same point in their careers. After all, those who don’t learn from history …

Albert Pujols, 1B, Cardinals

It’s only fitting that the most comparable player to Pujols is Stan Musial, the man who stands in Pujols’ way for the title of “Greatest Cardinal of All Time.” Through their age-31 seasons, there is little to distinguish one from the other. From 1941-52, Musial collected 87.3 wins above replacement, while Pujols is presently at 84.7, and will likely finish the season with a number very close to Musial’s mark.

Musial sustained his greatness from age 32 through 37, giving the Cardinals six more excellent seasons before finally succumbing to the effects of aging and losing most of his value. While Pujols has been rumored to be seeking a deal as long as 10 years, even the best players in the game’s history had a hard time holding off a decline into their early 40s. However, as Musial showed, great players can decline from their peak performance and still be among the best players in the league, and the Cardinals could get enough value from Pujols at the beginning of a long-term deal to justify overpaying him at the end of it.

Verdict: Keep him. In 15 years, they can build another statue outside the ballpark, and these two can forever be linked together as the best players in franchise history.

Prince Fielder, 1B, Brewers

It’s hard to find good comparables for Fielder because most athletes his size end up in the NFL. However, when the Brewers sit down to decide whether they should commit to Fielder for the rest of his career, they would do well to remember Mo Vaughn. Also a super-sized slugging first baseman, Vaughn developed at a later age than Fielder did but had a similar skill set and physique.

Unfortunately for the Angels, that physique helped to wreck his knees shortly after they gave him a monstrous free-agent contract, and he was essentially finished as an impact player after his age-30 season. Fielder is just 27 and has worked hard to keep himself in better condition, but he’s still a very large human being, and his defense will likely demand a shift to DH at some point in the not-too-distant future.

Verdict: Let him go. The Brewers don’t have the luxury of using a DH, and while they will miss his bat dearly, he’s not the kind of player that a National League team should be committing to long-term.

Jose Reyes, SS, Mets

If it weren’t for the injuries, this would be an easy call, as Reyes is one of the game’s best players when he’s completely healthy. However, leg injuries to players whose game is based around speed can be scary, and Reyes has had two lost years in the prime of his career. He’s bouncing back in a big way this season, however, and if he were surrounded by some more talented teammates, he’d be among the leading candidates for National League MVP.

If the Mets need reassurance that early career health problems can be overcome, they should look no further than Barry Larkin, a remarkably similar player who also struggled to stay on the field in his 20s. While he was never the most durable player in the game, he remained excellent while on the field through his age-35 season.

Verdict: Keep him. He will always present a health risk, but dynamic shortstops are in short supply, and it could take the Mets years to find a player who could fill Reyes’ shoes.

David Ortiz, DH, Boston

After being written off as over the hill in 2009, Ortiz has come back with a vengeance and re-asserted himself as one of the game’s best hitters. At age 35, however, the end is somewhat near with Ortiz, and the Red Sox will have to figure out just how much longer he’ll be able to fight off Father Time.

Like Fielder, Ortiz is also hard to find a comparable player for, but Andres Galarraga’s late career resurgence does offer some similarities. He looked like he was on his way out of baseball before thundering back to life at age 35, the first of a three-year run as one of the game’s best hitters. Amazingly enough, his best season came at age 37 immediately after leaving Colorado and returning to sea level. We’ll never know how long he could have kept it up, as a cancerous tumor cost him his age 38 season and he wasn’t the same upon returning. However, Galarraga showed that big sluggers can revive their careers with more than a one-year fluke, and Boston fans should be encouraged that Ortiz has stopped striking out this year.

Verdict: Keep him. The Red Sox need his bat, he’s beloved in Boston, and his new ability to avoid striking out suggests that he’s not anywhere near finished yet.

Jimmy Rollins, SS, Phillies

There’s no question that Rollins is not what he was a few years ago. He’s almost certainly never going to hit 30 home runs in a season again, as the power looks to be gone and never coming back. However, as a switch-hitter with speed and elite contact skills, Rollins could continue to be a productive player well into his 30s.

Tony Fernandez never had Rollins’ power, but his skill set was similar to the one Rollins is showing now, and he also plateaued not long after turning 30. However, even as his speed waned, his ability to hit for a high average while holding down a spot on the infield made him a useful piece on championship-caliber teams. Rollins can still play shortstop and has enough left in the tank to stay there for a few more years. While he’s more of a league-average hitter now than the dynamic offensive player he was previously, he has the skills to stave off serious decline.

Verdict: Keep him. The Phillies have already committed long-term deals to Ryan Howard and Cliff Lee, so now would be a silly time to start sacrificing the present in the name of fiscal responsibility.

When it comes to shortstops, the National League is stacked. Troy Tulowitzki is generally accepted to be one of the game’s best players, and it was no surprise when he was selected first overall in ESPN’s Franchise Player Draft on Wednesday. The NL also boasts Hanley Ramirez, Jimmy Rollins and a revitalized Jose Reyes for those who like guys who can run, and Stephen Drew’s production at the position is one of the reasons the Diamondbacks are surprising contenders in the NL West. Toss in 21-year-old Starlin Castro, and there will be some tough decisions to be made when it comes time to pick who will represent the Senior Circuit at the position in next month’s All-Star Game.

Over in the American League, however, it’s a different story. Derek Jeter is the big name but his skills have eroded to the point that he’s barely contributing anymore, and the rest of the teams in the Junior Circuit field shortstops who are mostly anonymous to the national public. However, there’s one shortstop in the AL who deserves more recognition than he’s received to date and has shown that he’s good enough to hang with the big boys at the position.

Alexei Ramirez has quietly become the best player on the White Sox and is perhaps the best-kept secret in all of baseball. How underrated is he? He’s not even in the top five in voting at the position for next month’s All-Star Game, although at this point, he’s clearly the best shortstop the AL has to offer.

Since the beginning of the 2009 season, when the White Sox shifted him across the bag from second base to shortstop, Ramirez has posted the highest UZR of any player at the position in either league, even ahead of defensive specialists such as Cesar Izturis, Elvis Andrus and Brendan Ryan.

And unlike that trio, Ramirez can actually hit.

He’s not quite Tulowitzki at the plate, but Ramirez has legitimate power; he averaged 18 home runs per season during his first three years in the big leagues. He combines above-average power with quality contact skills, allowing him to avoid strikeouts and keep his batting average at a more than respectable level. Ramirez has never been the most patient hitter at the plate, but he’s nearly doubled his walk rate from last year, and he’s currently only seven walks away from tying his entire 2010 total.

Even as offense around the league has decreased the past few years, Ramirez has continued to improve, and he is now on pace to have the best season of his career. In fact, the 2.7 wins above replacement that he has accumulated so far this season is second only to Reyes among shortstops in MLB. This isn’t just a flukey hot start to the season, either — Ramirez has been legitimately terrific for several years now.

Since the beginning of the 2009 season, Ramirez has posted 9.3 WAR, the fourth-highest total of any shortstop in baseball, American League or National League. The only players ahead of him? Tulowitzki, Ramirez and Jeter, and I doubt you’ll find too many people who think that Jeter is still a high-quality player at this point in his career.

And yet, Ramirez is never mentioned as one of the best in the league at the position. Perhaps it is partially due to the fact that he spent his rookie year as a poor defensive second baseman who made a lot of mental mistakes, or maybe it’s just that he doesn’t fit the mold of a high-profile player. He doesn’t have the flair of Reyes or make as many highlight-reel plays as Andrus, but the reality is that Ramirez has produced at an elite level since moving to the position.

Reyes is going to cash in on the scarcity of shortstops in baseball this winter when he lands a monster contract as a free agent, but his signing will only continue to reinforce how valuable Ramirez is to the White Sox. After getting away with paying him just a total of $6.3 million over the first four years of his career (including just $2.75 million this season), the White Sox were able to lock up the next four years of his career for a total of just $32.5 million, a fraction of what Reyes will get in the free-agent market this winter, and just a drop in the bucket compared to the massive 10-year, $157 million contract the Rockies gave Tulowitzki.

Not only is Ramirez producing an an All-Star level for the White Sox, he’s doing so while earning a fraction of what he’s worth, and the contract extension he signed will keep it that way for the foreseeable future. Underappreciated and underpaid, Ramirez is truly one of the game’s hidden gems.

The strength of the San Francisco Giants is undoubtedly their pitching staff, which annually ranks among the best in baseball. Led by ace Tim Lincecum and a collection of hard-throwing relievers, the Giants once again led all of baseball in strikeout rate last year, but the thing that makes their pitchers special isn’t their ability to miss bats, but rather their unique ability to rack up a ton of outs on fly balls.

This might not sound like a particularly sexy skill for a pitching staff to possess, but most fly balls that are not caught become extra-base hits and about 10 percent of the time they fly over the wall for a home run. Pitchers who give up a lot of balls in the air tend to do so because they throw a lot of fastballs up in the strike zone, where hitters are prone to chasing pitches that they can’t get the bat on. That’s why a lot of fly ball pitchers are also good strikeout pitchers. The problem is that when a pitcher who lives in the high part of the strike zone misses with his location the ball can get hit very hard and far, so these pitchers often give up a lot of homers; for example, Ted Lilly had the lowest rate of ground balls in baseball last year and gave up a staggering 1.49 home runs per nine innings.

While most pitchers tend to hover around a rate of 10 percent of their fly balls leaving the yard, this does not hold true for pitchers who wear the Giants’ jersey, and it hasn’t for quite some time. Only 8 percent of the fly balls allowed by San Francisco pitchers in 2010 went over the fence, and as usual that was the best mark in baseball. This isn’t anything new — the Giants’ staff has been beating the league average on home runs per fly ball rate for a decade now.

Since 2002 (the first year our batted ball data is available at FanGraphs), the league average HR/FB rate is 10.4 percent with 27 of the 30 teams within 1 percent of that mark on either side. Very few pitchers have shown a constant ability to post a better than average rate in this category over large amounts of innings, so this isn’t a skill that teams have been able to cultivate among their pitchers. Except for the Giants. Their HR/FB rate since 2002 is just 8.6 percent, and the gap between them and the next best team (Oakland at 9.3 percent) is equal in distance between the second-place team and the ninth-place team (the Dodgers).

Put simply, no team is even close to the Giants in keeping its fly balls in the yard, and it hasn’t really mattered who the pitchers on the staff have been. While you might suspect that the low HR/FB rates posted by Lincecum, Matt Cain and Jason Schmidt are simply due to their high-quality pitches, the team has also seen the likes of Russ Ortiz, Brett Tomko and Matt Morris prevent home runs during their stints in San Francisco. And, to make things even more interesting, none of the pitchers who have shown this ability while in the Bay Area have been able to take those skills to other cities and keep their home run rates as low as they were previously.

The most natural explanation in situations like this would be the home park that the team plays in, and indeed AT&T Park is one of the toughest places in baseball for a left-handed hitter to hit a home run. The long distance to the right-field wall, combined with the wall’s height and proximity to a body of water which can produce some stiff winds, make it a challenging place for lefties to pull the ball out of the park.

However, the way their home park plays does nothing to explain the fact they also have the lowest rate of home runs per fly balls on the road since 2002 as well, coming in at just 9.1 percent. That’s higher than their home mark of 8.0 percent, but still quite a bit better than average. It is true that their road games involve a number of stints in Petco Park, but their division also includes the homer-havens of Colorado and Arizona, so we can’t give credit to their rivals’ parks, either.

Despite turning over the pitching staff several times and pitching in a way that suggest that their home park is not the sole factor (though it is certainly one of the factors), the Giants have continually been among the league leaders in home run prevention. The only constant during the past nine years has been Dave Righetti, who has been the pitching coach for that entire stretch. When I asked him about this phenomenon during spring training, however, he didn’t seem to have any more answers than I did.

He dismissed the notion that he encourages his pitchers to walk hitters rather than groove pitches that they might hit out of the park, responding with a firm “absolutely not” when asked if he coached his pitchers to avoid giving in when behind in the count. I also asked him if he or the organization specifically targeted or developed pitchers who they thought could limit home runs, and he said that they did not — they try to get pitchers who could limit walks and get strikeouts, just like everyone else.

And yet, whether it is intentional or not, the Giants have been able to cultivate a pitching staff that consistently gives up few home runs despite putting the ball in the air with some frequency. Even during the playoffs last year, facing some of the game’s most impressive power hitters, they allowed just nine home runs in 15 postseason games.

Whether it’s Righetti, the park, the pitchers or some really long-lasting good fortune — or, most likely, a combination of all of these things — the Giants have been better at preventing home runs than any other team in baseball, and it is perhaps the biggest reason that their pitching has annually been among the best in the game.

Don Mattingly won his first game as a major league manager Thursday night, as his Los Angeles Dodgers knocked off the San Francisco Giants behind a stellar pitching performance from Clayton Kershaw. However, while all of his moves “worked” in retrospect, Mattingly made one big rookie mistake that could have cost the Dodgers the game — he left Kershaw in the game too long.

In the bottom of the sixth inning, the Dodgers capitalized on some defensive miscues to break the scoreless tie and take a 1-0 lead. However, after Rod Barajas lined out for the second out of the inning, Bruce Bochy opted to intentionally walk Jamey Carroll to load the bases and bring Kershaw to the plate, forcing Mattingly to choose whether to let Kershaw hit in order to pitch the seventh inning or go to the bench and then use a reliever to get the next three outs.

Mattingly chose to stick with Kershaw, which is understandable considering how well he had been pitching. However, like football coaches who punt far too often on fourth down, that’s a conservative call that actually lowers a team’s chances of winning.

Let’s start with Kershaw’s offense — he’s one of the worst hitting pitchers in baseball, having accumulated just 10 hits (all singles) in 132 major league at-bats. He’s drawn just four walks and struck out 46 times, and his lack of ability to hit the ball with any authority has led to a miserable .076/.103/.076 career mark. And remember, that’s his line against pitchers of varying quality — if he consistently had to face Tim Lincecum, his numbers would be even worse.

Charitably, we can say that there was approximately a 7.5 percent chance that Kershaw would have reached base safely in that situation, extending the rally and pushing the Dodgers’ lead to two or three runs. Those odds are not good, and predictably, Kershaw bounced out to first base to end the inning.

If Mattingly had chosen to pinch hit, he likely would have turned to Marcus Thames or Xavier Paul. While Paul would have given them a left-handed bat to counter the right-handed Lincecum on the mound, he’s also a young player without much of a track record in the major leagues, so the safe assumption is that Thames would have been the one to get the call.

While he’s on the roster for his ability to hit lefties, Thames still holds a career line of .236/.296/.480 against right-handed pitchers. Again, we have to adjust those numbers downward to adjust for Lincecum’s abilities and the fact pinch-hitters fare worse than normal on average, but Thames still had at least a 20 percent chance of getting hit and another 7.5 percent chance of getting on via hit batsman, walk or error. Thames was four times as likely to produce a positive outcome in a critical situation in which any base hit would have likely plated multiple runs, and he also presented a real opportunity for a grand slam that would have essentially put the game out of reach.

There was a significant opportunity cost to letting Kershaw bat in that situation, and Mattingly traded away a real chance for an expanded lead for the right to keep Kershaw on the hill in the seventh inning. Kershaw rewarded his manager with a three-up, three-down inning, but given that he was facing the 6-7-8 hitters in the Giants’ order, this was a job that could have easily been entrusted to Matt Guerrier.

After all, the Dodgers thought enough of Guerrier to sign him to a three-year contract as a free agent this winter. Guerrier is not nearly as good as Kershaw, but he’s an effective reliever, and he could be trusted to get out Miguel Tejada, Brandon Belt and Pablo Sandoval, especially with the pitcher’s spot looming if the Giants were able to get a rally going. However, this isn’t about Guerrier — the run expectation of the two situations is so large that Mattingly could have handed the ball to almost any other reliever in the seventh inning and still come out ahead.

The difference between Thames and Kershaw hitting in that situation was more than two-tenths of a run in expected value. Kershaw’s career 3.17 ERA translates to an expectation of .35 runs allowed per inning, so Mattingly could have chosen a pitcher with an ERA of 5.00 (.55 runs per inning, creating that same two-tenths of a run gap) and had it be a push. Using Thames to pinch hit and any reliever with an expected ERA below 5.00 would have been a better bet than letting Kershaw bat for himself and then pitch in the seventh inning.

In the end, it didn’t end up costing the Dodgers a win, but this is the baseball version of punting on fourth-and-1 from your opponent’s 30-yard line. Mattingly can create a significant advantage for his team by more aggressively pinch hitting for his starting pitcher in high-leverage situations and accepting the fact that, while the reliever will not be as good as the pitcher you’re replacing, the drastic upgrade at the plate with a chance to blow the game open is more than worth it.

With Opening Day less than a week away, the San Francisco Giants still have a few things to decide before finalizing their roster: Who will close while Brian Wilson recovers from an oblique strain? Does Aaron Rowand deserve another chance to try and earn his inflated salary? And, most importantly, what should they do with top prospect Brandon Belt?

The left-handed slugging first baseman — and sometimes outfielder — demolished minor league pitching last year, climbing from Class A all the way to Triple-A and hitting at every stop along the way. He capped his season with a monstrous showing in the Arizona Fall League and has continued to impress with his advanced hitting skills during spring training. Despite having only one professional season of experience, it appears that Belt has little left to learn in the minors.

However, the decision on whether or not he should break camp with the big league team is more complicated than simply determining whether he’s good enough to handle major league pitching right now. The question the Giants need to answer is whether Belt’s potential production in the first two months of the season might outweigh the escalating costs they would face down the line. Based on some projections and historical comparisons, we can help them with the calculations.

Let’s start with Belt’s estimated production. Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projects his season line at .266/.357/.440, suggesting he’d immediately become the Giants’ fourth-best hitter if inserted into the lineup on Opening Day. Even with his defensive limitations (or Aubrey Huff’s, depending on who they moved to get his bat in the lineup), he’s likely a better player than Pat Burrell is right now. And, with Cody Ross set to begin the season on the disabled list, the Giants have the opportunity to give Belt regular playing time out of the gate.

However, the marginal improvement from adding Belt (or Huff) to the outfield rotation on Day 1 may not be as large as you might think. If we just focus on April and May — Belt will almost certainly be up in early June regardless of what they decide to do next week — the Giants have about 600 at-bats to distribute between first base, left field and right field. Below are the projected performances with and without Belt:

Huff, Burrell, Ross, Nate Schierholtz, Mark DeRosa: .265/.335/.445
Huff, Belt, Ross, Burrell, DeRosa: .265/.343/.446

Shifting some playing time from Schierholtz and Burrell to Belt represents an upgrade, but not a significant one — the difference in those two lines is only worth about five runs. A five-run improvement equates to an expectation of about half a win difference in terms of projected finish. Of course, given that the Giants could very well be in a dogfight for the National League West crown, the prospect of potentially adding even just one win to their final record is quite valuable.

Based upon research by Nate Silver in Baseball Between The Numbers, the revenue generated by a win for a team in playoff contention was close to $2.5 million in 2006 — economic inflation since then likely pushes the total to more than $3 million now. If having Belt on the roster in April and May added half of a win to their expected total, that performance could be worth between $1 million and $2 million in revenue that the Giants wouldn’t otherwise get if he spent the first two months in Triple-A.

However, when we look at the long-term cost differences related to the amount of service time Belt accrues this year, $1 million to $2 million quickly begins to look like pocket change. If he were to spend at least 172 days on the active roster this season, he’d be on target for free agency after the 2016 season. If the Giants hold him down for just three weeks, they’ll push his ability to hit the open market back by a full year, gaining the rights to his services for the 2017 season that they otherwise would not have. The additional value of having Belt under contract for an additional year — in what should be the prime of his career — is worth far more than $1 million or $2 million in potential revenue in 2011.

The bigger question is whether the Giants should choose to leave Belt in Triple-A until early June in order to prevent him from reaching “Super Two” status. While most players do not become eligible for salary arbitration until after they have accrued three years of service time, the top 16 percent of players with two-plus years of service are granted arbitration a year early and end up going through it four times rather than the usual three.

To see the impact this can have on a player’s salary, here are two relatively comparable players, one whom was awarded Super Two status and one who was not.

Hunter Pence (Super Two)
2007 — $380,000
2008 — $396,000
2009 — $439,000
2010 — $3.5 million
2011 — $6.9 million
Total: $11.6 million

Yunel Escobar (not Super Two)
2007 — $380,000
2008 — $402,500
2009 — $425,000
2010 — $435,000
2011 — $2.9 million
Total: $4.5 million

By achieving arbitration a year earlier and using escalating raises to increase his salaries as he goes through the process, Pence has already earned an addition $7 million in salary, and will likely continue to outpace Escobar significantly going forward. By the time they reach free agency after the 2013 season, the difference in career earnings could be as high as $15 million.

The Giants know these numbers and they are well aware of the fact there are significant cost savings to be gained from leaving Belt in the minor leagues for two months. (Remember, they faced a similar dilemma with Buster Posey last year, and chose to keep him in the minors to begin the year.) Given the fact they have viable alternatives at first base and in the outfield, it is tough to argue that the benefits of having Belt on the roster for April and May justify the long-term costs associated with granting him Super Two status, much less allowing him to reach free agency a year earlier.

When it comes to promoting young players who aren’t demonstrably better than what you already have on the roster, patience really is a virtue.

The Boston Red Sox had a banner offseason, bringing in both Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford to bolster their offense and their chances in the American League East. Now that they’ve added two more weapons to their lineup, Terry Francona has to figure out how to piece it all together — given the numerous options the Red Sox have accumulated, that’s easier said than done.

The projected starting nine for the Red Sox leans very heavily to the left-hand side. Gonzalez and Crawford have displaced Adrian Beltre and Mike Cameron from last year’s starting lineup, giving the team two additional bats from the left side. Along with Jacoby Ellsbury, J.D. Drew and David Ortiz, the Red Sox will have five regulars who bat from the left side, and all of them are used to hitting near the top of the order. Balancing the order so that the lefties aren’t all bunched together will be a challenge for Francona.

Complicating the process is the fact Crawford feels he “sucked at it” when asked to hit first, and while he’s said that he will hit wherever Francona asks him to, he’s admitted to being more comfortable in another spot in the order. Crawford’s skills scream leadoff hitter, but that might not be a viable option if the Sox determine that his production could suffer in a spot he doesn’t like to hit.

Putting the Red Sox lineup together isn’t easy, but with the help of the research done by Tom Tango and Mitchel Lichtman in “The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball”, we can make some suggestions on how the batting order should be arranged, based on their 2011 ZIPS projections:

1 — J.D. Drew — .260/.362/.473 projected line

There are two main things you want in a leadoff hitter: a high on-base percentage and relatively low power. Drew has more power than a classic leadoff hitter, but he does get on base — his career OBP is .387 — and he doesn’t hit so many home runs that his power would be wasted by launching too many solo shots. While he’s not a big base-stealing threat, the rest of the Sox lineup is so good that they shouldn’t be trying to steal too many bases at the top of the order anyway. They are better off with their speed guys hitting lower in the order.

2 — Kevin Youkilis — .280/.382/.505 projected line

While OBP is king for the first spot in a lineup, you want your second hitter to be a bit more balanced, as he can create a lot of value by driving that runner in with an extra-base hit. In order to avoid allowing a lefty specialist to get multiple outs against LH bats earlier in the game, it’s best to put a right-handed bat behind Drew. Youkilis gets the edge over Dustin Pedroia here, which also puts two high on-base guys at the top of the order.

3 — David Ortiz — .260/.363/.509 projected line

While the No. 3 spot is traditionally considered the spot for the team’s best hitter, the No. 4 hitter actually comes to the plate with runners on base more often, and the No. 3 hitter leads the team in at-bats with two outs and no one on. On a team with fewer quality hitters, Ortiz would hit clean-up, but surrounded by this much talent, Ortiz should slide in to this less important role. Having only one right-handed batter between him and Drew isn’t ideal, but it’s a byproduct of the Sox’s LH-heavy lineup.

4 — Adrian Gonzalez — .316/.407/.569 projected line

The cleanup hitter should be your best hitter with power and that’s exactly why the Red Sox acquired Gonzalez. While every other position in the batting order has a reasonable alternative, this is where Gonzalez belongs. Set this one in stone, even though it gives the Red Sox three left-handed bats in the first four lineup spots.

5 — Dustin Pedroia — .300/.370/.471 projected line

The ability to clear the bases is the most important skill for the No. 5 hitter and Pedroia fits the bill nicely, especially at home. Given the run of lefties at the top of the order, a right-handed bat is a necessity here. You could also flip Youkilis and Pedroia here if you wanted a bit more power in the No. 5 spot, but given that the No. 2 hitter gets an extra at-bat every third game as compared to the No. 5 hitter, it’s more important to have the superior hitter higher in the order.

6 — Carl Crawford — .312/.359/.491 projected line

While Crawford fits the mold of a prototypical leadoff hitter, he’s actually perfectly suited to hitting sixth in this lineup. With lesser hitters coming up behind him, his ability to steal bases and get himself in scoring position will be more valuable, and there’s a lower cost of getting thrown out when you don’t have the big bats due up. Hitting lower in the order will allow Crawford to be more aggressive on the bases and maximize the utility of his speed. He also has enough power to drive in Gonzalez and Pedroia and extend rallies.

7 — Marco Scutaro — .272/.341/.381 projected line

While many of the ideas in “The Book” went against conventional wisdom, they also confirmed that you want your base-stealer batting in front of someone who hits a lot of singles and doesn’t strike out very much. With Crawford one spot ahead of him, Scutaro’s high contact rate can lead to a lot of RBI singles after Crawford steals his way into scoring position.

8 — Jacoby Ellsbury — .284/.336/.397 projected line

Ellsbury loses the battle for the No. 7 spot mostly due to his handedness. He’s a similar hitter to Scutaro, but putting the right-handed bat between Crawford and Ellsbury will keep teams from being able to leverage their left-handed relievers as easily. Also, Ellsbury should be more willing to run when getting on base from the No. 8 spot because he will be followed by a poor hitter rather than by the top of the order.

9 — Jarrod Saltalamacchia — .230/.308/.382 projected line

With few exceptions, you want your worst hitter at the bottom of the order simply because he’ll get the fewest number of plate appearances. Salty is pretty clearly the worst hitter of the bunch and that will also be true of Jason Varitek on days that he catches. It’s OK to have a base-clogger hitting ninth when the top-of-the-order guys can all hit the ball over the wall.

It’s not a conventional batting order of speed at the top and power in the middle, but grouping the Red Sox lineup this way gives them the best chance to score the most runs. And, if Crawford doesn’t like being asked to hit sixth, well, at least it’s not the leadoff spot.

The Milwaukee Brewers made two big acquisitions this winter, adding starting pitchers Zack Greinke and Shaun Marcum to their rotation in a bid to contend for the National League Central crown. Most analysis is focused on how well they’re going to pitch, but another key question is this: Can they hit? These two should provide a significant upgrade on the mound, and having two quality arms behind Yovani Gallardo in the rotation may give the Brewers the lift they need to get over the hump. However, the chances of the Brewers’ success hinges not just on how the new guys pitch, but how well they can adjust to life in the National League, where pitchers also have to bat.

Last season, the Brewers held a huge advantage over the rest of the league in offense produced by their pitchers. Led by Gallardo and his four home runs, the Brewers’ pitching staff hit .207/.249/.280, or just a little bit worse than the worst-hitting regular position player in baseball last year, Cesar Izturis. Being less productive offensively than Izturis is rarely a compliment, but when compared to the futility of other pitchers, Milwaukee’s performance looks positively Ruthian.

If you exclude the Brewers, the average line put up by an NL pitcher was just .137/.170/.167. Milwaukee trounced that, and its Weighted On Base Average of .239 was 83 points higher than the .156 wOBA of its competitors. With each team’s pitchers accounting for about 350 trips to the plate, the differences can really begin to add up. Greinke and Marcum are coming over from the American League, so we don’t know how they handle the stick. If they hit like typical pitchers, as opposed other Brewers pitchers, then Milwaukee stands to lose a decent amount of production on offense.

Below are the best and worst offensive performances from pitchers among NL teams in 2010. wRAA is Weighted Runs Above Average (or in this case, below average, since each team is in the negative compared to a league average hitting position player). Believe it or not, having a staff of good hitting pitchers can make an enormous difference.

The Good
1. Milwaukee Brewers: .239 wOBA, -23.9 wRAA
Gallardo was the second-best hitting pitcher in baseball last year (behind only Dan Haren), and his .363 wOBA was the same as Jay Bruce’s. Chris Narveson also brought some offense to the table, hitting .327 and posting a .365 on base percentage. He didn’t hit for any power, but he got on base enough to be a valuable offensive performer. Randy Wolf and Manny Parra didn’t embarrass themselves either, giving the Brewers some legitimate offense from the No. 9 spot in the lineup nearly each day they came to the park.

2. Arizona Diamondbacks: .207 wOBA, -33.7 wRAA
As mentioned, Haren was the star here, putting up a .364/.375/.527 line that was on par with what Luke Scott did for the Orioles as a DH. The D-backs lost some punch when they dealt Haren to Anaheim, and although Ian Kennedy and Barry Enright were respectable at the plate, Arizona got some awful performances from Rodrigo Lopez and Joe Saunders.

3. New York Mets: .191 wOBA, -36.6 wRAA
While the Mets didn’t get much offense from big bat acquisition Jason Bay, a couple of newcomers to the rotation managed to provide some offense from the bottom of the order. R.A. Dickey‘s breakout wasn’t limited to his knuckleball, as he hit .255 and struck out only eight times. Perhaps more impressively, Jon Niese drew eight walks in 66 trips to the plate, getting halfway to A.J. Pierzynski’s season total despite the catcher having 400 at-bats.

The Bad
1. Los Angeles Dodgers: .113 wOBA, -60.6 wRAA
Talk about a total team “effort” … Vicente Padilla and Chad Billingsley were the best of the worst, but the entire staff failed to hit. Clayton Kershaw and Hiroki Kuroda combined for just five hits — all singles — between them, while Jon Ely and Ted Lilly weren’t much better. Overall, the pitching staff managed just 24 hits, with only two of those going for doubles, and no home runs all season. It’s no wonder the Dodgers led the league in sacrifice bunts from their pitchers.

2. San Francisco Giants: .127 wOBA, -58.2 wRAA
While the Giants’ pitchers helped lead the team to a World Series title, they didn’t help their own cause very often in the regular season. Madison Bumgarner was the only member of the rotation to beat the league average line for a pitcher, and as a group, Giants pitchers drew fewer walks than Niese did by himself.

3. Philadelphia – .136 wOBA, -56.5 wRAA
The Marlins and Pirates posted worse overall lines from their pitchers, but wRAA accounts for the fact that the Phillies’ stadium is a pretty good place to hit — unless, of course, you pitch for the Phillies. We shouldn’t be surprised that AL escapees Roy Halladay and Joe Blanton aren’t much with the bat, but Roy Oswalt is a lifelong NL pitcher and he was just as useless at the plate.

Given that a team can add one win to its expected total for every 10 runs, the gap between the Brewers and Dodgers was worth nearly four wins in the standings last year. With two AL pitchers joining the group in Milwaukee, don’t expect a repeat performance. If Marcum and Greinke struggle as many pitchers do when switching leagues, they could give back a significant amount of their value at the plate. The Giants showed that you can win despite bad hitting pitchers, so this doesn’t necessarily spell impending doom for Milwaukee, but it is something they will have to account for this year. For all the gains the Brewers will make in terms of run prevention, they’re going to give some of that up on the other side of the ball.

With Cliff Lee’s struggles in Game 1 and the bullpen meltdown in Game 2, the focus of the World Series has been squarely on the Rangers’ pitching staff, and understandably so. However, overshadowed by their teammates’ more noticeable failure is the fact Texas’ offense hasn’t lived up to its end of the bargain yet, either.

As a team, the Rangers are hitting just .227/.293/.303 through the first two games of the Fall Classic. For comparison, that’s roughly the same offensive performance that Bobby Crosby had this year — you know, the guy who the worst team in baseball got rid of for not performing up to its standards. No matter how you look at it, the Rangers simply haven’t hit, and that will have to change tonight if they want to get back in this series.

There are a couple of reasons for optimism in Texas, however. As the series moves to Texas, the rules change, allowing the Rangers to put Vladimir Guerrero back in the lineup without subjecting him to the embarrassment of playing the field again. The return of the DH will be a welcome addition for Texas, and it comes at the perfect time in the series, as the Giants will be starting left-handed pitchers in both Games 3 and 4.

Like most right-handed hitters, Guerrero fares better against southpaws. In addition to hitting .338 against them this year, his walk rate was double that of his mark against right-handers. For his career, his walk rate against lefties is 60 percent higher than against right-handers. As an outfielder facing a right-handed pitcher in Game 1, Guerrero was a liability; as a designated hitter against left-handed pitchers each of the next two nights, he could be a big asset.

The other reason for hope in Texas is simply the shift in ballparks itself. As Ian Kinsler will tell you, even hitting a ball on the screws is no guarantee that it will get out of AT&T Park. The Giants’ home park is one of the toughest places to hit home runs, which is one of the main ways Texas puts numbers on the scoreboard. The Ballpark in Arlington, on the other hand, is one of the best places in baseball for home run hitters, and the Rangers have a roster built to take advantage of the park’s dimensions.

Below are the home and road splits for the Rangers’ expected Game 3 lineup, by weighted on base average (wOBA):

Player Home wOBA Road wOBA
Elvis Andrus .289 .307
Michael Young .373 .297
Josh Hamilton .506 .384
Vladimir Guerrero .375 .344
Nelson Cruz .467 .348
Ian Kinsler .395 .319
Jeff Francoeur Not enough ABs
Mitch Moreland .361 .355
Bengie Molina .283 .266

The disparity in performance for the middle of the Rangers’ lineup is staggering. Michael Young, Josh Hamilton, Nelson Cruz and Kinsler, especially, did most of their heavy lifting in their home park, and were far more mortal outside of Texas. Most teams hit better at home than on the road, unless they play in a severe pitchers’ park, but the Rangers responded to home cooking like no other team in baseball.

In Texas, they hit .288/.352/.449, the fourth-best mark in the American League. On the road, they hit just .265/.324/.391, only the seventh-best mark in the AL and just a hair ahead of offensive behemoths like the Los Angeles Angels and the Kansas City Royals. Or, to put it another way, the Rangers hit only three more home runs on the road this year than the Seattle Mariners did.

The combination of natural home-field advantage and the hitter-friendly nature of the park allow the Rangers to rack up runs in a hurry. The Giants should not count on throwing any shutouts while on the road, as they’ll have to keep putting up big run totals to offset the offense that is likely to come from their opponents.

So, with the series shifting locales, expect the dynamic of the first two games to change dramatically. However, there is good news for the Giants — the Rangers can’t win this thing in Texas, and they will have to win a game in San Francisco before all is said and done. Given that the Rangers’ bats are likely to come alive in the next three games, there’s a good chance that San Francisco will have the opportunity to win the World Series on its home field.