Headed into the season, the Los Angeles Dodgers were considered favorites to win their third straight NL West title, but they now find themselves sitting in fourth place. The team activated Manny Ramirez off the disabled list over the weekend and will gladly welcome his bat back into the everyday lineup, but scoring runs has been the least of the team’s worries. A lack of run prevention is the shovel that the Dodgers have dug themselves in a hole with.

For starters, the Dodger pitching staff has really struggled to find the plate. Their starters have walked 4.36 batters per nine innings pitched, which is the highest mark in the National League. It’s possible that their pitchers are afraid to throw strikes because their defense isn’t catching anything. Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) has the Dodger defense costing the team 25.5 runs so far relative to average, worst in baseball. John Dewan’s defensive runs saved metric agrees, knocking the Dodgers defense to the tune of -19 runs. The primary problem? Matt Kemp, who was publicly called out by general manager Ned Colletti for his poor defense two weeks ago. While Kemp did win a Gold Glove last year, the Dodger GM’s assessment of his center fielder’s defensive butchery is confirmed by the data.

DRS says he’s cost the Dodgers -14 runs; UZR has him at -11.8, which is by far the lowest in baseball at his position. That’s a staggering amount of runs this early in the season. The worst center fielders might do that over the course of a year, not over the course of thirty or so games. (For context, Vernon Wells had the worst UZR among center fielders last year at -16.6.) While there’s bound to be some noise in such small sample stats, there is no doubt that the normally reliable Kemp — who had a UZR of 3.1 last year — has been bad in the outfield, whether judged by the eyes or the numbers. As Colletti said, “It’s a shame that he would go from where he was a year ago to revert back to when the ball goes up in the air and you’re not sure where it’s going, or if it’s going to get caught.”

If the Dodgers are going to make up the ground they’ve lost in the early stages of the season, they must get back to some very basic, fundamental principles of the game. Pitchers need to throw more first pitch strikes and stop issuing so many silly walks, and their fielders, particularly Matt Kemp, need to start getting to more balls.

Not long ago, Denard Span looked like nothing more than a grade C prospect who failed to make good on his tremendous athletic ability. Then, something changed, and quickly. Span developed a more patient approach at the plate, which led to him drawing more walks and getting better pitches to hit. Fast-forwarding to today, Span is an extremely valuable regular on a winning team. Breakouts can seemingly come from out of nowhere, but there are statistical indicators that tell us which are more real than others.

Naturally, at this time of the year we view players with a certain air of suspicion, and rightly so; Small sample sizes make trusting early season statistics difficult. However, there is a point in time when certain stats can become more trustworthy than others. A study done by Russell Carlton showed that after 50 plate appearances, a player’s swing habits can be a reliable guide to what’s going on. In the case of Colby Rasmus, his swing habits give us a substantial reason to believe he’s a changed man. According to O-Swing percentage (which is a stat we use at FanGraphs that measures the percentage of swings a batter takes at pitches outside of the strike zone), undisciplined batters greatly decrease their odds of reaching base by mercilessly hacking at everything thrown their direction. (This shouldn’t surprise anyone.) Rasmus did not really show great plate discipline last season, evidenced by a paltry .307 on-base percentage. He swung at 25.9 percent of pitches thrown out of the zone last year, but this season, he’s decreased that number to just 17.8 percent. As a result, Rasmus has drawn more walks (17) than teammate Albert Pujols (15) and he’s taking more advantage of pitches he’s finding to his liking. The result? A line of .316/.436/.658. People have projected stardom for Rasmus since he was a first-round pick in 2005, and it appears the 23-year-old is figuring things out.

Like Rasmus, Oakland’s Daric Barton is also demonstrating a tremendous amount of selectivity at the plate, with an O-Swing percentage of just 13 percent. Barton’s been known for this for a while, but he is also making a lot more contact when he does swing. He’s getting the bat on the ball 89.7 percent of the time when he swings, a 4.8 percent increase over his career rates. When you’re not swinging at a lot of bad pitches, and making that much contact with the pitches you do swing at, good things are bound to happen, and they are so far for Barton. He’s never going to hit for a ton of power, but he has a .407 OBP and should be an on-base machine for years to come.

Chicago Cubs left-handed reliever Sean Marshall is another breakout to believe in. In the early goings of the season, we see that his curve has about 2 more inches of downward movement according to Pitch f/x data, and he’s throwing his curve 41.5 percent of the time. Batters against Marshall have an O-Swing percentage of 33.0 this season, and his career rate is 23.0. Translation: He’s getting a lot more guys to chase out of the zone, because he’s throwing a curve with more movement. While he’s not going to be confused with a flamethrower anytime soon, his average fastball velocity is up from 87 mph to 89.3 mph, a considerable increase. A better fastball helps set up the off-speed, and it helps when that off-speed pitch is a filthy, knee-buckling curveball like Marshall’s. He’s fanned 18 and walked just two batters in 14 innings, and his dominance could give the Cubs the flexibility to move Carlos Zambrano back into the rotation.

As expected, the White Sox will continue to use Bobby Jenks as their closer this year, despite having a superior bullpen arm in Matt Thornton. For the past two seasons, Thornton has been a buried treasure, posting better numbers than the Southside’s closer. For that matter, his FIP (a defense-independent measure of ability) has been better than many other team’s closers.

The White Sox aren’t the only team that does not have their best relief pitcher throwing in the ninth. Kevin Jepsen of the Angels is a better pitcher than Brian Fuentes, and the Mariners’ Brandon League could very well be better than David Aardsma. In one extreme case, the 2007 Indians continued to use Joe Borowski as their closer despite his bloated 5.07 ERA, while they reserved Rafael Betancourt for the eighth inning. Betancourt posted a minuscule 1.47 ERA and 2.22 FIP that year.

For fans that follow these teams, it’s frustrating to see the manager continue to go to the well with these “proven closers” while neglecting to give these elite arms their fair shot at saving games. Well, the aggravation of fans aimed towards the manager in most cases is unnecessary. No, they aren’t using their assets in the best possible way, but the impact isn’t a big as you might think.

With the help of Tom Tango, FanGraphs provides a stat that measures the magnitude of every game situation called Leverage Index, or LI for short. Here’s the gist, and this takes us back to what Sky shared about the Twins loss of Joe Nathan earlier in the month:

-The average situation (think of the starting pitcher’s role) has an LI of 1.
-Closers appear in situations with an average LI of about 1.8, meaning runs allowed by closers are a little less than twice as damaging as the average run.
-Set-up men will see LIs in the 1.3 to 1.6 range.

So while closers on average pitch in more crucial situations, the set-up man pitches in some pretty important situations as well, and often more frequently.

For a practical example we’ll use Jenks and Thornton of 2009 White Sox. What happens if we go back into 2009, only with Jenks and Thornton swapping roles? Jenks posted a FIP of 4.47 over 53 1/3 innings, with an average LI of 1.9. This made him good for 4 runs above replacement level, or about half a win. Thorton threw 72 1/3 innings, with a 2.47 FIP, with an average LI of 1.5. That made Thornton good for 26 runs above replacement level. If you give Thornton’s innings and leverage to Jenks, and vice versa, the difference in runs above replacement comes out to be about a single run. That’s all.

Part of the extra value that a set-up man has is he isn’t restricted to just the ninth inning with a lead. Many non-save situations are crucial to a team’s chances of winning, and in fact, a lot of high leverage situations happen when a team is trailing by just one run — a situation where a manager will almost never use his closer, even though keeping the score close gives his team a chance for a come from behind victory.

Non-closer relievers can be extremely valuable in these middle innings, high leverage situations, so it’s not the end of the world if your team’s manager chooses to employ an inferior pitcher to close out games. Thornton, Jepsen, and League will provide plenty of value, even if they don’t rack up many saves.

Over the past decade, fans have witnessed some astonishing offensive performances. We’ve been spoiled by Joe Mauer’s 2009, which was one of the best seasons by a catcher ever. Alex Rodriguez hit more than 50 home runs as a shortstop — twice. We’ve seen the crowning of a new home run king. Historic stuff. You could assemble a dream lineup from some of these single-season achievements, so why not indulge in a little fantasy?

There are plenty of stats we could look at to determine who had the best season at each position, but a good catch-all number is weighted Batting Runs above Average. It’s based on a FanGraphs stat called wOBA, which sums up a player’s production in a single number.

One thing to be aware of before we get started with the actual lineup: All these guys are, for the most part, middle-of-the-order hitters. Don’t get too hung up on actual batting order. Most studies of batting order show that even using the optimal 1-9 slotting, you’re going to gain only one or two wins.

Here we go now with the ultimate all-decade, all-value, all-production lineup. In case you doubt its value before we begin, consider this: If we plug this lineup into David Pinto’s lineup analysis tool, we learn the dream team you’ll discover below would score an average of nine runs per game. That means a team with this lineup could have the woeful 2003 Detroit Tigers as its pitching staff and still win 115 games.

Ready? Let’s go.

Batting first: Carlos Delgado, 2000, 1B

Whew. This was a close one. Delgado’s greatest competition, surprisingly, was not Albert Pujols — it was Jason Giambi. Giambi won the MVP in 2000 and was slightly better in 2001, hitting for an insane .342/.477/.660 line. Giambi’s 2001 is just a sliver better than Delgado’s in terms of batting runs above replacement — 102.8 BRAR to 102.6 — but the edge goes to Delgado because he started every game at first base. Giambi played 17 games as the A’s DH. Delgado hit .344, drew 123 walks and slugged for an absurd .664; he would hardly be your prototypical leadoff hitter, but in 2000 he did have a healthy .470 on-base percentage.

Batting second: Sammy Sosa, 2001, RF

While Slammin’ Sammy is remembered best for the summer of ’98, this was Sosa’s finest season. Unfortunately, no one outside of Chicago seemed to notice, because of what Barry Bonds was doing in San Francisco. Not only did Sosa top 60 home runs for the third time, but he also enjoyed career highs in batting average (.328) and walks (116).

Batting third: David Ortiz, 2007, DH

When you think Ortiz, you probably think “clutch” first. This wasn’t his most clutch season, but it was arguably his most productive; he hit 54 homers in 2006, but in 2007 he hit .332 instead of .287 and posted a similar slugging percentage.

Batting fourth: Barry Bonds, 2001, LF

His single-season slugging, on-base percentage, walks and home runs from ’01 are simply untouchable, barring an unforeseen superhero coming onto the scene.

Batting fifth: Alex Rodriguez, 2007, 3B

A-Rod hit .314/.422/.645 with 54 homers and ran away with the MVP; he enjoys the distinction of setting single-season home run records for two different positions (shortstop and third base).

Batting sixth: Alex Rodriguez, 2001, SS

This certainly might pose a logistical challenge, as human cloning hasn’t yet reached this level of sophistication. Seriously, though, the only competition for A-Rod was A-Rod. 2002 Rodriguez and 2001 Rodriguez were very close. He hit more homers in ’02 (57) but hit for a higher average with more doubles in 2001. He had 82 batting runs above replacement in 2001, 80 in ’02.

Batting seventh: Joe Mauer, 2009, C

Mauer was like vintage Mike Piazza with the bat — and he won a Gold Glove to boot. Mauer finally had his long-anticipated power breakout (28 homers) and hit for an astounding .365 batting average. Babe Phelps is the only catcher to qualify for a batting title with a higher average, and he only had 319 at-bats back in 1936 for the Dodgers. One can only wonder what Mauer would have done had he not missed the entire month of April.

Batting eighth: Jeff Kent, 2000, 2B

Kent won the MVP, edging out his teammate Barry Bonds even though Bonds actually had the better season. Bonds had more wins above replacement, 8.7 to 7.9. Kent set personal bests in a number of different categories, including slugging (.596) and on-base percentage (.424). Even in this age of offense, you do not often see this type of production from a middle infielder. You could argue he was more of a first baseman posing as a second baseman, but regardless, this was quite a remarkable season.

Batting ninth: Jim Edmonds, 2004, CF

Edmonds, Scott Rolen and Pujols formed “MV3” in this year — each player had an MVP-caliber performance in 2004 and the Cardinals won 105 games, only to be swept by the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. Edmonds hit .301 despite striking out 150 times, but he slugged .643, drew 101 walks and won his fifth consecutive Gold Glove.

Overall Team Outlook: Say what you will about Jeffrey Loria’s slumlord ways, few teams can match The Fish in production per dollars spent. Perhaps that’s easy to do when you’re flipping stars with escalating contracts for top prospects, but maybe, just maybe, some low-budget teams could learn a thing or two about knowing when to deal from the Marlins’ pattern. In order to continue the success, the club will rely upon its young core of star players while hoping that other youngsters like Cameron Maybin find their stride.

Starting Rotation: Josh Johnson ascended into the rarefied air of “Ace” this past year, putting together a spectacular 5.5 WAR season. Johnson was the subject of many a trade rumor this past hot stove season, but after the MLBPA publicly shamed the Marlins organization for pocketing its revenue sharing money, the club gave Johnson a nifty four-year, $39 million extension. If there is any concern, ’09 was the first time Johnson ever approached the magical 200-inning threshold, so it will be interesting to see how he holds up next season. Behind Johnson is the enigmatic Ricky Nolasco, owner of the Jekyll-and-Hyde-iest FIP-ERA differential of 2009, and his performance re-opened a whole can of worms in the debate on the merits of using FIP when calculating a pitcher’s WAR. He posted golden strikeout and walk numbers, 9.49 K/9, 2.14 BB/9, but he finished the season with an ugly ERA of 5.06 despite a sterling 3.35 FIP. Will the real Ricky Nolasco please stand up?

After Johnson-Nolasco, the rotation picture gets clouded. The stinker, er, I mean sinker-balling Chris Volstad was third on the team in innings pitched with 159, and pitched at replacement level last year. Anibal Sánchez, Rick VandenHurk, Sean West, and Andrew Miller will fight for the remaining three spots. All four pitchers have promise, but for one reason or another they have been unable to live up to their billings. Sánchez made headlines when he threw a no-hitter back in 2006. He was the first rookie to do so since Bud Smith threw one in 2001. Sánchez’s pitching career unfortunately is going down the path of Smith’s, as he has not been able to stay on the field due to injuries.

Bullpen: I’m fishing for positives here and coming up empty (pun intended). Right now, the closer is Leo Nunez, a proud owner of a career 4.72 xFIP. Nunez was the worst closer in all of baseball in terms of WAR last season at -0.8 WAR, yet he managed to rack up 26 saves, which goes to show you how worthless of a stat saves really is. Behind him is a mixed bag of middling middle relievers that includes Dan Meyer, Burke Badenhop, Reynel Pinto, Brian Sanches, Jose Veras, and Cristhian Martinez. To make things interesting, the Marlins invited Derrick Turnbow to spring training.

Starting Lineup: The offense starts and ends with Hanley Ramirez, the one Marlin even casual baseball fans know about. After “The Manley” there is Dan Uggla. This is one player the Marlins probably have waited a bit too long to trade, but most projections have him continuing his Three True Outcome ways in South Florida. Chris Coghlan wasn’t the sabermetric-group-think NL ROY of choice, but he was the BBWAA’s, and that’s all that matters, so suck it up! But I digress. A second baseman by trade, he’s in the outfield for now until/if/when Uggla gets traded.

To Coghlan’s credit, a .372 wOBA is nothing to sneeze at coming from a rookie, even if it was aided by a .366 BABIP. Expect some regression to the mean, but Coghlan will be a valuable cog in the lineup for years to come. Cody Ross is approaching the overrated zone after posting a 24-homer, 90-RBI season last year, but is a solid-average player, good for a .340-.350 wOBA with average-ish defense.

Jorge Cantu is in a similar class as Ross, sans the defense. He is an average player with gaudy RBI totals that make him overrated. At any rate, his defense is average at first, but if all goes well, he’ll be playing at third with Gaby Sánchez at first base. Sánchez bombed in his last spring training, and it led to manager Fredi Gonzalez losing his mind and giving Emilio Bonifacio more than 500 plate appearances before the organization traded for Nick Johnson.

Sánchez is somewhat of a poor man’s Nick Johnson, although that comparison might be a bit of a stretch; he doesn’t hit for power, but he has good plate discipline and draws a fair share of walks. He posted a .378 wOBA in the graveyard that is Zephyr Park in Triple-A New Orleans while Bonifacio hogged up all his playing time while playing at replacement level. Did you know that John Baker and Ronny Paulino teamed up to form a 4 WAR platoon at the catcher position for Florida last season?

Finally, the wild card is Cameron Maybin. The graceful and athletic Maybin, not Coghlan, was predicted to run away with the NL ROY. He ended up stumbling out of the gate and getting sent to Triple-A, where he reclaimed his uber-prospect status. His projections diverge greatly, but all he has to do is be league average as a hitter to offer value to Florida, thanks to his solid defense.

Bench: Brett Carroll might be the new Gabe Gross, in that he’s a minus with the bat, but is so freakishly good at defense that he merits his fair share of playing time. I’ve already touched on Paulino and Bonifacio. Jai Miller is a strikeout machine but has decent power and can play solid outfield defense. Wes Helms, Brian Barden, and Danny Richar will battle for who is the less fungible infielder in spring training.

I’m thankful for Michael Jong of MarlinManiac. com, whose suggestions were invaluable in penning this preview.