Eleven years removed from his MVP season, well past his prime and near the end of his career, Jason Giambi doesn’t play much anymore. When the Rockies penciled him into the lineup Thursday, it marked just his second start in nearly a month.

But the 40-year-old slugger showed he had something left in the tank, blasting three homers and knocking in all seven of Colorado’s runs in a blowout win over the Phillies. In the process, Giambi accomplished a feat that’s becoming increasingly rare in baseball: providing a big contribution off the bench.

A generation ago, teams carried 10-man pitching staffs, allowing managers to deploy a litany of platoons and employ ace pinch hitters, while still saving room for speedy pinch runners and defensive replacements who could make big plays late in a game. Before Bobby Cox built a dynasty in Atlanta, he managed the first winning clubs in Blue Jays history, using his deep bench to field platoons at multiple positions. Meanwhile, professional pinch hitters such as Manny Mota and Wallace Johnson stayed employed, despite having little value other than their ability to bag a base hit late in a game.

Today, teams use 12-, even 13-man pitching staffs, leaving little room to collect a group of quality backups. For all the advantages managers gain by being able to play bullpen matchups, they’re giving a lot of that back by trotting out shallow benches.

Though it’s tough to peg one person for starting the trend of bloated bullpens and tiny benches, Tony LaRussa certainly helped get the movement going with the way he built his pen around Dennis Eckersley while managing the Oakland A’s in the late 1980s.

Baseball being a game of copycats, other teams started expanding the size of their bullpens, hoping to tap into that Oakland magic. The trend rapidly accelerated once pitch counts and more conservative usage of starting pitchers came into vogue. Today, a typical American League team carries just four bench players.

One of the best ways to handle this severe limitation is to build a versatile roster. The Tampa Bay Rays have Ben Zobrist, who doubles as one of the better hitters in the league and a multi-position threat, having played everywhere except pitcher and catcher in 2009, then skipping just pitcher, catcher and shortstop last season. Adding Sean Rodriguez (seven positions played last year) allows the Rays to platoon, pinch run and pinch hit as well as any club with just four bench guys possibly can. (Why the Rays have bothered with a seven-man ‘pen while their long relief man almost never pitches is another question, and a strike against their usually sharp manager Joe Maddon.)

Through the season’s first six weeks, however, the honor of baseball’s best bench goes to another team: LaRussa’s own St. Louis Cardinals. Perhaps realizing what he’s wrought with his bullpen tinkering, LaRussa has long targeted the most versatile players to man his bench, shying away from the Matt Stairs types who can get you an occasional pinch-hit homer but little else.

Hole Cards
Owning baseball’s best bench is one of many reasons the St. Louis Cardinals sit in first place in the NL Central.

PLAYER PA AVG/OBP/SLG
Jon Jay 89 .312/.398/.455
Allen Craig 80 .319/.400/.507
Nick Punto 77 .262/.355/.385
Gerald Laird 48 .214/.313/.381

This year’s club is no exception. The three bench players who’ve seen the most playing time — Allen Craig, Jon Jay and Nick Punto — have played four, three and three positions, respectively. All three have hit well, too (see table), so much so that Craig has seized the starting second-base job with Skip Schumaker on the disabled list. LaRussa’s penchant for flexing players at different spots doesn’t just extend to relative no-names either. To make room for other players, Albert Pujols has played two games at third base this year, the first time he’s handled that position in nine years. As much as Matt Holliday and Lance Berkman have supercharged the offense and Jaime Garcia, Kyle McLellan and Kyle Lohse have been revelations in the rotation, the Cardinals might not be in first place if not for the contributions of their reserves.

The contending team that might have the weakest bench is Philadelphia. Though the Phillies knew they had a major injury risk with Chase Utley, they failed to acquire quality backups, watching Wilson Valdez (.234 AVG/.261 OBP/.290 SLG, not far off his career numbers) and Pete Orr (.230/.299/.279, and ditto) struggle mightily in Utley’s place. Brian Schneider, 34, predictably flailed (.173/.218/.327) behind Carlos Ruiz at catcher before going on the DL. With Raul Ibanez looking close to the end and All-Star center fielder Shane Victorino on the DL, backup outfielder Ben Francisco’s performance (.216/.329/.360) has also been a letdown, though his career numbers are considerably better.

With a team heavy on star power but showing age or injuries or both at several positions, the Phillies could sorely use some bench reinforcements to hold off the upstart Marlins and Braves in the NL East. Given GM Ruben Amaro’s history of making in-season upgrades (including Stairs, Professional Hitter himself), we could well see that happen in the next few weeks.

Matt Garza is good. Very good. His stuff, as many a catcher will attest, is as filthy as a chimney sweep. Yet, despite this, he has produced the results of a merely above-average starter. This year, in-the-know Cubs fans have observed The Tale of Two Garzas — the story of a devastating strikeout pitcher who just can’t seem to keep the scoreboard clean.

What gives? Which is the real Matt Garza? The one who can make Albert Pujols look like Neifi Perez, or the one who watches opponents slap pitches for key double after key double? Well, the truth lies somewhere in between.

Garza is never hard to find in a dugout. Leaning on the railing, nervously spitting sunflower seeds, waiting for any reason to vault over the railing and scream a little, the Cubs third starting pitcher is always totally immersed in the game, whether he’s pitching or still four days away from taking the mound. But the Cubs didn’t trade a hefty slice of their farm system for a cheerleader — they wanted Garza win some games. Unfortunately for the Cubs, that hasn’t happened very often this year.

When the Cubs acquired Garza this offseason, they were getting a starter who had pitched nearly 200 innings for three straight seasons with an ERA under 4.00. So far in 2011, Garza has been decent, but not lights-out-go-to-bed-you’re-grounded, sporting a 3.72 ERA.

After his trade to the North Side, the common fear surrounded his stadium change. Despite his good ERA with the Tampa Bay Rays, Garza allowed more than the league average in homers in both 2009 and 2010 — despite playing in a park known to depress power numbers. Moving to Wrigley Field, where a windy day can transform a popup into a double and a Mohawk into a comb-over, Garza looked poised for some serious struggles.

Instead, he changed his approach and found a new form of success.

In 2010, Garza threw his four-seam fastball (the straight or rising fastball) about 60 percent of the time, essentially challenging hitters to do their worst. This approach, coupled with the Rays’ superior defense, made Garza relatively successful. However, without Evan Longoria snaring grounders like a demigod, the righty needed a more defensive-independent approach. So he replaced his extra four-seamers with a slew of bendy and wobbly pitches: more two-seamers (22 percent), sliders (21 percent), changeups (12 percent) and curves (11 percent).

Garza has gone from a fastball-obsessed flamethrower to a crafty right-hander, who happens to sport a flammable fastball. The result has been a significant uptick in swinging strikes (7.5 percent in 2010 to 11.1 percent in 2011). Only his curveball seems to have lost some whiffs, but nearly every other pitch has induced many more frustrated batters; his changeup alone went from 33 percent whiffs to more than 54 percent.

His ERA (3.72) is nearly his career best; his strikeouts per nine innings (10.99) are way up from his career norm (7.36); and despite the extra K’s, his walks per nine (3.23) are near his career norm (3.18). Everything but the ERA screams, “Elite!”

In the National League, Garza gets to face pitchers and pinch hitters — essentially giving an extra one or two strikeouts every game over his former league — but still, no one anticipated that Garza would (1) change his approach and (2) become a strikeout machine because of it.

Fielding independent pitching (FIP), a statistic which combines strikeouts, walks, homers and hit-by-pitches to predict ERA, suggests Garza has actually been playing at a sub-2.00 ERA level. Through his first nine starts, Garza has mustered a 1.82 FIP, good for second in the majors behind Roy Halladay.

So is Garza on the road to Cy Young consideration? Well, no. Not really.

One of the reasons Garza’s FIP is so low is the same reason his ERA is so high: BABIP. Garza’s batting average on balls in play is extraordinarily high this year. Coming into his 10th start, Garza brings with him the highest BABIP of his career (.362). For pitchers, balls in play tend to go for only about a .300 average. When they fluctuate from that number, it oftentimes means the pitcher is rather lucky or unlucky.

Garza’s high BABIP, which is about 60 points higher than his career norm, has not only allowed extra runs to score (increasing his ERA), but has also helped depress his FIP. Like the dandelion, which chokes out the grass but offers its own little flower, Garza’s high and unlucky BABIP has led to more strikeouts. As noted before, Garza’s K’s are way up (about 55 percent up per inning). However, if we look at his strikeouts per batter faced, he has only gone from 19 percent (in 2008 through 2010) to 28 percent — up only 9 percent, not 55 percent.

On top of that, Garza has allowed only one home run this year, after allowing 28 in 2010 and 25 in 2009. Though his new pitch selection approach may certainly play a role, he still appears to have Lady Luck’s favor. Only 2.4 percent of Garza’s fly balls have gone deep this year, despite allowing around 10 percent the last two years. One must expect, especially given his home stadium, that he will return to his career norm.

So altogether, the Cubs have one tough pitcher to predict: He’s changed his approach significantly and seems to have increased his strikeouts; he’s pitched better than his record (2-4) implies and maybe even better than his ERA suggests; but he’s also pitched worse than his stellar K/9 and FIP report.

Which Garza will the Cubs get moving forward? Probably one similar to what we saw from 2008 through 2010, but over the next few years, Garza will likely continue to mature into one of the league’s better right-handers, improving to a 3.25-3.50 ERA pitcher over the coming years. For now, though, his new approach will likely only improve his play marginally, taking him from a 4.00 ERA pitcher to a 3.80 ERA pitcher.

In the meantime, he’ll at least be one hell of cheerleader.

Carl Crawford became a top-of-the-order hitter in his first full big league season, at age 21. Batting almost exclusively in the top three spots, he developed into an All-Star and the best player in Tampa Bay Rays history. He banked the best season of his career in 2010, making his fourth All-Star team, winning the Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards, finishing seventh in MVP voting, and propelling Tampa Bay to an achievement few ever thought possible: their second AL East title in three years. His success was so overwhelming, the Boston Red Sox gave Crawford a seven-year, $142 million contract, the second-richest deal in club history.

Then the Red Sox started the season 0-2. Terry Francona promptly dropped his left fielder to No. 7 in the Boston order — the lowest Crawford had batted since 2003 — against Rangers lefty Matt Harrison on Sunday.

But really, it was the other way around. For eight long years, Crawford’s managers misused him. Boston’s 0-2 start simply offered an excuse to make what might turn out to be one of Francona’s smartest moves of 2011.

In exactly 1,600 career plate appearances versus left-handed pitching, Crawford has hit just .270/.315/.381. For comparison’s sake, Jeff Francoeur, one of the most notorious hackers of his generation and a whipping boy for many baseball writers and analysts, has hit .268/.310/.425 for his career. Even Neifi Perez’s .672 career OPS isn’t far off Crawford’s .696 mark versus lefties.

Despite what’s now nearly a decade of futility against southpaws, Crawford has never seen anything close to a platoon, let alone been dropped from his perch at or near the top of the order. At first, this made some sense. When Crawford began his career in 2002, the then-Devil Rays were a joke of a team, licking their wounds after the ill-fated Hit Show saw Greg Vaughn, Jose Canseco and Vinny Castilla blow up the team’s building efforts and financial situation in one offseason spending orgy. Tampa Bay saw a future star in Crawford, and wanted to give him every chance to grow into a successful everyday player.

Lou Piniella took the reins in 2003, found little in the way of dynamic, young talent and installed Crawford as his leadoff hitter. In 184 times up versus lefties that year, Crawford hit an abysmal .263/.283/.302. The next season, Crawford saw big improvement in both his overall game, and in his efforts against left-handers. His OPS versus lefties spiked 180 points (.295/.346/.418). But in 2005, Crawford’s production versus lefties nosedived again, to .244/.293/.326, the D-Rays won 70 or fewer games for the eighth straight year, and Piniella was out of a job.

Joe Maddon took over in 2006, rightly waiting to see what his young players had to offer before making big decisions. What he saw from Crawford in the next two years was a hitter who looked like he could hack it against pitchers of all stripes. Crawford hit a solid .288/.341/.436 versus lefties in ’06, then a career-best .318/.350/.437 against them in ’07. The Rays were maturing as a young club, a new wave of intriguing players had filtered in, and Crawford was going to be Maddon’s go-to guy, a five-tool player who would play (and bat high in the order) against everyone, no matter the circumstances.

That’s when the law of averages kicked in, and Crawford’s truer tendencies re-emerged. From 2008 through 2010, Crawford hit a blistering .316/.367/.493 versus righties, but just .259/.312/.372 versus lefties, right around his career average. Ever the lineup tinkerer and fearless decision maker, Maddon showed he would do just about anything to find the smallest edges — except drop Crawford lower in the order versus left-handed pitchers.

Left with a problem
These left-handed hitters are all considered stars. But you wouldn’t know it from looking at their career numbers against southpaws.

Player OPS vs. RHP OPS vs. LHP
Ryan Howard 1.039 .769
Josh Hamilton .984 .786
Prince Fielder .974 .796
Andre Ethier .915 .676
Carl Crawford .816 .696
Whether it was the team’s 0-2 start or other factors that prompted Francona to drop Crawford down to seventh in the order yesterday, the Red Sox could be better for it, while also being unique in taking such action. The Phillies’ Ryan Howard has always been a mediocre hitter versus lefties, posting a career OPS of just .769 against them, with an awful .316 on-base percentage. But the politics and optics of the situation dictate that Charlie Manuel keep batting his $125 million slugger in the middle of the lineup against any and all pitchers, just as other managers stubbornly give prime lineup spots to other hitters when career-long tendencies suggest they’re wrong in doing so.

The Red Sox should still play Crawford every day. As the game’s best defensive left fielder, and one of baseball’s most dynamic baserunners and base stealers, he offers plenty of value even when he’s not hitting. There’s even an argument to be made that his speed is even more valuable at the bottom of the lineup because he can take chances without worrying about robbing the likes of Kevin Youkilis and Adrian Gonzalez of RBI opportunities.

Once the Sox’s lineup gets cooking, it will be very interesting to see if Francona keeps Crawford near the bottom of the lineup.

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.

Carlos Gonzalez’s gigantic breakout was one of the great stories of the 2010 season. Few players in major league history have exploded onto the scene quite the way he did — leading the circuit in hits, total bases and batting average, and finishing third in NL MVP voting.

So impressive was CarGo’s effort that he might have won more fantasy leagues for his owners than perhaps any player other than Jose Bautista, and he also earned a seven-year, $80 million contract. Not bad for a player in his first full big league season.

But in a year of amazing numbers, one stat soared so high that it makes you wonder whether Gonzalez can do it again. Major league hitters batted .297 on balls hit in play last season; Gonzalez hit .384.

To understand what .384 means — and to find out whether this amazing performance is repeatable — we need to examine how baseball research has influenced the way we’ve come to evaluate pitchers and how hitters are subject to many of the same variables, although to a lesser extent.

Ten years ago, an inquisitive student and baseball fan named Voros McCracken wrote an article for Baseball Prospectus that set the analytical community on its head. The story, titled “Pitching and Defense: How Much Control Do Hurlers Have?” posited that pitchers had very little control over a pitch once the hitter made contact. Once a hitter put the ball into play, the pitcher was at the mercy of his defense, which would decide whether the batted ball would result in a hit or an out. Our understanding grew, to the point where we also could describe a batted ball as neither the result of pitching nor defense but rather pure luck (or random variance, or however you want to describe a seven-hopper squirting through while a scorching liner lands right in a fielder’s glove).

Today, we use one five-letter acronym as short-hand for the separation of pitching and hitting from defense and luck: BABIP (batting average on balls in play). McCracken’s theory has held up well during the past decade, with few pitchers managing to post BABIP results drastically different from league norms throughout a career. (League average is typically around .300 or a shade below.) But BABIP means something different on the hitters’ side. Hitters tend to show more BABIP variance throughout their careers, both above and below league norms, than pitchers do.

One of the most common ways for a hitter to post unusually high BABIP numbers is with great speed. Ichiro Suzuki sports a career .357 BABIP, making him perennially one of the league leaders. His hitting approach is unique, specifically tailored to his ability to hit ’em where they ain’t, and to beat the play when the ball doesn’t leave the infield.

According to FanGraphs, Ichiro’s career ground-ball rate is a sky-high 55.7 percent, compared to just a 24 percent fly-ball rate. Grounders turn into hits more often than fly balls for any player. In Ichiro’s case, he is fast enough to beat out a ton of infield hits and possesses a swing that has him bailing out of the box early, propelling him halfway to first base by the time the ball takes its second hop. Ichiro’s slashing approach also has netted a career 20.3 percent line-drive rate, a high-average figure that also makes hits more likely.

By both traditional and advanced measures, CarGo ranks among the fastest players in the game today. He stole 26 bases in 2010, an impressive-enough total. But take a look at his speed score, a metric devised by Bill James that combines a player’s stolen-base percentage, frequency of stolen-base attempts, percentage of triples and runs scored percentage. By that standard, CarGo ranked 11th in the majors, well ahead of Ichiro, and also above known speedsters (and prolific base stealers) like Juan Pierre and Rajai Davis.

The bigger factor boosting CarGo’s BABIP, though, is Coors Field. The accompanying table lists the BABIPs of the Rockies’ 10 most frequently used hitters. Eight of the 10 came in above .300, four of them above .325. The list of BABIP outperformers includes fast guys like CarGo and outfield running mate Dexter Fowler but also plodders like Melvin Mora, Brad Hawpe and Todd Helton.

Coors Field is a well-known hitters’ haven, and it even helps batting average on balls in play. The league’s BABIP was .297 in 2010, but most of the Rockies far exceeded that figure.

Player 2010 BABIP
Carlos Gonzalez .384
Ryan Spilborghs .341
Dexter Fowler .328
Troy Tulowitzki .327
Melvin Mora .324
Brad Hawpe .314
Ian Stewart .308
Todd Helton .307
Clint Barmes .263
Seth Smith .256

No major league park boosts hits more than Coors, whether you’re using 2010 figures or more reliable three-year park factors. According to stat-tracking site StatCorner.com, Coors does tend to help right-handed hitters a little more than it does lefties. Still, the spacious Coors outfield, the lack of ample foul territory (as seen in parks like Oakland Coliseum) and some managers’ desire to play deep and prevent extra-base hits have conspired to boost hits across the board, be they singles, doubles or triples on balls in play, not to mention the homer spike we’ve come to know through the days of the Blake Street Bombers to more recent balls-in-humidor tactics.

Even accounting for Gonzalez’s speed, his own healthy line-drive rates (20.8 percent in 2010, 20.7 percent career) and high ground-ball-to-fly-ball rate for a power hitter (42.5 percent GB vs. 36.6 percent FB last year), and Coors Field’s significant impact, Gonzalez’s BABIP was abnormally high last year. Only Austin Jackson‘s and Josh Hamilton’s numbers were higher, and only four batting-title-qualified hitters in the past three years have topped Gonzalez’s .384 BABIP from last season. Other numbers warrant concern, such as Gonzalez’s strikeout-to-walk ratio (nearly 4-to-1 in 2010) and his poor walk rate (just 32 unintentional walks in 628 plate appearances last year).

But Gonzalez is still a 25-year-old outfielder with immense physical talents, playing in the friendliest hitters’ park in the game with a skill set that suggests he’ll continue hitting — and BABIPing — his way to big numbers. Don’t expect the moon this season. Do expect another round of impressive results. Even his true level of a talent is a .350 BABIP, he’s still an All-Star.

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.

By any objective measure, the Tampa Bay Rays bullpen was terrific in 2010.

Rays relievers posted the lowest team ERA in the American League last season (3.33). Using FanGraphs’ fielding independent pitching (FIP), a stat that runs along a similar scale to ERA but strips out the impact of balls hit in play, the Rays ranked second at 3.76. The Rays’ three best relievers and seventh-, eighth- and ninth-inning men, Grant Balfour, Joaquin Benoit, and Rafael Soriano, were all among the AL’s top 10 relievers by Baseball Prospectus’ expected wins added stat. No way the Rays win 96 games and their second AL East title in three years if not for the bullpen’s knockout performance.

So when Tampa Bay’s top relievers all became free agents at the end of the year, the Rays took stock of their roster … and let them all go. And here’s the crazy part: They did the right thing.

The most basic reason for dropping six relievers in a single offseason is that relief pitchers are the single most unpredictable commodity in baseball. Only four relievers in all of baseball have posted an FIP of 3.50 or lower in each of the past four seasons: Jonathan Broxton, Huston Street, the now-retired Billy Wagner and, of course, Mariano Rivera. Try a more modest query and you’ll still find a very small group of consistently excellent pitchers — just 15 have posted sub-3.50 FIPs in each of the past three seasons (minimum 10 IP per season). Trusting a non-Rivera reliever to be great (or even good) every year is an unrealistic proposition.

Like all players, the time frame that counts the most in evaluating a relief pitcher’s future value is his most recent season. In the Rays’ case, they had to match other teams’ offers on a passel of pitchers coming off career or near-career years. The table below shows the monster seasons put up by Balfour, Benoit and Soriano, plus a slightly-better-than-usual season for left-handed specialist Randy Choate. Even if the Rays re-signed every one of last year’s relievers, there’s no way they could have expected that group to duplicate their 2010 performances.

The table also shows the dollars and years commanded by this buy-high crew. Lefty specialists who can’t get a right-handed batter out to save their lives practically grow on trees, yet Choate secured a guaranteed two-year contract. Benoit earned a $16.5 million deal, less than two years removed from major shoulder surgery. Soriano’s three-year, $35 million contract to serve as Rivera’s apprentice was so stupefying that Yankees GM Brian Cashman immediately pointed the finger at other front office members for offering the deal, coming as close to overtly blasting his own team’s spending as any GM has over any move in recent history.

RAYS BULLPEN PERFORMANCE IN 2010
Player 2010 ERA Career ERA 2010 FIP Career FIP New Contract
Rafael Soriano 1.73 2.73 2.81 3.23 3 yrs/$35M
Joaquin Benoit 1.34 4.47 2.43 4.30 3 yrs/$16.5M
Grant Balfour 2.28 3.31 2.68 3.47 2 yrs/$8.1M
Randy Choate 4.23 4.39 3.50 3.80 2 yrs/$2.5M

By jettisoning the big three and Choate, the Rays also collected multiple compensatory draft picks. Tampa Bay pocketed the 31st and 42nd overall picks in the 2011 draft for losing Soriano. Benoit brought back the No. 52 pick, Choate No. 56. Baseball’s arcane free-agent compensation system can even pay off when teams lose players of dubious repute. Chad Qualls posted an unfathomable 7.32 ERA last season, partly due to bad luck on balls in play, but also due to injuries and an overall decline in effectiveness. Yet the Rays still scored the No. 60 pick in the draft for watching Qualls sign elsewhere.

All told, Tampa Bay holds 12 of the first 89 picks in the 2011 draft, a bounty never before seen in major league baseball. Those picks will require plenty of cash to pay for them all, cash saved by not, say, throwing $35 million at Rafael Soriano. Draft picks are wildly unpredictable, with even first-rounders often failing to pan out. But the long-term upside for top picks is also much higher than whatever you’d get from a typical 30-something relief pitcher. For a team that lives and dies with its homegrown talent as it competes against much wealthier rivals like the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, the draft is a much smarter venue for aggressive spending.

Building a brand-new bullpen filled with unproven commodities still carries major risk, of course. The Yankees and Red Sox now sport loaded bullpens to go with their loaded lineups, adding the likes of Soriano and Bobby Jenks to their stables. One can’t help but wonder how long the Rays can keep knocking off the beasts of the East with a much smaller payroll, especially with the team’s already modest 2010 payroll of $73 million dropping by a full $30 million for 2011.

But, as I wrote about the Rays in my book on their unlikely worst-to-first journey, they have started to make a habit of pulling off such financial miracles. (See ESPN.com’s excerpt of the book here). Finding players with hidden value has been one of the keys to their rise; finding relief pitchers with hidden value has been a linchpin of that success.

This year’s projected bullpen is no exception. Remember the 15 pitchers with FIP marks of 3.50 or lower in each of the past three seasons? Adam Russell, a 6-foot-8 behemoth with big strikeout rates and ground ball tendencies, is one of those 15 (more than 54 combined major league innings, granted, but he showed those skills in the minors too).

Hard-throwing, homegrown lefty Jake McGee could emerge as a high-leverage relief ace for years to come. Joel Peralta signed for just $925,000 after striking out a batter an inning, posting a 2.02 ERA and a 3.02 FIP last year with the Washington Nationals. Yankees fans might cringe just from hearing the name Kyle Farnsworth, but the hulking righty has blossomed into an excellent reliever, picking up a cut fastball, slicing his walk rate and posting FIPs of 3.10 and 3.06 the past two seasons.

If those names don’t excite you, remember that the Rays have built great bullpens from spare parts before. They grabbed Balfour off the scrap heap from the Milwaukee Brewers, designated him for assignment, brought him back to the big leagues, then watched him turn into a dominant force on the Rays’ 2008 pennant-winning team. Balfour’s running mate that year, J.P. Howell, was acquired in a trade for Joey Gathright, a player with little on his résumé other than jumping over cars on YouTube.

Last month the Rays signed Juan Cruz, nabbing a fly-ball pitcher with big strikeout rates coming off a shoulder injury, for the price of a minor league contract. The deal looked like a classic Rays move. Benoit was once a struggling starter with Texas before finding success in the Rangers’ bullpen. He had major shoulder surgery in January 2009 and missed that entire season. But where others saw defects, the Rays saw opportunity, in the form of strong career strikeout rates and fly-ball tendencies that could work out much better in Tampa Bay, given the team’s strong outfield defense and Tropicana Field’s far friendlier park effects for pitchers. The Rays signed Benoit to a minor league deal in February of last year, ultimately paying him a grand total of $750,000 … to pitch like vintage Dennis Eckersley.

The lesson here: Don’t overpay to bring back last year’s success stories. Instead, dig deep to find the new one, for millions less. It’s a smart move for any team trying to build a bullpen.

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 Minnesota Twins have taken plenty of flak for the mass exodus from their bullpen and their many unproven, younger relievers. But the Twins have a much bigger problem on their hands for 2011, one that could threaten their two-year reign as AL Central champs: a severely diminished defense.

The Twins finished sixth in team ultimate zone rating last season. Developed by Mitchel Lichtman and tracked by FanGraphs, UZR is a stat that measures the number of runs a player saves compared to the average player at his position. It’s more reliable on a three-year basis, though, and at times subject to small-sample-size flukes, such as Jason Repko’s team-leading performance in just 58 games played.

Random fluctuations aside, the Twins’ biggest defensive downgrade this season comes at shortstop, where Alexi Casilla takes over for J.J. Hardy. Per UZR, we see that Hardy ranked among the Twins’ best defenders last season. He earned a UZR of 8.1 in 2010, saving just more than eight runs last year as compared to an average defensive shortstop. And this wasn’t a one-year fluke. For his career, Hardy has a UZR of 11.0 per 150 games played. Using the sabermetric convention of 10 runs saved equaling one win gained in the standings, that means Hardy is worth one full win more than an average shortstop each year with his glove alone.

Meanwhile, Casilla is a big unknown as a major league shortstop, having played just 41 games at the position in four-plus years as a mostly part-time player in Minnesota. Without a meaningful sample of games, it’s tough to make an accurate prediction of Casilla’s expected defensive value at short. The scouting reports haven’t been glowing, though, and finding a near-elite defensive shortstop like Hardy is tough to do. And it’s not as if Casilla will be much of an offensive contributor, as his career line is just .249/.306/.395 in more than 1,000 plate appearances.

New Twins second baseman Tsuyoshi Nishioka comes with a better defensive reputation than Casilla’s. But he, too, replaces a player coming off a strong defensive season for the Twins’ 2010 division-winning squad. Orlando Hudson saved nearly 10 runs more than an average second baseman last year for Minnesota in just 126 games — down from 2008 and 2009 levels but consistent with longer-term trends and thus likely a pretty accurate reading of his true defensive value to the club. The loss of slick-fielding (though terrible-hitting) utility infielder Nick Punto compounds the issue.

If the Twins’ defense was stellar everywhere else, you might not worry that much about their middle-infield uncertainty. But Minnesota’s corner-outfield defense ranks among the very worst in baseball. Delmon Young, Jason Kubel and Michael Cuddyer cost the team about three wins in their combined time in left and right fields last season, compared to the average player at those positions. That’s consistent with those players’ career track records, which show butcherish tendencies in the field.

Cuddyer was a far worse defender (and a far inferior hitter) than Justin Morneau when he took over at first base for the concussed slugger this past summer. Morneau has started seeing game action in spring training as he tries to make it back after missing half of last season due to complications stemming from the concussion. If he comes back fully healthy in April, or even May, the Twins could bank a two-way upgrade, with one of Young, Kubel or Cuddyer relegated to DH or the bench when Morneau plays. But Morneau’s health remains a major question mark for the Twins with less than three weeks until Opening Day.

We’re still learning about the connection between pitching and defense and exactly how much catching the ball means to a team’s run prevention. Although stats such as UZR and defensive runs saved above average do a pretty good job of quantifying defensive impact, one factor which can get lost in the calculus is something we can call “cascading.”

Here’s an example of how cascading can play out: bases loaded, one out, pitcher induces a grounder up the middle. A good shortstop fields the ball, tosses to second for one, on to first, inning-ending double play, crisis averted. A lesser shortstop lets the ball go through. But it’s not just the two runs that score that hurt the team on the field; it’s also the added strain it places on the pitching staff. The pitcher on the mound still needs two more outs to escape this high-stress situation. If he can’t get out of the jam, the manager will have to make a call to the bullpen earlier than he’d like. Now you’re getting your lesser middle relievers into the game instead of your better late-inning guys, meaning you’re liable to give up more runs. You’re also forcing the bullpen to generally work harder, raising the risk that your relievers could wear down as the season goes on, if your defense continues to struggle. The end result can be more runs allowed, more fatigue for your pitchers and even a greater risk of injuries.

In the Twins’ case, more grounders could shoot through holes with Hardy and Hudson gone, and line drives and deep flies could land in the gaps, given the team’s weak corner-outfield defense. This is important because Twins have a pitch-to-contact staff that finished 10th in the AL in strikeouts in 2010. Minnesota’s pitchers need a good defense to thrive. So whether you’re a ground-ball-oriented pitcher like Francisco Liriano, Carl Pavano, Nick Blackburn or Brian Duensing, or an extreme fly-ball pitcher like Scott Baker or Kevin Slowey, you’re vulnerable to the team’s defensive problems.

Losing four established relief pitchers from last year’s squad could dent the Twins’ chances, although the return of Joe Nathan and a full season of Matt Capps should help. The White Sox should be better than they were last season, although they still have question marks at multiple positions. But if Minnesota fails to three-peat in 2011, that leaky defense could be the biggest reason.