Red Sox acquire 1B Adrian Gonzalez from the Padres for RHP Casey Kelly, 1B Anthony Rizzo and OF Reymond Fuentes

Swinging in the most sinister offensive environment in the game, Gonzalez nonetheless batted .285/.387/.523 over the past three seasons, drawing a walk nearly 14% of the time with an ISO around .240. His three-year wOBA of .383 ranks 20th among qualified MLB hitters, but once you adjust for PETCO, Gonzalez’s bat has been eighth-best in the bigs over that time frame.

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Bobby Abreu

Profile: In 2010, Bobby Abreu hit 20 home runs, stole 24 bases, and showed the same plate discipline (13% BB, 23% K) that he always has (14.8% BB, 21.6% K career) — and yet, there are reasons to think that the end is nigh for his fantasy relevance. While his stolen-base totals have stayed in the steady-but-solid range in the last six years (22 to 31 stolen bases), his Bill James’ speed score hit a seven-year low last year. With his bad body and poor defense — he’s pretty much a designated hitter these days — his lack of athleticism really has to catch up with him eventually. Also worrisome is the fact that he hit a career-low in line drives last year. He’s been undervalued before, and has managed twelve straight years with at least 15 home runs and 20 stolen bases, but as that speed dissipates, so will his remaining fantasy value. (Eno Sarris)

Quick Opinion: The old man with the beer gut has managed twelve straight seasons with more than 15 home runs and 20 stolen bases, but those wheels are getting a little rusty. Treat him more like an extra piece if he falls far enough, and you’ll mitigate the risk that his athleticism is providing these days.

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Travis Hafner

Profile: In 2010, Hafner played in more than 100 games for the first time since 2007, and managed an unflashy, but useful, .278/.364/.449 line in a deflated 2010 run environment as Cleveland’s primary DH. However useful that may be in real baseball, for a DH-only player in traditional 5×5 leagues, it won’t cut it. Hafner was last a good fantasy piece in 2006, a lifetime ago in baseball terms. Without the power to truly make pitchers pay, his walk rate has dropped. Even 2010’s numbers need to be seen in light of his .332 BABIP, so his average will likely drop. Cleveland doesn’t really have any other options at DH next season, so if he stays healthy (and even in 2010, he only played in 118 games) Hafner will help in counting categories; although, given the condition of the rest of Cleveland’s offense, he isn’t going to get that many opportunities to drive runs in or be driven in. Expect .260/.350/.430 with about 60 runs, 60 RBI, and 10-15 home runs. In other words, at this point Hafner is Billy Butler without the average. He should go drafted in all but the shallowest leagues, but don’t spend a high draft pick or more than minimal fantasy dollars on him. (Matt Klaassen)

Quick Opinion: Hafner had a mini-comeback in 2010, but the pre-2007 Hafner is almost certainly gone for good. He’s better than people think in real baseball, but not in ways that can help a fantasy team very much.

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Miguel Olivo

Profile: Olivo has racked up double digit home run numbers in five consecutive seasons while playing for three different franchises, but he’s decided to really challenge himself in 2011 – he’s going to the worst park in baseball for his particular skillset. As a right-handed extreme pull hitter, Safeco Field punishes his strengths more than any other park, and Olivo is going to have to do a lot of damage on the road to repeat his 2010 numbers. You would think he might have noticed what Adrian Beltre did in Boston after leaving Seattle, or how Jose Lopez failed to make this same approach work in Seattle, but Olivo took the security of a two year deal and now has to try to overcome baseball’s version of death valley for RHBs. Given that former Catcher Of The Future Adam Moore is still hanging around, Olivo will have some competition for playing time, so if he struggles, he might find himself on the bench more often than he had anticipated. (Dave Cameron)

Quick Opinion: Let someone else pay for Olivo’s expected power – his new home ballpark will stifle his production in a big way.

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David Aardsma

Profile: Heading into the off-season, it was essentially a foregone conclusion that the Mariners would trade David Aardsma. He has racked up solid save totals the last two years, but his shaky command and one pitch arsenal always left you feeling that he was something of a time bomb – eventually, hitters would stop swinging at his fastball out of the zone and let him self destruct. However, news broke in December that Aardsma would require surgery on the labrum in his hip, which nuked his trade value, and so he remains a member of the Mariners roster. He also remains one of the highest risk options for saves in baseball. He was already an implosion candidate before the injury, and now he’s going to get up speed in 2011 without a spring training to work out the kinks. If all these warning signs have you thinking buyer beware, you are a pretty smart individual. (Dave Cameron)

Quick Opinion: If he’s healthy, you’ll saves with a side helping of heart attacks. He might not be healthy. Discount heavily.

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Ryan Madson

Profile: For the last two years, Ryan Madson has been a better pitcher than titular closer Brad Lidge, and yet he only has 15 saves to show for it. Ask a Phillies fan, though, and they’ll assure you he’s not fit for the role. Perhaps he doesn’t have the temperament (he did kick a wall and break his toe after a blown save). What he does have is the ability to strike people out (10.87 K/9 last year, 7.67 K/9 career) and garner groundballs (50.4% last year, 47.6% career) while eschewing the walk (2.21 BB/9 last year, 2.77 BB/9 career). He’s 30 and only pitched 55 innings last year due to a non-pitching injury (the toe-wall thing), and seems primed for a great year. Unfortunately, in most leagues his value will depend almost entirely on the production of Lidge. Given that Lidge has both an injury-riddled and ineffective season in his recent past, it could mean double-digit saves for Madson by the end of the year. (Eno Sarris)

Quick Opinion: In recent times, Ryan Madson has been a better pitcher than the man notching the saves for the Phillies. Still, it looks like his owners will have to wait for Lidge to go down before getting any saves out of their pitcher.

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The surprising hero of Game 3 was No. 9 hitter Mitch Moreland; there can be no doubt. But his three-run home run in the second inning, the biggest play of the game by most statistics, may have been surprising for reasons that don’t immediately come to mind.

Yes, he is a rookie in the World Series. But we might remember an even younger Andruw Jones launching two home runs in his first two World Series at-bats.

Yes, Moreland, a left-handed hitter, was digging in against the left-handed Jonathan Sanchez. And yes, Moreland had a poor track record against left-handers this year. But his .200/.304/.300 line against lefties came in only 23 plate appearances, and per Tom Tango’s research, it usually takes about 1,000 at-bats for a lefty’s platoon split to become even 50 percent reliable. Moreland was well short of that benchmark, and the sample is so small as to make the line almost meaningless.

Really, the surprise comes because of the type of pitch Moreland punished Saturday night. Moreland’s home run came on a fastball on the ninth pitch of an extended at-bat. Check out the pitch selection that Buster Posey and Sanchez went with:

88 MPH fastball (ball)
76 MPH slider (ball)
89 MPH fastball (foul)
89 MPH fastball (called strike)
79 MPH slider (foul)
79 MPH slider (foul)
80 MPH changeup (foul)
80 MPH changeup (foul)
89 MPH fastball (home run)

The surprise here is that the tandem chose a fastball in a full count when the slider is Sanchez’s out-pitch (he used it 43 percent of the time on 0-2 pitches in 2010). In a game that was the battle of the slider — Colby Lewis was 11th and Sanchez 26th in slider usage percentage among qualified starters — the Giants’ starter went with a pitch that only got him whiffs 6.8 percent of the time during the regular season. His slider had a 17.4 percent whiff percent during the year.

The fateful pitch did come in a full count, and perhaps the thinking was that a slider was closer in speed to the last two pitches Sanchez had thrown in the sequence, and that Moreland might be waiting for a changeup or slider and could be late on a fastball. But Moreland loved fastballs in 2010. FanGraphs keeps a statistic that tracks in-game results by pitch type, and Moreland was easily best against the fastball (2.6 runs better than average against the fastball, minus-1.1 runs versus sliders). Once again, it looks like the slider might have been the best move.

On Saturday night, the slider wasn’t moving like it normally does for Sanchez. After averaging over five inches of horizontal break during the year, the slider only broke about two inches horizontally during Game 3. He also didn’t manage a single swinging strike on any of his 13 sliders. It wasn’t working for him, and perhaps Posey knew it even as early as the second inning.

We can only guess why the slider wasn’t breaking. Maybe Sanchez didn’t quite get loose, or maybe he was nervous. Or maybe he’s tiring. After a career high of 163 1/3 innings in 2009, Sanchez is now up to 213 1/3 this year. Increasing your workload by 125 percent might make for a tired arm — that’s a lot of sliders.

Sanchez lived by the slider all year, and probably should have died with it too. Despite the surprising pitch selection in that fated at-bat, Mitch Moreland and Rangers fans are not complaining.

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.

You can make an argument right now that Cliff Lee — the Texas Rangers’ Game 1 starter in the 2010 World Series — is among the best postseason pitchers ever, or certainly within the last few decades.

How does he do it?

Lee thrives not just because of fastball command, curveball movement and cut fastball usage — he’s very good in all respects — but also because of how he works the count. Lee was ahead in the count (36.3 percent of pitches) twice as often as he was behind in the count (18.4 percent of pitches) in 2010, demonstrating that he gets ahead early and often. He also averages 10.3 strikeouts per walk, which is the second-best ratio in baseball history.

Lee throws, basically, six specific pitches: four-seam fastball, two-seam fastball, cut fastball, changeup, curveball and slider. The cut fastball is a newer pitch for him, but it might already be among his most important: he used it on 19.8 percent of pitches this season.

If you break down Lee’s pitch selection by count and batter, the first trend that sticks out is the use of his fastballs; versus left-handed batters he throws the four-seamer 42.7 percent of the time — that’s the most for any one pitch — and against right-handed batters he throws the two-seamer 45.3 percent of the time — again, the most of any one pitch.

Aside from those two pitches, Lee distributes very evenly. He doesn’t throw curves (5.9 percent to righties, 3.9 percent to lefties) or sliders (0.2, 7.1) that often, but he mixes in changeups and cut fastballs adeptly.

Lee distributes his cutter pretty evenly no matter the count but uses the curveball on two-strike counts and pitcher’s counts, rarely throwing it otherwise. In fact, 78 percent of the curveballs he throws are on two-strike counts. Lee clearly uses his curveball as an out pitch, which induces a swinging strike the highest percentage compared to his other pitches.

In two-strike counts, Lee uses some variation of the fastball 75 percent of the time. Here’s how they break down placement-wise, starting with the four-seam. For these heat maps, the brighter the color, the more often the pitch ends up in that area. As you can see, Lee’s pitches are rarely in the middle of the plate:

Here’s the two-seam:

And here’s the cut fastball:

Lee is more willing to throw four-seamers inside or up and out of the zone to righties — while being more selective against lefties and throwing it into the strike zone. He is more selective with the two-seamer against righties but is also quite willing to throw the pitch inside on lefties. Lee tends to locate the cut fastball outside to both hitters on two-strike counts, painting the edge of the strike zone while mostly hitting the inside of the zone.

The two pitches that Lee gets the highest swinging strike percentages on are his curveball and changeup, particularly when he throws them against right-handed batters. Here’s a look at where Lee locates his breaking balls and where right-handed batters swing and miss (misses are the red dots):

Lee isn’t afraid to locate either pitch down the middle but tends to throw his changeup low, away and in the zone to righties. He is very successful at getting swinging strikes there. Lee’s changeup gets swinging strikes in the zone, while many of his swinging strikes on curveballs are down and out of the zone.

The Texas Rangers have put the vise grips on the ALCS, going up 3-1 in the series by beating the New York Yankees 10-3 in Game 4 on Tuesday night. The turning point came on Bengie Molina’s three-run home run in the sixth inning, turning a one-run deficit into a two-run lead.

In the year of the pitcher — and the playoffs of the pitcher — the A.J. Burnett–Tommy Hunter matchup looked seriously out of place. It lived up to that billing, with Hunter getting through just 3.1 innings, and Burnett struggling through six innings. Burnett was in and out of trouble, with the same problems that have plagued him all year: three walks (one intentional) and a hit batter, a wild pitch and a stolen base allowed.

Still, it looked like Burnett might give the Yankees six innings of two-run ball. With Nelson Cruz on first base and one out in the sixth inning, Ian Kinsler flied out to center field. Cruz, with the base-running aggressiveness Texas has shown throughout the playoffs, tagged up and went to second base.

With two outs and first base open, Yankees manager Joe Girardi elected to intentionally walk the lefty David Murphy with Molina on deck. Putting an extra man on with the lead in the sixth is an unorthodox move, and it didn’t work. Molina hit the first pitch, an up-and-in fastball, down the left-field line for a three-run homer. Before that, the Rangers had a 33.7 percent chance of winning. After the Molina homer, it went up to 73.3 percent. The swing of almost 40 percent was easily the biggest in the game.

This graphic shows the locations of the pitches that Bengie Molina has hit for home runs over the past two seasons. The one in bold is the pitch from A.J. Burnett on Tuesday night.

Up-and-in pitches can sometimes handcuff a batter, but over the past two years Molina has had no problems with them. Many of his home runs have come on pitches in this location. In the graph to the right, you can see the locations of the pitches he has hit for a HR, with the one against Burnett marked. The graph is from the catcher’s perspective.

The second-largest win percentage shift happened in the top of the fifth when the Rangers’ Mitch Moreland hit into a double play. Molina had just hit a single, so Texas had one on with no outs while down by just one run. The Molina hit translated into a 42 percent win percentage for Texas, but when Moreland hit into the double play, that fell to just 31.3 percent.

The third-largest win percentage came in the bottom of the second inning on Robinson Cano’s controversial home run. That play took the Yankees’ win percentage from 52.9 percent to 63.1 percent. At the time, Burnett was cruising; he had struck out three of the first six batters with no signs of the command issues he would show later in the night. It was the first time the Yankees had struck first in the series, and with what looked like a solid Burnett on the mound versus a shaky Hunter — two batters later Lance Berkman almost hit another solo HR — the Yankees must have felt like they had a better than 63 percent shot at the game.

But that is not how it played out. Now the Yankees will need three straight wins against the Rangers. It’s not where they wanted to be, but the Yankees are set up with their best three starters all on normal rest.