If you've been eager to insert some minor-league baseball into an early-summer vacation, your time has come. By the end of June, regular-season action will be under way for all five of the Washington Nationals' top affiliates, some of which will contain new faces that will have been acquired during next week's First-Year Player Draft.

By the way, if you're thinking of making the trek to Syracuse to see Stephen Strasburg, you'd better hurry; he'll be making one final triple-A start there in Buffalo [HT to Brian Dautch for the update] on Friday Thursday.  (That would have practically guaranteed a sellout at Alliance Bank Stadium, whose stated capacity is 11,071 but which reported ticket sales of 13,115 for Strasburg's most recent start last Saturday night.)

Less hailed on Saturday was the debut of onetime Nats rotation regular Collin Balester as a Syracuse reliever.  Balester took over for Josh Wilkie in the top of the eighth with two out and the bases empty, and retired the lone batter he faced.

Here's a look at where the Nats' farm clubs stand at the beginning of June.

• Vermont (short-season single-A): The Lake Monsters will play 76 games during 2010 in the northerly-tilted New York-Penn League, whose general experience level and June 18 opening day will make it the landing spot for some number of June draftees.  Will Bryce Harper be among them? Perhaps, but for that to happen would rest on a lot of assumptions that are worthy of a separate discussion, so let's just say "not in June" for now.  Second-year Vermont manager Jeff Garber will be hoping for a 2010 draft class with which he and the Monsters can better their 2009 record of 33-41.


• Hagerstown (low single-A, 28-23 as of the end of play on May 31): The Suns start the month with a five-game home set against Philadelphia-affiliated Lakewood, with whom they're tied at second place in the South Atlantic League's Northern Division.  Helping to keep Hagerstown competitive has been left-handed pitcher Daniel Rosenbaum, a 22nd-round selection in last season's June draft who pitched 37 high-quality innings later in 2009 at the Gulf Coast League.  Named Sally League Pitcher of the Week for the week ending May 16, Rosenbaum has accrued a 1.53 earned run average thus far in the 2010 season, having struck out 47 batters in 53 innings over which he's issued 42 hits and nine bases on balls. A promotion to Potomac some time in the next few weeks is a reasonable expectation.


• Potomac (high single-A, 23-28): Baltimore-affiliated Frederick is trying to run away with the first-half flag in the Carolina League's Northern Division, but neither the P-Nats nor their other two rivals are out of it yet.  The team may be less immediately concerned about the pennant race than about the return to health of top-prospect catcher Derek Norris and C-DH Brian Peacock, each of whom was recently hit in the helmet by a pitched ball -- Norris on May 21, suffering a concussion, and Peacock on May 30, after which a CT scan came back negative.


• Harrisburg (double-A, 25-26): The Senators are stuck mid-pack in the Eastern League's Western Division, where Pittsburgh-affiliated Altoona is currently in first place at 33-18. Harrisburg will be showing off the renovations to Metro Bank Park as the club hosts the 2010 Eastern League All-Star Game on July 14. Tickets go on sale this week at the Senators' web site, which will be offering a special pre-sale to its Twitter and Facebook followers.


• Syracuse (triple-A, 30-20):  The Chiefs are vying with Yankees-affiliated Scranton / Wilkes-Barre and Mets-affiliated Buffalo for supremacy in the International League's North Division as all three teams hover within a game and a half of first place.  Syracuse skipper Trent Jewett, a veteran minor-league coach and manager who's in his second year with the Nationals organization and first at the helm of the Chiefs, talks minor-league managing (and Strasburg) with David Laurila at Baseball Prospectus.

      

The unfailing harbinger of Spring for Washington baseball fans is arriving tonight, Tuesday, March 9, at 7:00 p.m.

That's when Kevin Goldstein, Jay Jaffe, Clay Davenport, Matt Swartz and Steven Goldman of Baseball Prospectus will be making their annual appearance at Politics and Prose Bookstore, 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW.  They'll be sharing some of their predictions for the 2010 season (including, perhaps, what they foresee from pitcher Stephen Strasburg), answering questions from audience members and signing copies of the 2010 Baseball Prospectus annual.

As is customary at P&P, admission is free and seating should be plentiful.  See you at 7.

      

Steven Goldman just put a couple of pieces of good news up on the Baseball Prospectus site which, as its dedicated readers will testify, is a haven for seekers of sensible baseball analysis.

First, the big Baseball Prospectus 2010 annual will be shipping next week to bookstores, and customers who have pre-ordered individual copies directly should expect them to be delivered to their mailboxes ere long.

As for this Hutch, we won't be buying a copy until early March, which is when the authors of BP have scheduled their annual appearance and book signing at Politics and Prose Bookstore on Connecticut Avenue in upper Northwest D.C.  The event is scheduled the evening of Tuesday, March 9, at 7 p.m.; check the P&P website for updates.

      

It's been a busy weekend.  Check out all the great stuff that NationalsPride.com managing editor Ian Koski caught and photographed at the Nationals' Winter Caravan this Friday and at Sunday's NatsFest.

Also, yours truly was privileged to have the opportunity to speak this past Saturday in Rosslyn at the annual meeting of the Bob Davids Chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research.

That provided an opportunity to start unrolling a set of predictions for what the Nationals will accomplish in 2010.  Not only were there quite a few Nats fans in the SABR audience, but Baseball Prospectus had raised some eyebrows last week when they pegged the Nats to post a winning record of 82-80 in the coming season.

Some of those raised eyebrows were the result of BP computations that turned out to have gone awry; they've since revised their forecast to 81-81.  But whether the number in the W column is 81 or 82, does it make sense?

Not from the vantage point of this Hutch.  Here, as unveiled to the members and guests of SABR on Saturday, is a more sensible NL East projection.

Future installments of this feature will explain how the numbers in the above table are derived.  For now, here's a synopsis of why things rate to shake out that way.

• Phillies:  A fairly solid team that mostly successfully addressed a short list of offseason needs.  Rotation?  Check.  Third base?  Check.  Back of the bullpen?  We'll see.  (We'll also see what they do next offseason when their veteran pickups are a year older.)
• Braves:  They've still got an outfield situation to sort out.  And an aging third baseman. And Derek Lowe.  None of these things portends hope.
• Marlins:  While the members of the starting rotation are all old enough to get driver's licenses, not all can yet be trusted to keep the ball within the confines of the playground.
• Mets:  Presumably their hope is that a revivified Gary Matthews Jr. can tee off on NL pitching as he could not in Anaheim.  Despite having surrendered the services of Brian Stokes, they've still got Bobby Parnell and Nelson Figueroa to lean on and have further buttressed the relief corps with Clint Everts.  Good luck with that plan, Omar.
• Nats:  Largely free of distraction but also largely free of superior starting pitching.  Boppers and bullpen can respectively push the record closer to .500 and keep it there but the middle-infield defense will be the story of the year -- one whose ending the team is praying will be happier than it was in 2009.

What's your take?

UPDATED 01-Feb-2010 5:00 pm:  BP has tweaked their formula again and now says 76 wins…

      

As the Nationals' front office heads into this week's Winter Meetings in Indianapolis, a bit of puzzlement attaches to their position.

Not that they don't have one, and MLB.com's Bill Ladson does a good job explaining it.  But Washington's stance seems to be biased toward incremental change, which Joe Sheehan at Baseball Prospectus ($) sees -- barring a major trade for prospects, of which he discusses one possibility in his article -- as about all that can be hoped for given the still-parlous state of the system.

There is money in the coffers.  Ronnie Belliard, Nick Johnson, Austin Kearns and Dmitri Young are all gone, and their $20+ million in salaries with them.  (Cristian Guzman and his $8 million salary remain, but it is not clear either whether he will play shortstop or second base or what he could fetch in a trade.)

Spending some of the recovered money to pick up free-agent pitching is an attractive idea.  Don't be surprised if the Nats bypass that option, at least with respect to any multi-year contracts.  A one-year deal to someone like free agent Jon Garland, whom Peter Gammons at ESPN ($) says they are interested in, is a more reasonable expectation.

Beyond Garland and a handful of others, though, the market for starting arms is fairly thin.  Moreover, lavishing big-bucks, long-term contracts on pitchers in their 30s is a strategy far from guaranteed of success (which might, for example, reflect the Angels' equivocal attitude toward free agent John Lackey, although he should still produce 150+ innings a season) and would thus be highly unwise unless just about every other piece were in place.

Which, in Washington, it is not.  For one thing, the Nats' needs at catcher still must be addressed.  But improving the middle-infield defense is paramount, and expecting a relocated Guzman and rookie Ian Desmond to do it alone would be foolhardy.  A signing of free agent Orlando Hudson or a trade for Florida's Dan Uggla would probably make it less tempting for the Nationals' 2010 opponents to field all-left-handed-batting lineups to poke ball after ball through what might otherwise be a very porous right side of the infield.

Whom might Washington send back in an Uggla trade?  The Nats don't have a lot of spare pieces they'd be willing to let go of.  (Local product Justin Maxwell might be one, which, as Ladson notes, could be a win-win if Maxwell thus got to play every day.)

And there's always interest swirling around slugging outfielder Josh Willingham.  The Mets, who are aching to avoid a repeat of their embarrassing 2009 season, are the latest potential trade partner whose name is being bandied about.

Whether the Nats will either acquire Hudson or Uggla or deal Willingham, or some combination thereof, is anybody's guess.  But given all the work this front office has yet to do to field a competitive team, Nats fans must be hoping that this week's meetings won't just be the beginning of another endless winter.

      

Whether or not you're old enough to remember when winning baseball was played regularly in this vicinity, you'll likely get a kick out of Baseball Prospectus' interview with onetime Baltimore ace starting pitcher Mike Boddicker.

Boddicker might not have thrown with the velocity of, say, Stephen Strasburg, but his ability to change speeds and locate the ball earned him 20 wins and a trip to the All-Star Game in 1984 -- just one season after his complete-game victory in World Series Game 2 at Memorial Stadium evened the Fall Classic at one game each for the Orioles and Phillies.  Baltimore would go on to win that Series four games to one, although little recking at the time that their victory would knell the end of two decades of dominance in the Charm City.

      

If you are a fan of any team in the National League Central Division, rest assured that your front office is busy these days working the phone (and the Net) to make trades in advance of the July 31 non-waiver deadline.

In particular, Pittsburgh general manager Neal Huntington would doubtless be very pleased to realize value in the form of prospects for players like fan-favorite shortstop Jack Wilson and rotation ace Zach Duke. (What's this we hear about long-term contract extensions for Wilson and Freddy Sanchez?  Huntington's purring reassurances make nice, feel-good copy, but his lowball contract extension offers to those players reinforce our expectation that the Pirates are open to remaking the roster to whatever degree they perceive to be profitable.)

Huntington, as well as his NL Central GM confreres, would appear to be looking at a pretty sluggish market for trades.  The sports business climate, like that of business in general, is dismal these days -- and isn't everybody looking to deal away their saleable pieces as they prepare to contend next year?

Shed no tears for Huntington. The other five teams in the NL Central are in contention this year, and suitors for his players are likely ringing Huntington's telephone off the hook. (We will explain that quaint metaphor to our younger readers another day.)

Baseball Prospectus' John Perotto argues that, with more teams still very much in the hunt than definitely (like the Nationals) out of it, this is in fact a seller's market. He lists interesting players on several teams -- including the Nats, whom he sees shopping outfielder Josh Willingham, among others. (You need to be a subscriber to Baseball Prospectus to see the whole list.)

Who might the others be?  Much as this Hutch loves 'em, and irrespective of what Baseball Prospectus might or might not think, our guess is that patient-hitting first baseman Nick Johnson and super-utilityman Willie Harris -- both able and useful, but both also just past age 30 -- are at the top of the Nats' list of tradeables.

      

Okay, I get VORP, I really do.  I even philosophically get MLVR and WARP and Win Shares.  But, can someone share with the public a stat that helps everyone get it? I have read the books, I understand that Bill James and the SABR community are challenging conventional thought by focusing on other metrics than the time honored ones (RBI's for example). I get it.

BUT, do you know what are two simple sets of numbers that folks understand? Wins vs. Losses and Runs Scored vs. Runs Allowed. Pretty easy.  So can someone take all the nuanced metrics with numbers that have no relative nature to anything and tell me the following:

• Per game, on average, Ryan Zimmerman's combined value with the glove, bat, and baserunning gives the Nationals "x" extra runs a game, and saves "x" runs a game. So that when you compare him to a David Wright or to a Chipper Jones or to an Edwin Encarnacion in terms of VALUE, you have a nice (NOT PERFECT) measure?
• Can someone then take that and say how many wins and losses that equates to over the year?
• Can someone do this in small numbers so that I dont say--Ryan Zimmerman is good because he has a 24.8 VORP (that means nothing).  I want to know what this means on a day in and day out basis.  For example, I watch a game.  The Nats win 6-4. Dunn hits 2 HR, drives in 3.  Makes an error in the field, leads to two unearned runs.  What is the relative value for that game? Or, Ryan Zimmerman goes 1-5, leaves 6 runners on base.  plays superb defense all game, and Nats win 2-1.  What was his value on that game  .5 runs? .3 runs? -1 runs?

While I love baseball statistics, I feel there is a disservice going on for those who watch the game and do not want to study applied statistics to talk at the water cooler about a player's impact on the game.  We all love stats in baseball, that is why "714", "56", ".406" mean something.  We have seen it, lived it, and UNDERSTAND IT.  There needs to a better understanding for the lay person on some of these new stats.

      

I have spent a lot of time on this site talking about VORP, and it is becoming more commonplace in the mainstream baseball parlance (yeah!!!).  With that, it's worth checking in on our boys to see how their VORP relates to other teams around the league. In this piece, we will look at our hitting and pitching VORP, as well as talk about the key items of VORP--value, and replacement level players.

Hitting VORP

As Baseball Prospectus points out this week, the Nationals as a team are currently 5th in all of MLB in Hitters VORP, with a total of 75.8, trailing only the Dodgers, Mets, Phillies and Rays. This means, loosely, that the Nationals players have accounted for 75.8 more runs than a team full of replacement hitters would have contributed. The Nationals VORP leaders are:

• Ryan Zimmerman (24.8)--10th in all MLB, second for 3B, trailing only Evan Longoria, first in NL 3B.
• Adam Dunn (16.6)
• Nick Johnson (13.5)
• Christian Guzman (10.9)
• Jesus Flores (8.3)

The Nationals offense has made great strides this year, and by EVERY measurable statistic is not to blame for the 13-30 record.  The fact that the Nats 1-4 hitters are their top 4 VORP leaders is a strong sign, and even their 5-8 hitters, when healthy, are very productive with Flores (#6 hitter, #5 in VORP) and Dukes (#5 hitter, #6 in VORP) delivering when in the game. The Nationals hitters have grown since last year, when hitters like Dukes and Flores were mostly replacement level players, and have played to a level above replacement and have given the Nationals tangible value in runs scored, runs driven in, and run chances created. 

Pitching VORP

Where to begin? Teams with bad pitching VORPs tend NOT to be at the top of any standings list, and the Nationals exemplify that in this year's stats/rankings/standings discussion.   The Nationals are the ONLY team with a negative pitching VORP, and they do so by a CLEAR margin.  The Nationals -18.7 VORP is staggering.  What that means in layman's terms is that a team filled with average, replacement level pitching would yield 18.7 fewer runs than this team at this point in the season. After 47 games, you are talking about a small amount, but it is significant.  Put it another way, the gap between the 30th place team in Pitching VORP (The Nats, -18.7) and the 29th place team (The Orioles, +13.6) is 32.6 runs.  The gap between the #1 team (Blue Jays, +88.7) and the 15th ranked team (The Pirates, 54.8) is 33.9 runs!!!!

I know what you are thinking, well it is that damn bullpen! And for the most part, that is where the most glaring consistent set of negative VORP totals come out, but what is staggering is Scott Olsen (-9.2 VORP) and Daniel Cabrera (-13.0).  We knew they were bad, but their performance has been downright abyssmal. The Pitching Top 5 in VORP are:

• John Lannan (7.3)
• Ron Villone (7.2)
• Shairon Martis (5.4)
• Ross Detwiler (3.2)
• Joe Beimel (1.6)

Seeing Detwiler (3.2), Stammen (0.2), Jordan Zimmermann (0.7) and Shairon Martis (5.4) on the positive side of the ledger is fantastic.  These guys are young developing rookies who are showing the Nats brass that it is wiser to let them pitch and learn than to lean on overpriced free agents showing their age and not delivering.  For example, here are 5 free agent pitchers who the Nats could have brought in for a run based on their needs and the player's:

• Oliver Perez (-10.4 VORP)
• Brad Penny (-2.1 VORP)
• Carl Pavano (.9 VORP)
• Shawn Hill (.3 VORP)
• Sidney Ponson (-3.4 VORP)

So, in terms of value and replacement, the Nationals starting staff (without D-Cab and Olsen) are pitching to the level of replacement level talent, the difference being that these are players with high ceilings, who are only slated to improve.  That is the real value they bring to the table for the Nationals right now.

In terms of the bullpen.  It is a nightmare.  No value, worse than replacement level, and that is unfortunately where we are this season; bringing in one replacement level reliever after another.  Unfortunately it might take one of our best VORP guys (Johnson, 13.5) to get a decent VORP reliever in return.

      

The Nationals' last two contests have been distinguished by something not seen since May 2: consecutive games with no Nats fielding errors. (The previous streak only lasted two games, and only one errorless skein -- April 10-12 -- has stretched to three games, so don't get your hopes up.)

Much debate has bounced around the Natmosphere as to whether it's the defense or the pitching that are to be blamed for the current ghastly 12-29 record. Of course, both are culpable, and smart fans have had reason to be skeptical about whether wholesale bullpen turnover alone would cure the Nats' woes.

Why, then, can't we blame it on just the defense? It's also possible to take that argument to an extreme, as in the following example.

Ross Detwiler pitched five innings in his major-league debut Monday night. During those five frames, Det and his mates recorded 15 outs and three errors. Had the errors instead been putouts, Detwiler would arguably have lasted six innings, the Nats wouldn't have had to use so many relievers, and the opposing Pirates might not have laid waste to another great Nats offensive effort by logging nine runs off the bullpen.

It's hard not to think that way when you've just watched a 5-3 lead go up in flames. But the MLB-leading 43 errors that the Nats have committed this season don't quite tell the whole defensive story.

We need to look at another number, this one called Defensive Efficiency or DefEff. That might sound like nothing more than another shiny invention of the seamheads, but it's really quite simple:

• The rules of baseball being what they are, most batters for any team will put the ball into play. (A modest number will strike out, which is bad; others will draw a base on balls, which is good, or hit a home run, which is great.)
• Balls that are put into play result in the batter reaching base safely about 30% of the time over the long haul. We can think of that as a .300 Batting Average on Balls In Play (or BABIP). That number can vary for an individual offense, which is largely a matter of chance -- or for an individual defense, which is largely a matter of skill.
• When the ball is put into play and the batter doesn't reach base safely, the defense was successful.  That happens about 70% of the time, which we can think of as .700 Defensive Efficiency.
• Thus, the inverse of batting average on balls in play is DefEff. It's that simple. Subtract BABIP from 1 and you have DefEff.

BABIP averages around .300 over time, so DefEff should average .700 over time. In fact, this morning in the National League, those numbers are right on the dot.

Guess who's at the bottom of the National League in DefEff? That would be your Washington Nationals, at .673. The leader is the scalding-hot Los Angeles Dodgers, at .730.

The reason DefEff likely won't catch on any time soon, if it ever does, is that it involves a bit of computation.  We fans in the stands like our numbers simple, the kind we can tally one at a time, which is why Errors may well always rule over DefEff.

Still, we miss something when we ignore DefEff.  At times that something can be subtle and a little tedious to explain in detail, so we'll try instead to illustrate it with an example from 2008. (Go here for the hard numbers, but, as we say, we're going to try to keep this example soft.)

Say your second baseman was Chase Utley. He fielded a fair number of smashes, especially out of his zone. He thus created putouts on many balls that other second basemen -- say, Orlando Hudson -- might have let get by.

Who was the better fielder? Their fielding averages are virtually identical, and Utley committed more errors than Hudson did. This is because Utley played more innings in the field than Hudson and took more chances.

To cut to the chase, over a 162-game season, nine players who can field like Chase Utley will put out more opponents than nine players who field like Orlando Hudson. They will thus allow fewer runs and, given similar pitching and offense, they will win more games.

Not wanting to tax the endurance of our readers more than we feel we absolutely must, let's conclude with a look at last night's opponents.

The Nats, as noted just now, are the most defensively inefficient team in MLB -- and, perforce, the most defensively inefficient in the National League.

Who is the most defensively inefficient team in the American League? Until a few nights ago, the answer would have been Baltimore, but the Orioles' ineptitude as measured by DefEff has since been eclipsed by that of the White Sox, who seem to be trying mightily to outdo the Nats at inefficient glove work.

In raw numbers, our local teams would seem to be worlds apart.  As judged (however subjectively) by official scorers, Washington has committed a stunning 43 errors; Baltimore, a near-AL-average 27.

But in Defensive Efficiency, the teams are pretty close: Washington's is .673 and Baltimore's is .679. (Summing up and oversimplifying, Nats fielders are getting hit in the chest by balls that Orioles fielders would watch go by.)

Baltimore's record at this writing is four and a half games better than Washington's. But a six-point difference in DefEff should account for a one-game difference in the standings at most. Trust us on this one -- or if you don't, pick up a copy of Baseball Prospectus' Baseball Between the Numbers and dig into the article "Can a Team Have Too Much Pitching?" by Steven Goldman.

Oh, by the way, we need to examine that pitching question. We'll do so in the next installment of this series.