I also made this table on Excel.  Basically, if you use the positional adjustments and hold constant everything else, you can figure out what a league average defender needs to hit (in wOBA over 600 PA) at a position to be league average overall.  And once that's done, you can add defense back in and make this chart.  As is evident, 10 points of wOBA over 600 PA is worth half a win.  I think it's pretty cool, anyway.

• Arb News from MLB trade rumors - Nothing really big, but a good recap of what's goin' on.
• Gil gets his wins accounted - Nice to see this, since I can use it for...
• This! which I've already linked to, but hey that's cool right?  It's my win accounting google doc, plus a bunch of other stuff, most of which is worth checking in on if you haven't in a while.
• John Walsh looks at the extent to which pitchers actually have pinpoint control.  It's a pretty interesting idea and application of pitch f/x stuff.  I would also bet that the metric he uses there would line up pretty well with my balls called/strikes called command metric. 
  
• Cripple Fight! - Just wanted you guys to know that 2008 Michigan probably wasn't as bad as 2007 Notre Dame.  Charlie sets the bar, and we clear it baby.  
• Rob Neyer also links  to Seidman's win accounting and provides a little context. 
  

WMT's curators prefer not to apply strict scrutiny to the traditional definition of "a week".  As such, the third round of these is going up now.  This week, it can be iTunes Most Played Lists?  The previous computer contained a slightly embarrassing mix of Neutral Milk Hotel, American Football, Death Cab For Cutie and The Shins, a total significantly run up during an obviously lonely freshman year.  C'est la vie.  The new one, however, looks thus:

1)Animal Collective - Fireworks (18 plays)

2)Bon Iver - Skinny Love (15 plays)

3)Jesus and Mary Chain - Just Like Honey (11 plays)

4)Mazzy Star - Fade Into You (11 plays)

5)The Shins - The Past and Pending (11 plays)

6)Chris Knox - Not Given Lightly (9 plays)

7)The Kinks - Picture Book (9 plays)

8)Everybody's Down - No Age (9 plays)

9)Of Monteal - Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse (9 plays)

10)Of Montreal - Gronlandic Edit (9 plays)

11)Slowdive - Alison (9 plays)

12)Blondie - Hanging On The Telephone (8 plays)

13)Galaxie 500 - Blue Thunder (8 plays)

14)Magnetic Fields - Sweet Lovin' Man (8 plays)

15)Of Montreal - Cato As A Pun (8 plays)

16)Talking Heads - Psycho Killer (8 plays)

17)Black Rebel Motorcycle Gang - Fault Line (7 plays)

18)The Kinks - Do You Remember Walter (7 plays)

19)m83 - Kim and Jessie (7 plays)

20)Magnetic Fields - Nothing Matters When We're Dancing (7 plays)

21)Michael Jackson - Thriller (7 plays)

22)Michael Jackson - Beat It (7 plays)

23)Of Montreal - Suffer For Fashion (7 plays)

24)T. Rex - Jeepster (7 plays)

25)Yo La Tengo - Little Eyes (7 plays)

I'm not sure what this says about me, other than I'm in college and white.  I already knew that, I think...Anyone else care to offer themselves up for slaughter?  And of course, feel free to throw out stuff in general that's caught your ears lately, either in list form or even some files/links. And I know it's mostly an exercise in futility, but links to good music writing is always welcome.  Obviously, the usual bitching, moaning, of Kevin Barnes fun making and assorted assholery is encouraged.  Also: it turns out that Chris Getz doesn't really give that much thought to his entrance music.  I told him it was up to him to raise the standard, though.  So here's hoping.

WU demands content, but I really don't know what to tell you guys that won't be in the transcript.  It wasn't really a Q&A.  More like a conversation than anything.  Went for about an hour and I thought it went pretty well, but I've never done this before so who knows.  But unless I missed something, Chris wasn't at all guarded, so I really didn't have to work to find stuff out. He was really cool and down to earth, both thoughtful and respectful.  The transcript has yet to begin and I'm not sure what it's worth talking about here, but I really do think the old man is going to freak out if this isn't up when he sits down to his corn flakes and prune juice.

First, here's my work, so to speak.  It's not supposed to be self-evident as I plan on breaking down what I did.  Anyway, after all that math, I end up with a projection of .241/.311/.415 for Josh in '09.  So what did I do?

What I really wanted to look at was Fields' true talent from 2006-2008.  His 2007 was perhaps the only bright spot outside of Buehrle's no-no and, it seemed, bode well for a Crede-less 2008.  Those 23 HR and the accompanying ISO had me fairly well convinced that despite his lack of glove and love of strikeouts, he could be slightly below average at 3B in 2008 and that we'd forget all about Joe Crede as soon as Kenny could let him loose.  Then the offseason and the actual season happened and Fields was more or less forgotten and ended up battling injuries to the point that he didn't even break 300 AB in Charlotte.  According to my 3B FA post, it's pretty clear I don't think that much of Fields at this point, but I skipped around actually quantifying his value.

Since then, Chone Smith released his 2008 defensive projections.  Fields rates nearly a full win, -9 runs, below average.  Remember that the replacement level player plays average defense, so replacement level and average are functionally equal here.  So that's half of his 2009.  What about the bat?

That's what all the math was about.  I started with his raw stats from 2006-2008 and used the MLE calculator to get everything normalized to a neutral MLB setting.  That's the first set of data on the google doc.  The next thing was to get a coherent season out of 2007 between the Charlotte and Chicago parts.  I took an average weighted by ABs and got his 2007.  Next, I regressed each part of the slash line from each season to the AL 3 year mean.  To show specifically, I used Actual*[(ABs)/550] + Mean*[(550-ABs)/550]. "Actual" = whatever part of the slash line I was using.  So after all that, we have a regressed true talent slash line for 2006-2008.

The only thing left to do to make a Marcels' projection would be to weight each season (such that the more recent the season was, the more weight it receives) and then tack on an age component.  The only thing I don't have is the age component, which may or may not be critical.  2006-2008 corresponded to Fields' 23-25 age seasons, so he stands to improve, on average, up until age 27.  My projection, then, assumes that he's going to plateau at age 25 without even getting incrementally better through age 27.  The .241/.311/.415 line completely neglects upside.  You might think of it as the 50th percentile projection rather than the weighted mean, to use PECOTA terms.  Or even maybe the 40th, depending on how high on Fields (of grass) you are. 

Translate that to wOBA and it's around .320, which comes about to about 10 runs below average for 600 PA.  All told, that's .5 wins above replacement, or 2 wins below average.  What if we throw some upside back into it?  What if he manages a .260/.330/.490 line, as per the old community projection? About .350 wOBA, which gets him all the way to -.5 wins above average.

Lastly: this is me doing math.  We all know how well that turns out.  So, obviously, there may be some glaring errors that potentially invalidate the specifics of what I've done here.  But no matter!  What's intriguing to me about this is the method.  Front offices do the same thing every day in their evaluation of players from the Rule V draft to CC's future deal.  With the vast array of resources baseball-crazed webfolks have made available, and for free no less, we can do the same damn thing.  Pretty cool, I say.

So larry's unrelenting attempts to get me to live up to my title have borne fruit.  I emailed Chris Getz to see if he would be interested in doing an interview for the site.  He consented, so now I'm soliciting question suggestions for Mr. Getz.  What say you, masses of SSS?

• UPDATE: KGJr and The Piemaster have options declined.  Surprised Toby isn't back.  Cole Armstrong is probably not ready and is left-handed, so doesn't make much sense as an AJ backup.  Sox fans are lucky that Jim is around since he's made the backup catcher a pet project of his.  He'll have something more in-depth pretty shortly I'd bet.

  [Note by The Cheat, 10/30/08 2:57 PM CDT]: Declining the option on Hall doesn't neccessarily put an end to his time on the south side. Much like we saw last off-season when Uribe's option was declined, the Sox may still have some intent in keeping him around at a lower cost. Though, usually such events happen in rapid succession so as not to leave a player hanging in the wind.

• Getting A Competitive World Series - Tango looks at creating a different structure for the playoffs with an actually competitive World Series matchup in mind.  There's talk of abandoning the AL and NL as well as turning to a "Home Manager Picks DH/No DH" and all sorts of fun stuff.  Personally, I think the current structure of the league is pretty bizarre and if the Brewers can be in the NL then I can imagine a world where the AL and NL are dissolved. 
  
• BtB Decries Lack of Pujols - The combination of talent and relative obscurity in which Albert plies his trade is a testament to how badly the talking heads mangle the reality they purport to describe.  David Byrne should be ashamed by association.
• Jim Talks Alexei and Jose - Hopefully you've already read this as Sox Machine is obviously awesome.  Jim details how Alexei came to be a member of the squad thanks at least in part to Jose Contreras.  KW, it turns out, never intended to send Alexei to the minor leagues in order to ensure Alexei was able to adapt to living in the States.  Contreras was tasked with the mentor and advocate role.
• A Mechanical Model of Pitching - THT examines the impact of the hand and fingers in changing the shape of the ball's flight.  If you haven't pitched or were wondering exactly what's at work behind the transition from grip to movement and velocity, it's a great primer.  I wish there were more diagrams and that he talked about pronation and the sinker, but they are kind of implied by the basics anyway.
• Royals Acquire Mike Jacobs For Some Reason - Royals Review examines the acquisition made by The Traditional AL Central Doormat and wonders why.  Other observers have done the same.  The cost was a relief arm, so that's unlikely to be a major loss, but for a team that's got Billy Butler and Kila Kaaihue, there's opportunity cost if Jacobs is getting at bats over cheaper and higher potential players.  He's also a liability at first as Chone's projections have him at 8 runs below average.  Konerko is a -3, for comparison.  For the Royals' sake, I hope this was a depth acquisition more than anything in the veing of KW signing Grudz.
  

WU is crotchety, even for someone his age.

Toonder and I (and Keith was there) are beginning a hopefully weekly series of fanposts for the musicophiles up in these parts.  It does seem every time music comes up, a decent discussion follows, so we're hopefully taking that impetus and centralizing it every week in a fanpost. 

Unless I've got some particular things I think everyone should listen to or some other bit of writing on the matter, it's largely just going to be a free-for-fall in here.  And even if I have written something, I'd prefer it be like that.  This ain't a music blog, I don't write well about music and it is a fanpost, which means it's here for everyone to get down and e-dance.  And if you do happen to write well about music, keep it coming and be more visible.  It's too bad, but I can't think of anywhere outside of the AV Club that good music writing regularly congregates. Anyway:

Bought recently:

• Songs: Ohia - Magnolia Electric Co.
• Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping
• Tom Waits - Rain Dogs

Newly Downloaded AND Actually Listened To:

• Vivian Girls - S/T
• Dr. Dre - Nothin' But A G Thang

The S:O album I've long had but never bought and I think it's excellent.  Skeletal Lamping is too squirrel-on-crack for me to have figured anything out about it yet and I haven't really sat down and mulled Rain Dogs, though I did listen to it all the way through at 3 am with some friends last week.  There may not be a bigger "OMG I LOVE THAT GUY" out there that I haven't listened to than Tom Waits, so I'm trying to get that under control.  Vivian Girls have listened to a ton of twee and shoegaze and are pretty great if you liked that part of the 80's.  I love that sound, so VG are right up my alley.  Plus I was bitching the other day about the lack of prominent women in rock, particularly rock I care about, so that was momentarily quelled. To further digress: what the hell happened to Patti Smith, Pat Benatar and Debby Harry types? or the Deals?  or even Karen effing O for that matter.  I hope that asian chick that fronted the funk-rock band I saw playing a co-op Halloween party last week makes it big.  Anyone who covers "Are You That Somebody" can just marry me now.

Wiz and anyone else, feel free to put anything good you find in here.  Those of you without posting access just link to to it in the comments.

• Best LF of 2008 - Beyond the Boxscore continues its look at the best players by position.  Q! comes in at number 5 and gets the "overrated" tag.  His defensive reputation and assorted other metrics make it unlikely he's actually 15 runs below replacement level at playing left.  Fortunately, the dude who wrote this pops up every now and then and can sort out whether I understand his D scores properly.  In any case, Q! tied for the second best offensive output in MLB by their measure and I think that more accurately reflects his performance.
• FIP+ AL Central - More from BtB, this time a division by division look at FIP performances relative to average.  Javy obviously badly underperformed relative to his peripherals and has a history of doing so, so feel free to ignore that one.  On the other hand, FIP is highly predictive for basically everyone else.  I don't blame Kenny for not knowing he had one of the few pitchers in the league for whom FIP isn't descriptive.  Rearden and I checked out FIP.  Basically unless you consistently get unlucky with things like LOB%, your ERA will eventually gravitate toward FIP. What an enigma.
• Alan Nathan summarizes Pitch F/x progress - From Tango's Book blog, it's a powerpoint file, so be prepared to deal with that.
• MVP Candidates and Total Year Production - Chris Dial uses a similar diagnosis method as the BtB guys and gets out his google spreadsheet to look at the offensive and defensive contributions in terms of runs above average (it appears).
• THT Interviews Carlos Gomez - Larry's favorite internet talking head turned D-Backs scout gets interviewed by THT.  Not especially enlightening, though we get the kind of background details about him that would have been nice when he was a nobody penning stuff for THT.
  

So quoth WU, thus quoth Game Thread Title.