Phil Watch: He Had Me At Range Factor

Phil bought a book!

Last week, Phil called the 2009 Bill James Handbook recommended reading.

I had to change my underwear as I had crapped my pants in disbelief.

And then he used a cursory glance at the book to say Chone Figgins may be the most overrated player in baseball because he doesn't hit home runs and was only a +7 baserunner in his accompanying article.

Just forget the fact that he fractured two fingers in the second game of the year and followed that up by pulling his hamstring and was out a month. Oh, and then he followed that up with bruising his right elbow in September. All that and he hit ahead of the #2 position in the order that hit a collective .258 behind him, 5th worst in baseball on a team that won the most games in 2008.

Check out what Bill James projects Figgins to do in 2009. Every team would take a player like that. Just look shit up! There. It's out of my system.

So there was no Phil Watch last week because it just would have been a bunch of curse words and name calling. I'm trying to be a better person.

This week's offering makes for a little more cerebral experience.

Let's get started.

White Sox's Jermaine Dye might be moving on

But whether they involve him being on the team is still a question

Anybody understand what the heck that means? Read that again and please tell me because I don't get it. Outside of possibly NORAD, proofreaders are probably most valuable in this world at newspapers, wouldn't you think?

Paging Jermaine Dye, paging Jermaine Dye … Mr. Dye, please cancel your spring-training reservations with the White Sox and hold for your impending reassignment.

Phil wrote the opening in that netherworld between sleep and awake, the only place where shit like that seems funny.

Oh, fuck it. Let's just get to the goods.

...If you were going to have Carlos Quentin on one outfield corner and Dye on the other, as the White Sox did in 2008, why even consider Viciedo in the outfield?

I will speak slow. Just because Alexei Ramirez happened to play right away doesn't mean Viciedo will. Alexei is 26. Viciedo is 19! And apparently out of shape. Just because Kenny may be open (Kenny quotes I omitted) to trying him in the outfield doesn't even touch the realm of meaning he is going to take over right field on Opening Day 2009. And therefore meaning Dye is going to be traded. See, there are more years after next year. It's called long-term for a reason.

Kenny didn't broach the subject. Somebody asked him about the possibility. Possibility, by definition, means it's possible. And not necessarily right now.

Common sense thinking. It works. I promise.

Years ago, when Williams was the Sox's farm director, he and his coaches turned Carlos Lee from a third baseman into a left fielder in little more than a week's time. The guess here is that's the long-term plan for Viciedo, assuming Josh Fields and Wilson Betemit can hold down third.

Paging Phil Rogers...paging Phil Rogers. Your column is about to get stupid. Paging Phil Rogers...

Quentin should be a fielding upgrade in right field over the 34-year-old Dye, whose 2008 range factor of 1.86 ranked 27th among 30 primary right fielders. So this is the right time to trade Dye.

Phil. Go to the glossary of your new book. It's in the back. Range factor is NOT a spectacular judge of an outfield's ability to field his position at or better than the rest of the league.

ZONE RATING IS! It's a stat that evaluates how a player fields his typical defensive zone compared to the rest of the league. It's all comparabley and stuff, therefore more importanter.

Range factor's formula is (put outs + assists/innings played). Now look that over. In short, if your team's pitching staff is loaded with a bunch of flyball pitchers or tends to pitch more away to right-handed batters or a flurry of other factors, your range factor will be skewed by the number of fly balls you caught. It's not adjusted for anything. It just asks if the player caught the balls hit to him.

And Phil has heard of zone rating. We know this here at Phil Watch. He used it to say Miguel Cabrera was a bad third basemen by third basemen-y standards. What the hoo-hoo?

And if he's in that section of the book and wants to use range factor, turn a couple of pages to the leftfielders! Quentin had a 1.83 range factor, .04 points below Dye. And while he's on the left field page, check out Carlos Lee's zone rating. It's .755, dead last in baseball. Lee's play in left field doesn't buttress anything here.

And an aside here. If range factor is important in Phil's world, where's the column discussing Ryan Theriot's dead-last rating for shortstops? Had to get that in. I'm small.

Dye's slow and not very rangey, but in 272 chances in 2008, he had one error. Quentin, by contrast, had seven errors in 240 chances. Both had five assists. Upgrade?

He has averaged 34 home runs and 95 RBIs in his four years with the Sox. That gives him value to many teams: the Dodgers (assuming they don't re-sign Manny Ramirez), Mets, Braves, Angels (if they lose Mark Teixeira), Rays and Reds, to name six teams that are not believed to be on his no-trade list.

Christo fading. Columnists = Analysts. Reporters = Reportage.

Team-by-team:

Dodgers: They'd have to move/would be asked for Kemp or Ethier, something they wouldn't do for a bevy of players with bigger upside than Dye. With Lowe and Penny gone, they're not letting go of any pitching. Oh, and they already have two players with wildly expensive and not very producey-type contracts in Pierre and Jones in the outfield. How does Dye fit?

Mets: Intriguing, part une. The rumors are out there. But the Sox wouldn't do it without getting a centerfielder in return and the Mets are backtracking on the possibility of trading Fernando Martinez. And Jenks would be involved in that one. See, other teams have needs, too.

Braves: Well, they just traded Vazquez to the Braves and got what they wanted from their farm system in return. I suppose it's possible. Not very probable. It would be the definition of a salary dump.

Angels: No. Dye can't play left and that's what they need.

Rays: Intriguing, part deux. Surplus of bullpen arms and the Sox need it.

Reds: Intriguing, part trois. The names are already out there. Bailey for Dye straight up? Maybe not with Bailey's regression last year.

See. Mets, Rays and Reds. I could have saved Phil some time by not typing in stupid.

Williams might not fill his biggest remaining need—a center fielder/leadoff hitter—with a Dye trade, but should get a lot of interesting offers the next two weeks. By moving Dye, who is due $11.5 million in 2009 with an option for '10, he would be gaining flexibility to sign a free agent or two who slips between the cracks, as he did with A.J. Pierzynski and Orlando Hernandez after trading Lee and letting Magglio Ordonez walk after 2004.

He already has that flexibility. His own paper has mentioned the updated payroll numbers after the Vazquez trade about a gazillion times.

This off-season Williams is doing to his lineup what he did to his rotation two years ago—sacrificing expensive, known quantities to collect multiple options with potential staying power. I didn't like it when he traded Freddy Garcia and Brandon McCarthy (and almost Jon Garland), but the development of Gavin Floyd and John Danks made that gamble work.

Phil owns up to his own dippiness. Kind of. Progress.

But that 'almost' on Garland is a bit of a misnomer. He didn't like it. For evidence, he compared the potential effect of losing Jon Garland to the Cubs letting Matt Clement go. Oh, and there was a 'Ghost of Garland' image in the nut graph. Fun.

The latest renovation of the roster is more appealing, even if many executives believe Williams is overrating Flowers, whom they regard as a serious liability behind the plate. Williams did well recouping the kind of talent he sent to Arizona to acquire Vazquez three years ago (center fielder Chris Young was the headliner).

Vazquez was traded for Chris Young, Luis Vizcaino and Orlando Hernandez.

Vizcaino had a perfectly fine, if unspectacular little run pitching in middle relief for three different teams in the three years since. He's now 34 and coming off a 5.28 ERA campaign for Colorado in 2008.

Hernandez is out of baseball and didn't pitch last year because he's 97 years old.

Young...well...since the trade, he had a great rookie year. Since that year, Arizona has decided he is a terrible lead0ff hitter because, you know, he doesn't get on base. .306 OBP in the majors will do that. And that little thing like striking out once in every 3.97 at bats will do it as well. If he was the leadoff hitter for the White Sox, White Sox fans would not want him as a leadoff hitter. He's worse than Soriano in the leadoff spot. By a lot, actually.

Zone rating = average. Range factor = below-average.

Young wasn't just the headliner...he was the only real player in the deal. And even with all that Vazquez was, the Sox got the better of that one, all things considered.

Now! onto Flowers. Many executives don't think Flowers is overrated. Many executives know that Flowers caught full-time for the first time last year. He was a shortstop in high school and switched between catcher and first base in college. They think he's a project defensively, not overrated.

The guy walked 98 freaking times in 413 at-bats last year for a .427 OBP. And he's not and all-or-nothing hitter. 32 doubles in 413 at-bats. Sure, Class A. But he should be on schedule to get to the White Sox right about the time Pierzynski and Konerko's contracts expire. It's a ridiculously good play and the right guy for the situation.

Flowers, Gilmore and Santos Rodriguez are all high-ceiling guys. Brent Lillibridge could be next year's Quentin: a talented player acquired when his value was low after a bad year. It makes you wonder how much Williams will be offered for Dye.

And there you go. Phil spends a bazillion columns lamenting the loss of Fautino de los Santos and barely even mentions that Santos Rodriguez, a guy comparable not only in name but in ceiling, was just acquired. And Rodriguez has the added advantage of not just having Tommy John surgery.

That's our Phil (cue wacky sitcom music)!