The Most Important Player in the Division

Baseball, by its nature, includes an interesting sort of duality. On one hand, it is the quintessential team game where players have to live together from March until November with no real breaks if they hope to succeed. Baseball history is peppered with stories of talented rosters submarined by flawed relationships and clubhouse cancers. Even if intangible or unmeasurable, team chemistry has a very real effect on in-game performance. On the other hand, players have a tremendous amount of personal responsibility within games. The closest interaction with other players on the field may be calling one another off for an infield pop-up or congratulating a teammate for a big hit. The game’s most essential event- the showdown between pitcher and batter- is an overwhelmingly individualistic practice, pitting one’s wits and skills against another’s.

In the vein of this second sentiment, there will never be a baseball version of Steve Nash. No individual player’s presence will suddenly alter everyone else’s performance on the roster- the game requires too much individual execution. Sure, Greg Maddux can pass down knowledge to younger pitchers, and Kevin Millar can loosen up a clubhouse with an Icy-Hot jock, but notice that those two have not drastically overhauled their new teams over the last two years.

Instead, individual contributions come from a player’s personal skills and perseverance. Last season, Francisco Liriano made the Twins much better because he played extremely well, not because his pitching made Nick Punto a better hitter. His individual contribution was enough that it pushed a solid team to win its division and enter the postseason sweepstakes. Losing that contribution near the end of the season was a key factor that contributed to the winless playoff series at the end of the chain. Altogether, few other players had such an overpowering impact on their teams’ playoff and championships than Liriano, which is precisely the reason the Twins could be in dire straits this season. Today, I will look around the majors for the players whose situation and variability put them in uniquely high-leverage positions, giving them the opportunity to make or break their team’s hopes within the division.

AL West: Howie Kendrick, 2B, LAA

The A’s did not replace their two most famous players from a year ago, the Rangers still have no pitching staff, and the Mariners have a steep hill to climb into contention. That leaves the Angels in a strong position to win the division without improving much on last season’s results. At the same time, the team has one easily foreseeable weakness: the ability to score enough runs to win ballgames. Most of the squad’s offensive stalwarts have a pretty narrow range of possible outcomes. Vlad Guerrero, Orlando Cabrera, Gary Matthews, and Garret Anderson have been around long enough that they are not terribly difficult to project, at least as long as they average around 140 games apiece. One place where the team can improve from 2006, however, is at the keystone, where the young Kendrick finally replaces the stalwart Adam Kennedy, giving the lineup some much needed upside. Kendrick, like Wade Boggs and Tony Gwynn, has the type of ability to hit any pitch that can translate into a batting average over .300 year after year. Many scouts agree that he has multiple batting titles in his future, and PECOTA thinks he will be the Angels’ second best offensive performer this year, well behind Vlad, but more than 10 runs ahead of either Matthews or Cabrera. A disappointing season could undermine the team’s postseason chances, as The Hardball Times sees the Angels’ as a one game favorite in the division, leaving little room for error.

AL Central: Joe Borowski, Closer, CLE

Between Grady Sizemore and Travis Hafner, the Indians should have no trouble putting crooked numbers on the scoreboard- PECOTA thinks they will score the fourth most runs in all of baseball. Preventing runs, on the other hand, could provide more of a challenge. A miserly bullpen over the last two years has not only put the team at a disadvantage in terms of run prevention, it has done so at the highest leverage parts of ballgames. As a result, the Indians have systematically underperformed their run differential and missed the playoffs with very talented rosters two years in a row. Like Guillermo Mota and Bob Wickman before him, Borowski was scraped off the pavement to try to staunch the bleeding. Since THT sees the Indians 6 games behind the Twins at year’s end and BP sees a one win deficit, it seems that the projection systems do not think he will cover the wound sufficiently. PECOTA predicts a 4.95 ERA for Borowski, but he has managed sub-4.00 ERAs in each of his last two major league seasons, so there may be hope for the Indians at the back end of the bullpen after all.

AL East: Chien-Ming Wang, SP, NYY

If we want to discuss high leverage in the AL East, it is safe to say that the D-Rays are not involved. Wang is one of the few highly volatile players who PECOTA refuses to take a strong stance on. A 4.31 ERA and a 23.0 VORP splits the difference between hitters figuring him out and his sinker continuing to blister the league. Personally, I do not believe that the results will fall so cleanly in the middle. The debate revolves around whether a pitcher who throws only one pitch and throws it extremely well can succeed by getting lots of ground balls, or whether those ground balls will eventually get eyes and find their way through the infield as they did for Jake Westbrook last year. Wang is no Westbrook; his velocity and command dwarf Westbrook’s, and he has already had a better season than Westbrook will ever have. But being the nominal ace on the biggest ticket team with the highest expectations in all of baseball place him in a more challenging spot. If Wang repeats 2006 or improves upon it, the Red Sox will be hard pressed to stick with the Bombers. If hitters somehow figure him out, or his sinker loses any little bit of effectiveness (the way Zito’s curveball never quite got back to Cy Young form after 2002), he could be in for a much rougher patch, and his team will feel the effects. Personally, I believe Wang’s 2007 will look more like 2006 than the huge drop off Zito experienced after his breakout, and he may even challenge Matsuzaka as the best Asian import in the division.

NL West: Randy Johnson, SP, ARI

With both projection systems placing Arizona at the top of the heap in the NL West with a very young lineup, there are lots of uncertainties on their roster. I could list Chris Young, the rookie centerfielder obtained from Chicago for Javy Vazquez, whose lofty projections under grid much of the team’s hopefulness. Miguel Montero, Stephen Drew, and Carlos Quentin could all receive that same billing. Nonetheless, the other end of the age spectrum interests me a bit more. After Brandon Webb, the Diamondbacks have an experienced (old?) rotation with some legitimate injury concerns. I do not question whether Johnson can be effective- his time in New York was marred from the beginning by his reclusive nature recoiling at the hyperactive Manhattan media. Moving from the AL East to the NL West will make him look significantly better even if he makes no improvements to his performance whatsoever. Combining those two factors, I believe the PECOTA projection of a 3.78 ERA is at the higher end of possibility. The bigger question is how many innings the Big Unit will complete. Since Juan Cruz and Enrique Gonzalez (4.41 and 4.74 ERAs respectively) are the most likely candidates to take his missing starts, it would behoove the D-Backs to find any way possible to get Johnson on the mound every fifth day. In a way, it is a shame that his last couple of dominant years in his previous AZ stint were wasted on a non-contender, and now that he is back on a team on the cusp of dominance, his body may not allow him to fully contribute.

NL Central: Rickie Weeks, 2B, MIL

The NL Central is a highly volatile division, coming off of a season where four teams finished bunched within 8.5 games of one another. BP and THT do not see eye-to-eye on much of the division, particularly the Brewers, who take the cake in BP’s version with 85 wins, but finish 7 games back of the Cards and in third place in THT’s standings. And while I could easily select any of the Cardinals’ pitchers after Chris Carpenter for the category of “highly volatile performance,” the team has collected enough realistic possibilities between Anthony Reyes, Adam Wainwright, Braden Looper, Kip Wells, Mark Mulder, and Ryan Franklin that I believe Dave Duncan and Tony LaRussa will be able to cobble together enough so-so innings each night to get into the bullpen. Weeks, on the other hand, could be a member of a young squad of Brewers who make the leap one year after many people expected them to do so. BP likes the Brewers in large part due to PECOTA’s projection for weeks of .275/.358/.457 and a 31.7 VORP at second base, numbers that would change the position from a mediocrity last year to a solid strength this season. With Bill Hall, Prince Fielder, and Corey Hart, Weeks could push the Brewers from an average offense to a strong one, and his stagnation could be enough to relegate them to the neighborhood of THT’s projection.

NL East: Wes Helms, 3B, PHI

Only Jose Valentin remains somewhat mysterious for the Mets, unless you count the wholly befuddling starting rotation, but many teams share that same sort of rotational uncertainty. Shane Victorino also faces an important task as the Phillies’ replacement for Bobby Abreu. I chose Wes Helms over these possibilities because he steps into a position that was one of the worst in the majors last year between Abraham Nunez and David Bell. Even performing slightly above replacement level could provide the Phillies enough of a lineup boost to keep their offense at the elite level despite losing Abreu’s on-base skills. BP likes his 2006 success in Florida enough to put him at a 22.9 VORP, splitting time between a majority of the third base duty and some spot duty at first and probably the outfield corners. THT does not like the Phillies chances as well, pegging them for only 81 wins and third in the division. If you see Helms’s success as a platoon-driven fluke- his career OPS is 100 points better against lefties- then I understand you skepticism. Last year, though Helms mashed lefties and righties in his limited duty. A full implement of starts should damped his near-1.000 OPS pretty noticeable, though I still like him as a league-average third baseman, which is something that will make a big difference for the Phillies, possibly enough to win the division.