BaseballHappenings.com

You have have probably seen Marc Normandin‘s work at places like Beyond the Boxscore, Baseball Digest Daily, and Baseball Prospectus. Mr Normandin was nice enough to take some time out to answer a few questions

The Upton dilemma has been played out for years whether he can play SS in the Major Leagues. If you were making the decisions based on their personnel, what would you do with him?

Upton clearly is not a shortstop, at least not defensively. His bat plays best there, but he’ll need to move over to third base, as his bat isn’t that special in the outfield. Upton would be one of the players I would attempt to move in a deal for starting pitching help, as he has more value to other teams than he does for the Rays, a club deep in the outfield and now the infield.

Jim Rice : Is he going to end up in the Ray Lankford wing of the Hall of Fame or in Cooperstown? Does he meet the criteria of the Keltner List?

I think Rice should be a member of the Ray Lankford Wing myself, but it’s possible he may just sneak in before he falls off the ballot. Oftentimes, players receive a few more votes in their last seasons of eligibility, and that might be enough to push Rice over the 75% threshold. Even as a Red Sox fan, I don’t think he’s a legitimate candidate. If the BBWAA does happen to elect Rice, it will lower the standards for outfielders, which isn’t a good thing.

Out of Rice, Andre Dawson and Dale Murphy, I think the most compelling case lies with the former Brave. Of course, Tim Raines, who joins the ballot for the first time in 2008, is better than all three by a significant amount.

The Yankees seemed like they could not wait to move Randy Johnson and Gary Sheffield. Why do you think they were in such a rush to move these players and not getting much in return other than financial constraints?

Now that Brian Cashman is running the Yankees without interference from owner George Steinbrenner, his plan to add young talent and field a cheaper team has come together somewhat, at least as a start. I haven’t seen much of anything that suggests the minor leaguers the Yankees picked up were of any significant consequence, but it gives the Yanks a few more viable pieces in their system to play with. The Sheffield deal at least gave them an arm they very well may use in 2007 in Humberto Sanchez — if he can hold up over a full season, anyways.

There isn’t much distance between the Red Sox and Yankee payroll any longer, and I have a feeling that there will be less disparity as time goes on.

Brandon Webb, Jason Schmidt, and Jake Peavy. Some of the best arms in the National League. If you were starting a team and could choose any two of these pitchers, who would you choose and why?

Jake Peavy and Brandon Webb, easily. Schmidt is on the wrong side of 30, and isn’t the same kind of dominating force he was in his earlier days with the Giants. Peavy and Webb are two of the best pitchers in all of baseball, nit just in the NL.

I worry about Schmidt in Dodger Stadium. Not a lot, but I don’t have the same confidence I would if he was still in San Francisco. Dodger Stadium is fairly neutral nowadays instead of the pitcher’s park it used to be, with homeruns allowed being the significant problem. Schmidt is an extreme flyball pitcher with homerun tendencies, and pitching half his games in San Francisco helped to mask that somewhat.

Peavy and Webb are two of my favorite pitches to watch, along with Ben Sheets. If you could guarantee me that Ben Sheets would be healthy for a full slate of starts, I’d take him over anyone else in the National League, I think.

The PrOPS numbers from 2006 say David Wright and Hanley Ramirez are highly overrated. Thoughts on this metric? Do you think they will match their 2006 performance in the upcoming year?

Wright was .035 points above his expected batting average on balls in play (line drive percentage + .12) in 2006; unless he hits a few more line drives than he did in 2005, he might take a step backward in his rate statistics, but he’s also only 24 years old and may develop more as a player in 2007 anyways.

Hanley was only .015 above his expected BABIP, and his line drive percentage was around the league average, so I don’t expect a dramatic drop-off from him. By the way, I love J.C. Bradbury’s work, but I don’t know enough about PrOPS to criticize or praise its claims.