The outfield in Colorado is a little bit of a Crowded House, and at least one good player is probably wondering why the team is being “Mean to Me.” Brad Hawpe, despite his lack of any defensive skill whatsoever, is a rock in more than one sense of the word. He plays every day that he can, and should because he’s an important contributor on offense. The rest of the outfield? Not as easy to call.

In a way, it’s surprising that the team did not trade Ryan Spilborghs at the deadline because the 30-year-old is probably fifth on the outfield depth chart in Colorado. With a .351 career wOBA and passable defense even in center field (-2.1 UZR), he could fill a more important role on another team. He’s obviously the odd man out on a team that has needs elsewhere and is competing hard for the wild card.

There is some exciting play coming from the guys ahead of Spilborghs the depth chart. One thing seems obvious. Dexter Fowler has a lock on center field for the foreseeable future, and all of his flaws have simple corrections that seem to be in his reach. His defense has not been great as measured by UZR (-16.8 UZR/150), but most of that comes from a lack of range (-10.4 Range Runs), and a guy with a 7.5 speed score should seemingly post a better range soon. He also showed better range in the minors.

The other flaw is his strikeout rate, which is keeping him from entering elite status. Again, he had a strikeout rate closer to 20% in the minors than his 27.9% in the majors. Players often post higher strikeout rates in the majors, so perhaps this flaw will stay with Fowler his whole career. His strikeout rate has spiked in the minors before, though, and returned to normal so here’s a bet that it’s just Fowler learning the ropes and that he’ll be a .300-hitting average-fielding center fielder with power and speed before long.

But this was supposed to be a referendum on left field. Carlos Gonzalez, though boasting better defensive stats in center field (10.1 UZR/150) than Fowler, seems to be the team’s second option there. Instead, he’s battling it out with Seth Smith in left field, and they seemed to be mired in a bit of a strict platoon. With Smith’s career .764 OPS against lefties, he’s probably best served by sitting out against southpaws. Then again, Gonzalez is also a lefty, so this isn’t the perfect platoon.

Should Gonzalez be getting more playing time? He’s had 37 August at-bats to Smith’s 34, and he’s outperforming him in this small sample (1.093 OPS to Smith’s .697). Gonzalez has had a wildly oscillating strikeout rate in his minor league career (14.3% to 25.8%), but his major league strikeout rate has been stable at a high 26.6% level. The biggest change this year has been that CarGo has found his power again (.203 ISO) and also upped his walk rate to his minor league rate (8.9% this year, 7.5% in the minors). Added to a 4-component speed score (7.8) that would rank fourth in the league if he played more, and there’s an exciting picture being painted here.

With his recent play, CarGo’s physical tools seem to be winning out over Smiths’ slow and steady approach. Smith has a good idea of what he’s doing at the plate, with a high walk rate (12.5% career), low strikeout rate (18.7% career), nice power (.184 ISO career), and a good line drive rate (20.3%). He’s cut down on reaching for balls off the plate (18.6% this year, 21.9% career) and shown good advancement as a hitter. Other than a slow half-month, there’s not much to dislike about Smith. He’s even a plus defender in left field.

Because this is a team that’s still in it, it’s hard to handicap the playing time going forward this year. They’ll probably play the ‘hot hand,’ which means that CarGo has the short-term advantage. Long-term, though, all four (and possibly five) of these outfielders deserve major league jobs. A trade is the Rockies’ future, and probably should have been in their immediate past.

Alex Rios was claimed off of waivers today and will be a Chicago White Sock shortly. In our look at Scott Rolen and Nick Johnson in their new digs, we established somewhat of a precedent for trying to analyze the effect of a mid-season home park change: look at the park left behind, the new park, and the tendencies of the hitter as well as their history. So let’s take a look at Rios from an offensive standpoint, as the White Sox ponder their $60 million dollar addition.

The team has had historic problems in center field, so in some ways they can’t be blamed for coveting a player that has performed well in center field (12.8 UZR/150). But let this be about his offense, which has been inconsistent at best.

At first glance, his power shouldn’t be too effected by the move. Rogers Centre currently has a 1.152 park factor for home runs, and US Cellular a 1.164 number. However, Rogers had a sub-1.00 park factor for home runs last year, another park pointing at the instability of park factors. Over a three year period, Rogers came in at a 1.20 park factor while the Cell had a slightly more robust 1.293 park factor for home runs.

So far we’re looking at a maximum of a 5% overall power increase for Rios. Like with Rolen and Johnson before, 5% on a player averaging around 20 home runs a year is not a huge increase. Could Rios profile well for US Cellular and receive more of a power boost?

Though I still desire more detailed spray charts for hitters – and would appreciate being put in the right direction by anybody reading this piece – www.hittrackeronline.com can give us his spray charts for home runs.

Rios pulls almost all of his home runs. He’s hit 10 of his 14 this year to left field, as his home run chart shows. This continues a trend – last year he hit 14 of 15 out in left field, and the other was in left-center. 20 of his 24 in 2007 went out to left or left-center.

The Rogers Centre is 328 down the line and 375 in the left-center power alley. US Cellular is 330 down the line and 375 in left-center according to wikipedia. Perhaps it’s the wind that helps the Cell play tougher on pitchers, because the dimensions are practically the same.

The final question, it seems, is if Rios will ever bust out with some real power. A popular answer has been that he won’t because he hits too few fly balls. But his career fly ball rate (37.2%) is weighed down by his first two years in the league when he was a true worm-burner. He’s settled in around 40% now, and there are plenty of other sluggers that hit 40% of their balls in the air (Adrian Gonzalez and Lance Berkman just to name a couple).

What those other sluggers have that Rios doesn’t just happens to show up in their respective home runs per fly ball numbers. Rios (9.5% this year, 8.6% career) just doesn’t measure up to Gonzalez (17.3% career) and Berkman (19.6%). After 3071 plate appearances and a home run per fly ball rate just around the league average, I think it’s safe to say that Rios, in his average season, will display 20-home run power, no matter which of these two fields he calls home.

The Arizona Diamondbacks apparently know how to clean out their veterans in order to take a look at the future. Or maybe things just fell that way. In any case, whether by injury (Chris Snyder, Conor Jackson and Eric Byrnes), trade (Felipe Lopez), or release (Tony Clark), the Diamondbacks have opened up four positions for auditions.

We have already taken a look at Josh Whitesell and his chances of proving himself worthy of the first base job. But will these other young D-Backs have lasting power? Let’s take a look at a trio of possibly under-appreciated D-Backs.

Ryan Roberts – Roberts was a fringe option a while back, but now he’s shown a little bit of power (three home runs) and a little bit of speed (five stolen bases) without a glaringly bad batting average. Is it possible that Roberts will claim the job and keep it despite being a minor league journeyman that has suffered from a bad strikeout rate in the majors so far? In a word, yes. Mostly because of his defense (+18.5 UZR/150 at 2B) and the lack of a potential second baseman in the system (although Rusty Ryal is showing good power in AAA right now, he’s old at 26 and has an inconsistent career), Roberts looks like a strong bet to keep the job. With the fact that his strikeout rates have consistently declined in both the major leagues and minor leagues, Roberts could actually find himself starting for many NL-only leagues next year, but he won’t be the kind of player that wins or loses your league for you. There’s just not enough power or speed here.

Gerardo Parra – Parra is another player that didn’t elicit much excitement in the minor leagues, albeit without all the bouncing around that Roberts had to go through. It just was clear from his .311/.373/.436 minor league line that he didn’t have much power, and though he had 84 stolen bases in the minors, his 71% success rate and declining steals totals weren’t very exciting either. Add in the fact that it was clear from his usage in the minors that the team didn’t think he was a center fielder, and you have your typical fourth outfielder. So far his .281/.321/.427 major league line this year is borderline, and good enough for fantasy owners in deep leagues. But with Byrnes coming back with his big contract and better defense (0.2 UZR/150 for Parra, 6.2 for Byrnes), the guess here is that Parra will be a bench bat next year.

Miguel Montero – Montero is actually in a different category. He’s more of a post-hype sleeper, because he came up with nice numbers in the minors (.291/.360/.467) and the designation of Future Catcher for the DBacks. Then a funny thing happened on the way to his first 500+ plate appearances. He struck out more than he ever did in the minor leagues and just couldn’t put enough wood on the bat to keep his batting average north of .250 for very long. Guess what. He’s got his strikeout rate down to his minor league levels (around 15%), and suddenly he looks like he did in the minor leagues: a catcher that can discern pitches and whallop the right ones. Montero is a stud again, and should be owned in all keeper leagues regardless of size. Like Roberts, sometimes it just takes a little time to get back to the player you were in the minors.

Erik Manning did a fine job looking at the Scott Rolen-to-Cincinnati trade from a transactional standpoint, but fantasy managers might be interested in the prognosis for Rolen’s power in his new address. The same could be said of fantasy managers looking at Nick Johnson in Florida.

At first glance, Rolen should enjoy playing in Great American Ball Park. Though park factors aren’t always consistent from year to year, the Reds ballpark is consistently favorable to hitters. It has a 1.063 park factor for home runs this year, but last year that number was 1.23 and in 2007 it was the second-best park for power (with a whopping 1.351 park factor. In the three years before this year, the park consistently awarded over 20% more home runs than a neutral ballpark.

ZiPS RoS has Rolen down for a whopping four more home runs, though. 20% more than four is not very exciting. Is it possible that Rolen will see a more significant boost in power? His home runs per fly ball have been pretty stable for the past three years, hovering around 7%. His fly ball percentage has also been stable (around 40%), though lower than it was when he was more of a power hitter. In fact, his current 41.9% fly ball percentage and 6.3% home run per fly ball are his worst and second-worst marks in those respective categories.

The power is not coming back. Judging from the comments on R.J. Anderson’s recent article on Rolen it seems the power outage is part of a concerted effort to revamp his swing after his shoulder woes. At least his line drive gains seem for real (two straight years of improvement, and his current 25.2% would only be his second-best mark ever), and that park can help boost all his non-home run hits as well. He still gets a little boost with the move.

Nick Johnson’s move is in the wrong direction. He’s already currently sporting a slugging percentage below his on-base percentage, which is not an easy thing to do, and he’s moving from a neutral-to-offensive park to a known pitcher’s park in Florida.

At least, it used to be a pitcher’s park. “Land Shark” stadium is currently sporting a robust 1.182 park factor for home runs, ranking fourth in that category in the league, and 23 spots above Nationals Park and its .791 number. Is Johnson in line for a 30% power boost? Not so fast. The average park factor in Florida, from 2006-2008, was .91. Nationals park last year played to a .942 park factor for home runs over the full year.

Rolen is moving from an offense that ranks tenth in the league in runs to one that ranks 26th, so he’ll feel a hit in the runs and RBI categories that could undo any positive park effects. Johnson is moving from a team that ranks 20th in runs to one that ranks 17th and has negligible park effect differences. The unexciting conclusion is that these low-power bats will not gain much in their new homes.

There’s been a lot of work done on BABIP by the esteemed writers on this site as well as The Hardball Times, so it’s not suprising that Derek Carty’s July 10th release of a simple expected BABIP calculator flew under the radar a bit. It shouldn’t have. The calculator allows us fantasy types to say with a little more certainty what sort of BABIP a particular player should expect.

The ‘simple’ in the calculator meant that instead of using the more complicated and nuanced four-component speed score, users have to use the more brute method of inputting stolen bases. This may be a considerable flaw, allbeit an easily corrected one. Taking a look at this threesome will provide us some questions about BABIP in general. It certainly looks like sometimes rotten luck lasts a whole year.

Jose Lopez – Midway through June, Lopez was languishing was a sub-.250 batting average and little power. Most were questioning if his breakout 2008 was just a fluke. His BABIP, though, was unnaturally low, and the balls began to bounce his way. He ended June with a .329/.325/.592 slash line that seemed to be a harbinger of further success. Unfortunately, his July slash line (.269/.299/.441) has been a lot less inspiring. The simple xBABIP calculator pegs his expected BABIP at .301, which seems fine at first glance. He has an average line drive percentage (18.1%) and profiles mostly as he did last year during his great year. But then look at his yearly BABIP totals, and something looks fishy. Since 2005, those BABIPs have read: .276, .312, .269, .311, .266. It seems that he has good and bad years as much as he has good and bad months. Perhaps a good year is just one where the number of good months outweigh the bad months. And maybe 2009 is ‘just a bad year.’

Vernon Wells – Wells rode a .311/.329/.514 July back into respectability and is now on pace for a career high in stolen bases. Despite his low 14.9% line drive percentage, the xBABIP calculator likes him for a .302 BABIP. In the face of his .294 career BABIP and his career-best four-component speed score, this xBABIP seems more correct than his current .278 number. Maybe the title of the article gave you a heads up, but Wells is the proud poppa of his own pendulum-like BABIP. Here are his yearly totals, since his first full year in 2002: .288, .322, .286, .275, .313, .265, .299, .278. I’m not really suggesting that that Lopez and Wells are ‘due’ for bad years, but it does seem to follow that these are two players whose value is often tied up into BABIPs, and who often put together full years with sub-par BABIPs. Caution, at the very least, is in order when thinking of buying low in these cases.

Ichiro Suzuki – Suzuki is merely here because of tendency to ‘break’ BABIP predictors. His yearly BABIP totals oscillate a little, too, but there’s hardly a year that can be characterized as ‘poor:’ .371, .347, .333, .401, .319, .350, .390, .337, .387. When .319 is a poor BABIP for you, you don’t belong in this trio. The simple calculator can’t quite handle Ichiro’s legendary BABIP control (if such a thing exists), predicting a .328 number for Ichiro which would be the second-worst of his career. With his history, it doesn’t seem smart to predict a dive in his BABIP to get to that .328 number.

The lesson seems to be that there is still work to be done on xBABIP, and I doubt anyone would argue that they’ve figured it out completely. The work to date has been impressive, but there certainly seems to be more we can understand. Why is it that some players have BABIPs that normalize within a year, and other players seem to have BABIPs that only normalize over an entire career? It may only be a question of sample size, but there seems to be something more here. At first glance, I’d have to think that contact rate could be included in any expected BABIP model, but I’ve only just begun my journey into the numbers.

While Scott Boras is negotiating on behalf of his newest client, Stephen Strasburg, the name Luke Hochevar probably won’t come up to often. So far, with a career 5.09 ERA and 1.38 WHIP, Hochevar is far from a model former first draft pick. His struggles are instead a warning sign for the Nationals and other teams being bullied into a big bonus.

So far, the Royal has seemingly lacked an out pitch despite all of his quality offerings. He has five pitches that he throws with regularity, and four that he throws more than 10% of the time. A 92 MPH fastball, an 83 MPH slider, a 77 MPH curveball, an 84 MPH changeup, and a 91 MPH two-seam fastball. And unless pitch f/x is mislabeling some pitches, he’s even added a sixth pitch, an 88 MPH cutter. With this kitchen sink approach, he’s been able to elicit a good amount of ground balls (51.8% career), but has not found the combination to punch them out (5.30 career K/9).

That was, until two starts ago. In the last two starts, Hochevar has silenced two potent offenses. And he’s done so with the strikeout. In his last 13.1 innings, amassed against Texas on July 25th and Tampa Bay on July 19, Hochevar has put up 22 strikeouts against zero walks. Extend the window to include his July 9th start against Boston, and he has 27 strikeouts and 1 walk in 19.1 innings.

Yes, the sample size is small. But is it possible that Hochevar has made some changes that will finally allow him to harness his entire arsenal and add the strikeout to his ground-ball inducing approach? There are notable differences in his approach over his last three starts.

One thing that is immediately obvious is that he’s going to the curveball more this year, and more in his recent starts. Overall, his curveball percentage is up to 13.6% from 9.1% last year, but if you look at the last three games, the effect is more pronounced. Against Boston and Texas, Hochevar went to his big curve ball over 20% of the time, almost double his usage of the pitch from last year.

Seen as his perhaps best pitch going in to the draft, the curveball has been inconsistent for him. He’s lost almost a full three inches of horizontal movement on it this year, but the movement has come and gone from start to start. The linear weights show the curveball being a negative for him this year, and on the other hand you can’t argue with his recent results. Against Boston, the curveball showed its best horizontal movement of the year, pushing the seven- and eight-inch horizontal movement that he showed in his first two seasons. If the curveball was merely dormant at the beginning of the year, kudos to the pitcher for persevering and throwing the pitch enough to recover the movement and craft himself a plus pitch.

Overall, his only positive pitch has been his slider, worth about 3.1 runs so far this year, and 13 in his short career so far. In his remarkable 13-strikeout, zero-walk performance against Texas this weekend, Hochevar used the slider almost 32% of the time. This brought his yearly percentage to 24.9%, easily a career high for Hochevar.

Looking at his usage chart for his career, one thing is clear. Hochevar is using his off-speed offerings much more often this year. With a fastball that hovers around neutral, this looks like a natural and beneficial progression for the young pitcher. Perhaps this is meaningful change that will allow the Royals to once again regain a rosy disposition to their high draft pick. Fantasy owners, at the very least, should take notice.

Maybe I’ve been surfing the web a little too much. Maybe becoming Stewart Cink’s 559,250th follower on Twitter has addled my brain. But today I thought I would take a look at three players whose last names begin with W, and do so for the win, or not, as the case may be. Hey, at least this intro was a little better than my last one, eh?

Josh Willingham – The offense around him is not good. Eric Seidman pointed out at the beginning of June that all of his nine home runs were solo home runs – threatening the ‘record’ for solo home run percentage set by Curtis Granderson in 2007 (21 out of 23). Well, Willingham has finally hit a non-solo home run – but only one. So you probably don’t pick Willingham up for RBI, but it’s also starting to look like his mini power breakout is for real. He’s shown the on-base skills before (12.9% BB% this year, 11.2% career), and his .317 BABIP (.306 career) does not portend a quick and painful slump in the future. Could the new power be as simple as the fact that his new park is helping him out? Park factors are not always stable from year to year, so this year’s half season, in which Florida’s stadium is giving up more home runs than Washington’s, is less relevant when put against that same stadium’s consistent pitcher-friendly park factors. Take last year, for instance, and Washington’s stadium gave up 10% more home runs and doubles as Willingham’s old park. Of course, his .545 slugging percentage is over 10% better than his career slugging percentage in Florida (.432), but Willingham is 30 and could easily be peaking this year. Wonky math aside, Willingham will get his chance to prove that he is who he thinks he is – in Washington or elsewhere.

Josh Whitesell – The Diamondbacks finally got savvy to their lost season and began to look to the future at first base. With Conor Jackson still laid low by his mysterious illness, and with Tony Clark shown the door (and over to the Mets perhaps?), Whitesell gets his chance. His consistently high strikeout rates in the minors (ranging from 22% to 26% before this year) have led to inconsistent batting averages (ranging from .264 to .328). But this year he finally cut the rate down below 20% and had a good followup to last year’s career best .328/.425/.568 AAA debut. He’s only two years younger than incumbent Chad Tracy, but Tracy’s declining OPS and difficulty staying on the field are both reasons that Whitesell may have a window to take over the position if he starts out hot. His 23% strikeout rate in his 62 major-league at-bats this year bodes well, even if he hasn’t shown the power yet.

Cory Wade – Wade’s story is a sad story that we’ve all heard before: Young, promising reliever debuts on a veteran team led by Joe Torre, who goes on to ride that young arm to the postseason without a look at the usage stats and patterns or a care for the reliever’s future. Call Scott Proctor for details, but Wade is on the DL with a sore shoulder and it all sounds too familiar. With all the research about starters’ usage and their development, perhaps a little more attention could go to the blue-collar workers out in the pen. Torre is, once again, using his relievers more than any other manager in the league, and Ramon Troncoso and Ronald Belisario are the new Cory Wades. They, like Wade, are among league leaders in relief appearances. Like Wade (71.1 IP), Torre’s new toys are on pace to rack up big innings totals (Troncoso – 102 IP pace, Belisario – 86 IP pace). Like he did with Wade and Proctor before, will Torre break his newest toys?

Sometimes you just can’t find a quip at the ready. You’re watching the all-star festivities, thinking about all the wonders of baseball and perusing the newest about Pitch F/X, Hit F/X, and now even Game F/X, and you think something will come. But there you are, and all you have is….

Kendry Morales – Projection systems often have trouble with breakouts, so maybe it’s not surprising that ZiPS projects Morales to basically halve his home run production from here on out, finishing with 23 home runs instead of the 26 or 27 he might otherwise be on pace for.

One can’t really blame the system for being pessimistic, however. He had only 19 home runs in 402 at-bats in the major and minor leagues combined last year, and only nine home runs in 401 total minor league at bats the year before. Why would this player approach 30 home runs?

Perhaps the pessimism also stems from Morales’ consistently low line drive percentages. When a player seems to lack home run power, the pundits fall back on the idea that he is a ‘line drive hitter’ or can ‘drive it in the gaps.’ Instead, it seems that Morales is the type of hitter that avoids the strikeout (16.9% career) in favor of putting the ball in play, often on the ground (44.9% ground ball rate). It certainly isn’t his line drive percentage (15.3% career, 17.5% this year).

One thing should be said: with a fly-ball rate over 40%, he could up the power. Lance Berkman and Adrian Gonzalez also own similar fly ball rates and have a little power. Morales’ HR/FB rate has increased every year and he may some day hit 30 home runs if only because he’s listed at 26 years old and has more baseball to play. He has also repeated AAA three times while waiting for his chance – he probably couldn’t be better prepared for this, and his peak is probably still on the way.

The year-27 peak theory has been disproved for the most part. An oft-referenced study by Schulz et al, done in 1994 by surveying the statistics of over 388 players that were active in 1965, found that major league baseball players peak between 25 and 28 years old. The reason for the range is that their peak is usually determined by their age when they broke into the majors. It follows that you would peak later if you debuted later. But the law of the bell curve also applies, and the later you join the league, the earlier you leave the league for the most part.

If this Cuban first baseman is actually 26 years old, he’s joining the majors early enough to have better years in front of him. For those in keeper leagues, this first half at least shows that he belongs and will play long enough to probably have a better year in sometime soon in his career.

However, if he’s closer to 30 and the owner of a false birth certificate like many other Cuban players, this is most likely his peak and he probably won’t be a starter in the majors for very long. That much we do know about the bell curves of major league players as it relates to their ages and their performances.

Repeat after me: 15 innings is not a significant sample size. This much we know. But three starts and fifteen innings in, much of baseball is still looking at John Smoltz and trying to figure out what’s left in the tank. Let’s join in, shall we?

The ‘normal’ stats that measure rate will fail us, but they do tell a story. His pinpoint control is still there – his 1.80 walks per nine would only count as his fourth-best full season if he kept it up, and it is right in line with his 2.63 career rate. The strikeout rate is the problem: at six Ks per nine, he’s well off his 7.97 career rate. The 54% strand rate and the .382 BABIP are blips on the radar, but if he can’t get the K-rate back up, he’ll be in trouble.

He’s been to this rodeo before. He had elbow surgeries in 1994, 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2005. The one in 2000 was of the Tommy John variety. Not surprisingly, he’s seen strikeout dips of this magnitude in 1999 and 2005 after his other surgeries. And he’s seen many rebounds in his strikeout rate as well. Will he rebound this year? Let’s take a look at the pitch f/x data so far this year.

He’s lost some velocity, but going from 92.5 MPH on his fastball to 91.5 MPH shouldn’t rob him of all of his effectiveness. The slider going from 87 MPH in 2007 to 84.8 MPH is a little more worrisome, and that’s why his vaunted slider (worth over 20 runs in 2006 and 2007) is only worth 1.7 runs this year. But people are still swinging at 38% of his pitches outside the zone so the movement is possibly more important than the velocity.

Amazingly, the movement is mostly there. His fastball is moving exactly the same as it did in 2007, and he uses it about as much as he did before (over 40%), so at least 40% of his pitches are moving about the same. The changeup has retained its velocity and its horizontal movement, but has lost about an inch-plus of vertical drop since 2007. Maybe because it’s the secondary pitch that has retained its velocity and movement best, he’s begun using it a little more – all the way up to 19.8% this year (11.3% career).

But the slider. Ah, the slider. The slider has not only lost two-and-a-half miles per hour since 2007, but it’s also lost an inch-and-a-half of vertical drop. And there’s the rub. That’s fifteen innings of reduced movement and velocity in a Hall of Fame pitch. The Smoltz slider that has racked up over 200 wins, 150 saves, and a .789 postseason winning percentage – that slider is currently missing.

From reviewing his game charts from 2007, it looks like he’s had some temporary loss of movement in his slider before. Unfortunately, it looks like he lost much of that movement late in 2007, so it could have been when he was wearing down. If he’s missing that movement now, early in the season, it may bode poorly for him. For now though, repeat after me: 15 innings is not a significant sample size.

The dust has settled after a mini-fury of deals for the Pirates, and it looks like a couple young outfielders ended up gaining some playing time. The bad news is that, beyond wunderkind Andrew McCutchen, this outfield is deeply flawed. No matter, let’s see what benefit deep-league managers can mine from the group.

Delwyn Young – In terms of major league experience, the starting right fielder for the Buccs is not yet fully formed. His .280/.360/.404 line represents only 280 big league at-bats. It’s not yet time to close the book on his potential, especially in his 27th year on the planet. With a few notches up in each component of the slash-line, for example, and you’ve suddenly got an outfielder with some speed and some power and an .800 OPS. That’s value, and depending on how deep your league is, it’s time to pounce just on upside alone.

How much upside is left in this right fielder is worth taking a look at. His minor league slash line (.303/.363/.514 in over 3000 plate appearances) shows some slugging ability that he hasn’t really shown in the major leagues. Unfortunately, some of his more recent slugging performances (.571 in AAA in 2007, for example) have been in Las Vegas, which played about 10% in the hitter’s favor from 2006-2008. Shave 10% off that high water mark and you’re right in line with his career minor league production.

In general, Young cut his strikeouts and upped his walks as he advanced in the Dodgers’ minor league system, which can only be seen as a positive. On the flip side, however, he was old for every station, as he signed at 20 and hit AA at 23 years old. With 28 steals against 18 caught stealings, Young doesn’t show much stolen base capability despite some okay speed scores in the minors (5.1 and 5.5 in his last AAA appearances). So the oscillating slugging ability provides the big question for Young. The fact that he managed to accrue over 100 home runs in over 700 minor league games says there’s at least a chance Young can find his way to some more power in the major leagues.

But in terms of staying power in the major leagues, his bat probably won’t play at the corner outfield position for very long (at least at current slugging levels). He was a decent-fielding 2B in the minor leagues. If he starts fielding balls there again, his long term prospects improve.

Garrett Jones – Jones is another player with a well-established minor league line and very few chances in the majors. His 4185 plate appearances in the minors have resulted in an unsightly slash line (.258/.312/.450), and both the Braves and Twins organizations have given up on him despite both needing slugging in the outfield.

Three years ago, Jones was coming off 140 games in his second go at AAA, and he might have thought his career was in the balance because of his putrid showing (.238/.302/.430). But he bucked up and put up some numbers that caught the Pirates’ eyes. He’s had better than a .800 OPS for three straight years at AAA since, with a batting average over .280 and a slugging percentage close to .500. He also showed the best strikeout rates of his career to date, as he cut his near-20% rate down to around 15%.

If he can maintain his power with the new strikeout rate in the major leagues, he has a chance of strengthening his tenuous grip on a job. He’s battling Brandon Moss, whose .263/.313/.383 production this year is reminding people of his fourth-outfielder label coming up in the Boston system. Jones certainly has more power potential than the speedier Moss, and slugging two home runs in his first weekend as a Buc helped his chances of catching a regular job.

Few 27- and 28-year-old rookies even rise to the level of an average major-league regular. Give the Bucs some credit for fielding two somewhat-promising players in this category, but the odds say that they’ll be lucky to find one regular outfielder between the two. Because Young’s numbers were more consistent in the minor leagues, and he’s a year younger than Jones, he seems to be the better bet.