Archive for First Base

Not all of us are looking to sell high and buy low right now. Some of us are just looking for help – any help at all – off the wire. And if you’re in an NL-only, AL-only, or even a 20-team, MI/CI, 5 OF and 2 UTIL league (yeah, that one is fun), you’re looking for any guy that might take the job and start for a while.

Let’s take a look at some of these fringe options. Every once in a while, the ‘first guy off the bench’ can really do some damage in these deeper leagues.

Edwin Maysonet – His speed is the only skill he has that registers as decent on the scouting scale, and his contact and patience are both below average. About what you’d expect from a middle infielder with a minor league career .259/.338/.384 slash line. But you know what? He’s hot. After hitting .271/.343/.379 in his second year at AAA last year, he earned seven at-bats in the majors and got one hit. Repeating seems to work for him, as he’s currently hot in his second try at the major leagues after putting up a batting-average heavy .309/.417/.395 at AAA in his third try at the level. Of course, his current BABIP (over .400) has a lot to do with it. Why not get some stats out of the young guy, though – it’s not like 33-year-olds with injury-riddled histories come back quickly from bad hammies. (Yes Kaz Matsui, I’m looking in your direction. How’s the couch feeling?)

Jonny Gomes – The good news about Gomes is that he’s actually bettered his strikeout percentage over the last three years. Of course, he started at a Russell-Branyan
-esque 36%, and he may have made some of his gains by being reduced to a part-time role (his .219/.309/.425 slash line versus righties is just ugly, and he had twice as many at-bats against lefties as righties last year). On the other hand, Ramon Hernandez
is brittle enough – why push him with more at-bats at first base? While starter Joey Votto is out with his mysterious stress-related illness, someone has to play first. When that someone is Gomes, versus a lefty, take advantage of that .271/.371/.512 slash line against southpaws.

Sean Rodriguez – Howie Kendrick is struggling. Despite being a .294 hitter in a career 300 games, the fact that he has never even put together 400 plate appearances in a single season makes everyone wary. Are his current struggles injury related? Or, as the low .262 BABIP (career .346) suggests, just luck related? He really needs to start hitting better than 12% line drives, and his upside seemingly belongs along side the other high-contact-rate low-pop second basemen like Robinson Cano and Placido Polanco. Rodriguez, on the other hand, is showing mighty power for a second baseman. His .279/.364/.637 slash line shows isolated power that is well above his career .494 slugging percentage in the minors, but right in line with his .645 slugging percentage from last year. Guess he likes Salt Lake City and its 1.16 park factor for home runs in 2008. If the team gets tired of Kendrick, or – gasp – he gets hurt again, Rodriguez is worth a long look.

Ryan Roberts – With all the first basemen in Arizona hurt (what’s in that water?), Roberts has found his way into some at-bats over the past week-plus. This former shortstop’s defense is above-average, so he probably has a chance of sticking as the corner infielder, at least until even Tony Clark is back. Roberts has always been a power-and-patience guy and his major league strikeout percentage (29.8%) is not in line with his minor league one (19.8%). This year, he’s got that number down to 23.9%, which bodes well for his offense. Unfortunately, his BABIP is .471 and ZiPS pegs him for a reasonable .256/.328/.380 finish. There’s not much to like here, since the team has decided that Mark Reynolds is a fine solution at the hot corner despite his poor defense.

The Chicago Cubs finally found a way to make room for the hottest hitter in the minor leagues. Jake Fox has reportedly been recalled from triple-A Iowa, with infielder Aaron Miles landing on the disabled list.

Fox, a first baseman, was leading the triple-A Pacific Coast League in all three Triple-Crown categories: average (.423), home runs (17), and RBI (50) in 149 at-bats. Now, before you get too excited, there is some fine print that comes with Fox. 1) He’s not your typical prospect at the age of 26 (going on 27 in July). 2) The Pacific Coast League is an extremely good hitter’s league. 3) He cannot play defensive to save his life and is a below-average first baseman and has no hope of playing another position.

As we all know, Derrek Lee is the incumbent first baseman in Chicago and although he’s struggling (.248/.314/.416), he’s due $13 million annually through 2010. Sweet Lou is desperate for offense, but he’s not about to abandon one of his veteran regulars. As such, Fox’s playing opportunities should be limited to pinch-hitting duties and the occasional start at first base. His situation is actually fairly similar to that of Micah Hoffpauir, another over-aged rookie who posted solid offensive numbers in the minors. Hoffpauir, though, has more defensive flexibility.

Last season, while playing at double-A, Fox hit 25 homers in 388 at-bats and posted a triple-slash line of .307/.397/.580 with an ISO of .273. He actually appeared in seven games with Chicago in 2007 but hit just .143/.200/.286 (although both his hits were doubles). Fox was originally selected by the Cubs in the third round of the 2003 draft out of the University of Michigan. Drafted as a catcher, Fox played himself off the position by 2007. For interest’s sake, here is a sneak peek at his pre-draft scouting report from Baseball America:

Fox enjoyed a breakout season with the bat, hitting .365 and leading the Big 10 Conference in homers (14) and RBIs (63). He drives balls 450 feet in batting practice, and might have had more homers if he didn’t play his home games in cavernous Ray Fisher Stadium. He is exceptionally strong at 6 feet and 210 pounds, and has worked hard to improve his catching. He still has just average skills behind the plate, with below-average hands and arm strength.

The best scenario for Fox (barring an injury to Lee) would be for him to perform well in limited duty over the next one to two months until he can be packaged in a trade to an American League club for a veteran who can help the Cubbies in the race to a World Series title.

The Cleveland Indians organization finally made the move we all knew was coming the moment 1B/DH Travis Hafner hit the disabled list with another shoulder injury. The club promoted LF/1B/DH Matt LaPorta from Triple-A. LaPorta has crushed minor league pitching almost constantly since being the seventh overall selection in the 2007 draft. The right-handed batter was traded from Milwaukee to Cleveland in last year’s C.C. Sabathia deal.

He has massive power and could make an immediate impact in the Indians lineup, given appropriate playing time from manager Eric Wedge. LaPorta was hitting .333/.414/.640 with five homers in 75 at-bats for Triple-A Columbus. His walk rate has been constantly improving, which is encouraging, but you can expect him to strikeout 20-25 percent of the time.

LaPorta struggles against off-speed pitches so he’s going to see a lot of them early on in his MLB career. His career minor-league average is .292 but don’t expect him to hit for a high average right away. The power, though, should be there right from the get-go. He may get platooned early on, but he’s never really hit southpaws all that well with a career .237/.327/.452 line against them (compared to righties at .311/.407/.626).

The club also recalled infielder Luis Valbuena. He was picked up from the Seattle organization in the J.J. Putz trade this past off-season, which also saw outfielder Franklin Gutierrez head to Seattle. Valbuena has a little bit more pop in his bat than current Indians infielder Asdrubal Cabrera – who was also obtained from Seattle in an earlier trade back in 2006 – which can actually be a bad thing as he tries to muscle up from time-to-time. Valbuena has the chance to offer some stolen bases and a little pop, while also providing a respectable average. In other words, he’ll given a little bit of everything but he’s not going to be a star.

*For an extra bit of info… Here is an interview I did with Matt LaPorta shortly before the Brewers selected him with the seventh overall pick in 2007.

In 2008, Kevin Youkilis had a season completely out of line with what he did previously. Everyone focused on the home run power, as his 29 homers matched his combined total from 2007 and 2008. But Youkilis also enjoyed a career-best average last season, as he posted a .312 mark. His previous high was the .288 he posted in 2007.

Because of his big 2008, Youkilis was one of the more difficult players to project. The Bill James forecast was the most optimistic, and it had him with a .289 average and 23 home runs. The CHONE system had him with a .286 average and 18 home runs.

Of course, Youkilis is off to a great start here in 2009. One of the biggest grey areas in fantasy is determining when we can project that it is more than a hot start and more likely to be something to last the whole season.

I think we may have reached that point with Youkilis and his average.

I took all of the players in 2008 who qualified for the batting title and who batted plus or minus five points from the .286 average that CHONE predicted. I came up with a group of 26 players. Then I took all of the players from this group and counted how many hits they had through 75 at-bats last season.

Our 26 players ranged from 16 to 27 hits in their first 75 at-bats last season. It is not a perfect bell curve but the right side of it does display a standard downward-sloping tail as you can see by the crude chart below:

	x										
	x				x						
	x				x		x				
	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x			
x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x
16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27

I came up with an average of 20.7 hits and a standard deviation of 3.1 for this group. So, two standard deviations gives us a high and low of 15 and 27 hits. So, for this definition of a .286 hitter, 95 percent of the time he should have between 15 and 27 hits in 75 ABs.

Youkilis ended play last night with 74 at-bats and 30 hits, meaning he falls outside of our 95 percent range. Our most likely conclusion is that he is a better hitter than the CHONE projection prior to the start of the season.

This is just a first step and I have no projection on what Youkilis will end up hitting in 2009. ZiPS projected Youkilis to bat .288 this season. Dan Szymborski just came out with an update to ZiPS based on 2009 stats. He now projects Youkilis to bat .298 for the rest of the season and finish with a .313 average.

Carlos Pena followed up his monster 2007 season with a disappointing year. Last year’s highlights for Pena were hitting 31 HR and driving in 102, which led to a $10 season according to Last Player Picked. The mock draft crowd is expecting a bounce back season in 2009 for the Tampa Bay slugger, as they have given him an ADP of 65 according to the latest rankings at Mock Draft Central.

Pena has great power, but it was unlikely that he was going to match his 2007 HR output. That year, he had a 29.1 percent HR/FB ratio, the fourth-highest mark in the majors. His career mark in the category is 19.7 percent. As expected, Pena fell off in 2008, dropping to an 18.8 percent mark last year, although he got a boost by hitting a career-best 50.3 percent of his batted balls in the air.

Another area where Pena was likely to regress last year was in his AVG. In 2007, he posted a career-high with a .282 mark. A lifetime .251 hitter, Pena produced a .247 average last season. Looking forward, none of the five projection systems show Pena coming anywhere close to his 2007 AVG. Marcel, which uses a weighted-average of the past three seasons, has the highest mark at .261 while the rest have him in the .250s.

It is likely that Pena will be below average in both AVG and SB so he really has to make hay in the other three categories. But there is no reason to expect the 31-year old to come close to duplicating the power numbers from his career-year of 2007. Plus he has never scored a ton of runs, with a career high of 99.

Add it all together and we have an overvalued player. Last year Pena was the 17th-best player with 1B eligibility, according to the RotoTimes Player Rater. He has the 10th-best ADP for a first-base eligible player this year. The Bill James projection, usually the most optimistic, has Pena with a .254-31-90-77-2 line.

I would expect Chris Davis, Carlos Delgado and Joey Votto to all beat that line. Garrett Atkins, Aubrey Huff and Derrek Lee could post better numbers, and it would not surprise me. The bottom line is not to reach for Pena if you get shut out from the top first basemen.

From the moment the Los Angeles Dodgers plucked James Loney out of prep powerhouse Elkins High (Texas) back in 2002, scouts lauded his silky-smooth left-handed swing. A two-way phenom who could dial it up into the low-90’s on the mound, Loney was nonetheless preferred by the Dodgers for his feats in the batter’s box. While few doubted that Loney would spray line drives all over the field, his power ceiling was subject to considerably more debate.

It’s been seven years since Los Angeles made Loney the 19th overall pick, and guess what? We still don’t know how much thump the 25 year-old will show in the long term. His minor league career was often schizophrenic, as he posted a combined .296/.362/.430 line. That’s garden-variety production from a fellow playing the pre-eminent power position on the diamond, but Loney continued to rank prominently on most prospect lists on the faith that his doubles power would eventually lead to more frequent round-trippers…

2003, High-A Vero Beach (Age 19)
.276/.337/.400, .124 ISO, 9.2 BB%, 17 K%
Baseball America Prospect Ranking: #42 overall (4th in LA system)
Prospect Handbook comment: “A disciplined hitter with good pitch recognition and a classic lefthanded stroke that recalls Mark Grace, Loney sprays line drives to all fields and has power to the alleys. He’s still growing and projects to hit 30 homers annually.”

(note: Loney did break his wrist late in 2002; wrist injuries tend to sap a player’s bat control and power)

2004, AA Jacksonville (Age 20)
.238/.311/.327, .099 ISO, 10.6 BB%, 19 K%
BA Prospect Ranking: #62 overall (4th in LA system)
Prospect Handbook comment: “Loney did bat .314 in the Arizona Fall League and remains one of the game’s most promising first-base prospects…scouts have wondered when Loney’s power is going to come.”

(note: Loney fractured the tip of his middle finger during the season and later developed an infection)

2005, AA Jacksonville (Age 21)
.284/.357/.419, .135 ISO, 11.7 BB%, 17.3 K%
BA Prospect ranking: 11th in LA system
Prospect Handbook comment: “Following three seasons marred by wrist and finger injuries, Loney finally stayed healthy in 2005…but he hit just 11 homers, and scouts continue to wonder if he’ll have enough power to be a regular first baseman in the big leagues.”

You get the picture. Most everyone loved the swing and kept the faith that Loney would eventually hit the ball with force. But, as the prospect rankings slipped and the slugging exploits remained mild, some were beginning to fall off the band wagon.

Just when it looked like Loney’s prospect status might be headed down the drain, the lefty hit the jackpot with AAA Las Vegas in 2006. The Pacific Coast League (and Vegas in particular) is a great place to hit, and Loney’s line was fueled by a lofty batting average, but he turned in a .380/.426/.546 showing that evidently re-started the love affair with scouts. Loney also helped himself with a searing cup of coffee with the Dodgers, batting .284/.342/.559 in 111 PA. He jumped back up the charts, ranking as BA’s 44th best prospect. By this point, Loney was yet again compared to Mark Grace, another southpaw-swinging first-baseman with modest pop but good strike-zone control and contact ability.

Loney regressed back at Sin City in 2007, however, posting a very mild .279/.345/.382 line at Vegas. The youngster still received another opportunity to break into the big league lineup in June, as Nomar Garciaparra’s bat was no-mas (.307 wOBA in ’07). Loney seemingly made good on those power prognostications, posting a tantalizing .389 wOBA (.331/.381/.538), a .200-plus ISO (.206) and 15 bombs in 375 PA.

So that’s it, right? Loney was the greatest thing since Vin Scully and bopped happily ever after?

Not quite. Rather than maintaining that boost in the extra-base hit department, Loney turned in a rather Graceian .289/.338/.434 line in 2008, with 13 taters in 651 PA. His ISO (.145) was the fourth-lowest among first baseman qualifying for the batting title, ranking ahead of only underpowered peers such as Casey Kotchman, Ryan Garko and Daric Barton. While it’s probably best not to get worked up over a one-year platoon split, southpaws did silence Loney to the tune of .249/.303/.361.

Loney is a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a Dodger Dog. Any time one feels confident in mapping out his future, he unexpectedly takes a 180 degree turn. There’s a fine line between asset and liability at a spot like first base. With the positional standard being so high (the average MLB first baseman hit .271/.352/.463 in 2008), singles-and-doubles-hitting batsmen aren’t all that valuable; they’re just sort of there.

Loney is still just going to be 25 this year and holds a career .303/.353/.480 line in the majors, so he’s certainly not without talent. But it seems most will end up disappointed if he turns out to be the next Sean Casey. Holding the title of “Mayor” could be sort of a letdown if you were expected to become president of a young and immensely talented ballclub.

In 2007, Prince Fielder hit 50 HR and was considered one of the top sluggers in the game. Heading into the 2008 season, Fielder had an ADP of 11. However, those who took Fielder that high suffered through a rough beginning of the season. Through May 29th, he had just six home runs and 25 RBIs in 194 at-bats. For the rest of the season he had 28 HR and 77 RBIs in 394 at-bats.

For the season, Fielder had a $17.23 dollar value according to the RotoTimes Player Rater and finished outside of the top-40 fantasy hitters. This year, fantasy owners are splitting the difference between 2007 and 2008, giving Fielder an ADP of 26 according to the latest update over at Mock Draft Central.

Much was made last year about Fielder becoming a vegetarian. Many people blamed the slow start on his dietary decision. But slumps happen. Fielder’s poor stretch simply happened at the beginning of the season and was more noticeable.

But much like Carlos Delgado, Fielder had two poor months and four good months last year. And the four good months were the final four of the season. Now, we don’t get to pick the months that we want to count from a player’s stat line. The season is six months long and each month counts the same.

However, when projecting players into the future, one should take into account as much information as possible. We know that Fielder hit 50 HR in 2007. We know that his final four months of the season he was on a pace for 42 HR. In the past two years, there is much more evidence that Fielder is a 40+ HR player than there is that he is a <35 HR player.

One could easily counter that if we are going to look at all of the information, we should include 2006, when Fielder hit 28 HR in 569 at-bats as a 22-year old. And I won’t quibble with that one bit. It is my belief that we should put more weight on the more-recent performance, especially given his age.

If you are comfortable projecting Fielder as a 40-HR guy, that makes him a top-20 hitter, assuming he can keep his average in the .275-.280 range. Three of the four projection systems show Fielder clearing the .280 mark this season.

Fielder may be slightly undervalued by the mock drafting crowd. The mockers prefer Justin Morneau, who on average is going six slots ahead of Fielder. Morneau provided much more value in 2008, but I would prefer Fielder’s power over Morneau’s RBI bat this season.

Over the last four seasons, Mark Teixeira has averaged a .298-35-120-100 fantasy line. Last year he nearly perfectly matched those numbers. Teixeira is one of a dozen or so players to consider for a late-first, early-second round pick and is the textbook definition of consistency that one should look for from an early pick.

When making a choice from many evenly-matched players, a fantasy owner should consider numerous factors, among them how he wants to build his team. Obviously, if you pick Teixeira you are putting yourself in a hole for SB. In his six-year career, he has just 13 steals or five less than fellow first baseman and late-first/early-second pick Lance Berkman had last year alone.

Another thing to consider is what significant changes are in store for the player. And for Teixeira the big news is his move to the Yankees, where he will be under the microscope like never before. However, Teixeira has handled big expectations in the past, as he was dealt twice in the past two years to teams that had great hopes he would be the final piece.

While it remains to be seen how Texieira will hit in the new Yankee Stadium, he has done well as a visitor in New York. He had a .305/.354/.524 line in 113 PA in Yankee Stadium and a .405/.425/.676 one in 40 PA at Shea.

All four of the projection systems see Teixeira likely to repeat his numbers from the past four seasons. Marcel has him coming up short in the counting categories, but that is mainly because it projects him with just 513 at-bats due to his injury-shortened 2007 season, when he missed 27 games with a strained quadriceps injury. Teixeira played 157 games last year.

Currently, Teixeira has an ADP of 13. He has gone as high as the fifth overall pick and as low as 20th in the last 708 qualifying drafts over at Mock Draft Central. While his lack of steals is a concern, the excellent production in the other four categories makes Teixeira a fine pick anytime after the ninth slot.

In six of the last eight seasons, Lance Berkman has drawn support in the MVP balloting. Last year he ranked fifth in the National League, following a season in which he batted .312-29-106-114-18. According to Last Player Picked, that was the ninth-best season by a hitter in 2008. Berkman was the second-best first baseman behind only Albert Pujols in fantasy last year, but this year he has an ADP of 15 and on average is the fifth player picked from his position.

Part of the reason for Berkman’s relatively low rank this year is his second-half fade in 2008. After going .327/.444/.613 before the break, Berkman posted a .276/.354/.449 slash line in the second half. Streakiness is nothing new to Berkman, who followed up an .839 OPS in the first half of 2007 with a .970 OPS after the break.

Berkman displayed a full season of excellence in 2006, when he posted a .315-45-136-95-3 line. That year he set career-highs in both FB% (41.8) and HR/FB (24.6). Last year his HR/FB rate was down to 16.6 percent, his lowest mark since the 2003 season.

What you expect his HR output to be will have a big influence on when you decide to draft Berkman. Is he the guy who hit 40+ HRs in 2002 and 2006 or do you think he’s the guy who failed to crack 30 HRs in 2003, 2005 and 2008?

None of the four projection systems see Berkman as a 40-HR hitter this year. Bill James is the most optimistic, showing him with 33 HRs while both Marcel and Oliver show him with 28.

It is understandable why fantasy players are opting for the easier-to-project first basemen like Ryan Howard and Mark Teixeira over Berkman in early mocks. Berkman simply has not displayed the consistency from year-to-year that fantasy players desire from their early picks.

Additionally, none of our four projection systems see Berkman repeating his career-best season of 2008 in either runs or SB, which helped him to his big fantasy success last year. Without a return to form in HR, Berkman could fall to the eighth-best first baseman in fantasy, which would hardly be worth a high second-round pick.

The Washington Nationals’ roster is, to say the least, jumbled at the moment. Between first base and the outfield, the Nats have a consortium of promising youngsters, former and failed top prospects, injury risks and overlapping parts. Short of petitioning the league for an extra outfield spot or two, Washington is going to need to sort out how to deploy newly-signed Adam Dunn (1B? OF?), Elijah Dukes, Lastings Milledge, Josh Willingham, Austin Kearns, Wily Mo Pena and Willie Harris, and will also need to figure out if the brittle $10.5M combo of Nick Johnson and Dmitri Young can provide any value. Dave Cameron summed up GM Jim Bowden’s circus-like roster construction best:

“If Bowden was a general contractor, he’d build houses with nine bedrooms, six garages, no bathrooms, and half a roof.”

According to Washington’s official depth chart as well as this MLB.com story, Dunn will be taking over duties at first base for the Nats. While the 29 year-old is allergic to all things leather (-12.6 career UZR/150 in the OF, -11.3 at 1B), shifting him to a corner infield spot is the lesser of two evils in the non-DH league.

There’s not much to say about Dunn’s offensive profile: while not aesthetically pleasing to those who fancy batting average, the former Red and D-Back has tremendous plate discipline and a ton of raw power. He has posted wOBA’s of .365, .399 and .383 over the past three seasons. Granted, those wOBA figures aren’t park-adjusted, but Dunn’s offensive production is still very impressive once you strip away the benefit derived from Great American Ballpark and his short time at Chase Field. Dunn’s park-adjusted batting runs above average over the 2006-2008 period: 17.9, 34.5 and 27.4.

The slugger who has eerily posted exactly 40 home runs each of the past four seasons will now reside in Nationals Park. We have only one year of data for the new stadium, so making any sweeping conclusions about the offensive environment of the park would be fruitless. It played as a slight hitter’s venue overall in 2008, though it slightly suppressed homers. Odds are, Dunn’s production will slip to some extent without GABP (128 HR park factor from ’06-08), but the park adjusted runs show that he’s still a very productive batsman.

If Dunn will be settling in as the everyday first baseman, then that leaves Nick Johnson and his partner is medical commiseration, Dmitri Young, without a place to play.

In case you have forgotten (perfectly understandable, considering he missed all of ’07 and accumulated just 147 PA last year), Johnson is a wonderful offensive player when he’s healthy. With a career .370 wOBA and a near-.400 OBP, “Nick the Stick” could be a fantasy beast in a utopian society where world hunger, global warming and war have all come to an end. Unfortunately, Johnson remaining upright for a full season might be the least probable of those four scenarios: Nick’s 2007 season was wrecked by a broken leg, and his ’08 campaign was derailed by a tendon injury in his right wrist. He has taken 600 PA in one season exactly once in his career (2006). Owed $5.5M in ’09, Johnson could find himself on another roster come April. The Indians, Angels and Giants seem like possible fits.

If the gifted-but-breakable Johnson seems superfluous in Washington, then it’s doubly so for Dmitri Young. Young came to the Nats at perhaps the lowest point of his professional career, having played poorly for the Tigers while dealing with personal issues in 2006. The minor league free agent resuscitated his career in ’07, posting a .374 wOBA in 508 PA. However, GM Bowden got the warm fuzzies for Young and his other minor league scrap heap find, Ronnie Belliard, and signed them both to misguided, multi-year extensions. Young took just 180 trips to the plate in 2008, as complications from diabetes led to weight problems. Outrighted off the 40-man roster during the fall, Young is currently listed as a non-roster invitee. $5M commitment or not, his chances of making the club appear between slim and none.

Now that we’ve assessed the first base situation, it’s time to focus on the truly messy conundrum: the outfield. First, let’s get this out of the way: the two guys that positively, absolutely need to be playing on an everyday basis are Elijah Dukes and Lastings Milledge. While Washington has a lot of bodies for those three outfield spots, Dukes (24) and Milledge (24 in April) are two gifted youngsters who will be part of the next relevant Nationals team.

Dukes’ highly promising 2008 season has been chronicled here before: he posted a robust .382 wOBA and was worth nearly 3 wins to the Nats, despite taking just 334 PA. Dukes’ plate discipline, pop and athleticism figure to make him a well-rounded contributor. To do anything but give the 6-1, 240 pounder a full season’s worth of at-bats would be a masochistic act by the Nationals.

Milledge remains a fairly raw player, having drawn a walk just 6.8% of the time in 2008 while swinging at about 32% of pitches thrown outside of the strike zone. However, he managed to post a decent .268/.330/.402 line, chipping in 24 steals in 33 attempts. A highly-touted prospect with the Mets, Milledge posted a career .303/.376/.477 line in the minors and possesses the skill-set to turn into a big asset for Washington in time. As with Dukes, Milledge needs everyday playing time to smooth out the rough edges in his game. Platooning a guy like this would be detrimental to the club’s overall rebuilding effort.

If Milledge and Dukes occupy center and right field, respectively, then the left field gig will likely go to newly-imported Josh Willingham. “The Hammer”, picked up from Florida along with Scott Olsen earlier this offseason, has been remarkably consistent at the plate over the past three seasons. From 2006-2008, Willingham has posted wOBA’s of .364, .365 and .363. 30 years old tomorrow, Willingham has some deficiencies with the leather (-6 career UZR/150 in LF), but his patience and solid pop make him a worthwhile contributor.

So, Willingham, Milledge and Dukes are the likely starters. That still leaves a couple of former top prospects and a defensive whiz to fight for roster spots. Former Reds outfielders are sort of like erstwhile Cincy GM Jim Bowden’s “White Whale”: in addition to bringing in Dunn, Bowden had previously swung trades to acquire Austin Kearns and Wily Mo Pena.

Kearns has been a pretty valuable player at times in his career. A plus defender with good plate patience, Kearns racked up 4.1 Value Wins between the Reds and the Nats in 2006, and was worth 3.6 wins during an ’07 season where he supplemented mild offense with great D. However, the 28 year-old’s offensive production has essentially fallen off of a cliff over the past two years. Kearns was never a hulking slugger (career .175 ISO), but he posted a .145 ISO in ’07 and a paltry .099 ISO in 2008. He still worked the count well and was the victim of poor luck on balls in play in 2008 (.251 BABIP), but the lack of punch is disconcerting. Kearns was beat up last year, dealing with a stress fracture in his foot and an elbow injury. Perhaps I’m just stubborn, but I think that Kearns could be of some value if he ends up taking his $8M salary elsewhere. It wasn’t that long ago that he was a solid contributor.

It’s almost impossible to fathom, but Wily Mo Pena has been in professional baseball since the end of Bill Clinton’s second presidential term. The Mets originally tried to snag Pena out of out the Dominican Republic, but later voided the contract. The Yankees swooped in during 1999, handing him a hefty $2.3M bonus. Later shipped to the Reds for another ill-fated prospect, Drew Henson, Pena was in the majors with Cincinnati by the age of 20. Pena has since played sporadically for the Reds, Red Sox and Nats, and owns a career .253/.307/.447 line.

One has to wonder what sort of player the 6-3, 245 pounder might have developed into had he been given sufficient time to hone his craft in the minors. That’s not to say that the 27 year-old is a lost cause, but the song remains the same for Pena: feats of strength sprinkled in with few walks (career 6.3 BB%) and a whole lot of whiffs (32.7%). Pena is coming off of a wretched 2008 (.227 wOBA in 206 PA) and appears to be lost in the shuffle with Washington. His skill-set just doesn’t appear suited to part time or pinch-hit duties: with a long, convoluted swing and a propensity to chase (33.2 O-Swing% from ’05 to ’08), Wily Mo might not be that useful off the bench.

Would you believe me if I told you that Willie Harris was Washington’s most valuable position player in 2008? I swear, I’m not making it up: the light-hitting utility man somehow managed to pop 13 HR in 424 PA, good for a .340 wOBA. He also posted a +32 UZR/150 in about 700 innings the outfield. All together, Willie managed to be worth 3.2 Value Wins, surpassing Christian Guzman’s 3.0 (honest, that’s true too) and Dukes’ 2.9. Of course, there’s little reason to take Harris’ offensive outburst as more than a blip: the 30 year-old has a career .343 slugging percentage and .303 wOBA in the majors. With so many other bats ahead of him, Harris figures to use his outstanding glove (career 15.2 UZR/150 in the OF) to carve out a role as Josh Willingham’s legs in the late innings. For fantasy purposes, he’s a non-factor.

Every time I think about Washington’s outfield/first base glut, I keep on getting this image in my head. I mean, how are they all going to fit in there? Odds are, one or possibly two of the fellows listed above will be changing addresses sometime soon. With Dunn now in D.C., the Nats must not sacrifice the development of either Dukes or Milledge- those guys need to play.