Great baseball Writers and Jason Bartlett the Pear.

I have been studying for the GRE, hoping to get into graduate school for the spring. Since I started way too late, I will not be nearly as prepared as I wish I would be. However I can't sit and study all the time, I'm just not that type of studier, I have to pace myself and hope that I got enough of it in. When not at work, and not studying I have been keeping myself busy with sports, fantasy sports, and as always cooking. Today was a good day for baseball reading with a great simple article from Joe Posnanski (who may be the best baseball writer in all the land), and food with a meatball sub for the ages. First thing first. Joe Blog. I'm going to copy the whole article and then just basically agree with him a little.

Jason Bartlett has an 83 OPS+.

Jason Bartlett has a .328 on-base percentage and has struck out three times more than he has walked.

Jason Bartlett has a .358 slugging percentage and has hit 1.00 home runs this season.

Jason Bartlett has missed 32 baseball games, which accounts for his relatively unimpressive total of 43 runs scored and 34 runs batted in.

Jason Bartlett ranks 11th among “everyday shortstops” with an .825 zone rating.

Jason Bartlett ranks 12th among “everyday shortstops“ with 4.22 range factor.

Jason Bartlett ranks 17th among ”everyday shortstops“ with a .969 fielding percentage.

Jason Bartlett scores a minus-1 on the Dewan Plus/Minus fielding system, meaning he has made one fewer play than the average shortstop in baseball this year.

The Tampa Bay Chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America voted Jason Bartlett the Tampa Bay Rays most valuable player in this magical season of 2008.

Your honor. The defense rests.

This goes to show that Jason Bartlett is in fact a pear not a baseball player. Okay bad food-baseball joke, but it does show that he is well below average for a SS in today's game. His OPS+ says about 17% worse than average actually. However maybe by the hand of God the Rays won all those games and he was actually their best player lets check. Posnanski, because he is better at this than me used a bunch of fancy stats to show how bad Bartlett Pear is, but for offense I'm going to use my favorite VORP because to me, it is the best overall offensive metric, although OPS+ is very good I still think it doesn't value OBP enough. It may though. Oh well, here we go.

Evan Longoria 33.8
Carlos Pena 33.0
B.J. Upton 30.2
Akinori Iwamura 17.3
Dioner Navaro 15.1
Cliff Floyd 14.7
Eric Hinske 11.8
Jason Bartlett Pear 11.2

He is the 8th best offensive player on his team this year. That's probably only because the next two guys (Carl Crawford and Gabe Gross) lose production points for being corner outfielders, and production is so much more at a premium at shortstop, so his replacement level is way lower. None the less, not even close to most productive offensive player.

As Posnanski alluded to Jason Bartlett ranks only ahead of Edgar Rentaria and Stephen Drew at SS. I used John Dewan's Revised Zone Rating (which handles out of zone plays seperately, and doesn't give the player extra credit for double plays)and he came in at .808. Khalil Greene is about league average at .835.

But wait. There are plenty of pitchers on Tampa Bay who are above Bartlett Pear in VORP as well. Included in them are James Shields, Scott Kazmir, Edwin Jackson, Matt Garza, J.P. Howell, Grant Balfour, Andy Sonnanstine, and Dan Wheeler.

As you can see I went through way too much work to prove a point that had already been proven. However there was no hand of God that allowed a team with a below average SS as their best player to make the playoffs. Actually there are about 14 or so Rays having a better season, give or take a player who is close. Further proof the BBWAA is ridiculous and should be stopped.