Nate Silver ran a piece the other day at Baseball Prospectus re-examining his earlier look at the 50 most valuable long-term commodities in baseball. He offers thoughts on biggest risers (including Justin Upton, about whom he correctly notes that “age is everything, and for a 19-year-old to come this far this fast is very special”), biggest fallers (comparing Jason Bay’s career path to that of Bobby Higginson), and his “very preliminary, off-the-cuff, subject-to-change, pre-PECOTA Top 20″ for next year.
Read the full article for all the details, but here are Silver’s projected top pitchers for 2008-2013. See if you can figure …read more

With the season winding down, I got to wondering who’s stinking up the joint? Here are the players with the lowest OPS+ by position (minimum 430 PA, roughly what it would take to qualify for the batting title if the season ended now) and the pitchers with the highest ERA+ (minimum 140 IP for starters, 40 G for relievers):

Worst Position Players of 2007

Pos
Name
Team(s)
BA
OBP
SLG
OPS+

Statistics are courtesy of Baseball-Reference and are through games of September 9, 2007.

C
Jason Kendall
Oak/ChN
.245
.300
.313
63

1B
Lyle Overbay
Tor
.239
.317
.397
85

2B
Josh Barfield
Cle
.245
.273
.326
59

3B
Nick Punto
Min
.199
.286
.255
46

SS
Tony Pena
KC
.256
.276
.334
56

Omar Vizquel
SF
.239
.299
.295
56

LF
Jason Bay
Pit
.253
.331
.424
95

CF
Juan Pierre
LA
.290
.323
.347
73

RF
Delmon Young
TB
.293
.322
.416
92

Quick comments:

Kendall and Pierre have humongous contracts. Kendall’s is up at the end of the ‘07 season, …read more