Dave Cameron on the value of depth, or how to minimize risk while adding wins. Of course, there is the difficulty of knowing whether a player whose production falls in the right-tail of the distribution is relying on luck versus skill, which makes the manager's decision difficult.

The Olympia Olympian has an interview with Mariners' head statistical analyst Tony Blengino. He discusses the free agent market and player valuation.

Tommy Rancel has an interview with new Rays' Director of Pro Scouting Matt Arnold. He discusses, among other things, how his economics background influences his scouting.

San Antonio College's The Ranger has an interview with economics professor and BtB alum Cyril Morong. He discusses what got him interested in sabermetrics. You can, of course, find his blog here.

Sky Andrecheck has a column at Sports Illustrated on why the free agent valuation system is an effective tax on Type A free agents. That'll teach those relievers not to rack up meaningless saves.

More photos » by Frank Franklin II - AP

The Cubs handed a $7 million dollar contract to John Grabow, who has been worth $5.3 million dollars over his career. They later traded Aaron Heilman to Arizona for a pair of prospects.

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On the eve of Free Agency, the Cubs made a pair of moves involving relief pitchers.

First, the Cubs re-signed LHP John Grabow to a two-year contract reportedly worth $7-7.5 million dollars. If you're asking yourself why they would spend that much money on a player who has accumulated -0.1 WAR over the past three seasons, then you're in the right place.

Grabow is a serviceable relief pitcher, but he is nothing special. His fastball sits in the low 90s, and like a lot of other relievers, he mixes in sliders and change-ups. His change-up has proven to be a plus pitch, but overall he doesn't generate a lot of swings and misses (8.1 swstr% in 2009).

Results wise, Grabow has benefited from a shiny ERA, and that's probably why he got the contract he did. In 2008, he posted an ERA of 2.84 for the Pirates and followed that up with a combined 3.36 for Pittsburgh and Chicago in 2009. Advanced metrics, however, see past the ERA screen and rate Grabow about average. His FIP in 2008 was 4.54 and only slightly better in 2009 at 4.20. That's not terrible, but I'm not giving him $7 million dollars over two seasons to basically be replacement level--especially not the day before the market is flooded with cheaper, and in many cases better, options.

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More photos » by Ben Margot - ASSOCIATED PRESS

Tim Lincecum, doing his best LOWESS impression. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

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Today it was announced that Tim Lincecum would join Zack Greinke as this year's second Cy Young award winner. Both had excellent seasons. While Greinke likely has the edge due to Lincecum's more favorable league and park, both exhibited no real weakness. Both struck out more than a batter per inning, both walked fewer than three batters per nine innings, and both allowed fewer than a dozen home runs.

After Greinke's furious start, there was some concern that his superlative season might be lost as he bumped slightly in the middle of the season. Lincecum, by comparison, appeared to be more consistent: he had no string of dominance as convincing as Greinke's April, but neither did he have any periods in which he struggled.

I decided to calculate each pitcher's single-game FIP and xFIP (based on batted ball data from FanGraphs) and run it through the R CLI. I then applied a LOWESS regression to each pitcher's season to give an idea of how each pitcher's fortunes changed from month to month. Here they are, by FIP (click to enlarge):

xFIP comparison below the jump.

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Jeremy Greenhouse's Visual Scouting Report 1.0: Bay vs. Holliday. The heat is on!

A Wrigley mystery contained in a photo. If you'd like to take a crack at it without seeing the answer, the question is: "of which game was this picture taken?"

Was Zack Greinke's 2009 more like Ben Sheets' 2004 or Mark Prior's 2003? Note that both Prior and Sheets gave up more home runs than everyone's new favorite sabermetrician.

J.C. Bradbury compares methods for evaluating player aging. This is his most even-handed blog piece on the subject to date.

The free agency market officially opens tonight at midnight. Who's ready to overpay a weak class?

More photos » by Julie Jacobson - AP

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Yawn.

Beyond the Box Score will be starting a new series, Reward Retrospective, that will look at past awards (MVP, Cy Young, ROY, etc.) that pique our interest and examine them with some of todays metrics. I hope you enjoy these looks back at various players and seasons.

In 1985, I was 10 and never knew that it would be the last time I would see my Royals in the postseason. As a hardcore Brett fan, I wanted to go back and see if he was deserving of the AL MVP in 1985.  

Here is a table of top 5 AL MVP vote getters and their basic stats for the '85 season:

Now here is a comparison using Rally's WAR data (thanks to Sky for the original idea and Justin Bopp for the graphic):

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J.C. Bradbury takes on the world! He argues players peak at age 29-30, then Phil Birnbaum replies, then Bradbury fires back armed with graphs, then Colin Wyers gets into it. Bottom line is that this stuff is hard and any attempt to analyze the data will include assumptions that are open to criticism. Stay tuned.

What is the value of inductive reasoning? Would your answer change if I told you you had only one data point? What about if I told you that outsiders (Football or otherwise) have systematic bias as well?

The Last Expo's 2004 is a living reminder that statistical flukes happen all the time. He somehow scored more runs than Ichiro! in the same year that the latter broke the single season hits record.

How to become a trade-rumormonger, or everything you ever wanted to know about Jon Heyman's job but were afraid to ask, by Matt Swartz. Sadly it is behind BPro's pay wall.

My favorite law review note of all time: "The Common Law Origins of the Infield-Fly Rule." For fun, read the footnotes. 

More photos » by Charlie Riedel - AP

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Zack Greinke earned the 2009 Cy Young Award earlier today. It was well deserved, and not much of a surprise. I've covered Greinke via PITCHf/x on a few occasions* (here, here, here, here and here), so I'm taking this opportunity to look at Greinke's curveball -- which is thrown at a wide range of speeds.

*If you check out those links, you'll see some flight paths, learn about his sinker, compare his

fastball locations to Rich Harden's and explore head-to-head match-ups against Kevin Milwood and John Lackey.

Greinke's best pitch is his slider. It's one of the best pitches in baseball, and he complements it with two above average fastballs (four- and two-seam varieties), a change-up and the aforementioned curveballs. For starters, Greinke can vary his pitch speeds by nearly 40 mph -- high 90s fastball and a low 60s curveball.

But Greinke's curve is thrown anywhere from the lower 60s up to the lower 80s.

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The art and science of well-timed acquisitions and trades. Why everyone looks like a genius in hindsight and true value is tough to find.

Tommy Rancel interviewed Andrew Friedman. He discusses the fact that he does not have a contract with the Rays, picking late in the draft, and Carl Crawford.

Michael Jong has disaggregated Tango's Fans Scouting Report and moved Dan Uggla around the diamond. He would likely be a few runs below average at both 3B and LF.

Albert Pujols is really good, even in Korea. Here's an excerpt:

Albert Pujols에 대해서는 별다른 설명이 필요하지 않을 것이다. 다만.. 초인적인 공격 스탯 외에도 주목할 부분은 바로 16 SB/4 CS이다. Albert Pujols가 팀내 도루 1위라니...!!! 그것도 80%의 성공률로..!!! 그는 그다지 발이 빠른 편은 아니지만... 메이저리그에서 아마도 가장 aggressive한 주자일 것이다. 때로는 지나치게 공격적으로 베이스러닝을 하다가 홈에서 아웃당하는 경우가 있긴 하지만... 상대의 허를 찌르는 도루 솜씨는 정말 훌륭하다. [emphasis in original]

Aggressive indeed.