Welcome back to the BtB Mailbag, where we take our best shot at your best questions. Send your questions to btbquestions@gmail.com and provide your name for inclusion.

This week's question comes from a Met fan trying to defend a Phillie in a quarrel with a Yankee fan - an excellent argument to get in the middle of.

John asks: I'm an avid Mets fan from New York. I've been a BtBreader for awhile now and I check it daily, and I think all of your writers are intelligent and knowledgeable baseball fanatics, so naturally I trust you guys with my burning questions. Here is my question for this week:

I believe Chase Utley is both offensively and defensively superior to Robinson Cano, however one of my best friends is a die hard Yankee fan and refuses to agree with me. He says I am crazy to think that and refuses to listen to me when I reference statistics to prove my case. My question is...what is the most basic way to prove that Chase Utley is more valuable and effective a player than Robinson Cano without having to use statistics that will confuse my friend?

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Welcome back to the BtB Mailbag, where every week we take our best shot at your best questions. Send your questions to btbquestions@gmail.com and include your name for inclusion.

Cliff Lee signing with the Phillies was a pretty crazy move (in the sense of unexpected and exciting), but the move and its implications on whether or not the Phils now have the best rotation off all time (Cole Hamels as the team's #4 starter is also crazy, as in insane) has been covered quite well all over the place. I'll just add that I'm glad he didn't go to New York, but Phillies fans don't have much right to complain about the Yankees' spending anymore. The best job in baseball next year might be as the Phillies longman; make $400K just to watch ballgames every day - maybe go in once a month or so.

The first question this week is near and dear to my heart:

Drew asks: Matt Stairs has been on a lot of teams, huh? Why does he keep getting traded/moved/picked up?

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Welcome back to the BtB Mailbag, where every week we take our best shot at your best questions. Send your questions to btbquestions@gmail.com and include your name for inclusion.

With my Orioles blog currently in limbo, I was sent quite a few questions about the team's moves and potential moves this week. The O's may have finished the season below .500 for the 13th year in a row - and they may do some things I disagree with - but the situation isn't completely hopeless.

What are your thoughts on the Mark Reynolds trade, the purported shortstop acquisitions, and bringing Koji Uehara back?

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Welcome back to the BtB Mailbag, where every week we take our best shot at your best questions. Send your questions to btbquestions@gmail.com and include your name for inclusion.

Just a couple questions this week - it is a holiday* after all.

* In that spirit, I'd like give thanks for the whole Beyond the Box Score crew - past and present - and all the other great baseball writers out there who put out such interesting, informative, and enjoyable to read work; all the people who read my ramblings; Albert Pujols' swing, Mariano Rivera's cutter, and Nick Markakis' arm; and my family and friends, I guess.

First up is Dan: What's the most surprising arbitration decision?

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Welcome back to the BtB Mailbag, where every week we take our best shot at your best questions. Send your questions to btbquestions@gmail.com and include your name for inclusion.

The first question this week (or set of questions, as it were) comes from Sean:

I have a couple of questions about Isolated Power as an evaluator of power.

My first question is: why is ISO calculated with ABs rather than PAs? Doesn't this give an advantage to players who walk more?

I would also like to know what ISO tells us about a player. In a post on BtB, PWHjort showed that players who a lot of home runs per fly ball do not hit more doubles and triples than players with low HR/FB rates. But ISO lumps together all extra base hits.  So, is ISO a satisfactory evaluator of power? Or, should there be one power stat for home runs and a separate power stat for doubles and triples power?

Finally, how does ISO correlate from year to year?

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One of the new weekly features introduced by Justin is a Beyond the Box Score mailbag in which we answer your questions about baseball, sabermetrics, baseball players, and anything else you may have on your mind.  Each week we'll dip into that trove of questions and do our best to answer whatever is on your mind. Send your questions to btbquestions@gmail.com and include your name and hometown.

BtB Mailbag, Volume I

Starting our first mailbag will be Roger:

For fly balls and/or line drives, is there any correlation between ISO and BABIP?  So does ISO (or ideally, ISO on fly balls) influence fly ball BABIP, and the same for line drives?  It seems intuitive to me that if a player hits a fly ball (or any ball, but ISO on groundballs doesn't tell us much) with more power, the BABIP will be more favorable.  Perhaps comparing ball-off-the-bat speed and BABIP could be better.  And if so, couldn't utilizing this be a useful refinement of xBABIP?

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