Around the SaberSphere 11/26: Evan Longoria, Zack Greinke, Wil Myers

Dave Cameron of FanGraphs briefly analyzes Evan Longoria's six-year contract extension: FanGraphs |Rays Extend Longoria, Again

There’s clearly some added risk to the Rays franchise in signing up for the age 31 to 36 seasons of a guy who has had some injury issues, especially because a lot of his value is tied up in his defense at third base. While they’re not exactly the same player, Longoria does share a decent amount in common with Eric Chavez, and his age 29-34 seasons — he accumulated a total of +2.2 in those six seasons — serve as a warning to how quickly a great player can become an albatross

Jay Jaffe of Sports Illustrated discusses how a So-Cal bidding war could drive the price up for Zack GreinkeHit and Run--Greinke should benefit from the Yankees' signing of Kuroda

Greinke isn’t guaranteed to get a $150 million deal, but with the Angels and Dodgers both interested, his odds are better. The Angels committed nearly $320 million last winter to free agents Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson, and cleaned out their farm system to acquire Greinke; adding insult to injury by losing him would be a bit of a blow in terms of public relations. In trying to free up salary space to retain Greinke, they shed both Ervin Santana and Dan Haren; remarkably, they offloaded $12 million of the former’s $13 million 2013 salary on the Royals, but they also paid a pricey $3.5 million buyout on the latter’s $15.5 million option due to concerns about his back. To keep up with the Rangers and A’s, both of whom made the playoffs, they need Greinke to join Wilson and Jered Weaver at the front of their rotation, and given their lack of prospects, the alternative of trading for another starter would be much more complicated.

R.J. Anderson of Baseball Prospectus discusses why Wil Myers has found himself on the trade block again: Baseball Prospectus | Painting the Black: What's Wrong With Wil Myers?

A Myers trade may not tell us much about the player, given the mixed bag results of other top prospects dealt. But it may tell us more about the team. You can theorize why the Royals are willing to trade Myers in a few different ways: maybe they’re looking to take advantage of the seasons put forth by Mike Trsout and Bryce Harper, or trying to capitalize on Giancarlo Stanton’s apparent removal from the trading block. The real motivation for moving Myers is probably the easiest explanation: Kansas City wants good pitching. To get good pitching, sometimes you have to give up good prospects, like Myers.

Lee Panas of Tiger Tales attempts to fill the gap between Runs and RBIs: Tiger Tales: A Detroit Tigers Blog: Filling the Gap Between Runs Scored and RBI

If one is going to use actual runs scored in any analysis of players though, it is a good idea to consider the entire run as opposed to the popular practice of just looking at RBI. To that end, I have created the Runs Assisted (or RAS to distinguish it from the pitching metric "Run Average") statistic which gives players credit for contributing to runs without a run scored or RBI.

Patrick Gordon of Philadelphia Baseball Review gives us another take down of ERA and batting average: PBR--Exposing the Myth of ERA and Batting Average

You can also see OPS, Rdfiff and WHIP are the only categories with higher absolute value T-statistics of over two, demonstrating a strong relationship between the three categories and team win totals. To confirm the relationship, the only categories with P-values below .05 are OPS, Rdiff and WHIP. p-values of .05 or less are considered to represent differences that are less likely to occur by chance.

I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday!