A little more than a week ago, Jon Heyman of CBS sent out a tweet wondering why it was that Starling Marte and Bryce Harper had the same WAR. Heyman was quoting Baseball-Reference's version of WAR, which at that moment in time showed Marte and Harper tied at 1.7 wins. Harper had clearly been the superior hitter, but drilling down, it turned out that the fielding metric used by Baseball-Reference loved Marte's defense enough (and thought Harper's was average enough) to call them equals.

Of course. He's a pitcher.

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Two weeks ago in this space, I asked what a good pitching coach—someone like noted magician Leo Mazzone—is worth to a major-league team. I came up with an estimate that Mazzone might have been worth four wins to the Braves (and Orioles) per year during his tenure.

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Last week, in an article in Sports Illustrated, Tom Verducci put forth an argument that the modern game of baseball has a problem. Hitters, he claimed, have become too passive in their approach at the plate as they attempt to drive up the pitch counts of the opposing pitcher. He mixes together a couple of case examples (Joey Votto, Jayson Werth) with some data that appear to show that hitters have become more passive in their approach over time, and are paying for it in declining run production. Maybe Joey and Jayson, and by proxy the rest of the baseball players out there, should swing the bat a little more.

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Leo Mazzone is a genius. Dave Duncan can take a scrap heap veteran and turn him into something useful. Don Cooper is dreamy. Right?

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Last Thursday night, in the bottom of the sixth inning of the Dodgers-Padres game—which the Dodgers led 2-1 at the time—Zack Greinke hit Carlos Quentin with a 3-2 pitch. Words were exchanged, and Quentin (6'2", 235 lbs) charged the mound. Greinke (6'2", 195 lbs) tried to mosh with Quentin, leading with his left (non-pitching) shoulder, but Quentin had a 60-foot running start and 40 pounds’ worth of advantage. In the classic physics equation, force equals mass times acceleration. Quentin had the advantage on both counts.

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I think that we've really misunderstood pitcher BABIP over the years.

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He finally signed. Kyle Lohse finally signed with someone, and I hope we all learned something in the process. No, not that his last name is not spelled L-O-S-H-E. There has to be a bigger moral to all of this, right? At the end of every long saga, there's a scene where the characters sit down together and rehash all that has happened, take stock of it, and generate some pithy phrase that encapsulates the whole story.

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Baseball games come with built-in subtitles. Dwight Gooden vs. Roger Clemens in the 1986 World Series. Bob Gibson vs. Denny McClain in the 1968 World Series. Kyle Lohse vs. Ross Detwiler in Game 4 of the NLDS last year. It's one thing to see a game between the Yankees and Tigers, but it's an entirely different game if CC Sabathia is pitching against Justin Verlander. And no one ever subtitles the game A-Rod vs. Miguel Cabrera.

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Brandon McCarthy thinks that Brandon Inge is worth 10 wins or so to a team behind closed doors. Jonny Gomes, too. Participating in a player panel at the SABR Analytics Conference earlier this month, McCarthy posited that if Inge and Gomes had been removed from the 2012 Oakland A's, they might have fallen from a 94-win team to a 70-win team, purely by virtue of being deprived of the effect the two players had in the clubhouse. According to WARP, Gomes was worth 2.2 wins last year, while Inge was worth 0.6. So, assuming that if neither had been on the team, they would have been replaced by... well, replacement level players, that means that Inge and Gomes somehow combined for 21.2 wins just by being good guys in the clubhouse.

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It's the time of year when managers start thinking about games that will actually count. Positional battles are heating up, because decisions need to be made. Opening Day starters are being named. Variations in lineups are being considered, for facing righties, lefties, and Pat Venditte. Your favorite team has spent the spring trying to decide between two players, both of whom are relative unknowns. Due to the 50/50/90 rule (when you have a 50/50 chance of getting something right by chance, you will get it wrong 90 percent of the time), they will pick the wrong utility infielder and the other guy will become a decent starter for some other team.

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Well, this year's Sloan Sports Analytics Conference has come and gone, and I wasn't able to attend. Worse, I couldn't go to the SABR Analytics Conference either. Of course, I've followed along as best as I could, but there's no substitute for actually being in the room.

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