BABIP, or Why Some People Might Make the Wrong Statistical Conclusion

Note: Most of this article was written in early September, so the information on Morse may not be especially important.  However, my desire to finally complete this post is to address something broader about statistical analysis and Morse is a good example to use in this instance.

Wander around the internets or, perhaps, spend time (a lot of time) at the ball park and you may hear about how certain hitters have been lucky or unlucky.  The comments could be as specific as how line drives are being hit straight at the third baseman, less specific by mentioning BABIP, or even less specific by indicating how performance marks in general are not up to peak career marks.  What I want to comment on is the conversation right in the middle: BABIP.

The general idea of a player being unlucky with with respect to Batting Average of Ball In Play (BABIP) is based on the population trend that the value is consistent.  That is if a component of the population is hitting 50 points over their average, they tend to revert back to their average.  Mike Morse's career BABIP is .333 while his current season BABIP is .267.  If Morse has suffered a simple fluke in the distribution of his batted bats (like most players most of the time) then we should expect that he will revert back to a .333 BABIP in the future.

That expectation dismisses his current performance of 226/283/410 and suggests he should be more in line with 280/340/480.  Having hits drop in, as you can see, can greatly increase a player's worth.  However, we need to remember that this assumption is based on the measure of a population as compared to the measure of individuals.  In other words, a forest might look incredibly healthy from afar, but up close you see that a couple trees are dying.  It is a matter of resolution.

In general, it is fine to say that given such a broad resolution that it is plausible to expect a player like Mike Morse to bounce back from such an uncharacteristic BABIP.  If this is as far as you go, then you might forget what actually impacts changes in BABIP.

The three major components of BABIP are:

1) Defense - Although the unbalanced schedule makes for the possibility of BABIP to be team specific due to differences in stadium design (e.g., Fenway) or general differences in defensive aptitude, usually it all washes out.  Defenses are very similar to each other and there is enough overlap between schedules that a batter essentially faces a league average defense over the course of a season.

2) Random Variation - For no good reason that we have been able to discern, sometimes a player tends to hit more balls in defensible territory than normal.  There seems to be little ability for a hitter to deftly place a ball to an empty spot on the field.  Think of the crazy shifts that are employed today and how no MLB hitter can exploit them with any regularity.

3) Talent - Talent is a combination of foot speed, batted ball type, as well as just how those batted balls travel.

Below is a good video that briefly reexplains what I just noted:

I do want to drill a little deeper on the talent portion of BABIP.  Why?  Because that is what changes in practice.  These chances in BABIP occur because players get stronger, more experienced, and refine their approaches.  Players can also age, adversely affecting their production, and get injured.  I compact them down to three things:

1) Foot speed - as a population, players tend to see a decrease in BABIP over the course of their careers as they lose speed.  This effects grounders almost exclusively and this trend tends to be very small due to how good defense is in the Majors unless a physiologically catastrophic event occurs to the player.

2) Batted Ball Type - again, as a population, balls that are grounders become hits 23% of the time, line drives fall in 69% of the time, and fly balls are wonderful for the hitter 13% of the time.  A player who tend to have more line drives than fly balls will tend to have a higher BABIP.  If something about the player changes the types of batted balls he hits, then that BABIP will change as well.

3) Types of Batted Ball Type - As we all know, a fly ball is not a fly ball is not a fly ball.  We tend to think of a Chris Davis moon shot flyball differently as opposed to a Nick Markakis fly ball.  Within grounders, line drives, and fly balls we get a lot of variety within those classifications.  Those differences can mean a great deal with respect to how well a player will perform.  Soft liners are easily to turn into outs than hard liners.  Shallow flies tend to be caught more often than deep flies (and we are not even considering how deep flies can turn into home runs).

Now, let us use Mike Morse as a vehicle for this discussion.  Below is a table indicating his previous performance.  His 2013 time with the Orioles is not included because I find performance after a trade to be not important with respect to making a trade because that portion is unknown.  Later we will revisit what he did for the Orioles.

Year	Age	Tm	PA	2B	3B	HR	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS+	BABIP
2005	23	SEA	258	10	1	3	18	50	.278	.349	.370	97	.341
2006	24	SEA	48	5	0	0	3	7	.372	.396	.488	131	.421
2007	25	SEA	20	2	0	0	1	4	.444	.500	.556	184	.571
2008	26	SEA	11	1	0	0	1	4	.222	.364	.333	91	.400
2009	27	WSN	55	3	0	3	3	16	.250	.291	.481	101	.303
2010	28	WSN	293	12	2	15	22	64	.289	.352	.519	133	.330
2011	29	WSN	575	36	0	31	36	126	.303	.360	.550	147	.344
2012	30	WSN	430	17	1	18	16	97	.291	.321	.470	112	.339
2013	31	SEA	307	13	0	13	20	80	.226	.283	.410	98	.267

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 9/1/2013.

A good exercise is now to run through the different variables because upon looking at his .267 BABIP so far in 2013, we would think that he has been incredibly unlucky.  Why?  Because the greater population of baseball players tend to perform at their established career BABIP.  In other words, we should expect Morse to have a BABIP of about .330 to .340 if what has transgressed so far this season is due to random variation (aka balls finding gloves).

However, has his talent level changed?  If it has, then we would expect the BABIP to not be random and instead be a characteristic of that player.

Foot speed

Although Morse began his MLB career as a shortstop, foot speed was never a quality he enjoyed.  He may be slower, particularly with his quad injury that forced him on the disabled list in June through almost all of July.  That said, running out ground balls was simply not a major part of his game.  True, a loss of speed will negatively affect his performance somewhat as a loss in footspeed would result in a slight alteration in singles and doubles, but probably nothing profound.  His game is not a singles game and we do not see a great increase in hitting singles from would-be doubles.  I severely doubt foot speed has caused his BABIP to drop.

Change in Batted Ball Type

Another possibility would be that a leg injury could impact his mechanics and result in him creating a different proportion of fly balls.  The table below shows his batted ball types over the past nine seasons.  Again, I am not considering his time in Baltimore.

Apparently, the table failed to load properly when posting.  I will have to wait until tonight to correct it.  Until then, feel free to go over to Fangraphs here and see how similar his distribution is to his prime years to date.

From that table, nothing appears to be out of the ordinary.  It also appears that from this there is no great reason why we should suspect his poor hitting performance with respect to his BABIP is not a product of a change in batted ball percentages.

Types of Batted Ball Type

One thing that concerned me about Morse was that leg injuries can greatly impact power transfer from a player's lower half into the bat.  If that transfer is off, then swings become all arms, which greatly reduces the distance of those balls.  Even when you see a guy like Chris Davis flip a bat into the stands with only his arms, you can still see a portion of his power is coming up through his legs.  Below is a table showing Morse's average distance for his line drives and home runs.  These numbers are somewhat difficult to find on your own, so I decided to include his few Baltimore data points here.  To be clear here are the three designations for 2013: (a) Seattle before leg injury, (b) Seattle after leg injury, and (c) Baltimore.

	Line Drive (n)	Fly Ball (n)
2011	266 ft (72)	316 ft (141)
2012	249 ft (59)	309 ft (81)
2013a	276 ft (31)	302 ft (54)
2013b	230 ft (12)	298 ft (16)
2013c	189 ft (3)	269 ft (4)

When I look at the data above, I see potential red flags.  Looking at 2011, 2012, and 2013a, we see some variation in Line Drive distance, which I believe is normally highly variable.  That does not concern me.  What does concern me is the decrease in Fly Ball distance, which I think is a more stable number (again, though, I have not studied this, so this is a bit anecdotal).  I think his early season numbers this year were inflated due to solid line drive contact.  The decrease in his fly ball percentage makes this difficult.  For every 10 feet you lose in your average fly ball distance, the player experiences about a 20% decrease in home runs.  Now, I would not write him off completely long term, but I would be concerned that he might be a player who will flame out early even if he is healthy.

That said, the long term prognosis is not what we have interest in with Morse as a trade candidate.  As a trade candidate, we have more of a concern with respect to how well he performed after coming off the disabled list.  Now, 12 ground balls and 16 fly balls are a very, very small sample size (I assume, I do not know how many batted ball events are needed to stabilize one of these numbers, but I assume this is an accurate statement), but a drop of 46 ft in line drives and his fly balls falling below 300 ft were big concerns of mine.  That suggests to me that even though he was healthy enough to play baseball, he likely was not healthy enough to be Mike Morse and that is a significant issue.  That drop was a major reason why I panned the Avery for Morse deal.  The distance is an illustration that even though his BABIP is low in comparison to his career line, his current BABIP might be completely founded in a change in ability due to his leg injury.

Population vs Individual

This is a major issue for some who are new to baseball statistics and projections.  A good rule of thumb is to expect players to behave like the population of players behave.  This really is true about any population model.  It makes sense for drug trials and it makes sense for ecosystem assessments.  You will often be right more often if you make this assumption.  However, if you are able to assess a single individual, you may have some ability to tease apart the causes for a change in behavior.  For instance, your patient not doing well in the trial may have a secondary issue that causes him to respond differently to the drug.  Or perhaps, your pristine habitat does not act like other pristine habitats because someone is dumping all of their excess paint into the stream.  In Mike Morse's case, it should not have been expected of him to bounce back perhaps because there was an underlying cause (leg injury) and evidence (lack of batted ball distance) that suggested there were real issue there.

In other words, one should not be fundamentalist when it comes to assigning population responses to an individual.  It has been shown consistently that players suffer from variability in their performance.  Much of that wobbles back and forth each year as a result of chance, but there are also real issues that can cause a player to deviate from the expected path.  It is important to recognize these things.  Luck is not all.

How Has Mike Morse performed for the Orioles?

In 27 plate appearances, Morse has three singles and a walk.  He has a slash line of 115/148/115 and a OPS+ of -27.  His offense has been worth -4.1 runs, roughly meaning that in those 27 appearances he was responsible for about half of a loss in comparison to a replacement level player.  He saw 49 innings in the outfield and was credited for -7.5 runs when extrapolated out to a full season.  In other words, he played poor defense.  In a general sense, he has done nothing to improve the team and he cost the team a million dollars.  As you know, money is not a thing that is spent wildly in Baltimore, so losing a million hurts a little bit.  Add that to the loss of a genuine 4th/5th outfielder with options in Xavier Avery and the deal looks slightly worse.  Twenty three year old toolsy, poor skilled outfielders are not exactly a dime a dozen, but they are probably close.  Avery certainly has value and a scant chance at become something more like a second division starter.  With the paucity of talent in the Orioles upper minors, it does potentially hurt a little to give up on Avery's slight promise and his certain versatility.

What Happened to Xavier Avery? 

Avery logged 14 plate appearances over three games in AAA Tacoma.  He walked once, had a sacrifice hit, and had six hits, including a home run and a double.  He also managed a stolen base.  He started once at each outfield position.  For those three games, Avery was a wunderkind.  He was not added to the expanded roster in Seattle.  He is expected to be given a legitimate shot at the fourth outfield position with the club next year.  He is fully expected to log time at some point in Seattle next season.

Orioles Pick Up Bud Norris, Part With More Mid-Level Prospects

The Orioles, having already acquired a starter (Scott Feldman) and a reliever (Francisco Rodriguez) in the last few weeks, decided they needed to make one more move for a pitcher at the trade deadline. That move happened to be trading for Astros starter Bud Norris, who will make his O's debut tonight (against his former club). For Norris's services, the O's sent L.J. Hoes, Josh Hader, and a 2014 competitive balance pick to Houston. Besides Norris, the O's received an international signing bonus slot.

Norris, 28, happened to be the Astros' best starting pitcher, though that doesn't say much. In 126 innings this season, he has a 3.93 ERA, but there are some worrisome signs. His strikeout rate (6.43) is about two fewer than his career rate (8.39). He's been fortunate with his HR/FB rate as well: Only 7% of the fly balls against him have left the ballpark, while his career average is around 11%. Also, as this FanGraphs article notes, Norris's velocity is in decline (which explains some of the strikeout issues), he is not good against left-handed batters, and he may have more of a "reliever's arsenal."

But it's not all negative with Norris. He's been walking fewer batters (3.07 BB/9 vs. 3.67 for his career). He's also thrown at least 153 innings the last three seasons (and is on pace to easily exceed that mark this year), which is not amazing in itself, but is always good to avoid giving starts to pitchers like Freddy Garcia and Josh Stinson. And he has two arbitration-eligible years left (he's not a free agent until 2016), so he should be relatively team-friendly cost wise. He'll likely replace either Feldman or Jason Hammel, who are both free agents, in next year's rotation.

Norris gives the Orioles more rotation depth and is probably a minor upgrade over Hammel, who went on the disabled list yesterday. But he basically provides more of the same for an O's rotation that is not very good in the strikeout department. Here are the strikeout rates for the team's five other starters (including Hammel):

Chris Tillman: 7.39
Miguel Gonzalez: 6.33
Jason Hammel: 6.22
Wei-Yin Chen: 5.50
Scott Feldman: 6.31 (5.40 with O's)

Zach Britton and Steve Johnson aren't high strikeout guys either. That's one of the reasons why fans are so excited about Dylan Bundy and Kevin Gausman, and also why some refused to give up on Jake Arrieta. Certainly it helps any pitcher to have Manny Machado and J.J. Hardy fielding behind them on the left side of the infield, but most of the O's starters don't get a ton of groundballs anyway (Norris doesn't).

Maybe it would have made sense to just roll the dice with someone like Britton, who has pitched well at times but overall hasn't been that great. Interestingly enough, the Astros were interested in acquiring Britton as the lefty alongside Hoes in the trade, but the O's parted with Hader instead. Maybe that means Britton will strongly be considered for a rotation spot next season, or maybe the O's just didn't want to lose a 25-year-old starter who's a decent option and has major league experience.

So what did the O's give up in the trade? More of the same: mid-level prospects who the organization may or may not have soured on. Baseball Prospectus had Hoes seventh and Hader 10th on its preseason Orioles top 10 prospects list, while Baseball America listed Hoes sixth and did not include Hader. Hader appears to have a higher ceiling than Hoes, who many view as a fourth outfielder type. Still, the Orioles managed to hold on to Bundy, Gausman, Jonathan Schoop, and Eduardo Rodriguez, probably the organization's top four prospects. I'm also relieved that the O's did not sell low on Bundy.

Still, by not trading any of those four, the O's did not really improve the team that much. Feldman and Norris will help more than Rodriguez, but it's not like they were real valuable acquisitions. If Hammel is legitimately injured, the Norris trade looks a little better (again, unless you're a big believer in Britton). But none of the three are genuinely great pitching options.

As discussed in the K-Rod trade analysis, could the O's have packaged Delmonico along with the now traded Hoes and Hader (or Arrieta)? Even for a shallow farm system like Baltimore's, that would have still been an intriguing collection of prospects, and it should have netted a better starter than Feldman or Norris. But, again, it's hard to know who was actually available and how much the Orioles were willing to spend on whoever they acquired.

Dan Duquette made the decision to spread some assets around and trade for three decent but flawed pitchers. I'm not sure if the O's sacrificed that much talent for those pitchers, but I don't think their presence makes the team that much better. They're somewhat better, but was it worth the risk?

How Valuable Is Francisco Rodriguez in the Orioles' Bullpen?

A version of this article appears at Baltimore Sports and Life.

I wrote a version of this article a few days ago for Baltimore Sports and Life.  However, I wanted to share it here as well as my writing here will see an uptick over the upcoming playoff run for the Orioles.  So, with some moderate excitement, I am back in a deadline deal sort of way.

Tommy Hunter / credit: Keith Allison

Is there really anything more to say about the Orioles' acquisition of Francisco Rodriguez?  I certainly think so and it does not have to do with the pall cast over the deal with the known and alleged incidents of violence that are attached to the team's new relief pitcher.  No, I do not wish to discuss my perspective Rodriguez pleading guilty to attempted assault to avoid jail time when he attacked his at-the-time fiance’s father or about the time he attacked Mets’ bullpen coach during a game or the allegations of repeated abuse that the prosecution came up with or about the Milwaukee abuse case that was dropped when his at-the-time girlfriend (who was allegedly attacked) and the sole alleged witness (a housekeeper) went back to Venezuela and were no longer around for the trial.

What I want to discuss is how this deal rates as a baseball acquisition.  To what extent does Rodriguez improve this team.  What are best case scenarios in a general sense using simple numbers to see how big a deal acquiring Rodriguez was for the success of the team.  To do with, I want to assume the following:

1. With 58 games left, there are about 25 innings left for the 7th inning righty, 8th inning righty, and middle relief / junk inning righty.
2. Francisco Rodriguez is a 3.00 ERA pitcher (let’s assume he is really solid down the stretch).
3. Tommy Hunter and Darren O’Day are 4.00 ERA pitchers (let’s assume they struggle down the stretch to the point that they are underperforming their current ERAs of 2.80 and 2.20, respectively).
4. Jairo Asencio and whoever are 6.00 ERA pitchers (this is likely a pessimistic view as to what the default 4th righty in the pen could do).

So, here is what we get without Rodriguez using the above assumptions.

		IP	ERA	Runs
7th	Tommy Hunter	25	4.00	11
8th	Darren O’Day	25	4.00	11
Junk	Jairo et al.	25	6.00	17
				39

This is what happens with Francisco Rodriguez as the 8th inning righty, again, according to the set assumptions:

		IP	ERA	Runs
7th	Darren O’Day	25	4.00	11
8th	Francisco Rodriguez	25	3.00	8
Junk	Tommy Hunter	25	4.00	11
				30

These two tables note that the acquistion of Rodriguez saves the team nine run.  That is roughly worth one win based on standard sabermetric practice (that number jumps around year to year).  However, is it adequate to simply look at those nine runs and assume it is worth a win.  Are runs more or less important are the end of the game or in situations where these pitchers pitch to the point where grouping it all together makes for unfair comparisons?

The Leverage Index suggests that maybe we need to drill down a bit further.  To those of you who do not know, the Leverage Index calculates how important a situation is in a game based on the number of outs, baserunners, men on base, and the score.  A neutral scenario would have a Leverage Index of one.  A consequential plate appearance would be greater than one.  Here are the Leverage Indices of Orioles relievers when they enter a game:

Pitcher	gmLI
Jim Johnson	1.81
Darren O’Day	1.42
Brian Matusz	1.15
Pedro Strop	1.12
Troy Patton	1.01
Tommy Hunter	0.95
Jairo Ascencio	0.89
Kevin Gausman	0.78
Steve Johnson	0.76
Luis Ayala	0.75
TJ McFarland	0.67
Alex Burnett	0.61

Those numbers pass the sniff test.  Johnson, O’Day, and Matusz are often placed in on the mound in tough situations.  Strop may seem like an outlier, but the team tried their best to keep him as a setup man and then 7th inning man until his performance found the team shipping him to the Cubs.  The point I am trying to make here is that even though the different between the two assumed righty sets above amount to 9 runs, 6 of those runs are saved in junk innings that normally would have gone to guys like Burnett, Johnson, Gausman, and, yes, Asencio.  Those scenarios were ones where the game was largely in the Orioles’ favor or their opponents’.  With that in mind, those runs given up in low leverage situations are not very meaningful because of the run differential in those game situations.

Instead, the important runs in the optimistic scenario that was detailed earlier in this post would be the focused on the three runs that do not score thanks to 3.00 ERA Rodriguez on the mound instead of 4.00 ERA O’Day in the eighth inning, but we need to determine how valuable those runs might be.  As mentioned earlier as well, a general appreciation of what a run is worth (about 1/9th of a win) would suggest that having Rodriguez is worth about a third of a win due to those three runs saved.  However, runs scored in high leverage situations are likely to be worth a different amount than runs scored in less important situations

Here is the score differential of the July outings when O’Day entered the game:

	Dif	Runs
July 24th	0	1
July 21st	2	0
July 19th	2	0
July 13th	-4	0
July 11th	1	0
July 9th	-3	1
July 7th	1	0
July 5th	1	0
July 3rd	0	0

Five (or 56%) of his July outings were games where the differential in score was 0 runs or the Orioles being up by 1.  If that stays the same then of those 25 8th innings to come, 14 of them will be games where the score is tied or the team is holding on by one run.  That difference now is about 2 runs (slightly less) in what you could expect between a 3.00 pitcher and a 4.00 pitcher.  That suggests than maybe the value of a third of a run more important, might be lower than that.

However, assume that for 12 of those innings pitched, Rodriguez and O’Day would be the same pitcher, but for the other two innings Rodriguez would give up no runs and O’Day would give up a run in each performance.  Well, how does that impact win probability.

Visitor
Dif	Win Probability
1	85
0	48
-1	14
Home
Dif	Win Probability
1	89
0	63
-1	30

Why are the probabilities different?  It almost all comes down to the home team having two innings to score while the visitor having only one.  If we look at the worst case scenarios (as a vistor going +1 to 0; as a home team going 0 to -1), we have decreases in win probability of 37% and 33%.  In other words, not letting runs score in the worst cases possible detailed above means a 3.00 pitcher is worth about 0.7 wins more than a 4.00 pitcher.  In other words, the runs saved in the 8th inning in high leverage conditions are roughly twice as important than they are in general based on the assumptions I have made here.

Where we are left is that under ideal circumstances, it is probably safe to assume that the addition of Rodriguez will benefit the team with an extra game in the win column, at most.  More likely though, his impact will be far less felt.  Differences in runs saved in high leverage innings will likely be rather inconsequential and applying Hunter to even lower leverage innings will likely be even more inconsequential.

In the end, the team gave up a second tier prospect in Nicky Delmonico.  A position player who was 100th ranked in Baseball America’s top 100 prospects has a 1 in 3 chance of being a useful starter in baseball.  At best, Delmonico was just south of 150th and probably no worse the 200th.  More than likely he will never make a dent on a MLB roster.  Even more important, Delmonico would have had zero impact on the Orioles in 2013 when they are competing for a playoff spot.  In other words, one would be pressed to call him a meaningful prospect.

However, Delmonico does not need to be a meaningful prospect to have value.  I’d suggest that his ability to augment a trade package is probably worth more than him being traded straight up for a reliever who at best makes the 2013 Orioles a +1 win team.  It is difficult to ever know what is possible in trades and it is an illness in the brain that us followers of the game tend to want to believe in an abundance of trade opportunities, but I do think that a package of Delmonico plus one would likely bring back to the Orioles a player of greater importance than Rodriguez.  Of course, this contention is somewhat unfair.  It is difficult for the addition of Rodriguez to stand up against a comparison of something that does not exist.  The vagueness of the unknown is certainly a draw for many to embrace and questioning Oriole front office authority has been a talent that has been thoroughly developed over the past decade and a half.  That said, I maintain that the health of the franchise is better served when second tier prospects are stacked instead of being doled out one at a time.

Orioles Trade Options: Designated Hitter

This past weekend, Jon Heyman of CBS Sports reported that the Orioles may be unwilling to add additional money to further improve the team this year, following the trade for Scott Feldman.  Heyman suggests that any attempts to improve the team would come from players already within the organization, and that even Justin Morneau, and his $6 million left in salary would be too much money for the Orioles to handle.  This would also mean that acquiring Chase Utley is not something the Orioles would likely pursue, seeing as he is owed a similar amount of money the rest of the season, and it makes my recent “Ode to Chase Utley” on Orioles Proving Ground obsolete (from an Orioles perspective anyway).

Even with the fiscal constraints that have recently come to light, there are several options on the DH trade market the Orioles could look into that would not only provide an upgrade, but would also come with a cheap price tag, both in dollars and prospects. The criteria for this list includes players from teams who are assumed to be selling at the deadline, provide an improvement for the Orioles at DH (currently sporting a triple slash line of .214/.265/.374), and will be owed $2 million (completely arbitrary) or less as of July 31.  With that in mind, you will not be seeing Alfonso Soriano, Adam Dunn, or the aforementioned Morneau.  Each table shows the player’s estimated salary remaining on July 31, their statistics to date, and their projected statistics for the rest of the year, according to ZiPS at Fangraphs.

Lind is easily both the best and most unlikely option in this list.  Not only is the option unlikely because Toronto and Baltimore play in the same division (intra-division trades are rare), but Lind is having a productive season on a team that may not be willing to sell at the deadline.  Add that to the fact that Lind has very affordable club options through 2016 ($7 in 2014, $7.5 million in 2015, and $8 million in 2016), and the chances of Baltimore acquiring Lind are probably south of 1%. 

These two players from the Seattle Mariners have shown up on a lot of lists for teams searching for cheap bats at the deadline.  However, with so few impact bats openly available on the trade market this year, the price for either of these players may be higher than teams would like to pay.  Additionally, according to Jon Heyman, the Mariners seem reluctant to trade any veteran pieces, fearing their young team will go into free fall, and as a result, hurt their development.  If Baltimore could pry away one of these two, Morales is likely the better player moving forward (mainly due to the fact that he’s 11 years younger), though even the projected zero wins above replacement from Ibanez the rest of the year would still be considered an upgrade. 

Byrd is another player who is being mentioned as a cheap bat at the deadline, with several teams reported as interested in trading for the Mets outfielder.  Despite the productive year to date, it’s unsure whether Byrd can continue this level of production, as his slugging percentage is over 100 points higher than his career level, which is normally something that doesn’t happen to a player at the age of 35, who was also nearly out of baseball completely as recently as last year.  In addition, it looks like the Mets will needto be overwhelmed to trade him.

I’ll be honest, I’m not a fan of Delmon Young.  I don’t think he’s particularly good at baseball, and his on and off field issues are troubling at best.  Having said that, he does meet the requirements for this list, so therefore he’s included.  The Orioles should not go down this road. 

Even with the two Mariners representing the best (realistic) options, it’s difficult to get excited about the list above, although any one would be an upgrade over the current cast of players the Orioles have used at designated hitter so far this year.  However that doesn’t necessarily mean that they should make a trade for one of them, even if the cost is small.  With a full week remaining before the trade deadline, Baltimore would be wise to see if they have in-house options that could provide an improvement at DH (again, not difficult to accomplish).  They seem to be doing exactly that when they called up Henry Urrutia last Friday.  If you’re not familiar with Urrutia, check out Joe’s write up on the Cuban import here on Camden Depot.  With only a week before the deadline, the sample size for Urrutia will be small, so regardless of his results, it will be interesting to see how he handles major league pitching.  If Urrutia can prove that he is not overmatched at the major league level, the Orioles may be able to increase the productivity at the DH position, without having to sacrifice minor league talent or increase payroll to do it.