The Trenton Thunder are our second to last team to examine defensively by way of TotalZone rating. Here's the stuff you need to know:

TotalZone invented and calculated by Sean Smith of Baseballprojection.com. "Runs" is relative to league average. The meaning of specific numbers varies from position to position, but in general, +10 is a very good fielder, +15 or more is outstanding. Below -10 is not very good at all. Runs/150 estimates runs saved per 150 games, and is shown for players with at least 1/3 that playing time at a position. This article describes preliminary work in translating across levels.

The article describing the translation is a must read for fully understanding what these numbers represent, but in short, infield numbers are slightly more reliable than outfield ones and sample size issues are in play with any infielders with less than 350 chances and outfielders less than 1000 (2 full seasons roughly). Also these performances are relative to their league, so a AA third baseman would be slightly worse than a AAA third baseman. Reading the whole article is definitely recommended.

Infield

Outfield

Well the biggest controversial nugget here is the Eduardo Nunez numbers for sure. Well after ticking defense off the list of things Nunez might do well, I guess we just have batting average, and thank goodness that's so important! Oh, wait. This isn’t a sample size thing either. He’s had WELL over 1000 chances in his career at SS and never posted a TotalZone rating above 0. That’s pretty clear. Now while I think that Nunez probably has a lot of nice skills as a baseball player, at some point those skills just have to turn into results. MAYBE they’ll develop in the future, but its really extremely unlikely at this point.

Colin Curtis grades out as a very nice defensive outfielder at this point, at least in LF anyhow. He’s been solidly above average for his career there- not terrific certainly, but very solid. I wouldn’t get too worked up about the Edwar Gonzalez numbers either. Edwar Gonzalez is probably a good RF but most likely not THIS good- not that it matters as he’s certainly a non-prospect.

NoMaas has a two part interview up with John Manuel of Baseball America with a bunch of solid information. There are of course questions discussing guys like Andrew Brackman and Jesus Montero, but Manuel also talks about some less heralded prospects: Jonathan Ortiz(?), David Adams, and Christian Garcia.

Head over to NoMaas and give it a read:

It's all but official that Nick Johnson will be the number two hitter in the Yankees lineup, taking Johnny Damon's place in that spot. There are many fans who aren't sold on the idea of putting Johnson in the two-hole, and wanted the Yankees to re-sign Johnny Damon so he could be plugged back in there.

Their thinking is that while Nick Johnson has superior on-base skills, his speed(or lack thereof) will do the team damage in the two-hole. Last season, the Yankees switched Johnny Damon and Derek Jeter in the lineup and one of the reasons was that Jeter was hitting into too many double plays.

Johnny Damon, on the other hand, is one of the best players in the majors at avoiding double plays. On average, batters hit into double plays in around 11 percent of their double play opportunities. For his career, Johnny Damon has only hit into double plays in five percent of his chances.

The switch was definitely successful in this regard. Damon had a career high 160 double play opportunities and hit into only nine double plays(5.6 percent). Jeter had only 106 opportunities and still hit into 18 double plays(17 percent).

Basically, if the Yankees didn't switch them and they had faced the each other's double play opportunities instead, they would have combined for 33 double plays instead of 27. While this isn't a huge number, it makes a difference. On average, a double play costs a team .35 runs. So, it seems that this switch netted the Yankees 2.1 runs, just based on double plays. This isn't especially substantial, it's important for teams to find runs wherever they can.

Now lets bring the newly acquired Nick Johnson into play. Johnson is the ideal number two hitter for statheads everywhere. Last season, he put together an absurd .426 OBP, good for third in the majors. It's unlikely he'll post such an impressive number again in 2010, but getting on base has always been Johnson's specialty.

Damon is no slouch in that department either, as he got on base at a .365 clip last season. As we all know, just using last season's numbers is not an effective way to project a player going forward.

CHONE projects that Johnson will put up a .392 OBP in 2010 while Damon will have a .357 OBP. While getting on base is extremely important, I wanted to see if Damon's other prowess make up for the big OBP gap between the two players.

I prorated each of their CHONE batting lines to 600 plate appearances and got that Damon projects to be worth 10 runs above average and Johnson projects to be around 20 runs above average, so he has a nice ten run advantage here.

Now, onto baserunning. Johnson is known as a very slow runner, and that's an accurate description. Damon has always been quick, but he only stole 12 bases in 2009. I'm sure part of this is based on the fact that you don't want to risk getting caught stealing when Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez are coming up behind you. In terms of total baserunning value, Damon gains some runs back.

Using a simple MARCEL-like 5-4-3 projection with some regression of the two players eqBRR, I get that Damon has around a four run edge on the bases. Cut Nick Johnson's advantage down to six runs now.

Getting back to where we started, Damon stands to make up some more ground because of his superb ability to avoid the double play. Looking at their career numbers on Baseball-Reference, I'd say it's fair to make a rough estimate that Damon will hit into a double play in six percent of his opportunities and Johnson will in 12 percent of his.

The player hitting second in the Yankees lineup is sure to see a ton of double play opportunities, but there's no real way of knowing how many. I'm just going to put the number at 150, slightly below the number Damon had last season.

Using that -.35 linear weight and the 11 percent average, we find that Damon projects to be around 2.5 runs above average and Johnson looks to be about a half of a run below average. Put it all together and here's what we get:

When the Yankees signed Johnson, I assumed he would be a huge upgrade over Damon batting second because of his 35 point edge in OBP; it just isn't that cut and dry. The numbers tell me it is way closer than I thought, but they still bear out the fact that Johnson is the better option for the Yankees.

There are still some people who would prefer Damon to Johnson in the two-spot, but the numbers suggest that's the wrong move. As I said earlier, teams need to find ways to add runs in any little way they can. Just from an offense and lineup perspective, the Yankees did just that by signing Nick Johnson to be their two hitter.

Thanks to Daniel of Camden Crazies and Matt K. of FanGraphs for some help with these numbers. Also, I feel like I may have just put some numbers in here without fully explaining them. I didn't want to overwhelm the piece with numbers, so if you have any questions about my methodology just let me know and I'll elaborate.

Last offseason, Mike Axisa did about as thorough of a prospect profile on Mark Melancon as one could hope for. There isn't really anything to add to Axisa's 1500 words on Melancon except what has happened since that was written. So go read that, come back(or just stay here), and I'll talk about Melancon's 2009 season.

Melancon started the season in Triple-A and was not on the 40-man roster, but it was understood that he was a guy the Yankees were going to go to if they needed bullpen help during the season.

Considering that every team needs bullpen help every season, it was a foregone conclusion that we would see Melancon pitch in the big leagues sooner rather than later.

At the start of the season in AAA, Melancon continued to show why he had garnered so much praise from the Yankee organization. He pitched 11 scoreless innings over his first six appearances. During that span, he struck out a ridiculous 17 batters while walking only three.

After just 31.1 innings for Scranton, it seemed like Melancon had already conquered Triple-A. At this point, the Yankees were struggling to find consistency out of their bullpen with Edwar Ramirez and Jose Veras pitching poorly. When Brian Bruney went down with an injury, the Yankees had little choice but to call up the touted Melancon. On April 25th, he was called up. I was very optimistic at the time, stating:

He's the type of guy who can stick in the majors for good right now.

Well, things did not go as smoothly as I had hoped. The next night, Melancon debuted versus Boston. He managed to get through two innings unscathed, but wasn't what I had expected to see. His command was all over the place and he threw some fastballs that weren't even close to the strike zone.

The next few outings were more of the same for Melancon. He continued to struggle with his control, and it all fell apart on May 5th in his second appearance against Boston. Melancon walked all three batters that he faced, throwing only 8 strikes to go along with 14 balls. The Boston hitters were able to lay off of every single pitch he threw outside of the zone.

After a shaky and disappointing start to his career, Melancon was sent back down to Triple-A to regain his confidence that had seemingly disappeared. I expected Melancon to make an instant positive impact on the bullpen, but that's not always how it goes.

Returning to Scranton, Melancon continued to pitch extremely well. He threw 29.3 more innings there, racking up 25 strikeouts and only five walks. His ERA during that span was 3.38 and his FIP was an even better 3.00.

After leaving him in the minors for two months, the Yankees decided it was time to give Melancon another shot. This time around, Melancon pitched extremely well. In his next eight innings(five appearances), he did everything you want out of a young relief pitcher. He threw strikes(66 percent). He got batters to hit the ball into the ground(61%). He only struck out five batters, but he walked just one to go along with that. His ERA and FIP were both around 2.25 in this span. This was the Melancon I had expected to see, but it's worth noting this came in very low leverage spots.

Melancon didn't get too much more of a chance, even after this successful stretch. He was sent down until September because there was no room for him in the bullpen. He had a few poor outings in Triple-A this time, but he was still striking out hitters, keeping the ball on the ground, and keeping the walks down.

When rosters expanded, Melancon was called back up had some more middling results, giving up three runs in five innings while walking four and striking out three. The Yankees didn't show much confidence in him and that was all the work he got in September. All in all, Melancon racked up 69.1 innings, with just 16.1 of them coming in the majors. There's no doubt that this was a disappointing year for him.

Scouting Report

Here's what Mike Axisa had to say about Melancon's repertoire:

Melancon regained his pre-TJ stuff by the end of 2008, sitting 92-94 and touching 96 with good life on his fastball. His out pitch is a hard 12-to-6 curveball that he can drop in for strike one or use to get chases for strike three. He toyed with a splitter in college, however the Yanks had him scrap in favor of a true changeup that is now a usable third pitch.

That matches up fairly well with the Pitch F/X data we now have on Melancon. He worked primarily off of his fastball which averaged 93.1 and topped out right around 96. The sample sizes with his secondary pitches are small, but his curveball appeared to be as good as advertised.

His curveball had average vertical movement, but above average velocity. He averaged 82.3 with the pitch.

As you can see, he was able to drop the pitch into the strike zone or have it drop out. The key here is that his curveball had an 18.2 percent whiff rate, suggesting it was a very dominant pitch. Take a look at how it matches up to the rest of his repertoire:

Melancon's fastball actually doesn't sink as much as I expected it would, considering the impressive ground ball rates he puts up. In fact, it has less downward vertical movement than the average fastball. His curveball has much different movement than his other two pitches, which is probably what makes it so effective. Usually you see a bit more of a discrepancy here between fastball and changeup, and I wonder if that's why Melancon's change is merely "usable."

2010 Outlook

Mark Melancon's 2009 season was disappointing, but I don't think it really changes his long-term outlook very much at all. Throughout Melancon's pitching career, versus lefties, versus righties, he has always dominated. His 16.1 mediocre innings for the Yankees in '09 just aren't enough to challenge his track record. In fact, his tRA last season was 4.65, which was just slightly below the league average.

In 2010, I think we'll see much more of the Melancon we saw who had that dominant eight inning stretch in the middle of the season. CHONE disagrees with me a bit and is projecting a 4.50 ERA for Melancon. On the other hand, the FANS are optimistic, projecting a 3.78 ERA.

Right now, Melancon is a big-league ready reliever who should mature into a legit setup man. I don't see any reason to believe he can't live up to that potential this season and I would not be surprised in the slightest if he topped that 3.78 ERA.

I thought 2009 was going to be the year that Melancon broke into the bigs and stuck there, but it didn't work out that way. I'll try again, and this time, say with confidence that Melancon will make a name for himself over the course of the 2010 season as one of the Yankees' top relievers.

Photo Credit: Mike Ashmore