Biggio a net loss?

A little late on this one, but here is an article written by the Brain Trust at Baseball Prospectus (Yes, it cost money to read, but for $5 month to try it out -- which I can assure you that you'll love it). It essentially suggests that Craig having to be in the line-up at 2nd base to chase his 3000 hit will cost the Astros, at a minimum, 3 wins.

To summarize for those who won't shell out the cash, the argument comes that because you push Burke to CF, which he'll suck at and lose at least a game for us there -- well, he and Craig combined defensively -- and the inability to include Pence in the line-up as a result, cost us 2 games due to offensive short-comings.

The current Astros lineup looks like:

Biggio 2B
Burke CF
Berkman 1B
Lee LF
Ensberg 3B
Everett SS
Scott RF (Garner says he wants him down here so that 7-9 aren't 3 easy outs??)
Ausmus C
Pitcher

An anemic line-up for sure, as OPS is below .700 for 4 hitters there (OBP below .300 too).

According to Baseball Prospectus, the line-up that wins 3 more games is:
Burke 2B
Pence CF
Berkman 1B
Lee LF
Scott RF
Ensberg 3B
Everret SS
Ausmus/Quintero/Munson C
Pitcher.

Here's what we have to say:

Ok, so we’ll start with this: Biggio does create quite the headache in that he is an aged legend who at this point in his career can only play 2B. We concede this, but have to argue a few points that we feel have been over stated in determining a net loss of 3 for the ‘Stros with Bigde in the lineup.

Here is a rough list of the holes we found in the articles reasoning:

1. Brad Ausmus had an OBP of .308 in ’06. It was his dismal slugging percentage and the fact that he managed to ground into 21 double plays that caused the biggest flaming hole in the eighth spot in the line-up. Therefore, we don't have four hitters with OBP's of less than .300. On that note, we need to push this further, using their own patented stat, PECOTA, everyone in the Astros line-up is slated to have an OBP of .300 or more and everyone but Everett and Ausmus an above .700 OPS at their 50th percentile ranking. And Everett is given a favorable prediction to make some improvement due to his relative youth and if he performs at his 60th percentile ranking he hits at a .700 OPS.

2. Chris Burke played CF 38 times in 2006, starting in 36 of those appearances. He maintained a .987 Fielding Percentage which is only .002 points lower than Willy Taveras’ career percentage in CF. So what makes Chris Burke such a terribly bad CFer?

3. Craig Biggio maintained a .989 fielding percentage, which is better than Chris Burke’s .974 in the same position in 2006. Granted Burke made very few starts at 2B and was essentially coming off the bench, still, food for thought.

If you consider the anemic line-up which we posted last year, with the robust line-up we are sending to the plate this year, you have to wonder how we are that much worse of team? We have now Lance Berkman, Carlos Lee, a healthy Morgan Ensberg (who finished 4th in MVP voting in 2005), and Luke Scott. We have essentially added 2.25 hitters to the line-up from last year (Morgan pre-injury and the second half brilliance of Luke Scott had to be factored in).

All of our critiques aside, it is hard to argue with certain facts which are presented in the article, because they are facts. We do have a problem with having someone as talented as Loretta sitting on the bench and someone with as much potential as Pence being forced to stay down in the minors when clearly seems primed to bust on the scene. These are the same arguments that have been made for many Astros’ farm-hands and pine riders such as Burke, Lamb, and Bruntlett. Therefore we are not posting are best possible team yet, the inclusion of Craig Biggio in the line-up for the last two years has not cost us too terrible in performance. Granted an extra 3 wins last year put us in the post season, an extra three wins could have been generated with Lee, Scott, and a healthy Ensberg in the line-up all season long. Of course, the line-up last year survived on the fact that we had much stronger rotation than than year, however, who is to say that Roger doesn’t come back for the second half? Because it certainly isn’t harder to out perform our pitching from the first half of last year. For the first half of the year, look for us to have an ML average rotation anchored by Roy O. By all accounts (here comes our Nieve prediction) Fernando Nieve is primed for a decent season (that being a compliment) his ERA adjusted for the season drops down to a 4.09. Nieve has developed all four of his pitches which he has been throwing in Spring Training with success. Also, he wasn’t over used in his first full year of attempting to start which is good because he doesn’t come with the injury weariness that Verlander and Weaver do. We think Fernando can deliver a 10-8/4.40/170 IP/123 K line in 2007. This gives us a pretty solid enough rotation with a much improved line-up (and there is still a Roger Clemens possibility). By all accounts – Baseball Prospectus’ included – the NL Central is yet again an incredibly mediocre division – which, invariably means that we need to scrape out all the winds possible, but it’s hard to imagine that all the factors cited in contributing to a three game loss are as dire as predicted.

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