Kuzul

What would baseball be like if players didn’t have nicknames?

Nicknames are fun, and they’re great ways for fans to feel connected with their favorite players. Sometimes these contrived monikers even take on lives of their own; if asked to name the greatest hitter of all time, how many people would say George Ruth?

People both inside and outside the game spend countless hours trying to guess which players will be the next Ted Williams or Pete Rose, so why not spend a few minutes thinking about which players’ nicknames have inherited the assumed the places of “The Splendid Splinter” and “Charlie Hustle?”

The following slides comprise my list of the best nicknames in baseball today. The winners were selected primarily on creativity, coolness, and, in some cases, the moniker’s elevation from silly sobriquet to a title that becomes a player’s identity.

Of course, the popularity of the name has to count for something too. For example, Jhonny Peralta isn’t on this list because not many people know that his nickname is “Guitar” (also because it’s a stupid nickname).

Finally, as part of my aforementioned emphasis on creativity, no player whose nickname is simply a derivation of his actual name was allowed to crack the top 10. That means no “A-Rod,” “King Felix,” or even “Magnum Z.I.”

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Are you a Phillies or Dodgers fan who wants to ensure that your team will have the home field advantage if they make the World Series? Do you want to see the National League get revenge at the Midsummer Classic after going home empty-handed 13 years in a row? Are you a sadistic sociopath who likes messing with people for the pure schadenfreude?

If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, you might want to reconsider how you fill out your All-Star ballot.

If you truly want to see the best players in baseball duke it out on July 13, then by all means vote for the superstars. But if you want to see the Senior Circuit emerge victorious, you might want to think twice about naming Joe Mauer or Evan Longoria on your ballot.

This slideshow features the AL player at each position who has the greatest potential to screw up his league’s All-Star team, based on both relative ineptitude and current rank in the voting (if the player you vote for has no chance of winning, it doesn’t matter whom you choose).

Injured players have been excluded because if one of them is voted in, he can be replaced with a substitute of the manager’s choice.

Let this be your guide in your unsportsmanlike attempt to tamper with the biggest night of the baseball season! And be sure to check out Part One for how to screw up the NL team.

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Are you a Red Sox or Rays fan who wants to ensure that your team will have the home field advantage if they make the World Series?

Do you want to see the National League go home empty-handed at the Midsummer Classic for the 14th year in a row?

Are you a sadistic sociopath who likes messing with people for the pure schadenfreude?

If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, you might want to reconsider how you fill out your All-Star ballot.

If you truly want to see the best players in baseball duke it out on July 13, then by all means vote for the superstars. But if you want to see the Junior Circuit emerge victorious, you might want to think twice about naming Albert Pujols or Chase Utley on your ballot.

This slideshow features the NL player at each position who has the greatest potential to screw up his league’s All-Star team, based on both relative ineptitude and current rank in the voting (if the player you vote for has no chance of winning, it doesn’t matter who you choose).

Injured players have been excluded, because if one of them is voted in, he can be replaced with a substitute of the manager’s choice.

Let this be your guide in your unsportsmanlike attempt to tamper with the biggest night of the baseball season!

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Welcome to the Cleveland Indians Trading Post, a weekly segment meant to help my fellow Tribe fans sort out which of the few familiar faces left on the team won’t be around much longer.

This week’s potential trade bait is Russell Branyan.

The basics

Ranked the 26th-best prospect in baseball before the 1998 season, Branyan bounced between the Indians and the Triple-A Buffalo Bison until 2000, when he became a semi-regular part of Cleveland’s lineup. He was revered as a source of tremendous untapped power, but his all-or-nothing mentality (39 percent career strikeout rate) made him a poor contact hitter (.234 career average).

In 2009, Branyan went to the Mariners (his ninth organization in seven years), and finally got a taste of regular playing time. He excelled, mashing 31 homers with an .867 OPS in 116 games.

Branyan signed a one-year, two million-dollar contact with the Indians before Spring Training, with a five million-dollar mutual option for 2010. This is his fourth separate stint with the Indians organization.

Why he has value

Branyan might not hit the ball with great frequency, but when he does, it goes a long, long way. His moonshots are so massive that even fans of the opposing team often applaud in awe.

He started off slowly as he struggled with injuries and a good old-fashioned slump. On May 10, he was hitting .200 with just two RBI and a .586 OPS. A man whose entire game revolves around the long ball had yet to hit a home run.

But on May 11, Branyan hit two homers in what seems to have been the turning point of his season.

In 86 at-bats since, Branyan has smacked seven long balls—on par with Albert Pujols and Ryan Zimmerman over the same time period—and driven in 13 with a .535 slugging percentage.

Don’t try and call this an unsustainable hot streak, because his numbers in the last 30 days are right in line with what he did last year. Assuming the injuries are behind him (at least for now—Branyan always seems to have something wrong with him), it is the slump that will end up looking fluky.

He’s not your prototypical middle-of-the-order guy, but what team wouldn’t love to have a slugger like him?

Why he’s expendable

The Indians aren’t contending in 2010, so having him around this year doesn’t do the team any good. However, this situation is more complicated than Austin Kearns’ or Jake Westbrook’s because of his option for 2011. And unlike Jhonny Peralta , there’s a legitimate case to be made for the Tribe keeping him around past this season.

No one’s expecting a pennant run in Cleveland next year, but the Indians certainly have the potential to contend in 2011. By the end of next season, the Tribe’s lineup will likely be boosted by prospects like Carlos Santana, Lonnie Chisenhall, and Nick Weglarz, while the rotation could feature the likes of Yohan Pino, Hector Rondon, and Carlos Carrasco. Throw in a healthy Grady Sizemore and another year of seasoning for the Indians’ young current regulars, and you’ve got the makings of at least a respectable team.

If Branyan keeps up this pace, picking his option would be a no-brainer for Cleveland. But remember that it’s a mutual option. If he finishes with 35 homers, he’d probably be able to claim more than five million dollars on the open market.

Plus, if the Indians hold onto him past the Trade Deadline because they plan to pick up his option and he ends up going down with one of his trademark injuries, we’ll have missed a potentially lucrative opportunity.

Where he’d go

A half-season of a power-happy slugger who will make only about a million dollars over that time—what contending team wouldn’t be interested? The most interested teams, though, would probably be those that are looking to replace their injured or struggling first basemen.

The Colorado Rockies certainly fit the bill. For the first time in 14 big-league seasons, franchise icon Todd Helton is looking like a below-average hitter. His .240 batting average and .309 slugging percentage are by far the worst of his storied career. The man who once reached 49 homers and 146 RBI is currently on pace for just three dingers and 31 men knocked in.

The Rockies are sitting in fourth place in the ultra-competitive NL West. Just keeping pace with the Dodgers, Padres, and Giants will be a challenge, let alone making up the lost ground. If they want to return to the playoffs, they can’t keep looking the other way with Helton.

And what of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim? We’ve looked at their offensive struggles before , and things have only gotten worse with the loss of Kendry Morales.

With the Wild Card spot all but claimed by the AL East, the Halos’ only hope of making the playoffs is by winning the wild, wild AL West. They need a bopper to help fend off Texas and Oakland.

Finally, Branyan may be courted by the New York Yankees. The Bombers are looking up at the Rays and have the resilient Red Sox breathing down their necks, and first baseman Mark Teixeira is having the worst season of his career. How long can they wait before pulling the plug on the slumping $180 million man?

What do you think? Will Branyan be traded? Where will he go, and who will we get in return?

More Trading Posts

May 13: Austin Kearns

May 20: Jake Westbrook

May 27: Mitch Talbot

June 3: Jhonny Peralta

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

With the Midsummer Classic just one month away, Bleacher Report’s Featured Columnists are back with an updated mock All-Star vote!

This is part two of this week’s poll: the NL results (for the AL results, click here). For each position, I’ve listed the full vote totals, as well as the current real-life leader(s) and a reminder of who we chose five weeks ago. And, as always, a “featured writer” has submitted commentary for each winning player.

If some of the participants’ names seem unfamiliar in this context, that’s because they probably are; a whopping 44 Featured Columnists voted on at least one league’s ballot, making this the biggest FC Poll yet.

Thanks to everyone who participated! May our actions set an example for the idiots who keep voting for Mark Teixeira.

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Boy, this season is going by fast.

It’s hard to believe that the All-Star game is just one month away. But because it is, and because our last All-Star vote took place in April, Bleacher Report’s MLB Featured Columnists are back with an update.

This is part-one of this week’s poll: the AL results (look for the NL results tomorrow). For each position, I’ve listed the full vote totals, as well as the current real-life leader(s) and a reminder of who we chose last time. And, as always, a “featured writer” has submitted commentary for each winning player.

If some of the participants names seem unfamiliar in this context, that’s because they probably are; a whopping 44 Featured Columnists voted on at least one league’s ballot, making this the biggest FC Poll yet.

Thanks to everyone who participated! May our actions set an example for the idiots who keep voting for Mark Teixeira.

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“Remember where you are so you remember where you were.”–Nationals radio announcer Charlie Slowes after Tuesday night’s game

Wow. Just wow.

What more is there to say about Stephen Strasburg’s debut?

The buzz surrounding the right-handed fireballer reached historic levels before he even signed a professional contract. He was the unquestioned No. 1 pick in the draft last year, jumping to the top of a prospect class that was far more talented than this year’s.

The world watched as Strasburg dominated at Double-A and terrorized at Triple-A. Even his most fervent fans couldn’t have predicted that he would post a pristine 1.30 ERA with a jaw-dropping 65:13 K:BB ratio in 55 minor league innings.

Expectations could not have been higher for this über-prospect’s MLB debut. Nationals Park was sold out. Fans started lining up in the wee hours of the morning to buy tickets.

Strasburg was so good, it was said, he could strike out Chuck Norris—on two pitches.

Now that we’ve seen him pitch, I believe it.

With just 11 prior professional games under his belt, Strasburg breezed through seven innings on just 94 pitches. He earned a win in his MLB debut, giving up just two runs on five hits without issuing a single walk.

Oh, and he racked up 14 strikeouts.

That’s right, 14 strikeouts. He averaged two an inning in his first ever Major League start.

Every batter who Strasburg faced struck out at least once. Five of them saw strike-three twice.

That, my friends, is dominance.

In the words of former Nats radio broadcaster Warner Wolf, “If you picked the season finale of Glee tonight, you lose!”

I wasn’t ready to hand Strasburg an armful of Cy Youngs. I wasn’t prepared to preemptively vote him into the Hall of Fame, or declare him the future best pitcher of all time. But now, that’s changed.

Memo to Cooperstown: start casting Strasburg’s plaque.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Last year, when agent Scott Boras refused to lower the asking price for his client, No. 1 draft pick Stephen Strasburg, there was a realistic chance that the Washington Nationals would not come to terms with the prolific young fireballer.

The most hyped prospect the game has ever seen going unsigned would have been a huge deal, but each year, several hundred drafted players don’t end up signing with the teams that pick them.

If a team doesn’t show serious interest in a guy it picks, sometimes a high school player will decide to give college a try, or an underclassman undergrad will choose to play another season in hopes of earning a more lucrative contract offer in the next year’s draft. Plus, there’s a whole plethora of personal problems that no one can predict.

Most of them disappear and are never really heard from again; the executives who snubbed them sleep just fine knowing that “the one that got away” wouldn’t make for a very exciting fish story.

But a small minority end up haunting those scouts’ dreams for the rest of their lives.

Some snubbed stars are now top prospects. Others are perennial All-Stars, and a few are unquestioned studs who would have dramatically changed the futures of the franchises who forgot about them.

Here are the 20 most regrettable unsigned draft picks in MLB history.

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Welcome to the Cleveland Indians Trading Post, a weekly segment meant to help my fellow Tribe fans sort out which of the few familiar faces left on the team won’t be around much longer.

This week’s potential trade bait is Jhonny Peralta.

The basics

Signed in 1999, Peralta made his MLB debut in 2003 but did not claim a permanent place on the Indians roster until 2005, when he replaced Omar Vizquel at shortstop.

Now Cleveland’s starting third baseman, he’s hitting .247/.330/.420 with four homers and 22 RBI so far this year. He’s making $4.6 million in 2010, with a $7 million club option for 2011. Also noteworthy: his teammates apparently call him “Guitar,” for reasons I can’t even begin to imagine.

Why he has value

He’s (usually) an above-average hitting infielder with 25-plus homer potential. Interested yet?

After a miserable start this year (.154/.308/.269 with one homer and four RBI over the first three weeks of the season), Peralta has hit .287/.341/.484 in his last 31 games. That’s nothing to shake a stick at.

But Peralta’s ceiling is much higher. In 2005, he hit .292/.366/.520, smacking 24 homers and racking up 4.5 WAR. A New York Times article said he was a better hitter than Derek Jeter and Michael Young. If he could do that at age 23, there’s no reason he can’t do it at age 28.

His defense might be a bit of a problem. After posting the first positive UZR of his career in 2009, Peralta’s glove—never a real point of pride amongst Indians fans—has been worse than ever this season.

UZR has him at -6.4 so far in 2010, with a nauseating -21.2 UZR/150. The former is the third-worst figure in the league, and the worst of any third baseman in the game. UZR ranks his range (-8.5) as the second-worst in all of baseball, better only than Matt Kemp.

Most Clevelanders (myself included) will happily tell you that it’s impossible to underestimate Peralta’s glove, but the reality is he probably won’t be this bad for long. He’s never put up defensive numbers this awful before, and he spent most of his career playing shortstop, a much more demanding position.

There’s no denying that his D has been bad, but for a team in need of an offensive upgrade, the trade-off would probably be worth it.

Why he’s expendable

It makes zero sense for the Indians to pick up Peralta’s option for next year, so he’ll be gone after the season anyway. The Tribe has all but raised the white flag for 2010, so keeping him around for another four months doesn’t really do the team any good.

If we passively let him walk instead of actively shipping him out, it’s unlikely that we’ll get anything in return. Offering Peralta arbitration before he hits the market would be risky, and there’s no guarantee that Cleveland would get draft pick compensation if they did (there’s no guarantee that he would qualify as even a Type B Free Agent).

But most importantly, Peralta isn’t very well liked in Cleveland. From the get-go, he was saddled with the unenviable task of replacing Omar Vizquel, a fan favorite and the last major holdover from the “Glory Days” of the 90’s.

Jaded by the flawless fielding of an 11-time Gold Glove winner, Tribe fans have been particularly perturbed by Guitar’s deficient defense (seriously, how did he get that nickname?). And while Vizquel’s bat never boomed, he was fast and could get on base—plus, did I mention he won 11 Gold Gloves?

In addition, Peralta’s inconsistency and sloppiness have made him the perfect symbol for everything that’s gone wrong with the team since the rebuilding process began. He’s a scapegoat, but the reputation isn’t entirely undeserved.

No Clevelanders would moan and groan at his departure, as we did with CC Sabathia and Victor Martinez; most of us would consider it a favor.

Where he’d go

Any discussion of teams in need of a boost from the hot corner has to start with the Chicago Cubs.

After averaging 29 homers and a .919 OPS from 2005-09, Aramis Ramirez has completely collapsed in 2010, hitting .162 with just hour homers and a nauseating .496 OPS. If the Cubs are serious about making a run at the playoffs, they’ll need to patch up the gaping hole in their depth chart.

A couple time zones away, the Oakland Athletics are also in need of an offensive upgrade.

The A’s already have a Cleveland export, Kevin Kouzmanoff, playing third base. He’s been anemic offensively this year, but his superb defense gives him a larger margin of error than most hitters would have.

He would be better used replacing struggling DH Jack Cust, a player who has so far failed to fulfill his one role (hitting). Such a move would also nullify Peralta’s fielding follies.

The Peralta sweepstakes might add fuel to a division rivalry: a few hundred miles south, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are dealing with similar struggles from Brandon Wood, Howie Kendrick, and Erick Aybar. A steady infield bat could save the struggling Halos (the Rally Monkey can’t do everything by himself).

What do you think? Will the Indians trade Peralta? Where will he go, and who would we get in return?

More Trading Posts

May 13: Austin Kearns

May 20: Jake Westbrook

May 27: Mitch Talbot

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

About a month ago, I wrote an unintentionally controversial article about some puzzling patterns in Derek Jeter’s early season numbers.

There were two main contradictions within his statistics: that he was on pace for the best power numbers of his career while posting his highest ground ball rate ever, and that he was posting a career-low strikeout rate while swinging at a dramatically larger proportion of pitches thrown outside of the strike zone.

My critics claimed that I was reading too much into the stats too early in the season. Under normal circumstances I would have agreed, but it was more than the numbers themselves that were puzzling. When a person hits more home runs on fewer fly balls and makes better contact with worse pitch selectiveness, the results contradict the logic, no matter how small the sample size.

Four weeks later, I think it’s appropriate to revisit the situation and see how things are shaping up.

Overall, the discrepancies have become less dramatic, but the contradictory trends are still in place.

As I predicted, his power numbers have come back down to earth. He’s now on pace for 16 homers (down from 26 at last writing) and 98 RBI (down from 130). Neither would be a career high, but both would be above his norm.

But Jeter’s unprecedented groundball tendencies haven’t abated. Over two-thirds of balls off his bat (67 percent) have been on the ground—by far the highest such figure in the American League. While that’s a slight decline from the 71 percent mark he posted last month, it’s by far the highest of his career and a full 10 points above what he posted from 2002-09.

Meanwhile, his 16 percent HR/FB rate is the highest it’s been since 2005. Coincidentally, the 2005 season was the only other time in his career that his groundball rate hit 60 percent. So basically, the more he puts the ball on the ground, the more likely it is that each fly ball he hits will clear the fences. I’m not sure if that’s really a contradiction, but it’s certainly an odd correlation.

One thing is clear: this isn’t a common trend. This year, Jeter is the only player in the AL who has both a groundball rate over 50 percent and a HR/FB rate over nine percent.

But the more dramatic (and interesting) statistical oddity stems from the collapse of Jeter’s plate discipline.

Over his career, Jeter has been one of the most selective hitters in baseball, hacking at less than 20 percent of balls out of the strike zone. This year, that number has ballooned to 31.3 percent. Simply put, he’s chasing bad pitches. That’s not an insult or a criticism—that’s an indisputable, objective fact.

The sample size isn’t too small to start drawing conclusions. Jeter has seen 288 pitches outside the zone and swung at 90 of them.

As one might expect, this trigger-happy approach has had a negative effect on his walk rate, which, at five percent, is a career low. It’s less than half of the walk rate he posted last year.

Similarly, you’d expect his strikeout rate to shoot up into the stratosphere, right?

Wrong.

While Jeter’s 14 percent whiff rate is a sizable increase from last month’s nine percent figure, it’s still inexplicably lower than it ought to be, given Jeter’s history and his newfound aggressiveness.  How is that possible?

My first thought upon revisiting these numbers was that, in addition to swinging at more pitches off the plate, Jeter was starting to be less discriminatory with pitches thrown in the zone. That made sense, and I was embarrassed that I hadn’t thought of it a month ago.

But it turns out that’s not right either—in fact, it’s actually the opposite. This year, Jeter has chased a career-low 69 percent of balls in the zone, compared to 74 percent for his career. Simply put, Jeter is swinging at more bad pitches and fewer good ones.

I plugged in the numbers and found that, while 80 percent of the pitches he’s swung at since 2002 were good, just 69 percent of balls he’s chased in 2010 would have been called strikes.

And yet, Jeter’s 86 percent contact rate is the best of his career.

This doesn’t make sense.

I’m not insulting Jeter, I’m not criticizing Jeter, and I’m definitely not suggesting that Jeter is using steroids, as I was somehow accused of doing last month. I am merely a fan of baseball statistics who was drawn in by this series of internally inconsistent abnormalities.

Derek Jeter is making the best contact of his career. That’s a fact.

Derek Jeter is swinging at the worst pitches of his career. That’s a fact.

But that Derek Jeter is making the best contact of his career while swinging at the worst pitches of his career—that’s not just a fact, that’s a mystery.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com