The discussion of the NLC rankings generated by bloggers from teams around the division was so lively that Cory of the Pittsburgh Lumber Company has continued along the same lines with a position-by-position comparison of the teams. Today he talks about the catchers and first basemen.

You can read the ground rules and the see the assumptions he's made about who will be playing each position for each team here. This is worth checking in to because the numbers he uses are from a projection mechanism rather than, say, 2006. So if you think it's pretty odd that, for example, David Ross could have 247 ABs last season when he was the #2 catcher and only 197 next season when he's the #1, you don't have any room to argue. ZiPS said so.

Me, I'm going to get right down to saying why he's wrong, starting with the catcher position. Cory says:

[STL] Molina	423 AB	.232/.279/.338	8 HR	53 RBI	1 SB	+ Def
[HOU] Ausmus	328 AB	.232/.309/.284	1 HR	31 RBI	2 SB	+ Def
[CIN] Ross	197 AB	.234/.326/.482	12 HR	37 RBI	0 SB
[MIL] Estrada	401 AB	.277/.323/.404	8 HR	49 RBI	0 SB
[PIT] Paulino	452 AB	.272/.327/.378	8 HR	49 RBI	1 SB
[CHC] Barrett	403 AB	.285/.349/.481	15 HR	63 RBI	0 SB

Eerily similar, no? I’d split them into four groups: The complete player (Barrett), the decent bats (Estrada and Paulino) with promise, the light-hitting gloves (Molina and Ausmus) and should be Javier Valentin (Ross). Even Barrett has his concerns, though, as he missed significant time to injury in 2006. Johnny Estrada should be a nice fit in Milwaukee, but Damian Miller will see playing time, too. Paulino has the most upside in the group, but that also means that he could flop. (The homer in me says that he won’t.) Ausmus and Ross are both one-tool players. If I had a choice, I’d go with the glove man over the “power” bat.

Now, to assign a ranking system to those numbers and categories. I’m going go from one to 10 (bigger is better), starting with 10 for the best player in the group and subtracting for the drop-off from player to player. (This is where you call me out for being an idiot.)

CHC=10 | MIL=7 | PIT=7 | STL=5 | HOU=3 | CIN=3

If you follow the link to the page where this comparison is done, you'll see this sentence in the introductory paragraph:

“Baseball is driven by numbers”

I'd like to know how you can claim that baseball is driven by numbers, list the numbers above, and rank David Ross last among them. You're talking about a guy with half the number of ABs of the other guys in the list, but more home runs than all but one. In fact, I'm failing to see a single category in which Ross comes in last, let alone support for ranking him last over all.

I guess that the sin of being a “power” bat must be his downfall. Given that driving in a lot of runs is bad, plus my suspicion that Ross is actually more powerful than the magic 8 ball says, he probably ought to be ranked even lower. A negative number, maybe.

And while I enjoy a nice jab in favor of Javier Valentín as much as the next person (much more than the next person, in fact), it doesn't make sense here. By his own projections, half the time the catcher *is* Javy. In that case, it would make a whole lot more sense to combine Javy's number with Ross's before doing the comparison.

If you want to rag on the Reds about their catching situation, you don't have to project (and then ignore) the numbers. There's plenty of actual material there.

For example, how about the fact that Krivsky seems hell-bent on keeping three catchers on the active roster? Adding in Chad Moeller's contribution, small as it is likely to be, wouldn't do anyone any good. (Unless I'm right about that power-is-bad thing.)

Or, considering that manager Jerry Narron used 140 different starting line-ups last season, there's a non-zero probability that he'll have Scott Hatteberg or Ryan Freel catching a game at some point. Where's the projection on that?

But the fact is that the catcher's position has been a major strength for the Reds for two years running, and there's no reason to think that's going to change in 2007.

So, Kerry Wood is already hurt:

Oft-injured Kerry Wood is out again this time because of a flub in a hot tub.

The Chicago Cubs pitcher is not expected to throw off the mound for a few days after he slipped this week getting out of a hot tub at home. Wood landed on his stomach and chest.

That's an injury I hadn't foreseen when talking about the Baby Bear Boo-Boos. Note to Cubs: buy the man some Aqua Socks.