So there's been a lot of discussion of third basemen lately. Who is the best? Well, Rolen - obviously. But how do the rest of them rank?

Using the same method as my CF rankings, here's how I rank them.
Rolen 4.07
Chavez 3.73
Rodriguez 3.4
Beltre 2.93
Lowell 2.73
Ramirez 2.73
Mora 2.67
Blalock 2.4

There's such a huge spread because, despite the fact that they're all hitting very well this year, the guys at the bottom play truly attrocious defense. Beltre plays great D, but he was truly awful with the bat before this year. Rodriguez also suffers, because this evaluation method only allows a player to excel so much in each category and had nowhere higher to go in his OPS3 ranking than an A+.

Also, I did some slightly different things on defense. Since A-Rod and Mora are in their first years at 3b, I compared their ZRs to the ZRs of the others (which would have all earned very similar grades to the defensive # I used) and approximated a score for each of them. I also averaged Rolen's def # of the last three years, instead of just using last year, because that score was clearly an outlier.

The A's are currently up 6-4 on the Yanks. It's great to see them finally doing some hitting against quality pitchers. We seem to have had trouble with that this year, but the bats might just be finally coming around .... here's hoping it's not just a brief hot streak.

I'll be out of town until next Monday, so I won't be posting in the interim.

--update--

Yep, it happens ... a lineup like that, it's insane.

but the game ended just in time for me to switch to ESPN2 and watch Jimmy Rollins hit an inside the park homerun, which was cool.


--update--

Wow, I just saw my second inside the park job of the night, by Dustin Mohr - exciting stuff.

Kotsay, again? Yep. That's right.

MVP? Nope.
New question: Best CF in the AL?

With Beltran and Cameron joining Jones, Edmonds, Pierre, Finley ... and Griffey in the senior circuit, the battle for top center fielder in the AL is wide open. When evaluating the glory position of decades past, we cannot discount the importance of defense, both in defining the glorious legacy of the Mays, DiMaggios, and Mantles of yesteryear and in overcoming the slowest of foot sluggers in the corner spots.

To evaluate defense, we'll use a slight variation on the "Cedeno Method" envisioned by Avkash (http://theraindrops.weblogs.us/archives/015441.html). For a number of reasons, I do not believe that Win Shares is appropriate to combine with UZR, Rate2, and the Probabilistic Method, so I just averaged the last three numbers, without Win Shares, yielding slightly than Avkash found. See Avkash's article for an explanation of the various methods and how we used them.

In addition I used OPS and three year OPS (01-03) to measure offense. I assigned each player considered a grade in each "class" based on how well they performed relative to their "classmates". Grades were assigned to specific intervals.

example for Defensive Number:
A+ = 22+
A = 18-21
A- = 14-17
B+ = 11-13
B = 8-10
B- = 4-7
C+ = 1-3
C = -2-0

I then figured a GPA for each player, giving double weight to each offensive category, since offense is so much more important than defense. One of the first things I will attempt to discern a more exact proportion that these should be weighted against one another. I weighted present OPS and past OPS equally because the present OPS is more important, being that it is what they are doing right now, but past OPS is statistically more valid because it has a much larger sample size.

For AL, only, I considered Kotsay, Hunter, Wells, and Damon.
The grades they received were (OPS, OPS 3, Def#)
Kotsay
B+, B, A+
Hunter
C, B+, B
Wells
B, A, C
Damon
A, C, B+

GPAs
Kotsay: 3.57
Wells: 3
Damon: 2.93
Hunter: 2.93

Now, just for fun, lets see how they compare to their NL counterparts.
I considered the above players, plus Beltran, Cameron, Jones, and Edmonds.

The grades they received were (OPS, OPS 3, Def#)
Kotsay
B, B-, A+
Hunter
C, B, B
Wells
B-, B+, C
Damon
B+, C-, B+
Beltran
A, A, B+
Cameron
C+, B-, A+
Jones
B+, B+, A
Edmonds
A+, A+, B

GPAs
Edmonds: 4.06
Beltran: 3.87
Jones: 3.46
Kotsay: 3.12
Cameron: 2.85
Wells: 2.80
Damon: 2.67
Hunter: 2.60

The NL center fielders are certainly the class of the game - but Kotsay looks great compared to his brethren in the AL.
Please offer any comments and criticisms.