As you surely know by now, the Dodgers signed Orlando Hudson to an heckuva incentive-laden one year deal. Coupled with their (re-) signing of Rafael Furcal earlier this offseason, the Dodgers pretty much gobbled up the best middle infielders on the free agent market (only because Mark Ellis resigned with Oakland without going to free agency though... [sigh]).

I discussed my personal love for the O-Dog earlier, but how does the Dodgers double play combo stack up against the rest of the NL? Are they now the best? Let's explore this in a series of graphs.  To begin, here's a mystery chart that has the Dodger's middle infield near the top of the NL:

...but that's not overall player quality. I'll reveal what that is at the end of the article.

One really can't evaluate any deal, free agent, trade, or whatever, without taking money into account, I'm not going to do it here. In fact, I'm not evaluating the signing at all. I just want to stack up the NL double play combos going into 2009 against each other, rather than as individual players.

It's sort of an arbitrary way to pair two players togehter -- why not best pitcher-catcher combo? Best center fielder and first baseman? There's no law that I know of that says the same value at two particular positions is better than having that value elsewhere. But traditionally we associate double play partners with each other (Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker, for example), and it's a fun exercise. I'm sure Ned Colletti thinks it matters.

(Oh don't worry, it's not as long as it looks)

...

(ahem)

Method

To evaluate the quality of the NL starting middle infield for 2009, I first got the projected starters from Baseball Prospectus (although I put Skip Schumaker in for the Cardinals because that's, well, a mess ove rt here).

For the offensive projections, I averaged  wOBA numbers from CHONE (available from FanGraphs and averaged that with each player's wOBA that a generated from the PECOTA spreadsheet. (I like ZiPS just as much as the other two, but the whole projection isn't out yet, and I didn't want to use it if I didn't have it for all the players). I then used that wOBA number to generate offensive linear weights (or wOBA Runs Above Average) per 625 PAs, or about what  a player would get in about 150 games.

For defense I simply used CHONE's projections (except in a couple cases where he didn't have them, then I made a quick pseudo-projection from the player's FanGraphs data) which are the best currently out for the general public. Although I don't think I can best him, I started working on my own defensive projections just using bUZR from FanGraphs for fun, but it was taking too much time for this one article.

To get each player's WAR (Wins Above Replacement) for the season, then, I added in the position adjustment (+2.5 for 2B, +7.5 for SS), divided the total offense + defense + position by 10 to convert to wins, then added 1.8 wins for replacement level. Why 1.8? In the post that lauched a thousand uberstats, Tom Tango explains that per 700 PAs, AL position players have a replacement level bonus of 2.5 wins and NL position players get a replacement level bonus of 2 wins to account for the Al's superior pitching. So I prorated that 2 win replacement level for 625 PAs (yes, I probably should have done something similar for the positional adjustments, but it's all the same here and only a couple of runs so sue me. No, not really).

I did not adjust for playing time. For guys like Hudson and Furcal in particular, given their recent junury histories and age, this is a consideration, but I thought we'd just go straight up and see who is "the best when they're on the field." Also, adjusting for playing time is hard.

Here are the starters at 2B and SS I have for each team. Yes, I'm sure I'm off on some teams, especially the Cardinals:

CIN: Brandon Phillips, Alex Gonzalez
COL: Clint Barmes, Troy Tulowitzki
PHI: Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins
FLO: Dan Uggla, Hanley Ramirez
ARI: Felipe Lopez, Stephen Drew
PIT: Freddy Sanchez, Jack Wilson
SFN: Kevin Frandsen, Edgar Renteria
ATL: Kelly JOhnson, Yunel Escobar
HOU: Kazou Matsui, Miguel Tejada
NYN: Luis Castillo, Jose Reyes
SDN: Matt Antonelli, David Eckstein
CHN: Mike Fontenot, Ryan Theriot
LAD: Orlando Hudson, Rafael Furcal
WAS: Ronnie Belliard, Cristian Guzman
MIL: Ricky Weeks, J.J. Hardy
SLN: Skip Schumaker, Khalil Greene

So get ready for some Graphing!

Offense

Well, that's incredibly hard to read, but you can open it ina new wins to get a better look... You can see that while O-Dog and Furcal project as above average hitters, they're not close to Milwaukee, much less Florida (the best) and Philadelphia (the second best). Actually, they aren't even projected to be as good as the Mets, who are sporting Jose Reyes, a stud who is brought down by the Corpse of Luis Castillo.

Fielding

Also tough to read, so click away... Hudson and Furcal are projected by CHONE to each be a bit above average, which isn't in line with their reputations. But the truth is bUZR and other stats see them as each dropping off considerably in recent years, so CHONE's use of the Fans Scouting Report probably helped them a great deal. Florida's pair, as one would expect, give away a fair amount of value on defense. Colorado is the best. Philadelphia is second best on defense, as they are on offense, but that's no surprise...

Total

Well, this is anticlimactic...

(AHEM)

Wow, that's not even close. Here's a nice little table with the data sorted...

The Phillies have the best combo, by far. They're the second best defenders and hitters, and their opposite numbers in that respect are no match on the other side of the ball. Utley himself projects as the best hitter and defender (at his position) of the whole group. It will be  interesting to see how his health is for the start of the season.

As you can see, the Dodgers (half-) new middle infield is just above the middle of the pack. That doesn't make it a bad pair of signings, but they aren't "the best in the NL" Indeed, according to the projections here, they aren't even the best in their division -- the Rockies are. And the displacement of Blake Dewitt (no superstar, but not replacement level, either) by Hudson and also Casey Blake must also be taken in to account. Still, the Dodgers have put themselves in a good position to win the Weak West again. Now, adding Manny Ramirez would make them almost a shoo-in...

While dear ol' Ned Colletti didn't get "the best out there," he did the best he could. Hey, and remember that first graph? Well, it does show the Dodgers' MI combo, if not at the top, then very near. What did that measure? Here's the full version:

Now that's the Snakeskin Boots we know and love, even though (predictably) Ed Wade beat him to the punch.