You know the drill with baseball bloggers: we like to talk about players who are either really, really good, or (and perhaps preferably -- overall, we're pretty misanthropic) really, really bad.  But what about the guys in the middle of the pack? Hey, they have value, too -- a surprising amount, given what they often go for on the free agent market.. So, with some help from my good friend the FanGraphs WAR leaderboards, let's take a look at the 11 most average position players in the majors leagues at the moment.

One the things I like about the generic concept of Wins Above Replacement (WAR) as formulated by Tom Tango
(and implemented in different ways at FanGraphs and Rally's historical WAR site) is its relative simplicity , particularly with regard to position players, is its simplicity. While the derivations of offensive runs above average, defensive value, and positional adjustments are a bit more complex, once you have the data, the basic math is basically just a bit of prorating, adding, substracting, and multiplying. And if you aren't concerned with replacement level, to figure out of a player is above or below average, once you add everything up -- offense, defense, position, and baserunning (FanGraphs has not yet implemented a baserunning statistic other than steals, which is included in their offensive linear weights), figuring out if a player is average is easy: 0 is average, so anything above zero is above average, and anything below zero is below average. Simple enough.

With that out of the way, let's get back to the celebration of adequacy. What I did was simple enough. I went the the FanGraphs position player value leaderboards (all data is as of Monday morning, June 22), sorted by runs above replacement (RAR). To get "average" out of this, I simply subtracted the "Replacement" runs from the RAR total. This gives value runs above/below average.

Finding the "average-est" player was simple -- find the player whose RAR-Replacement number was closest to zero. Then I simply took the five players above and below him for a total of 11 players. So, yeah, it isn't terribly precise, but it serves my purpose of getting a group of players together to see some of the different "flabors of league average" (didn't someone use this phrase recently in the sabermetric blogosphere?).

So here are the 11 "Most Average" position players in the MLB according to FanGraphs, from "bottom" to "top." Remeber, these players are ranked by absolute distance from average, not by overall value (although that is listed as well).

11) Adam Dunn, Washington Nationals.
RAR: 8.9
Replacement: 9.9
1.0 Runs Below Average

I've written about Dunn recently, so I don't want to belabor the point. He's been an offensive monster so far this season (+15.7 runs above average), but his defense has simply been atrocious (-13.1) in left field and first base (-3.6 positional adjustment). He's one of the few players whose value would almost certainly be greater as a DH -- heck, he'd probably be above average there. The sabermetric lovefest for Dunn is pretty much over -- don't worry about the strikeouts, just catch the ball, Adam!

10) TIE Randy Winn, San Francisco Giants
RAR: 9.8
Replacement: 9.2
0.6 Runs Above Average

Even among underrated players, Winn is underrated. It's probably a combination of being a corner outfielder without being a power bat and being on mostly bad teams during his career. In addition, he's pretty old... but despite being above average, this actually is a down year for Winn (prorated for 600 PAs, he's almost exactly league average) due to a bad bat despite his typically good defense. Other than a down 1.4 year in 2006, he's been consistently above average for years, averaging about 3.5 WAR a season from 2002-2008. Randy Winn has never made $10M in a season...

10) TIE Alexei Ramirez, Chicago White Sox
RAR: 9.6
Replacement: 9.0
0.6 Runs Above Average

This is a bit of a surprise, particularly given how badly Ramirez's bat has tailed off this season so far. Despite having a pretty bad year defensively at 2B in 2008 (-8.3 UZR), the White Sox moved Ramirez to SS in 2009. So far (albeit in a small sample size for defensive stats) he is +2.7 runs at the hardest defensive position on the field. Once again, the White Sox defy sabermetric conventional wisdom and win.

8) TIE, Kendry Morales, Los Angeles Angels
RAR: 8.1
Replacement: 8.6
0.6 Runs Below Average

No, he isn't Mark Teixeira, but despite the Angels' seemingly-typical efforts to not play their young, cost-controlled players, they didn't have a choice this season. Morales hasn't been a superstar, but he's been capable on both sides of the ball.

8) TIE, David DeJesus, Kansas City Royals
RAR: 9.5
Replacement: 9.0
0.5 Runs Above Average

Yay! More Royals content! Seriously, I'm a DDJ fan, but this surprised me a bit a few weeks ago. Yes, I assumed he'd be a good defender in LF, but he has been pretty dreadful with the bat (.306 wOBA). Still,8.7 runs above average, even in LF, is very valuable. DDJ's offense, like the Royals in general, has disappointed even my relatively low expectations (as opposed to all the uninformed "next Rays!" hype out there before the season started), but his defense has more than made up for it. No, at the moment he isn't on pace for his usual ~3 WAR season, but his bat is starting to heat up a bit, so it's not out of the realm of possibility. He's above average now, anyway. He's sort of an American League version of Randy Winn --  a singles-hitting outfielder who is a good defender in the corner, but not quite good enough any more to play CF regularly. They do a lot of things well, nothing great. Without looking at FanGraphs, how many people would have guessed that DeJesus and Winn have each been more valuable than Adam Dunn this season?

6) J.J. Hardy, Milwaukee Brewers
RAR: 9.0
Replacement: 8.8
0.4 Runs Above Average

Are you seeing a trend here? Another guy whose numbers with the bat (.283 wOBA) would  make you think he would be utterly useless so far this season. But he's actually been above average by being a defensive monster at the most difficult defensive position on the diamond (catcher is its own thing). Playing time is the only thing keeping him from being more valuable overall than

5) TIE Rafael Furcal, Los Angeles Dodgers
RAR: 9.5
Replacement: 9.0
0.2 Runs Above Average

Well, at least he's been healthy. Yes, he's been above average despite being almost as bad with the bat (.295 wOBA) as Hardy, but this isn't what the Dodgers were hoping for when they gave him the big contract in the offseason. Still, his fielding has been very good. Note to GMs: Shortstops who can field are valuable. Still, while average players are valuable, and the season isn't half-over, this doesn't bode well for the future of Furcal's contract. Who would have thought Ned Colletti would overpay for an aging, overrated veteran?

5) TIE, Bengie Molina, San Francisco Giants
RAR: 8.1
Replacement: 8.3
0.2 Runs Below Average

I thought about excluding all catchers, since FanGraphs doesn't have a running catcher defense stat at this time (I'll be posting on a provisional one soon), but hey, it's another Giant! As you might expect, the positional adjustment for Molina is the highest of all the players encountered here.

5) Carlos Lee, Houston Astros
RAR: 9.0
Replacement: 9.2
0.2 Runs Below Average

Sure, he's almost average. And he does have 43 RBI.... (ahem) Still, 18.5 million dollars isn't what it used to be.

2) Jhonny Peralta, Cleveland Indians
RAR: 9.0
Replacement: 9.2
0.1 Runs Below Average

Jhonny isn't hitting that well this season, and he's been playing more 3B this season than in the past, but believe it or not, UZR says he's been better at SS (+2.4) than 3B (-1.6) so far this season. That seems unlikely to persist given a larger sample. It will be interesting to see how the year rounds out for this perienally-bouncing-between-over-and-underrated player.

So here we are... the most average-est position player in the major leagues as of this writing....

1) Paul Konerko, Chicago White Sox
RAR: 9.0
Replacement: 9.0
EXACTLY Average

Tremendous work by Paul. He isn't exactly tearing the cover off of the ball, but he hasn't been terrible (.342 wOBA in a hitters' park). Decent fielding so far at 1B (+3.7) although at this pace it would be a career year. Still... to average right on the mark... that isn't easy my friends. Sure,  at this rate, the contract is a bit to big ($12M this season), but hey, at least he isn't Carlos Lee!

So there is is my friends... the most average position player in the majors at the moment... join us at some random time in the future when we again venture into the realm of pure adequacy.

Appendix: Here is a quick table of the players discussed above with the FanGraphs data used as of today. "Avg" is their current runs above/below average (RAR-Replace). Remember that the players are sorted above by their "absolute" distance from average (0.0), which is how this ranking is sorted.