Did you know that in just over 250 plate appearances this season that Jamey Carroll is at 1.9 WAR (Wins Above Replacement) this season? For perspective, with the way FanGraphs does it, we'd expect a league-average position player to be about 2.0 WAR over 600 PAs... And to think I was just mocking this guy the other night as a scrappy white utility guy a la Willie Bloomquist... So how good can we estimate Carroll to be at the moment?

Jamey Carroll

#11 / Second Base / Cleveland Indians

Height: 5-9

Weight: 170

Bats: R

Throws: R

Born: Feb 18, 1974

I won't got through Carroll's biography here -- if anyone has some juicy nuggets or good stories about him, feel free to add them in the comments. He was originally an Expo, spent a season in Washington, then a couple seasons with the Rockies, then 2008 and this season with Cleveland. From 2006-present, he has had 534, 268, 402, and 253 (as of this writing in 2009) plate appearances. You'd assume he'd be a replacement-level scrub, right? In his 0.1 2007, maybe, but in 2006 (the only season he had something approaching full-time play) he was 3.1 WAR. In 2008 he was 1.4 in 2004 PAs (about 2/3s of a season), and as mentioned, he's at 1.9 so far this season.

Maybe one season would would make you think it was a fluke, i.e., a random variation from his true talent. It happens. But three out of four seasons is different.  While he's generally been a below average hitter, Carroll's a good defender, especially at 2B, which is what he came up as. But he's pretty good elsewhere.  We'll leave his OF numbers alone, as he's played just over 60 innings there in his career, but his career UZR/150s by infield position are: 9.1 at 2B, 1.3 at 3B, -6.7 at SS. The biggest sample is at 2B, followed by 3B. 

Carroll is in his option year for the Indians, making $2.5M while providing about $8.4M in value so far for Cleveland. He's a free agent after this season, and I thought it would be interesting to crudely estimate what his true talent is at the moment following the basic outlines of the method for calculating WAR outlined by Tom Tango.

As for his offense, his wOBAs from 2006-2009 are .339, .284, .319, .327. Weighting the seasons 5-4-3-2 and regressing against 220 PAs of league average as per The Book, we get an estimated wOBA skill of .325, or about -2 runs above (or below, in this case) average per 700 PA.

Defense is more difficult. Since this is an admittedly crude estimation, I won't go to the Fans Scouting Report, but will just use his UZR/150 numbers for  2B, regressed against 80 games of league average per season.  I get Carroll as being about a +5 2B per 162 games.

He's a good baserunner, too. A very quick look at his baserunning numbers makes him look like about a +1 baserunner with steals excluded (they are included in wOBA).

Splitting the different between his Al and NL seasons, we'll use a replacement level of 22.5 runs (stand-in for 2.25 wins).

Adding it up: -2 offense + 5 defense +2.5 positional adjustment +1 baserunning +22.5  replacement level = 29 * 80% playing time = about a 2.3 WAR player at the moment. No, it doesn't adjust for parks. Nor do I really deal with aging -- we might expect him to drop by half a win a season, so maybe he's more like 1.8 WAR next season when he's a free agent.

Still, a quick look makes a guy I thought was a 26th man look like he's got the talent of a league-average player. No, he's not "awesome." But a lot of teams have starter who aren't league average at 2B, and certainly not at $2.5M. Nice job, Mark Shapiro. And nice job, Jamey Carroll.