Jeff Francoeur has indeed been an above-average defender according to UZR/150 (found at FanGraphs). He has a 6.2 UZR/150 in right field, which means he makes about six more plays per 150 opportunities than the average right fielder.

There are four components to WAR for non-catcher position players: batting runs, fielding runs, positional adjustment, and replacement level adjustment.

Francoeur has mostly been a poor offensive player and he plays a non-premium position, so he’s been docked heavily in that regard. Over his career, this is what the components of his 6.6 WAR (over five seasons) look like:

-27.7 batting runs
27.8 fielding runs
98.0 replacement runs
-31.5 position runs

That comes out to 66.6 overall “runs” and roughly 10 of them add up to a win. So he’s been worth about 1.3 WAR on average per season, but he’s been worth -1.1 over the past two seasons combined because his fielding has actually gotten worse:

2007: 16.9 UZR/150
2008: -4.9
2009: -5.9

The Werth topic is getting almost as ridiculous as the Cliff Lee trade. As much as I like reading most of the Phillies blogs I visit those topics always seem to itch me the wrong way. A couple examples would be a ridiculous blogpost to sign Johnny Damon, trade Victorino, and keep Werth(What the hell?!). Another was a post that “As of 2012, we will not have both Werth and Howard” under contract.

Now I don’t look at or use sabermetrics too often so I’m sure there are plenty of valid arguments(several posted on this blog), but in the end, as fun as it is for all of us to play arm-chair GM, we aren’t Ruben. I’m hoping it settles down once the season starts because it only gives headaches.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Francoeur an above average defensive player? Going by Phylan’s explanation it seems like WAR penalizes players who aren’t skilled with both the bat and glove.

Like Cap. Ave said the other day on here, the Braves did their homework on these guys before signing them. And with 3B depth(finally), expect Chipper to get the rest he needs.

kmart, WAR stands for “wins above replacement.” “Replacement” refers to a replacement level player — the fringe MLB scrub that you can bring up from your AAA team for league minimum salary. WAR takes the production of a player on offense and defense, converts it to a common scale, and measures how many wins you add by taking the player in question and putting him at a given position instead of that replacement level guy.

For example, Jeff Francoeur was just about a replacement level player last year — he had 0.1 WAR. If the Phillies had played him in right field, instead of Jayson Werth (4.7 WAR), they would have lost about 4.6 wins. It’s a way of evaluating the total contribution that players make on an even playing field, if that makes sense.

2/3 picked a team with a worse pen, defense, starting staff, and possibly a worse lineup than the Braves?

Tim Hudson, Jair Jurrjens, Tommy Hanson, Kenshin Kawakami, and Derek Lowe.

Anibal Sanchez, Ricky Nolasno, Josh Johnsn, ???, ???

The Marlins strike out way too much. Aside from Hanley and Cantu, pretty much everyone has trouble getting on base(unless Coghlan keeps it up, which I don’t see).

I’ll take this lineup over the Marlins anyday:

Nate McLouth
Martin Prado
Chipper Jones
Troy Glaus
Brian McCann
Yunel Escobar
Jason Heyward
Matt Diaz/Melky Cabrera

Seriously, that’s a pretty balanced lineup(assuming it can stay healthy and Diaz gets most of the time in LF over Melky)

I see no reason for anyone to pick the Marlins over the Braves at this point.

That’s without including base running.

Look, I love Jayson Werth (I believe I even started with “I would love to see us re-sign Werth”), I think he’s been fantastic out in RF for us since he’s been here. But I can easily see the Phillies letting him go at the end of the year. As much as I like Werth, I think Howard brings more to the team. You may not like his fielding, but it was very, very solid last year, and Howard will always put up better numbers than Werth. I would rather have Howard around for the rest of his career than Werth. Remember, this is just opinion. You obviously feel oppositely, but geeze man, you don’t need to get so worked up about it.