River Avenue Blues

River Ave. Blues » Elias Rankings

Matsui noticeably absent from Elias Rankings

by 76 Comments

Elias Sports Bureau’s free agent rankings were released earlier this afternoon, and they contain a few surprises. Despite numerous projections placing him firmly in the Type B bracket, Yanks’ DH Hideki Matsui is an unranked free agent. Although Matsui missed much of 2008 with injuries, he rebounded to have a stellar 2009 regular season campaign, and over the last two years — the period considered by the rankings — he hit .282/.368/.473 with 37 home runs and 135 RBI. Meanwhile, Xavier Nady, who played in just seven games this year, is a Type B free agent.

In unsurprising news, Johnny Damon is a Type A free agent, and Pettitte is a Type B. As Joe wrote earlier, the Yanks will most likely resign Pettitte for 2010. The remaining Yankee free agents — Eric Hinske, Jerry Hairston and Jose Molina — are also unranked.

Mussina, Pettitte headline AL Type A free agents

by 34 Comments

Over the summer, Eddie Bajek at Detroit Tigers Thoughts managed to reverse engineer the Elias Sports Bureau formula for ranking free agents. He’s been providing us with tidbits ever since. Now that the season is over, though, we can be more sure about where each player will land. Today, Eddie takes a look at the AL pitchers and where they rank.

Pettitte was actually the ninth-highest rated overall starter in the AL. Ahead of him are, from one through eight, Roy Halladay, John Lackey, A.J. Burnett, Josh Beckett, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Scott Kazmir, James Shields, and King Felix. Pettitte is well within the Type A bounds. After him come Javier Vazquez and Fausto Carmona, followed by Mike Mussina. The Type As end five spots after Mussina with Erik Bedard. Strangely enough, Chien-Ming Wang checks in as a Type B. I guess missing half the season hurt his ranking. Jon Garland and Paul Byrd are the only other AL free agent starters to garner even Type B status.

Over on the NL side, obviously CC Sabathia tops the rankings. He’s joined in his Type A status by four other hurlers: Ben Sheets (14), Oliver Perez (16), Derek Lowe (17), and Jamie Moyer (18). So it looks like when Jon Heyman says the Yankees will pick two of the available starters, they’re selecting from among the Type As. Thankfully, this is in a year where the Yankees have at least one protected first-round pick (not that losing a pick should stop you from signing a guy like CC). Brad Penney, John Smoltz, Randy Wolf, Greg Maddux, and, surprisingly, Braden Looper garner Type B status.

It’s interesting to see how these players are ranked. Some of it seems rather strange. A.J. Burnett as the third highest rated pitcher in the AL? Pettitte as the ninth highest? I know the stats are based on multiple years, but still, it seems odd in some places. In any case, I’ll be sure to post the future rankings as they come in.

Just for shits ‘n’ giggles: The last ranked pitchers in each league were Mark Prior in the NL, and Andrew Brackman in the AL.