MVN: Most Valuable Network

People say that hindsight is 20/20. Well, that is what the Indians front office has to believe about the trade that brought the thought-to-be talented rookie Josh Barfield to Cleveland just over two years ago.

The problem that this trade was supposed to solve has actually prolonged the pain of a missing proven infielder in the Indians lineup.

Just think, if that trade had never happened, chances are the Indians would not now be searching out the "missing piece" for the infield and could be more focused on obtaining arms to help the pitching staff.

Kevin Kouzmanoff, who was dealt along with reliever Andrew Brown (now of Oakland) for Barfield, has grown into a solid third baseman in San Diego, hitting .260 with 23 home runs and 84 RBI in a tough ballpark on hitters.

If he were still in a Tribe uniform, Kouzmanoff would be the third baseman along side Jhonny Peralta at short and Asdrubal Cabrera at second (although the Indians would not have had Casey Blake's season at third in '08 and netted Carlos Santana in the trade, so maybe karma evened things out..), and there would be no talks of spending huge commitments, in terms of both dollars and years, on players such as Rafael Furcal and Orlando Hudson, which as it now sounds are thankfully not going to happen.

Don't get me wrong, those guys would be serious upgrades, but at what cost? Many Indians will be hitting their arbitration and free agent years, while some will make more money due to escalating salaries in their contracts over the next few seasons. Signing such large commitments, that do have risk, could come back to haunt a team that is built to win from within.

I'm getting off track here. Lets get back to Barfield.

While Kouzmanoff has lived up to his end of the trade, the son of a former home run champion has arguably become the worst position player in the American League when he has been in the lineup. Barfield's OPS, which is on-base percentage plus slugging percentage, is under .600! That's right, under .600!

Only Nick Punto of Minnesota in 2007 had a worse OPS than Barfield for players with 400 or more plate appearances. And Punto at least improved this season to a .726 OPS. Nobody in 2008 had an OPS of under .600.

That is just Barfield offensively, defensively he hasn't been much better. Barfield had the worst fielding percentage, .975, and zone rating, .806, of all qualified second baseman in the American League in 2007. In fact, reading back on some of his scouting reports as a prospect, it was thought that he was going to eventually make the transition to the outfield because of his poor defense at second, but the improvement that he eventually showed in San Diego has disappeared, just as the bat has, leaving Barfield's career in a state of limbo.

I am not bringing up 2008 in any of this for a reason, I mean, why would you? He hit just .251 in 299 at-bats in AAA, and a measly .182 in 33 at-bats with the Indians. It was another horrific season, and this time Barfield even lost months of his season to a finger injury that occurred at the most inopportune time in June, just as he was getting a chance to regain his lost second base job after Cabrera had been demoted. Things just can't get much worse for the one-time top prospect of the Padres.

Where does Barfield go from here? Does he still have a shot at performing as the Indians second baseman, or does he continue his fade into obscurity? Well, I thought that I'd take a look back at what history has to say on the subject, and use baseball-reference.com's "similar batters" as a guide.

What does history suggest?

Looking over the lists, I focused on the similar batters through age 25 because it gives a better guide to how a player has performed up until that point in their career, rather than comparing a career to a player as the similar batters list does. Although, former Toronto shortstop Russ Adams from this similar batter list is a comparable name, as he has many of the same qualities of Barfield through three-plus seasons as a major leaguer, so I include him.

I preferred to compare OPS+, as it gives an insight as to how the batters performance compared to the rest of the league. In this case, Barfield's 75 OPS+ is the bottom of the barrel, and just a few come within range of it. I also looked at AVG, OBP, SLG, and BB/K numbers. Here is a comparison of vital stats for a few names that I thought interesting.

Player	AVG	OBP	SLG	BB	K	SB	OPS+
Josh Barfield	.261	.293	.374	44	181	35	75
Russ Adams	.248	.314	.376	84	117	15	80
Carlos Febles	.254	.331	.373	109	204	44	79
Carlos Guillen	.259	.329	.372	85	157	7	86
Patt Kelly	.250	.303	.370	64	192	34	86
Michael Young	.256	.303	.389	67	204	9	79

This is certainly a mix of bad and good. Barfield could go either way according to these names. Michael Young and Carlos Guillen have gone on from their year-25 seasons to have very good careers offensively, while the likes of Pat Kelly, Carlos Febles, and Russ Adams have been anything but.

What can we take away from these numbers?

Nothing much unless looking much deeper. One fact that we can search out is that for Guillen and Young, there was a progression during their careers, where production continued to improve year-by-year. Their strikeout rates, batting average on balls in play (BABIP) and line drive percentages improved to the point that they became .300 hitters who developed a bit of power with age.

Febles, Kelly, and Adams on the other hand, all had one season that they peaked at within their first 2-3 seasons in the league before regressing during their prime years, just as Barfield has to this point.

Another striking difference between the positive group and this lesser trio is that the BABIP's and Line Drive rates are startlingly different, other than Adams' solid line drive percent, which has led to an unusually low BABIP.

Career rates:

Player	LD%	BABIP
Josh Barfield	18.7	.306
Russ Adams	21.5	.270
Carlos Febles	19.0	.292
Carlos Guillen	21.5	.329
Patt Kelly	N/A	.301
Michael Young	25.1	.339

In defense of Barfield, he still is entering his age-26 season, and I am including the career rates of others. Young and Guillen really took off at ages 26, and 28 respectively. So anything is possible, yet as pointed out, at least those two had a progression to their careers to signal that good things could be coming.

Another interesting piece of information is from Barfield's huge 2005 AAA campaign where he hit .310 with 15 home runs and 72 RBI. Barfield's line drive rate that season was a low 14.0 percent, despite a very high BABIP of .372. This is a remarkable difference that was, and is clearly unsustainable, and could begin pointing to reasons why the Padres sold on Barfield when they did.

Another issue for Barfield is that, as his scouting reports projected, he continues to have problems against right-handed pitching.

In 2005's Baseball America Handbook, Barfield was coming off of a poor AA season in which he hit .248. This was a quote from the book and still rings true today, "Barfield has problems with righthanders - he hit .196 against them last year - particularly with diving after breaking pitches that finish outside of the plate." To date, Barfield has a .639 OPS against RH, and .751 against LH, with the main difference being the amount of power loss that he experiences against a righty.

When comparing this problem with our list, Barfield is not alone. Though, Russ Adams is the only other to have problems with his RH/LH splits, his being lefty versus lefty. The other four hit pretty much the same against either handed pitcher. This is another strike against Barfield, and it is the bad side of the split to be on, since the majority of pitchers are right handed.

Outlook

To be honest, in my own opinion it doesn't look too bright. The Marcel projections for 2009 don't believe that much will change either. It projects Barfield to maintain his .260 batting average and have an OPS of .676, which would again place him in the lower tier of major league players.

What could go wrong, according to early scouting reports, has gone wrong. Even strengths have slowly diminished, including once thought of 20-25 HR potential and can't miss hitting potential.

Until Barfield can find a way to relax at the plate, work himself into better hitting situations, and put the ball in play hard, I would not expect much to change for Barfield. These things have to change for Barfield to have any future success. And even if things do improve, the ceiling for what he could accomplish looks to be lowered.

Time is running out. It is now or never for Josh Barfield to rekindle what once looked to be a bright career or else soon he is destined to be the next Pat Kelly.

Shameless Plug

If you are as die-hard of a stat-guy as I am, you have to check out John Burnson's Graphical Player 2009 that comes out Monday. If you are new to the book, it changes how you view a player and their statistics. It is not your normal batting line of average, home runs, RBI...it shows how a player performs graphically with three-year historical running game logs, player projections that go three years out, consistency trends, where hitters appear in the lineups, how players stack up against others at their position, and much more. It is a "dashboard" of a player's strengths, weakness, and where they are about to go.

Also included is player commentary from team experts, which is where my shameless plug comes from. I am the commentator of the Indians players in the book. I can't reveal my thoughts about everyone, but I will say that Indians fans may not agree with all of the information presented in the book.

Louis Sockalexis Bio

If you are interested in reading a great biography about one of Cleveland's great early baseball players, a new biography has come out of the SABR BioProject by David Fleitz that details Chief Louis Sockalexis' outstanding sporting talents, his battle with fan abuse as the first recognized minority (Native American) in the National League - 50 years before Jackie Robinson, and his bout with alcoholism, which eventually took over his life and career.

It also details how the Indians franchise name came to be back in 1915 when Nap Lajoie had left the organization and the new owner was looking to change from the "Naps".