As this offseason’s free agent class has been shaken and largely settled, some of the jilted teams have been left in fine shape. Some immediately went out and patched the hole where a departed free agent once was—the Braves, for instance, grabbed B.J. Upton immediately to fill most of the Michael Bourn void—while others had replacements ready to go, making the free agents expendable.
Not everybody was so lucky or so prepared, however, as one can see by observing the voids forming where free agents used to be.
Here’s a look at the five positions where teams are still scrambling to replace talent or will need an in-house option to exceed expectations lest they face a looming black hole at the position.
5. White Sox catcher without A.J. Pierzynski
The South Siders avoided one potential shortfall when they were able to replace the departed Kevin Youkilis with Jeff Keppinger at third base. They’ve chosen to let things be at catcher, and they’re likely to see a big offensive drop from 2012, when they had the highest team TAv at catcher in the American League (.276).
With Pierzynski Texas-bound, it’s now on Tyler Flowers, a backup the last two years and a .205/.307/.388 career hitter in 317 major-league plate appearances, to step into Pierzynski’s vacated gear. Flowers’ minor-league numbers and that limited sample indicate some power and patience are present. His isn’t a case of bad luck so far in the majors, though, and at 26 (he’ll turn 27 later this month), he’s not exactly young. In order to catch on in his age-27 season, he’ll have to cut down on his strikeouts, which have come in an astounding 34 percent of his plate appearances.
4. Indians DH without Travis Hafner
4a. Yankees DH without Nick Swisher, Andruw Jones and Raul Ibanez
The Indians have an easy fix for their DH shortage—re-sign Hafner, whose option the team declined at the outset of the offseason. Hafner, while injury-prone and coming off just 66 games last year, is an upgrade over what they have now—namely either nothing or utility man Mike Aviles on his non-field days, depending on how you look at it.
For the Yankees, this isn’t so easy. The loss of Swisher and the two backup types won’t go over too badly in the outfield, with Brett Gardner replacing Swisher, but it does create a DH vacancy. The Yankees, as old as they are, will often use the spot to rest position players—Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter should need plenty of time there when they return. But until then, it’s just another backup added to an already depleted lineup.
3. Braves third base without Chipper Jones
The last time the Braves went into a season without Jones in the lineup was 1994. It was Terry Pendleton’s last season at third base, when the former “MVP” hit .252/.280/.398 (73 OPS+) before embarking on a four-team-in-four-year career denouement. The first Chipperless season of this century does not inspire much higher hopes.
Juan Francisco has put together decent numbers on the strength of a selective usage pattern that is endangered by the needs of the Braves roster. A left-handed hitter, he has an .806 career OPS against righties but a .446 OPS against lefties that doesn’t even carry a BABIP excuse. If he can sustain his career rate of making 83 percent of his plate appearances against righties, then there’s some hope, but he doesn’t have the look of an everyday player.
Should the Braves acquire Justin Upton or should Michael Bourn run out of needier suitors and go back to the Braves, it could push B.J. Upton to left, Martin Prado to third, and Francisco to a better role. But for now, the Braves are missing Chipper more than they could have expected.
2. Rays outfield/DH without B.J. Upton
The problem here, as the Rays predictably let Upton walk, is that there’s only so much Wil Myers can solve even if he does open the season with the big league team—hardly the Rays’ M.O. anyway. A Myers call-up would put an end to an outfield forced to start Sam Fuld alongside Desmond Jennings and Matt Joyce, but it does nothing to solve the designated hitter conundrum. With Carlos Pena having taken the new DH role in Houston, that has become a void as well.
Ben Zobrist could move to the outfield, putting Joyce at DH, but then what becomes of second base? No matter what, Upton has thrown off the whole mathematics of this lineup construction for Joe Maddon, who has scrambled before and will have to again.
Even in the unlikely case that Myers is ticketed for the majors right away, the Rays would be wise to look for more help in the outfield in the bargain bin or in the cost-controlled portion of the trade market.
1. Yankees catcher without Russell Martin
The funny part about Martin making this list is that the Yankees still never saw the best of his ability manifested in results. His two years with New York were by far his two worst in terms of batting average on balls in play, depressing his offensive output until a terrific powerful September that helped the Yankees hold off the Orioles last season.
Martin’s BABIP by year
2006 (LAD) .305
2007 (LAD) .317
2008 (LAD) .309
2009 (LAD) .284
2010 (LAD) .287
2011 (NYY) .257
2012 (NYY) .222
Assuming Martin’s BABIP sees even a small bit of natural bounceback, the combination of his broad offensive skill set with his defensive ability will give the Pirates a very valuable backstop. Meanwhile, his old team is left to muddle through some much lesser options after not obtaining Pierzynski in this new era of Yankees frugality.
Francisco Cervelli fell out of the Yankees’ favor after a competent run as backup in 2010 and 2011, and now they’ve come crawling back to the soon-to-be-27-year-old non-power threat as a real option. Chris Stewart, who was picked for the no. 2 job last year over Cervelli, has a backup profile and not a very imposing one, though he’s a skilled framer.
If there is hope, it lies in Austin Romine, but a guy who has played a total of 30 games above Double-A is nothing but hope. Twenty-year-old prospect Gary Sanchez, who played in low-A and high-A in 2012, can’t get to the Bronx soon enough.
A version of this story originally appeared on ESPN Insider 
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For starters, Jeff Keppinger is a much bigger hole than Tyler Flowers. Keppinger will be 33 this April and a career .337/.396 O/S hitter. He is an old below average 3B - a desperate fill in. Why should we expect him to maintain his 2012 career year at his age? Flowers, in the meantime hit .390/.500 in the International League during his last stint there of 270 plate appearances. Those stats were helped by a high BABiP as much as a low BABiP hurt his Major League stats that balance of that season. PECOTA isn't out yet, but Bill James Info Systems projects .338 /.453 for Flowers. That makes him offensively a YOUNG ABOVE AVERAGE catcher - certainly not a void.
Secondly, having a void at DH is not a void. Many teams prefer to use the DH to rest regulars who need a rest and, perhaps, keep their bench players from getting rusty. If a team is play-off bound and still could use a potent bat in that spot, nothing is easier to acquire late in the season than a DH. The Yankees have even stated this is essentially how they intend to use the DH spot this year. Besides that, either Russ Canzler or Ronnier Mustelier probably wouldn't be the worse DH in the league. The Indians are in a major rebuild and rightly do not intend to waste their resources on filling the most extreme old player's end of the defensive spectrum. Perhaps, Matt LaPorta will learn to hit and come up and fill that spot, anyway.
I won't discuss the Braves, because I don't follow the N.L. as closely as the A.L.
Will Myers is certainly no void. He is probably a superior player to B.J. Upton - since Desmond Jennings nicely slips over to center-field. The Rays might keep Myers in the minors for a month or two in order to delay the arbitration clock and take the pressure off of him, but he is solidly their left-fielder.
As for the Yankees' catching, I do agree that neither Romine nor Sanchez look ready to fill that hole. Every year I expect a major Yankees downfall, but they have managed to defy gravity. I wouldn't bet on that continuing this year - and their impending down period might last until the Steinbrenners sell the team.
It's a single rate metric that indicates overall offensive value... which is basically what OPS tried to be, but TAV is more accurate (FanGraphs wOBA is very similar- certainly someone smarter than me could and probably has made an argument to abandon one over the other, although I know they are not exactly alike).
I also like the triple slash, for all the reasons you cite, but for situations when you want to compare player offensive value, how do you know which one of these lines is more valuable than the other?
.300/.350/.400
.280/.320/.500
TAV would provide the answer. Just an example for how its useful.
Who copied who, then fudged it up a little to make a claim towards superiority? FanGraphs likes to do that, but bless them, they've really put BP and other sites on their toes and have been a great contribution to our baseball stat enjoyment.
.280/.320/.500 is better than .300/.350/.400 parks and leagues being equal because 1.8*(.350-.320) < (.500-.400), but I get your point. My point is that if it were a .300/.350/.425 vs. .280/.300/.500, you might get a more correct answer using TAV, but who cares? The real answer is that they are very close and it would depend on your team needs or other factors depending on why you were comparing the two players. Seeing the OBA and the Slugging gives you more info which might be helpful. It certainly is more interesting. With just two numbers instead of one, you get a much better picture of the player you are discussing.
As far as having it all boil down to one stat - sure - I don't know about you, but there just aren't many circumstances where I would rather know a player's TAV instead of his OBA/Slg along with how many plate appearances that included. For projecting or assessing quality, you want to know all of that plus their age and injury history. For comparing who had the better career or season, you would want to look at their WAR and other metrics. I was overly harsh about TAV, but I feel BP has been forcing it a bit too strongly on us.
As a writer, I don't want to have to look it up, when I can easily see a player's OBA and Slugging. If I want to cut down on the number of numbers, I'd give the OPS or OPS+. More people would have a better idea of what I'm talking about and it is less time consuming for me. I'll take that at the expense of a little accuracy. Only if a TAV level of accuracy was critical to my point, would I consider using it.
Personally, there are plenty of times when I'd prefer to see TAv instead of triple-slash stats. If I want to know what kind of hitter (as opposed to just how good a hitter) someone is, then triple-slash stats might give me more to go on. But if I want to know how productive someone was, I'll take the TAv. Otherwise, I'd basically be trying to translate the triple-slash stats into a single number in my mind, factoring in the relative value of OBP and slugging plus park factors, and I'd probably do a worse job of that than TAv does.