Depressing baseball stat of the day

I was just reading an unsurprising article confirming the fact (that was essentially already known) that Dodger shortstop Rafael Furcal won't return until after the All-Star break. This article includes the following sentence:

Furcal is tied for the team lead in runs scored -- even though he has not played since May 5 because of a bulging disk in his back.

Holy shit. That about sums up the way the season has gone thus far.

Baseball's Worst Hitters and Pitchers for 2007 (by position)

The season isn't over yet, but here is the current list of baseball's worst of the worst for 2007.

The list is compiled by position, with OPS+ as the metric of choice for position players and ERA+ as the metric of choice per pitchers.

OPS, which stands for on-base percentage + slugging percentage, is an excellent quick and dirty method for measuring the quality of somebody's offense. OPS+ just means what one's OPS is realtive to the league average. (I don't know if the National League and American Leagues are being separated in the quoted stats.)

ERA+ refers to what one's ERA (earned run average) is relative to the league average. ERA is computed by taking a pitcher's earned runs, multiplying by 9, and dividing by innings pitched. (That is, it measures how many runs does a pitcher allow during a full-length game that are determined to be his fault.)

Do you want to guess at which player is the worst in the Majors in center field? Here's a hint: he sucks! I can't believe we're going to end up paying this guy over $9 million a year for several years. Yuck. (By the way, Nomar Garciaparra isn't even close to worst among third baseman in terms of OPS+ because Nick Punto's stats are historically bad.) If Nomar were still playing first base as he was for about half of the year, then he would rank worst by a large margin. He currently has an OPS+ of 75 and the listed first baseman, Lyle Overbay, currently has an OPS+ of 85.)

Basically, this is a rather poignant reminder that the Dodgers have had two gaping holes in important spots in the lineup for the entire year. We have better players on the roster, and we should be playing them!