While running a major league team, there are only so many ways you can gain a real advantage. Having more capital then your opponent is the easiest way, but teams continually look for other ways to better themselves at an inexpensive price.

This is termed a market inefficiency. Basically, the best thing a team can do is find something of value that isn't being valued properly on the open market. While many people ignorantly think Michael Lewis's Moneyball is about sabermetrics, this is what it was really about: finding market inefficiencies and using them to your advantage. The biggest example that was used in this case was on-base percentage, which was significantly undervalued at the time.

At this point, something as simple as OBP is valued correctly. In recent years we've seen teams like the Mariners shift to optimizing defense at a well below-market rate. It seemed that this was the new market inefficiency, but this seemed to right itself quickly. This offseason, we saw Boston look to improve their defense through free agency by acquiring defensive specialists Adrian Beltre and Mike Cameron while moving Jacoby Ellsbury to left field.

While Boston may seem to be a continuation of getting defense on the cheap, they actually didn't pay too much below market value with these two signings. This suggests that teams are much more aware of the impact defense can have and it can no longer be seen as a market inefficiency.

These things work in cycles. It's very hard to find a way to game the market consistently without other teams catching up to you. In a recent post on FanGraphs, Dave Cameron talked about efficiency wages. In his piece, he briefly mentions nutrition without getting into it too much.

See, MLB just raised the minor league per diem five dollars all the way to $25 per day. Now, if you're eating for one and cooking your own meals, that's fine. I cook many of my own meals and spend less than $25 a day. The issue here is that these are not people who live on a regular schedule. They're not working nine to five jobs; they're traveling all around whatever region they're in and end up eating out for many of their meals. Now you can see why that's a struggle. If you want three meals on $25... you're going to be getting food that is neither nutritious nor particularly good.

Dave suggests a widespread increase of quality of life for minor leaguers. He proposes that you not only raise the per diem, but you get better buses as well. For the Yankees, these two things should be a no-brainer. Having updated, comfortable buses for each minor league affiliate would cost relative pennies for the Yankees. We can't be sure how much this would benefit the team in the long run but improving the day-to-day life of the team's prospects can't hurt.

This also got me to thinking about the recent film Sugar, which follows a young pitching prospect out of the Dominican Republic. Now, I don't want to spoil the film for you if you haven't seen it yet(and I recommend you do), but the character Sugar could have benefited from these things and many more.

My Recommendation for the Yanks

With the Yankees' financial advantage, they should take this whole idea a step further. Considering that they are so active in the international free agent market, they'd benefit the most from it anyway. Instead of just increasing the per diem, encourage players to eat healthy. Maybe if there is a restaurant in an area a team is visiting that specializes in healthy food, offer incentives to eat there.

When the team is home, serve healthy foods. Substitute regular pasta, white rice, and white bread out. Replace them with whole wheat pasta, brown rice, and whole grain bread. Obviously, I'd take it a bit further, but you get the point. Simple changes like that would not even cost very much, but would increase the health of the players.

I haven't spent enough time around the low minor leagues to know what goes on in Low-A ball, but teams should go out of their way to make sure that the prospects are comfortable and happy. In Sugar, we saw that might not always be the case.

This would not only benefit the players currently in the system. It's possible that young ballplayers would be even more attracted to signing with the Yankees because they offer a better quality life.

As the first commenter on Dave's post points out, this would probably end up causing other teams to follow suit, which would just raise prices all around. If that happens, then so be it. That just means that the corporate suits end up with a little less money while these 18-year-old kids in A-ball get an increase in their quality of life. I know I don't have a problem with that. And if other teams didn't follow, then the Yankees could have found themselves another efficient way to spend their money as they streamline talent to the major league team.

With spring training under way I thought it would be a good idea to take a look at those who have a shot (even if it's just an outside shot) at seeing time with the Yankees in 2010. Later we'll look at the potential 4th and 5th outfielders, but first, the infield. The job is really Ramiro Pena's at this minute-but are there better options right now? Here are CHONE's projections for the utility candidates in 2010:

Hall of Famer Goose Gossage continues to campaign for Joba Chamberlain to move to the bullpen, "Personally, I think Joba is a relief pitcher ... I think that he is more valuable in the bullpen." Gossage also chimes in that, "I think Phil Hughes is a starter for sure."

I don't get it. Joba Chamberlain has had more success than Hughes starting and they've had pretty much equal success as relievers. To each his own, I suppose.

Because the fifth outfielder is just that important.

The two players are both right-handed hitters, but that is about the extent of their similarities. They both have their fair share of strengths and weaknesses, but the Yankees only have room for one on their roster.

Marcus Thames's biggest strength is his power. For his career, he has hit a home run once per every 15 at-bats and he has an ISO of .248 which is well above average. On the other hand, Jamie Hoffmann hit one home run for every 60 minor league at-bats with a career minor league ISO of .118.

What's more striking are Thames' splits versus lefties. It has been well documented that the Yankees could use a lefty-masher on their bench to compensate for the relative weaknesses of Curtis Granderson and Brett Gardner. While Gardner has not shown much of a platoon split over the course of his career, the Yankees must see something there because they have made the habit of hiding him versus left-handed pitching.

For his career, Thames has a .360 wOBA against lefties as opposed to a .323 wOBA versus righties. This is a stark difference that makes Thames a legit pinch hitting option against left handed pitching.

If the Yankees are looking for a player they can use to pinch hit, back up the corner outfield spots and first base, Thames is the guy they will choose.

Hoffmann, on the other hand, offers a different array of skills to the team. Baseball America just named him the best defensive outfielder in the Yankees system after consistently ranking him the best in the Dodgers system. This is a clear difference from Thames, who has been worth -15.8 runs in the corner outfield over his career and has a career outfield UZR/150 of -9.5.

Hoffmann is an unknown when it comes to hitting at the major league level, though. CHONE predicts an unacceptable .304 wOBA for him, which is not good enough to justify giving him a roster spot.

Whichever of these two players doesn't make the 25-man roster will be gone at the end of spring training.The main difference is that if the Yankees make Hoffmann their fifth outfielder and he remains with the team for the entire 2009 season, they would be able to retain him for the following five seasons.

If the Yanks decide to hold onto Thames, they will lose team control over him after the 2010 season. So what it really comes down to is what the Yankees see in Hoffmann. If they see a player who will be slightly less valuable to Thames in 2010, but one who can provide value for multiple seasons, they'll keep him.

If they have soured on Hoffmann a bit since the Rule 5 draft and think he doesn't provide enough offense to be a part of their bench, they'll try to work out a deal with the Dodgers to keep him, or send him back to Los Angeles while adding Thames to the 25-man roster.

The choice is up to the Yankees, but I think I'd lean towards keeping Hoffmann. Thames would not definitively opt out, seeing that he could see an opportunity with the Yankees after a single injury or ineffectiveness from Hoffmann.

Either way, the winner of this battle is just going to be the fifth outfielder. If one of them ends up playing a major role in 2010, that means injuries have befell the Yankees and would not be a good sign.

Baseball Prospectus, while unveiling a new team of writers also has unveiled a new statistic called SIERA that Greg touched on before here.

As a quick refresher, here is what SIERA does:

1. Allows for the fact that a high ground-ball rate is more useful to pitchers who walk more batters, due to the potential that double plays wipe away runners.

2. Allows for the fact that a low fly-ball rate (and therefore, a low HR rate) is less useful to pitchers who strike out a lot of batters (e.g. Johan Santana's FIP tends to be higher than his ERA because the former treats all HR the same, even though Santana’s skill set portends this bombs allowed will usually be solo shots).

3. Allows for the fact that adding strikeouts is more useful when you don't strike out many guys to begin with, since more runners get stranded.

4. Allows for the fact that adding ground balls is more useful when you already allow a lot of ground balls because there are frequently runners on first.

5. Corrects for the fact that QERA used GB/BIP instead of GB/PA (e.g. Joel Pineiro is all contact, so increasing his ground-ball rate means more ground balls than if Oliver Perez had done it, given he's not a high contact guy).

6. Corrects for the fact that FIP and xFIP use IP as a denominator which means that luck on balls in play changes one's FIP.

Needless to say this information is extremely useful in determining skills that pitchers can control and predicting future ERA. What we didn’t know a few weeks ago was that Baseball Prospectus also has SIERA numbers for minor leaguers, included in their annual season preview book. Let’s take a look at the SIERAs they provided.

Manny Banuelos,  2.67 ERA, 3.22 SIERA

Jeremy Bleich,  6.65 ERA,  4.18 SIERA

Wilken De La Rosa,  3.48 ERA,  4.11 SIERA

Zach McAllister,  2.23 ERA,  3.82 SIERA

Hector Noesi,  3.92 ERA,  2.64 SIERA

Ivan Nova,  AA- 2.36 ERA,  4.30 SIERA/ AAA- 5.10 ERA,  4.68 SIERA

Romulo Sanchez,  4.04 ERA, 4.00 SIERA

Andrew Brackman,  5.91 ERA,  4.40 SIERA

DJ Mitchell,  2.87 ERA,  3.54 SIERA

David Phelps,  2.80 ERA, 3.67 SIERA

SIERA’s are pretty complicated and involve a lot of factors so I don’t think I could illuminate every single thing causing the discrepancies that appear here. However some of it has to do with adjusting for park, league, defense, ground ball percentages as well as BABIP, K% and BB%.

A couple of things really stand out however. Hector Noesi is one of the few pitchers who has his SIERA almost a full run lower than his ERA. This isn’t a fluke either, as Noesi has consistently had sub 3.00 SIERA’s at each level for the past 2 seasons. Noesi is a fly ball pitcher and control specialist but has also struck out almost a batter per inning at each level from 08-09 as well. Andrew Brackman who had a horrific season shows a more reasonable SIERA of 4.40 compared to his 5.91 ERA in Charleston. Some of this is adjusting for defense I would assume as well as his elevated BABIP of .325 and a reasonable K%. However there’s really no glossing over such a bad season. If your still burning a torch for Brackman, BP does it’s best to douse it with water:

“The most wrong-headed first round pitching selection since Bill Bene, Tomy John surgery survivor Andrew Brackman was healthy enough to completely destroy any remaining illusions about his being a prospect at all- mechanical consistency is no more than a concept”

Ouch. Zach McAllister had a really low BABIP of .266 and playing in Trenton it’s not surprising the 2.23 ERA might be misleading. BP actually has McAllister with only a 47% GB rate in Trenton as well which is surprising from sinkerball specialist. McAllister has consistently had SIERA’s in the mid 3’s, which is obviously very good but not as nice as the 2.23, 1.84 and 2.45 ERA’s he’s posted the past two years.

In the next few weeks we’ll post some of the projections and discuss what the various systems have to say about the Yankee prospects they have numbers for. We’ll also be wrapping up our last 5 Yankee prospect profiles as well as starting to cover their spring training performances. It’s almost a month until real baseball and we’re getting pretty excited.