Chris Kahrl at Baseball Prospectus (subscription only) has some sobering thoughts about Kevin Brown:
The problem is that few pitchers put more balls on the ground than Brown does, and now, instead of having a strong middle infield with a very good shortstop behind him, he’s got Derek Jeter and Alfonso Soriano, which is something like knowing that Belgium’s got your back in a World War. The Dodgers allowed 1,966 ground balls and 895 singles last year, or a 1B/GB figure of .455. The comparable Yankees figures are 2,023, 1,009 and .498. So you could say that a ground ball is roughly 10% more likely to become a single against the Yankees. Brown got 374 ground balls last year and allowed 147 singles. Allowing 10% more hits on ground balls would mean 15 extra singles against Brown, or nearly 10 runs’ worth. Do the same for Weaver and the result isn’t nearly so dramatic, but he looks a bit better than he did last year.
He also notes that the same goes double for Paul Quantrill.
Unfortunately, the same was true to now-departed Andy Petitte. Argh.