Remembering Ralph


I don’t really have more to add on Ralph Kiner, who died today at age 91, than I said in my 2010 appreciation of Ralph. His passing is the end of an era for Mets fans, and nearly the end of an era for baseball; only Yogi Berra and Bobby Doerr remain of the great players of the World War II generation. Ted Berg, who worked with Ralph, has his own compelling memories, and Metstradamus does too and collects some remembrances from those who knew him.
I’ll leave you with Ralph doing the postgame interviews of Yogi Berra, Tom Seaver, and other Mets after they clinched the 1973 pennant.

UPDATE: Jayson Stark’s column is too good not to mention here.
This too.

The 400 Win Club And Then Some

I have a new baseball essay over at The Federalist looking at baseball’s winningest pitchers if you combine their Major League, postseason, Minor League, and in some cases Japanese and Negro League wins. I looked at every pitcher who won 150 or more games in the majors plus every known minor league 300 game winner, plus anybody else I ran across who made the list, so it’s possible there’s a few people here and there I missed but unlikely that any of them (aside from people who spent their whole careers in Japan or the Negro Leagues) would crack 300. All numbers are through the 2013 postseason (in which Bartolo Colon went 0-1 and Freddy Garcia pitched without a decision). The charts in the article go down through 250 wins, but since I have extra space here, I’ll run the rest of what I have here:
The 225-249 Win Club

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1883 1898 Adonis Terry 197 196 3 4 49 22 249 222 0.529 27
1981 2003 David Cone 194 126 8 3 47 40 249 169 0.596 80
1929 1950 Tommy Bridges 194 138 4 1 50 36 248 175 0.586 73
1913 1932 Lee Meadows 188 180 0 2 60 56 248 238 0.510 10
1959 1979 Mickey Lolich 217 191 3 1 27 44 247 236 0.511 11
1995 2013 Roy Halladay 203 105 3 2 41 35 247 142 0.635 105
1913 1928 Urban Shocker 187 117 0 1 60 28 247 146 0.628 101
1889 1901 Amos Rusie* 246 174 246 174 0.586 72
1914 1940 Sad Sam Jones 229 217 0 2 16 10 245 229 0.517 16
1966 1988 Joe Niekro 221 204 0 0 24 17 245 221 0.526 24
1891 1908 Brickyard Kennedy 187 159 0 1 58 49 245 209 0.540 36
1930 1947 Bill Lee (I) 169 157 0 2 76 33 245 192 0.561 53
1930 1951 Harry Gumbert 143 113 0 0 101 84 244 197 0.553 47
1911 1935 Dutch Ruether 137 95 1 1 106 84 244 180 0.575 64
1938 1959 Virgil Trucks (2) 177 135 1 0 65 40 243 175 0.581 68
1884 1895 Bob Caruthers 218 99 7 8 17 16 242 123 0.663 119
1982 2008 Kenny Rogers 219 156 3 3 19 39 241 198 0.549 43
1967 1986 Vida Blue 209 161 1 5 31 18 241 184 0.567 57
1895 1909 Jack Chesbro 198 132 43 34 241 166 0.592 75
1911 1934 Bob Shawkey 195 150 1 3 45 50 241 203 0.543 38
1957 1975 Claude Osteen 196 195 1 2 43 32 240 229 0.512 11
1939 1954 Allie Reynolds 182 107 7 2 51 32 240 141 0.630 99
1912 1930 Jesse Barnes (1) 152 150 2 0 84 58 238 208 0.534 30
1975 1995 Dave Stewart 168 129 10 6 59 46 237 181 0.567 56
1874 1885 Tommy Bond 234 163 2 1 236 164 0.590 72
1877 1889 Will White 229 166 7 13 236 179 0.569 57
1895 1910 Al Orth 204 189 32 19 236 208 0.532 28
1945 1964 Billy Pierce 211 169 1 1 22 19 234 189 0.553 45
1898 1923 Wild Bill Donovan 185 139 1 4 48 23 234 166 0.585 68
1882 1892 Charlie Buffinton* 233 152 0 0 233 152 0.605 81
1965 1979 Catfish Hunter 224 166 9 6 233 172 0.575 61
1997 2013 Tim Hudson 205 111 1 3 27 13 233 127 0.647 106
1928 1947 Lefty Gomez 189 102 6 0 38 30 233 132 0.638 101
1912 1931 Bullet Joe Bush 196 184 2 5 34 21 232 210 0.525 22
1903 1923 Red Ames 183 167 0 1 49 47 232 215 0.519 17
1991 2013 Derek Lowe 176 157 5 7 51 47 232 211 0.524 21
1921 1945 Red Lucas 157 135 75 54 232 189 0.551 43
1909 1925 Fred Toney 139 102 0 0 93 62 232 164 0.586 68
1921 1938 Pat Malone 134 92 0 3 98 113 232 208 0.527 24
1954 1969 Don Drysdale 209 166 3 3 19 16 231 185 0.555 46
1968 1989 Doyle Alexander 194 174 0 5 37 38 231 217 0.516 14
1983 2003 John Burkett 166 136 2 1 63 59 231 196 0.541 35
1986 2005 Kevin Brown 211 144 5 5 14 23 230 172 0.572 58
1907 1921 Hippo Vaughn 178 137 1 2 51 46 230 185 0.554 45
1972 1998 Dennis Eckersley 197 171 1 3 31 16 229 190 0.547 39
1965 1985 Mike Torrez 185 160 2 1 42 46 229 207 0.525 22
1935 1957 Dizzy Trout 170 161 1 2 58 42 229 205 0.528 24
1926 1948 Willis Hudlin 158 156 71 49 229 205 0.528 24
1926 1942 Larry French (*3) 197 171 0 2 31 36 228 209 0.522 19
1994 2013 Bartolo Colon 189 128 2 4 37 14 228 146 0.610 82
1960 1978 Wilbur Wood 164 156 64 46 228 202 0.530 26
1998 2013 CC Sabathia 205 115 9 5 13 13 227 133 0.631 94
1982 2000 Dwight Gooden 194 112 0 4 33 13 227 129 0.638 98
1922 1941 Firpo Marberry 148 88 0 1 78 66 226 155 0.593 71
1902 1920 Ed Walsh 195 126 2 0 28 13 225 139 0.618 86
1928 1945 Lon Warneke (2) 192 121 2 1 31 36 225 158 0.587 67

The 200-224 Win Club

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1905 1922 Slim Sallee 174 143 1 3 49 32 224 178 0.557 46
1890 1903 Frank Killen 164 131 60 48 224 179 0.556 45
1977 1994 Bob Welch 211 146 3 3 9 6 223 155 0.590 68
1894 1912 Chick Fraser 175 212 48 53 223 265 0.457 -42
1939 1955 Hal Newhouser 207 150 2 1 13 18 222 169 0.568 53
1897 1911 Sam Leever 194 100 0 2 28 22 222 124 0.642 98
1954 1972 Mudcat Grant 145 119 2 1 75 33 222 153 0.592 69
1897 1911 Deacon Phillippe 189 109 3 2 29 30 221 141 0.610 80
1948 1967 Jack Sanford (1) 137 101 1 2 83 74 221 177 0.555 44
1887 1906 Red Ehret 139 167 2 0 79 90 220 257 0.461 -37
1913 1929 Art Nehf 184 120 4 4 31 19 219 143 0.605 76
1922 1937 General Crowder 167 115 1 2 51 38 219 155 0.586 64
1932 1948 Claude Passeau 162 150 1 0 56 41 219 191 0.534 28
1897 1911 Jack Taylor 152 139 67 43 219 182 0.546 37
1911 1927 George Mogridge 132 133 1 0 86 51 219 184 0.543 35
1974 1994 Rick Sutcliffe 171 139 1 1 45 51 217 191 0.532 26
1910 1929 Bill Doak 169 157 48 51 217 208 0.511 9
1931 1950 Rip Sewell 143 97 74 85 217 182 0.544 35
1915 1932 Bill Sherdel 165 146 0 4 51 35 216 185 0.539 31
1910 1942 Clarence Mitchell 125 139 0 0 91 70 216 209 0.508 7
1938 1956 Sal Maglie (2) 119 62 1 2 96 81 216 145 0.598 71
1887 1899 Jack Stivetts 203 132 2 0 9 6 214 138 0.608 76
1982 1998 Jimmy Key 186 117 5 3 23 16 214 136 0.611 78
1961 1975 Dave McNally 184 119 7 4 23 24 214 147 0.593 67
1981 1999 Mark Langston 179 158 0 0 33 22 212 180 0.541 32
1918 1935 Eddie Rommel 171 119 1 0 40 32 212 151 0.584 61
1970 1989 Bob Forsch 168 136 3 4 41 37 212 177 0.545 35
1947 1967 Bob Buhl (2) 166 132 0 1 46 44 212 177 0.545 35
1903 1915 Howie Camnitz 133 106 0 1 79 46 212 153 0.581 59
1938 1958 Bob Lemon (3) 207 128 2 2 2 6 211 136 0.608 75
1950 1966 Bob Friend 197 230 0 2 14 13 211 245 0.463 -34
1961 1974 Mel Stottlemyre 164 139 1 1 46 23 211 163 0.564 48
1997 2013 Roy Oswalt 163 102 5 2 43 28 211 132 0.615 79
1930 1947 Dizzy Dean 150 83 2 2 59 29 211 114 0.649 97
1972 1990 Bob Knepper 146 155 0 1 65 45 211 201 0.512 10
1928 1945 Johnny Allen 142 75 0 0 69 50 211 125 0.628 86
1947 1967 Curt Simmons (1) 193 183 0 1 17 6 210 190 0.525 20
1914 1930 Howard Ehmke (1) 166 166 1 0 43 18 210 184 0.533 26
1946 1961 Don Newcombe (2) 149 90 0 4 61 26 210 120 0.636 90
1942 1961 Mike Garcia (3) 142 97 0 1 68 45 210 143 0.595 67
1957 1973 Milt Pappas 209 164 0 0 0 1 209 165 0.559 44
1901 1917 Doc White 189 156 1 1 19 16 209 173 0.547 36
1924 1936 George Earnshaw 127 93 4 3 78 48 209 144 0.592 65
1973 1993 John Candelaria 177 122 2 2 29 11 208 135 0.606 73
1963 1982 Rick Wise 188 181 2 0 17 20 207 201 0.507 6
1932 1951 Schoolboy Rowe (2) 158 101 2 5 47 20 207 126 0.622 81
1985 2002 Chuck Finley 200 173 1 2 5 2 206 177 0.538 29
1993 2012 Kevin Millwood 169 152 3 3 34 35 206 190 0.520 16
1990 2008 Hideo Nomo 123 109 0 2 83 52 206 163 0.558 43
1886 1897 Silver King* 203 152 2 6 205 158 0.565 47
1929 1950 Bucky Walters 198 160 2 2 5 6 205 168 0.550 37
1973 1992 Mike Flanagan 167 143 3 2 35 16 205 161 0.560 44
1968 1984 Paul Splitorff 166 143 2 0 37 32 205 175 0.539 30
1994 2011 Javier Vazquez 165 160 1 1 39 16 205 177 0.537 28
1976 1998 Danny Darwin 171 182 33 22 204 204 0.500 0
1900 1910 Addie Joss 160 97 44 34 204 131 0.609 73
1919 1939 George Uhle 200 166 0 0 3 4 203 170 0.544 33
1999 2013 Mark Buehrle 186 142 2 1 15 8 203 151 0.573 52
1895 1909 Bill Dinneen 170 177 3 1 30 24 203 202 0.501 1
1995 2013 Freddy Garcia 156 108 6 3 41 30 203 141 0.590 62
1881 1890 Jim Whitney 191 204 11 11 202 215 0.484 -13
1996 2012 Livan Hernandez* 178 177 7 3 16 9 201 189 0.515 12
1978 1998 Dave Stieb 176 137 1 3 24 12 201 152 0.569 49
1971 1989 Ron Guidry 170 91 5 2 26 27 201 120 0.626 81
1900 1914 Earl Moore 163 154 38 29 201 183 0.523 18
1987 2006 Kevin Appier 169 137 0 2 31 25 200 164 0.549 36
1948 1966 Bob Purkey (2) 129 115 0 1 71 51 200 167 0.545 33

Honorable Mention

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1909 1920 Tom Seaton 92 65 108 84 200 149 0.573 51

The 150-199 Win Club

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1923 1945 Guy Bush 176 136 1 1 22 11 199 148 0.573 51
1936 1955 Johnny Sain (3) 139 116 2 2 58 41 199 159 0.556 40
1902 1915 Frank Smith 139 111 60 53 199 164 0.548 35
1947 1965 Harvey Haddix (1) 136 113 2 0 61 33 199 146 0.577 53
1979 1997 Fernando Valenzuela* 173 153 5 1 20 16 198 170 0.538 28
1963 1983 Rudy May 152 156 0 1 46 29 198 186 0.516 12
1979 1999 Tom Candiotti 151 164 0 1 47 40 198 205 0.491 -7
1951 1971 Camilo Pascual 174 170 0 1 23 16 197 187 0.513 10
1977 1994 Bill Gullickson 162 136 1 2 34 24 197 162 0.549 35
1976 1994 Bruce Hurst 145 113 3 2 49 31 197 146 0.574 51
1941 1962 Gerry Staley (3) 134 111 0 1 63 35 197 147 0.573 50
1888 1899 Frank Dwyer 177 151 19 16 196 167 0.540 29
1903 1917 Ed Reulbach* 182 106 2 0 10 5 194 111 0.636 83
1944 1966 Joe Nuxhall 135 117 59 67 194 184 0.513 10
1893 1906 Red Donahue 164 175 28 22 192 197 0.494 -5
1983 1998 Doug Drabek 155 134 2 5 34 25 191 164 0.538 27
1984 2005 Al Leiter 162 132 2 3 26 46 190 181 0.512 9
1885 1896 Ice Box Chamberlain 157 120 2 3 31 28 190 151 0.557 39
1918 1936 Tom Zachary 186 191 3 0 189 191 0.497 -2
1981 1996 Frank Viola 176 150 3 1 10 11 189 162 0.538 27
1999 2013 Barry Zito 165 143 6 3 18 7 189 153 0.553 36
1965 1979 Ken Holtzman 174 150 6 4 8 3 188 157 0.545 31
1971 1989 Rick Rhoden 151 125 0 1 37 34 188 160 0.540 28
1883 1890 Ed Morris 171 122 16 6 187 128 0.594 59
1984 2000 Tim Belcher 146 140 4 2 37 35 187 177 0.514 10
1983 2001 Bret Saberhagen 167 117 2 4 17 10 186 131 0.587 55
1939 1956 Howie Pollet (2) 131 116 0 1 55 16 186 133 0.583 53
1948 1967 Vernon Law (2) 162 147 2 0 21 20 185 167 0.526 18
1933 1949 Mort Cooper 128 75 2 3 54 55 184 133 0.580 51
1891 1901 Nig Cuppy 162 98 0 1 21 14 183 113 0.618 70
1922 1937 Rube Walberg (*1) 155 141 1 1 27 27 183 169 0.520 14
1886 1895 Mark Baldwin* 154 165 29 25 183 190 0.491 -7
1990 2010 Mike Hampton 148 115 2 4 33 25 183 144 0.560 39
1892 1908 Pink Hawley* 167 179 15 15 182 194 0.484 -12
1880 1888 Larry Corcoran* 177 89 3 4 180 93 0.659 87
1991 2006 Brad Radke 148 139 2 3 30 35 180 177 0.504 3
1977 1996 Scott Sanderson 163 143 0 0 16 8 179 151 0.542 28
1991 2007 Aaron Sele 148 112 0 6 31 18 179 136 0.568 43
1951 1969 Johnny Podres 148 116 4 1 26 16 178 133 0.572 45
1926 1941 Bump Hadley 161 165 2 1 14 7 177 173 0.506 4
1994 2013 Chris Carpenter 144 94 10 4 23 41 177 139 0.560 38
1950 1965 Frank Lary (2) 128 116 48 26 176 142 0.553 34
1928 1949 Thornton Lee* 117 124 59 66 176 190 0.481 -14
1882 1890 Guy Hecker* 175 146 175 146 0.545 29
1981 1995 Mike Moore 161 176 4 3 10 9 175 188 0.482 -13
1971 1985 Steve Rogers 158 152 3 1 14 26 175 179 0.494 -4
1964 1979 Jim Lonborg 157 137 2 3 16 12 175 152 0.535 23
1969 1986 Jim Slaton 151 158 1 0 23 8 175 166 0.513 9
1889 1903 Sadie McMahon* 173 127 1 0 174 127 0.578 47
1875 1889 George Bradley* 171 151 3 3 174 154 0.530 20
1938 1954 Preacher Roe 127 84 2 1 44 39 173 124 0.582 49
1889 1902 Jouett Meekin 152 133 20 24 172 157 0.523 15
1941 1955 Vic Raschi (3) 132 66 5 3 33 30 170 99 0.632 71
1955 1966 Sandy Koufax 165 87 4 3 169 90 0.653 79
1989 2002 Andy Benes 155 139 1 1 12 6 168 146 0.535 22
1884 1896 Dave Foutz? 147 66 3 6 18 4 168 76 0.689 92
1877 1894 Monte Ward* 164 103 0 0 164 103 0.614 61
1931 1946 Hal Schumaker (3) 158 121 2 2 4 2 164 125 0.567 39
1971 1985 Burt Hooton 151 136 6 3 7 4 164 143 0.534 21
1906 1920 Jack Coombs 158 110 5 0 163 110 0.597 53
1932 1955 Spud Chandler* (2) 109 43 2 2 47 41 158 86 0.648 72

Honorable Mention

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1997 2013 Hiroki Kuroda 68 70 2 2 103 89 173 161 0.518 12
1999 2013 Daisuke Matsuzaka 53 40 3 1 117 74 173 115 0.601 58

The Rest

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1871 1876 Dick McBride 149 78 149 78 0.656 71
1872 1877 Candy Cummings* 145 94 1 7 146 101 0.591 45
1914 1935 Babe Ruth 94 46 3 0 22 9 119 55 0.684 64

WINFILES II

The 350-399 Win Club
Let’s move a little more quickly through the rest of the list, stopping to highlight a few things along the way.

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1899 1916 Christy Mathewson 373 188 5 5 20 15 398 208 0.657 190
1983 2007 Roger Clemens 354 184 12 8 13 6 379 198 0.657 181
1874 1894 Pud Galvin* 365 310 12 6 377 316 0.544 61
1958 1983 Gaylord Perry 314 265 1 1 55 46 370 312 0.543 58
1937 1963 Early Wynn (1) 300 244 1 2 66 55 367 301 0.549 66
1882 1894 John Clarkson* 328 178 2 5 34 9 364 192 0.655 172
1959 1987 Phil Niekro (1) 318 274 0 1 43 25 361 300 0.546 61
1964 1988 Steve Carlton 329 244 6 6 24 11 359 261 0.579 98
1912 1935 Burleigh Grimes 270 212 3 4 86 57 359 273 0.568 86
1965 1988 Don Sutton 324 256 6 4 24 9 354 269 0.568 85
1879 1893 Tim Keefe* 342 225 4 3 7 9 353 237 0.598 116
1984 2009 Tom Glavine 305 203 14 16 31 33 350 252 0.581 98

In the 350-399 win range, we encounter the question of “cheating,” as the 350-win club includes two known steroid users and three known spitballers. Besides Roger Clemens, the other “steroid” user is Hall of Famer Pud Galvin, who experimented briefly with a testosterone elixir (probably an ineffectual patent medicine), drinking it openly on the field as it was not illegal at the time. Galvin was just a slightly above-average pitcher but a ridiculous workhorse even for his day, averaging 495 innings a year for a decade from age 22-31; he died at 45 from stomach inflammation. The spitball story is a similar one: Burleigh Grimes was one of the men “grandfathered” and thus allowed to throw a legal spitball in the 1920s, whereas Gaylord Perry and Don Sutton were both famous and illegal defacers of the ball. I mentioned the study of High Quality Starts: the only two pitchers to make 300 of them since 1920 are Sutton (310) and Clemens (308).
Sutton was sort of the poor man’s Spahn: his season ERAs and other stats were rarely eye-popping, but he started 27 games and pitcher 207 innings in 1968, 23 games in the strike-shortened 1981, but otherwise started at least 31 games in each of the other 20 seasons between 1966 and 1987. His second season, 1967, was his only really poor year, although a number of others were more modestly subpar. His only real injury was while bunting in September 1980. Ask any manager how valuable it is to have a guy you can just pencil in the rotation and leave him there for 22 years.
Perry was 32 years old when the Giants traded him for Sam McDowell, who was four years younger, in December 1971. Perry won 180 more games, McDowell won 19. It’s hard today to believe the workloads that Perry carried within living memory: he averaged 321 innings, 39 starts and 25 complete games a year from age 30-36, 1969-75, the last three of those against lineups that used the DH. Yet he stayed healthy enough to win the Cy Young at 39 and pitch until he was 44.
I had always just assumed that Phil Niekro‘s late start in the majors was wholly due to learning the knuckleball, but he missed his age-24 season in the military in 1963. In 1982, at age 43, Niekro threw a 2-hit shutout against the Giants (with whom the Braves entered the game tied for second place) on September 27, then came back and threw a 3-hit, no-walk shutout on 3 days’ rest against the Padres; they were his only two shutouts of the year, and gave Joe Torre’s Braves the division by one game over the Dodgers.
Christy Mathewson, who shares the NL career win record with Alexander, also shares having his life ruined by World War I; Mathewson inhaled poison gas during a training exercise, wrecking his lungs. He was already at the end of his playing career (he had hit the wall after age 33), but the illness ended his managing career and he would be dead of tuberculosis by age 45. Mathewson, who threw straight overhand with tremendous control and the very occasional deployment of his devastating “fadeaway” (a precursor to the screwball) was a preposterous 303-120 with a 1.91 ERA from 1903-1913, age 22-32, and at the peak of the Giants-Cubs rivalry in 1908-09, he went 62-17 with a 1.31 ERA while Three Finger Brown, the Cubs’ ace, went 56-18 with a 1.39 ERA. In the 1905 World Series, Matty would throw three shutouts in six days; in the 1919 World Series, recuperating in the press box, he was one of the few men willing to question whether the Series was on the level.
Tom Glavine should skate into the Hall on the strength of 305 wins, five 20-win seasons and leading the National League in starts six times. As a Mets fan I don’t recall him as fondly as many Braves fans do, especially given his role in the 2007 season-ending collapse (he gave up seven runs and retired just one batter in the first inning of Game 162; the Mets had entered the final day tied for first), but Glavine in his one postseason trip for the Mets in 2006 was 2-1 with a 1.59 ERA.
Honorable Mention

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1928 1953 Tony Freitas (3) 25 33 348 243 373 276 0.575 97
1927 1952 William Thomas 368 335 368 335 0.523 33
1926 1953 Dick Barrett 35 58 317 251 352 309 0.533 43

I’m listing separately the pitchers who won less than half their games in the majors. Thomas, the winningest minor league pitcher ever, was a wandering control pitcher in the low minors in a hitters’ era; he was 244-258 with a career ERA around 3.53 through age 38 before he started rolling up good won-loss records against war-depleted Southern Association competition, so there’s no real reason to think he would have been a top major league pitcher. Freitas, by contrast, had some modest if fleeting success in the majors and rolled up most of his wins in the Pacific Coast League.
The 325-349 Win Club

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1907 1935 Jack Quinn 247 218 0 1 101 65 348 284 0.551 64
1965 1993 Nolan Ryan 324 292 2 2 21 10 347 304 0.533 43
1908 1928 Stan Coveleski 215 142 3 2 127 104 345 248 0.582 97
1928 1953 Bobo Newsom 211 222 2 2 131 106 344 330 0.510 14
1985 2009 Randy Johnson 303 166 7 9 29 27 339 202 0.627 137
1909 1933 Red Faber (1) 254 213 3 1 79 64 336 278 0.547 58
1961 1989 Tommy John 288 231 6 3 41 30 335 264 0.559 71
1912 1935 Dazzy Vance 197 140 0 0 133 129 330 269 0.551 61
1901 1920 Three Finger Brown 239 130 5 4 85 52 329 186 0.639 143
1901 1917 Eddie Plank 326 195 2 5 328 200 0.621 128
1984 2012 Jamie Moyer 269 209 3 3 56 35 328 247 0.570 81
1962 1983 Fergie Jenkins 284 226 43 26 327 252 0.565 75
1966 1986 Tom Seaver 311 205 3 3 12 12 326 220 0.597 106

[CHART: k.bf.prime.updated]
Dazzy Vance was, as measured relative to the league, the highest-strikeout pitcher of all time, despite not winning a major league game until he was 31. Vance’s rate of strikeouts per batter faced was 222% of the league average, 228% in his power-pitching prime from age 31-42. Nobody else is over 200% career, although Bob Feller, Grove and Rube Waddell are all over 200% if you focus on their prime years. Vance may have had some unique help from Ebbetts Field (it was said that he bleached his pitching sleeve and often threw against the backdrop of white laundry hung by Brooklyn housewives from clotheslines behind the park); the numbers show that from 1922-32, the years he was with the Dodgers, he had a 2.67 ERA and averaged 7.3 K per 9 innings at home, a 3.67 ERA and 5.1 K/9 on the road. Grimes, his teammate, had a 2.70 ERA at Ebbets from 1918-26, 3.38 on the road, but wasn’t a big strikeout pitcher (1.7 K/9 at home, 1.4 on the road).
Mordecai Peter Centennial “Three Finger” Brown, one of baseball’s unique stories due to the boyhood farm accident that left him with a mangled pitching hand that naturally threw curveballs, didn’t even play in the minors until he was 24. Brown’s teams had among the best team defenses in baseball history, a great edge for a guy who, from 1906-09, walked just 1.6 batters per 9 innings and allowed 5 home runs in 1165.1 innings. Yet, by 1911, Brown was making nearly half his appearances in relief (between 1906-11, he is credited with 38 shutouts and 38 saves).
Stan Coveleski is one of those Hall of Famers whose resume of a high-quality but relatively short career (his ERA+ from age 27-35 is a sterling 136) looks more impressive when you throw in 127 minor league wins between age 19-25.
Eddie Plank is the first pitcher we encounter here who never pitched in the minors; lefthanded pitching was sufficiently rare in baseball’s early days that when Plank retired, he had won 129 more games than any other lefty.
Honorable Mention

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1913 1940 George Payne (1) 1 1 348 262 349 263 0.570 86
1923 1949 Sam Gibson 32 38 307 200 339 238 0.588 101
1910 1931 Oyster Joe Martina 6 8 0 0 330 268 336 276 0.549 60
1915 1941 Alex McColl 4 4 0 0 332 263 336 267 0.557 69
1902 1920 Charles Baum 327 279 327 279 0.540 48
1891 1911 Ted Breitenstein 160 170 165 92 325 262 0.554 63
1917 1938 Frank Shellenback 10 15 300 179 310 194 0.615 116

Ted Breitenstein holds some quasi-legitimate records for most hits and runs allowed in a season, their legitimacy based on drawing the recordbooks’ line across 1893, the year the mound was moved back to 60 feet six inches. Relocating to the more lenient Southern Association after the turn of the century, he posted a 2.02 ERA from age 32-42, including ERAs of 1.05, 1.33, 1.48, and 1.53.
Bill James, in the Historical Baseball Abstract, picked longtime Pacific Coast League hurler Frank Shellenback as the best minor league pitcher of all time; he was a spitballer cut by the White Sox in mid-1919 who had the misfortune of being in the minors and not “grandfathered” when the pitch was outlawed the following year.
The 300-324 Win Club

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1879 1892 Mickey Welch* 307 210 1 2 16 14 324 226 0.589 98
1881 1902 Tony Mullane 284 220 38 26 322 246 0.567 76
1957 1983 Jim Kaat 283 237 1 3 36 33 320 273 0.540 47
1913 1937 Jesse Haines 210 158 3 1 107 61 320 220 0.593 100
1991 2013 Andy Pettitte 256 153 19 11 43 22 318 186 0.631 132
1888 1914 Clark Griffith 237 146 78 55 315 201 0.610 114
1969 1992 Bert Blyleven 287 250 5 1 22 7 314 258 0.549 56
1886 1910 Gus Weyhing 264 232 50 53 314 285 0.524 29
1905 1927 Babe Adams 194 140 3 0 116 61 313 201 0.609 112
1879 1891 Old Hoss Radbourn* 309 194 3 0 312 194 0.617 118
1903 1927 Chief Bender 212 127 6 4 94 44 312 175 0.641 137
1921 1948 Charlie Root 201 160 0 3 111 83 312 246 0.559 66
1924 1943 Carl Hubbell 253 154 4 2 52 38 309 194 0.614 115
1927 1946 Paul Derringer 233 212 2 4 74 53 309 269 0.535 40
1871 1887 Bobby Mathews 297 248 8 13 305 261 0.539 44
1948 1967 Robin Roberts 286 245 0 1 14 4 300 250 0.545 50

Tony Mullane is best known for being Irish-born and ambidextrous, occasionally toying with throwing with each hand; he won 284 big-league games despite missing the 1885 season, at the age of 26, after being suspended for jumping a contract. Mullane averaged 34 wins a year the prior three seasons and 30 a year the next three, so he would have easily had 300. But perhaps it’s just as well, given how he treated his catcher, African-American pioneer Fleet Walker, in 1884:

“Moses Fleetwood Walker was the best catcher I ever worked with, but I disliked a Negro and whenever I had to pitch to him, I used to pitch anything I wanted without looking for the signals,” wrote Mullane of Walker, his former teammate with the Toledo Blue Stockings. “One day he signaled me for a curve ball and I shot a fast ball at him. He caught it and walked down to me. He said: ‘I’ll catch you without signals but I won’t catch you if you are going to cross me when I give you signals.’ And all the rest of the season he caught me and caught anything I threw. I pitched without him knowing what was coming.”

Mullane threw 63 wild pitches in 64 starts that year; Walker was charged with 72 passed balls in 41 games, albeit not that many more than teammate Deacon McGuire (66 in 41 games).
Andy Pettitte finishes up as a 275 game winner in the majors if you include the postseason.
Babe Adams, a control specialist, had a really remarkable baseball odyssey, going back to the minors four times over his career yet pitching all but one of his big-league games between ages 25 and 44 for the Pirates, for whom he was the hero of the 1909 World Series and would make his last World Series appearance as a 43 year old in 1925. From 1919-22, Adams walked 74 batters in 857.2 innings.
Bert Blyleven, the best pitcher born in Holland, had 167 wins and a career ERA+ of 127 in 3000.2 innings from age 19-30; Sandy Koufax had 165 wins and a career ERA+ of 131 in 2324.1 innings from age 19-30. Blyleven would win 131 more games, including three seasons when he was in the top 4 of the Cy Young balloting after age 30; Koufax was retired at 30. Oddly, Blyleven, the last man to throw 20 complete games, holds the single season record for no-decisions, with 20.
Chief Bender and Jesse Haines are both marginal Hall of Famers (in Haines’ case, far below marginal) who pitched multiple big World Series games and had long minor league records. Bender won 212 games between age 19-33, left baseball to spend a year working in the shipyards to support the war effort in 1918 (I don’t credit him for missed time because he wasn’t actually in the military, but that may be a quibble), then had a second act in the minors starting with a season of 29-2 with a 1.06 ERA in the lowly Virginia League in 1919. He made one more brief cameo in the majors at 41, and had a 1.33 ERA in the Middle Atlantic League in his professional coda at 43.
There are four great pitchers who really stand out from their own contemporaries for their workloads at their peak, relative to the years they pitched in: Robin Roberts in the early 50s, Bob Feller in the late 30s to the season of his return from the war, Phil Niekro in the late 70s, and John Clarkson in the mid-late 1880s. But Niekro was a knuckleballer, and Clarkson was just doing what everybody else had been doing 5 years earlier; only 12 pitchers between 1924 and 1962 threw 320 innings in a season, and three of those were Roberts in consecutive seasons (in that 3-year stretch he averaged 338 innings and 31 complete games), and three others were Feller, albeit separated by four years in which Feller didn’t pitch due to the war. Roberts tossed 300 innings six years in a row and less than 3 innings short of a seventh, at a time when the #2 workhorse in the game (Warren Spahn) was miles behind. Like Mariano Rivera, Roberts in his prime threw basically one pitch, a fastball with great movement and pinpoint control, and that put little strain on his arm.
Honorable Mention

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1910 1933 Rube Benton 150 144 1 1 172 136 323 281 0.535 42
1898 1928 Long Tom Hughes 132 174 0 1 189 165 321 340 0.486 -19
1907 1929 Harry Krause 36 26 281 237 317 263 0.547 54

Harry Krause led the AL in ERA at age 20 with a 1.39 mark in 1909, albeit on a team where Plank, Bender and Cy Morgan were all below 1.80. But he flamed out of the majors by age 23 and missed most of the A’s dynasty that would follow.
The 275-299 Win Club

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1911 1930 Wilbur Cooper 216 178 83 76 299 254 0.541 45
1974 1998 Dennis Martinez 245 193 2 2 51 23 298 218 0.578 80
1947 1967 Whitey Ford (2) 236 106 10 8 51 20 297 134 0.689 163
1923 1947 Red Ruffing* (2) 273 225 7 2 16 27 296 254 0.538 42
1958 1975 Juan Marichal 243 142 0 1 50 26 293 169 0.634 124
1909 1926 Hooks Dauss 233 182 60 49 293 231 0.559 62
1919 1944 Earl Whitehill 218 185 1 0 74 55 293 240 0.550 53
1990 2008 Mike Mussina 270 153 7 8 14 4 291 165 0.638 126
1966 1994 Charlie Hough 216 216 0 0 75 55 291 271 0.518 20
1964 1984 Jim Palmer 268 152 8 3 14 6 290 161 0.643 129
1920 1943 Freddie Fitzsimmons 217 146 0 3 73 64 290 213 0.577 77
1909 1929 Jeff Pfeffer (1) 158 112 0 1 130 98 288 211 0.577 77
1912 1931 Carl Mays 208 126 3 4 75 57 286 187 0.605 99
1961 1982 Luis Tiant* 229 172 3 0 52 30 284 202 0.584 82
1957 1975 Bob Gibson 251 174 7 2 25 25 283 201 0.585 82
1895 1910 Vic Willis 249 205 0 1 31 32 280 238 0.541 42
1950 1971 Jim Bunning 224 184 55 66 279 250 0.527 29
1986 2007 Curt Schilling 216 146 11 2 50 43 277 191 0.592 86
1976 1994 Jack Morris 254 186 7 4 15 13 276 203 0.576 73

Whitey Ford started 156 career games in which the Yankees scored 6 runs or more, and never lost one of them. And he did that despite facing unusually stiff competition. In his rookie season, Ford made just 2 of his 12 starts against .500 or better teams – but from his return from the Army in 1953 until Casey Stengel’s last season in 1960, Ford made more than half his starts against .500 or better teams. Partly that’s because more than half the rest of the league was over .500 in those years, but in 1954, 1959 and 1960 there were only two other winning teams in the AL. One of the great what-ifs is what the early 50s World Serieses look like if Ford is on the 1951 and 1952 Yankees and Don Newcombe is on the 1952 and 1953 Dodgers instead of in the military (the 1952 and 1953 Serieses went to the Yankees in 7 and 6 games, respectively). From Ford’s arrival in July 1950 through the end of the 1954 season, counting the postseason, the Yankees went 267-134 (a .666 winning percentage).
The best defensive support of any pitcher – most sophisticated fielding metrics place Brooks Robinson and Mark Belanger among the four or five most valuable defensive players of all time, and that’s before we get to Paul Blair – helped Jim Palmer throw a High Quality Start in 47.6% of his career starts, the best of any post-1920 pitcher.
We don’t really have a full record of what Luis Tiant did before coming to the U.S., as he had been pitching since “age 16.”
As I’ve noted before, Jack Morris actually had two great “years” that just weren’t within a single season: from June 1, 1983 to May 31, 1984, Morris was 27-9 with a 2.36 ERA, with 24 complete games and 248 strikeouts in 317 innings; from July 5, 1986 through July 4, 1987, he went 26-5 with a 2.98 ERA. Had he done those in two single seasons, he might be in the Hall of Fame now even with the same relatively unimpressive career resume.
Honorable Mention

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1910 1933 Ray Caldwell 134 120 0 1 159 147 293 268 0.522 25
1928 1950 Luke Hamlin 73 76 213 147 286 223 0.562 63
1910 1930 Jim Bagby 127 89 1 1 151 131 279 221 0.558 58
1927 1966 Satchel Paige 28 31 0 0 248 103 276 134 0.673 142

Jim Bagby, like Krause, tasted big-league greatness for a short time, winning 31 games in 1920 as the ace of the Indians’ first World Championship team.
Satchel Paige started pitching in 1927 and was, in his last publicity-stunt start in the minors in 1966, a teammate of Johnny Bench. He went 21-12 with a 2.15 ERA at age 49-50 pitching for Miami in the International League in 1956-57. He threw shutouts in his second and third major league starts, at what was probably the age of 41. As uneven as the statistical record of his career is, every piece of it points to a tremendous pitcher, one who racked up 1990s-style strikeout rates against all types of competition between the 1920s and early 1940s and who was still far above the league strikeout average in the majors in his mid-40s.
The 250-274 Win Club

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1877 1887 Jim McCormick* 265 214 3 3 6 6 274 223 0.551 51
1928 1947 Curt Davis 158 131 0 1 115 93 273 225 0.548 48
1982 2007 David Wells 239 157 10 5 22 28 271 190 0.588 81
1884 1897 Bill Hutchinson* 182 163 87 54 269 217 0.553 52
1913 1935 Dolf Luque 194 179 1 0 72 45 267 224 0.544 43
1937 1956 Eddie Lopat 166 112 4 1 97 82 267 195 0.578 72
1936 1966 Bob Feller (4) 266 162 0 2 266 164 0.619 102
1912 1933 Eppa Rixey (1) 266 251 0 1 266 252 0.514 14
1897 1914 Jack Powell 245 254 21 18 266 272 0.494 -6
1905 1920 Eddie Cicotte 209 148 2 3 55 36 266 187 0.587 79
1972 1993 Frank Tanana 240 236 0 1 24 8 264 245 0.519 19
1916 1938 Waite Hoyt 237 182 6 4 21 44 264 230 0.534 34
1906 1933 Rube Marquard 201 177 2 5 61 43 264 225 0.540 39
1894 1913 Jesse Tannehill 197 117 65 34 262 151 0.634 111
1937 1959 Murray Dickson 172 181 0 1 90 63 262 245 0.517 17
1923 1946 Ted Lyons (3) 260 230 260 230 0.531 30
1990 2009 Pedro Martinez 219 100 6 4 35 20 260 124 0.677 136
1947 1967 Lew Burdette 203 144 4 2 53 49 260 195 0.571 65
1914 1934 Ray Kremer 143 85 2 2 115 145 260 232 0.528 28
1912 1934 Herb Pennock (1) 241 162 5 0 13 10 259 172 0.601 87
1897 1913 Rube Waddell 193 143 65 50 258 193 0.572 65
1927 1947 Mel Harder 233 186 24 15 257 201 0.561 56
1967 1990 Jerry Reuss 220 191 2 8 34 33 256 232 0.525 24
1965 1985 Jerry Koosman 222 209 4 0 28 30 254 239 0.515 15
1901 1915 George Mullin 228 196 3 3 22 22 253 221 0.534 32
1956 1975 Jim Perry 215 174 0 1 38 28 253 203 0.555 50
1871 1877 Al Spalding 252 65 252 65 0.795 187
1989 2011 Tim Wakefield 200 180 5 7 47 49 252 236 0.516 16
1957 1977 Mike Cuellar 185 130 4 4 63 60 252 194 0.565 58
1942 1972 Hoyt Wilhelm (3) 143 122 0 0 109 67 252 189 0.571 63
1935 1953 Harry Brecheen 133 92 4 1 114 77 251 170 0.596 81
1970 1991 Rick Reuschel 214 191 1 4 35 15 250 210 0.543 40
1986 2009 John Smoltz 213 155 15 4 22 26 250 185 0.575 65
1979 2000 Orel Hershiser 204 150 8 3 38 30 250 183 0.577 67
1951 1968 Larry Jackson 194 183 56 32 250 215 0.538 35
1930 1953 Dutch Leonard 191 181 59 57 250 238 0.512 12

Continue reading WINFILES II

Matt Harvey: Man Without A Decision

After the Mets’ 20-inning, 2-1 loss on Saturday to the mightless Marlins, Matt Harvey has 8 no-decisions in his last 9 starts. Harvey is now 5-0 in 13 starts; if he continued at his current season’s pace, he would finish the season 14-0 with 22 no-decisions in 36 starts. That would set a major league record for no-decisions in a single season. How unusual a year is Harvey having?
Harvey opened 2013 as the one shining bright spot in a dismal Mets season, a season that got even more dismal with Monday’s demotion to AAA of Ike Davis, who led the team in homers by a double-digit margin last season. The Mets’ increasingly punchless offense (even with the stalwart presence of David Wright) is 11th in the NL in scoring and batting an anemic .226/.294/.369 entering Tuesday’s action, and it has caught up to Harvey with a vengeance. After scoring 6 runs a game and going 5-0 in Harvey’s first five starts, the Mets have scored just 2.75 runs a game in his last 8 starts, going 3-5.
Some of those no-decisions have been especially agonizing. On May 28, Harvey went 8 innings against the Yankees, allowed one run, struck out 10 and walked nobody. He threw 114 pitches and got a goose egg; the team ended up winning 2-1 for Scott Rice. On May 7, he went the full 9 innings against the White Sox, striking out 12, walking nobody and allowing only an infield single to Alex Rios in the seventh inning. The 10th inning win went to Bobby Parnell. Saturday, the Mets scored in the second inning and were blanked for the next 18 innings, Harvey leaving after 7 innings once again having struck out 6 and walked nobody, and complaining of a sore back to boot. (The game was the fifth 20-inning game in Mets history; only 42 other games that long have been played in MLB history without the Mets’ involvement). Harvey has yet to allow more than 4 runs in a start this season, and has never gone less than 5 innings in a start in his brief Major League career.
Overall, over the last 9 starts, Harvey has a 2.66 ERA, has thrown 6.78 innings and 105 pitches per start, and has not allowed a single unearned run. In the 8 no-decisions, he has a 2.68 ERA, has cracked 100 pitches six times, and averaged 6.71 innings per start. This ought to be the stat line of a winning streak – good pitching, going deep into game after game – yet Harvey has come up empty. While this string of no-decisions is not totally historically unique, it is very unusual.
Bill James recently looked at the odds of a pitcher winning a game if you measure by “Game Score,” his quick formula for measuring how well a pitcher pitched, taking account of things like walks and strikeouts as well as innings and runs. Looking at a sample of all starts between 1952 and 2011, he found that a Game Score of 51 or above is more likely to mean a win than a loss, and a pitcher with a Game Score of 66 or above will generally have a winning percentage of .800 or above in his decisions. James didn’t separately break out rates of no-decision, but using his numbers, a pitcher is likely to get a decision 93% of the time with a Game Score over 80, 88% of the time with a Game Score over 68; Game Scores in the 50s yield a decision around two-thirds of the time. But not for Matt Harvey: he already has no-decisions this season with Game Scores of 97, 76, 67, 58, and 55.
According to the Play Index at Baseball-Reference.com – which currently only goes back to 1916, but no-decisions were rare before then – the Game Score of 97 on May 7 tied a record previously held by Randy Johnson (twice, in a 15-strikeout outing in 1992 and a 20-strikeout outing in 2001) for the highest ever in a 9-inning no-decision, although I would argue that perhaps the best 9-inning no-decision of all time was Francisco Cordova’s 9 no-hit scoreless innings, 2 walks and 10 strikeouts in 1997, for a Game Score of 95). In fact, Baseball-Reference.com lists only 19 starts in baseball history where a pitcher posted a Game Score of 90 or better in 9 innings or less and got a no-decision (there are many no-decisions with Game Scores above 100, from the earlier years when starters would go deep into extra innings, the extreme example being Joe Oeschger and Leon Cadore on May 1, 1920 pitching to a 26-inning complete game 1-1 tie for Game Scores of 153 for Oeschger and 140 for Cadore. You think your team is having a rough patch? Following the 26-inning game, the Dodgers lost in 13 innings on May 2, lost in 19 innings on May 3, then went on in the succeeding weeks to lose in 11 innings on May 7, win in 10 on May 9, win in 14 on May 14, lose in 11 on May 27 and win the second game of a double-header – with Cadore going the distance again – in 10 on May 29. Somehow, they survived this to go on to win the NL Pennant).
Since 1916, the single-season record for no-decisions is 20, by Bert Blyleven for the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates. Blyleven is a particularly odd person to hold this particular record: he got a decision in 80% of his starts over the rest of his career, including a 4-year stretch from 1971-74 when he averaged 34 decisions and 5 no-decisions a year. (In 1973, Blyleven had 37 decisions in 40 starts, going 20-17 with a 2.52 ERA). As late as the 1985-86 seasons, he had 64 decisions and only 9 no-decisions, and in 1985 was the last pitcher to throw more than 20 complete games in a season. But in 1979, pitching for a World Championship team with a deep bullpen (Kent Tekulve, Enrique Romo and Grant Jackson between them averaged 83 appearances and 115 innings apiece and a 2.89 ERA), Blyleven was kept on a short leash by Chuck Tanner. In his 20 no-decisions that season, Blyleven averaged just 5.87 innings per start (going more than 7 innings only twice), posting a 4.76 ERA in those starts, in which the Pirates went 11-9. And he didn’t pitch much differently in the ones they won – in the 11 no-decisions the Pirates won, Blyleven averaged 5.76 innings per start with a 4.69 ERA.
Only five other pitchers have managed as many as 17 no-decisions in a season, and only 15 in total have had 16 no-decisions; here’s how they stack up to Harvey (I’ve listed Runs Allowed rather than ERA so you can see the full effect of Harvey not allowing any unearned runs):

Year Pitcher No-Decisions Starts ND% RA IP/ND
2013 Matt Harvey 8 13 61.5% 2.68 6.7
1979 Bert Blyleven 20 37 54.1% 5.14 5.9
2004 Odalis Perez 18 31 58.1% 3.65 6.3
1986 Andy Hawkins 18 35 51.4% 5.69 5.4
1999 Kenny Rogers 17 31 54.8% 5.91 5.6
2008 Oliver Perez 17 34 50.0% 4.70 5.7
1987 Mike Krukow 17 28 60.7% 6.89 4.6
2009 Randy Wolf 16 34 47.1% 3.43 6.2
2009 Roy Oswalt 16 30 53.3% 4.48 5.4
1978 John Montefusco 16 36 44.4% 4.39 6.0
1999 Eric Milton 16 34 47.1% 6.14 5.5
1917 Lee Meadows 16 36 44.4% 5.06 4.7
1980 Dennis Lamp 16 37 43.2% 6.08 5.0
1979 Randy Jones 16 39 41.0% 4.19 6.3
1993 Juan Guzman 16 33 48.5% 5.72 6.0
2009 Joba Chamberlain 16 31 51.6% 6.20 4.4

As you can see – after we pause briefly while all the Mets fans still reading this stab their eyes out upon seeing Harvey on a chart next to Oliver Perez and Kenny Rogers – Harvey sticks out like a sore thumb on this list, both in terms of how well and how far he pitched into games and the high ratio of no-decisions to decisions. Many of these guys were beneficiaries of winning teams – Guzman went 14-3 for the World Champion 1993 Blue Jays, Krukow was bailed out in games the division champion Giants went on to win on 13 occasions (13 no-decisions in games his team won is the most on record, and he had a 6.51 ERA in those 13 starts). Maybe the most extreme example of a guy who got bailed out constantly by his offense was Dwight Gooden in 1999: Gooden, by then running on fumes, was 3-4 with 15 no-decisions in 22 starts and an 8.25 ERA in his no-decisions. The Indians went 12-3 in those starts anyway, and in the 12 the Indians won, Gooden had a 9.13 ERA and averaged 3.94 innings per start. But that Indians team scored over 1,000 runs; the Mets are on pace to score fewer than 650.
You have to get further down the list to find anybody who had a full season that looks like what Harvey has done so far:
-Cliff Lee in 2012: 3.21 ERA and 7.11 IP/start in 15 no-decisions (half of his 30 starts), going at least 6 innings every time.
-Brad Radke in 2004: 2.52 ERA and 6.66 IP/start in 15 no-decisions out of 34 starts; like Harvey, Radke threw at least 5 innings and allowed no more than 4 earned runs in any of his no-decisions. Amazingly, Radke voluntarily re-signed with the Twins after that season.
-Joey Hamilton in 1995: 2.87 ERA, 6.69 IP/start in 15 no-decisions out of 30 starts, going at least 5 innings every time. However, Hamilton allowed 9 unearned runs, so his Runs Allowed average was a less stellar 3.68.
-Jim Deshaeis in 1990: 2.32 ERA, 6.73 IP/start in 15 no-decisions out of 34 starts, going at least 5 innings each time and never allowing more than 4 runs.
-Pedro Astacio in 1996: 3.16 ERA, 6.64 IP/start in 15 no-decisions out of 32 starts. This 2011 SABR presentation argued that Astacio, followed by Deshaies and Montefusco, had the most effective no-decisions based on where they left their team when they exited the game: Astacio left with a lead 7 times and a tie 7 more, meaning he was bailed out when losing only once in his 15 no-decisions. In Harvey’s case, he left two of his no-decisions with a lead (scores of 6-4 and 2-1), three tied (scores of 2-2, 1-1 and 1-1) and three trailing (by scores of 1-0, 3-2 and 3-2).
-Perhaps the best pitching in a significant number of no-decisions in one season (and a hopeful case for Harvey) was Clayton Kershaw in 2009. Kershaw got 14 no-decisions in 30 starts, and partly that was because he hadn’t yet learned to imitate Greg Maddux’s pitch efficiency: Kershaw averaged 5.9 innings per start in his no-decisions, and lasted a full 7 innings in only 5 of them. But his ERA in those starts was a measly 1.42; Kershaw’s 10 no-decisions with a Game Score of 60 or better in a season is the most on record, edging out Tom Candiotti in 1993 and Roger Clemens in 2005.
-Candiotti in 1993 (yet another Dodger on this list, thank you Chavez Ravine): 14 no-decisions in 32 starts, a 1.97 ERA and 6.86 IP per no-decision.
The list of consecutive starts without a decision is even more dominated by pitchers who were not in Harvey’s league: three pitchers went 10 straight starts without a decision, and they were all terrible over that stretch: Dick Stigman in 1965 (5.48 ERA, 4.26 IP/start), Randy Lerch in 1977 (6.70 ERA, 4.96 IP/start) and John D’Acquisto in 1977 (8.39 ERA, 2.46 IP/start, which makes you wonder why the Padres even bothered with a starting pitcher when it was D’Acquisto’s turn). The longest stretch of pitching well without a decision is Al Downing in 8 spot starts from 1974-76, a 2.17 ERA in 6 innings a start for a Dodger team with tireless workhorses Mike Marshall and Charlie Hough in the bullpen.
Historically, the guys who got the most no-decisions, and most well-pitched no-decisions, in their careers were just the guys who started the most games. Tommy John leads the pack with 188 no-decisions followed by Don Sutton with 182, but John started 700 games, Sutton 756. The most no-decisions with a Game Score of 60 or better is Nolan Ryan with 41, followed by Roger Clemens (34), Greg Maddux (31) and Don Sutton (30), and all four of those guys won more than 320 games.
But in today’s game, Harvey has something more like company. Among pitchers with 67 or more career no-decisions, three have career ERAs below 3.10 in their no-decisions: Felix Hernandez (2.76), Matt Cain (2.95) and Jake Peavy (3.01). (Greg Maddux had a 3.14 ERA in his 159 no-decisions, to go with a 1.83 ERA in his 355 career wins. The lesson, as always: Greg Maddux was awesome.).
The most logical conclusion from looking at history is that Harvey either won’t keep pitching like this or will sooner or later start getting some wins again. Eventually, as Mets fans will remember, hard luck can turn. In 1987, pitching for the defending World Champion Mets (who would lead the league in runs scored), Ron Darling went an agonizing 14 starts without a win from April 26 to July 3 – 0-6 with 8 no-decisions – at a time when he was the team’s only healthy starter. Darling’s 4.76 ERA over that stretch attests that he was often ineffective, but he also had 5 starts in there with a Game Score of 60 or better; the Mets scored just 3.7 runs a game in those starts. But things turned around, Darling went 10-2 in his next 14 starts…until he tore his thumb diving for a bunt that broke up his no-hitter in the sixth inning on September 11, ending his season and leading to Terry Pendleton’s famous home run to ice the division race later that night.
So yes, Mets fans. It will probably get better. But it can always get worse.

Wright Zone Judgment

David Wright is back, or rather he’s still back. Wright, who batted .311/.394/.534 (OPS+ 141) from 2005-08 (age 22-25), slumped to .284/.364/.463 (OPS+ 124) from 2009-11, the first three years in the new Citi Field in what should have been his prime hitting age, 26-28. But over the 2012-13 seasons so far, he’s hitting .307/.396/.497 (OPS+ 146), reclaiming his status as an elite player.
A major factor in both turnarounds has been Wright’s strikeout rate. From 2005-08, Wright averaged walks in 11.8% of his plate appearances, strikeouts in 16.6%. From 2009-11, the walk rate slumped slightly to 11.2%, but the K rate ballooned to 22.9%. Strikeouts are not much worse than any other out, but when a player suddenly starts striking out a lot more, that’s usually a bad sign. Since the start of 2012, however, Wright is back to a BB/K rate of 12.8% walks, 16.5% strikeouts.
When you break it out by month, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Wright was particularly badly affected by his August 15, 2009 beaning, which caused him to miss the rest of that month; while his K rate was already up in April-May 2009 (14.6% BB, 24.9% K, mostly due to adjusting to an unfriendly new home park – 11.2% BB, 31.2% K in home games those two months, 18.3% BB, 18.3% K in road games), he’d been whittling it down the rest of that season (12.0% BB, 18.3% K in June-August 2009), before being beaned by Matt Cain. From his return in September 2009 through May 2010, Wright averaged an unsightly 8.7% BB and 25.1% K rate. It took a while to gradually get that back to a more normal (for him) ratio.
Last season, Wright started with great progress in cutting his strikeouts, but they spiked in July. Combined with a September spike in 2011, that suggests that, as Wright gets older, he may be prone to getting his swing out of whack as fatigue and injuries set in (although recall that last year he was hitting with a broken finger in April). So, it’s possible that this year’s low strikeout rate will drift a bit as the year goes on. But on the whole, the pattern over Wright’s career is that keeping his strikeouts under control is key to his productivity. Here’s the monthly breakdown over his career:

Month PA BB K BB/PA K/PA
Jul-04 39 2 5 5% 13%
Aug-04 114 4 15 4% 13%
Sep-04 130 8 20 6% 15%
Apr-05 91 14 17 15% 19%
May-05 107 11 19 10% 18%
Jun-05 106 11 22 10% 21%
Jul-05 110 7 11 6% 10%
Aug-05 117 17 19 15% 16%
Sep-05 126 12 25 10% 20%
Apr-06 106 10 13 9% 12%
May-06 125 14 29 11% 23%
Jun-06 117 10 21 9% 18%
Jul-06 99 14 21 14% 21%
Aug-06 115 9 19 8% 17%
Sep-06 99 9 10 9% 10%
Apr-07 108 16 23 15% 21%
May-07 121 11 25 9% 21%
Jun-07 112 14 19 13% 17%
Jul-07 117 13 21 11% 18%
Aug-07 128 26 17 20% 13%
Sep-07 125 14 10 11% 8%
Apr-08 120 23 16 19% 13%
May-08 129 13 23 10% 18%
Jun-08 123 13 18 11% 15%
Jul-08 123 21 16 17% 13%
Aug-08 127 11 22 9% 17%
Sep-08 114 13 23 11% 20%
Apr-09 94 12 27 13% 29%
May-09 119 19 26 16% 22%
Jun-09 118 12 23 10% 19%
Jul-09 110 16 20 15% 18%
Aug-09 56 6 9 11% 16%
Sep-09 121 9 35 7% 29%
Apr-10 100 21 26 21% 26%
May-10 120 11 39 9% 33%
Jun-10 114 9 25 8% 22%
Jul-10 112 10 23 9% 21%
Aug-10 112 8 25 7% 22%
Sep-10 112 10 23 9% 21%
Apr-11 119 14 31 12% 26%
May-11 53 11 12 21% 23%
Jun-11 0 0 0 0 0
Jul-11 46 1 5 2% 11%
Aug-11 113 14 21 12% 19%
Sep-11 116 12 28 10% 24%
Apr-12 89 16 14 18% 16%
May-12 114 16 16 14% 14%
Jun-12 122 16 11 13% 9%
Jul-12 111 11 27 10% 24%
Aug-12 119 15 23 13% 19%
Sep-12 115 7 21 6% 18%
Apr-13 106 19 17 18% 16%

I put the month-by-month graph below the fold because it’s very wide.

Continue reading Wright Zone Judgment

BASEBALL/42

Over the weekend, I went to see 42, the Jackie Robinson movie. A few thoughts, with spoilers for those of you who do not already know the story by heart (I can’t say my take here is that radically different from a number of other reviews I’ve read from other baseball writers):
1. The movie is a snapshot – not the full story of either Robinson’s life and career or the integration of baseball. It starts with Branch Rickey’s decision to bring a black player to the Dodgers in 1945, and ends with the Dodgers winning the 1947 NL pennant. Even within that snapshot, once Jackie makes the Dodgers’ minor league team in Montreal, almost nothing is shown of his 1946 season, and some other events are compressed (the Cardinals get off easy, as the film focuses on the Phillies as the main villians who threatened not to take the field against an integrated team). That keeps the plot and pacing relatively tight (even though the endpoint is no surprise), but it necessarily leaves off a lot of background and detail as well as the other storied chapters of Robinson’s career. And relatedly, the film is intended mainly to tell Robinson’s story to a generation of moviegoers who don’t know all the details, so there’s a bit of broad exposition that would not be necessary for people like me who are already steeped in the whole story.
2. The performances are everything they needed to be. Harrison Ford – while still recognizably Harrison Ford – steals every scene he’s in as Branch Rickey, and captures “Mr. Rickey’s” character and style (complete with his trademarks – his sermonizing speaking style and outrageously bushy eyebrows). Similarly, Christopher Meloni and John C. McGinley look, act and sound like the real Leo Durocher and Red Barber, other than Meloni being a lot bigger and bulkier than the diminutive Lip.
Chadwick Boseman has the unenviable task for a young actor of having to carry the film while competing with Ford and other more experienced actors, but while he doesn’t mimic Robinson’s high-pitched voice, he captures the man’s fierce competitive drive and hatred of segregation, and perhaps even more importantly he’s truly believable at bat and on the basepaths, where Jackie worked his memorable magic. More broadly, the baseball in the movie is really well-done: the players, the game and the parks all look like 1940s baseball. Brad Beyer as Kirby Higbe, for example, looks very much the part of your typical Sourthern farm boy turned power pitcher of that era.
In some ways, Jackie Robinson’s challenge in holding his temper in check and channeling it into the game reminds me of what I’ve written about George Washington; neither was the kind of man to meet adversity with Zen-like calm, but both managed to become complete masters of their own powerful emotional currents – anger, rage, despair – and present to the world a stoic face. That’s an incredibly impressive skill, for such a strong personality to remain so contained. The film captures that challenge, and takes some dramatic license to illustrate it with a scene (which almost certainly did not happen) of Robinson breaking down in the tunnel behind the dugout and requiring a pep talk from Rickey.
(Nicole Beharie is elegant as the still-elegant Rachel Robinson, but doesn’t really have much of a role to work with beyond the standard baseball-wife scenes. The film does spend some time with the Robinsons as newlyweds, which reminds me of an interesting question that I think I asked on Twitter a while back to not much satisfactory response: what is cinema’s most compelling black romantic couple? We can all name lots of famous onscreen romances, but it’s only much more recent films that have really developed those relationships between a black man and a black woman, and I can’t think of one that stands out as iconic. But there has to be one I’m not thinking of.)
3. The dialogue is frequently terrible, windy and too self-aware, and there’s a handful of scenes that are anachronistic in the way the characters speak and interact (men in the late 40s didn’t talk with each other about their feelings a lot, for example). While the usual rule in biographical films is to avoid mimicry, the best dialogue is actually characters like Rickey, Barber, Durocher and Happy Chandler speaking the way those men actually spoke (I sat through all approximately 478 hours of Chandler’s Hall of Fame induction speech in 1982). Branch Rickey really did talk as if he was orating for the history books; most of his players did not.
4. The movie’s inaccuracies were irritating but few and minor. Leo Durocher’s suspension for the 1947 season is portrayed as solely the result of his scandalous affair with Laraine Day, when in fact the stated reason for the suspension was over Durocher consorting with gamblers (Happy Chandler also cited “the accumulated unpleasant incidents in which he has been involved,” which also covered the affair and a variety of Leo’s other feuds). (I’ll forgive the filmmakers for sneaking into a night-time phone conversation Leo’s iconic “Nice guys finish last” line). Pee Wee Reese is given Gene Hermanski’s famous clubhouse wisecrack about how the Dodgers should all wear 42 when Jackie gets a death threat, so nobody could tell which one was him. Fritz Ostermuller’s family claims that the film inaccurately portrays him as a racist who beaned Robinson in a game. (The family of Ben Chapman, who eventually repented of his racist torments of Robinson late in life, could make no such claim). The film ignores Dan Bankhead, the second black Dodger who joined the team in late August. But on the whole, I was pleasantly surprised by the attention to getting details right that historians of the game would notice. The movie captured both the essential truths of Robinson’s battle against the color line and the twists along the way. Particularly interesting and mostly accurate was the differing motivations of the players who rallied around Robinson, from Reese’s reluctant solidarity (as a son of Kentucky) to the scrappy Eddie Stanky, who like his mentor Durocher would walk over fire for you if you were on his team and could help him win a ballgame.
Every generation learns history anew, and Jackie Robinson’s corner of history is one worth retelling. If you haven’t seen 42 yet, you should.

Established Win Shares Levels, RIP

I have come to a decision, absent a really compelling reason to re-think it: after doing them for nine seasons, I’m retiring my annual division-by-division Established Win Shares Levels reports.
EWSL was first introduced in this January 2004 post and is explained in some detail here. I’ve had a lot of fun along the way, but it’s time to hang up those particular spikes, for three reasons.
First, it’s an enormous amount of work. For nine years, I’ve run a 23-man roster for each of MLB’s 30 teams and an EWSL for each of those players: a total of 6,120 computations, each and every one of them done by hand-entering the annual Win Shares data in an Excel spreadsheet and applying an annually re-adjusted age adjustment. I don’t have a database or an assistant; every single number is my own effort.
The EWSL reports are by far the most time-consuming thing I do on the blog all year. Most of my other research projects (in baseball or politics) are smaller in scale, and often – being historical studies – they’re not on the same time pressured frame as rolling out all six divisional previews before the season’s too far underway for them to be meaningful. And they have to be cranked out at the same time every year when I’m engaged in preparing my fantasy baseball drafts and doing my taxes (and in recent years, my dad’s taxes and my brother’s estate’s taxes), plus it’s usually a busy time of the year at work.
Second, they’re behind the times. In 2004, we had fewer ways to use all-encompassing “Great Statistics” to evaluate each team in anything like a comprehensive manner. The first PECOTA projections were only unveiled in 2003. Win Shares were something of a new kid on the block, and even if EWSL was never high science, it was – I thought at the time – a bit innovative to run an established performance level with them to get a rough estimate of the established major league talent each team had on hand. At the time, it seemed like a way to add a new angle to the discussion and move it forward. And I do think that, if nothing else, the age-adjustment data I compiled over the years is something of use.
But the state of the art has advanced a lot since 2004. With a quick click of the mouse, you can gather far more sophisticated projections at Baseball Prospectus, Fangraphs, the Hardball Times, and elsewhere than any value that EWSL adds. Many of those projections are developed by teams of people with a lot more mathematical expertise, computing power and free time than I have at my disposal, and at some point it’s time to stop playing John Henry against the machine and know when you can no longer keep up. Most everyone these days prefers the more precise Wins Above Replacement to Win Shares anyway, since Win Shares are really a measure of gross value, rather than marginal value compared to a replacement level player. EWSL just isn’t worth the effort that goes into it, and while I’m grateful for the support of my readers over the years, I’m not sure it will really be missed all that much.
Third, and related to the prior point…I can get more bang for my time by blogging other things. It’s no secret that in the past 4-5 years, while my place in the baseball blogosphere has receded, my profile ability to reach a large audience with my political writing (especially at RedState) has increased a lot. I have no intention of abandoning baseball writing – I’d like to do more pieces for Grantland, for example, and I have some ongoing statistical research projects – but realistically, whether it’s sharpening other baseball pieces or writing about politics, I can put my blogging time to better use than the annual time vortex that is the EWSL reports.
Thanks again to everyone who’s read, commented on or linked to my EWSL posts. But it’s time to move on.

The Hall of Fail

This afternoon, we will see how the baseball writers voted, and it looks like it will be a very close call for the Hall of Fame to elect anyone (at last check, based on the publicly disclosed votes, it looks like Craig Biggio may be the only candidate in striking distance, with Jack Morris and Tim Raines trailing).
I don’t have a ton to add right now to what I wrote last year about many of these same candidates and the same issues – like steroids – that dominate the debate (follow the links in that post for more detailed arguments). But a few points.
1. The limitation of the ballot to ten names isn’t normally a problem, but this year, there’s such a backlog of qualified candidates that it presents a real dilemma. I don’t have a ballot, of course, but I divide my list of who I’d vote for as follows:
SHOULD GO IN WITHOUT DEBATE: (8) Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mike Piazza, Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, Tim Raines, Fred McGriff, Rafael Palmeiro.
To put Biggio in the simplest terms: 4,505 times on base (18th all time), plus 414 steals, while playing 1989 games at second base, 428 as a catcher, and 255 as a center fielder. That is a career. From 1992-99, adjusted for the fact that he lost 41% of a season over 1994-95 to the strike, Biggio’s average season was 160 games, 732 plate appearances, .299/.394/.460, 120 Runs, 73 RBI, 41 2B, 17 HR, 36 SB and only 11 CS, 101 times on base by walk or hit by pitch, and only 7 GIDP. And all of that while playing second base in the Astrodome and winning four Gold Gloves in eight years.
DEBATABLE BUT I’D VOTE THEM IN: (3) Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Curt Schilling.
I GO BACK AND FORTH: (2) Edgar Martinez, Bernie Williams. As noted last year, I do struggle with the fact that Edgar and McGwire have more similar cases than they seem at first glance.
CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR: (3) Alan Trammell, Larry Walker, Kenny Lofton.
BAD BUT NOT RIDICULOUS CHOICES: (3) Jack Morris, Lee Smith, Dale Murphy. As I’ve noted before, Murphy was good enough, but not for long enough; Morris, too, might deserve induction if his 1980 and 1988-90 seasons were of the same quality (plus quantity) as his 1981-87 seasons.
WORTH A LOOK BUT NOT A VOTE: (4) Don Mattingly, David Wells, Julio Franco, Steve Finley. Mattingly, of course, would have been an easy Hall of Famer if his back had held up.
JUST ENJOY BEING ON THE BALLOT: The other 14 guys, any of whom should be flattered to get a vote and honored by having had distinguished enough careers to be on the ballot. I mean that: if I was, say, Todd Walker, I’d want to frame my name on the Hall of Fame ballot. Only a tiny handful of the kids who start out dreaming on the sandlots get that far.
2. The postseason is an ever larger factor in modern baseball, and certainly a big part of what puts Bernie Williams and Jack Morris in the conversation, and Curt Schilling over the top. That’s as it should be.
There’s actually an awful lot of hitters on the ballot this year who struggled in October (not even counting Barry Bonds, who struggled the rest of his Octobers but made it up with a 2002 rampage). And of course, postseason numbers can be unfair to a guy like Raines who got a disproportionate amount of his October at bats in his declining years. We should not overlook, however, the value of Fred McGriff’s postseason contributions. Of the 16 somewhat serious position player candidates, five had somewhat limited postseason experience (less than 100 plate appearances); Trammell hit .333/.404/.588 in 58 plate appearances, Sosa .245/.403/.415 in 67 PA, and Palmeiro .244/.308/.451 in 91 PA. Mattingly and Murphy got one series apiece, Mattingly hitting .417/.440/.708, Murphy .273/.273/.273.
Here’s how the rest stack up:

Player G PA Avg OBP Slg OPS
Barry Bonds 48 208 0.245 0.433 0.503 0.936
Fred McGriff 50 218 0.303 0.385 0.532 0.917
Edgar Martinez 34 148 0.266 0.365 0.508 0.873
Larry Walker 28 121 0.230 0.350 0.510 0.860
Bernie Williams 121 525 0.275 0.371 0.480 0.851
Mike Piazza 32 133 0.242 0.301 0.458 0.759
Tim Raines 34 142 0.270 0.340 0.349 0.689
Jeff Bagwell 33 129 0.226 0.364 0.321 0.685
Mark McGwire 42 151 0.217 0.320 0.349 0.669
Kenny Lofton 95 438 0.247 0.315 0.352 0.667
Craig Biggio 40 185 0.234 0.295 0.323 0.618

Looking at the postseason numbers also suggests that the case for McGwire over Edgar is even narrower; yes, McGwire played for a World Champion and three pennant winners whereas Edgar’s often-insanely-talented teams never reached the Series, but like Edgar’s teams, Big Red’s lost some big serieses to obviously less talented opponents, and McGwire’s overall postseason performance was terrible.
Anyway, looking at McGriff, in over 200 plate appearances in the postseason he has the best batting and slugging averages of this illustrious group, and the second-best OBP to Bonds (and Bonds drew 5 times as many intentional walks in October – leave those out and McGriff beats Bonds .374 to .369). Projected to a 162 game schedule, his postseason line produces 36 2B, 32 HR, 87 BB, 117 R, and 120 RBI. McGriff slugged .600 in a postseason series six times in ten series (including all three series en route to the 1995 World Championship), an OPS over 1,000 five times. If you’re giving points for producing with seasons on the line, the Crime Dog should get more than any of these guys. (Bernie Williams slugged over .600 in 8 series, but he appeared in 25 of them; he also slugged below .320 ten times.).
3. On the steroid issue…well, you have to ask whose Hall of Fame is this? It’s a question Bill James asked 30 years ago about the All-Star Game, and people tend to skip over it as if everybody has the same answer.
We know Major League Baseball is operated for the purpose of making money for the owners, but that (as James also pointed out in the early 80s) it exists to satisfy popular enthusiasm for baseball, and the maintenance and cultivation of that fan interest is something the owners, in their self-interest, have to attempt to respect.
If you’ve read James’ indispensable book The Politics of Glory, you know that the question – whose Hall is it? – has long been a complicated and fraught one between MLB, the players, the BBWAA, the owners of the Hall, the Town of Cooperstown, and the fans who visit the museum.
Honoring the players is certainly an important and honorable purpose; for most of these guys, getting the call and being inducted into the fraternity of the Hall is the highlight of their entire lives, and that’s not a small thing. And to the extent that we view the Hall primarily as a personal honor, it makes some sense to cast a jaundiced eye at least on those players we know for a fact to have cheated to win, whether by breaking the game’s rules or breaking the law (some of the performance enhancing drugs at issue were legal under one of the two regimes but not the other at various times).
But at the end of the day, to me, the Hall is bigger than the players for the same reasons as why the games are played in full stadiums in front of TV cameras, for the same reasons as why scores of visitors make the pilgrimage to sleepy Cooperstown each summer. The Hall belongs to the fans, too. There is one red line, in my view: Shoeless Joe Jackson and his co-conspirators belong outside the Hall because they participated in a conspiracy to lose games. But everything else is about guys who were doing their best to win. The fans paid the owners to watch those wins, the writers wrote about them; they belong to history now, and to memory. We can’t re-live the 1990s to change the memories we have. It’s the job of the game to enforce the rules while the games are being played; having failed that (failed badly enough that clouds of unproven suspicion linger over many players without the evidence to resolve them), we are cutting off our noses to spite our faces by keeping a generation of the game’s best players out of the Hall, in a way that ultimately degrades the whole point of the place: to be a commemoration of the best in the game’s history. The game survived segregation and wars and gambling and cocaine and spitballs and assaults on umpires; we can keep those memories alive too and try to remedy them going forward, but we still enshrined the players who won baseball games through all of them. Because it’s not just their Hall, it’s ours.
It’s not the Hall of Fame if it doesn’t have guys like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and Mike Piazza (and, for that matter, Pete Rose). Their flags still fly over their stadiums, their records are still in the books, and their plaques should be in the Hall.

Has Mike Trout Peaked Already? Maybe.

David Schoenfield asks a provocative question: is Mike Trout’s Rookie of the Year and MVP runner-up season in 2012 as good as he will get? After all, he’s unlikely to improve much as a fielder or base thief. Schoenfield thinks Trout can still get better as a hitter – for most 20-year-olds, that’s not even a question mark, but most have more room for improvement:

I think it’s possible. He has a walk rate of 10.5 percent — while above the AL average of 8.0 percent — could improve, boosting his on-base percentages over .400, even if he’s more .300 hitter than .330…
What about power? Trout wasn’t projected as more of 20-homer guy coming up, so the 30 home runs was a big surprise, especially in a tough home run park. According to the ESPN Home Run Tracker, eight of Trout’s 30 home runs were “just enough” — a figure that wasn’t near the league-leading figures of Miguel Cabrera (16) and Adrian Beltre (15). Trout’s home run percentage on fly balls was 21.6 percent, which ranked 15th in the majors among those hitters with 300 plate appearances. Remember, as fast as is he, Trout isn’t a small guy, at 6-1 and over 200 pounds. He’s bigger than Mays or Hank Aaron.

Let’s look at some history. Trout’s headline-grabbing number is 10.7 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) at age 20. You can’t really study a player like that systematically, because he’s essentially a sample size of one. Counting only non-pitchers, only 2 other players have cleared 8 WAR at age 20 – Alex Rodriguez and Al Kaline, a list that grows to 5 if you include 21 year olds (Rogers Hornsby, Rickey Henderson, Eddie Mathews). If you compare Trout to players with 10-WAR seasons, the youngest comps are Ted Williams at age 22, and Willie Mays, Ty Cobb and Eddie Collins at age 23. Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Mantle and A-Rod all did it at 24, Hornsby and Babe Ruth at 25 (Ruth only really put in his first full-time season as an outfielder at 24). And of those, if you look at players with 10.5 or more WAR ate age 25 or younger, the only guys on the list with Trout are Mantle (twice) and Ruth, Gehrig, Cobb, and Hornsby once each, all of them at 24 or 25. Rare air to be listed with any of these guys, let alone atop a club exclusive to those names.
But to at least get some historical perspective, let’s loosen the criteria.
Of the ten previous players to clear 10 WAR in a season for the first time by age 25, four never topped that season again, and three of those never topped 10 WAR again; only three (Ruth, Hornsby and Mays) cracked 10 WAR more than two more times (the “10+Yrs” column refers only to subsequent seasons):

Player Age WAR Career High Age 10+ Yrs dWAR HoF?
Mike Trout** 20 10.7 N/A N/A N/A 2.1 Active
Ted Williams# 22 10.1 10.7 27 2 -0.9 YES
Willie Mays# 23 10.3 10.9 34 5 2.0 YES
Ty Cobb 23 10.1 11.1 30 2 0.4 YES
Eddie Collins 23 10.1 23 0 2.8 YES
Lou Gehrig 24 11.5 24 1 -0.2 YES
Mickey Mantle 24 11.0 11.1 25 2 0.5 YES
Jimmie Foxx 24 10.2 24 0 -0.1 YES
Alex Rodriguez** 24 10.1 24 0 2.3 Active
Babe Ruth 25 11.6 13.7 28 7 -0.5 YES
Rogers Hornsby 25 10.6 12.0 28 4 1.3 YES

**-Active
#-Lost seasons to military service

If you expand the field to players who reached 9 WAR for the first time by age 25, you get 19 players. 7 of the 19 never topped that season, although besides Arky Vaughan all of those were the 24 and 25 year olds. 9 of the 19 went on to have at least 3 more seasons of 9 or more WAR:

Player Age WAR Career High Age 9+ Yrs dWAR HoF?
Mike Trout** 20 10.7 N/A N/A N/A 2.1 Active
Alex Rodriguez** 20 9.2 10.1 24 3 1.7 Active
Rogers Hornsby 21 9.7 12.0 28 7 3.5 YES
Ted Williams 22 10.1 10.7 27 6 -0.9 YES
Ty Cobb 22 9.5 11.1 30 4 -0.7 YES
Eddie Collins 22 9.4 10.1 23 2 1.3 YES
Stan Musial*# 22 9.3 10.8 27 1 0.7 YES
Willie Mays# 23 10.3 10.9 34 6 2.0 YES
Cal Ripken 23 9.8 11.3 30 1 3.5 YES
Mickey Mantle 23 9.2 11.1 25 3 1.1 YES
Arky Vaughan 23 9.1 23 0 0.6 YES
Shoeless Joe Jackson$ 23 9.0 9.3 24 1 -0.1 Ineligible
Lou Gehrig 24 11.5 24 4 -0.2 YES
Jimmie Foxx 24 10.2 24 1 -0.1 YES
Tris Speaker 24 9.8 24 1 0.4 YES
Babe Ruth 24 9.7 13.7 28 9 0.2 YES
Barry Bonds 25 9.5 11.6 36 5 2.5 Not Yet
Adrian Beltre** 25 9.3 25 0 2.5 Active
Terry Turner 25 9.2 25 0 5.4 No

**-Active
#-Lost seasons to military service
*-1st 9-WAR season vs war-depleted competition
$-Banned from baseball in mid-career

As you can see, I included here as well, under the heading dWAR, the player’s defensive Wins Above Replacement, to see if players whose defensive value was a big part of scaling these heights were more or less likely to repeat. At the extreme end you have Terry Turner, who made this list on a fluke defensive season for the 1906 Indians (the defensive stats of Nap Lajoie’s Indians are a whole separate historical controversy). That said, the guys with some significant defensive value, like Trout, do seem to have been more likely to re-appear on the list, even guys like Hornsby and Bonds who were no longer valuable defensive players by the time of their best offensive seasons.
Stretching this to players who reached 8 WAR before age 25, you get a total set of 40 players, and almost half of them never matched the first season when they reached that level:

Player Age WAR Career High Age 8+ Yrs dWAR HoF?
Mike Trout** 20 10.7 N/A N/A N/A 2.1 Active
Alex Rodriguez** 20 9.2 10.1 24 7 1.7 Active
Al Kaline 20 8.0 8.2 26 1 0.4 YES
Rogers Hornsby 21 9.7 12.0 28 8 3.5 YES
Rickey Henderson 21 8.7 9.8 26 2 1.3 YES
Eddie Mathews 21 8.0 21 1 0.3 YES
Ted Williams 22 10.1 10.7 27 7 -0.9 YES
Ty Cobb 22 9.5 11.1 30 5 -0.7 YES
Eddie Collins 22 9.4 10.1 23 5 1.3 YES
Stan Musial*# 22 9.3 10.8 27 5 0.7 YES
Dick Allen 22 8.5 22 1 0.3 No
Cal Ripken 22 8.0 11.3 30 2 2.2 YES
Joe DiMaggio# 22 8.0 8.6 26 1 0.4 YES
Willie Mays# 23 10.3 10.9 34 10 2.0 YES
Mickey Mantle 23 9.2 11.1 25 4 1.1 YES
Arky Vaughan 23 9.1 23 1 0.6 YES
Shoeless Joe Jackson$ 23 9.0 9.3 24 1 -0.1 Ineligible
Reggie Jackson 23 8.8 23 0 0.1 YES
Ken Griffey jr. 23 8.5 9.5 26 2 0.9 Not Yet
Albert Pujols** 23 8.4 9.4 29 6 -0.8 Active
Joe Cronin 23 8.0 23 0 2.7 YES
Andruw Jones** 23 8.0 23 0 2.7 Active
Lou Gehrig 24 11.5 24 6 -0.2 YES
Jimmie Foxx 24 10.2 24 3 -0.1 YES
Tris Speaker 24 9.8 24 5 0.4 YES
Babe Ruth 24 9.7 13.7 28 10 0.2 YES
Ron Santo 24 8.6 9.6 27 2 0.8 YES
Johnny Bench 24 8.5 24 0 2.4 YES
Willie Wilson 24 8.3 24 0 2.2 No
Ralph Kiner 24 8.1 24 0 -0.1 YES
David Wright** 24 8.1 24 0 1.4 Active
Bobby Grich 24 8.0 24 0 3.9 No
Ryne Sandberg 24 8.0 24 0 2.0 YES
Barry Bonds 25 9.5 11.6 36 8 2.5 Not Yet
Adrian Beltre** 25 9.3 25 0 2.5 Active
Terry Turner 25 9.2 25 0 5.4 No
Will Clark 25 8.5 25 0 -0.1 No
Hank Aaron 25 8.4 9.1 27 5 -1.1 YES
Snuffy Stirnweiss* 25 8.1 8.2 26 1 2.5 No
Joe Medwick 25 8.1 25 0 -0.5 YES

**-Active
#-Lost seasons to military service
*-1st 9-WAR season vs war-depleted competition
$-Banned from baseball in mid-career

Stirnweiss was a dominant player in 1944-45 who was merely ordinary when the real ballplayers returned from the war. Grich and Andruw Jones, like lesser versions of Turner (though better players over their careers), were pushed to these heights by unusually valuable glovework.
Mike Trout is a highly unusual player; we just don’t have much precedent for a guy this good, this young, with this broad a base of skills and some of them (like his defense and base stealing) so well-polished already. You can compare him to Mays, Mantle and Cobb, but almost by definition you can’t project a player to have that kind of career. What we can say is that players who have MVP-caliber seasons at age 25 or younger (1) tend, more often than not, to go on to great careers but (2) tend, as often as not, to never have a better season simply because it’s hard to put it all together like this at any age.

D vs R, Yankees vs Mets

Once every four years, I have a little fun crossing the baseball and politics streams by writing a post noting that the Hated Yankees have prospered far better in the World Series under Democratic than Republican presidents – in fact, they haven’t won a World Series with a Republican in the White House since 1958. Counting since 1921 (their first pennant), the Yankees are 20-3 in the World Series in 42 postseasons of Democratic Administrations, but just 7-10 in the World Series in 48 years of Republican Administrations. On the whole, the Yankees under Democratic presidents have won the World Series (20 times) more often than they’ve missed the postseason (14 times), compared to 7 championships and 26 Octobers at home during Republican presidencies. They’ve gone 0 for the last five GOP Administrations while failing to bring home a championship on the watch of only one Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson.
Here’s a chart – I classified the postseasons by who was President in October (Nixon resigned in August, Harding and FDR died in the spring, JFK was killed in November) and left out 1994, when Buck Showalter’s Yankees had the best record in the American League when the strike hit, and 2012, since the postseason’s just started:

POTUS P Years WS W WS L LCS W LCS L LDS W LDS L Post No Post
Harding R 2 0 2 2 0
Coolidge R 6 3 1 4 2
Hoover R 4 1 0 1 3
FDR D 12 6 1 7 5
Truman D 8 5 0 5 3
Eisenhower R 8 3 3 6 2
Kennedy D 3 2 1 3 0
Johnson D 5 0 1 1 4
Nixon R 5 0 0 0 0 0 5
Ford R 3 0 1 1 0 1 2
Carter D 4 2 0 2 1 3 1
Reagan R 8 0 1 1 0 1 7
HW Bush R 4 0 0 0 0 0 4
Clinton* D 7 4 0 4 0 4 2 6 1
W Bush R 8 0 2 2 1 3 4 7 1
Obama** D 3 1 0 1 1 2 1 3 0
ALL R 48 7 10 4 1 3 4 22 26
ALL D 42 20 3 7 2 6 3 28 14

The Mets, sadly, have not even appeared in enough postseasons to be worth doing a similar analysis- their total is a World Championship (1969) and a World Series loss (1973) under Nixon, a World Championship (1986) and an LCS loss (1988) under Reagan, a Division Series loss (1999) and a World Series loss (2000) under Clinton, and an LCS loss (2006) under George W. Bush. But if you compare regular season records:

POTUS P W%
Kennedy D 0.283
Johnson D 0.375
Nixon R 0.525
Ford R 0.508
Carter D 0.401
Reagan R 0.536
HW Bush R 0.505
Clinton D 0.505
W Bush R 0.503
Obama D 0.463
ALL R 0.517
ALL D 0.431

A pretty clear inverse of the Yankees pattern, although much like the GOP, while falling short of the big prize the Mets had a good second half of the Clinton years under Bobby Valentine (the Newt Gingrich of baseball managers), and like the GOP the Mets had terrible months in October 2006 and September 2008.

Dickey Rises Above

RA Dickey this season finished 20-6 for a 74-88 team: 14 over .500 for a team that was 14 under. How unusual is that accomplishment? I ran through the past century looking for examples, focusing on pitchers who (1) won 15 or more games and (2) finished 5 or more games over .500 (3) for a team that was below .500 when they didn’t pitch. I came up with 73 75 examples; I’m sure there are more I missed, but I think I got the major ones. The chart below is ranked by multiplying the pitcher’s number of games above .500 by the team’s number of games below .500 the rest of the time (“x”); the “TOT” column adds the two:

Continue reading Dickey Rises Above

Mike Trout Scores

Mike Trout recently played his 162nd major league game, in which time he scored 136 runs. How unusual is that? Pretty unusual, at least in modern baseball. Baseball-Reference.com has game logs going back to 1918, and while I can’t run a systematic search, I’m pretty sure this is a complete list of the players since 1918 to score 120 or more runs in their first 162 major league games – 8 Hall of Famers out of 26 (plus at least one, Ichiro, who is sure to be a 9th, plus others who still could and a handful of guys who would have made it if they’d stayed healthier or out of World War II). Ages and years are listed by the age the player was in the season when he played his 162nd game:

Player Runs Age Year
Joe DiMaggio 154 22 1937
Ted Williams 146 21 1940
Lloyd Waner 142 22 1928
Johnny Frederick 142 28 1930
Mike Trout 136 20 2012
Vada Pinson 136 20 1959
Barney McCoskey 135 23 1940
Roy Johnson 133 27 1930
Jackie Robinson 132 29 1948
Jim Gilliam 132 25 1954
Dom DiMaggio 131 24 1941
Ichiro Suzuki 130 28 2002
Kiki Cuyler 130 26 1925
Frank Robinson 128 21 1957
Charlie Keller 127 23 1940
Nomar Garciaparra 126 23 1997
Hanley Ramirez 124 23 2007
Bobby Bonds 123 23 1969
Pete Reiser 123 22 1941
Chuck Klein 122 24 1929
Hal Trosky 121 21 1934
Augie Galan 121 23 1935
Carlos Beltran 120 22 1999
Johnny Pesky 120 26 1946
Lou Boudreau 120 22 1940
George Watkins 120 31 1931

As you can see, the list includes a number of guys (Ichiro, Jackie Robinson, Johnny Frederick, Roy Johnson, George Watkins) who arrived in the majors as seasoned veterans in mid-career. (This is not the case for Johnny Pesky, who scored 105 runs in 147 games as a 23 year old rookie, then spent 3 years at war before scoring 115 runs in 1946 when he returned). It’s also heavily dominated by the high-scoring 1925-41 period. The number of players who compiled a scoring record like Trout’s at such a young age is short and dominated by immortals.
I won’t chart them, but others of note: Lloyd Waner’s better brother Paul 113, Roy Johnson’s better brother Bob 118, Joe DiMaggio & Charlie Keller’s outfield-mate Tommy Henrich 116 and their teammate Lyn Lary 116, Albert Pujols 115, A-Rod 117, Ryan Braun 116, Dick Allen 119, Frank Thomas 110, Julio Lugo 111, Denard Span 115, Terrence Long 115, Steve Henderson 112, Wally Moses 116, the ill-fated Len Koenecke 110, Earl Averill 111, Earle Combs 115, Vince Coleman 115, Minnie Minoso 117, Bobby Thomson 115, Dan Uggla 111, Gary Redus 112, Al Smith 112, Fred Lynn 108, Lu Blue 109, Jose Reyes 103, Adam Dunn 108, Richie Ashburn 107, Pee Wee Reese 107, Dan Gladden 108, Andrew McCutchen 108, Bob Meusel 101, Jim Bottomley 101, Walt Dropo 106, Chick Fullis 108, Juan Samuel 109.
You can go back and find a few more in the 1900-17 period – Federal League star Benny Kauff scored 124 runs in his first 159 games, Roy Thomas 137 runs in his first 150 games, Lefty Davis scored 150 runs in his first 171 games in 1901-02. The 19th century is different, of course – Willie Keeler scored 191 runs in his first 170 games, Billy Hamilton 165 runs in his first 172 games, Hugh Duffy 204 runs in his first 207 games, and going all the way back to the beginning in 1871, in the days before gloves, groundskeeping or even fixed fielding positions, Ross Barnes scored 272 runs in his first 136 National Association games and 197 runs in his first 165 National League games.
But if you have to go back that far, it should tell you what a special player Trout really is.

That Sinking Feeling

I’ve lived through many depressing Mets seasons, ranging from years like 1978-80 when there was just no hope from the outset to years like 2006-08 when the team just unraveled right at the very end. But there is, in my view, no more unwatchable spectacle than a team that stays in the hunt or at least plays respectable halfway through the season, then just goes into freefall.
We’ve been down this road before. The two most memorable of these were 1991 and 2004. In 1991, the Mets had a Gooden-Cone-Viola front 3 and a rebuilt post-Strawberry lineup with Vince Coleman and Hubie Brooks supposed to stand in for Darryl. It was not that impressive a solution, but for a while it seemed to work: the team was 46-34 and 2.5 games back at the All-Star Break, and 49-34 (a 96-win pace, and with 368 runs scored and 312 allowed, they were only about two games above their Pythagorean record) three games after the Break. They went 4-4 the next 8 games to stand 53-38 (still a 94-win pace) on July 21, 4 games back of the Pirates. Then they just stopped. Look at their batting and pitching lines through July 21 – Gooden was 10-6 with good peripheral numbers (but a 4.06 ERA), Viola was 11-5 with a 2.92 ERA, Cone was 9-6 with a 3.07 ERA (with a combined K/BB ratio of 329/112 between the three), the Franco/Pena/Innis bullpen was solid, HoJo was hitting .268/.363/.553 with 69 RBI, Brooks was hitting .254/.350/.454, Kevin McReynolds .293/.357/.463, Gregg Jefferies .287/.360/.426, and Dave Magadan, Coleman and Rick Cerone had OBPs of .379, .360 and .369.
The team went 24-46 the rest of the way, including an 8-21 mark in August (batting / pitching). Brooks and Coleman got hurt, combining for just 159 ineffective plate appearances the rest of the year. McReynolds hit .212/.275/.351 the remainder of the way, Jefferies .256/.312/.322. Garry Templeton ended up starting at first base for a while, and hit .209/.235/.291 after July 21. HoJo kept hitting for power, but with an OBP of .315 the rest of the season. On the pitching side, Gooden started just 6 more games, and Viola – due partly to poor defense – collapsed to 2-10 with a 5.73 ERA the rest of the way. It was a gruesome end to the team that had averaged 95 wins a year from 1984-90 and been on pace to do the same in mid-July. The team would not contend again for 6 years.
2004 was horrible in a different way. The Mets were coming off two straight down years, so expectations were low enough in Art Howe’s second season at the helm. And in fact, they were never a really good team – but due to a poor start by the perennially division-leading Braves, the Mets were 1 game out of first place as late as July 15, the first game after the All-Star Break. The trouble signs should have been obvious: the team was 45-43, the Phillies were tied for first, the Marlins were also a game out, and the Mets’ .528 Pythagorean record still paled next to Atlanta’s .551. As it turned out, the Braves would go 50-24 the rest of the way.
The Mets on July 15, 2004 had a few bright spots (batting / pitching). Mike Piazza, then 35, was hitting .293/.385/.500. Cliff Floyd was hitting .281/.347/.516. Al Leiter and Tom Glavine had ERAs of 2.39 and 2.66, and closer Braden Looper’s 1.80 ERA understated his dominance – 43 K, 6 BB, 2 HR in 50 IP.
You know what happened next. The Mets dropped 10 of their next 14 games to fall 7 games back on July 30 – and then pulled the trigger on a trio of trades that packed off top pitching prospect Scott Kazmir and another prospect to the Rays for Victor Zambrano, obtained Jose Bautista from the Kansas City system in exchange for Justin Huber and then packaged Bautista and Ty Wigginton for Kris Benson and Jeff Keppinger. The deals were win-now deals, but the Mets had already effectively dropped out of the race; after going 3-5 their next 8 games, they were 11 games back and finished. Overall, they ended up 26-48 the rest of the way, Benson posted a 4.50 ERA and Zambrano got hurt and started only 3 games. (batting / pitching). The team became almost as totally unwatchable as in 1991, the sole exception being the July 21 callup of David Wright, who hit .293/.332/.525.
2012 is starting to get that feeling. There were a lot of memorable highlights this season’s first half, from Wright’s amazing comeback (slashing his K rate by more than half from the prior years) to Johan Santana’s no-hitter to RA Dickey’s amazing dominance. All I really asked for was that, after Mike Pelfrey went down, this team keep Wright, Ike Davis and the four remaining rotation starters healthy. The Mets were 43-36, 2.5 games out and leading the Wild Card race on June 30 (playing only slightly above their Pythagorean record), and would make it into the Break 46-40.
Through June 30, things looked solid. (batting / pitching). Wright was hitting .355/.449/.564, and while he had no other major help, some other offensive contributors were pitching in a little: Lucas Duda was hitting .258/.348/.417, Kirk Neuwenhuis .275/.335/.414. Ike Davis, after a nightmarish start, was beginning to shake off the rust in mid-June. Dickey was 12-1 with a 2.15 ERA, Santana 6-4 with a 2.76 ERA, and the top four starters (Dickey, Santana, Jonathan Niese and Dillon Gee) were combining for 383/115 K/BB ratio in 395.1 IP.
But the second half has been a nightmare. Gee went down with a season-ending blood clot in his arm. Santana went to the DL, nominally with an ankle injury but most likely signifying his shoulder hasn’t really recovered after his June 1 no-hitter; he had allowed 4 HR in 68 innings through that night, 11 in 42.2 IP and a 6.54 ERA since. Dickey’s ERA since July 1 is 4.69, and most of the rest of the staff has been no improvement. In the outfield, Duda has hit .140/.260/.233, Nieuwenhuis .105/.190/.132, Jason Bay .109/.242/.164 (the former two have since been demoted). (batting / pitching)
The Mets lost 11 of the first 12 games after the Break, dropping to 11.5 games back in the division and 5.5 back of the second Wild Card. The losses have, this time, been more of the excruciatingly close variety. Of those 11 losses:
-On July 14, the Mets blew a 7-5 lead in the bottom of the 8th and lost by 1 run, 8-7.
-On July 17, the Mets staged a 3-run rally to lead 3-2 entering the bottom of the 9th, blew the lead, took a 4-3 lead into the bottom of the tenth, and lost the game 5-4.
-On July 18, the Mets lost a 1-run game, 4-3.
-On July 20, the Mets lost a 1-run game, 7-6.
-On July 21, the Mets trailed 6-5 entering the 9th inning, before Dickey (working in relief) was tagged for two runs.
-On July 22, the Mets rallied with runs in the 7th and 9th to tie the game, then lost 8-3 in 12 innings.
-On July 23, the Mets rallied to tie the game in the 7th, then lost 8-2 in 10 innings.
That’s a 12 game stretch featuring 3 extra inning losses, 3 other 1-run losses, and 1 other game that was a 1-run game into the 9th.
Amazingly, the team has actually righted the ship a little since then, with a 5-2 stretch entering yesterday’s loss and a total record of 6-5 on the current West Coast road trip, including some spectacular moments by raw rookie Matt Harvey (1-2 so far but with 23 K in 16.1 IP). Daniel Murphy (.369/.414/.524) and Ruben Tejada (.338/.377/.392) have been on a tear since July 1, and Jordany Valdespin has hit a number of big pinch hit homers, picking up where Scott Hairston left off earlier in the season; Mets pinch hitters are batting .268/.367/.492 with 8 pinch homers on the season. So the situation is not as dire as that of, say, the Astros, who after posting a 22-23 record through May 25 have gone 14-50, including 4-30 since June 27 (and have traded away their only good starting pitcher and most of their bullpen).
But it’s hard to watch, after the hope of the first half. This team will have to keep fighting to avoid the fate of 1991 and 2004.

1968: Year of the Injured Hitter?

Why was 1968 the Year of the Pitcher? Let me present to you an unorthodox theory that has been percolating in my brain since I noticed a pattern leafing through the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract a quarter century ago: the dominance of pitching that season was exacerbated by an unusual run of injuries to a number of the game’s best hitters, combined to some extent with an unusual run of good health by the game’s best pitchers.
Lest we get too carried away with the theory, let me step back a bit. The offensive/defensive conditions of the game change every year, sometimes due to years-long structural factors, sometimes due to weather, chance or other one-year factors. Scoring dropped throughout the 1960s due to a number of the former: a bigger strike zone, more pitcher-friendly parks, higher mounds, more night games, a reduction in the stigma against strikeouts without a corresponding emphasis on plate patience. Those factors affected the game from 1963-68, and some of them continued to linger into the late 1970s. 1968 was simply the most extreme example of its era. Scoring was down from 3.77 runs per team per game to 3.42 (a drop of almost 10%), rising back in 1969 to 4.07.
But I have wondered for years if there was something specific at work that made 1968 stand out from the years around it, and if you look one by one at the injuries to major offensive stars that season, a pattern suggests itself. I do not promise a systematic comparison of 1968 to other seasons in this regard, but take a look at the anecdotal evidence with me and see if you agree.
The Walking Wounded
Let’s start with the core group of players, most of them major offensive stars, who were hampered by injury in 1968. I’ll list each player’s age as of 1968 in parentheses, and a chart showing each player’s plate appearances and Offensive Wins Above Replacement (OWAR) for the 1967-1968-1969 seasons (source: baseball-reference.com).
Joe Morgan (24)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
580 5.6 27 0.3 657 4.7

Morgan wasn’t the biggest star KO’d by injury in 1968, but he was the most total loss. While he wasn’t recognized as a major star until he escaped the Astrodome in 1972, Morgan had been second in the Rookie of the Year voting in 1965, an All-Star in 1966, batted .276/.385/.408 and averaged 20 steals a year from 1965-67, and .253/.366/.392 with 44 steals a year from 1969-71, plus another All-Star appearance in 1970. But 10 games into the 1968 season, with Morgan’s OBP at .444, he tore up his knee when Tommie Agee ran into him at second base, ending his season.
Harmon Killebrew (32)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
689 6.9 371 2.1 709 7.5

The biggest home run threat of the 1960s, Killebrew hit .266/.379/.546 from 1959-67, including 44 homers, 131 walks and a second-place MVP finish in 1967. He hit .267/.409/.534 from 1969-71, including 49 homers, 145 walks, 140 RBI and an MVP Award in 1969. In 1968, Killebrew was off his game but still productive (.210/.361/.420, OPS+ of 131); he was batting .204/.347/.392 when he tore a hamstring stretching for a throw in the All-Star Game, and didn’t return until September, when he batted .257/.458/.629 but started only 10 games and managed just 48 plate appearances.
Roberto Clemente (33)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
632 8.0 557 4.7 570 6.0

Clemente won the 1966 NL MVP and won his third batting title in four years in 1967, batting .357/.400/.554 and driving in 110 runs. Overall, he batted .332/.375/.503 from 1961-67, and .346/.395/.532 from 1969-71. But in 1968, Clemente was hampered by a nasty shoulder injury he suffered in the offseason at his home in Puerto Rico when a steel railing he was climbing on collapsed on his patio, sending him hurtling down a hill. Clemente tried to play through it, but later admitted that he should have at least skipped spring training; he hit .211/.237/.368 through May 24 before returning to something like his usual form, ending the season at .291/.355/.482.
Frank Robinson (32)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
563 6.5 508 4.3 643 6.4

Robinson, the 1966 Triple Crown winner, was slowed slightly in 1967 by vision problems from a violent collision, which may have lingered the following year; in 1968 he added mumps and a sore arm. He batted .314/.407/.609 in 1966-67 and .299/.400/.524 in 1969-71, but missed 32 games and hit .268/.390/.444 in 1968.
Al Kaline (33)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
550 6.3 389 2.7 518 2.5

Kaline batted .307/.385/.509 from 1955-67, and had arguably his best season as a hitter in 1967, batting .308/.411/.541 (OPS+ of 176). He was still a productive hitter in 1968, batting .287/.392/.428 (OPS+ of 146), and despite an off year in 1969, his batting line from 1969-72 was a robust .286/.378/.456. But Kaline missed six weeks in 1968 after his arm was broken when he was hit by a pitch from Lew Krausse on May 25.
Willie Stargell (28)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
536 2.8 496 2.2 594 5.6

Stargell battled injuries in both 1967 and 1968 before getting healthy and returning to form in 1969:

Willie’s production fell off in 1967. With Mota continuing to hit .300, Stargell found himself often benched against lefthanders. He suffered through injuries as well that year, crashing into the wall twice in a span of three days and experienced tendonitis in his shoulder. His weight remained and issue and inactivity did not help it. In 1968, Stargell first injured a knee and later suffered a concussion and face lacerations making a spectacular catch while crashing into the Forbes Field scoreboard and ended up hitting .237, the lowest of his career as a regular player as he battled headaches for the rest of the season.

On the whole, Stargell declined from .315/.381/.581 with 102 RBI in 1966 (his second straight 100 RBI year and third straight slugging .500) to .271/.365/.465 with 73 RBI in 1967 and .237/.315/.441 with 67 RBI in just 128 games in 1968. Stargell would bat .307/.382 /556 in 1969 and .289/.375/.555 from 1969-79.
Joe Torre (27)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
534 3.9 464 2.5 678 3.2

If you’re keeping score at home, that’s six Hall of Fame hitters between the ages of 24 and 33. Torre might be a seventh, although he’s likely to be inducted as a manager. Torre batted .301/.364/.487 from 1963-67 and .326/.394/.501 from 1969-71, but in 1968 he missed 47 games with injuries including a fractured cheekbone that caused him to miss a month after being beaned on April 18 by Chuck Hartenstein and a fractured hand in September, batting .271/.332/.377 on the season. As Torre describes the beaning these days:

Hank Aaron was on first base, trying to steal, and as Torre tried to sneak a peak back at the catcher and didn’t pick up the pitch in time before it hit him. The pitch broke his palate, and Torre said the toughest part was staying in bed for a long period of time.

Tony Conigliaro (23)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
389 3.1 0 566 0.4

I retold Tony C’s familar and sad story recently; he was one of baseball’s major rising star sluggers when he suffered a horrific beaning in August 1967, and missed the entire 1968 season.
Rico Carty (28)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
496 1.1 0 339 3.2

A devastating hitter when healthy, Rico Carty batted .330/.388/.554 as a rookie in 1964, .324/.382/.505 from 1964-66 before struggling to hit .255/.329/.401 in 1967 while playing with a separated shoulder. Carty then missed the entire 1968 season with tuberculosis. He would return to bat .357/.434/.570 in 1969-70 before his next big injury, to his knee.
Rico Petrocelli (25)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
556 3.0 451 1.8 643 7.9

Like a few others listed above, Petrocelli had injury problems in 1967 that worsened in 1968 before bouncing back healthy in 1969. In Petrocelli’s case, it was a bad elbow that cost him 39 games. He had batted .259/.330/.420 as a 24 year old in 1967 (OPS+ of 113) and would enjoy a monster breakout 40-homer .297/.403/.589 season in 1969, hitting .269/.363/.506 from 1969-71 (OPS+ of 134). But hampered by the elbow injury, Petrocelli hit just .234/.292/.374 (OPS+ of 92) in 1968.
Don Mincher (30)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
563 4.3 457 0.5 514 2.1

Yet another beaning victim. Mincher, a productive if unspectacular slugger, batted .255/.348/.488 (OPS+ 134) from 1962-67, including .273/.367/.487 (OPS+ 156) in 1967. He would go on to bat .257/.359/.448 (OPS+ 129) from 1969-71. But 1968 was a significant off year, as he batted .236/.312/.368 (OPS+ 111) and missed 42 games, including 10 games in April and the last 20 games of the season. The main cause was a horrific April 11 beaning by a 90+ mph Sam McDowell fastball to the jaw, which knocked out teeth and caused Mincher permanent hearing loss in one ear and “gave me equilibrium problems.”
Tommie Agee (25)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
584 2.3 391 -0.2 635 3.7

The April collision with Morgan wasn’t Agee’s first bruising of 1968; he was hospitalized after being beaned by Bob Gibson on the first pitch of spring training, and things didn’t get better from there: the 1966 AL Rookie of the Year had batted .256/.315/.412 (OPS+ 117) in 1966-67 and would bat .280/.348/.456 (OPS+ 121) from 1969-71, but in 1968 he was helpless, batting .217/.255/.307 (OPS+ 69) and doing even that well only with a strong September; Agee was hitting .109 in mid-May, .165 in mid-July and .181/.222/.265 on August 26 before regaining his bearings to hit .371/.397/.486 in his last 25 games.
Tony Oliva (29)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
615 3.4 528 3.4 692 3.6

Another outstanding talent (he was feared enough to lead the AL in intentional walks in 1968) whose career was degraded by injuries, the 1964 Rookie of the Year and 1965 Al MVP runner-up batted .317/.363/.518 from 1964-66 (OPS+ 143), .322/.362/.517 (OPS+ 140) from 1969-71. He had had a mild off year (.289/.347/.463, OPS+ 129) in 1967, and in that context his 1968 season (.289/.357/.477, OPS+ 145) looks like the same old Oliva, just hitting under more difficult conditions. But Oliva averaged 664 plate appearances a year from 1964-67 and 683 a year in 1969-70, whereas he missed 34 games in 1968 including the entire month of September with a separated shoulder, and finished the season with just 68 RBI.
Dick Allen (26)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
540 6.8 605 5.3 506 4.9

Allen, a better hitter than a good many Hall of Fame sluggers, was still a dangerous hitter in 1968 and had injury problems that season that were not unusual for him, but he may still deserve mention here; he suffered a groin injury and may have been suffering some aftereffects from the injury that ended his 1967 season (he tore up his hand pushing it through a car headlight on August 24); Allen started slowly, batting .257/.330/.396 through May 17, and while he caught fire after missing 8 games in early June, he ended up tailing off, batting .240/.334/.498 in the season’s second half (this being Dick Allen, that could also have been the results of a bruised ego, as he was feuding with his manager at the time). On the whole, Allen hit .312/.400/.601 in 1966-67 (OPS +178) – only Frank Robinson was better over that period – and .297/.390/.557 from 1969-74 (OPS+ 166). In that context, 1968 counts as a mild off year for Allen, .263/.352/.520 (OPS+ 160) with a career-high 161 strikeouts.
Adding Up The Damage

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
7827 64.0 5244 29.6 8264 61.7

I don’t want to overstate the effect of this rash of injuries to productive hitters, but the numbers do suggest that injuries to these 14 hitters alone were enough to have some effect at the margins. Combined, they accounted for 6.4% of all Major League plate appearances in 1967, 4.3% in 1968, and – with expansion – 5.6% in 1969. But not just any plate appearances – almost all of these guys were stationed at the top or middle of their teams’ batting orders, and the combined loss of 30-35 offensive WAR in a 24-team league is a lot of holes to fill.
In doing any sort of comparison, of course, we also have to consider that the 1969 bounce-back is inflated by expansion, which not only dilutes talent levels but tends to dilute them asymmetrically in favor of more scoring (marginal pitchers trapped in the minors are mostly there because they can’t pitch, whereas many marginal non-pitchers are trapped in the minors because they can hit but can’t field; adding more bad pitchers and a mix of bad hitters with good hitters who can’t field will, on balance, bring more scoring).
More Off Years
Of course, those 14 hitters were not the only ones to have a tough time in 1968, even relative to the league. To complete the picture, I’ll run here through a number of other players who had off years, some of them obviously not injury-related and others perhaps caused by unknown or minor injuries. But absent some reason to classify some of them as injury problems, I would not consider them as part of the analysis.
Carl Yastrzemski (28)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
680 9.5 664 7.1 707 3.8

Yaz was healthy and one of the three best hitters in baseball in 1968, but his 1967 Triple Crown season was not something he could repeat. Nobody had a year like it in 1968.
Orlando Cepeda (30)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
644 6.0 656 1.4 636 1.8

The unanimous 1967 NL MVP had back-to-back off years in 1968-69 (dropping from .314/.381/.500, OPS+ 148 to .252/.316/.402 OPS+ 108) before a big bounce back in 1970 (.305/.365/.543, OPS+ 136). I suspect his chronically bad knees may have had something to do with that, but that’s just guesswork.
Tim McCarver (26)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
540 4.5 467 1.8 576 1.8

Injuries for catchers can just accumulate. McCarver’s reduced playing time and production suggest he was banged up.
Paul Blair (24)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
619 3.9 467 0.0 685 3.9

I don’t know of any injuries – Blair’s famous beaning by Ken Tatum came in 1970 – but 1968 was a total loss for him with the bat, .211/.277/.318 (OPS+ 81), compared to .288/.338/.435 (OPS+ 126) in 1966-67 and .277/.335/.460 (OPS+ 119) in 1969-70.
Tommy Davis (29)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
621 2.5 482 -1.2 492 -1.0

Again, I don’t know of specific injuries, but Davis had many knee problems in his career and fell off dramatically relative to the league in 1968.
George Scott (24)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
641 3.5 387 -3.3 617 1.6

The Boomer had his usual spats with management over his weight, but seems to have just lost his batting eye in 1968, dropping from .303/.373/.465 to .171/.236/.237; he would go on to a long, productive career as a slugger.
Curt Blefary (24)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
645 2.7 535 0.3 632 1.5

I’m not aware of any injury problems; the 1965 AL Rookie of the Year, who batted .252/.361/.447 (OPS+ 133) just fell apart, .200/.301/.322 (OPS+ 89) despite improving his K/BB ratio significantly. He would hit .253/.347/.393 (OPS+ 109) in the Astrodome the following year, his last as a productive hitter.
Rod Carew (22)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
561 2.8 492 1.8 504 4.7

Carew was healthy and still just a young hitter coming into his own; his playing time was held back by his military commitments, which included 19 games away from the team in June 1968 to attend a summer training camp.
Tony Gonzalez (31)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
568 4.1 471 1.4 561 -0.4

Gonzalez, a good hitter earlier in the decade, had a fluke year in 1967, hitting .339/.396/.472, but was never really a major offensive threat after that.
Wes Parker (28)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
496 1.5 534 0.7 541 3.4

Parker missed 3 weeks in August, but this doesn’t seem all that unusual for him, and he was ordinarily not a major offensive star. But he did drop off from .250/.355/.367 (OPS+ 112) in 1966-67 and .301/.375/.444 (OPS+ 129) in 1969-70 to .239/.312/.314 (OPS+ 96) in 1968.
Jim Ray Hart (26)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
665 6.5 535 3.5 271 1.0

A dangerous hitter from 1964-67 (.290/.352/.501, OPS+ 136) Hart’s career was ended prematurely by injuries including shoulder problems, supposedly stemming from being hit in the shoulder by Bob Gibson. He batted .258/.323/.444 (OPS+128) in 1968 and missed 26 games, including a week in May and another in August, compared to the 664 plate appearances he averaged the prior four years, and never played a full season again. It appears that he was never hit by Gibson in a regular season game, so unless Gibson’s just making up the story, it may have happened in a spring game, like Gibson’s beaning of Agee, but the year would be unclear.
Ron Santo (28)

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
697 7.3 682 5.2 687 5.0

Yeah, I didn’t realize Santo and Yaz were the same age, either, which is the main reason I bothered listing him here. He, too, was coming off a big 1967, and was healthy as a horse.
If you just include Parker, who was definitely injured, and Carew, who was definitely unavailable for reasons unrelated to the offensive conditions, the chart I ran above now looks like this:

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
8884 68.3 6270 32.1 9309 69.8

If you then add in Cepeda, McCarver and Tommy Davis, you get this:

1967 PA OWAR 1968 PA OWAR 1969 PA OWAR
10689 81.3 7857 34.1 11013 72.4

Without running the full numbers, there were a few other players who busted out of 2-3 year funks in 1969: Boog Powell (who’d been injured in 1966-67 but was healthy in 1968), Ron Fairly, Willie Davis (Bill James in the 1988 Abstract identified Davis as a guy who lost a lot to the expanded strike zone of 1963-68; he had no injury issues). Hank Aaron’s OWAR for 1967-69 read 8.1-5.2-7.1, but he was healthy. 1968 also saw a couple of long-productive sluggers hit the wall with age: Bob Allison, Leon Wagner. Mickey Mantle was at the end, but was more productive than his numbers looked at first glance, and Mickey had been in gradual decline for a few years.
1969 also saw a bunch of guys bust out big compared to their 1967-68 OWAR. Some were productive hitters in 1968 who blossomed even further with expansion, better hitting conditions and marginally better health: Willie McCovey (who missed 14 games in 1968), Pete Rose (who uncharacteristically missed 2 weeks in July 1968 but still managed 692 plate appearances), Frank Howard, Jimmie Wynn, Reggie Smith, Rusty Staub, Cleon Jones, Tony Perez. There were also a crop of young players who established themselves offensive stars for the first time in 1969, in many cases 1968 rookies or guys who got their first full seasons in 1969: Reggie Jackson, Johnny Bench, Sal Bando, Bobby Bonds, Bobby Tolan, Alex Johnson, Mike Epstein. A passel of young talent can contribute to changing the balance of power between hitters and pitchers, but then 1968’s crop of rookie pitchers included guys like Jerry Koosman and Stan Bahnsen who enjoyed immediate success; it’s probably an effect rather than a cause of the offensive environment that many of the rookie hitters that season needed more time to adjust.
Finally, despite the offensive conditions or in some cases perhaps because of them, there were a handful of major hitters who had better years (measured by OWAR) in 1968 than in 1967 or 1969. Some just had career years (Willie Horton, Ken Harrelson) or at least happened to be right at their peak (Bill Freehan) or enjoying an up year in a series of ups and downs (Felipe Alou, Matty Alou, Roy White). Others just gave up less ground than the rest of the league (Willie Mays, Billy Williams, Lou Brock, Brooks Robinson, Ernie Banks).
The Pitchers
I have thus far addressed the hitters and their problems. But there’s a dog that didn’t bark much in 1968: pitching injuries, normally the bane of every baseball team. For example, contrasted to the number of injured, in-their-prime Hall of Fame hitters in 1968, there were 14 Hall of Fame pitchers active that season. Two were relievers: Hoyt Wilhelm made 72 appearances, Rollie Fingers was 21 and made his Major League debut on September 15. Of the 12 starters, 9 started at least 31 games and threw at least 232 innings, plus Don Sutton, who started 27 games and threw 207 innings, plus 21 year old rookie Nolan Ryan, who started 18 games. And that includes a number of guys who were right at the top of their game – Gibson, Marichal, Seaver, Drysdale, Jenkins. Only Jim Bunning was hurt: Bunning was perhaps the best pitcher in baseball in 1967, but he was 36 and broke down in 1968, starting 26 games and throwing 160 innings on the way to a 4-14 season. Of course, there were two other major injuries: Jim Palmer started only 9 games in 1967 and missed all of 1968 at age 22, and Sandy Koufax, still just 32, had retired after 1966 (Whitey Ford’s career was also ended by injury in early 1967). The Hall of Famers hit 1968 like a bullseye: Bob Gibson, who had the great 1.12 ERA, had missed two months with a broken leg the year before, while Don Drysdale, who set the scoreless innings record that would stand for two decades, blew his arm out the next year. 1968 AL ERA champ Luis Tiant (1.60 ERA) would struggle in 1969 before missing large chunks of 1970-71 with arm woes, and 31 game winner Denny McLain would be effectively finished as a star by arm trouble in 1970, as would longtime AL star Dean Chance in 1969.
Looking more broadly around the league, there were a few other pitching injuries. Tommy John and of course Gary Nolan missed about 10 starts each. Jim Perry pitched well with a reduced workload, but it’s not clear if he had arm trouble or was just in a 2-year state of exile as a swing man. Overall, 67 pitchers started 27 or more games, an average of 2.8 per team – not bad for a league that mostly used four-man rotations. 56 pitchers cleared 200 innings. These were not especially shocking figures for the era, but they do support the view that there were a lot of healthy arms around.
In short, there were a lot of reasons why 1968 became the Year of the Pitcher – but the fact that a lot of the game’s elite hitters were hampered by significant injuries, while most of the game’s best pitchers were healthy, surely had at least some role at the margins in tipping the scales towards the men on the mound.

Weak D

In a 2-part study in 2011 here and here, I looked at the best and worst team defenses, measured by their Defensive Efficiency Rating (percentage of balls in play turned into outs) relative to the league average. (This is not a park-adjusted measurement, so park effects do play into this).
Let’s look at this year’s contenders, as well as updating the 2011 charts, which were based on early season results. As I explained in the longer article, it is extremely rare for teams to finish 5% or more above or below the league average – the 2007 Tampa Bay Devil Rays, at 95.32%, were the least effective defensive team in the postwar era (they led the AL the following year, which accounted for almost the entirety of their improvement to a pennant-winning team), while only three teams in that era cracked 105%: the 2001 Mariners (tops at 105.52%), 1999 Reds, and 1975 Dodgers (yes, that’s two teams with Mike Cameron in center field). The last team below 95% was the epically awful 1930 Phillies, the last below 94% was the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, who finished 20-134. The 1930 Phillies were also the only team since 1915 to convert fewer than 65% of all balls in play into outs.
Here’s the decade in progress, through June 22, 2012:
National League

BIP% NL High DER High % Low DER Low %
2010 69.7% 689 SFG 707 102.61% PIT 671 97.39%
2011 70.4% 694 CIN 705 101.59% CHC 678 97.69%
2012 69.3% 690 WSN 718 104.06% COL 646 93.62%

A couple of things jump out when looking at the NL. First, balls in play are way down this year; the NL in 2010 was the first league ever below 70%, and this season’s average would be a historic low. But team defense is also off from 2011.
As far as team defense, the Nationals’ surge this year may owe a lot to the “K Street” pitching staff that is averaging 8.4 K/9, but the team has also featured the NL’s best defense since the 1999 Reds, beating every NL defense of the past decade by a full percentage point (if they can sustain this pace). At the opposite end of the scale, the Rockies are currently threatening to be the first team since the 1899 Spiders to run below 94% of the league average and the first since the 1930 Phillies to post a DER below 650 (the team opposing batting average on balls in play – BABIP – is an eye-popping .343; there are a few accounting reasons, such as double plays, why DER and BABIP are not precise mirror images). Two of the team’s top relievers, Esmil Rogers and Rex Brothers, have been pounded to the tune of BABIPs above .400, although Brothers has survived this by striking out 35 batters in 24 innings and allowing only one home run.
Regression to the mean is likely for both the Nats and the Rockies, and Colorado in particular is likely to tinker with its lineup to fix the problem (this is what the Astros did after a similarly horrific defensive start in 2011).
American League

BIP% AL High DER High % Low DER Low %
2010 71.4% 694 OAK 711 102.45% KCR 679 97.84%
2011 71.3% 694 TBR 724 104.32% MIN 677 97.55%
2012 70.0% 697 CHW 715 102.58% DET 669 95.98%

In the AL, the league DER dropped off sharply from early June 2011 – when I wrote last year’s post and the league average was 702 – to season’s end at 694, leaving the Rays (who slightly improved their DER) with the best defense relative to the league (and in absolute terms) since 2001. Meanwhile, the Twins’ defense collapsed, moving the White Sox out of last.
Turn to 2012, and the White Sox are now atop the AL, and Tampa at 696 is just a hair below the league average. But it’s the Tigers who horrify, with an Opening Day infield of Prince Fielder at first, converted outfielder Ryan Raburn at second, lead-footed Jhonny Peralta at short and Miguel Cabrera – who is not significantly thinner than Fielder – at third. Even the spectacular center field defense of Austin Jackson can’t salvage this D. Raburn, hitting just .165/.225/.245, has largely been supplanted now by Ramon Santiago, but Cabrera, Fielder and Peralta aren’t going anywhere. This presents a real problem. The highest BABIP ever recorded (since such things have been tracked; at present the records go back to 1948) against a pitcher to qualify for the ERA title was .358 vs Kevin Millwood 2008 (four of the ten worst were Texas Rangers – besides (Millwood, you can find Kevin Brown, Aaron Sele, and John Burkett on the list). THis season, you have Max Scherzer at .383 BABIP, Josh Johnson of the Marlins at.365, and Rick Porcello at .350 (no Rockies qualify). Even with some expectation of a regression to the mean, the BABIP vs the whole Tigers staff is .318, so Scherzer and Porcello can expect to struggle with this all year. This is a major reason why Scherzer has a 5.17 ERA despite striking out 11.5 men per 9 innings and a K/BB ratio of 3.45 to 1 (Scherzer has also had home run problems), and Porcello a 4.95 ERA despite allowing just 2.3 walks and 0.9 HR/9 and a 2.3 to 1 K/BB ratio. The 1983 Phillies were the first team ever to finish in first place with the league’s worst DER; it’s been done twice again since (the 1998 Rangers and 2001 Indians), but for a team that was projected as the division leaders based on their offense (which, granted, is 7th in the league in runs) and pitching, that may prove too heavy a burden to carry.

The Knuckle Master

Kilimanjaro was a front. In fact, R.A. Dickey went to the Dagobah system in the offseason. It’s the only possible explanation.
Dickey right now is locked into one of the greatest pitching stretches in baseball history – he’s just the tenth man to throw back-to-back 1-hit shutouts, and the first since 1900 to strike out 10+ batters in both. He’s the first pitcher in major league history to notch 5 straight starts of 0 earned runs and 8+ Ks. Over his last six starts, he’s 6-0 with an 0.18 ERA, averaging over 8 innings per start (48.2 IP) and a 63/5 K/BB ratio (11.65 K/9 and 0.92 BB/9), no homers, and just 21 hits allowed (3.88 per 9). He’s now 11-1 with a 2.00 ERA (ERA+ of 188), leading the NL in Wins, ERA, strikeouts, WHIP, shutouts, and complete games. And his last fourt starts have been against the Cardinals (who entered that series leading the NL in scoring), the first-place Nationals, the then-first-place Rays, and the Orioles, who entered the game 39-27.
Dickey’s mastery has come on as a sudden step up from what was already a successful record – his first two years with the Mets, he posted a 3.08 ERA and struck out 5.6 batters per 9 innings; through May 12 of this season, he was striking out 6.5 batters per 9. Jeff Sullivan at Baseball Nation has a great breakdown of how the performance of Dickey’s knuckler has improved, including a staggering 69% of his knucklers this season being thrown for strikes. Other knuckleball pitchers have had great seasons, and like them, Dickey has done it wth excellent control – Wilbur Wood in 1971 had a 1.91 ERA (189 ERA+) in 334 innings (walking 1.7 men per 9) and was the second-best pitcher in baseball; Hoyt Wilhelm from age 41-45 had a 1.74 ERA over 539 innings in relief (ERA+ of 185), walking 2.3 men per 9. But even those walk numbers don’t really capture the level of Dickey’s ability to command a normally un-commandable pitch, to say nothing of the fact that unlike Wilhelm, Wood and Phil Niekro for most of their careers, he actually has a fastball (not the 90+ heater he had in his 20s, but enough to freeze batters looking for a knuckler that has been clocked as slow as 54 mph).
Really, you could not get two better stories at the front of your rotation than Santana and Dickey, assuming Santana can shake off his post-no-hitter doldrums.
UPDATE: Dickey since May 20, 2011: 18-9, 2.42 ERA, 209/57 K/BB ratio & 20 HR in 256.1 IP, one of just six MLB pitchers with an ERA below 2.50 in 200+ innings in that stretch.
Dickey could be the third knuckleballer to start the All-Star Game, after Dutch Leonard (not the 0.96 ERA one, the Senators pitcher from the 40s) and Bob Purkey, and is on track for the best strikeout rate ever by a knuckler.

The Green Monster

I’ve tried to keep short-term expectations for Bryce Harper in line, noting in my NL East preview how few rookies, even among Hall of Famers, hit with significant power before age 22 and especially before age 20.
It’s a long season, and Harper as of now has just 144 plate appearances. But if he can sustain his .288/.375/.528 batting line, he’d have done something virtually unprecedented.
Harper’s current OPS is 903, and his OPS+ is 143. Among players with 140 or more plate appearances as a teenager, only two post an OPS above 900: Mel Ott and Jimmie Foxx. Both are inner-circle Hall of Famers: Ott was probably the best hitter in his league 4 or 5 times and retired as the all-time NL home run leader (it was 18 years after his retirement before another NL player cracked 500 homers), and Foxx won 3 MVP awards despite playing the same position at the same time as Lou Gehrig and Hank Greenberg, won a Triple Crown and missed a second by not leading the league in homers in a season when he hit 50, and was – until A-Rod – the only player to have 500 homers through age 32.
The OPS+ is equally impressive. Four teenagers with 140 or more plate appearances have cracked an OPS+ of 140, but one (Whitey Lockman) did it against war-depleted competition in 1945, and the other three (Jack Clements, Oyster Burns and Fred Carroll) did it in 1884, when the Union Association badly diluted the talent base. The only 4 guys to crack 130: Foxx, Ott, Ty Cobb and Tony Conigliaro. That’s some pretty fast company. If Harper can avoid the kind of plague of misfortunes that befell Tony C, he already looks like a guy who may have a really epic career.
PS – I’m reminded again, when you compare his numbers through age 22 to comparable hitters at that age, what a special player Conigliaro was and what a tragedy his career and life turned into. He should have hit 500 homers and waltzed into Cooperstown; go read his SABR bio for a full accounting of how it all went wrong, leaving him washed up at 25, brain damaged at 37 and dead at 45. I had not previously read the story of how Ted Williams warned him just before the beaning:

On the 17th [of August 1967], Tony’s partner in the music business, Ed Penney, was visiting his sons at the Ted Williams Baseball Camp in Lakeville, MA. Ted warned Penney, “Tony is crowding the plate. He’s much too close. Tell him to back off. It’s serious time now. The pitchers are going to get serious.” As Penney was leaving the camp later that evening, Williams shouted to Penney, “Tell Tony what I said. Don’t forget to tell Tony what I told you.” Penney did tell him, before the game the very next night. Tony was in a slump at the time, and told brother Billy he couldn’t back off the plate or pitchers wouldn’t take him seriously. If anything, he was going to dig in a little closer.
The Red Sox were facing the California Angels the next day – August 18 – and Jack Hamilton’s fourth-inning fastball came in and struck Tony in the face, just missing his temple but hitting him in the left eye and cheekbone. Tony later wrote that he jerked his head back “so hard that my helmet flipped off just before impact.” He never lost consciousness, but as he lay on the ground, David Cataneo wrote, Tony prayed, “God, please, please don’t let me die right here in the dirt at home plate at Fenway Park.” Tony was fortunate to escape with his life, but his season — and quite possibly his career – was over.

8020

You gotta believe. There is joy in Mudville. Finally, at long last, the Mets have a no-hitter, and it’s by Johan Santana, the Mets staff ace with the surgically reconstructed shoulder and a fastball that only barely impersonates his old heater.
How do you write about something you’ve waited for your whole life? Something I wish my mom and my older brother and Bob Murphy had lived to see?
This was the best Mets moment since the 1986 World Series, topping even the epic comebacks of 1999 and the 2000 NL Pennant. It was all the sweeter because it was Santana, a classy guy and a true warrior and a pitcher of the stature to deserve succeeding where Seaver, Gooden, Ryan, and others had failed, and the guy who had pitched the previous guttiest Mets start I ever saw, the last win at Shea in 2008. To recap, while the Mets had not produced a no-hitter in 8,019 prior games going back to 1962, the following pitchers had pitched for the Mets and thrown a no-hitter for another team:
Pitchers Who Threw No-Hitters After Leaving The Mets:
Nolan Ryan (seven times, including for every other franchise he pitched for)
Tom Seaver
Mike Scott
Dwight Gooden
David Cone
Hideo Nomo
Phil Humber
*Octavio Dotel (1 inning in combined no-hitter)
Pitchers Who Threw No-Hitters Before Coming To The Mets:
Warren Spahn (twice, albeit long before he was a Met)
Dean Chance (twice)
Don Cardwell
Dock Ellis
John Candelaria
Bret Saberhagen
Kenny Rogers
Al Leiter
Hideo Nomo (got ’em on both ends)
Scott Erickson
**Pedro Martinez (9 perfect innings, but allowed hit in tenth; no longer officially counted as a no-hitter)
*Alejandro Pena (1 inning in combined no-hitter)
*Billy Wagner (1 inning in combined no-hitter – same one as Dotel)
If you count Pedro and leave out the relievers, that’s 17 pitchers and 26 no-hitters. Meanwhile, teams like the Red Sox have had no-hitters thrown by figures as obscure as Devern Hansack.
Santana threw over 130 pitches tonight, the most of his career. A choked-up Terry Collins (who told Santana on the field that he was Collins’ hero) made the right choice during the game – given how much this meant to Santana and the franchise – to let him finish this game, but he was clearly worried about Johan’s health. At a minimum, the Mets have some options for giving Santana (who between this year and next is owed $54.5 million and is again the team’s ace) an extra day of rest, either by throwing RA Dickey on 3 days rest or by bringing up Jenrry Mejia.
Santana’s champagne and whipped cream shower after the game and SNY’s emotional footage of him returning to the Mets clubhouse after the game showed how much this means to these guys. Sports are an emotional business, and Collins, as a leader of men, can’t ignore that aspect. This team is unlikely to win the World Series; this is probably as good as 2012 gets for the players and the fans alike.
Collins in the postgame told a great story about managing Sid Fernandez to an A ball no-no; Sid had 18 Ks but had thrown 119 pitches through 8, and had a strict 130 pitch limit. He struck out the side in the 9th on 10 pitches, ended with 21 Ks. Sid was the all-time master of the 5 inning no-hitter and then the wheels come off (I saw him do that in an exhibition at the first game ever played at Camden Yards in 1992: 5 no-hit innings, 5 runs in the sixth). When he was promoted out of A ball in 1982, Sid had a career record of 13-2 with a 1.70 ERA; in 163.2 IP, he had allowed 81 hits and struck out 269. As anyone who watched the All-Star Game or Game Seven of the World Series in 1986 could attest, Sid could be that unhittable at his best even against the most fearsome Major League lineups.
There were many nervous moments in the game, from Kirk Nieuwenhuis almost crashing into Omar Quintillana on an 8th inning popup to Mike Baxter leaving the game with a busted shoulder on a catch against the wall.
There was poetic justice in Carlos Beltran being the last out of the 8th, and Adam Wainwright the losing pitcher.
On the whole, an Amazin’ night.

Doubled Up

Looking through the baseball-reference.com Play Indexes, which have this data back to 1948, yields some interesting nuggets.
Highest opposing BABIP, 100 or more innings: Glendon Rusch in 2003 (.381). You can beat the balls in play if you’re good enough: BABIP vs Pedro Martinez in 1999: .325.
Most 2B allowed in a season since 1948: 68 by Rick Helling in 2001. Tied for second: 66 by Helling in 2000.
Most 3B allowed in a season since 1948 is a 4-way tie at 17, but Larry Christenson managed it in 1976 in just 168.2 IP. That 1976 Phillies team frequently had Greg Luzinski in LF, Ollie Brown or Jay Johnstone in RF, Garry Maddox in CF.
Most steals allowed in a season: 60 by Dwight Gooden in 1990. Tied for second: Gooden with 56 in 1988. Fewest: 200 innings in a season without allowing a steal has been done 10 times, four of them by Whitey Ford; Kenny Rogers in 2002 is the only one since 1968. Most career steals allowed: 757 off Nolan Ryan, and it’s not even close, Greg Maddux is second at 547. Gooden allowed 452 steals in just 2800.2 innings.
Then there’s the things besides steals that get buried in a pitcher’s line, even looking at BABIP numbers, most of all double plays, doubles and triples. Tommy John induced 605 double plays in his career. Since 1948, Jim Kaat is second with 462, a huge gap. For the 61 pitchers to throw 3000 or more innings over that period – admittedly an elite group – I broke out their GIDP, steals, doubles, triples, and total bases allowed on doubles and triples (23B/9, counting triples twice) per 9 innings. The results are obviously heavily influenced by era and park and teammates, but interesting nonetheless – Tommy John and Dennis Eckersley are as dominant in the most- and least-DP business as Ryan and Whitey Ford are in allowing the most and least steals. I sorted the table by GIDP/9, so for the others:
SB/9: Most – Ryan, Tim Wakefield, Joe Niekro, Eckersley; Fewest – Ford, Billy Pierce, Warren Spahn, Rogers.
3B/9: Most – Robin Roberts, Bob Friend, Curt Simmons (Roberts’ longtime teammate). Fewest – Chuck Finley, Randy Johnson, Jamie Moyer (Johnson’s Seattle teammate).
23B/9 (largely the same list as 2B/9): Most – Rogers, David Wells, Livan Hernandez, Wakefield. Fewest – Juan Marichal, Ryan, Bob Gibson, Ford.
All of which went a long way to explaining to me why Whitey Ford was so successful in an era when the truly fielding-independent paths to success (K, BB, HR) were limited – few pitchers in the 50s had especially low BB/9, high K/9 or huge variances in HR/9. Not to say there was no variations, but not nearly enough for a pitcher to really distinguish himself (it’s a study for another day to ask whether BABIP was as pitcher-independent in that era as today). But what’s clear is that, with the help of a superior defense and possibly park effects (see here and here), Ford cut off the running game, induced a lot of double plays, and rarely allowed doubles or triples, which in addition to a fairly low HR rate explains how a guy with a 1.37 K/BB ratio from 1950-60 could be such a dominating pitcher year in and year out.
The table is below the fold.

Continue reading Doubled Up

Exit Sandman

The torn ACL suffered by Mariano Rivera shagging fly balls in the wet Kansas City outfield last night most likely ends his career at age 42. Even the most determined Yankee hater like myself – or the most determined skeptic of the modern closer role – had to appreciate and respect Rivera’s talent, his accomplishments, his cool under pressure, his Christian faith and quiet dignity. And he did it, basically, with one pitch.
A few numbers to give the scale of Rivera’s greatness, which will undoubtedly carry him swiftly to Cooperstown:
-Rivera exits still at the top of his game. His ERA and ERA+ thus far this season were both better than his career averages for the fifth consecutive season…from age 38-42. Counting the postseason, he was working on strings of 21 straight appearances without an unintentional walk and 28 straight appearances without allowing a home run. This season, he’d struck out 8 (above his career K/9 ratio) and allowed (excluding intentional walks) 6 baserunners out of the 32 batters he faced. Absent injury, who knows how long he could have kept that up? But after 1051 big league games without a significant injury, he can hardly complain.
Rivera appeared in 848 games in which he was not charged with a run, the third-highest total of all time, behind Jesse Orosco (951) and Mike Stanton (864). Rivera threw more innings in those appearances than either of them, although four pitchers since 1918 threw more innings in scoreless appearances (Hoyt Wilhelm, Rollie Fingers, Rich Gossage and Kent Tekulve), plus presumably Walter Johnson (with 110 career shutouts) would top Rivera on that score. Rivera was unscored-upon in 560 of his career saves; only one other pitcher (Trevor Hoffman) even had a career total number of saves within 80 of that.
-Counting the postseason, Rivera’s career ERA as a reliever was 1.91. In 1310.2 innings over 1137 appearances. (That drops to 1.90 in 1318.2 innings over 1145 appearances if you throw in the All-Star Game, in which he pitched 8 times, 8 innings, allowing just 5 hits and a single unearned run).
-Rivera’s career ERA+ (park-adjusted ERA compared to the league average) of 206 dwarfs the #2 pitcher on the list with at least 1000 innings (Pedro Martinez at 154) – yes, Rivera’s career ERA, relative to the league, was 33% better than any other pitcher, ever, and twice as good as the league average. Only 4 other pitchers have career ERA+ above 200 in more than 40 career innings, and all four are young relievers still getting started (Craig Kimbrel, Johnny Venters, Andrew Bailey and Al Albuquerque). Rivera had 12 seasons of 60 or more innings with an ERA+ of 200 or better – second-most is a tie between Pedro and Joe Nathan with 5 apiece (Walter Johnson and Billy Wagner did it four times each). Rivera also ties Walter Johnson with the most seasons (11) of 60 or more innings with an ERA below 2.00, with three others (Hoyt Wilhelm, Cy Young and Grover Alexander) tied with 6 each.
-Rivera allowed 0.9 homers per 9 innings in 2009, the only time in 17 seasons after his rookie year he was above 0.6. He walked 3 men per 9 innings in 2000, the only time in those 17 seasons he was above 2.8 and only the second time he was above 2.5. He had a 3.15 ERA in 2007, the only time he was above 2.85 in those 17 seasons, and in 71.1 innings that year he allowed 4 home runs, struck out 74 batters and allowed 10 unintentional walks, so the ERA was mostly a fluke. That kind of consistency is just unreal.
Rivera’s average of 0.42 homers per 9 innings since 1996 is easily the lowest average in that period for pitchers with 1000 or more innings pitched in that stretch. Out of 167 pitchers, only 63 were below 1 homer per 9, 12 were below 0.75, and just 4 below 0.69: Rivera, Kevin Brown (0.56), Tim Lincecum (0.58) and Brandon Webb (0.63). Rivera did this while pitching in the American League straight through the heart of the power-mad steroid era. In the same time frame, he allowed the 11th fewest walks per 9, the 15th-most K/9, the 5th-best K/BB ratio, and – despite what was often a shaky Yankee middle infield defense – easily the lowest batting average on balls in play, .262 (only Matt Cain is below .270).
(If there was one area where Rivera’s regular season record was pedestrian, partly reflecting the way he was used, it was with inherited runners – he allowed in 28.98% of such runners, 79th best among the 296 pitchers to make 400 or more relief appearances; Ricardo Rincon is the best at 18.96%, followed by Trevor Hoffman at 20.23%).
-Yankee Stadium did Rivera no favors: his career ERA was 2.46 at home, 1.95 on the road. Oddly, the home ERA breaks down as 2.61 in Yankee Stadium and 1.73 in New Yankee Stadium. Rivera had a 1.99 career ERA with Jorge Posada catching him, 1.94 with Joe Girardi.
[UPDATED: I looked a little more at the home/road splits. A little is due to bad outings at home as a rookie. A big split is 1999-2002 (home ERA 3.08, road ERA 1.83), as compared to 2009-12 (home ERA 1.73, road ERA 1.96). In 2005, Rivera had a 2.28 ERA at home, but a preposterous 0.26 ERA – one run in 34 appearances – on the road. Although Rivera’s K/BB ratio at home has been an insane 94/10 in the new Stadium, the main distinction seems to be on balls in play: BABIP of .275 at old Yankee Stadium, .261 on road, .225 at the new Stadium. I wonder if the infield surfaces or grass have anything to do with that. I can’t get a good fix on grass/turf or indoor/outdoor, but Rivera was at his deadliest in domed stadiums, regardless of whether the roof was up: a 1.07 ERA and 1 HR in 50.1 IP at Tropicana Field, a 1.30 ERA and 1 HR in 27.2 IP at the Metrodome, a 1.85 ERA in 43.2 IP at Skydome, a 2.19 ERA in 12.1 IP at the Kingdome, and a scoreless inning at the Tokyo Dome, for a total of a 1.47 ERA in 135 innings]
Rivera allowed a home run to Reed Johnson last June in a game against the Cubs (he still got the save). That’s noteworthy because Rivera pitched 40.1 career regular season innings against the NL Central and NL West, and that’s the only earned run he allowed to either division.
-There was no good way to get Rivera. Opposing batters hit .201/.236/.281 against him when leading off an inning, .209/.270/.290 with men on base. Opposing hitters still hit .239 and slugged .346, both very weak figures (albeit with a .534 OBP) after getting three balls on Rivera. But he went to a 3-ball count only 698 times in 4752 batters faced for which baseball-reference.com has count breakdowns, less than 15% of the time, compared to 2591 times he got to two strikes on a batter. On a 3-2 count, opposing hitters hit .202/.403/.283.
-In 1990, his one season as a reliever in the minors before the Yankees tried to make him a starter, Rivera had a 0.17 ERA in rookie ball – in 52 innings he struck out 58, walked 7 and allowed 17 hits (2.9 hits per 9 innings). His career ERA in the minors was 2.35.
-As good as Rivera was in the regular season, he was rather literally twice as good in the postseason (twice the workload, half the ERA), and probably the most valuable postseason pitcher ever (maybe the most valuable postseason player ever). Anyone who says the Yankees can just slot in Rafael Soriano and David Robertson and not miss Rivera that much because closers are overrated is missing this crucial dimension.
The Yankees played 156 postseason games between 1995 and 2011, just about a full season’s schedule of games. The postseason can be brutally unforgiving, as I noted when reviewing Billy Wagner’s career, and normally it’s a victory to play the same in October as you did all year. Rivera’s now-apparently-final line in a season’s worth of postseason work: 96 games, 141 innings (nobody’s thrown 140 innings in relief in a regular season since Mark Eichhorn in 1986), 8-1 record (Game Seven of the 2001 World Series being his only loss), 42 saves, 78 games finished, 0.70 ERA (0.83 even if you include unearned runs), only two home runs allowed (the famous Sandy Alomar homer that decided the 1997 ALDS and Jay Payton’s home run in the Mets’ furious but futile comeback in Game Two of the 2000 World Series, the only time in 96 postseason appearances that Rivera allowed more than one earned run – he allowed 2), allowing just 86 hits, 21 walks (4 of those intentional; Rivera’s 2 walks in the ill-fated Game Four of the 2004 ALCS was the only postseason appearance where he walked more than one batter), and striking out 110. Counting 3 hit batsmen, that’s 111 baserunners in 141 innings, only one more than his strikeout total. Rivera pitched 2 or more innings in a postseason game 33 times, allowing a run in only 4 of them; he pitched more than 1 inning 58 times. In the postseason, his opposing BABIP dropped to .219, his inherited runners scored dropped to 19%. He’d actually gotten better; his postseason ERA since 2006 was 0.31 in 24 appearances. Rivera was ice in October. We will never see the like of that again. And he did it with a huge workload: you throw 141 high-leverage innings with a 0.70 ERA in the regular season, you should and will win the MVP award.
PS – Speaking of worthiness of respect, Stan Musial’s wife Lil died yesterday. Stan and Lil were married 73 years. Now that is a life.

2012 NL West EWSL Report

Part 6 of my now very belated “preseason” previews is the NL West; this is the last of six division previews, using Established Win Shares Levels as a jumping-off point. Notes and reference links on the EWSL method are below the fold; while EWSL is a simple enough method that will be familiar to long-time readers, it takes a little introductory explaining, so I’d suggest you check out the explanations first if you’re new to these previews. Team ages are weighted by non-age-adjusted EWSL, so the best players count more towards determining the age of the roster.
Prior: AL Central, AL East, AL West, NL Central, NL East.
Some players are rated based on less than three seasons or given a rookie rating. Key:
+ (Rookie)
* (Based on one season)
# (Based on two seasons)

Arizona Diamondbacks
Raw EWSL: 236.50
Adjusted: 246.53
Age-Adj.: 239.48
WS Age: 28.9
2012 W-L: 93-69

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 28 Miguel Montero 20 20
1B 24 Paul Goldschmidt* 3 8
2B 30 Aaron Hill 14 13
SS 29 Stephen Drew 14 14
3B 31 Ryan Roberts 11 9
RF 24 Justin Upton 21 27
CF 28 Chris Young 18 18
LF 30 Jason Kubel 14 12
C2 40 Henry Blanco 4 2
INF 34 Willie Bloomquist 6 5
OF 25 Gerardo Parra 13 16
12 35 Lyle Overbay 10 7
13 37 John McDonald 5 3
SP1 27 Ian Kennedy 14 12
SP2 25 Daniel Hudson# 11 15
SP3 24 Trevor Cahill 11 12
SP4 31 Joe Saunders 10 8
SP5 26 Josh Collmenter* 5 11
RP1 35 JJ Putz 9 8
RP2 27 David Hernandez 8 7
RP3 32 Brad Ziegler 6 5
RP4 31 Craig Breslow 5 4
RP5 42 Takashi Saito 5 3

Subjective Adjustments: None, but I expect Goldschmidt to easily surpass 8 Win Shares if healthy.
Also on Hand: Position players – Geoff Blum, Cody Ransom (who has now played 10 years in the majors without once having 100 plate appearances), AJ Pollock.
Pitchers – Joe Paterson, who is off to about the worst possible start imaginable: Paterson allowed as many earned runs (11) in April as he did in 62 appearances all last year. In 2.2 innings he’s faced 26 batters and allowed 18 baserunners (including 2 homers and 4 doubles), and he hasn’t struck out a batter yet. Also Bryan Shaw, Jonathan Albaladejo, Wade Miley, Mike Zagurski, Joe Martinez, Patrick Corbin and Barry Enright.
Analysis: The D-Backs remain the class of this division based on established major league talent, and were the logical preseason favorites. Obviously, the Dodgers’ 4-game lead through May 2 could turn out to be decisive in the long run even if LA comes back to earth. Arizona has also been banged up early, including injuries to Hudson, Drew and Saito. Upton remains a very logical potential MVP candidate.
Henry Blanco is still playing at 40, Matt Treanor at 36, Brian Schneider at 35, Rod Barajas at 36, Dave Ross at 35, Jose Molina at 37. If you know young football players, advise them to consider catching as a career. A little talent, toughness and work ethic will give them a longer, happier career than a lot of NFL stars seem to have.
I haven’t run the numbers, but the Diamondbacks have to have made the most trades involving the largest number of contributing major league players over the past 2 years or so.
San Francisco Giants
Raw EWSL: 209.00
Adjusted: 221.64
Age-Adj.: 213.06
WS Age: 28.9
2012 W-L: 84-78

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 25 Buster Posey# 11 16
1B 24 Brandon Belt* 3 7
2B 34 Freddy Sanchez 11 10
SS 25 Brandon Crawford* 3 6
3B 25 Pablo Sandoval 19 23
RF 28 Nate Schierholtz 10 10
CF 30 Angel Pagan 17 16
LF 27 Melky Cabrera 15 15
C2 22 Hector Sanchez+ 0 4
INF 35 Aubrey Huff 17 12
OF 28 Gregor Blanco 2 2
12 32 Ryan Theriot 12 9
13 27 Emmanuel Burriss 1 1
SP1 28 Tim Lincecum 16 15
SP2 27 Matt Cain 16 14
SP3 22 Madison Bumgarner# 9 14
SP4 34 Barry Zito 4 3
SP5 34 Ryan Vogelsong 7 6
RP1 30 Brian Wilson 13 11
RP2 32 Santiago Casilla 7 5
RP3 33 Jeremy Affeldt 6 4
RP4 34 Javier Lopez 5 4
RP5 29 Sergio Romo 8 7

Subjective Adjustments: None, because I’m trying to avoid biasing the results with events since the season started, but clearly Brian Wilson will not be contributing to the Giants this season, and now Sandoval is out with a busted hand. Freddy Sanchez has also been hurt, and it’s not really clear whether he or Burriss ends up as the second baseman once Sanchez is healthy.
Also on Hand: Position players – Brett Pill, Joaquin Arias, Eli Whiteside.
Pitchers – Clay Hensley, Guillermo Mota, Dan Otero, Eric Hacker.
Analysis: As noted above, San Francisco’s injuries make it a lot harder for the Giants to pick themselves off the mat. They have a lineup only Brian Sabean could love, despite the presence of three talented young bats (Sandoval, Posey and Belt). The outfield seems particularly symptomatic of a failure to learn anything from the Aaron Rowand signing. I needn’t belabor the obvious point that Belt needs to be just stuck in the lineup until he figures things out; he batted .320/.461/.528 in the minors last season after .352/.455/.620 in 2010, but the Giants seem unwilling or unable to live with any growing pains.
As for the rotation, there’s been a huge variation thus far in the batting average on balls in play vs various Giants pitchers, and their early successes and failures should seem a lot less dramatic as these even out over the course of the season; it’s why I’m not so worried about Lincecum in particular, whose peripheral numbers are still solid:

PITCHER BABIP
Dan Otero 0.452
Jeremy Affeldt 0.417
Guillermo Mota 0.367
Tim Lincecum 0.351
LEAGUE AVERAGE 0.295
Ryan Vogelsong 0.292
TEAM AVERAGE 0.277
Madison Bumgarner 0.245
Santiago Casilla 0.192
Clay Hensley 0.188
Barry Zito 0.188
Matt Cain 0.158

Los Angeles Dodgers
Raw EWSL: 204.67
Adjusted: 215.23
Age-Adj.: 200.51
WS Age: 30.2
2012 W-L: 80-82

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 31 AJ Ellis# 3 3
1B 28 James Loney 17 17
2B 35 Mark Ellis 13 9
SS 24 Dee Gordon* 6 8
3B 32 Juan Uribe 9 7
RF 30 Andre Ethier 20 18
CF 27 Matt Kemp 28 29
LF 29 Tony Gwynn jr 8 7
C2 36 Matt Treanor 4 3
INF 36 Adam Kennedy 8 6
OF 33 Juan Rivera 11 9
12 36 Jerry Hairston jr 11 8
13 26 Justin Sellers* 2 4
SP1 24 Clayton Kershaw 19 21
SP2 27 Chad Billingsley 8 7
SP3 33 Chris Capuano 4 2
SP4 36 Ted Lilly 10 9
SP5 34 Aaron Harang 6 4
RP1 26 Javy Guerra* 4 9
RP2 24 Kenley Jansen# 5 7
RP3 37 Jamey Wright 5 4
RP4 35 Mike MacDougal 4 3
RP5 33 Matt Guerrier 6 4

Subjective Adjustments: None, but as with Goldschmidt, you can assume a pretty high likelihood that Dee Gordon beats 8 Win Shares if he stays healthy all year.
Also on Hand: Position players – Ivan De Jesus jr, the third of the Dodgers’ junior brigade, and Jerry Sands.
Pitchers – Todd Coffey, Blake Hawkesworth, Josh Lindblom, Scott Elbert, Rubby de la Rosa (on the DL) and Ronald Belisario (same).
Analysis: The frontline talent is strong and in its prime, but the rest of the team is ancient and creaky. Obviously, banking on Matt Kemp to hit .411/.500/.856 all year is not a wager I would take. Kemp has now raised his career April line to .343/.405/.618; his .297/.354/.526 line in June is the only one even close. Color me unpersuaded that this is really a 90+ win team unless significant help is added to the roster.
The Dodgers’ long-term prognosis, of course, is vastly improved by the end of the McCourt Era, in which – ironically – Frank McCourt proved unable to competently manage even the one part of the team he had experience running (parking lots).
Colorado Rockies
Raw EWSL: 181.83
Adjusted: 193.87
Age-Adj.: 177.50
WS Age: 30.6
2012 W-L: 72-90

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 36 Ramon Hernandez 11 8
1B 38 Todd Helton 13 9
2B 36 Marco Scutaro 14 10
SS 27 Troy Tulowitzki 25 26
3B 26 Chris Nelson* 1 2
RF 33 Michael Cuddyer 16 14
CF 26 Dexter Fowler 15 16
LF 26 Carlos Gonzalez 20 22
C2 23 Wilin Rosario+ 1 4
INF 27 Jonathan Herrera# 4 4
OF 26 Tyler Colvin# 4 5
12 27 Eric Young 3 3
13 41 Jason Giambi 6 3
SP1 24 Jhoulys Chacin# 9 13
SP2 49 Jamie Moyer 2 1
SP3 25 Juan Nicasio* 2 4
SP4 33 Jeremy Guthrie 10 7
SP5 31 Jorge de la Rosa 7 5
RP1 37 Rafael Betancourt 9 7
RP2 32 Matt Belisle 7 6
RP3 27 Matt Reynolds# 2 2
RP4 29 Josh Roenicke 1 1
RP5 24 Rex Brothers* 2 5

Subjective Adjustments: None. Jorge de la Rosa is expected back in June and will be welcomed by a tattered rotation, but his numbers reflect his injury last season
Also on Hand: Position players – Jordan Pacheco, Eliezer Alfonzo, Hector Gomez.
Pitchers – Drew Pomeranz, who is presently the third or fourth starter pending the return of de la Rosa and Guthrie (also Chacin, just sent to AAA), Tyler Chatwood, Esmil Rogers, Guillermo Moscoso, Edgmer Escalona, Zach Putnam, Josh Outman.
Analysis: I’ve had a lot of fun on Twitter doing “how old is Jamie Moyer” facts (eg, he was the second-oldest player on the Mariners when he arrived in Seattle in August 1996), but the amazing thing is how dependent the Rockies have been on Moyer. His 3.14 ERA is deceptively low given the unearned runs he’s allowed and a low BABIP, but he’s basically the same old Moyer, which is a valuable thing on a team in Coors Field with terrible pitching.
A further retrospective on the careers of Moyer, Helton and Giambi is something I should return to later.
San Diego Padres
Raw EWSL: 159.67
Adjusted: 178.57
Age-Adj.: 172.33
WS Age: 28.7
2012 W-L: 71-91

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 28 Nick Hundley 11 11
1B 25 Yonder Alonso* 2 5
2B 34 Orlando Hudson 15 13
SS 32 Jason Bartlett 15 12
3B 28 Chase Headley 16 16
RF 29 Will Venable 12 12
CF 25 Cameron Maybin 12 14
LF 29 Carlos Quentin 14 14
C2 31 John Baker 3 2
INF 26 Andy Parrino+ 0 4
OF 28 Jesus Guzman* 7 13
12 31 Chris Denorfia 7 6
13 28 Jeremy Hermida 4 4
SP1 28 Ednison Volquez 1 1
SP2 28 Clayton Richard 6 5
SP3 27 Cory Luebke* 4 6
SP4 30 Tim Stauffer 7 6
SP5 24 Anthony Bass* 3 6
RP1 28 Huston Street 9 8
RP2 26 Ernesto Frieri# 3 4
RP3 28 Luke Gregerson 6 5
RP4 25 Andrew Cashner# 1 2
RP5 29 Micah Owings 4 3

Subjective Adjustments: None, but again, I expect Alonso to step up with full-time playing time.
Also on Hand: Position players – Kyle Blanks (now out for the season), Mark Kotsay, Blake Tekotte, Logan Forsythe.
Pitchers – Joe Thatcher, Joe Wieland (presently in the rotation), Josh Spence, Brad Brach, Dale Thayer, Jeff Suppan (recently exhumed from the minors – he’s now in his 20th professional season. He’s also 13 years younger than Moyer), Dustin Moseley (out for the season).
Analysis: What’s worse – that the Padres are hitting .216/.302/.331 as a team, or that that doesn’t even make them the lowest-scoring team in the league (the Pirates are scoring almost half a run per game less)? Yet, the lineup (partly due to a number of good glove men) isn’t full of untalented guys, so much as it lacks anybody with star-level talent, plus the big bat (Quentin) hasn’t played yet, with Guzman subbing for him. It’s actually the rotation, which the park makes look respectable, that’s really weak, and the bullpen is less impressive as well than it seems.

Continue reading 2012 NL West EWSL Report

2012 NL East EWSL Report

Part 5 of my now very belated “preseason” previews is the NL East; this is the fifth of six division previews, using Established Win Shares Levels as a jumping-off point. Notes and reference links on the EWSL method are below the fold; while EWSL is a simple enough method that will be familiar to long-time readers, it takes a little introductory explaining, so I’d suggest you check out the explanations first if you’re new to these previews. Team ages are weighted by non-age-adjusted EWSL, so the best players count more towards determining the age of the roster.
Prior: AL Central, AL East, AL West, NL Central.
Some players are rated based on less than three seasons or given a rookie rating. Key:
+ (Rookie)
* (Based on one season)
# (Based on two seasons)

Atlanta Braves
Raw EWSL: 215.17
Adjusted: 248.24
Age-Adj.: 260.94
Subj. Adj.: 257.94
WS Age: 28.6
2012 W-L: 99-63

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 28 Brian McCann 21 21
1B 22 Freddie Freeman* 10 34
2B 32 Dan Uggla 22 17
SS 22 Tyler Pastornicky+ 0 11
3B 40 Chipper Jones 17 9
RF 22 Jason Heyward# 13 28
CF 29 Michael Bourn 20 20
LF 28 Martin Prado 15 15
C2 35 Dave Ross 7 5
INF 34 Jack Wilson 6 5
OF 34 Matt Diaz 6 5
12 34 Eric Hinske 6 5
13 28 Jose Constanza* 2 3
SP1 25 Tommy Hanson 10 11
SP2 25 Brandon Beachy* 4 8
SP3 26 Jair Jurrjens 10 11
SP4 36 Tim Hudson 14 13
SP5 22 Randall Delgado* 1 3
RP1 24 Craig Kimbrel# 10 13
RP2 27 Johnny Venters# 11 11
RP3 27 Eric O’Flaherty 8 7
RP4 26 Kris Medlen 3 3
RP5 24 Mike Minor# 2 2

Subjective Adjustments: I docked Freddie Freeman 3 Win Shares, down from 34 to 31, and that still seems conservative. Is Freddie Freeman really a reasonable bet to be better than Joey Votto in 2012? That’s where EWSL has him, on grounds of being 22 and coming off a 19 Win Shares season. You have to admit, Freeman’s batting line looks a lot more impressive when you account for his age…but still. Really?
On the other hand, I refuse to adjust Jason Heyward, the team’s other 22-year-old regular, downwards from 28 Win Shares. I can totally see that happening.
Also on Hand: Position players – Juan Francisco, who subbed as the everyday 3B until Chipper was ready to go, and likely will again the next time Chipper gets chipped.
Pitchers – Chad Durbin, Livan Hernandez, and two injured pitchers, Robert Fish and Arodys Vizcaino.
Analysis: EWSL is out on a limb here because 22 year old hitters are its weakness, but the Braves are potentially loaded. They fit the classic profile of a team ready to rip the ears off the division, like the 1986 Mets or the 1984 Tigers: a young team with a few key veretans that had a couple of tough endings and is starting to get written off, but could suddenly gel and hit the stratosphere. The tough part is how cutthroat this division is, but maybe no moreso than the AL East in 1984.
Note that this is the second year in a row that EWSL had the Braves winning the division.
Philadelphia Phillies
Raw EWSL: 285.67
Adjusted: 293.00
Age-Adj.: 247.33
WS Age: 32.0
2012 W-L: 96-66

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 33 Carlos Ruiz 18 15
1B 32 Ryan Howard 22 17
2B 33 Chase Utley 23 19
SS 33 Jimmy Rollins 20 17
3B 36 Placido Polanco 16 12
RF 29 Hunter Pence 22 21
CF 31 Shane Victorino 23 19
LF 34 Juan Pierre 14 12
C2 35 Brian Schneider 3 2
INF 34 Ty Wigginton 5 5
OF 31 Laynce Nix 6 5
12 28 John Mayberry 6 6
13 41 Jim Thome 13 7
SP1 35 Roy Halladay 23 19
SP2 33 Cliff Lee 19 13
SP3 28 Cole Hamels 16 15
SP4 24 Vance Worley* 6 12
SP5 31 Joe Blanton 4 3
RP1 31 Jonathan Papelbon 12 9
RP2 33 Chad Qualls 4 3
RP3 27 Kyle Kendrick 6 5
RP4 26 Antonio Bastardo 5 6
RP5 25 Michael Stutes* 3 6

Subjective Adjustments: None.
Also on Hand: Position players – Pete Orr, Freddy Galvis.
Pitchers – Joe Savery, Jose Contreras, Brian Sanches, David Herndon, Michael Schwimer.
Analysis: After threatening for years, the piper has come to Philadelphia, and he will be paid. 32 year old Ryan Howard, 33 year old Chase Utley, and 33 year old Cliff Lee are all on the DL. Almost as old as the Yankees, this team is: outside of Worley and the bullpen, the “kids” are 28 year old Cole Hamels and 29 year old Hunter Pence. For all of that, this team won’t go down easy: before the age adjustments, this is a 111-win team, so even when you discount them for age, they are still knocking on the door of triple digits. And if you draw a healthy Halladay, Lee and Hamels in a short series, you’re still in deep yogurt; there has maybe never been a more skillful pitching staff assembled.
Miami Marlins
Raw EWSL: 215.50
Adjusted: 226.27
Age-Adj.: 227.44
WS Age: 28.6
2012 W-L: 89-73

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 31 John Buck 14 11
1B 28 Gaby Sanchez# 14 17
2B 30 Omar Infante 17 15
SS 29 Jose Reyes 20 19
3B 28 Hanley Ramirez 18 18
RF 22 Giancarlo Stanton# 14 30
CF 27 Emilio Bonifacio 13 14
LF 24 Logan Morrison# 9 13
C2 28 Brett Hayes# 2 3
INF 33 Greg Dobbs 4 4
OF 27 Chris Coghlan 8 9
12 29 Donnie Murphy 2 1
13 32 Austin Kearns 4 3
SP1 28 Josh Johnson 12 11
SP2 33 Mark Buehrle 14 10
SP3 28 Anibal Sanchez 10 9
SP4 29 Ricky Nolasco 6 5
SP5 31 Carlos Zambrano 8 7
RP1 34 Heath Bell 13 10
RP2 28 Edward Mujica 6 6
RP3 27 Mike Dunn# 3 3
RP4 26 Ryan Webb 4 4
RP5 26 Steve Cishek* 3 7

Subjective Adjustments: None; I haven’t downgraded Stanton for the same reason as Heyward. This season has a bumper crop of 22-year-olds who will put EWSL’s age adjustment to the test: Heyward, Stanton, Freeman, Eric Hosmer, Brett Lawrie, Starlin Castro, Ruben Tejada, and Jose Altuve. Note that, as usual, that group is split between guys whose playing time is stepping up to full time (Lawrie, Hosmer, Altuve, Tejada) and those who were already everyday for a full season (Heyward, Castro, Stanton, Freeman). It’s the inevitable growth of the former group that tends to artificially over-project the latter. The effect is most pronounced on 22 year olds because guys who are playing everyday at 21 or 22 tend to be really good.
Also on Hand: Position players – Scott Cousins.
Pitchers – Randy Choate, Chad Gaudin, the potentially ineligible Juan Oviedo (f/k/a Leo Nunez), the injured Jose Ceda.
Analysis: If you can buy this as a third-place team, you see how deep this division is now.
Jose Reyes gets more attention, as does the Miami Medusa in center field that goes off when the Marlins hit a home run:

But the most interesting issue to watch is whether Hanley Ramirez, now batting .236/.330/.381 since the start of 2011, can bounce back. Also, whether Giancarlo (don’t call me Mike) Stanton’s prodigious power will be held back by the new stadium’s cavernous dimensions. So far, so good from the team’s perspective – the Marlins have hit 9 homers at home, 9 on the road, compared to allowing 4 at home and 12 on the road, and Stanton’s lone longball this season came at home – but he’s started slowly overall.
Washington Nationals
Raw EWSL: 185.17
Adjusted: 195.33
Age-Adj.: 195.34
WS Age: 28.2
2012 W-L: 78-84

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 24 Wilson Ramos# 8 12
1B 32 Adam LaRoche 9 7
2B 25 Danny Espinosa# 12 18
SS 26 Ian Desmond# 12 15
3B 27 Ryan Zimmerman 19 20
RF 33 Jayson Werth 20 17
CF 32 Rick Ankiel 6 5
LF 33 Xavier Nady 4 3
C2 27 Jesus Flores 1 1
INF 30 Michael Morse 16 14
OF 28 Roger Bernadina# 7 8
12 37 Mark DeRosa 4 3
13 32 Chad Tracy 1 1
SP1 23 Stephen Strasburg# 3 4
SP2 26 Jordan Zimmermann 6 7
SP3 28 Edwin Jackson 12 11
SP4 26 Gio Gonzalez 13 14
SP5 26 Ross Detwiler 2 3
RP1 35 Brad Lidge 4 3
RP2 25 Henry Rodriguez# 2 3
RP3 27 Tyler Clippard 10 9
RP4 24 Drew Storen# 9 12
RP5 29 Sean Burnett 6 5

Subjective Adjustments: None.
Also on Hand: Position players – Wunderkind Bryce Harper, Mark Teahen, Brett Carroll, Steve Lombardozzi (the younger one), Tyler Moore.
Pitchers – Tom Gorzelanny, Craig Stammen, Ryan Mattheus, Chien-Ming Wang.
Analysis: The “K Street” Nationals’ hot start has brought back memories of Davey Johnson teams of yore; four starters have ERAs in the ones, three relievers have ERAs ranging from 0.00 to 2.00, and the team is averaging 8.7 K/9. And they’re not really kids, either – Strasburg is already a Tommy John surgery veteran, and he and Henry Rodriguez are the only guys on the staff under 26. For a team that in its seven prior years in DC finished 16th in the NL in pitcher strikeouts twice, 15th three times, 13th once and as high as 10th only in its inaugural season, this is revolutionary. For the first time, it will actually be the offense that has to carry the ball.
Bryce Harper may well be a superstar in the making, but he’s closer in age to Justin Bieber than he is to Strasburg. Harper was 8 years old on 9/11. When he was born, Jamie Moyer was mulling a coaching job offer from the Cubs, his MLB pitching career widely considered over. In other words: don’t expect too much too soon. Harper reached the majors without slugging over .400 above A ball. There are 72 players (including a few pitchers and managers) in the Hall of Fame who had 200 or more plate appearances their first season in the majors; only 18 of those 72 slugged above .450, and only 11 of those were 22 or younger, the youngest being age 20; the highest among the teenagers was Mickey Mantle at .443 (Mel Ott is the only Hall of Famer to slug .450 as a teenager – .524 as a 19 year old in 1928 – and Ott wasn’t a rookie, having 241 plate appearances over the prior two seasons). Barry Bonds hit .223/.330/.416 as a rookie.
New York Mets
Raw EWSL: 162.50
Adjusted: 185.94
Age-Adj.: 183.04
WS Age: 29.3
2012 W-L: 74-88

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 25 Josh Thole# 8 10
1B 25 Ike Davis# 8 12
2B 27 Daniel Murphy 9 9
SS 22 Ruben Tejada# 6 13
3B 29 David Wright 18 18
RF 26 Lucas Duda* 6 12
CF 34 Andres Torres 14 12
LF 33 Jason Bay 14 12
C2 29 Mike Nickeas* 1 1
INF 27 Justin Turner* 8 16
OF 32 Scott Hairston 6 4
12 29 Ronny Cedeno 9 9
13 24 Kirk Nieuwenhuis+ 0 4
SP1 33 Johan Santana 7 5
SP2 37 RA Dickey 11 9
SP3 25 Jonathan Niese# 4 5
SP4 26 Dillon Gee* 4 6
SP5 28 Mike Pelfrey 6 6
RP1 32 Frank Francisco 7 5
RP2 27 Bobby Parnell 3 3
RP3 33 Jon Rauch 6 4
RP4 30 Ramon Ramirez 7 6
RP5 38 Tim Byrdak 3 2

Subjective Adjustments: None; I’m trying to keep these limited to preseason rankings, so I did not dock Mike Pelfrey.
Also on Hand: Position players – Mike Baxter (I could have rated him in the same place as Niewenhuis, but Niewenhuis is likely the guy I’ll be rating down the road), Zach Lutz, Jordany Valdespin, Brad Emaus, Freddie Lewis.
Pitchers – Miguel Batista, Manny Acosta, Pedro Beato, DJ Carrasco, Chris Schwinden, Jeremy Hefner.
Analysis: The Mets, realistically, are not aiming for a first place finish this season, but for .500 and respectability. And maybe not last place, which will require one of the other competitors here to have a very disappointing year. The main thing that needs to happen, for that to occur, is to keep the front four of the rotation healthy (Mike Pelfrey is headed for season-ending Tommy John surgery today), as well as Wright and Davis; some of the youngsters also need to step up, as Tejada, Thole and Nieuwenhuis have so far (I admit, I never expected Tejada to be a major league hitter). Santana, of course, has been miraculous, averaging over 10 K/9 for the first time since his first Cy Young season in 2004 and not having yet allowed a home run. The lesson is never bet against great pitchers – but also, be cautious, as I can recall Dwight Gooden having some outstanding stretches in the years after shoulder surgery, but never again sustaining it over a full season.

Continue reading 2012 NL East EWSL Report

2012 NL Central EWSL Report

Part 4 of my now very belated “preseason” previews is the NL Central; this is the fourth of six division previews, using Established Win Shares Levels as a jumping-off point. Notes and reference links on the EWSL method are below the fold; while EWSL is a simple enough method that will be familiar to long-time readers, it takes a little introductory explaining, so I’d suggest you check out the explanations first if you’re new to these previews. Team ages are weighted by non-age-adjusted EWSL, so the best players count more towards determining the age of the roster.
Prior: AL Central, AL East, AL West.
Some players are rated based on less than three seasons or given a rookie rating. Key:
+ (Rookie)
* (Based on one season)
# (Based on two seasons)

Cincinnati Reds
Raw EWSL: 210.83
Adjusted: 228.84
Age-Adj.: 218.03
WS Age: 29.1
2012 W-L: 86-76

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 31 Ryan Hanigan 11 9
1B 28 Joey Votto 32 32
2B 31 Brandon Phillips 20 17
SS 26 Zack Cozart+ 1 11
3B 37 Scott Rolen 11 7
RF 25 Jay Bruce 18 21
CF 27 Drew Stubbs 13 14
LF 33 Ryan Ludwick 15 13
C2 24 Devin Mesoraco+ 1 4
INF 34 Wilson Valdez 8 7
OF 27 Chris Heisey# 5 7
12 34 Willie Harris 5 5
13 38 Miguel Cairo 6 4
SP1 35 Bronson Arroyo 8 7
SP2 26 Johnny Cueto 11 12
SP3 24 Mike Leake# 7 9
SP4 26 Homer Bailey 5 6
SP5 24 Mat Latos 9 10
RP1 24 Aroldis Chapman* 3 5
RP2 29 Sean Marshall 10 8
RP3 29 Bill Bray 3 3
RP4 27 Logan Ondusek# 4 4
RP5 30 Nick Masset 6 5

Subjective Adjustments: None.
Also on Hand: Position players – Paul Janish, Billy Hamilton.
Pitchers – Alfredo Simon, Jose Arredondo, Ryan Madson (out for the season).
Analysis: The NL Central often looks weaker before the season than it does as the year progresses, but times have changed; Tony LaRussa, Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder are all gone, leaving the division short on anchors. That gives the Reds, who unlike their rivals managed to retain star 1B Joey Votto, a competitive advantage. Add in a rotation that could be stable if Johnny Cueto stays healthy and the usual Reds young, athletic outfield, and this team should be in any mix that emerges in this division.
Hamilton thus far is batting .381/.470/.583 and has already stolen 28 bases in A ball, although his suspect defense may slow his ascent.
Milwaukee Brewers
Raw EWSL: 227.50
Adjusted: 232.08
Age-Adj.: 212.81
WS Age: 29.9
2012 W-L: 84-78

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 26 Jonathan Lucroy# 9 12
1B 26 Mat Gamel 1 1
2B 29 Rickie Weeks 20 19
SS 35 Alex Gonzalez 14 10
3B 34 Aramis Ramirez 19 17
RF 30 Corey Hart 18 16
CF 31 Nyjer Morgan 14 11
LF 28 Ryan Braun 33 33
C2 29 George Kottaras 4 3
INF 28 Travis Ishikawa 3 3
OF 26 Carlos Gomez 6 6
12 30 Norichika Aoki+ 0 1
13 32 Cesar Izturis 4 3
SP1 26 Yovanni Gallardo 12 13
SP2 28 Zack Greinke 13 12
SP3 30 Shawn Marcum 11 9
SP4 35 Randy Wolf 11 9
SP5 30 Chris Narveson 6 5
RP1 29 John Axford# 11 12
RP2 30 Francisco Rodriguez 10 9
RP3 30 Kameron Loe 4 4
RP4 29 Manny Parra 1 1
RP5 31 Jose Veras 4 3

Subjective Adjustments: None.
Also on Hand: Position Players – Brooks Conrad.
Pitchers – Marco Estrada, who is off to an excellent start; Tim Dillard.
Analysis: The whiz heard round the world: Ryan Braun missing 50 games would have been a really horrible blow to this team after losing Fielder. With him, the Brewers’ rotation gives them a fighting chance. Note that an unbalanced schedule against this large, weak division, especially the Astros, should make the rest of the NL Central teams look deceptively stronger than they are.
World Champion St. Louis Cardinals
Raw EWSL: 208.67
Adjusted: 223.91
Age-Adj.: 199.17
WS Age: 31.0
2012 W-L: 80-82

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 29 Yadier Molina 18 17
1B 36 Lance Berkman 23 17
2B 32 Skip Schumaker 13 11
SS 34 Rafael Furcal 13 11
3B 29 David Freese 9 9
RF 35 Carlos Beltran 18 13
CF 27 Jon Jay# 9 12
LF 32 Matt Holliday 23 18
C2 25 Tony Cruz* 1 2
INF 25 Daniel Descalso* 5 12
OF 27 Allen Craig# 6 7
12 28 Tyler Greene 2 2
13 26 Matt Carpenter+ 0 4
SP1 37 Chris Carpenter 14 11
SP2 30 Adam Wainwright 10 9
SP3 25 Jaime Garcia# 8 10
SP4 34 Jake Westbrook 5 4
SP5 33 Kyle Lohse 5 4
RP1 30 Jason Motte 7 6
RP2 28 Mitchell Boggs 3 3
RP3 27 Fernando Salas# 6 7
RP4 28 Kyle McClellan 6 6
RP5 26 Marc Rzepcynski 4 4

Subjective Adjustments: None.
Also on Hand: Position players – Shane Robinson, Erik Komatsu.
Pitchers – Lance Lynn (I have him here because this was his preseason slot; he’s been a surprising early star in the rotation), JC Romero, Victor Marte, Scott Linebrink (injured).
Analysis: The hulking sinkerballer Lynn has really been a huge help in Carpenter’s early absence and with Wainwright struggling (0-3, 7.32 ERA), and the team’s 14-7 record (16-5 Pythagorean record) suggests that the Cards could yet again pull an upside surprise if the antique trio of Beltran, Furcal and Berkman can stay healthy (Berkman’s already on the DL). Then again, history suggests that a 1.62 ERA from Lohse, a 1.30 ERA from Westbrook and a .620 slugging average from Yadier Molina may be a tall order to sustain.
Pittsburgh Pirates
Raw EWSL: 168.00
Adjusted: 185.37
Age-Adj.: 182.65
WS Age: 28.5
2012 W-L: 74-88

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 36 Rod Barajas 10 8
1B 31 Garrett Jones 12 10
2B 26 Neil Walker# 15 20
SS 33 Clint Barmes 11 9
3B 29 Casey McGehee 16 15
RF 23 Jose Tabata# 9 13
CF 25 Andrew McCutchen 24 29
LF 26 Alex Presley* 4 9
C2 27 Michael McKendry* 1 2
INF 25 Pedro Alvarez# 6 9
OF 30 Nate McLouth 9 8
12 24 Josh Harrison* 3 7
13 26 Matt Hague+ 0 4
SP1 33 Erik Bedard 4 3
SP2 27 James McDonald 5 4
SP3 29 Jeff Karstens 6 5
SP4 28 Charlie Morton 5 4
SP5 31 Kevin Corriea 4 3
RP1 30 Joel Hanrahan 10 9
RP2 29 Chris Resop 3 2
RP3 29 Evan Meek 4 4
RP4 33 Juan Cruz 2 1
RP5 35 AJ Burnett 6 5

Subjective Adjustments: None.
Also on Hand: Position players – Yamaico Navarro
Pitchers – Jason Grilli, Jared Hughes, Tony Watson, Daniel McCutchen, Doug Slaten.
Analysis: Things are looking up in Pittsburgh, for a certain value of “up” compared to 19 consecutive losing seasons. Sad as it sounds, the Pirates’ 75 wins in 2003 was their only trip above 72 victories since 1999; this team has a fighting chance to top that. I would hesitate to project more.
Chicago Cubs
Raw EWSL: 156.00
Adjusted: 174.18
Age-Adj.: 175.23
SUbj. Adj.: 169.23
WS Age: 29.6
2012 W-L: 70-92

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 29 Geovany Soto 11 11
1B 29 Bryan LaHair+ 1 11
2B 26 Darwin Barney# 7 10
SS 22 Starlin Castro# 17 35
3B 27 Ian Stewart 5 5
RF 32 David DeJesus 10 8
CF 34 Marlon Byrd 14 12
LF 36 Alfonso Soriano 12 9
C2 26 Steve Clevenger+ 0 4
INF 31 Jeff Baker 4 3
OF 35 Reed Johnson 6 4
12 29 Joe Mather 1 1
13 26 Blake DeWitt 8 8
SP1 28 Matt Garza 10 10
SP2 35 Ryan Dempster 9 7
SP3 27 Jeff Samardzjia 4 3
SP4 25 Chris Volstad 4 4
SP5 30 Paul Maholm 6 5
RP1 29 Carlos Marmol 11 10
RP2 35 Kerry Wood 4 4
RP3 36 Shawn Camp 5 5
RP4 26 James Russell# 1 1
RP5 29 Randy Wells 7 6

Subjective Adjustments: I cut Starlin Castro from 35 Win Shares to 29, for the usual reason that EWSL over-projects 22-year-old everyday shortstops whose value is heavily in their glove.
Also on Hand: Pitchers – Casey Coleman, Rodrigo Lopez, Rafael Davis, Lendy Castillo, Scott Maine.
Analysis: In the optimist’s case, this is probably the season that provides the “how bad they were” backdrop for a later turnaround by Theo Epstein. I’d rather owe $54.5 million to Johan Santana than $54 million to Alfonso Soriano…the interesting question for an aggressive new GM is whether you could get a good package for Castro, or whether you retain him as the core building block. He’s going to be one of the most valuable fantasy players in baseball over the next five years, but the debate is whether he’s actually good enough defensively, and likely to survive his rough plate discipline, to match his perceived value. I don’t know that I’d bet against a 22 year old shortstop with his gifts, though. He’s batting .337 and leading the NL in steals at the moment.
Another guy who looks like he may finally be figuring things out is Jeff Samardzija, with a 25/8 K/BB ratio and just one HR allowed in 24 innings.
Houston Astros
Raw EWSL: 96.17
Adjusted: 113.76
Age-Adj.: 105.61
WS Age: 29.4
2012 W-L: 48-114

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 25 Jason Castro# 1 2
1B 36 Carlos Lee 17 12
2B 22 Jose Altuve* 1 4
SS 28 Jed Lowrie 5 5
3B 27 Chris Johnson# 9 11
RF 28 Brian Bogusevic* 2 4
CF 25 Jordan Schafer 4 5
LF 24 JD Martinez* 3 8
C2 31 Chris Snyder 6 5
INF 23 Marwin Gonzalez+ 0 4
OF 28 Travis Buck 2 2
12 29 Brian Bixler 0 0
13 28 Justin Maxwell 1 1
SP1 33 Wandy Rodriguez 11 8
SP2 27 Bud Norris 5 4
SP3 29 JA Happ 5 4
SP4 27 Lucas Harrell# 0 0
SP5 25 Kyle Weiland+ 0 4
RP1 31 Brett Myers 9 7
RP2 28 Wilton Lopez 5 5
RP3 28 Fernando Rodriguez* 2 2
RP4 26 David Carpenter* 1 2
RP5 32 Brandon Lyon 7 5

Subjective Adjustments: None.
Also on Hand: Position players – Brett Wallace, Landon Powell, Angel Sanchez.
Pitchers – Wesley Wright, Fernando Abad, Rhiner Cruz, Enerio del Rosario.
Analysis: No, that 48-114 record is not a typo; measured by ESWL, the Astros enter 2012 as the worst, or at least weakest, team since I started doing this in 2004.
The optimist’s case is that the Astros are this weak, not because they have a collection of players who have proven they can’t play in the majors, but mostly because they have a collection of players who haven’t proven they can play in the majors. That can sometimes yield surprises; the diminutive (5’5″) young (22) Jose Altuve, who hit .276 .297 .357 in Houston after hitting .408/.451/.606 in A ball and .361/.388/.569 in AA last season, is batting .359/.407/.551 so far; with his small stature, youth and compact swing, Altuve could well turn out to be a star, or he could be Jose Lopez, or he could be a little of both, like Carlos Baerga. Other youngsters could emerge as well, given enough playing time, although few of the others in the Houston lineup or rotation have an upside similar to Altuve’s.
But this is guaranteed to be a terrible team, one that will likely get worse before it gets better if the team can find takers for even a portion of Brett Myers’ and Carlos Lee’s contracts (Myers has one more year remaining, Lee’s done after this season).

Continue reading 2012 NL Central EWSL Report

Failure to Deploy

Sometimes, in retrospect, the answer is obvious. The Seattle Mariners of the late 1990s were one of the most talent-loaded teams in baseball history in terms of front-line stars: four immortals (Ken Griffey, Alex Rodriguez, Randy Johnson, and Edgar Martinez) one significant star (Jay Buhner) and a couple of productive regulars (Jeff Fassero, Jamie Moyer, Paul Sorrento). Yet from 1996-2000, they made it out of the first round of the playoffs only once (losing the ALCS in 2000), and posted two losing records. Only when Griffey, A-Rod and Johnson were all gone (along with Fassero and Sorrento) and Buhner finished would the team build a 116-win juggernaut in 2001, in part with the pieces acquired for Johnson and Griffey.
Injuries were part of that story (Randy Johnson started just 8 games in 1996, Buhner missed half the season in 1998 and again in 1999), the pitching was chronically thin, especially the bullpen behind the likes of Heathcliff Slocumb, and of course a two-year run of epic bad trades that stripped the team of both young stars and useful role players:

December 1995:
Traded Tino Martinez, Jim Mecir and Jeff Nelson to the New York Yankees. Received Russ Davis and Sterling Hitchcock.
Traded Miguel Cairo and Bill Risley to the Toronto Blue Jays. Received Edwin Hurtado and Paul Menhart.
August 1996:
Traded a player to be named later to the Minnesota Twins. Received Dave Hollins. The Seattle Mariners sent David Ortiz (September 13, 1996) to the Minnesota Twins to complete the trade.
December 1996:
Traded Sterling Hitchcock to the San Diego Padres. Received Scott Sanders.
July 1997:
Traded Derek Lowe and Jason Varitek to the Boston Red Sox. Received Heathcliff Slocumb.
Traded Jose Cruz to the Toronto Blue Jays. Received Paul Spoljaric and Mike Timlin.
August 1997:
Traded players to be named later to the Minnesota Twins. Received Roberto Kelly. The Seattle Mariners sent Joe Mays (October 9, 1997) and Jeromy Palki (minors) (October 9, 1997) to the Minnesota Twins to complete the trade.

But one of the underrated flaws of that team, in retrospect, was the failure to give a longer shot to a talented young player moldering on the team’s bench. Raul Ibanez in 1996 was 24 years old and coming off an age 22 season batting .312/.375/.486 and age 23 season batting .332/.395/.612 in A ball. Over the five seasons that followed – age 24-28, the years that should have been his major league prime – Ibanez would be given 518 plate appearances with the Mariners, just over 100 a year, before leaving for the Royals as a free agent. Ibanez, of course, would go on to stardom with the Royals (he drove in 103 runs in 2002) and return as a free agent after three years there. From age 30-37, Ibanez would bat .290/.351/.489, averaging 97 RBI a year. He’s still playing at 40; at last check, he’s slugging .500 and on pace to drive in 99 runs, although it’s early yet.
To be fair, Ibanez didn’t distinguish himself in his cups of coffee, batting just .241/.295/.383. He would bat .297/.364/.447 and .304/.349/.498 in 1996-97, mostly at AAA Tacoma, and struggle to a .216/.301/.363 line in a half-season’s work in 1998 before spending most of the rest of the period with the big club.
Still, you have to wonder how much worse the Mariners would have done if they’d just slapped Ibanez (or Cruz, for that matter) into the big league lineup in 1996 and left him there to work through the learning curve. Here’s how the team’s endless revolving door of left fielders (including Ibanez as well as Cruz, Rickey Henderson, Stan Javier, Al Martin, Mark McLemore, Brian Hunter, Butch Huskey, John Mabry, Glenallen Hill, Shane Monahan, Rich Amaral, Rob Ducey, Lee Tinsley, Roberto Kelly, Mark Whiten, Darren Bragg, and Alex Diaz) hit over those five seasons:

Year PA AB H 2B 3B HR R RBI BB SO SB CS GDP Avg OBP SLG OPS+
1996 697 608 155 25 4 23 103 76 67 121 20 7 9 .255 .336 .423 85
1997 665 612 164 34 4 24 84 78 41 133 16 5 13 .268 .314 .454 97
1998 651 608 168 40 4 17 76 76 33 127 10 4 15 .276 .315 .439 91
1999 712 658 158 15 5 12 96 64 41 111 42 7 12 .240 .281 .333 52
2000 762 645 164 23 6 11 117 59 103 108 42 14 12 .254 .356 .360 74
Avg 697 626 162 27 5 17 95 71 57 120 26 7 12 .258 .321 .400 79

(The walks column makes it pretty apparent when Rickey hit town).
Even the 2001 team never really solved the LF problem, splitting time among Martin, McLemore and Javier (combined LF batting line: .256/.350/.364, although they probably contributed more to the team’s historically effective team defense than Ibanez would have), and adding Ruben Sierra and Willie Bloomquist to the mix in 2002 (combined LF batting line: .277/.365/.424) before giving the job to Randy Winn in 2003, then shifting Winn to center to finally install Ibanez in 2004.

2012 AL West EWSL Report

Part 3 of my preseason previews is the AL West; this is the third of six division “previews,” using Established Win Shares Levels as a jumping-off point. Notes and reference links on the EWSL method are below the fold; while EWSL is a simple enough method that will be familiar to long-time readers, it takes a little introductory explaining, so I’d suggest you check out the explanations first if you’re new to these previews. Team ages are weighted by non-age-adjusted EWSL, so the best players count more towards determining the age of the roster.
Prior: AL Central, AL East.
Some players are rated based on less than three seasons or given a rookie rating. Key:
+ (Rookie)
* (Based on one season)
# (Based on two seasons)

The Anaheim California-Based Los Angeles California Angels of Anaheim
Raw EWSL: 273.50
Adjusted: 285.03
Age-Adj.: 252.76
WS Age: 30.9
2012 W-L: 97-65

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 29 Chris Iannetta 11 10
1B 32 Albert Pujols 30 24
2B 28 Howie Kendrick 18 18
SS 28 Erick Aybar 16 16
3B 29 Alberto Callaspo 15 15
RF 36 Torii Hunter 20 14
CF 25 Peter Bourjous# 9 13
LF 33 Vernon Wells 13 11
DH 29 Kendry Morales 7 6
C2 29 Bobby Wilson# 2 2
INF 26 Mark Trumbo* 7 15
OF 38 Bobby Abreu 18 12
13 31 Macier Izturis 12 10
SP1 29 Jered Weaver 21 18
SP2 31 Danny Haren 17 13
SP3 31 CJ Wilson 17 13
SP4 29 Ervin Santana 13 11
SP5 30 Jerome Williams 2 1
RP1 24 Jordan Walden# 6 8
RP2 36 Scott Downs 9 8
RP3 37 Hisanori Takahashi 7 5
RP4 39 LaTroy Hawkins 5 4
RP5 27 Kevin Jepsen 2 2

Subjective Adjustments: None.
Also on Hand: Position players – Hank Conger, Alexi Amarista, Ryan Langerhans, and – arriving sooner or later, and off to a hot start in AAA – outfield super-prospect Mike Trout.
Pitchers – Jason Isringhausen, who despite not being listed here is more or less in the closer mix, given the wobbly Walden.
Analysis: This team is the very picture of depth and balance, with just two really major stars (Pujols and Weaver, although in truth Weaver is only slightly better than Haren) but almost no weaknesses and a mix of young players and seasoned vets jostling for playing time (Trumbo, for example, hit 29 home runs last season and is basically reduced to playing all-purpose backup to Pujols, Callaspo, Morales, Hunter and Wells, while fending off Abreu and Trout). The only two conspicuous weaknesses are Wells, who with any non-insane contract would have been cut by now (fun fact: Vernon Wells made as much money as Mitt Romney in 2009 and 2010), and the uncertain Jerome Williams as the fifth starter.
American League Champion Texas Rangers
Raw EWSL: 235.50
Adjusted: 250.96
Age-Adj.: 230.02
WS Age: 29.9
2012 W-L: 90-72

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 30 Mike Napoli 17 16
1B 26 Mitch Moreland# 6 8
2B 30 Ian Kinsler 19 18
SS 23 Elvis Andrus 19 23
3B 33 Adrian Beltre 18 16
RF 31 Nelson Cruz 17 14
CF 31 Josh Hamilton 19 16
LF 30 David Murphy 11 10
DH 35 Michael Young 20 15
C2 33 Yorvit Torrealba 9 8
INF 29 Alberto Gonzalez 4 3
OF 28 Craig Gentry# 3 5
13 25 Brandon Snyder+ 0 4
SP1 32 Colby Lewis# 10 9
SP2 25 Derek Holland 8 9
SP3 25 Yu Darvish+ 0 4
SP4 24 Neftali Feliz 12 14
SP5 26 Matt Harrison 9 10
RP1 37 Joe Nathan 5 4
RP2 33 Mike Adams 10 7
RP3 28 Alexi Ogando# 9 10
RP4 37 Koji Uehara 8 6
RP5 29 Mark Lowe 3 3

Subjective Adjustments: None, although as I noted last year with Andrus, EWSL tends to overrate the growth potential of very young players whose value is disproportionately defensive. But by now, the more reasonable reading of the age adjustment is a built-in assumption of offensive improvement.
Also on Hand: Position players – Julio Borbon, Lonys Martin, shortstop prospect Jurickson Profar. I always read his name to myself using the Don Pardo voice: “Juuuuricksonn PrOWfarrr…” Try it once, I guarantee it will stick with you.
Pitchers – Scott Feldman, Robert Ross.
Analysis: It remains to be seen, but right now the difference in the AL West is CJ Wilson pitching for the Angels instead of the Rangers. we’ll get a better fix now on exactly how well the Nolan Ryan-led organization’s pitching strategies work with the move of Neftali Feliz to the rotation and Alexi Ogando back to the pen, as well as Yu Darvish’s adjustment to the majors as the rare non-gimmicky Japanese power pitcher to enter a rotation (the example of the late Hideki Irabu was not encouraging, but Irabu had a variety of issues).
The Rangers lineup is older than you think it is. Guys like Hamilton and Cruz got late starts in the big leagues, so it’s easy to forget they’re on the wrong side of 30 now.
Seattle Mariners
Raw EWSL: 147.50
Adjusted: 186.06
Age-Adj.: 183.55
WS Age: 28.8
2012 W-L: 74-88

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 33 Miguel Olivo 10 9
1B 25 Justin Smoak# 7 11
2B 24 Dustin Ackley* 7 18
SS 30 Brendan Ryan 12 10
3B 24 Kyle Seager* 3 4
RF 38 Ichiro Suzuki 20 13
CF 29 Franklin Guitierrez 10 10
LF 34 Chone Figgins 9 7
DH 22 Jesus Montero+ 1 11
C2 28 John Jaso# 8 9
INF 26 Mike Carp* 4 8
OF 25 Michael Saunders 3 4
13 27 Casper Wells# 4 6
SP1 26 Felix Hernandez 20 22
SP2 29 Jason Vargas 8 7
SP3 37 Kevin Millwood 6 5
SP4 23 Blake Beavan* 3 6
SP5 25 Hector Noesi* 1 2
RP1 29 Brandon League 9 8
RP2 28 Tom Wilhelmsen* 2 3
RP3 25 Lucas Luetge+ 0 4
RP4 28 Steve Delabar+ 1 4
RP5 35 George Sherrill 4 3

Subjective Adjustments: None.
Also on Hand: Position players – Muenenori Kawasaki, who has been doing the bulk of the infield backup work, Alex Liddi, Trayvon Robinson.
Pitchers – Shawn Kelley, Erasmo Ramirez, Hisashi Iwakuma (an import who’s still looking to crack the rotation).
Analysis: The Mariners have clipped about 3 years off their WS average age since last season, albeit partly because some of the older guys like Figgins and Ichiro are coming off tough years. But the road back is long, long enough that in the absence of marketable veterans they had to part with Michael Pineda to get a young hitter in Montero (not a bad deal, but a costly one for a rebuilding team). It’s hard to see the Mariners getting rebuilt before King Felix has either gotten injured or left town. This division remains stratified very sharply between the two strong and two weak teams.
Ichiro enters tonight’s action with 2438 hits in the American League to go with 1287 in nine seasons in Japan, dating back to age 18, a total of 3725 hits. It’s almost a certainty that he’d be on the doorstep of 4000 hits by now if he’d been in the majors that whole time: due to the shorter Japanese schedule, he made it to 200 hits only once in Japan, as a 20-year-old hitting .385 in 1994; from age 21-26, Ichiro batted .354 but averaged 172 hits in 486 at bats per season; in the majors from age 27-36, he batted .331 but averaged 224 hits in 678 at bats. Give him an extra 50 hits a year and he’d be over 4000 by now.
Oakland A’s
Raw EWSL: 114.00
Adjusted: 169.35
Age-Adj.: 167.16
WS Age: 28.3
2012 W-L: 69-93

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 28 Kurt Suzuki 10 10
1B 26 Daric Barton 10 11
2B 25 Jemile Weeks* 8 18
SS 28 Cliff Pennington 17 17
3B 26 Josh Donaldson+ 0 11
RF 25 Josh Reddick* 4 8
CF 26 Yoenis Cedpedes+ 0 11
LF 32 Coco Crisp 13 10
DH 31 Jonny Gomes 11 9
C2 28 Anthony Recker+ 0 4
INF 26 Eric Sogard+ 0 4
OF 29 Seth Smith 12 11
13 28 Kila Kaiaihue# 0 0
SP1 28 Brandon McCarthy 6 6
SP2 39 Bartolo Colon 5 4
SP3 25 Tyson Ross# 2 2
SP4 25 Tom Milone+ 1 4
SP5 27 Graham Godfrey+ 1 4
RP1 34 Grant Balfour 7 5
RP2 36 Brian Fuentes 7 6
RP3 28 Jerry Blevins 2 2
RP4 25 Andrew Carignan+ 0 4
RP5 25 Ryan Cook+ 0 4

Subjective Adjustments: None.
Also on Hand: Position players – Adam Rosales, Brandon Allen, Jermaine Mitchell, Grant Green, Chris Carter.
Pitchers – Fautino de los Santos, Jordan Norberto, prospect Jarrod Parker and the injured duo of Brett Anderson and Dallas Braden, whose dual absence blows a huge hole in the Oakland rotation.
Analysis: Even for the annually reborn A’s, who almost always exceed their EWSL due to overperforming young starting pitchers and a season-long influx of new discoveries, a non-age-adjusted total of 114 Established Win Shares (38 wins’ worth) is a narrow base upon which to build. The Astros can’t arrive in this division soon enough for Oakland.
You want good news? It’s nice to have a guy who can throw like this.

Continue reading 2012 AL West EWSL Report

2012 AL East EWSL Report

Part 2 of my preseason previews is the AL East; this is the second of six division previews, using Established Win Shares Levels as a jumping-off point. Notes and reference links on the EWSL method are below the fold; while EWSL is a simple enough method that will be familiar to long-time readers, it takes a little introductory explaining, so I’d suggest you check out the explanations first if you’re new to these previews. Team ages are weighted by non-age-adjusted EWSL, so the best players count more towards determining the age of the roster.
Prior: AL Central.
Some players are rated based on less than three seasons or given a rookie rating. Key:
+ (Rookie)
* (Based on one season)
# (Based on two seasons)

The Hated Yankees
Raw EWSL: 281.17
Adjusted: 288.33
Age-Adj.: 246.12
WS Age: 32.1
2012 W-L: 95-67

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 29 Russell Martin 13 12
1B 32 Mark Teixeira 23 19
2B 29 Robinson Cano 29 28
SS 38 Derek Jeter 18 12
3B 36 Alex Rodriguez 18 13
RF 31 Nick Swisher 20 16
CF 31 Curtis Granderson 22 18
LF 28 Brett Gardner 15 15
DH 40 Raul Ibanez 15 8
C2 26 Francisco Cervelli 5 5
INF 25 Eduardo Nunez# 5 7
OF 35 Andruw Jones 8 6
13 34 Eric Chavez 3 3
SP1 31 CC Sabathia 19 15
SP2 23 Michael Pineda* 5 12
SP3 37 Hiroki Kuroda 11 8
SP4 25 Ivan Nova# 6 8
SP5 26 Phil Hughes 6 6
RP1 42 Mariano Rivera 14 10
RP2 27 David Robertson 7 6
RP3 32 Rafael Soriano 9 7
RP4 29 Cory Wade 3 2
RP5 36 Freddy Garcia 9 8

Subjective Adjustments: None.
Also on Hand: Position players – Chris Stewart, Chris Dickerson.
Pitchers – Boone Logan, Andy Pettitte, Clay Rapada, David Aardsma. Joba Chamberlain and Pedro Feliciano almost certainly won’t pitch this year.
Analysis: Once again, the Hated Yankees are the class of the field – albeit not of the whole AL, compared to the Tigers – and once again, they are also (probably – I haven’t finished running all the numbers) the oldest team in the league, maybe in MLB.
The Yankees’ depth is not that impressive behind the front line, but of course the front line is very impressive, at least on offense and in the bullpen. It’s the rotation that remains a big question mark after CC Sabathia (it’s easy to forget that Kuroda is even older than Freddy Garcia). A lot will rest on Pineda.
One has to assume that by the trade deadline, the Yankees will find someone besides Ibanez and Andruw Jones to handle the DH and backup outfielder duties.
Boston Red Sox
Raw EWSL: 251.83
Adjusted: 252.87
Age-Adj.: 227.62
WS Age: 30.0
2012 W-L: 89-73

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 27 J.Saltalamacchia 5 5
1B 30 Adrian Gonzalez 31 28
2B 28 Dustin Pedroia 22 22
SS 31 Mike Aviles 6 5
3B 33 Kevin Youkilis 20 17
RF 27 Ryan Sweeney 8 9
CF 28 Jacoby Ellsbury 21 21
LF 30 Carl Crawford 18 16
DH 36 David Ortiz 17 13
C2 32 Kelly Shoppach 5 4
INF 34 Nick Punto 8 7
OF 31 Cody Ross 14 12
13 33 Darnell McDonald 5 4
SP1 28 Jon Lester 16 15
SP2 32 Josh Beckett 11 9
SP3 27 Clay Buchholz 10 9
SP4 27 Daniel Bard 8 7
SP5 24 Felix Doubront# 0 0
RP1 28 Andrew Bailey 10 9
RP2 29 Alfredo Aceves 8 7
RP3 27 Mark Melancon 6 6
RP4 34 Vicente Padilla 4 3
RP5 26 Franklin Morales 2 2

Subjective Adjustments: None.
Also on Hand: Position players – Ryan Kalish, Ryan Lavarnaway. Pitchers – John Lackey and Daisuke Matsuzaka, neither of whom is likely to pitch. Bobby Jenks, who’s on the shelf for at least about half the season. Aaron Cook, Scott Atchison, Matt Albers, Justin Thomas, Ross Ohlendorf, Michael Bowden. Cook’s the one most likely to have some impact in the near future.
Analysis: Bobby Valentine (who has done nothing so far to dispell my conclusion that he’s the Newt Gingrich of baseball managers) has his work cut out for him – this is still a talented team, but the injuries have piled up (including Bailey being shelved yet again) and age has taken its toll, plus one has to wonder whether Carl Crawford can take over the inspirational leadership void left by JD Drew.
(…yeah, I’m trolling with that last point)
And perhaps worst of all, not only are the Sox likely competing less for the division than for the single-elimination Russian Roulette wild card, they’re doing so in a viciously competitive division, as you can see from how the Rays and Jays rosters look. Maybe Crawford, Youkilis and Buchholz bounce back, but then Ortiz is 36 and there’s nowhere to go but down for Ellsbury, Gonzalez, and Pedroia after 2011. The Sawx will be a good team, but they face a high likelihood of being an odd man out.
Tampa Bay Rays
Raw EWSL: 213.83
Adjusted: 230.16
Age-Adj.: 223.76
WS Age: 29.1
2012 W-L: 88-74

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 37 Jose Molina 6 3
1B 34 Carlos Pena 17 15
2B 32 Jeff Keppinger 12 10
SS 27 Sean Rodriguez 8 8
3B 26 Evan Longoria 26 28
RF 27 Matt Joyce 13 14
CF 27 BJ Upton 18 19
LF 25 Desmond Jennings* 6 13
DH 34 Luke Scott 9 7
C2 27 Jose Lobaton+ 1 4
INF 26 Reid Brignac 6 6
OF 31 Ben Zobrist 26 21
13 28 Elliott Johnson* 1 2
SP1 26 David Price 13 15
SP2 30 James Shields 13 11
SP3 25 Jeremy Hellickson# 9 11
SP4 23 Matt Moore+ 1 4
SP5 29 Jeff Niemann 8 7
RP1 36 Kyle Farnsworth 8 7
RP2 36 Joel Peralta 6 5
RP3 35 Fernando Rodney 4 3
RP4 25 Jacob McGee* 1 2
RP5 26 Wade Davis 6 7

Subjective Adjustments: None.
Also on Hand: Position players – Stephen Vogt, Sam Fuld (who is injured).
Pitchers – JP Howell, Brandon Gomes, Josh Lueke, Burke Badenhop.
Analysis: The Rays have their usual assortment of young starting pitchers, prime-age position players, and aging relievers, with weak spots at catcher and much of the non-Longoria infield (depending where Zobrist is on a particular day, which thus far is more often in the outfield). It’s always hard to guess how Hellickson, Moore and Davis (to the extent he gets another shot in the rotation) will progress down the path to David Pricedom.
Despite an early injury, I have a suspicion that his age 27 contract year will be good to BJ Upton, who has definitely followed the Adrian Beltre career path; Upton’s five year average of .257/.346/.425 with 32 doubles, 17 HR, 37 SB & 71 BB is solid, but somehow his individual seasons don’t quite match up to that package.
Toronto Blue Jays
Raw EWSL: 204.17
Adjusted: 227.16
Age-Adj.: 221.26
WS Age: 29.2
2012 W-L: 87-75

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 26 JP Arencibia* 7 15
1B 28 Adam Lind 12 12
2B 30 Kelly Johnson 16 15
SS 29 Yunel Escobar 19 18
3B 22 Brett Lawrie* 5 18
RF 31 Jose Bautista 30 25
CF 25 Colby Rasmus 13 16
LF 25 Eric Thames* 4 8
DH 29 Edwin Encarnacion 9 9
C2 29 Jeff Mathis 4 4
INF 45 Omar Vizquel 4 2
OF 31 Rajai Davis 10 8
13 30 Ben Francisco 6 6
SP1 27 Ricky Romero 16 14
SP2 27 Brandon Morrow 7 6
SP3 25 Brett Cecil 6 6
SP4 22 Henderson Alvarez* 2 5
SP5 25 Joel Carreno+ 1 4
RP1 28 Sergio Santos# 8 9
RP2 37 Francisco Cordero 12 10
RP3 41 Darren Oliver 7 5
RP4 27 Luis Perez* 1 2
RP5 34 Jason Frasor 6 5

Subjective Adjustments: None, but Brett Lawrie’s EWSL may be somewhat enthusiastic here, as is sometimes the case for 22 year olds.
Also on Hand: Position players – Travis Snider.
Pitchers – Dustin McGowan (hurt again) and Jesse Litsch.
Analysis: What a difference a year makes for a team I has ranked last entering last season; EWSL has them effectively even with Boston and Tampa, even adjusting for Canadian exchange rates.
Colby Rasmus is to the Jays what Upton and Crawford are to Tampa and Boston, the lineup’s pivotal enigma. The pitching staff is still a crapshoot beyond Romero, but there are a fair number of live arms here.
Baltimore Orioles
Raw EWSL: 176.00
Adjusted: 181.12
Age-Adj.: 176.99
WS Age: 28.6
2012 W-L: 72-90

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 26 Matt Wieters 17 19
1B 26 Chris Davis 4 4
2B 34 Brian Roberts 7 6
SS 29 JJ Hardy 15 15
3B 28 Mark Reynolds 17 17
RF 28 Nick Markakis 20 20
CF 26 Adam Jones 15 17
LF 28 Nolan Reimold 7 7
DH 30 Wilson Betemit 10 9
C2 31 Ronny Paulino 6 5
INF 28 Robert Andino 6 6
OF 34 Endy Chavez 4 3
13 33 Nick Johnson 4 3
SP1 29 Jason Hammell 7 6
SP2 26 Jake Arrieta# 4 6
SP3 25 Tommy Hunter 6 7
SP4 26 Wei-Yin Chen+ 0 4
SP5 25 Brian Matusz 4 4
RP1 29 Jim Johnson 8 7
RP2 32 Matt Lindstrom 4 3
RP3 34 Kevin Gregg 6 5
RP4 29 Darren O’Day 5 4
RP5 34 Luis Ayala 3 2

Subjective Adjustments: None.
Also on Hand: Position players – Ryan Flaherty.
Pitchers – Pedro Strop, Troy Patton, Zach Britton, Tsuyoshi Wada, Brad Bergesen.
Analysis: The Orioles aren’t terrible, but this division could easily leave a lot of their players look like Robert Andino.
Wieters, Davis and Jones have basically reached the put up or shut up stage for their hyped potential. Davis now has a career line of .322/.380/.645 in AA, .337/.397/.609 in AAA, but .252/.301/.448 in MLB. In MLB, he’s averaged a .335 BABIP, 24 HR, 39 BB, and 189 K per 600 AB. Between AA and AAA: .395 BABIP, 41 HR, 58 BB, 156 K per 600 AB. In other words, it’s not just the strikeouts, Davis has struggled across the board to translate his skills to the MLB level. He could hit 45 homers, he could hit .210; he could do both. If he and Jones both improve their strike zone judgment just a bit, this lineup looks a lot better. Then you have Hardy, who is liable to do anything in a given season (I sort of half expect him to hit 30 homers because having two good years in a row is the one thing he’s never done), and Markakis, who is battling to avoid the Ben Grieve career path he’s been on for the past few seasons, as well as Reynolds, who will be a terror if he plays every day and strikes out less than 200 times, but is more apt to terrorize his own pitching staff. If ever there was an offense designed for the outside possibility of making its batting coach look like a genius…Jim Presley has his work cut out for him.
We pass in silence and avert our eyes from Baltimore’s pitching beyond noting that Jake Arrieta started Opening Day.

Continue reading 2012 AL East EWSL Report

2012 AL Central EWSL Report

Long-time readers know that the timing of my annual division previews has gotten more erratic over the years, but since this is a multi-year project, I can’t drop the ball even if I’m late, late enough that the season’s already underway before the first one. So here we go.
Part 1 of my preseason previews is the AL Central; this is the first of six division previews, using Established Win Shares Levels as a jumping-off point. Notes and reference links on the EWSL method are below the fold; while EWSL is a simple enough method that will be familiar to long-time readers, it takes a little introductory explaining, so I’d suggest you check out the explanations first if you’re new to these previews. Team ages are weighted by non-age-adjusted EWSL, so the best players count more towards determining the age of the roster.
Some players are rated based on less than three seasons or given a rookie rating. Key:
+ (Rookie)
* (Based on one season)
# (Based on two seasons)

Detroit Tigers
Raw EWSL: 250.83
Adjusted: 262.49
Age-Adj.: 254.41
WS Age: 28.5
2012 W-L: 98-64

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 25 Alex Avila 16 20
1B 28 Prince Fielder 30 30
2B 31 Ryan Raburn 10 8
SS 30 Jhonny Peralta 18 16
3B 29 Miguel Cabrera 33 32
RF 27 Brennan Boesch# 10 12
CF 25 Austin Jackson# 13 19
LF 26 Delmon Young 14 15
DH 26 Andy Dirks* 3 7
C2 32 Gerald Laird 6 5
INF 32 Ramon Santiago 7 5
OF 32 Don Kelly# 4 4
13 26 Danny Worth# 1 1
SP1 29 Justin Verlander 23 20
SP2 27 Max Scherzer 11 10
SP3 28 Doug Fister 12 11
SP4 23 Rick Porcello 8 8
SP5 23 Drew Smyly+ 0 4
RP1 32 Jose Valverde 13 10
RP2 34 Joaquin Benoit 7 6
RP3 38 Octavio Dotel 6 4
RP4 29 Phil Coke 5 4
RP5 26 Daniel Schlereth 3 3

Subjective Adjustments: None.
Also on Hand: Position players – Clete Thomas, the Ghost of Brandon Inge, the injured and almost certainly out for the season Victor Martinez.
Pitchers – Charlie Furbush, Al Albuquerque (who’s injured), Duane Below, Andrew Oliver, Collin Balester, Brayan Villarreal.
Analysis: As befits a team that went to the ALCS last year and then added Prince Fielder, EWSL rates the Tigers as fairly overwhelming favorites to win the AL Central going away. Verlander’s continuing health and durability is the key assumption there. So far, the Tigers have played as a caricature of themselves, scoring nearly 9 runs per game but with an appalling .654 Defensive Efficiency Rating – that infield’s not going to be pretty. Also, the Tigers’ depth in their everyday lineup is not great, if they have injuries. But these are mostly nits.
As you may have heard, Octavio Dotel has set the all-time record for most teams played for, 13 in 14 seasons. Smyly had a good pro debut last season – 2.07 ERA, 9.3 K, 2.6 BB, 0.1 HR/9 (just 2 homers in 126 IP) – and got stronger in the last third of the season when he moved up to AA, but will be making a big leap to the big leagues.
Cleveland Indians
Raw EWSL: 181.17
Adjusted: 193.77
Age-Adj.: 188.33
WS Age: 28.4
2012 W-L: 76-86

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 26 Carlos Santana# 13 17
1B 29 Casey Kotchman 12 12
2B 25 Jason Kipnis* 3 7
SS 26 Asdrubal Cabrera 19 20
3B 32 Jack Hannahan 8 6
RF 29 Shin-Soo Choo 17 16
CF 25 Michael Brantley 8 9
LF 26 Aaron Cunningham# 2 2
DH 35 Travis Hafner 13 9
C2 26 Lou Marson# 4 5
INF 27 Jason Donald# 4 5
OF 32 Shelley Duncan 7 5
13 29 Grady Sizemore 5 5
SP1 27 Justin Masterson 10 9
SP2 28 Ubaldo Jimenez 14 13
SP3 27 Josh Tomlin# 6 6
SP4 39 Derek Lowe 6 5
SP5 28 Kevin Slowey 4 3
RP1 26 Chris Perez 10 11
RP2 28 Tony Sipp 5 5
RP3 28 Joe Smith 5 5
RP4 27 Vinnie Pestano* 4 7
RP5 30 Rafael Perez 5 4

Subjective Adjustments: None.
Also on Hand: Position players – Lonnie Chisenhall, who may end up the third baseman at some point; Ryan Spilborghs.
Pitchers – Chris Ray.
Analysis: The Indians have the air of optimism about them, but Cabrera will have a hard time topping last season, as will Masterson (I’d bet on Masterson, of the two). There’s room for growth from Santana and a rebound by Choo – and you never know with Sizemore, although he’s on the 60-day DL at this writing – but it’s hard to look up and down this roster and see where they make up the gap to catch the Tigers.
A full season of Ubaldo Jimenez should help stabilize the rotation, but as of now he looks like another data point for the idea that guys who pitch well in Coors end up old before their time from the strain.
Kansas City Royals
Raw EWSL: 135.33
Adjusted: 154.33
Age-Adj.: 166.17
WS Age: 27.3
2012 W-L: 69-93

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 30 Brayan Pena 4 4
1B 22 Eric Hosmer* 7 23
2B 30 Yuniesky Betancourt 11 10
SS 25 Alcides Escobar 9 10
3B 23 Mike Moustakas* 2 5
RF 28 Jeff Francouer 12 12
CF 26 Lorenzo Cain# 2 3
LF 28 Alex Gordon 13 13
DH 26 Billy Butler 18 20
C2 32 Humberto Quintero 3 3
INF 28 Chris Getz 7 7
OF 30 Mitch Maier 7 6
13 30 Jason Bourgeois 3 3
SP1 35 Bruce Chen 8 6
SP2 28 Luke Hochevar 5 5
SP3 29 Jonathan Sanchez 7 6
SP4 28 Felipe Paulino 3 3
SP5 23 Danny Duffy* 1 1
RP1 28 Jonathan Broxton 5 4
RP2 26 Greg Holland* 5 10
RP3 25 Aaron Crow* 3 6
RP4 22 Tim Collins* 2 5
RP5 28 Luis Mendoza 1 1

Subjective Adjustments: None.
Also on Hand: Position players – Johnny Giovatella, like Getz, will sooner or later challenge again for the second base job.
Pitchers – Joakim Soria, who won’t pitch; Blake Wood.
Analysis: The Royals are back in that familiar position of having optimism derived from young talent in the lineup, but – as of yet – nothing comparable in the rotation. Duffy has the minor league record of a high-end prospect, but he got cuffed around last season and has much to prove to show he’s turned that corner. And of course, this team is still held together by too many players of the Francouer, Chen, Betancourt ilk. The Royals could well post a winning record if Moustakas and Duffy blossom and more help arrives from the minors, but it’s hard to see them actually contending yet.
Minnesota Twins
Raw EWSL: 169.33
Adjusted: 189.37
Age-Adj.: 175.41
WS Age: 29.7
2012 W-L: 72-90

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 29 Joe Mauer 19 19
1B 24 Chris Parmelee+ 3 11
2B 27 Alexi Casilla 6 7
SS 37 Jamey Carroll 13 8
3B 27 Danny Valencia 9 11
RF 24 Ben Revere* 5 12
CF 28 Denard Span 13 13
LF 33 Josh Willingham 16 13
DH 31 Justin Morneau 11 9
C2 31 Ryan Doumit 8 7
INF 26 Trevor Plouffe* 3 7
OF 27 Luke Hughes* 3 6
13 31 Sean Burroughs 1 0
SP1 36 Carl Pavano 11 10
SP2 30 Scott Baker 10 9
SP3 28 Francisco Liriano 7 7
SP4 30 Nick Blackburn 6 5
SP5 33 Jason Marquis 6 4
RP1 28 Matt Capps 8 8
RP2 29 Glen Perkins 4 4
RP3 29 Brian Duensing 7 6
RP4 24 Alex Burnett# 1 1
RP5 31 Jared Burton 1 1

Subjective Adjustments: None.
Also on Hand: Position Players – Tsuyoshi Nishioka. Pitchers – Jeff Gray.
Analysis: Few teams have fallen as far as fast as these Twins, with the unraveling of Mauer, Morneau and Liriano dashing any hopes the team could have had of fixing the problems further down the roster (a lesser storyline being the disappointment of Scott Baker and the now-departed Kevin Slowey). 72-90, reflecting some of the residual strength of the fallen stars, may actually be optimistic.
Chicago White Sox
Raw EWSL: 178.50
Adjusted: 195.73
Age-Adj.: 174.21
WS Age: 30.2
2012 W-L: 71-91

POS Age PLAYER Raw EWSL Age Adj
C 35 AJ Pierzynski 11 8
1B 36 Paul Konerko 25 18
2B 25 Gordon Beckham 13 15
SS 30 Alexi Ramirez 19 17
3B 25 Brent Morel# 2 3
RF 31 Alex Rios 10 8
CF 28 Alejandro de Aza 5 5
LF 23 Dayan Viciedo# 2 3
DH 32 Adam Dunn 11 8
C2 26 Tyler Flowers* 2 3
INF 28 Brent Lillibridge 4 4
OF 35 Kosuke Fukudome 14 10
13 23 Eduardo Escobar+ 0 4
SP1 27 John Danks 12 11
SP2 29 Gavin Floyd 12 10
SP3 31 Jake Peavy 6 4
SP4 29 Phil Humber# 6 6
SP5 23 Chris Sale# 7 10
RP1 24 Hector Santiago+ 1 4
RP2 35 Matt Thornton 9 7
RP3 23 Addison Reed+ 0 4
RP4 30 Jesse Crain 8 6
RP5 34 Will Ohman 3 2

Subjective Adjustments: None. Santiago has been announced as the closer, but I still expect Reed to take the job by season’s end.
Also on Hand: Position players – Conor Jackson, Osvaldo Martinez.
Pitchers – Zack Stewart.
Analysis: Can these guys really be worse than the hapless Twins? I admit some skepticism, but despite a lot of good arms, this team’s best everyday players have a lot of years on them. It’s more likely that the Twins underperform their EWSL than the White Sox significantly overperform, although of course another about-face by Dunn and Rios would help.

Continue reading 2012 AL Central EWSL Report

2011 EWSL Wrapup By Team

The second piece of the puzzle (after the below) in preparing my annual Established Win Shares Levels previews is to review the prior year’s team results. I’ll present these without much comment for now; the teams are sorted by how their 2011 pre-season rosters stacked up against their EWSL, with the later columns showing how they plugged the gaps with guys not listed before the season. I’ll go back and update this later with how this affects the cumulative team adjustments.

Team EWSL 2011 WS Plus/Minus Wins WS Rest of Team Rest-W
WAS 154.41 211 56.59 80 240 29 9.67
AZ 181.35 234 52.65 94 282 48 16.00
CLE 152.39 196 43.61 80 240 44 14.67
PHI 215.86 257 41.14 102 306 49 16.33
TB 202.95 240 37.05 91 273 33 11.00
MIL 223.33 259 35.67 96 288 29 9.67
NYY 233.73 264 30.27 97 291 27 9.00
DET 213.96 243 29.04 95 285 42 14.00
STL 217.52 241 23.48 90 270 29 9.67
KC 139.02 159 19.98 71 213 54 18.00
ANA 211.48 231 19.52 86 258 27 9.00
ATL 224.45 237 12.55 89 267 30 10.00
TOR 191.82 199 7.18 81 243 44 14.67
TEX 248.05 247 -1.05 96 288 41 13.67
BOS 246.27 245 -1.27 90 270 25 8.33
NYM 192.38 191 -1.38 77 231 40 13.33
SD 181.00 178 -3.00 71 213 35 11.67
FLA 195.68 182 -13.68 72 216 34 11.33
PIT 181.48 166 -15.48 72 216 50 16.67
CIN 219.32 202 -17.32 79 237 35 11.67
CHC 213.68 192 -21.68 71 213 21 7.00
BAL 195.24 172 -23.24 69 207 35 11.67
SEA 178.64 150 -28.64 67 201 51 17.00
LA 221.49 192 -29.49 82 246 54 18.00
COL 207.14 175 -32.14 73 219 44 14.67
HOU 172.28 138 -34.28 56 168 30 10.00
OAK 211.31 176 -35.31 74 222 46 15.33
CHW 230.98 192 -38.98 79 237 45 15.00
SF 248.71 198 -50.71 86 258 60 20.00
MIN 222.85 146 -76.85 63 189 43 14.33
TOTAL 6128.76 6113 -15.76 2429 7287.00 1174.00 391.33
Average 204.29 203.77 -0.53 80.97 242.90 39.13 13.04

UPDATE: As you can see from the above, MLB-wide, teams earned 1174 Win Shares, or 39.13 per team, from the rest of their rosters, the least since 2006. Results year-by-year since I started tracking results at a team level:
2005: 1067 (35.57)
2006: 1143 (38.10)
2007: 1260 (42.00)
2008: 1226 (40.87)
2009: 1221 (40.70)
2010: 1247 (41.57)
2011: 1174 (39.13)
Total: 8338 (39.70)

EWSL 2012 Age and Rookie Baselines

It’s that time of year again – it gets later every year – for my division previews powered by Established Win Shares Levels (originally explained here): before we get to rolling out the 2012 EWSLs, I have to update the age adjustments and rookie values I use each year. These are based on the data I have gathered over the past eight seasons, and so with each passing year, one would hope they become progressively more stable and useful in evaluating the established talent base on hand for each team entering each season. As a reminder: EWSL is not a prediction system. It’s a way of assessing the resources on hand.
To my mind, the age data is actually some of the most interesting stuff from this whole project, arguably more useful than the annual team previews, because it’s a mostly objective (albeit unscientific) dataset that gives us a different look at the aging curve from the perspective of the guys who look like they have roster spots in March and April of each year.
I’ll skip some more of the usual preliminaries (see this post from 2010 explaining more) and get right to the charts:
Non-Pitchers 2011 and 2004-2011:

2011 NP 04-11
Age # WS EWSL % # WS EWSL %
21- 3 55 48 1.146 9 127 107 1.187
22 2 26 33 0.793 30 462 260 1.779
23 4 53 33 1.603 71 865 704 1.229
24 22 286 205 1.393 137 1788 1368 1.307
25 22 270 238 1.137 195 2292 1906 1.203
26 28 304 246 1.235 241 2718 2491 1.091
27 43 569 495 1.149 277 3174 2997 1.059
28 41 457 481 0.950 280 3255 3227 1.009
29 29 350 350 1.000 253 3010 3103 0.970
30 31 358 361 0.992 261 2939 3239 0.907
31 32 240 378 0.636 241 2436 2969 0.821
32 23 264 308 0.857 219 2167 2695 0.804
33 24 173 247 0.701 189 1901 2230 0.853
34 17 174 183 0.953 163 1672 1923 0.869
35 26 231 314 0.735 148 1256 1702 0.738
36 6 42 63 0.665 96 904 1217 0.743
37 11 102 175 0.583 75 622 989 0.629
38 1 5 11 0.476 50 399 587 0.680
39 7 49 74 0.661 39 358 481 0.744
40+ 5 21 40 0.525 43 282 523 0.540
377 4029 4282 0.941 3017 32627 34716 0.940

The younger age cohorts, as usual, were volatile due to their small sample size. Among the 20somethings, the 28 year olds got hit the hardest (led by Joe Mauer, David Wright, Shin-Soo Choo, Kendry Morales, Casey McGeehee, Stephen Drew and Franklin Gutierrez), while the 26 year olds did the best (led by Matt Kemp, Matt Joyce, Emilio Bonifacio, and Melky Cabrera); the 31 year olds (led by Adam Dunn, Adam LaRoche, Felipe Lopez, Juan Uribe and Ryan Spilborghs) and 33 year olds (led by Chone Figgins, Marlon Byrd, Rafael Furcal, and Luke Scott) also took it on the chin, and as has been the pattern since the end of the steroid/Barry Bonds age, the over-35 crowd did more poorly than the overall results since 2004.
Pitchers 2011 and 2004-2011:

2011 P 2011 Total
Age # WS EWSL % # WS EWSL %
21- 1 12 8 1.500 11 85 64 1.328
22 3 29 18 1.656 36 294 224 1.312
23 14 121 90 1.339 76 583 496 1.175
24 16 94 93 1.016 120 850 754 1.127
25 21 144 136 1.062 184 1306 1172 1.114
26 27 238 169 1.408 231 1624 1459 1.113
27 39 244 319 0.765 231 1492 1692 0.882
28 30 218 232 0.938 219 1497 1595 0.939
29 25 152 157 0.967 202 1299 1498 0.867
30 18 137 153 0.897 188 1158 1373 0.843
31 13 74 99 0.744 173 1037 1326 0.782
32 21 123 154 0.801 141 865 1099 0.787
33 17 69 106 0.654 116 628 892 0.704
34 16 100 137 0.730 99 562 708 0.794
35 9 80 70 1.137 70 387 477 0.812
36 10 86 85 1.016 61 363 400 0.908
37 4 11 19 0.595 46 274 344 0.797
38 2 2 22 0.093 44 284 361 0.788
39 1 2 6 0.364 30 210 247 0.851
40+ 5 31 40 0.769 73 494 693 0.713
284 1917 2058 0.931 2343 15242 16821 0.906

Besides the youngest arms, the 26 year olds (led by Ian Kennedy, Justin Masterson, Eric O’Flaherty, Fernando Salas and David Robertson) and 35 year olds (led by Kyle Farnsworth, Scott Downs, Freddy Garcia, and Joel Peralta) had the best 2011 showings; the 24 year olds (led by Tommy Hanson, Jaime Garcia, Tommy Hunter and Brian Matusz) and 27 year olds (led by Josh Johnson, Ubaldo Jimenez, Andrew Bailey, Joakim Soria, Jonathan Broxton, and Kevin Slowey) the worst aside from an overall decay above age 30.
We wrap up with the rookie adjustments:
Rookies

Type of Player # in 2011 WS in 2011 # 2004-11 WS 2004-11 Rate
Everyday Players 9 82 75 793 10.57
Bench Players (Under 30) 4 16 70 269 3.84
Bench Players (Age 30+) 0 0 4 3 0.75
Rotation Starters 2 8 34 146 4.29
Relief Pitchers 6 11 24 107 4.46
TOTAL 207 1318 6.37

Negro League Stats Are Here!

Baseball-Reference.com has at long last started publishing Negro League stats. It’s a glorious day. They’re a work in progress, a lot less complete than those at other sites, but I assume that’s due to a superior commitment to accuracy.
Take a look at Satchel Paige’s stats. There are more detailed numbers for Paige in Larry Tye’s biography, which I highly recommend both for that reason and because Paige is a helluva story and a compelling character who both symbolizes and transcends his era. Anyway, look at Paige’s strikeout rates, from 11.5 K/9 in 1927 to 10.2 K/9 in 1945. Even given the sometimes uneven levels of competition and the fact that some of these are small samples of his innings, it’s just extraordinary to have those strikeout rates under the playing conditions of that era, with little or no night baseball and players still – just as in the white Major Leagues – taking a more contact-based approach than they would from the mid-1950s on. Indeed, even into his mid-40s, Paige would have some of the highest strikeout rates in the American League of his time. I mean some time to do a longer look at Paige’s career through the lens of the various numbers; there’s so much to work with even given the difficulty of putting it all quite into context. Paige was a rotation starter from age 20 in 1927 in Birmingham, yet by 1956-58, at age 49-51, he was still a swing man for the AAA Miami Marlins. Paige was 11-4 with a 1.86 ERA in 1956, posted a 2.42 ERA and a 6.91 K/BB ratio in 1957; over the three seasons in Miami, in 33 starts and 72 relief appearances, Paige threw 340 innings, went 31-22 with a 2.41 ERA and averaged 0.71 HR, 1.43 BB and 5.16 K/9. Paige made his last professional appearance in A ball in 1966 as a teammate of Johnny Bench.
Anyway, I’ll be excited to see the site build out more stats – most of us have a pretty good idea of what Paige’s and Josh Gibson’s talents look like when translated into something like a real stat line, but many other Negro League stars are fuzzier in popular memory (Oscar Charleston and John Henry Lloyd in particular are guys who deserve to be more vividly remembered – there’s every reason to think that Charleston was on the same level with the other all time great CF talents like Mays, Mantle, Cobb, Speaker, and DiMaggio).

A’s Losing The Real Moneyball

I generally avoid business of baseball stories, but I’ve covered this one for years and it remains extremely frustrating. Bill Madden and Maury Brown look at how the San Francisco Giants are using their ‘territorial’ rights to keep the Oakland A’s stuck in the dilapidated Coliseum by refusing to let them move to the less economically depressed San Jose following the collapse of their plan (hatched in 2006, seemingly endorsed at the polls in 2008, but abandoned in early 2009) to move to Fremont.
Brown speculates that Bud Selig favors the San Jose move as a way to increase revenues around the league, but lacks the votes among the owners to strip the Giants of their veto power. Madden:

To strip the Giants of their territorial rights to San Jose would require a three-quarters vote of the clubs, and as one baseball lawyer observed: “Clubs would realize what a terrible ‘there but for the grace of God go us’ precedent that would create in which all of their territorial rights would then be in jeopardy.” As an example of that, one can’t imagine the Yankees, Mets or Phillies voting to take the Giants’ territorial rights to San Jose away when it could conceivably open the doors for a team seeking to re-locate to New Jersey.

Brown echoes this: “If the A’s get to relo to San Jose, what’s to say that the Rays don’t wind up in Northern New Jersey, next?”
This is always a concern about precedent-setting by majority vote, but the situations are not at all comparable, because the A’s are already in the Giants’ market and are trying to move 35 miles further away. There is simply no fairness or equity argument you can make, in that sense, for the Giants’ position. The more sinister implication here is that the Giants are playing a game of brinksmanship in hopes of capturing the ultimate prize: kicking the already-twice-moved A’s out of Northern California entirely (and maybe even out of MLB), so the Giants can scoop up their fans. It would be hard to come up with a scenario that makes the territorial-rights concept less sympathetic than that.
On the other hand, the Giants’ owners have an entirely reasonable point that they paid for those territorial rights when they bought the team:

The Giants’ territorial rights to San Jose are part of the MLB constitution as a result of former A’s owner, Levi-Strauss heir Wally Haas agreeing to cede them in 1989 to Giants owner Bob Lurie, who, frustrated in his efforts to get a new stadium in San Francisco, was looking to relocate the team….
Lurie never did try to move the Giants to San Jose, but the fact that he now held those territorial rights to the rich high-tech Silicon Valley enhanced the Giants’ value, and was a prime reason why Lurie, who bought the Giants in 1976 for $8 million, was able to sell them for $100 million in 1993 to a group headed by former Safeway magnate Peter Magowan. The San Jose rights were also the reason why Magowan was able to secure financing for the new ballpark in San Francisco, as the Giants now maintain the crux of their constituency – season box and suite holders – is from the Silicon Valley.

The A’s note, in a press release quoted by Brown, that this is a case of no good deed going unpunished, and imply that they have some legal basis for challenging the continuance of the Giants’ rights after they failed to relocate the team:

Of the four two-team markets in MLB, only the Giants and A’s do not share the exact same geographic boundaries. MLB-recorded minutes clearly indicate that the Giants were granted Santa Clara, subject to relocating to the city of Santa Clara. The granting of Santa Clara to the Giants was by agreement with the A’s late owner Walter Haas, who approved the request without compensation. The Giants were unable to obtain a vote to move and the return of Santa Clara to its original status was not formally accomplished.

Only baseball’s longstanding antitrust exemption permits the existence of territorial rights in the first place; if the A’s were mounting some sort of challenge, I assume they’d have to show that the extension of the rights were conditioned on moving the Giants, and given how much Magowan paid for the Giants and the argument that the team’s value was significantly enhanced by its territorial rights, I’d be surprised if he didn’t do extremely careful due diligence to determine that they were bulletproof.
In a logical universe, Selig would be able to organize a vote to strip the Giants of their veto power over the San Jose move in exchange for arranging financial compensation to the Giants ownership, perhaps to be paid in part by the A’s and in part out of the revenue-sharing fund; the league could conceivably even assign a neutral arbitrator to assign a value to the compensation. This doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game of chicken between the two Bay Area rivals.

The Really Wild Card

It’s been rumored for a while, but Bud Selig makes it official:

Major League Baseball will officially expand the playoffs to 10 teams starting this season…The new format will add another wild card team, with the two wild cards to play each other in one game with the winner moving on to face a division winner.

I strongly approve of this; it’s how the wild card should have been all along, if we must have it (which I still dislike). Forcing the wild card teams into a one-game, high-stakes playoff gives a definite advantage to being a division winner over a wild card. That is likely to have the largest impact in the American League East, where the Yankees and Red Sox have often seemed to treat the regular season as a formality; now, especially if they’re facing another wild card team with one really good starting pitcher, they are going to want to fight like mad to get the division flag and not have to run the gauntlet of a one-game playoff. Yet, expanding to two wild cards also accomplishes what the owners wanted, which is to have more teams at least theoretically alive in September.
Yes, a part of me shares David Wright’s reaction (“That would have been nice five years ago“). Of course, that’s de facto what we have had a few times already when teams tied for the Wild Card, and it will get wilder still if we have those ties now, putting teams in the position of playing consecutive single-elimination games.
Bottom line: more thrilling September and October baseball, but in a way that makes early-season baseball more rather than less significant. For once, win-win all around.