The Largest One Year Increases and Decreases in wRC+ For Seasons With 400+ PAs

From FanGraphs.

"Similar to OPS+, Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+) measures how a player’s wRC compares with league average after controlling for park effects.  League average for position players is 100, and every point above 100 is a percentage point above league average. For example, a 125 wRC+ means a player created 25% more runs than a league average hitter would have in the same number of plate appearances. Similarly, every point below 100 is a percentage point below league average, so a 80 wRC+ means a player created 20% fewer runs than league average.

wRC+ is park and league-adjusted, allowing one to to compare players who played in different years, parks, and leagues." 

I called up all seasons with 400+ PAs since 1871

Rank	Name	Season	wRC+	Change
1	Babe Ruth	1926	216	83
2	Terry Pendleton	1991	141	81
3	Al Kaline	1955	156	80
4	George Burns	1918	153	79
5	Fred Dunlap	1884	214	78
6	Mookie Betts	2018	185	78
7	Cito Gaston	1970	144	76
8	Adrian Beltre	2004	161	75
9	Roy Campanella	1955	150	75
10	Jimmy Wynn	1972	148	74
11	Scott Brosius	1998	123	73
12	Carl Yastrzemski	1967	194	72
13	Orator Shaffer	1884	176	71
14	Ryan Zimmerman	2017	137	71
15	Clay Dalrymple	1962	120	70
16	Darin Erstad	2000	140	70
17	Cesar Cedeno	1972	163	69
18	Carl Furillo	1953	147	68
19	Pete Runnels	1958	136	68
20	Rico Petrocelli	1969	163	68
21	Aubrey Huff	2010	144	67
22	Willie Stargell	1971	186	67
23	Alex Rios	2012	126	66
24	Cleon Jones	1968	140	66
25	Don Hoak	1957	127	66
26	Kevin Mitchell	1989	185	66
27	Mark McGwire	1992	171	66
28	Sammy Sosa	1998	159	66
29	Stan Musial	1948	201	66

Ruth had his famous stomach ache in 1925, so he performed poorly (by his standards) that year. He returned to form in 1926 (his decline in 1925 from 1924 will be in the next table).

Pendleton in 1991 and Yaz in 1967 are from teams that surprised most people to come in first place. 

The Red Sox went from 72-90 (9th place) in 1966 to 92-70 and 1st place in 1967.

The Braves went from 65-97 (6th or last in the NL West) in 1990 to 94-68 and 1st place in 1991.

I did this analysis initially because I wondered where Lou Gehrig 1927 ranked. He jumped 58 in 1927 to 209. That is tied for the 61st biggest gain along with several other players. That still puts him in the top half of a percent.

Now the largest decreases.

Rank	Name	Season	wRC+	Change
13210	Fred Dunlap	1885	118	-96
13209	Victor Martinez	2015	77	-91
13208	Bryce Harper	2016	111	-86
13207	Mike Epstein	1973	82	-82
13206	Scott Brosius	1997	50	-81
13205	Rogers Hornsby	1926	128	-80
13204	Roy Campanella	1954	75	-79
13203	Babe Ruth	1925	133	-77
13201	Adam Dunn	2011	60	-76
13202	Dick Green	1970	45	-76
13199	Max Carey	1926	57	-75
13200	Sandy Alomar Jr.	1998	56	-75
13198	Chris Davis	2014	94	-74
13197	Jeff Burroughs	1979	87	-73
13195	John Mayberry	1976	94	-72
13196	Ross Youngs	1925	91	-72
13193	Adrian Beltre	2005	90	-71
13194	Reggie Jackson	1983	74	-71
13192	Don Buford	1972	82	-69
13188	Jimmy Wolf	1891	88	-68
13189	Juan Gonzalez	1994	96	-68
13190	Ken Singleton	1984	61	-68
13191	Sixto Lezcano	1980	97	-68
13186	Dick Allen	1975	96	-67
13187	Mark Teixeira	2016	76	-67
13181	Allen Craig	2014	68	-66
13182	Brook Jacoby	1988	78	-66
13183	Hoot Evers	1951	73	-66
13184	Jeff Keppinger	2013	62	-66
13185	Willie McGee	1986	85	-66

Ruth had the 8th largest decrease in 1925. Others who are in both tables in consecutive years are Beltre, Brosius, Campanella and Dunlap.

How Might Bonds and Clemens Have Done Without PEDs?

See Not as great: Assessing Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens without the PED factor by Mark Fainaru-Wada & T.J. Quinn of ESPN.

 

Excerpt:

 

"Meet baseball stats guru Dan Szymborski, the creator of the ZiPS projection system. In the simplest terms, the system (endorsed by MLB.com and explained here) uses past performance and trends on how performance degrades with age to predict a player's future performance. ESPN asked him to project Bonds' and Clemens' career stats from the season each is believed to have started using PEDs -- 1999 for Bonds and 1998 for Clemens."

 

Bonds' trajectory had him with a career WAR of 128.7 (instead of his actual WAR of 164.4). He would drop from 2nd highest career WAR for position players at FanGraphs to 9th. That still sounds like a first ballot Hall of Famer.

 

Clemens' trajectory had him with a career WAR of 111.3 (instead of his actual WAR of 133.7). He would drop from first in career WAR for pitchers at FanGraphs to 4th. That still sounds like a first ballot Hall of Famer, too.

 

Here is another excerpt:

 

"Szymborski is the first to admit that his projection system is not an exact science -- maybe something akin to predicting the weather -- and that the drugs can't account entirely for the sizable differences between the projections and the players' real, larger-than-life numbers. Yes, modern-day players are in far better shape than their predecessors, working out harder and more consistently (though PEDs actually are part of that equation in some cases). Players' careers are lasting longer, as they recover faster from injuries and benefit from a more scientific approach to the game. And, of course, Bonds and Clemens faced an untold number of opponents who used PEDs, too.

With those caveats, however, the ZiPS system has proved startlingly accurate. To demonstrate, Szymborski took 139 players who had at least 502 plate appearances in 2015, then compared their real numbers in five categories over the next six seasons to what the projection model spit out. The accuracy of the results surprised even Szymborski. For example, when comparing their real-life home run totals with projected homers (he normalized by using actual plate appearances, thus accounting for injuries, anomalies, etc.), the "average" miss was about two per season. The average miss on batting average was 13 points, and on OPS it was 36 points."

Hodges, Kaat, Minoso, Oliva and The Hall of Fame

They all just got voted in to The Hall of Fame. The table below shows their numbers and ranks in various career measures. They generally do not rank very high. Maybe peak value can justify their induction. I will discuss that for each player separately below.

 

 

	BB Ref WAR & Rank	Fangraphs WAR & Rank	Win Shares & Rank Thru 2000	MVP/Cy Young Shares & Rank
Hodges	43.9 (287th)	42.1 (292nd)	263 (266th)	0.65 (402nd)
Kaat	45.2 (133rd)	70.9  (28th)	268 (248th)	0.06 (260th)
Minoso	53.8 (166th)	50.8 (186th)	283 (210th)	1.90 (116th)
Oliva	43.0 (297th)	40.7 (322nd)	245 (318th)	1.90 (116th)

 

 

There are 269 players & pitchers in The Hall (including these four) by my count (I used the Hall page from Baseball Reference). It looks like 188 position players, 79 pitchers and 2 what appear to me to be both or player/pitchers (Bullet Rogan & Leon Day).

 

A couple of things to keep in mind for all four: Their Win Share ranks (which I got from the original Bill James book) will be much lower now as recent players pass them. Also, it looks like 25-30 Negro League players are in The Hall. If we take them out, the we are down to 240-250 Hall of Famers and that makes the ranks for these 4 look even weaker as Hall of Fame credentials. 

The Win Shares ranks includes both pitchers and position players in one group. The others are either just position player or just pitchers, depending on the case.

 

Hodges: None of his ranks are even close to the top 188 players (or even top 200 to leave a little elbow room). When he was playing, the writers gave him very little MVP support. 400 players are ahead of him and before 1931 there were just occasional MVP awards given out. He has only 3 top 10s in WAR for position players at Baseball Reference (7th, 7th, 9th). It looks like very little peak value. In OPS+ he two 6ths and two 8ths. Maybe his value as a manager helps but he really only had one good team, the 1969 Mets.

Kaat: His one high rank is 28th in WAR from Fangraphs (quite a bit lower than at BB Ref-see links at the end on how they each do WAR for pitchers-I don't see anything that jumps out at me to explain the difference easily). His Cy Young rank is low. But there was only one award for both leagues before 1967. This, however, probably does not help. If we gave him one full share (which is probably too much since his best WAR ranks before 1967 were a 3rd and 7th) it would bring him up to 1.06 and that would just be 60th and you have to remember that there was no award at all  before 1956. He does have 3 top 5 finishes in WAR for pitchers at BB Ref (3rd, 4th, 5th) and 3 other top 10s. But those are all spread out over a 14 year period. It is not like he was the dominant pitcher in the AL for a 3-4 year period.

Minoso: Now his ranks are all generally good and he had some good years in the Negro Leagues before coming to the AL. From 1951-1959, he was in the top 10 in WAR for position players from BB Ref 7 times including a 1st, 4th, 4th and 5th.

Oliva: Only his MVP shares rank is high (he came in 2nd twice). In his first 8 seasons he led the AL in hits 5 times and average 3 times. In his first 7 years he had 4 top five finishes in WAR for position players from BB Ref (2 4ths and 2 5ths). But given his low career ranks, I think he would need to have been the dominant player for a 3-4 year period to make it. Unfortunately for him, injuries slowed him down his last five seasons and he was done at age 37.

BB Ref pitching WAR

 

FG pitching WAR