WAR shows Donaldson was late bloomer

Josh Donaldson is one of 50 players to have 25+ WAR from ages 27-30. But prior to that he had only 1.2 career WAR. The only guy among the 50 to have less is Ichiro Suzuki, who had 0 (because he played in Japan before joining the Mariners).

Of the 50, only 3 other guys had less than 10 WAR before age 27: Jason Giambi, Hack Wilson and Chase Utley. Giambi and Utley (like Donaldson) went to college and did not get any professional experience until age 21. So that will tend to limit pre-27 WAR.

Donaldson has the greatest differential of age 27-30 WAR vs. previous WAR. Here are the top five:

Josh Donaldson	27.3
Ichiro Suzuki	26
Chase Utley	22.6
Jason Giambi	21.8
Hack Wilson	17.9

There are certainly other late bloomers and it would be worthwhile to check other age brackets. Carl Yastrzemski is the leader in this one with 38 in 2,749 PAs (Ruth is 5th in 2,302 PAs and it includes both 1922, the year he was suspended, and 1925, the year of the stomach ache).

Here is the entire group:

Player	WAR 27-30	Prev WAR
Ichiro Suzuki	26.0	0.0
Josh Donaldson	28.5	1.2
Jason Giambi	25.5	3.7
Hack Wilson	25.3	7.4
Chase Utley	32.4	9.8
Ken Boyer	28.2	11.2
Todd Helton	28.6	14.7
Paul Goldschmidt	25.1	14.9
Robinson Cano	29.0	15.4
Honus Wagner	30.2	17.2
Roger Connor	29.0	17.3
Wade Boggs	33.7	18.0
Ed Delahanty	26.0	18.1
Harry Heilmann	28.2	19.8
Dan Brouthers	25.3	19.8
Rod Carew	29.1	20.0
Billy Hamilton	25.0	20.2
Joe Morgan	32.8	21.3
Ernie Banks	32.0	23.1
Jeff Bagwell	26.3	23.1
Al Simmons	27.3	23.9
Buddy Bell	25.3	24.4
Carl Yastrzemski	38.0	24.9
Miguel Cabrera	28.7	26.1
Mike Schmidt	31.9	27.3
Reggie Jackson	25.5	28.2
Duke Snider	29.3	28.3
Gary Carter	27.0	28.7
Lou Boudreau	25.5	32.7
Ted Williams	37.6	34.1
Ron Santo	25.9	35.9
Cal Ripken Jr.	31.4	37.8
Stan Musial	36.5	38.9
Lou Gehrig	33.5	39.5
Willie Mays	36.2	40.6
Barry Bonds	32.7	41.2
Babe Ruth	35.8	44.0
Rickey Henderson	26.1	44.1
Eddie Mathews	28.4	45.0
Eddie Collins	30.5	45.9
Frank Robinson	25.4	46.0
Albert Pujols	35.2	46.1
Henry Aaron	33.9	46.7
Tris Speaker	28.9	48.7
Ken Griffey Jr.	26.2	50.0
Mel Ott	29.2	52.4
Alex Rodriguez	29.8	55.2
Rogers Hornsby	33.8	57.1
Mickey Mantle	29.3	61.3
Ty Cobb	34.3	63.3

Who are the top switch hitters in the GDP-K#?

I created the GDP-K#. It is like the Bill James PowerSpeed#. It is the harmonic mean of a player's relative strikeouts (his Ks divided by league average) and relative GDP rate (his GDP rate divided by the ML average). 

2*(K*GDP)/(K + GDP) 

Bot K and GDP are rates in the above formula. The idea is to have balance and not be extreme in any one number.

So far I have looked at switch hitters with 5000+ PAs since 1939 (100 guys). Lower is better and Jim Gilliam is lowest at 51.9 (his relative K rate was 42 and his relative GDP rate was 67.6). So he struck out only 42% as often as the average NL hitter and grounded into DPs only 67.6% as often as the average MLB hitter. My data sources are the Lee Sinins Complete Baseball Encyclopedia and Baseball Reference.

2nd lowest was 56.1 and then it only rises slowly. Gilliam is way ahead of the pack. An outlier in terms of being able to avoid both Ks and GDPs. Of the 100 batters here, Gilliam had the 4th lowest relative strikeout rate and the 11th lowest relative GDP rate. A batter might have a low GDP rate if he strikes out alot. But it seems like Gilliam was not one of those players. Either his speed or not hitting grounders in DP situations (or a little of both) account for his low GDP rate.

 

Player	K RATE	GDP Rate	GDP-K#
Jim Gilliam	42	67.6	51.8
Red Schoendienst	38	107.4	56.1
Ozzie Smith	41	90.7	56.5
Gregg Jefferies	38	123.8	58.2
Don Buford	85	44.8	58.6
Harold Reynolds	52	68.9	59.3
Larry Bowa	46	90.7	61.1
Johnny Ray	42	113.0	61.2
Jose Reyes	60	67.6	63.6
Alfredo Griffin	63	66.7	64.8

 

Update Dec. 27: Only 19.5% of Gilliam's career PAs were vs. LHP. So he did not bat right-handed that much, which helps him. During his career, I found that 27.6% of all MLB PAs were against LHP (I used the Stathead split finder for that).

I also found his GDP rate vs. both RHP and LHP. Then I used the MLB percentages for facing RHP and LHP to get a weighted average of what his overall GDP rate would be. That was 8.03%, a little higher than his actual 7.3% (I used Event Finder to get his GDP rates against RHP and LHP). When I recalculated his GDP-K# it was 53.68.

Red Schoendienst had 31.6% of his PAs vs. LHP while from 1945-58 all of MLB had 25.57% (I did not use his last 6 years since he only had 541 PAs out of his career total of 9,224). His weighted average turned out to be 10.05%, less than his actual 11.6%). His recalculated GDP-K# was 53.97.

So Gilliam is still ahead of  Schoendienst, but not by a very large margin anymore. 

Ozzie Smith had 33.3% of his PAs vs. LHP  while it was 30.57% for all of MLB during his career. I don't think his GDP-K# would change much if we used the MLB percentages for facing RHP and LHP.