Sad Story: Ricky Vaughn Admits He Used Steroids In 1989 To Help Indians Win Division Title

I guess there is nothing left to believe in. It was a great Cinderella story that year and now it is ruined.

Click here to read the story,

Rich Gossage vs. Mariano Rivera

...“I wasn’t a closer, I was a relief pitcher,” Gossage said. He made a great point that he was not just the closer, but the seventh and eighth inning man. He pointed out that he came on with inherited runners in the seventh or eighth inning many times. Some of those situations required that he keep the ball out of play.

Gossage went on to say that “Mariano doesn’t come in with inherited runners. He gets to start out the ninth with nobody on… Easy? It is a piece of cake compared to what we use to do.”

From Baseball Think Factory, quoting an article by Mike Silva.

Yes, relievers were used differently in Gossage's time. From 1977-1985, one of the time periods I will look at for Gossage, most of the top 50 seasons in both saves and games finished were by pitchers who pitched over 100 innings (with only a couple of cases of even 1 game started). From 1997-2005, the period I will look at for Rivera, there were no 100+ IP seasons and even 90+ IP was rare (less than 5 for both stats).

So I want to compare both Gossage and Rivera to the average relievers of their times. I picked Gossage's 1977-1985 years since that seems to be his prime years and he was very good throughout the period. It does leave out his great 1975 season as a reliever (he was a starter in 1976). So for Rivera, I look at his first 9 years as a closer, 1997-2005 (which leaves out a very good 1996 seaon). The fact that Rivera has continued to pitch great since then is a plus in his favor. Gossage supporters might say that Rivera's relatively low IP totals have helped his longevity. Gossage was just average after 1985.

The average relief pitcher from 1977-1985 had an ERA of 3.68 while Gossage had 2.10. If we turn that into a winning pct. using the Pythagorean formula created by Bill James to estimate team winning pct. using runs and runs allowed, we get .754. From 1997-2005, Rivera's years, he had an ERA of 2.04 while the league average was 4.31. That gets us a pct of .817. So Rivera edges Gossage .817-.754. (I checked park factors for each pitcher and the simple average of their teams pitching park factors was the same, 97.56, meaning that they each got a little help from their parks, which were about 2.5% lower than average in scoring). All the data I use here is from Baseball Reference or The Lee Sinins Complete Baseball Encyclopedia.

I also found the top 10 pitchers in saves in each era and then calculated the combined ERA of the other 9 (taking out Gossage and Rivera). The best 9 in Gossage's years had 2.87. That gets a .651 pct. The best 9 in Rivera's years had 3.07, getting us a pct of .694. Again, edge to Rivera.

So far, when being compared to contemporaries with a similar role, Rivera is ahead. But ERA can be misleading, since the fielders play a role here (and ERA may not be the best way to judge relievers who are supposed to come in and put out fires).

To avoid this problem, I am going to look at how each guy comapared to his peers in the fielding independent stats (HRs, BBs, SOs). Then I will convert that into a run value using the values below

HR: 1.40
BB: .33
SO: -.22

Those are the values used in what is called "Fielding Independent ERA" formulas. The table below shows how each guy compared to the average reliever of his time in these stats per 9 IP. For example, Gossage allowed .508 HRs per 9 IP while the average reliever allowed .724. So he was .216 better. Multiplying that by 1.4 we get .3024 (it is negative in the table, meaning how much below average Gossage was). Then this is done for the other stats and for Rivera. The last line shows the combined run value each guy was below average using all three sats.



So Rivera is farther below average than Gossage. If I use the average reliever ERAs from each period, then Gossage gets 2.49 (3.68 - 1.19). Rivera gets 2.76 (4.31 - 1.55). The Pythagorean winning pct for Gossage is then .686 and for Rivera it is .709. The next table does the same thing but only for the other 9 pitchers in the top 10 in saves in each period.



Going right to the bottom line, we can see that they are almost even. Gossage would get a Pythagorean pct of .620 and Rivera would get .611. Very close. Now Gossage may have been better than Rivera, but I think the evidence shows that he should not belittle his greatness. Rivera seems to be at least close to Gossage as measured by how good they were relative to their peers.

One weakness of looking at the others in the top 9 is that park effects and fielders might play a big role since they don't represent the entire league. It is possible that the other 9 guys Rivera gets comapred to pitched in great hitters parks so they look weak in comparison to him. Or maybe Rivera had much better fielders behind him. I have not checked that. And when I did the top 10, it included both leagues whereas when I used the league average, it was just the league they pitched in (for Gossage it was the NL from 1977 and 1984-5 and the AL from 1978-83).

Who Did Yankee Opponents Have To Fear In The Late Innings During The Late 1970s?

A couple of weeks ago on a White Sox game, Ken Harrelson said something like "back in the late 70s, when you were facing the Yankees, Reggie Jackson wasn't the guy you had to worry about. Other teams worried about Munson and Piniella in the late innings."

So I looked at how each of them hit in innings 7-9 from 1977-79 using Baseball Reference. The table below summarizes the data.



If you were afraid someone would get a hit, Piniella was the problem. But if power was the concern, Jackson was still definitely the guy doing the damage. And his average was not much lower than Munson's.

Here is the AVG/SLG/ISO for each guy combined for the three years:

Jackson 0.275/0.543/0.268
Munson 0.280/0.361/0.081
Piniella 0.328/0.452/0.124

Notice that if you add up the isolated power of both Munson and Piniella it is still less than Jackson's, meaning that he had more extra bases per AB than those two combined.

June Hitting Up Slightly In The AL, Down Slightly In The NL

With hitting pretty low already this year, not much good news for fans who like offense. The AL OPS by month so far

April .713
May .720
June .723

But for isolated power (ISO) we have

April .145
May .141
June .140

Runs per game in June 4.4

The NL OPS by month so far

April .709
May .702
June .700

But for isolated power (ISO) we have

April .137
May .132
June .131

Runs per game in June 3.83

Seasons With 15 Or Fewer HRs And SLG > .600

The PA minimum was 400. This is inspired by “Roll Projector!” Jose Reyes *is* on an Historic Pace from the Baseball Reference blog. They mention that Jose Reyes has a chance to set the Mets record for total bases in a season without hitting many HRs.

The table below shows all of the players who fit my criteria.



Those all happened a long time ago. The table below shows all the players who did it since 1946 with less than 30 HRs.

June Hitting Off To A Slow Start

The NL is averaging 3.89 runs per game with a .689 OPS. Their ISO is just .125. The AL is scoring 4.16 runs per game with a .712 OPS and a .139 ISO. Data from Baseball Reference. These numbers are even lower than they were in April and May. See my earlier post May Hitting About As Bad As April.

Last night there were 7 games with a total runs scored of 5 or less. That is between both teams. In 98 games so far in June, the NL has hit just 73 HRs. That would be about 120 per team for a whole season. The AL was a little better with 82 HRs in 88 games.

The table below shows the hitting stats in each month for both leagues in each of the last two years. The June numbers for 2010 are for the entire month.



The next table shows how each of those stats has changed.


Not sure if there is any kind of pattern other than that everything is down. It looks like the NL's power decline is even bigger than the AL's when you look at ISO.

May Hitting About As Bad As April

The MLB OPS for each month was .711. The NL fell to .702 from .709 while the AL rose to .720 from .713. But each league saw runs per game drop off. The AL went 4.33-4.29 while the NL went 4.25-4.02. Isolated power fell just a bit in each league. The AL declined from .145 to .142 while the NL slid to .132 after .137 in April.

The run scoring was probably helped over the last two days of the month which had 5.28 per game for all of MLB. I looked at April vs. May hitting a few weeks ago with May Hitting So Far Has Been Even Worse Than April Hitting and May OPS: AL .705, NL .699.

I also noted, as so many others have, that Albert Pujols is off to a slow start. See Albert Pujols' Slow Start from May 23. His OPS+ in each of the first two months so far have been 112 & 113. It is the first time in his career that he has had two straight months under 120. He has only had under 150 in back-to-back months twice before this and never had back-to-back months below 140. In 48 of his first 60 months his OPS+ has been 150 or higher. His ISO in May was .099, well below the league average of .132.

Paul Konerko had the highest May OPS of his career, .902. The next highest is .846. So given that hitting is down in MLB this year compared the rest of his career, this is pretty interesting. In fact, Konerko's May OPS in every year of his career has been less than the full-season OPS. See May Day, May Day! Throw Konerko A Life Preserver. So it looks like he has overcome his May jinx.

The table below shows his OPS in every month starting in 1999. April actually includes March and Sept includes Oct.



In only 3 seasons has his May OPS been greater than his April OPS (1999, 2007 and 2001). In only 3 seasons has his May OPS been greater than his June OPS (1999, 2003, and 2009). In six seasons his May OPS fell by 100 or more points compared to April and then rose 100 or more points in June compared to May.

In six seasons his overall OPS was 100 or more points better than his May OPS. Three others were 50 or more points better. The closest his May OPS has gotten to his full season OPS is 22 points. He has had 8 months with an OPS under .600 and 4 of them have come in May. No other mont has more than one and the one from Sept was .599.

Going into this year his career May OPS was .713. So he beat that by nearly 200 points.

Parity Comes to MLB

This is a guest post by Tom Ruane of Retrosheet

In looking at the standings the other day, I noticed that there
didn't seem to be many great or terrible teams so far this year,
especially in the AL, where most of the teams are within a
couple of games of .500. This got me to wondering if this was
out of the ordinary or simply something I hadn't noticed before.
To investigate this, I determined the difference between each
team's wins and losses after their first fifty decisions and
calculated the average difference to determine league parity.

Here are the seasons with the smallest average difference
after fifty decisions:

Year Teams Diff
1959 16 4.50
1944 16 4.88
1968 20 4.90
1975 24 5.00
1947 16 5.12
2011 30 5.27
1974 24 5.33

Not all teams reach their 50th decision on the same day, but to
get some idea of the early-season parity in 1959, see:

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1959/06061959.htm

And here are the years with the least parity:

Year Teams Diff
1876 8 19.25
1884 28 15.86
1875 7 15.71
1879 8 14.50
1883 16 14.00
1872 2 14.00

And the same list since 1900:

Year Teams Diff
1907 16 13.00
1953 16 12.00
1911 16 11.62
1906 16 11.12
1955 16 11.12
1931 16 11.00

Here is a link to a 1907 standings page:

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1907/06171907.htm

I also decided to look at parity by league. Here are the leagues
with the greatest parity after 50 decisions:

Year LG Teams Diff
1944 AL 8 2.50
1959 AL 8 3.00
1974 AL 12 3.00
1947 AL 8 3.50
1915 NL 8 3.75
1932 NL 8 3.75
1968 NL 10 3.80
1926 NL 8 4.25
1943 AL 8 4.25
1983 AL 14 4.29
2011 AL 14 4.29

A link to a 1944 page:

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1944/06141944.htm

And the leagues since 1900 with the least parity:

Year LG Teams Diff
1907 NL 8 15.25
1903 NL 8 13.50
1906 NL 8 13.00
1946 AL 8 12.75
1913 AL 8 12.75
1955 AL 8 12.50
1909 NL 8 12.50

So the current year is nothing too earth-shaking, but I was
hoping some might find this interesting anyway.

Albert Pujols' Slow Start

So far he as an OPS of .750 while the league OPS is .702. So that is a good year but not the kind of great season he has always had. He has never finished out of the top 10 in OPS. This year he is only 45th among NL players with 120+ PAs. He generally is not a slow starter. Here are his OPS numbers for each month, April to September, for all of his career:

1.060
0.991
1.049
1.006
1.099
1.059

Maybe he slips just a bit in May, but it looks he usually starts well. If he had had alot of bad starts, these numbers would look different.

But OPS+ from Baseball Reference is even better since it is adjusted to the league average and for park effentcts. 100 is average. The table below shows his OPS+ in each month for every year of his career:



April includes March and Sept includes Oct. All the months he has had an OPS+ under 120 are in red. He only played 10 games in June 2006 and must have been hurt. He has never had two straight months under 120. It looks like he has only had under 150 in back-to-back months once. He finished pretty strong last year, so it is not like he was starting to tail off then.

He has only been intentionally walked once this season. Here are his IBB totals for each season through 2010:

6
13
12
12
27
28
22
34
44
38

Maybe pitchers are not as afraid of him as they used to be or maybe having Holliday and Berkman behind him having good years keeps Pujols from being intentionally walked. This should mean he is seeing good pitches so he should be performing well (of course, the research on protection shows it does not have much effect).

He has also grounded into 14 double plays already this year. His average is 20 or so per season. But we are not even at the one-third mark. His rate is 26%. That is, he grounds into DPs 26% of the time there is an opportunity. That is twice his career average and the next highest is 16%. Maybe he has just been a little unlucky so far and things will even out. The league average is 10% this year and since Pujols came into the league it has been 10-11%.

The numbers below show how much better Pujols was than the league average for his career from 2001-2010:

AVG: 27%
OBP: 30%
SLG: 50%
ISO: 89%
SO/AB: 44% (less)
BB/PA: 54%

But what about this year?

AVG: 8%
OBP: 6.9%
SLG: 6.8%
ISO: 4.5%
SO/AB: 53% (less)
BB/PA: 10%

No doubt his being only 10% better than the league average in walks is partly due to not being intentionally walked. If I account for IBBs, he falls from being 32% better to only 14% better. Notice that he has improved his relative strikeout rate. The big drop is isolated power. He has been 89% better but now is only 4.5% better.

Players Who Hit Game-Tying HRs In The Ninth Inning And Game Winning HRs In Extra Innings In The Same Game

Brian McCann just did it a couple of days ago (pinch hitting in the 9th). I asked HR expert David Vincent (of SABR and Retrosheet) "Do you know how many times a player has hit a game tying HR in the 9th inning and then won the game with a HR in extra innings?" Here is the list he sent me, used with his permission. The hot link will take you to the boxscore and/or play-by-play for the game, as it does for McCann.

08/27/1949 Jeff Heath
04/29/1985 Donnie Scott
04/08/1986 Jim Presley
05/08/1990 Andre Dawson
06/10/1998 Robin Ventura
04/05/1999 Raul Mondesi
04/11/2000 Ed Sprague
06/14/2002 Aaron Boone
08/27/2002 Joe Crede
08/20/2004 Adrian Beltre

Jeff Heath also pinched-hit in the 9th inning of his game. His winner was in the 10th inning and both were off of Ewell Blackwell, who was pitching in relief. It is interesting that this was only done once before 1985 and has been done 10 times since (including McCann). Why so many recently while there were so few before?

In the Ventura game, the Sox trailed the Cardinals at home by 4 runs in the bottom of the 9th with 2 outs and no one on base. After Albert Belle hit a 3-run HR, Ventura hit his tying HR. Then he hit a 2-run HR in the 11th.

Presley's was opening day and his game winner was a grand slam. Mondesi's was opening day as well. Beltre drove in all the Dodger runs in his game (they won 3-2). Crede's game winner was also a grand slam and it was on the anniversary of Jeff Heath's game. Crede drove in 7 of the 8 runs for the White Sox that day.

Update 5-20: At Baseball Musings, commentor npbcardguy mentions a game when Mike Young of the Orioles hit a game tying HR in the bottom of the 10th and a winner in the 12th. Click here to see the boxscore and play-by-play. Does anyone know of any other games like that?

David Vincent found these other occurrences:

05/17/1971 Ralph Garr

06/14/1963 Willie Kirkland

May OPS: AL .705, NL .699

For the first week of May (as I reported last week), the AL had an OPS of .681 and the NL had .674. So that means this past week was better. The AL would have been about .729 and the NL about .724. But neither one of those is a very torrid pace.

Here are the AVG-OBP-SLG for each league, so far, for the month of May:

AL: .251-.321-.384
NL: .248-.320-.379

Not exactly the kinds of numbers that conjure up images of slugfests. For the whole season, the AL has an OPS of .711 and the NL has .706. So far this month, both leagues have a lower isolated power than they did in April. The AL fell from .145 to .133 and the NL has fallen from .137 to .131.

Generally, the OPS for all of MLB in April and May combined are pretty good indicators of the OPS we will get for the whole season, as shown in the table below:



The AVG is just the simple average of each of the first two months. It looks like May usually has slightly more PAs, but this is probably a good approximation. The Total column is the MLB OPS for the entire season. In only two seasons was the overall OPS 10 or more points higher than for April/May. The average is for the whole season OPS to be 4-5 points higher. So it looks like we are in for a very low offensive year.

Right now the MLB OPS is .708. The last year it was lower was 1992 when it was .700. The lowest from 1993-2010 was .728 (last year). The next lowest was .736 in 1993. The simple average from 1994-2009 was .760 with no season being lower than .748. In 8 of the 13 seasons from 1979-1991, it was higher than .708. So, by recent historical standards, we are having a very low-offense year.

Since I mentioned Paul Konerko last week and his general patter of doing much worse in May than he does for the whole season, his OPS so far this month is 1.212 after .836 in April.

May Hitting So Far Has Been Even Worse Than April Hitting

Was it the weather? I sure don't know. Both leagues have an OPS 20 points lower in May than April. Here the stats for April and May so far in both leagues:


One guy going against the trend is Paul Konerko, who usually does terrible in May. See May Day, May Day! Throw Konerko A Life Preserver. But in April he had an .836 OPS while it was 1.123 in May through yesterday. And today he went 5-for-5! His career April OPS is .860 while in May it is .719 (the lowest of any month in his career not counting March when he has only 12 ABs). His overall career OPS is .855.

Happy 80th Birthday To The Greatest All-Around Player In Baseball History

Yes, hard to believe that Willie Mays is 80. But no one knew he was the "Greatest All-Around Player" until last December when I crunched the numbers. Okay, that's a stretch. But here is that post again. It was A Crude Measure Of The Most "All-Around" Players Since 1957.

I started thinking about this when Cooper Nielson in a Baseball Think Factory discussion said:

"I suppose the "best all-around player" argument could go like this (keep in mind this is not my argument and not one I even agree with, but one that could conceivably and logically put Walker #1 in his era): There are five traditional baseball tools: hitting (for average), hitting for power, running, playing defense, and throwing."

See Cooperstowners in Canada: Larry Walker should be the second Canadian player elected to Cooperstown.

So here is how the crude measure works:

Multiply Gold Glove awards times 30. The idea here was to scale a great player in this stat to a great player in HRs or SBs. Brooks Robinson had the most GGs among position players with 16 and 16*30 = 480, close to 500.

Divide non-HR hits by 5. If a player had 2500 non-HR hits, you get 500.

Multiply SB*HR*non-HR*GG (with the above mentioned adjustments being made for GG and non-HR). If player had no GGs, I stopped multiplying so they did not end up at zero.

For Willie Mays it was 42,129,996,480. That is way too high a number to work with. So I raised it to the .25 power. That gave him 453, a more familiar kind of number to baseball fans. But that was divided by PAs and then multiplied by 10 to get the final number. Mays then had .363 (a nice number, close to the highest all-time batting average of .366 belonging to Ty Cobb). Here is the top 25:

1 Willie Mays 0.363
2 Torii Hunter 0.362
3 Barry Bonds 0.357
4 Larry Walker 0.355
5 Ichiro Suzuki 0.352
6 Ryne Sandberg 0.349
7 Eric Davis 0.345
8 Cesar Cedeno 0.345
9 Roberto Alomar 0.337
10 Devon White 0.333
11 Andruw Jones 0.330
12 Andre Dawson 0.327
13 Garry Maddox 0.325
14 Bobby Bonds 0.316
15 Andy Van Slyke 0.313
16 Mike Schmidt 0.311
17 Ken Griffey Jr. 0.309
18 Carlos Beltran 0.302
19 Paul Blair 0.296
20 Joe Morgan 0.295
21 Marquis Grissom 0.293
22 Ivan Rodriguez 0.292
23 Dwayne Murphy 0.291
24 Bill White 0.285
25 Jimmy Rollins 0.284

If I started with his stats from 1957 on, when they started giving out Gold Gloves, Mays gets .378.

If I gave Ty Cobb 10 Gold Gloves, he would get .306. That is partly due to playing mostly in the deadball era, when HRs were hard to come by. Even if a player tried for HRs, he might not have gotten many. If Cobb had 10 GGs and 273 HRs, then he would have .378, what Mays had from 1957 on. Of course, Cobb is helped by the dead ball era because there was alot of stealing going on.

If DiMaggio had 10 GGs, he would get .363. He's hurt by the low SB total (30). It just was not an era when player tried to steal much. He was fast, reaching double figures in triples 8 times, even doing it at age 35. Yankee stadium helped him there with its big outfield. He had 73 triples at home and 58 on the road. But if you double that 58, it is still more than 100. He finished in the top 5 in triples 8 times.

But then playing at Yankees stadium hurts his HR totals since he was a righty. He had 213 on the road. If he had 426 career HRs, he would get .378. But if I give him more HRs, his non-HR hits might need to be reduced, which would lower his rating. Some of the long balls he hit in Yankee Stadium that were not HRs were outs and some were doubles and triples. I sure don't know what that break down would be.

Also, Willie Mays might have had the greatest season in history in 1962. See Indispensable Seasons Go To WAR! (Or Did Willie Mays Have The Greatest Season Since 1950 in 1962?)

Two .400 Hitters on a Team After 30+ Games

This was posted to the SABR list by Tom Ruane who does great work for Retrosheet.

After 29 games, both Matt Holliday and Lance Berkman of the Cardinals are batting over .400. This got me to wondering about the last time (or times) a team had two players hitting .400 or more at least thirty games into a season (only counting players with at least 3.1 plate appearances per game played).

Here's what I came up with since 1918:


You can click on the table to see a larger version. For Cochrane and Simmons, it is after the first game of a double-header.

The second number in parenthesis following each player's name is his final batting average that year.

Editor's note: I am not sure if I had heard of Austin McHenry before. Seamheads has a great article about him. See The Promising Life and Tragic Death of Austin McHenry by Mike Lynch.

April Hitting In The AL & NL, 1994-2011

It seems like alot of people have noticed the low offensive output this past month. So I am basically just posting some numbers without much analysis. It does seem like April hitting helps predict what the reast of the year might be like. See Does The "High" April Slugging Percentage Mean Anything?

The next two tables show the AL & NL hitting for March/April each year from 1994-2011. Data from Baseball Reference. The AL comes first.





Now the OPS in April, AL first.

Bobby Grich And His Case For The Hall Of Fame

This came up again recently with Ex-Angel Grich is a no-brainer Hall of Famer By SAM MILLER of THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER. Hat tip goes to Baseball Think Factory.

I have written about how good the case for Grich is before.

The best, eligible Non-Hall of Famers (from 2006)

Peak Value And Hall Of Fame Worthiness

Some Players With A Good Sabermetric Case For The Hall Of Fame

Here is some info I just compiled, using Baseball Reference.

The only AL player with more WAR from 1973-6 than Grich (26.2) was Reggie Jackson (26.3). In a 10 year period, Grich had 5 top 5 finishes in the AL in WAR (among position players). From 1972-76 he was 5-2-1-4-6.

He had 7 top 10 finishes from 1972-81. Grich actually beats Jackson 32.0-31.8 in WAR in the AL over the years 1972-76.

Looks like good peak value. My guess is that many Hall of Famers don't have even that much peak value but that would require looking at all of them.

Grich had 67.6 WAR for his career, good enough for 65th among position players.

Here are the top 15 among second basemen (playing at least half their games there). Grich is 8th, while Whitaker is 7th and may have a good case, too.

Rogers Hornsby 127.8
Eddie Collins 126.7
Nap Lajoie 104.2
Joe Morgan 103.5
Charlie Gehringer 80.9
Frankie Frisch 74.8
Lou Whitaker 69.7
Bobby Grich 67.6
Craig Biggio 66.2
Roberto Alomar 63.5
Jackie Robinson 63.2
Ryne Sandberg 62
Willie Randolph 60.5
Jeff Kent 59.4
Bid McPhee 57.9

Here is how Grich compares to six other second basemen who are in the Hall. He had more top 5 finishes in WAR than all of them and only one had as much WAR in his best consecutive 3 seasons.

Top 5 finishes in WAR
Grich-5 (best consecutive 3 seasons-20.7)
Alomar-3 (best consecutive 3 seasons-20.6)
Sandberg-4 (best consecutive 3 seasons-20.7)
Lazzeri-2 (best consecutive 3 seasons-18.3)
Doerr-3 (best consecutive 3 seasons-14.6)
Fox-4 (best consecutive 3 seasons-16.9)
Herman-3 (best consecutive 3 seasons-19.1)

Will Prince Fielder Surpass Albert Pujols?

On Monday night before the Brewers game, a commentator on ESPN said something like "now that Fielder is entering his prime years, his numbers will surpass those of Albert Pujols." This seems hard to believe. Fielder generally has not hit as well as Pujols at the same age.

The table below shows how each guy hit by age:



So far, at only one age, 25, was Fielder even close to Pujols. From 21-26, Pujols had an OPS+ of 169. Fielder had 139. The table below shows the offensive WAR for each guy:



The next table shows the neutralized stats for each guy (all data hare is from Baseball Reference):

Bonds And His Performance As He Aged

Since he is in the news, I thought it would be good to revisit.

I have written about this before and there are some links below. This table shows his neutralized SLG as he aged from Baseball Reference. This means that it was adjusted for the league average and park effects. Notice how his 4 best years are clearly from 36-39. This seems to be highly unusual and I think his improvement at those ages over what he did earlier is much better than anyone else's improvement.


Now links to other posts:

The Best 5-Year Hitting Performances By Age

Bonds Aging vs. Aaron Aging

Bonds Greatest Feat Might Be Improvement

Has Anyone Aged as Well As Barry Bonds?

Has Anyone Aged as Well As Barry Bonds? (yes, there are two differenct articles with the same name)

Can "Pitching To Contact" Lead To More Scoring?

See Are Twins Taking "Pitching To Contact" Too Far? by Rob Neyer.

To look at this, I calculated the batting average and slugging percentage in the AL in 2010 on contact. For contact, I used AB - K + SF. I assumed that sacrifice hits (bunts) and their attempts rarely end up in strikeouts. So in the AL last year when a plate appearance ended in contact, the AVG was .320 and the SLG was .501.

How many runs per game might this lead to? To approximate this, I used the equation

R/G = 16.04*OBP + 11.595*SLG - 5.52

That comes from regression analysis based on the 2007-2009 seasons.

Last year the AL had a leage OBP of .327 and a league SLG of .407. The equation predicts that would lead to a runs per game of 4.44 (it was actually 4.45). But if we used .320 for OBP and used the .501 for SLG, we get 5.44 runs per game. That seems like a big difference.

I am not sure if this approximation works. It would be quite a different game with no walks and the denominator for OBP and SLG is not the same in each case. But even with that said, I am skeptical that pitching to contact (or not trying to cause batters to miss the pitch) is a good idea.

Did Minnie Minoso Have Enough Peak Value To Make The Hall of Fame?

Rob Neyer's Measuring Minnie Minoso's Hall Of Fame Case got me thinking about this. He might have enough peak value using WAR. His career WAR is not bad at 52.8, which is 152nd among position players (from Baseball Reference).

Here is the top 10 in WAR in the AL over the years of 1951-59:

Mickey Mantle 72.1
Minnie Minoso 49.5
Yogi Berra 43.3
Ted Williams 42.7
Nellie Fox 38.3
Gil McDougald 37.3
Larry Doby 34.2
Al Kaline 32
Al Rosen 27.8
Jackie Jensen 26.7

Second place to only Mickey Mantle is pretty good. He was still 6th if we look at both leagues;

Mickey Mantle 72.1
Willie Mays 57.2
Eddie Mathews 54.8
Stan Musial 53.1
Duke Snider 50.2
Minnie Minoso 49.5
Richie Ashburn 43.5
Yogi Berra 43.3
Ernie Banks 43.2
Ted Williams 42.7

Minoso had 7 top 5 finishes in the AL including 1st place in 1954 and 1959.

He was also 10th in OPS+ for players with 3000+ PAs in both leagues.

Ted Williams 186
Mickey Mantle 172
Stan Musial 159
Willie Mays 158
Eddie Mathews 152
Hank Aaron 151
Duke Snider 149
Ralph Kiner 141
Ernie Banks 139
Minnie Minoso 137

Here are his ranks in Win Shares in the AL from 1951-1960:

1951: 6
1952:
1953: 7
1954: 5
1955:
1956: 3
1957: 7
1958: 7
1959: 4
1960: 5

For the whole decade of the 1950s, Minoso was 3rd in Win Shares in the AL:

Mantle 317
Berra 276
Minoso 234

That means Minoso averaged 26 Win Shares per season. I don't know if any of this is enough to get him in, but his case is better than I thought.

AL On Record Power Pace

Just checked at Baseball Reference and so far the league SLG is .449. That would break the record for a whole league of .448 set by the NL in 1930. The AL has an ISO of .184. That would break the record the AL set in 1996 of .168. The Rangers have a .775 SLG with a .442 ISO. The Blue Jays have an ISO of .283, the Angels .239 and the Yankees .210.

Was Roger Maris More Deserving Of The MVP Award In 1960 or 1961?

I am not sure he should have gotten it in either year, but if he had to get it, 1960 was actually the better choice. This is inspired by Baseball and the Value of Sabermetrics: An Author's Perspective. It was an interview at Bleacher Report of author Alan Hirsch who wrote the new book The Beauty of Short Hops (Hat tip: Baseball Think Factory).

Here is the exchnge that inspired this post:

"Q: What about the fact that Maris, by some measures, was actually as good or better in 1960 than in 1961?

In 1960 Mantle mostly hit in front of Maris, not behind him. And Maris only had four intentional walks in 1960 hitting mostly in front of the rather mediocre Bill Skowron. Should we question the impact of Skowron on Maris’ performance in 1960, the season in which he was probably more deserving of the MVP award?

AH: First, I’d take issue with the suggestion that Maris was as good in 1960 as in 1961."

Now here is my analysis:

Maris 1960 vs. Maris 1961 is a very close call. But it looks like if he was deserving of the MVP, 1960 was the better choice.

OPS+
1960-161 (2nd to Mantle's 164)
1961-167 (Mantle lead with 206, Cash had 201)

Offensive winning percentage
1960-.751 (2nd to Mantle's.764)
1961-.739 (5th, Mantle lead with .868, Cash had .864)

WAR
1960-7.5
1961-7.2

He was 1st in 1960 and only 5th in 1961. So that makes 1960 more deserving. Here are the WAR leaders for each year in the AL

1960
1. Maris (NYY) 7.5
2. Mantle (NYY) 6.7
3. Bunning (DET) 6.0
4. Herbert (KCA) 5.9
5. Aparicio (CHW) 5.4
6. Skowron (NYY) 4.5
7. Lary (DET) 4.3
Ramos (WSH) 4.3
Fox (CHW) 4.3
10. Robinson (BAL) 4.2
Sievers (CHW) 4.2

1961
1. Mantle (NYY) 11.9
2. Cash (DET) 10.0
3. Kaline (DET) 8.3
4. Colavito (DET) 7.9
5. Gentile (BAL) 7.2
Maris (NYY) 7.2
7. Howard (NYY) 5.9
8. Killebrew (MIN) 5.5
9. Kralick (MIN) 5.2
10. Pascual (MIN) 4.7
Romano (CLE) 4.7
Pizarro (CHW) 4.7

Win Shares
1960-31
1961-36

In 1960, Mantle beat Maris in WS 36-31 (they were 1-2). In 1961, Mantle beat him 48-36. Mantle was 1st, Maris 3rd. Cash had 42. So that tells me he was not deserving in either year, and even less so in 1960.

Here are the leaders in runs created above average in each year. In 1960, Maris was at least close to the leader. But in 1960 he was way back.

1960 AL
1 Mickey Mantle 59
2 Ted Williams 53
3 Roger Maris 51
4 Roy Sievers 37
5 Norm Cash 33
T6 Jim Gentile 31
T6 Harmon Killebrew 31
T6 Bill Skowron 31
9 Tito Francona 26
T10 Jim Lemon 25
T10 Minnie Minoso 25

1961 AL
1 Norm Cash 113
2 Mickey Mantle 111
3 Jim Gentile 74
4 Rocky Colavito 63
5 Roger Maris 60
6 Harmon Killebrew 56
7 Al Kaline 48
8 Elston Howard 42
9 Roy Sievers 35
T10 John Romano 29
T10 Norm Siebern 29

Here are the 1960 AL leaders in BFW, batting plus fielding wins by Pete Palmer
BFW
3.9 Aparicio CHI
3.7 Maris NY
3.6 Mantle NY
3.5 Runnels BOS

Now 1961

7.6 Cash DET
7.5 Mantle NY
5.5 Gentile BAL
4.6 Colavito DET

Maris had 3.1

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How Good Are “Replacement” Pitchers? Evidence From Case Studies

When a star pitcher goes down with an injury, a team must get someone else to pitch. That new guy is called a replacement pitcher. To see how good those understudies might be, I looked at cases of when this happened from 1946-2005. I examined the ERAs of the new guys (only in their starts, data from Retrosheet) and then determined what their winning percentage would be based on that ERA. That winning percentage will be an estimate of how good a replacement pitcher is.

The cases come from any pitcher since WWII who was in the top 25 in career IP or in the top 25 in ERA relative to the league average (minimum of 2000 IP). Then I found seasons when they had a drop in IP of 25% or more from the previous season. This had to be followed by an increase back up of at least 25% (of the following year’s total). I did this to avoid cases of someone who had really declined or was near the end of his career. The idea is that their being out was somewhat temporary. If a pitcher had two seasons in a row of low IP, became a reliever, or was traded in the three-year period, I did not include it. I also only wanted to look at starters, so I did not check Hoyt Wilhelm, who ranked high in relative ERA. Also, IP totals were adjusted for strike seasons to be more in line with a normal full season.

The table below shows the results:


Jim Palmer, for example, pitched 140.333 fewer IP in 1979 than in 1978. The ERA of the worst combined 140.333 IP on the Orioles that year was 3.99 (after adjusting for park effects). With the league ERA of 4.23, that would give a Pythagorean winning pct of .529.

Since the Orioles got 140.333 fewer IP from Palmer that year than the previous year, they had to "replace" him. And we know he was not going way because he pitched over 200 IP the next year. Some of his IP literally had to be replaced. And the "worst" 140.333 IP on the Orioles that year were not really that bad. They had good replacements. But, as can be seen in the table, that was not always true. Jack Morris's replacements in 1989 combined to have a 7.94 ERA, good for a .194 pct. The overall winning pct of the replacements was for all 27 cases .348 (a weighted average based on the missing IP in each case).

There are a host of issues associated with this study. I could have used the increase in IP after the year in question for what the replacements would have (or an average of the two). ERA may not be the best way to evaluate the replacements. Sometimes many pitchers were combined to make the replacement and some of them had very low IP totals. Maybe they only pitched on the road or at home, so the park adjustment might not be a good idea. Still another issue is that teams don’t pitch the same number of innings each year. If IP go up, regardless of who is or is not hurt, someone has to pitch them. So maybe in some cases I set the replacement IP too low.

It might also be instructive to see how the worst pitchers on a given team did in the year before the guy in question got hurt. The next table shows the pythagorean pct for the year they were actually hurt and for the year before, covering the same number of IP (with adjustments for strike years being made). I also did not count the pitcher himself in determining the worst ERAs for starters on his team the year before he got hurt, no matter what his ERA was.


For Blyleven in 1981, for example, I looked at the worst 153.666 IP among starters (making an adjustment for the strike year). Once that was adjusted for park effects and the league average was used, their Pythagorean winning pct would have been .346. That is actually worse than in a comparable number of IP in the year when Blyeven was actually hut and had to be replaced. I would expect that the worst batch of starters' IP to have an even higher ERA the next year with Blyleven missing. But it did not work out that way.

Only 9 of the 27 cases actually saw the projected winning pct of the worst starters go down. One example is 1991 for the Angels, when Blyleven missed the whole season and they had to replace the 134 IP they got from him in 1990. The worst 134 starting IP for the Angels in 1991 would get a Pythagorean pct. of .263. The worst 134 IP in 1990 has .366. That is the kind of thing we would expect when a good starter needs to be replaced. Yet this was not the norm.

The overall composite or weighted average of the project percentages was .348 in the year these pitchers were hurt and it was .356 the year before. That seems like a very small difference. This tells us that when a star pitcher goes down, the missing IP are covered by a group of pitchers who perform about as well as the worst pitchers on that team the year before. It makes me wonder if every team is getting a fairly big chunk of its IP from replacement level pitchers each year.

The one other thing to look at would be who actually took over the missing starts and see how they did. In 1967, Nelson Briles came out of the bullpen to make 14 starts in the second half of the season when Cardinal ace Bob Gibson got hurt. Briles went 10-2 with a 1.89 ERA as a starter. He then became a regular in the Cards rotation the next two years and was pretty much a starter (and a good one) for the next 10 years.

Bert Blyleven's peak vs. Sandy Koufax's Peak

I raise this issue because it came up the other day at "The Hardball Times." See Visual Baseball: Blyleven vs. (dare I say) Koufax? by Kevin Dame. Here is something I wrote in the comments:

In 2007 at “Beyond the Boxscore” I posted an article called

"Bert Blyleven: As Dominating as Sandy Koufax

Over a 5 year stretch, both of them were 22 runs better than the 2nd best pitcher."

That was using a stat called RSAA or Runs saved against average. "It's the amount of runs that a pitcher saved vs. what an average pitcher would have allowed," as explained in the Lee Sinins Complete Baseball Encyclopedia. It is also adjusted for park effects.

I then went on to show that Blyleven was comparable to Koufax in strikeout-to-walk ratio and HRs allowed when park effects were factored in. Blyleven may have been a dominant pitcher during that time and no one really noticed.

Pitchers' Performance With Runners On And None On, 1974-2010

I used data from David Pinto's Day-by-Day Database. I found all the pitchers who had 2500+ PAs with runners on base (ROB) and no runners on (NONE). There were 274 pitchers.

The correlation between the batting average (BA) allowed with ROB and BA allowed with NONE was .723. For slugging percentage (Slug%) it was .740. Those are both fairly high.

But I did expect it to be even higher based on some recent posts where I compared BA differential and Slug% differential between the two cases for consecutive years were extremely low. That suggests very little ability to pitch to the situation.

The table below shows the 25 best pitchers in terms of lowering their BA with ROB compared to NONE.


Now for Slug%



The next two tables are the worst pitchers. That is, they gave up a higher BA and Slug% with ROB than with NONE.

Bud Black Says Padres Are More Balanced Now And This Will Make Up For The Loss Of Adrian Gonzalez

See Black: ‘We’re more balanced’. (Hat Tip: Baseball Think Factory). Click here to go their discussion. Here is what Black said:

"There is definitely going to be a different look. The Padres made a major transition midway through the 2009 season. It has transitioned again. I like this team. The focal point of last season was always Adrian (Gonzalez). We’re more balanced. That balance has to make up for the loss of Adrian."

That will be tough to do since in the last two years Gonzalez finished 4th and then 2nd in WAR with 7.0 and 6.3 (from Baseball Reference). Black said they will be improved elsewhere. That might make up for losing Gonzalez, but it does not have anything to do with balance per se.

I have done some research on balance. See

The Impact of Lineup Balance on Scoring, 1920-89

and

Are "Balanced" Teams More Successful?

I found balance helps very little, if at all. I also have links to research by Keith Woolner and David Gassko at that first site. It looks like their research shows that at most better balance can add 1 per season. So if Adrian Gonzalez's replacement costs the Padres more than 1 win compared to him, the balance will not help, as Black says. That is assuming that they actually are more balanced.

Does Clutch Pitching Persist Year-To-Year? (Part 2)

Part 1 was a couple of weeks ago, when I only looked at one pair of years. I have now done 5 pairs of years. Low correlations indicate that pitchers tend not to be clutch one year and again clutch the next year.

I looked at all pitchers that had at least 250 plate appearances against opposing hitters in both of five consecutive two-year periods both with and without runners on base. There were around 70 such pitchers in each of the five cases. Data from David Pinto's "Day by Day Database" which is based on Retrosheet.

I found the differential between the batting average they allowed with runners on base (ROB) and the batting average they allowed with no runners on (NONE). I did the same for Slug%. So if a pitcher allowed a .240 BA with ROB and a .260 BA with NONE, his differential was -.020. That means he did better in the clutch than otherwise.

Did pitchers maintain about the same clutch performance in each year? Probably not. The table below shows the correlation between the first year's differential and the second year's differential for both BA and Slug%. They all tend to be pretty low or negative. If a pitchers in general tended to have about the same differential in each year, the correlation would be much higher. That is what I would expect if they really had a constant ability (or inability) with runners on base. But what this means is that many pitchers have a good differential one year and a bad or mediocre one the next year.



In both cases, with runners on and with none on, there is a large number of PAs. So if there really is some clutch ability here, we should see it. Also, pitchers, unlike hitters, can actually bear down and throw a little harder with runners on (or try harder to break off good curve balls). A batter really can't swing harder, for example, depending on the situation. But pitchers could save a little extra for when they needed it with runners on. Batters probably don't save a little extra.

So the one group that could theoretically have some control over the clutch don't seem to have it even when looking at a fairly large number of observations.

The Expanded Postseason and its Impact on True Champions

SABR member Steve Fall presented his research on this at the Hornsby Chapter annual meeting. Very interesting.

Click here to read more about this and there is a link to the power point presentation Steve did. There are 24 slides. Here is the conclusion:

"While other factors have had some impact on the results, the most successful regular season teams have a much tougher time prevailing as World Series Champions due to the extra round of playoffs they must survive."

An Attempt To Measure Park Effects From 1934

I heard about this from the South Texas Chapter of SABR (Hornsby Chapter). Jan Larson said that author and chapter member Norman Macht, author of many books on baseball and other topics including Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball, came across a Baseball Magazine article from 1934 that looked at park effects. Here is the link A New Way to Compile Batting Averages (1934). The article is below anyway. The big idea was to calculate the batting average for each park and see if a player did better or worse than that.

The article was by FLETCHER PRATT. Jim Baker pointed out that he was very interesting. He was a science fiction and history writer who created some type of popular naval war game. Go to

Fletcher Pratt Wikipedia article

The World's Most Complicated Game: Fletcher Pratt, a historian and naval expert, invented a complex pastime that used ballroom floors and up to 120 players (from Sports Illustrated)

Here is the article:

The Present System of Computing Batting Averages Has Long Been Criticized and it Has Many Defects. Many Schemes for Improving the Records Have Been Advanced From Time to Time. Here is One That May Have Some Merit.

Does it seem right that Chick Fullis, who didn't hit hard when he was with the Giants, should suddenly develop a batting average thirty points higher than Mel Ott's at Philadelphia? Does it seem fair that Chick Hafey, one of the best hitters in baseball, should be getting the Bronx cheer for weak hitting, when the only trouble is that at Redland Field he was in a park where he had to drive the ball a mile to get a single?

Averages to show how well a player should hit in a park would straighten out these in¬consistencies. They would also give a lot of other information. They might tell us, for example, whether the Braves' pitching staff is really good, or merely look good because they have a lot of room to work in, and they might give us a real line on how well Chuck Klein should hit when he gets into a uniform with "Chicago" written across the chest.

But how will you get the batting average for a ball park? Simply by taking all the at bats in that park during a season, no matter what teams were playing, and dividing by the hits. The result will be the park's batting average, and it will be very accurate, for it will be an average compiled from the work of all the players in the league. This composite percentage will show, with reasonable certainty, how well the average player, if there were any such thing as an average player, ought to hit in a given park.

Trying this process with the National League parks for 1933, what results do we get? Here's the list, with all the games played during the year included:


There's a. lot of information in this table. Note that there is more than 73 points’ differ¬ence between Baker Bowl and the Polo Grounds. When one analyzes these figures they become even more important. They mean, for instance, that any team will hit over .300 in Philadelphia, and that the poor Philly pitchers have to face solid line-ups of .307 hitters from the beginning to the end of the season. But, of course, the visiting pitchers are up against the problem of curbing the clouting teammates of Dick Bartell and Don Hurst.
On the other band, take a look at the batting averages compiled at the Polo Grounds and at Braves' Field. No wonder Terry and McKechnie have good pitching staffs; they couldn’t have anything else in parks where the batters can hit no better than .244 and .232. It will be noted that 47 more runs were made at the Polo Grounds than at Boston during the 1933 season. This may mean that part of the low batting averages at the New York park is due to the ability of the Giants' pitch¬ing staff rather than to the park.

But that brings up another point. What is a good hitting team? Not just a team that makes a big batting average. The Phillies have been up near the top of the batting averages in the National League for years, and for just as many years they have been down near the bottom of the standing of the clubs. The usual reason given for this is that the Philly pitching staff has been weak, which is just another way of saying that the Phillies, although they pounded the ball, didn't hit quite as well as the teams they stacked up against—not well enough to beat them, any¬way. The Yankees in the days of their glory were a really good hitting team; that is, they consistently made more hits than the oppo¬sition in the same parks and under the same conditions. A hitting team, then, is not a team with a good batting average, but a team that can hit better than the opposition; that is, better than the average.

Now if the batting average of all the teams in the league at a certain park is .260 and the team whose home park it is, smacks the ball for a team batting average of .280, that team will be consistently hitting better than the opposition. So that if we compare the team batting averages in the league with the bat-ting averages of the parks they play in, we will be in a fair way to finding out what teams hit better than the opposition they encountered.

First let's take the clouting Phillies, who had three of the National League's six leading hitters and ranked third in team batting, with a figure of .274. The average for their park was .307, as we just saw. That is, all the teams playing in the Phillies' park hit .307 in 1933. But the Phillies themselves hit only .274, so their average was 33 points under what it should have been if they had hit as well as the rest of the teams in the league.

This shows that in spite of that .274 average, the Phillies were a weak-hitting outfit, which may help to explain why they finished in seventh place.

Now compare the figures in the same way for the Giants. In 1933 they hit only .263 and ranked down near the bottom of the league in hitting, while people compared them to the old Hitless Wonders of Fielder Jones. But the park averages we just compiled show that all the teams in the league hit only .232 at the Polo Grounds. This means that the Giants were hitting 31 points better than the opposition they met all season. They look like light hitters because they were play¬ing in a light-hitting park, but when they got into a batter's park, you couldn't get them out, as the Senators discovered. It doesn't matter whether it was because the Giants' pitching staff always kept the enemy in check, or whether it was because Bill Terry and his merry men could always find the opposing pitchers in the pinch. The Giants looked like weak hitters in the averages, but on the ball field they were a better-hitting team than any they faced.

Suppose we go right through the list of the teams in the league then, and make new averages. The team batting average will be one element; that will show how each team actually hit. The park batting average will show how all the teams in the league hit in that team's park; and the difference will be the amount each team hit better or worse than the teams it played against. Here's what we get:



Note how this list brings the teams out almost exactly in the order they finished in the Standing of the Clubs. This shows why the rank of the teams in the team batting averages doesn’t mean much. It’s not how hard a team hits the ball that counts; it’s how much better it hits than the other teams. On this basis, it appears that the Braves, who seemed to be a punchless outfit, actually hit just as well as the Pirates, who were rated the leading hitters of the league. It also shows that the Cards didn’t get so much good out of their wonderful pitching staff because they themselves weren’t hitting. Sportmen’s Field shows up as one of the best batting parks in the league.

But if you can subtract the park averages from a team’s batting average and get a good line on the team’s hitting, why can’t you do the same thing with individual batting averages and get a very accurate judgment on how good they are as hitters? If all the players in the league compile a general average of .280 at Sportsmen’s Field and Pepper Martin hits .316 there, then Pepper Martin is hitting 36 points better than the average and deserves to rank high up among the batters of the league. And if a player hits .305 at the Phillies’ .307 park, he is a -2 hitter in spite of his good-looking average.

So when we apply the same system to the individual batting averages we begin to understand why Chick Fullis fattened his batting average by 50 points when he moved from New York to Philadelphia and why Chick Hafey’s average fell when he changed over from St. Louis to Cincinnati. Sportsmen’s Field is a .280 park, Redland Field a .258 park. This would normally take about 22 points off the Chick’s average. Now Hafey hit .303 in 1933. If you give him back the 22 points he lost by switching a Cardinals uniform for a Redlegs one, his average comes back to .325, which is just about right, allowing for the dead ball in the National League last year.

When we go right down the line and apply the same system to the ranking batters of the league, we get a lot of interesting results. The leaders come out as follows:


Look what this does to the individual batting averages. For one thing, the Phillies no longer have three of the six leading hitters. Klein and Virgil Davis, who would be hot hitters in any company, are still up near the top, but the others have melted away. And Wally Berger, a fine hitter, who breaks up many a ball game and doesn’t get enough credit for the good hitting he does, is placed up there where he belongs.

Incidentally, with Klein in the fold this means that the Cubs are going to have the hardest-hitting outfield in baseball, and it also gives us a line on the vexed question of how Klein and Virgil Davis will hit in their new monkey-suits. The averages show Klein hits about 61 points better than his park. In Chicago, he will be batting in a .257 park. Add 61 points to this, with about 20 more for the livelier ball he will be batting in 1934, and you have .338 for his average if he does as well as last year. Virgil Davis will be batting in a .280 park at St. Louis. Add the 42 points he hit over his park average at Philadelphia, and make the same allowance for the lively ball and you have .342 for his probable average in 1934. So that both Klein and Davis will be found somewhere around .340 when the 1934 World’s Series rolls around, and if they aren’t the writer of this article will eat an arithmetic book with cream and sugar.

Does Clutch Pitching Persist Year-To-Year?

Low correlations indicate that pitchers tend not to be clutch one year and again clutch the next year.

I looked at all pitchers that had at least 250 plate appearances against opposing hitters in both 2009 & 2010 both with and without runners on base. There were 76 such pitchers. Data from David Pinto's "Day by Day Database" which is based on Retrosheet.

I found the differential between the batting average they allowed with runners on base (ROB) and the batting average they allowed with no runners on (NONE). I did the same for SLG. So if a pitcher allowed a .240 AVG with ROB and a .260 AVG with NONE, his differential was -.020. That means he did better in the clutch than otherwise.

Did pitchers maintaing about the same clutch performance in each year? Probably not. The correlation between their differentials in each year was just -.064. A zero correlation means no relationship and this is very close to that.

It was higher for SLG, though. But it was -.196 . That means if a pitcher was good in the clutch one year, he tended not to be good the next year, although the effect is weak.

This is just one year. More years need to be looked at. I will try to do more when I can.

FC Lane on the Batting Order

The post below is the few pages from FC Lane's book called "Batting" that dealt with the batting order. Whether or not it matches up with some of the recent analysis on lineups I will leave up to readers. One expert mentioned that it was a good idea to bat Cy Williams 2nd. FC Lane was a great baseball writer and editor of Baseball Magazine in the early part of the 20th century.

How the Batting Order "Colors" Batting

JOHN McGRAW once said, "Every ball team is capable of being arranged in a way to produce the maximum batting punch. You need a fast man who is a good waiter for lead off, another fast man good at the bunt and the hit and run in second place, then a massing of your heavy artillery in the next three or four positions so as to deliver the hardest blow with the least possible slowing down in speed. A slow footed runner, for example, will often cripple an attack. He must hit uncommonly well to be placed high on the list. Naturally your pitchers come last, for even if they are good hitters, they change too frequently for a settled batting order."

Jack Coombs said, "Every manager models his batting order on a scientific basis. He has so many batters at his disposal. He wishes to align those men so that their combined efforts will appear to the best advantage. How can he do this? Few managers agree on the precise details, but all agree on certain essential points. For example, number one should be a good hitter, but above all a good waiter. If he is short of stature so much the better for he will be harder to pitch to. All managers agree that the second man on the list must be a foxy hitter and fast on his feet. They agree also that third, fourth and fifth positions should be filled by good hitters who are preferably sluggers. I believe the three most important positions on the line-up are first, fourth and seventh place. First is obviously important. He is the entering wedge of your attack. Fourth is the logical clean-up man, the fellow who drives home that entering wedge. Seventh is a kind of clean-up man, but I cannot afford to put too good a hitter there. If I do, the opposing pitcher will pass him to take a chance at the tail of the batting order. Rather I must station a hitter at seventh who is not easily excited but is cool and always likely to come through with a hit."

Miller Huggins said, "An attack which is distributed through six or seven men rather than centered in one or two is much more effective. The team with a bunch of good hitters is usually consistent in its stick work. It is the steadiness of the pace which counts. On some clubs the batting punch is supplied by a renowned hitter like Hans Wagner or Nap Lajoie. On other clubs there is no such individual star but a better balanced attack of several men who are all good hitters. I prefer such a batting attack for your one or two stars may have an off day. The average work of six or seven men doesn't vary so widely. Besides, it is difficult for the pitcher to side step such an attack. In a pinch he can pass one or two men, but he can't pass half a dozen in succession. Furthermore, the strain of pitching to a number of men who are always dangerous is cumulative. The pitcher gets no breathing space as he would when he had retired one or two formidable stars and then faced mediocre batters."

Not all experts agree on the relative importance of the various positions on the line-up. Most of them would rate the lead-off man as important, and the clean-up sluggers as even more so. Hugh Jennings, however, thought differently. He said, "The neck moves the head and what the lead-off man accomplishes depends pretty much on the follow-up assistance he gets from the second man in the line-up. I believe it is a bigger job to locate a man who can play second properly than it is to find a good lead-off man. The talents which the lead-off man must possess are well understood and everybody realizes that the clean-up man must be a slugger. But the second place man hasn't been studied so thoroughly. This batter must be a good bunter. Good bunters ought to be common, but they are really less numerous than good hitters. The second place man must have a good batting eye and be a good waiter. Above all, he must use his head. In general he should hit to right field for his main object is to advance the lead-off man who has presumably reached first either through hit, pass or error. By driving the ball to right field he can send the runner to third base. I f he hit to left field, that runner would be held at second. Above all the second place man must have the peculiar knack of knowing whether the second baseman or short stop is going to cover the bag. Then he must be able to hit in a manner to break up their defensive play. This is very important. In fact I consider it the prime qualification for the man playing second position on the line-up. Moreover, the second place hitter should be fast. Then he won't get snarled up ina double play. There are times when he will retire the base runner in spite of himself. Then his thoughts are bent on saving his own scalp. That's largely a matter of speed in getting to first base."

Arthur Fletcher once played Cy Williams, his heaviest slugger, in second place. He said, "Cy isn't much of a bunter, I will admit. But he has some qualifications that you can't overlook. First of all, he's a right field hitter. That's what you want, a man to advance the runner. Then Cy seldom strikes out. You can generally depend upon him to hit the ball and hit it hard. Thus he advances the runner even though he is thrown out himself. And that's as good as a sacrifice. Besides, Cy is always likely to come through with a hit which may be a homer. Placing him high in the batting order you get more of his work. He'll go to bat five times in many a game where he would appear but four times if he batted farther down the list."

Even the despised tail of the batting list may be a source of strength. Wilbur Cooper said, "I am convinced that a pitcher adds much to his effectivness by his own good hitting. I believe that my batting and fielding have won seven or eight games a season for me that would otherwise have been lost."

Bill McKechnie said, "In all my experience I have known just one batter who liked to play the lead-off position." Bill thought this an inexcusable attitude, but it's not difficult to fathom. Batters don't like the lead-off position because it interferes with their hitting. It cuts their batting average many points. For example, John Tobin said, "The man who bats number one on the list and hits for .280 is doing well. He must forget his own hase hits in an effort to get on and of course his average suffers. How much it suffers I couldn't say, but I believe it will drop twenty to thirty points. Of course, some one has to play that position, but I think the records ought to make some provision for lead-off man and not rate his batting on the same basis as that of the slugger who comes fourth or fifth on the list."

Max Carey said, "In fairness to myself, I shall claim special consideration for my batting. I would have done much better had I not been lead-off man for several seasons. It is well known that lead-off man can not expect to have as high an average as he could get lower down the list. There are two reasons for this. In the first place he often has to wait out the pitcher and try to work him for a pass. In the second place, the pitcher, when he faces the lead-off man, usually has no one on bases to bother him. He is able to take lis full wind up and concentrate on the batter."

Batting languishes at the tail of the list. The catcher is out of the game frequently while the pitcher appears only once in three or four days. As Babe Ruth says, "No man can get in the games twice a week and do himself justice at bat as he would do were he getting daily practice."

Some managers shift their batting lists infrequently, even though one or two positions are open to criticism. They prefer to suffer this disadvantage rather than the greater disadvantage of a general disorganization. Not a few managers, however, particularly on losing clubs, shake up their batting lists rather often in the effort to hit upon a better working combination. When they do, the batting of the various players on the list is apt to fluctuate widely, for there is a definite connection between a batting average and the particular position in the batting order which a player is called upon to fill. In general lead-off man is handicapped by orders to wait out the pitcher, second position is handicapped by orders to sacrifice. The tail of the batting order is handicapped by a variety of adverse conditions among which infrequency of batting practice ranks rather high. Only at the clean-up positions does batting flourish at its best, for those players are usually called upon to "hit it out." There is also a noticeable psychology in a batter's position on the list. Let the man, for example, who has hit seventh, be raised to fourth or fifth place and his new responsibilities often act as a tonic on his batting average.

To sum up, a batter's work is colored to a considerable degree by the particular position he is called upon to fill in the batting order.

Trevor Hoffman Retires With Highest Strikeout-to-Walk Ratio

The table below shows the top 15 pitchers in strikeout-to-walk ratio since 1955 with 1000+ IP. For walks I used BB + HBP - IBB (which is called BB*). Data from Baseball Reference and the Lee Sinins Complete Baseball Encyclopedia.


In 1089 IP, Hoffman only hit 9 batters. The average pitcher would have hit about 4 times as many. And about 19% of his walks were intentional. For the average pitcher it was about 9%. Now for the guys who had 2000+ IP.

Ted Williams, Pedro Ramos, Dizzy Trout And Autographs

This is a post about trying to get to the bottom of some mythic stories. Stories that sound good but don't seem to stand up to scrutiny. The following site

http://www.sheilaomalley.com/?p=3280

Has a passage from the book "The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship" by David Halberstam. Here it is:

"When [Ted] was generous there was no one more generous, and when he was petulant there was no one more petulant, and sometimes he was both within a few seconds. Once in the mid-1950s, Pedro Ramos, then a young pitcher with Washington, struck Ted out, which was a very big moment for Ramos. He rolled the ball into the dugout to save, and later, after the game, the Cuban right-hander ventured into the Boston dugout with the ball and asked Ted to sign it. Mel Parnell was watching and had expected an immediate explosion, Ted being asked to sign a ball he had struck out on, and he was not disappointed. Soon there was a rising bellow of blasphemy from Williams, and then he had looked over and seen Ramos, a kid of 20 or 21, terribly close to tears now. Suddenly Ted had softened and said, “Oh, all right, give me the goddamn ball,” and had signed it. Then about two weeks later he had come up against Ramos again and hit a tremendous home run, and as he rounded first he had slowed down just a bit and yelled to Ramos, “I’ll sign that son of a bitch too if you can ever find it.”"

Now a writer at Baseball Think Factory wrote a refutation of this. It is at

Tracer: The Ted Williams-Pedro Ramos Story

My problem is that "The Biographical Encyclopedia of Baseball" has almost the same story about Ted Williams and Dizzy Trout. Page 1145, the entry on Trout. It does not say which year. It is the one edited by Pietrusza, Silverman and Gershman. Does anyone know anything about these stories? Any of them true? Are they told about other players? When was the first one reported? I doubt they are all true!

In the Dizzy Trout version (the Biographical Encyclopedia quotes his son, Steve), he strikes out Williams to preserve a 2-1 victory. I could find no game even remotely close to something like this for Trout vs. Boston using the Baseball Reference and Retrosheet game logs.

Update January 9: Rob Neyer discussed both the Ramos story and the Trout story in his book on baseball legends (pages 127-130). The Ramos story, he says, comes from Hy Hurwitz of the Boston Globe. The Trout story, he says, comes from Bruce Nash and Allan Zullo.

There is something plausible about the Trout case. On August 29, 1946, the Tigers beat the Red Sox 9-8 in 14 innings. Trout pitched the last 6.2 innings to win the game (allowing no runs on 3 hits and 3 walks). He struck out 2 batters but neither was Williams since the Baseball Reference boxscore shows no K's for him in that game. It is possible that Trout retired Williams in a key situation with runners on base. But the boxscore does not show that and the only news stories I found did not describe much about the game.

The Red Sox sent 64 men to the plate in the game, meaning that the leadoff man made the last out of the game. So Trout certainly did not get Williams out in the last inning.

But on Sept. 11, 13 days later, Williams did hit a HR off of Trout. So the story is not that far off at least as far as the events on the field are concerned.

Update January 9, 2016: Trout walked Williams both times he faced him in that August 29th game. One was intentional. Williams did not bat in the last inning. The play by play is now at Retrosheet

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1946/B08290BOS1946.htm