With Curtis Granderson currently tied for the AL lead in HRs while leading in triples, I thought I would find all of the players who had led the league in both in the same year as well as the others who did it but not in the same year. Some guys led one league in HRs one year and another league in 3Bs another year, like Dick Allen. They are all below, linked to Baseball Reference. If I missed anybody, let me know. They are in no order except the guys who did it in the same year are listed first. There are alot of Hall of Famers here. There are 33 in all.
Harry Stovey (twice in the same year)
Tip O'Neill (once in the same year and lead in 2Bs, too)
Harry Lumley (once in the same year)
Jim Bottomley (once in the same year)
Tommy Leach (once in the same year)
Willie Mays (once in the same year)
Mickey Mantle (once in the same year)
Jim Rice (once in the same year)
Roger Connor
John Reilly
Bid McPhee
Oyster Burns
Sam Crawford
Harry Davis
Home Run Baker
Johnny Mize
Ty Cobb
Lou Gehrig
Rogers Hornsby
Buck Freeman
Dan Brouthers
Dick Allen
Ed Delahanty
Joe DiMaggio
Sam Thompson
Wally Pipp
Frank Schulte
Buck Ewing
Jim O'Rourke
Jimmy Sheckard
Joe Medwick
Ryne Sandberg
Walt Wilmot
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Saturday, August 20, 2011
The record for most consecutive games versus over and under .500 teams
A guest post by Tom Ruane of SABR and Retrosheet
I thought it might be interesting to look at four groups:
1) under .400,
2) under .500,
3) over .500 and
4) over .600.
Here's what I found:
1) Starting on August 11, 1885, the Chicago White Stockings
played a record 23 straight games against opponents with
a winning percentage under .400. During the streak, they
played only Buffalo, Detroit and St. Louis. It ended when
they faced Boston (which entered the game with a
none-too-impressive winning percentage of .406). Chicago
went 20-2-1 during the streak.
The longest such streak since 1900 is nineteen and it was
done four times:
I thought it might be interesting to look at four groups:
1) under .400,
2) under .500,
3) over .500 and
4) over .600.
Here's what I found:
1) Starting on August 11, 1885, the Chicago White Stockings
played a record 23 straight games against opponents with
a winning percentage under .400. During the streak, they
played only Buffalo, Detroit and St. Louis. It ended when
they faced Boston (which entered the game with a
none-too-impressive winning percentage of .406). Chicago
went 20-2-1 during the streak.
The longest such streak since 1900 is nineteen and it was
done four times:
2) The Chicago White Sox played 51 straight games against
losing teams from May 27 to July 10, 1966. The streak ended
when they hosted the third-place Indians in the first game
following the All-Star break. Ironically, the Sox went only
22-28-1 while playing losing teams, and 45-32 afterwards.
No teams are close to their streak, the second longest
being a run of forty straight games by the San Francisco
Giants in 1986. It ran from July 3rd to August 17th and,
like the White Sox, the Giants had a losing mark (19-21)
while it lasted.
3) The top five teams with the most consecutive games
played against winning teams:
At the end of the streak by the 1916 Senators, the only
other team in the AL with a losing record was the 27-94
Philadelphia Athletics. And the three streaks from 1908 are
due to the practice of scheduling long road and home trips
between the eastern and western teams. In 1908, all of the
western teams had winning records.
4) The longest stretch of games against teams with a
winning percentage higher than .600 was 27 by the
Philadelphia Quakers in 1884. From May 20th to June 19th,
they went 6-21 against Boston, Providence and New York.
Entering the games of May 20th, those three teams had a
combined record of 37-5. Philadephia had been in fourth
place at the start but was in seventh place at the end of
the run.
The record since 1900 is 21, by the 1998 Tigers from
April 3rd (which was the first game of the second series
of the year) to 30th. Given how early in the season
it was, a few more wins here and there might have
short-circuited the streak, but Detroit went 5-16 in the
games.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Hitting Has Picked Up A Bit So Far In August
The table below shows the OPS and runs per game for each league by month for 2011.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Should Thurman Munson Be In The Hall Of Fame?
I'm looking at this because it was discussed at Baseball Think Factory. That discussion was inspired by a new website that is trying to get Munson in called VoteThurmanIn.com.
Munson is 14th in career WAR among catchers. Here is the top 22 from Baseball Reference (I went to 22 so I could include Campanella). It also shows their best three consecutive seasons (which I just eyeballed to find) and the number of times they finished in the top 5 and 10. These guys played at least 50% of their games at catcher.
Now Munson is only 240th among position players in career WAR. That probably is not enough for the Hall. But catchers don't have the longevity of other players, so being in the top 15 is impressive. If he had not died at age 32 in 1979, he might have made the top 10. He was on a pace to get about 3.6 WAR in 1979. He also had over 3 the previous year.
His best 3 straight years is not near the elite like Bench, Carter, Piazza or Mauer (does he have the record for best 3 straight by a catcher?-although some games at DH may have helped). But Munson's best 3 straight years beat Lombardi, Bresnahan and Hartnett. He also has more top 10 finishes than Lombardi and Hartnett.
Tenace is ahead of him in career WAR but only about 58% of Tenace's innings were at catcher (Munson is about 97%).
Munson also is 144th in MVP shares (at 1.50). That is good considering that catchers don't do that great in the voting. See my post called MVP Awards And Award Shares By Position. So his contemporary observers liked him. He also won three Gold Gloves.
Fangraphs has him at 21st in career WAR among catchers. But some of the guys ahead of him played less than half their games at catcher: King Kelly, Joe Torre, Brian Downing, Buck Ewing. Tenace and Bresnahan are both ahead of him, too. Bresnahan played about 70% of his games at catcher (this all points out something problematic with the position regarding the Hall of Fame-many guys who played there got moved to other positions). And again, don't forget that Munson died young. He could have moved up in the rankings.
Just what I have done so far is probably not enough. But I think we should be looking at him as a serious candidate.
Munson is 14th in career WAR among catchers. Here is the top 22 from Baseball Reference (I went to 22 so I could include Campanella). It also shows their best three consecutive seasons (which I just eyeballed to find) and the number of times they finished in the top 5 and 10. These guys played at least 50% of their games at catcher.
Now Munson is only 240th among position players in career WAR. That probably is not enough for the Hall. But catchers don't have the longevity of other players, so being in the top 15 is impressive. If he had not died at age 32 in 1979, he might have made the top 10. He was on a pace to get about 3.6 WAR in 1979. He also had over 3 the previous year.
His best 3 straight years is not near the elite like Bench, Carter, Piazza or Mauer (does he have the record for best 3 straight by a catcher?-although some games at DH may have helped). But Munson's best 3 straight years beat Lombardi, Bresnahan and Hartnett. He also has more top 10 finishes than Lombardi and Hartnett.
Tenace is ahead of him in career WAR but only about 58% of Tenace's innings were at catcher (Munson is about 97%).
Munson also is 144th in MVP shares (at 1.50). That is good considering that catchers don't do that great in the voting. See my post called MVP Awards And Award Shares By Position. So his contemporary observers liked him. He also won three Gold Gloves.
Fangraphs has him at 21st in career WAR among catchers. But some of the guys ahead of him played less than half their games at catcher: King Kelly, Joe Torre, Brian Downing, Buck Ewing. Tenace and Bresnahan are both ahead of him, too. Bresnahan played about 70% of his games at catcher (this all points out something problematic with the position regarding the Hall of Fame-many guys who played there got moved to other positions). And again, don't forget that Munson died young. He could have moved up in the rankings.
Just what I have done so far is probably not enough. But I think we should be looking at him as a serious candidate.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
July Hitting Picked Up A Bit In The AL, Still Sluggish In the NL
He are the monthly OPS figures for the AL starting in April:
April .713
May .720
June .719
July .731
For the whole season, it is .721. But just last year, for the whole season, it was .734. July should be one of the strongest months. From 1994-2009, the AL had an OPS of at least .750 every year with a high of .795 in 1996.
He are the monthly OPS figures for the NL starting in April:
April .709
May .702
June .699
July .709
For the whole season, it is .705. In 2009, for the whole season, it was .739. From 1994-2008, the NL had an OPS of at least .740 every year with a high of .773 in 1999.
April .713
May .720
June .719
July .731
For the whole season, it is .721. But just last year, for the whole season, it was .734. July should be one of the strongest months. From 1994-2009, the AL had an OPS of at least .750 every year with a high of .795 in 1996.
He are the monthly OPS figures for the NL starting in April:
April .709
May .702
June .699
July .709
For the whole season, it is .705. In 2009, for the whole season, it was .739. From 1994-2008, the NL had an OPS of at least .740 every year with a high of .773 in 1999.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Is Ryan Howard A Clutch Homerun Hitter?
This was inspired by a discussion at Baseball Think Factory about an article at Fangraphs called Ryan Howard and the RBI by Steve Slowinski (there is no shortage of great Polish baseball bloggers).
Some people say that Howard is a good "RBI guy" and that he is paid to drive in runs so maybe his overall stats and/or his OBP don't matter that much. But a good "RBI guy" would tend to hit better with runners on. In my opinion that means a higher AVG with runners in scoring position (RISP) than he normally gets and a higher SLG with runners on base (ROB) than normal
But this year Howard is only 47th in SLG (.463) with runners on base in all of baseball with guys with 150+ PA in that situation. Teixeira leads with .667.
Howard is 20th in AVG (.304) with runners in scoring position this year in all of baseball with guys with 100+ PA in that situation. Votto leads with .424.
So overall, nothing special on Howard's part.
But somehow Howard over his career has managed to hit better with ROB and RISP. His AVG/SLG with none on is .266/.528. With ROB it is .285/.593 and .281/.561 with RISP. The one difference that seems pretty big is the SLG with ROB.
From 1991-2000, ROB SLG was .422 in all of baseball and .411 with none on. Since 2006, it looks like SLG with ROB is about .009 higher than with none on. So Howard is way above that being .063 higher. Some of that might be because he is a lefty. But whether it is luck or some real clutch talent is hard to say.
So I thought I would try a statistical test on his HR% with none on (NONE) vs. his HR% with ROB. Here we calculate something called a "Z-score." To be significant at the 5% level (meaning there is less than a 5% chance of getting the difference between the two HR%s) the Z-score has to be at least 1.96 (plus or minus, since a guy could do worse with ROB, the clutch situation I am looking at). HR% will be highly correlated with SLG (also, it does not look like Howard hits very many more 2Bs or 3Bs with ROB than NONE). Some technical details on this are below.
Howard's HR% with NONE in his career is 6.857% while with ROB it is 8.221%. That may not seem like a big difference, but the ROB HR% is 19.9% higher (8.221/6.857 = 1.199). The question is whether or not it is statistically significant. This is where the Z-score comes in.
The Z-score takes into account the number of ABs and HR% in each situation (ROB, NONE). It also takes into account the normal major league difference (I used +.0009, the approximate difference from 2007-10). This is important because if the normal HR% was .01364, then Howard would not be clutch at all since this is the difference between his two percentages (.08221 - .06857). When I did this calculation for Howard, I got a Z-score of 1.655. That is significant at about the 10% level. I guess I would like to see it at the 5% level before considering that he is clutch in hitting HRs with ROB. But even if he had reached 1.96 or more in his Z-score, it is possible he got there by luck and not skill because 2.5% of the hitters will have a Z-score of +1.96 or more.
Z = (CLUTCH AVG – NONCLUTCH AVG + EXPECTED DIFFERENCE)/SD
NORMAL DIFFERENCE FOR CL = +.0009 (which is added in this case)
SD = STANDARD DEVIATION =
{[CLUTCH AVG*(1-CLUTCH AVG)]/CLUTCH AB + [NONCLUTCHAVG*(1-NONCLUTCH AVG)]/NONCLUTCH AB}
(FROM PETE PALMER, BY THE NUMBERS 3/90. He called it a “pooled” standard deviation)
In a normal distribution, 5% of the players would have a Z-score of at least +1.96 or less than –1.96.
Some people say that Howard is a good "RBI guy" and that he is paid to drive in runs so maybe his overall stats and/or his OBP don't matter that much. But a good "RBI guy" would tend to hit better with runners on. In my opinion that means a higher AVG with runners in scoring position (RISP) than he normally gets and a higher SLG with runners on base (ROB) than normal
But this year Howard is only 47th in SLG (.463) with runners on base in all of baseball with guys with 150+ PA in that situation. Teixeira leads with .667.
Howard is 20th in AVG (.304) with runners in scoring position this year in all of baseball with guys with 100+ PA in that situation. Votto leads with .424.
So overall, nothing special on Howard's part.
But somehow Howard over his career has managed to hit better with ROB and RISP. His AVG/SLG with none on is .266/.528. With ROB it is .285/.593 and .281/.561 with RISP. The one difference that seems pretty big is the SLG with ROB.
From 1991-2000, ROB SLG was .422 in all of baseball and .411 with none on. Since 2006, it looks like SLG with ROB is about .009 higher than with none on. So Howard is way above that being .063 higher. Some of that might be because he is a lefty. But whether it is luck or some real clutch talent is hard to say.
So I thought I would try a statistical test on his HR% with none on (NONE) vs. his HR% with ROB. Here we calculate something called a "Z-score." To be significant at the 5% level (meaning there is less than a 5% chance of getting the difference between the two HR%s) the Z-score has to be at least 1.96 (plus or minus, since a guy could do worse with ROB, the clutch situation I am looking at). HR% will be highly correlated with SLG (also, it does not look like Howard hits very many more 2Bs or 3Bs with ROB than NONE). Some technical details on this are below.
Howard's HR% with NONE in his career is 6.857% while with ROB it is 8.221%. That may not seem like a big difference, but the ROB HR% is 19.9% higher (8.221/6.857 = 1.199). The question is whether or not it is statistically significant. This is where the Z-score comes in.
The Z-score takes into account the number of ABs and HR% in each situation (ROB, NONE). It also takes into account the normal major league difference (I used +.0009, the approximate difference from 2007-10). This is important because if the normal HR% was .01364, then Howard would not be clutch at all since this is the difference between his two percentages (.08221 - .06857). When I did this calculation for Howard, I got a Z-score of 1.655. That is significant at about the 10% level. I guess I would like to see it at the 5% level before considering that he is clutch in hitting HRs with ROB. But even if he had reached 1.96 or more in his Z-score, it is possible he got there by luck and not skill because 2.5% of the hitters will have a Z-score of +1.96 or more.
Z = (CLUTCH AVG – NONCLUTCH AVG + EXPECTED DIFFERENCE)/SD
NORMAL DIFFERENCE FOR CL = +.0009 (which is added in this case)
SD = STANDARD DEVIATION =
{[CLUTCH AVG*(1-CLUTCH AVG)]/CLUTCH AB + [NONCLUTCHAVG*(1-NONCLUTCH AVG)]/NONCLUTCH AB}
(FROM PETE PALMER, BY THE NUMBERS 3/90. He called it a “pooled” standard deviation)
In a normal distribution, 5% of the players would have a Z-score of at least +1.96 or less than –1.96.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Ubaldo Jimenez Home And Away, 2009-2011
I guess he is the subject of trade rumors. Here are some of his numbers
Home:
IP-265.67
H-254
HR-20
BB-103
SO-233
ERA-3.79
H/9IP-8.60
Away:
IP-291
H-201
HR-13
BB-119
SO-287
ERA-2.94
H/9IP-6.22
So his ERA has been about .85 better on the road. But, of course, home ERA is usually better. Here are the differentials the last three years for all of baseball: .46-.54-.24.
Home:
IP-265.67
H-254
HR-20
BB-103
SO-233
ERA-3.79
H/9IP-8.60
Away:
IP-291
H-201
HR-13
BB-119
SO-287
ERA-2.94
H/9IP-6.22
So his ERA has been about .85 better on the road. But, of course, home ERA is usually better. Here are the differentials the last three years for all of baseball: .46-.54-.24.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Not all no-decisions are created equal: Evaluating a little-examined pseudo statistic
That was the title of Gilbert Martinez's presentation at the recent SABR convention. Gilbert is president of the Rogers Hornsby Chapter of SABR in Austin, TX.
Click here to get the power point slides. It has alot of neat graphs.
Here is the abstract:
Click here to get the power point slides. It has alot of neat graphs.
Here is the abstract:
"In 2009, two pitchers recorded 16 no-decisions. The Houston Astros’ Roy Oswalt set a franchise record for no-decisions and was 8-6 in 30 starts. The L.A. Dodgers’ Randy Wolf was 11-7 in 34 starts.
Research shows that 2011 Hall of Fame Inductee Bert Blyleven holds the record for most no-decisions in a season with 20 after a 12-5 record in 37 starts with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1979.
While Oswalt and Wolf didn’t set a record, they were among the most in a single season and they did receive some attention by the media and fans. Little analysis has been done to understand the nature of these no-decisions. Statistics abound in baseball, and especially with pitchers. Statistics capture games started, wins, losses, saves, earned run average, pitch counts, walks, hit batsmen, ground-ball outs, fly-ball outs, innings pitched, homeruns given up, strikeouts per nine innings, and so on. This project will focus on starting pitchers and no-decisions recorded as a result of starting a game.
The purpose of this project is twofold: 1) to evaluate the most no-decisions by a starting pitcher in a single season and in a career and 2) to determine which pitchers with the most no-decisions were unlucky or lucky.
A pitcher would be considered unlucky if he leaves the game with a lead, only to watch his team’s bullpen lose the game in the late innings. This would be considered a positive no-decision (positive because it suggests an effective pitcher). Likewise, a lucky pitcher would be one who leaves the game with his team trailing, only to be bailed out by a potent offense, thereby taking him off the hook. This would be considered a negative no-decision. If he leaves with the game tied, this would be a neutral no-decision.
These no-decisions are not equal, and some pitchers are more valuable to their teams than others. In other words, some pitchers saddled with numerous no-decisions but who have more positive no-decisions than negative no-decisions are more worthy of our sympathy than those with more negative no-decisions compared to positive no-decisions.
Initial review of the literature shows little on this subject, so it appears this research project would contribute to our understanding of lucky and unlucky pitchers in the context of no-decisions. In fact, this statistic is not readily recorded on Baseball-Reference.com.
The methodology includes running a formula in a pitchers database to determine no-decisions: (Games started) minus (wins + losses) = no-decisions. However, those results would need further review to eliminate no-decisions that come from relief appearances. The remaining results would be analyzed to determine the circumstances in which the pitcher was given the no-decision: Was his team leading or losing when he was removed? Was he lucky in receiving the no-decision or was he unlucky?
The result would be the number of positive, negative and neutral no-decisions, shedding new light on the pitcher’s effectiveness."
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Has Jake Peavy Had Bad Luck This Year?
His ERA is 5.19. The league average is 3.87. Yet here are his AVG-OBP-SLG allowed
.262-.281-.341
The league averages are .252-.319-.392
So he appears to be much better than the league average in OBP and SLG allowed.
He is getting hit pretty hard with runners on base (ROB). Here are his AVG-OBP-SLG allowed in those cases
.344-.342-.439
Now with runners in scoring position (RISP)
.370-.347-.508
It is not the case that he can't pitch in the clutch. For his entire career, his AVG-OBP-SLG are .233-.271-.336. With ROB, they are .235-.275-.313 and with RISP they are .240-.283-.303.
Fangraphs shows his fielding independent ERA at 3.06. That is a stat that tries to predict a pitcher's ERA just based on strikeouts, walks and HRs. His xFIP ERA is 3.49. That makes a further correction by giving all pitchers the same HR rate on flyballs (or something like that). They have an even more sophisticated stat called SIERA which projects him to have 3.57. Anyway you look at it, his actual ERA of 5.19 is very unlucky.
.262-.281-.341
The league averages are .252-.319-.392
So he appears to be much better than the league average in OBP and SLG allowed.
He is getting hit pretty hard with runners on base (ROB). Here are his AVG-OBP-SLG allowed in those cases
.344-.342-.439
Now with runners in scoring position (RISP)
.370-.347-.508
It is not the case that he can't pitch in the clutch. For his entire career, his AVG-OBP-SLG are .233-.271-.336. With ROB, they are .235-.275-.313 and with RISP they are .240-.283-.303.
Fangraphs shows his fielding independent ERA at 3.06. That is a stat that tries to predict a pitcher's ERA just based on strikeouts, walks and HRs. His xFIP ERA is 3.49. That makes a further correction by giving all pitchers the same HR rate on flyballs (or something like that). They have an even more sophisticated stat called SIERA which projects him to have 3.57. Anyway you look at it, his actual ERA of 5.19 is very unlucky.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Pitchers Duels That Turned Into Slugfests (and Vice Versa)
This is a guest post by Tom Ruane, based on a post to the SABR list.
While watching the two teams fail to score for most of the evening
during the recent SABR outing to Dodger Stadium, I got to wondering
about the highest scoring games that began with scoreless inning
streaks. Here is the list since 1918:
And here is the flipside, the most runs scored in a game that ended
with the longest scoreless streak:
Tom Ruane, a computer programmer in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., is a member of Retrosheet's board of directors. He has published articles in "The Baseball Research Journal" and "By The Numbers." He won SABR's highest honor, the Bob Davids Award, in 2009.
While watching the two teams fail to score for most of the evening
during the recent SABR outing to Dodger Stadium, I got to wondering
about the highest scoring games that began with scoreless inning
streaks. Here is the list since 1918:
And here is the flipside, the most runs scored in a game that ended
with the longest scoreless streak:
Tom Ruane, a computer programmer in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., is a member of Retrosheet's board of directors. He has published articles in "The Baseball Research Journal" and "By The Numbers." He won SABR's highest honor, the Bob Davids Award, in 2009.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
What Is Konerko Doing Differently? His OPS+ Is Up, His Strikeout Rate Is Down And So Is His GDP Rate
The table below shows these stats over the course of his career. Data from Baseball Reference.
These last two years his OPS+ has been well above anything he ever did before. He has his lowest strikeout rate in 8 years and his lowest GDP rate in 6 years (for strikeout rate it was K/PA with IBBs taken out-GDP rate is GDPs divided by opportunitites). He his making more contact which should make more GDPs a possibility but he is avoiding them more than in the past (see what I say below as to how his low 2005 GDP rate is another example of how lucky the Sox were that year).
The chart below shows Konerko's OPS+ over time.
A regression with OPS+ as the dependent variable and year as the independent variable yields an r-squared of .4 and the trend line is positive. He did not peak before 30 like most guys and then trend downwards
Now for the strikeout rate and the GDP rate.
Except for that wild fluctuation in the middle of his career, his GDP rate seems to be trending downward. He has always been slow but his GDP rate is not rising as he ages.
I think it is interesting that his GDP rate took such a big dip in 2005. He only grounded into 9 double plays that year. The year before it was 23 and the next year it was 25. Hitting into 10-15 fewer DPs must have really helped the Sox that year. This may be another way they were lucky that year. The Sox had to go down to the last week of the season before they clinched a playoff spot. It was not a sure thing. They beat their main competitor, the Indians something like 14 out of 19 that year and won a bunch of 1-run games that year against them. Konerko not hitting into DPs must have helped quite a bit. Click here to read about a bunch of other ways the Sox were lucky that year that I wrote about. For one, they got great years out of relievers Politte and Cotts who did not do much before or after that season.
These last two years his OPS+ has been well above anything he ever did before. He has his lowest strikeout rate in 8 years and his lowest GDP rate in 6 years (for strikeout rate it was K/PA with IBBs taken out-GDP rate is GDPs divided by opportunitites). He his making more contact which should make more GDPs a possibility but he is avoiding them more than in the past (see what I say below as to how his low 2005 GDP rate is another example of how lucky the Sox were that year).
The chart below shows Konerko's OPS+ over time.
A regression with OPS+ as the dependent variable and year as the independent variable yields an r-squared of .4 and the trend line is positive. He did not peak before 30 like most guys and then trend downwards
Now for the strikeout rate and the GDP rate.
Except for that wild fluctuation in the middle of his career, his GDP rate seems to be trending downward. He has always been slow but his GDP rate is not rising as he ages.
I think it is interesting that his GDP rate took such a big dip in 2005. He only grounded into 9 double plays that year. The year before it was 23 and the next year it was 25. Hitting into 10-15 fewer DPs must have really helped the Sox that year. This may be another way they were lucky that year. The Sox had to go down to the last week of the season before they clinched a playoff spot. It was not a sure thing. They beat their main competitor, the Indians something like 14 out of 19 that year and won a bunch of 1-run games that year against them. Konerko not hitting into DPs must have helped quite a bit. Click here to read about a bunch of other ways the Sox were lucky that year that I wrote about. For one, they got great years out of relievers Politte and Cotts who did not do much before or after that season.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
All-Star Game Oddity?
I wonder if this is not that strange. The first 3 NL pitchers used in the game are former ALers (Halladay, Lee, Clippard). The first 4 hits by the AL were by former NLers (Adrian Gonzalez, Bautista, Josh Hamilton, and Adrian Beltre). The first two hits by the NL were by former ALers (Beltran and Berkman).
With free agency, maybe something like this has happened before. Here are the former NLers who played on the AL team:
Adrian Gonzalez
Miguel Cabrera
Jose Bautista
Carlos Quentin
Josh Hamilton
Adrian Beltre
Paul Konerko
Chris Perez
Here are the former ALers who played on the NL team:
Brandon Phillips
Carlos Beltran
Lance Berkman
Matt Holliday
Scott Rolen
Roy Halladay
Cliff Lee
Tyler Clippard
Jair Jurrjens
With free agency, maybe something like this has happened before. Here are the former NLers who played on the AL team:
Adrian Gonzalez
Miguel Cabrera
Jose Bautista
Carlos Quentin
Josh Hamilton
Adrian Beltre
Paul Konerko
Chris Perez
Here are the former ALers who played on the NL team:
Brandon Phillips
Carlos Beltran
Lance Berkman
Matt Holliday
Scott Rolen
Roy Halladay
Cliff Lee
Tyler Clippard
Jair Jurrjens
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
If It's The Year Of The Pitcher It Is Even More The Year Of The Phillies Pitcher
You might have heard of these guys. Halladay. Hamels. Lee. Here is where they rank in WAR among NL pitchers this year:
1. Halladay (PHI) 4.9
2. Hamels (PHI) 4.4
3. Jurrjens (ATL) 4.2
4. Lee (PHI) 3.8
5. Kershaw (LAD) 3.2
Chacin (COL) 3.2
7. Cueto (CIN) 2.9
8. Cain (SFG) 2.8
Vogelsong (SFG) 2.8
Kennedy (ARI) 2.8
Hanson (ATL) 2.8
(data from Baseball Reference).
But even more impressive is that these three are in the top 5 of all players in the NL:
1. Kemp (LAD) 5.7
2. McCutchen (PIT) 5.1
3. Halladay (PHI) 4.6
4. Hamels (PHI) 4.5
5. Lee (PHI) 4.3
6. Braun (MIL) 4.2
7. Reyes (NYM) 4.1
8. Jurrjens (ATL) 3.9
9. Votto (CIN) 3.7
10. Kershaw (LAD) 3.6
The last NL team to have 3 pitchers in the top 5 in WAR among all players was the 1925 Reds. (Sean Forman found and sent me the list of all teams that had 3 or more in the top 10 just among pitchers and I went through those teams to see how they did among all players). Going through Baseball Reference year by year, it seems like 3 pitchers from one team in the top 10 in WAR among all players is very rare.
The 1966 Indians and the 1942 Tigers each had 5 in the top 10 among pitchers but none among all players.
The table below shows where these three Phillies pitchers rank in the NL in key stats so far this year.
Lee's 32nd in HR per 9 IP is in the top half of the 65 pitchers with 80+ IP. He gives up .79 HR per 9 IP while the league average is .877. Also note that the Phillies park gives up about 4% more HRs than average over the years 2008-10 (from the Bill James Handbook).
1. Halladay (PHI) 4.9
2. Hamels (PHI) 4.4
3. Jurrjens (ATL) 4.2
4. Lee (PHI) 3.8
5. Kershaw (LAD) 3.2
Chacin (COL) 3.2
7. Cueto (CIN) 2.9
8. Cain (SFG) 2.8
Vogelsong (SFG) 2.8
Kennedy (ARI) 2.8
Hanson (ATL) 2.8
(data from Baseball Reference).
But even more impressive is that these three are in the top 5 of all players in the NL:
1. Kemp (LAD) 5.7
2. McCutchen (PIT) 5.1
3. Halladay (PHI) 4.6
4. Hamels (PHI) 4.5
5. Lee (PHI) 4.3
6. Braun (MIL) 4.2
7. Reyes (NYM) 4.1
8. Jurrjens (ATL) 3.9
9. Votto (CIN) 3.7
10. Kershaw (LAD) 3.6
The last NL team to have 3 pitchers in the top 5 in WAR among all players was the 1925 Reds. (Sean Forman found and sent me the list of all teams that had 3 or more in the top 10 just among pitchers and I went through those teams to see how they did among all players). Going through Baseball Reference year by year, it seems like 3 pitchers from one team in the top 10 in WAR among all players is very rare.
The 1966 Indians and the 1942 Tigers each had 5 in the top 10 among pitchers but none among all players.
The table below shows where these three Phillies pitchers rank in the NL in key stats so far this year.
Lee's 32nd in HR per 9 IP is in the top half of the 65 pitchers with 80+ IP. He gives up .79 HR per 9 IP while the league average is .877. Also note that the Phillies park gives up about 4% more HRs than average over the years 2008-10 (from the Bill James Handbook).
Saturday, July 9, 2011
The art of fiction is dead-Again
Derek Jeter got his 3000th hit today, only the 28th player to do so. It was a HR, at home, on what looked like a beautiful afternoon in NY, 84 degrees according to Yahoo Sports. He also went 5-for-5, the first player ever to do so in the game he got his 3000th hit (according to mlb.com). Then he drove in the go-ahead and what proved to be winning run in the 8th inning. And it was against one of the other contenders in the AL East, the Tampa Rays.
Here is what the great sports writer Red Smith said about Bobby Thomson's pennant winning HR in 1951:
Here is what the great sports writer Red Smith said about Bobby Thomson's pennant winning HR in 1951:
"Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again"See Red Smith on Baseball at the excellent Baseball Almanac site.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Angels Call Up Mike Trout
Alot of people are mentioning this on blogs. David Pinto mentioned that he is right up there with Bryce Harper as the top prospect in baseball.
Click here to see his minor league stats
Click here to see the Texas League batting leaders
You can sort them by different stats. He is 7th in the league in OPS. He is 2nd in SBs with 28 (just 3 behind the leader) and has only been caught 8 times. He is 5th in AVG and 4th in OBP. 8th in SLG. 2nd in triples (he bats right-handed). He will turn 20 on Aug. 7. Pretty impressive showing at AA.
If you look at all of his minor league stats (including 2009 and 2010) you see lots of 3Bs, SBs (with good percentages) and high OBPs. He hits alot better in away games this year. Does anyone know if he plays in a tough hitter's park?
Wikipedia says "...Trout was named 2010 J.G. Taylor Spink Award as the Topps/Minor League Player of the Year. At just 19 years and two months, Trout is the youngest player ever to win this award."
Click here to see his minor league stats
Click here to see the Texas League batting leaders
You can sort them by different stats. He is 7th in the league in OPS. He is 2nd in SBs with 28 (just 3 behind the leader) and has only been caught 8 times. He is 5th in AVG and 4th in OBP. 8th in SLG. 2nd in triples (he bats right-handed). He will turn 20 on Aug. 7. Pretty impressive showing at AA.
If you look at all of his minor league stats (including 2009 and 2010) you see lots of 3Bs, SBs (with good percentages) and high OBPs. He hits alot better in away games this year. Does anyone know if he plays in a tough hitter's park?
Wikipedia says "...Trout was named 2010 J.G. Taylor Spink Award as the Topps/Minor League Player of the Year. At just 19 years and two months, Trout is the youngest player ever to win this award."
Hitting Picks Up In July, But Only Slightly
Here are the OPS levels in the NL by month starting in April:
.709
.702
.699
.714
For the whole season, the NL has .704. For all of last year it was .723. In the first half it was .729.
Now the AL:
.713
.720
.719
.732
For the whole season, the AL has .719. For all of last year it was .734. In the first half it was .741.
So quite a drop off for both leagues this year.
.709
.702
.699
.714
For the whole season, the NL has .704. For all of last year it was .723. In the first half it was .729.
Now the AL:
.713
.720
.719
.732
For the whole season, the AL has .719. For all of last year it was .734. In the first half it was .741.
So quite a drop off for both leagues this year.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Yes, It Is Easy To Explain Why McCutchen Did Not Make The All-Star Team
It seems like alot of people are wondering how a guy who is 2nd in WAR in the NL at both Baseball Reference and Fangraphs is not on the team. Here is why:
1. His value comes from non-traditional stats. He has a .389 OBP and 1.3 in defensive WAR (2nd in the league). The sabermetric revolution has only had so much influence and alot of people in baseball, including players and managers, don't know about them or don't think they are useful.
2. He has done poorly against the Giants, who are managed by the guy who picks the reserves, Bruce Bochy. The Giants have only played the Pirates 3 times this year, back in late April and McCutchen went 0 for 13. He has only a .180 career AVG with just 1 HR in 61 ABs against the Giants. So maybe that is why Bochy does not recognize how good he is.
3. He is not a standout in the traditional stats. McCutchen is not in the top 10 in HRs, RBIs or AVG or SBs. He has not won a Gold Glove and is only in his 3rd year. He has never batted .300, hit 30 HRs nor had 100 RBIs. So I guess he just does not have a great reputation (even though he should).
4. He also got off to a slow start, batting just .219 in April. Then he hit .275 in May and .347 in June (not witnessed by Bochy). So his name has not been on people's minds the whole season.
I could throw in that he plays on a team in a small market that has not had a winning season since 1992 and they have finished last in their division the last 4 years.
1. His value comes from non-traditional stats. He has a .389 OBP and 1.3 in defensive WAR (2nd in the league). The sabermetric revolution has only had so much influence and alot of people in baseball, including players and managers, don't know about them or don't think they are useful.
2. He has done poorly against the Giants, who are managed by the guy who picks the reserves, Bruce Bochy. The Giants have only played the Pirates 3 times this year, back in late April and McCutchen went 0 for 13. He has only a .180 career AVG with just 1 HR in 61 ABs against the Giants. So maybe that is why Bochy does not recognize how good he is.
3. He is not a standout in the traditional stats. McCutchen is not in the top 10 in HRs, RBIs or AVG or SBs. He has not won a Gold Glove and is only in his 3rd year. He has never batted .300, hit 30 HRs nor had 100 RBIs. So I guess he just does not have a great reputation (even though he should).
4. He also got off to a slow start, batting just .219 in April. Then he hit .275 in May and .347 in June (not witnessed by Bochy). So his name has not been on people's minds the whole season.
I could throw in that he plays on a team in a small market that has not had a winning season since 1992 and they have finished last in their division the last 4 years.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Is AROD In Serious Decline This Year?
Last week on the ESPN2 show "First Take," one of the commentators said something like "AROD is in serious decline this year." Those may not have been the exact words, but it was words to that effect.
Well, AROD has a 131 OPS+ this year, while last year it was 123. Even in 2009, it was 138, so this year is not too much worse than that. He did have 176 in 2007 and 150 in 2008. So any decline he had was before this year. And he is 35 (and turns 36 on 7-27). So this is not surprising.
He is also 7th in the league in WAR and the last year he was in the top 10 was in 2008. So the commentators of "First Take" could just as easily have said he was having a good comeback season. But they never mentioned WAR or OPS or any stats like that.
This brings me to my point: There is still not much use of sabermetrics in the mainstream media. Some complain about the new statistics ruining baseball. But the mass media, which alot more people are exposed to than stats blogs, keeps saying things that don't make sabermetric sense. So no, the new stats are not taking over and ruining baseball. They have made only a slight dent.
When the show discussed who the Yankees MVP was so far this year, they said Mark Teixeira. But here are Yankee leaders in WAR:
Curtis Granderson 3.8
Alex Rodriguez 3.3
Brett Gardner 2.8
Robinson Cano 2.5
Nick Swisher 2.5
Mark Teixeira 1.8
Teixeira is 2nd on the team in OPS+. But Granderson has 157.
Another example of this is Hawk Harrelson on the game today talking about how the leadoff walk always scores. But no one on national TV or a super station like WGN ever mentions the work of Retrosheet head Dave Smith who showed that leadoff walks only score about as often as leadoff singles. See Leadoff walks.
Well, AROD has a 131 OPS+ this year, while last year it was 123. Even in 2009, it was 138, so this year is not too much worse than that. He did have 176 in 2007 and 150 in 2008. So any decline he had was before this year. And he is 35 (and turns 36 on 7-27). So this is not surprising.
He is also 7th in the league in WAR and the last year he was in the top 10 was in 2008. So the commentators of "First Take" could just as easily have said he was having a good comeback season. But they never mentioned WAR or OPS or any stats like that.
This brings me to my point: There is still not much use of sabermetrics in the mainstream media. Some complain about the new statistics ruining baseball. But the mass media, which alot more people are exposed to than stats blogs, keeps saying things that don't make sabermetric sense. So no, the new stats are not taking over and ruining baseball. They have made only a slight dent.
When the show discussed who the Yankees MVP was so far this year, they said Mark Teixeira. But here are Yankee leaders in WAR:
Curtis Granderson 3.8
Alex Rodriguez 3.3
Brett Gardner 2.8
Robinson Cano 2.5
Nick Swisher 2.5
Mark Teixeira 1.8
Teixeira is 2nd on the team in OPS+. But Granderson has 157.
Another example of this is Hawk Harrelson on the game today talking about how the leadoff walk always scores. But no one on national TV or a super station like WGN ever mentions the work of Retrosheet head Dave Smith who showed that leadoff walks only score about as often as leadoff singles. See Leadoff walks.
Great Post By Rich Lederer At Baseball Analysts
Rich has been cited for showing "you can move around the traditional gatekeepers and centers of power" because of his great campaign to get Bert Blyleven elected to the Hall of Fame. See The Declaration of Independents by Rich Lederer.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Phillies Send Starting Pitcher To Minors-His ERA Was Too High At 2.20
See Worley, Phils beat Marlins 1-0.
One anonymous source said "The guy clearly was not pulling his weight." Another said "We couldn't allow him to put our season in jeopardy."
If you look at the numbers I posted yesterday, 3 of the top 7 in WAR in the NL were Phillies pitchers (that is among everyone, position players included). This has got to be very rare.
One anonymous source said "The guy clearly was not pulling his weight." Another said "We couldn't allow him to put our season in jeopardy."
If you look at the numbers I posted yesterday, 3 of the top 7 in WAR in the NL were Phillies pitchers (that is among everyone, position players included). This has got to be very rare.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Player Tied For NL Lead In WAR Not On The All-Star Team
Bill Gilbert pointed this out to me. Here are the leaders from Baseball Reference:
1. McCutchen (PIT) 5.1
Kemp (LAD) 5.1
3. Halladay (PHI) 4.6
4. Braun (MIL) 4.3
5. Reyes (NYM) 4.2
6. Hamels (PHI) 4.0
7. Lee (PHI) 3.8
8. Jurrjens (ATL) 3.7
9. Bourn (HOU) 3.5
10. Kershaw (LAD) 3.4
At Fangraphs, McCutchen is 2nd to Jose Reyes. Anyone know how often this happens, that the leader in WAR does not make the All-star team?
The Pirates have one all-star, Hanrahan, a reliever. Maybe Bochy thought that is what the NL needed. But McCutchen is having a better year than Beltran (not to pick on him) at least according to WAR, 5.1-2.7. And McCutchen has been good the last two years and had more WAR last year than Beltran. The Mets have at least one all-star anyway, Reyes. So McCutchen could have easily been picked within the current rules.
McCutchen gets alot of his value from a high OBP (.393) and his defensive WAR (1.4), which is 2nd in the league. The Giants have only played the Pirates 3 times this year, back in late April and McCutchen went 0 for 13. He has only a .180 career AVG with just 1 HR in 61 ABs against the Giants. So maybe that is why Bochy does not recognize how good he is.
McCutchen is not in the top 10 in HRs, RBIs or AVG. He has not won a Gold Glove and is only in his 3rd year. He has never batted .300, hit 30 HRs nor had 100 RBIs. So I guess he just does not have a great reputation.
His Baseball Reference page shows him with 4.0 WAR last year, which is very good. Yet when I used the Play Index to find the leaders in WAR, it shows him with just 3.7 (good for 26th) among position players.
He also got off to a slow start, batting just .219 in April. Then he hit .275 in May and .347 in June. He is 7th in OPS+ at 150.
1. McCutchen (PIT) 5.1
Kemp (LAD) 5.1
3. Halladay (PHI) 4.6
4. Braun (MIL) 4.3
5. Reyes (NYM) 4.2
6. Hamels (PHI) 4.0
7. Lee (PHI) 3.8
8. Jurrjens (ATL) 3.7
9. Bourn (HOU) 3.5
10. Kershaw (LAD) 3.4
At Fangraphs, McCutchen is 2nd to Jose Reyes. Anyone know how often this happens, that the leader in WAR does not make the All-star team?
The Pirates have one all-star, Hanrahan, a reliever. Maybe Bochy thought that is what the NL needed. But McCutchen is having a better year than Beltran (not to pick on him) at least according to WAR, 5.1-2.7. And McCutchen has been good the last two years and had more WAR last year than Beltran. The Mets have at least one all-star anyway, Reyes. So McCutchen could have easily been picked within the current rules.
McCutchen gets alot of his value from a high OBP (.393) and his defensive WAR (1.4), which is 2nd in the league. The Giants have only played the Pirates 3 times this year, back in late April and McCutchen went 0 for 13. He has only a .180 career AVG with just 1 HR in 61 ABs against the Giants. So maybe that is why Bochy does not recognize how good he is.
McCutchen is not in the top 10 in HRs, RBIs or AVG. He has not won a Gold Glove and is only in his 3rd year. He has never batted .300, hit 30 HRs nor had 100 RBIs. So I guess he just does not have a great reputation.
His Baseball Reference page shows him with 4.0 WAR last year, which is very good. Yet when I used the Play Index to find the leaders in WAR, it shows him with just 3.7 (good for 26th) among position players.
He also got off to a slow start, batting just .219 in April. Then he hit .275 in May and .347 in June. He is 7th in OPS+ at 150.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
White Sox 31-20 Since Starting 11-22
They had the worst record in baseball on May 6 at 11-22. They were the only team below .400 at that point.
In April, they had a batting OPS of .664 while allowing .739. In May it was .754/.695 and June was .721/.659. So after a bad
-.075 In April, they were a positive .059 and .062 the last two months.
My rough formula for winning pct is
Pct = .5 + 1.25*OPSDIFF
So they should have been .575 over May and June while they were actually 30-24 or .556. A .575 pct would give them 31 wins.
Through May 6, they were outscored 158-123, slightly more than 1 run per game. Since then, including beating the Cubs today 1-0, they have outscored their opponents 219-186. That gives them a Pythagorean winning pct of .581 while 31-20 is .608.
In April, they had a batting OPS of .664 while allowing .739. In May it was .754/.695 and June was .721/.659. So after a bad
-.075 In April, they were a positive .059 and .062 the last two months.
My rough formula for winning pct is
Pct = .5 + 1.25*OPSDIFF
So they should have been .575 over May and June while they were actually 30-24 or .556. A .575 pct would give them 31 wins.
Through May 6, they were outscored 158-123, slightly more than 1 run per game. Since then, including beating the Cubs today 1-0, they have outscored their opponents 219-186. That gives them a Pythagorean winning pct of .581 while 31-20 is .608.
So Far, Phil Humber Has Resembled Greg Maddux
A pleasant surprise for the White Sox, although it is only for half a season. Humber is not striking out alot of guys, but he is not walking many and he is not giving up many HRs. That is what Maddux did. Humber stats are close to Maddux's career averages.
The table below shows how Humber this year compares to Maddux's career numbers. Of course, Maddux pitched until he was 42. But even if I only went up to age 37, Humber would still be close and Maddux had a 143 ERA+, just a bit better than what Humber has this year.
The table below shows how Humber this year compares to Maddux's career numbers. Of course, Maddux pitched until he was 42. But even if I only went up to age 37, Humber would still be close and Maddux had a 143 ERA+, just a bit better than what Humber has this year.
Friday, July 1, 2011
This Year's Low Scoring In Recent Historical Perspective
The NL OPS in each of the first 3 months has been: .709-.702-.699. The declines seem as surpising as the low levels. And in June the NL has had some games with the DH. So it might have been lower without the inter-league games. The AL has gone .713-.720-.719.
David Pinto of "Baseball Musings" had a good post a couple of days ago about hitting this year vs. last year. See Halfway Point. He shows how HRs, hits, etc. have fallen.
The graph below shows AL runs per game from 1960-2011
It is pretty clear that this year is pretty low (4.26). The last time the AL was lower than 4.26 was in 1981, when it was 4.07. That was a strike year. Taking that out, we need to go back to 1978, when the average was 4.2.
The graph below shows NL runs per game from 1960-2011
The average this year is 4.1. The last time it was lower was in 1992 when it was 3.88.
David Pinto of "Baseball Musings" had a good post a couple of days ago about hitting this year vs. last year. See Halfway Point. He shows how HRs, hits, etc. have fallen.
The graph below shows AL runs per game from 1960-2011
It is pretty clear that this year is pretty low (4.26). The last time the AL was lower than 4.26 was in 1981, when it was 4.07. That was a strike year. Taking that out, we need to go back to 1978, when the average was 4.2.
The graph below shows NL runs per game from 1960-2011
The average this year is 4.1. The last time it was lower was in 1992 when it was 3.88.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
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,
Click here to read the story,
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
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.From Baseball Think Factory, quoting an article by Mike Silva.
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.”
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).
Thursday, June 23, 2011
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.
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.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
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
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
Friday, June 10, 2011
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.
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.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
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.
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.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, May 30, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, May 23, 2011
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.
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.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
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
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
Sunday, May 15, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, May 6, 2011
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:
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?)
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?)
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, April 29, 2011
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)
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)
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
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):
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):
Sunday, April 17, 2011
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)
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)
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
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.
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.
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