Obscure Stats, Take II
Posted: September 29th, 2008 | Filed under: Baseball | 35 Comments »
I know what you are wondering: How many players since the end of Deadball have had an OPS+ of 5 or less?
Well, it depends on how many plate appearances you are talking about. Quickly, you know OPS represents on-base percentage plus slugging, and OPS+ measures a player against everyone else in the league (taking ballpark effects into consideration). A 100 OPS+ is precisely average. That means, generally speaking, that a 5 OPS+ represents a player who is 20 times worse than average.
If you start with a 100 plate appearance baseline, there have been 211 players with a 5-or-below OPS+, because at that low threshold you get pitchers in there. If you exclude pitchers, the number drops to 31, from the astonishing Andy Anderson in 1949 to the Zen-like Ben Zobriat.
If you make it 150 plate appearances, you are down to six players. Their names:
1. Maury Wills, 1972. He was 39 years old then and his speed was gone. Maury Wills without speed did not make for a pretty picture. He hit .129/.167/.190 in 152 plate appearances.
2. Pat Rockett was a 23-year-old shortstop in Atlanta in 1978. He had been a pretty big prospect — he was the 10th overall pick in the 1973 draft and was picked just before Lee Mazzilli (and WAY ahead of Fred Lynn*). He hit .141/.155/.212 in 157 plate appearances — that’s a 0 OPS+ if you are scoring at home. He was traded to Toronto at the end of the year and never played in another Major League game.
*I had forgotten that Lynn was a late second round pick by Boston in 1973 — you have to think that if baseball drafts were scrutinized like football drafts, somebody would have gotten KILLED for passing on Fred Lynn twice. I mean, Rod Dedeaux said many times that Lynn was the best athlete he ever had at USC. The guy was a dominant baseball player on a team that won three straight college World Series. He was on the USC football team. He was a brilliant center fielder with power potential … So, you have to ask, WHAT THE HELL WERE SCOUTS LOOKING AT THEN? The Royals, for instance, took high school pitcher Lew Olsen AND high school catcher Brian Trifiolis. The Indians took high school infielder Glenn Tufts and college infielder Tom McMillen. The Rangers famously took pitcher David Clyde and not as famously took another pitcher Richard Schubert.
There are thousands of cases, of course, of teams making terrible draft choices, but looking back I don’t understand this one. I assume Lynn was the most famous college player in America (maybe it was Dave Winfield, but Lynn had to be right up there) and teams just refused to take him. And Lynn was obviously as advanced as anyone — the next year he was called up to the big leagues and hit .419 in 50 plate appearances. And the year after that he was the Rookie of the Year and MVP.
3. Tony Martinez was a 23-year-old shortstop from Cuba. And he had the misfortune of coming up to Cleveland in 1963, when pitchers absolutely dominated the American League. To give you an idea — the average batting average in 1963 was .247 and the average on-base percentage was .312. Tony Martinez was much worse than that. He hit .156/.184/.184 in 151 plate appearances, a 4 OPS+. He played in 30 more games.
4. Bob Didier was a 21-year-old catcher in Atlanta in 1970, and he he hit .149/.210/.173. Didier managed to stick around for four more years — he actually played five games for the 1975 Red Sox — and he managed to pull off the rare catcher’s feat of hitting four triples in his career but zero home runs.*
*It’s actually not nearly as rare as I expected — 21 catchers in baseball history have hit zero home runs but hit four or more triples. Benny Bengough from Niagara Falls and Paddy Livingston from my hometown of Cleveland both hit 12 triples in their careers bur zero home runs.
5. The aforementioned Andy Anderson in 1949 hit .125/.207/.169 in 1949. He played a little short, a little third base and a little second base for the St. Louis Browns. And he is the only baseball player to share names with the drummer for the Cure.
OK, so that makes five. Obviously, you already know the sixth. But to make the point … our guy is the ONLY player since Deadball to get 200 plate appearances and have a sub-5 OPS+.
He is, of course, Tony Pena, who actually hit .333 in his last four games (3 for 9) to improve his OPS+ to 4. For the season, Pena hit .169/.189/.209 with 4 doubles, 1 triple, 1 homer in 235 plate appearances. It really was an epic year, and you have to wonder what the future holds.
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Let’s not forget TPJ’s intentional walk… I’m sure John Gibbons doesn’t.
Who intentionally walked him? And who gave up the home run?
This is oddly satisfying to read. You don’t even have to know advanced stats like OPS+ to realize TPJ is a black hole. Everyone can tell.
Pena hit his lone homer off that world-renowned hurler for the Baltimore Orioles, Garrett Olson. Yes, the very same Garrett Olson with the 6.87 career ERA and 65 career ERA+.
Sometimes the irresistable force and the immoveable object really do meet.
That sums up what I see wrong with Royals management/scouting/talent evaluation.
They pitched Bannister way more than they should.
They gave Pena Jr way too many plate appearances.
Oh, but this isn’t just for 2008, this is their style the past decade. Check this out (I’m sure there’s more but I didn’t have time to really check long)
Bannister is the only pitcher this year to be given 180 innings to pitch, with an ERA over 4.00… and he was almost 2 runs over 4.
In 2004, Darrell May (another Royal), was given 180 innings to show he was a 5.61 ERA pitcher. And he was the only pitcher with that many innings.
In 2002, Jeff Suppan (another Royal) had a 5.32 ERA and was given over 200 innings to prove he could give up that many runs.
In 2001, Jeff Suppan (he was a Royal that year too) had a 4.49 ERA over 200+ IP.
In 2000, Jeff Suppan (yes, a Royal then too) had a 4.94 ERA over 200+ IP. He wasn’t alone, as Mac Suzuki threw 180+ IP with an ERA over 4. Wait, Mac Suzuki was a Royal too.
In 1999, Jeff Suppan… 4.51 over 200+
In 1998, Pat Rapp… 5.30 over 188 1/3
…yeah, the Royals like to give a ton of innings to pitchers that just won’t get it done.
And speaking of obscure stats, the aforementioned Garrett Olson has a higher career OPS+ (53) than Tony Pena Jr. (47).
…While Pena, of course, has a much better career ERA+ (infinity – it can’t be calculated) than Olson.
Somewhere Jayson Stark is jotting all of this down.
Exactly. I still don’t know why I was awake at that hour (or why I didn’t tune out on my hometown Tigers sooner in the season), but I will vividly remember Tony Pena reincarnating himself as Carlos Marmol for an inning.
If the Royals are smart, they should move Soria to the rotation and make Pena their 2009 closer
I know you said it already Joe, but in all seriousness, someone in the organization needs to make TPJ understand that his only future in baseball is as a pitcher. Someone needs to make him give that a shot. It might be a very long shot, but at least there’s a possibility that he could become a useful pitcher. There is no possibility of him becoming a useful position player.
Given the choise between slim odds and no odds, he may as well opt for slim odds.
Devon:
And the Royals gave over 400 plate appearances to the modern Pete LaCock (Ross Gload) and let Ryan Shealy languish in Omaha all year (.301/.354/.603 since his callup at the end of August).
Now, we don’t know for sure what would have happened, but Aviles and Shealy at SS and IB all season and the Royals might have been a .500 team.
TPJ with -24.9 VORP in just 235 PAs. That’s horrible. The badness of Punto, 2007, was -27.1, but he got 536 plate appearances to “compile” that total. (What kind of manager would ever trot somebody like that out there for that many plate appearances???)
But, with regards to TPJ, that’s almost a tilt on the VORP. Projected out to 600 PAs, thats almost a -64 VORP. Does a replacement level shortstop even produce 64 runs in 600 PAs? It appears that replacement level for a team of hitters was about 650 runs this year in the AL. Divide that by 9 and you have 72 runs per player. Of course, there are lineup effects (guys at the top appear more than guys on the bottom), but Justin Morneau played every game and had 709 PAs. So, what, 650 PAs? At 650 PAs, Pena is at -69 VORP. Since SS is probably behind only 2B and C in terms of position adjustment, I think it’s probable that Pena’s VORP is saying that he was worth less than zero runs. Tilt! He broke the formula.
(Incidentally, the tilt idea came to me in 2006 when evaluating the Twins after the month of April. At that point, Rondell White had a projected VORP of -113.25. Tilt!)
Just *look* at the baseball-reference.com page. That *4* sticks so far out there, that . . . I don’t know what, but it sticks far out there.
4.
That’s just plain criminal. The Royals should be relegated, EPL style, just for that . . .
While on B-R this morning, I couldn’t help but notice that TPJ finished with identical OPS+ and GDP numbers. There’s nothing really significant about that, of course, but it does underline the point about giving too many ABs to an unproductive hitter. It’s tough to ground into 4 DPs unless you get up to the plate more than occasionally …
So everyone’s clear cut MVP favourite in the NL is obviously Albert Pujols, but since voters perfer play off teams how come Sabathia is not getting more support from MVP voters. Now i know no one likes to give a pitcher an MVP vote but who has been more valuable down the stretch run? Pitching 3 games in 9 days takes serious balls, especially considering he is only viewed as a rental player for the Brewers. Not only has he taken the mound on three days rest he has thrown gems the entire time, well to be fair he would have a historically great season had he been with the Brew Crew all year long. Anyways i am actually writing something about this right now so i dont want to give it all away but i am reaching out to the voters. If you are not going to vote for Pujols who deserves to win please done vote for Manny or Howard, Sabathia has been far more valuable to his team.
The intentional walk came on April 25 against the Blue Jays. The Royals, specifically Leo Nunez, had just blown a fine start by Greinke in the top of the 8th, by giving up 3 runs and were down 4-2. They rallied against A. J. Burnett and then Scott Downs and were leading 5-4 with Gload on Third and Buck on 2nd with one out when TPJr. came up. John Gibbons elected to walk the RH hitting TPJr. and have Downs pitch to LH hitting DeJesus. DeJesus singled, scoring 2 runs. Then Callypso followed with a single, scoring TPJr. Jason Frasor came in and got the final 2 outs.
On August 10th, Tony Pena, Jr. had a batting average of .157 and had not recorded a hit since July 17th. Inserted as a pinch runner in the bottom of the 8th against the Minnesota Twins, he scored one of two runs that inning to tie the game 4-4. In the 12th inning he singled to drive in the winning run, his second hit of the game and the first walk-off hit of his career. That turnaround loss (and trust me, I know it was just one of many since the All Star break) could very well prove to be the difference between the Twins winning the AL Central this year or playing golf in October. So despite having historically bad offensive statistics for the year, any Twins fan will tell you that his uncharacteristic peformance in that one game alone is why Tony Pena, Jr. truly sucks.
Pena sucked, but Joe, did you know he somehow managed to finish in a tie for 8th on the team in the unoffical stat “GWRBI”? Somehow, the dude managed to amass 4 GWRBIs during this completly dreadful season. I know it means nothing, but sorta fascinating never-the-less.
Devon — Jeff Suppan does not help your case. In three of the four years you cite he was an above average pitcher in context to the league. There was a lot of offense at the turn of the century. The rest of the examples aren’t too bad.
That said, nobody was being held back at Bannister’s expense this year. And given what he did last year I think he was entitled to most of the innings this year.
Mike Williams,
Here’s the question: How many players with 200+ PAs had fewer GWBRI?
Or, we can look at the ratio of PA to GWRBI.
Care to make a bet?
I work with Bob Didier’s son. As he tells it, the only reason he got called up was to catch Niekro’s knuckler. Looking at Retrosheet, this seems to hold up.
“I know what you are wondering: How many players since the end of Deadball have had an OPS+ of 5 or less?”
Actually I was NOT thinking that, but this was an interesting column nonetheless.
Ben Zobrist, he of the 4 OPS+ in 2007, is apparently married to an extremely attractive Christian rock singer: http://www.raysindex.com/2007/02/benny-boo-zobrists-wife-would-like-to.html
This is not, strictly-speaking, a baseball point. But it does place OPS+ into perspective.
Hey Joe is there any way we could get a link to your profile and blog on SI.com? I can’t find it anyway. I am also, apparently, inept and the internet.
So, I voted for Sabathia, sorry, I did. The Brewers made the on the last day, after the team they were tied with lost. I know Lincecum put up unbelievable numbers, possibly one of the closest times we’ll see someone put up a year like Carlton in ‘72 any time soon, BUT Sabathia pitched 4 games in the last 12 days (yes, he only went 2-2 but he won the last 2). He finished t-3 in the AL in CG, led the NL with 7, 10 overall to lead MLB. He led both leagues in shutouts. Combine his totals he’s 2nd in K’s first in IP. He pitched in 17 games w/Milwaukee and the Brewers were 14-3. He pitched 130.2 out of 153 innings for the Brewers saving their bullpen, which was not a strong suit for the team. You know maybe Jeremy is right, since he pitched only a half season that’s not CY material, but compare where they were or would or could be to where they are, he’s the MVP. (Excepting Albert of course)
The Brewers made the playoffs (dummy)
The interesting part about Sabathia’s Sunday afternoon is that it will now completely overshadow Santana’s Saturday afternoon. Not complaining, as i love to see those loveable Mets “personalities” suffer, but just interesting how 24 hours can change everything. Otherwise we would be getting tons of Santana arguments…….. i just don’t think there should be that much stock in the NL Wild Card winner as far a determinant for MVP. If your going to use that criterion (winning), shouldn’t you choose a player on a truly dominant team?
Everyone needs to step back and settle down on Ryan Shealy. Anyone remember two years ago? Shealy got called up, hit really well in September and then fell flat on his face the next year. All of his stats are AAA and September numbers. Sorry, but those do not translate into regular season. I hope he can keep it going and do well for the Royals next year, but I am waiting to see it before I get too excited.
I still can’t stop laughing at Tony Pena bobblehead night.
Mike:
I respectfully disagree with your statements about Shealy. He had more ABs in 2006 than 2007 and there is really no reason to think that his ABs from about 8/1/2006 on are less reflective of his ability than his ABs in April and May, 2007. Given the September ABs this year, I think I would certainly think of him as a good possibility at 1B next year.
I do know and I knew before he did what he did this year, that Ross Gload does not have the ability to hit like you need a 1Bman to hit in the major leagues. Thus, it baffles me why the Royals wouldn’t at least see what Shealy could do earlier in the year. To paraphrase Dennis Green “Ross Gload is who we thought he was”
Good bounce back year for Ben Zobrist. 2008 OPS+ is 123. Better than Wills’ career best of +113.
Is it possible that the “tilt” examples cited above are evidence that OPS+ is fatally flawed, especially at the fringes (where it seems it typically applied)?
I voted Sabathia as MVP of NL ….predicated on the fact that without him the brewers are never even close to the playoffs …..which I perceive as the difference maker……No question pujols is the MOP……..but Valuable has a profoundly different level of consideration……Lincecum got my Cy vote…..body of work in the NL.
With all of the talk of Sabathia and Santana coming through when it matters most, I’m mildly surprised that no one has mentioned the September numbers put up by Ryan Howard: .352, .422, .852. He pounded 11 HR, 7 doubles, and 2 three-baggers this month. Howard had only managed 3 triples in his career prior to 2008, and 2 of those came in September, 2005!
Clearly, he’s no Albert Pujols when it comes to season long (Joe Morgan approved) consistency, but his candidacy is legitimate and merits mention. Alas, Howard’s piss poor performance out of the gate precludes him from sitting atop any respectable ballot. An April BA lower than that of Tony Pena Jr. is an unacceptable stain on a man’s resume.
The Tampa Bay chapter of the BBWAA would vote Tony Pena JR the MVP of the Kansas City Royals.
I have no idea where to post this comment but does anyone know where to vote in the Internet Baseball Awards? I thought it was hosted by Baseball Prospectus but I can find no mention of it on their website today?
thanks for any help.
Joe, great post as always but had to point out an error: you said you were dropping pitchers, so what’s TJP doing on your final list…