The Sweetland Awards
Posted: November 19th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 31 Comments »
Les Sweetland was a Depression Era lefty who pitched for the better part of five seasons and went 33-58 with a 6.10 career ERA. His strikeout-to-walk ratio was 159-357. Some of Sweetland’s lack of success was context driven — he pitched for terrible teams and spent much of his time pitching in the Baker Bowl, one of the worst pitching parks in baseball history. And then, a lot of it was that baseball people continuously seemed to believe he would pitch better the next time out.
We name our Anti-Cy Young Award after Les Sweetland.
The AL Les Sweetland Award: Jason Berken, Baltimore.
Sure, as you probably predicted, I originally had Kansas City’s Luke Hochevar as the Sweetland Award winner. And he probably deserves it — what a weird year he had. What a weird career. You probably know all this: Hochevar was picked by the Dodgers with the 40th overall pick in the 2005 Amateur Draft — he dropped that low, apparently, because everyone knew that he and his agent Scott Boras wanted big-time money. Then, unsurprisingly, he refused to sign with the Dodgers because, yes, he and his agent wanted big-time money. The twist came when he briefly appeared to fire his agent Scott Boras and he apparently signed with the Dodgers. Only then he went back to Boras and he did not sign with the Dodgers.
Then he went to pitch some Independent ball, and he went back in the draft, and then in a total shocker the Royals (who did not officially have a GM in charge at the time) made him the No. 1 overall pick in the 2006 Amateur Draft. Weird stuff. It didn’t help that the draft turned out to be talent rich: Others to go in the first round that year include — Tim Lincecum, Evan Longoria, Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, Chris Coughlan and Joba Chamberlain, among others.
The Royals sent Hochevar to Class AA, where he was utterly mediocre. This prompted a promotion to Class AAA, where he was no good. He was called to the big leagues in 2008 and he went 6-12 with a 5.51 ERA. The Royals saw progress.
But 2009 was weirder than all of that. It was a year when Hochevar shut down the Cincinnati Reds on 80 pitches, had a 13 strikeout-zero walk game against Texas, threw a nine-inning three hit gem against the White Sox and tossed seven scoreless innings against the Twins. Beyond that, he had six quality starts. So that’s ten good-to-great pitching performances. His other 15 however were ATROCIOUS. He was 2-11 with two no decisions, if you care about such things. His ERA was 10.82. He gave up 16 home runs in those 15 games. The league hit .376 against him in those games.
So, I had that all planned out … you can tell because I had all those paragraphs written (and, dammit, I wasn’t about to let them go to waste). But then I decided that I really could not give the award to Hochevar. These things are are becoming way too Royals-centric. The Royals were not even the worst team in the league.
So, I gave the league another look. And finally I took one look at Jason Berken’s season — it was remarkable. Berken was only a rookie, and there is reason to believe he still has a bright future ahead of him, maybe in the bullpen. So I’m not writing off his future by any means.
But this one year — wow. He made 24 starts in his rookie season. And I will now give you the best baseball stat you will see today.
The league — the whole league — hit .327/.384/.522 against him.
Basically, the whole league was an MVP candidate when Jason Berken was on the hill.
More: With runners in scoring position, the league hit .354/.415/.514. With the bases loaded, the league hit .529 against Jason Berken. So the league was also clutch against him.
Now, we all know that much of what happens to a pitcher is luck-related and defense-related. The league had a very high .344 batting average on balls hit in play. And despite Adam Jones’ Gold Glove — or perhaps because of it — many stats suggest that the Orioles were a below average defensive team. Then again — like with the McCloskey — no one wins a Sweetland Award alone.
The NL Les Sweetland Award: Manny Parra, Milwaukee
That poor Brewers pitching staff. Whatever bug hit one hit all of them. Jeff Suppan went 7-12 with a 5.29 ERA. Braden Looper won 14 games with a 5.22 ERA. David Bush had a 6.38 ERA. Tough times.
Manny Parra, though, had the toughest year of the bunch. Parra was probably best known coming into this year as the guy who got into that shoving match with Prince Fielder in 2008. He pitched pretty well in 2008 — but struggled mightily in 2009 though he did become the first pitcher since 1938 to win more than 10 games with an ERA higher than 6.25. He went 11-11 with a 6.36 ERA.
One thing I found interesting — and this is obviously just a small sample size thing but still I like it — is that Parra was 7-6 with a 5.97 ERA on four-days rest but 2-3 with a 10.52 on five-days rest. Maybe he’s the kind of guy who pitches better with the less rest you give him. Maybe if you pitched him on three-days rest he’d go 8-5 with a 4.74 ERA and go 7-1 with a 2.23 ERA on two-days rest. I just wish teams would try stuff.
And for you Phillies fans … yes, Brad Lidge was considered for the Sweetland. I have calculated my Closer+ stats, where I score pitchers by the kinds of saves they make (easy saves, regular saves, tough saves) and it shows what every other stat shows — Lidge had a dismal year. He blew two easy saves, which isn’t good (easy saves, basically, are like extra points — you have to make them) but more to the point he blew a baseball-leading NINE regular saves, which is epic. And he (thankfully) was not given a tough save all year.
Lidge absolutely fascinates me — he’s like the Frank Sinatra of closers. You know how Sinatra said that he had a “over acute capacity for sadness as well as elation.” Lidge has been either unreasonably great like he was in 2004, 2005 and 2008, or virtually unpitchable like he was last year and in 2006. The wild-swing makes him mysterious. I think he might my favorite pitcher in baseball, non-Brian Bannister Division.
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Circle me Bert
Circle me, Jose Lima!
Circle me Dave Burba!
How could the NL award not have gone to Ollie Perez? He made up two injuries to cover up his ineptitude!
So we’re overvaluing wins in the Sweetland as well as the Cy Young now?
Speaking of Dave Burba, the Columbus media never mentioned his name without preceding it with “former buckeye”, so to me his full name is Former Buckeye Dave Burba, not just “Dave Burba”
Well, to be fair to the Orioles defense, Berken was giving up line drives 24% of the time. It’s pretty hard to hold a league to a reasonable BABiP with that kind of hard hitting going on.
Orioles fans are basically taking the opinion of “Any publicity is good publicity” this offseason, so between this and all of the (mostly deserved) scorn towards Adam Jones’ Gold Glove, we’re pretty happy right now.
By VORP ascending:
Parra, -23.9
Andy Sonnanstine, -20.1
Chien-Ming Wang, -18.7
Lidge, -15.6
Fausto Carmona, -15.5
(Berken checks in at -11.5)
Now, I was all prepared to get up in your grill about how Fausto was the clear favorite in the AL, posting a fantabulous 79:70 K:BB ratio (a walk rate of more than 5 per 9 IP), a super 6.32 ERA, getting sent back to INSTRUCTIONAL LEAGUE because he was so preposterously bad, then coming back and pitching … about the same as he was. Carmona’s 2009 was truly terribibble.
I think you can rule out Wang, who was injured and only got 9 starts, although I admit, he packed a helluva lot of badness into those 9 starts (12 outings). The man had a 9.86 ERA, after all. But this award needs to go to someone who kept getting trotted out there even after it was apparent that he was No Fargin’ Good. Fausto got 24 starts and was still slinging in September; Sonnanstine only got 18 starts, but his 6.77 ERA is worse than Fausto’s and his 11.83 H/9 is clearly worse as well.
Therefore, I can accept an argument for Sonnanstine. But as a guy professionally obligated to watch each of Fausto Carmona’s starts, you’d have a hard time convincing me he wasn’t more “deserving.”
(Dishonorable mention: Raffy Perez: 54 appearances, 7.31 ERA, 12.38 H/9, 4.69 BB/9, 1.90 WHIP. Huzzah!)
And to think, Berken won his ML debut. I was there that night…he allowed 10 base runners in 5 innings, and somehow Toronto only scored twice off of him.
That was May 26. He didn’t get his second win until August 7, also against Toronto. That brought his record to 2-9. He would eventually drop to 2-11 before finishing the year on a 4-1 mini-run (with a 6.18 ERA in that span).
God and Dave Trembley willing, the kid will never peek at the O’s rotation again. We’ll see if he’s worth anything in middle relief some day. He was basically there because they were trying not to rush Tillman and Matusz, who were both in the rotation by August anyway. That’s what happens when your offseason pitching acquisitions are Mark Hendrickson, Rich Hill, and Adam Eaton.
This is great fun — I love studying the worst pitchers, even if they’re light-years ahead of anything any of us could do at the major-league level. (I’m looking at you, Kevin Jarvis.) But should this award be the Kid Carsey award? Sweetland only pitched 740 innings: I think Jay Hook and Mike Kekich and (of course) John Coleman were worse for longer. Carsey is easily the worst pitcher who somehow logged over 2000 innings, though. In his rookie year, the Washington Statesmen trotted the twenty-year-old Carsey out the mound for a team-leading 415 innings, and he dutifully led the AA in earned runs allowed, home runs allowed, hits allowed, and losses. Carsey also had the misfortune to toil for the 39-111 1898 St. Louis Browns and the 20-134 1899 Cleveland Spiders (the losingest and ninth-most losingest teams in history) as his career wound down, evidently doing his part to cement their infamy. Let’s give him his props!
No honorable mention for Chien Ming Wang?
Not counting 3 decent relief appearances, His season included:
1-6 W/L in 9 Starts, 34 IP, 11.38 ERA, 2.18 WHIP !
I remember hearing (but can’t confirm) that his first 3 starts were the worst to start a season EVER: 0-3 W/L, 6 IP, 34.50 ERA, 4.83WHIP !!!
Regardless of how over-exposed the yanks are, that deserves a mention.
As a Twins fan, I feel obligated to mention Francisco Liriano.
He was like your description of Hochevar, only it was inning-to-inning. He could strike out several batters in a row and maybe you think that he could have figured out how to pitch with a post-TJ arm, only to follow it up with a few walks and homers.
Oh no Poz, the best stat I heard all day was “Parra was 7-6 with a 5.97 ERA on four-days rest but 2-3 with a 10.52 on five-days rest” …that is hilariously funny in an age of 5 man rotations and tight pitch counts.
@6:
A guy in my office only refers to him as “Batting Practice Dave Burba”
It could be said that the Royals had both the league’s best and worst pitchers in their starting rotation.
Any chance of creating a Farnsworth-less award?
C’mon – It’s as obvious as Yankees fans are obnoxious — the Anti-Cy Young Award is the Anthony Young award!
Sweetland pitched during the height of what was probably the best hitter’s era ever, which explains how his 5.11 ERA in 1929 was 1% above the NL average. But that’s not much of an excuse for him, as he played for the Phillies, which had some truly awful pitching staffs at the time. Sometimes you keep trotting out a really bad pitcher because that’s all that you have, I guess.
@17: What’s amazing about Anthony Young is that in 1993… he had a 107 ERA+. I mean, that just boggles the mind; dude was 7% better than the average pitcher, and goes 1-16?
“Neutralized”, Young “should” have gone 11-12 over the 1992-1993 seasons, rather than the historically frightening 3-30 record he got saddled with. I always felt bad for the guy, ’cause he wasn’t close to as bad as that record suggested.
RE: Lidge – Lidge also gave up the 2nd longest HR of the year to Mark Reynolds: https://secure.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?mid=200907295799033&c_id=ari It came in the 9th inning of a 4-1 game after Lidge had given up a leadoff walk to Justin Upton (who stole 2nd) and was followed by a gorundout and 2 warning track flyballs to end the game. So there’s a save that went:
- walk
- stolen base
- 481 ft HR
- groundout
- 380 ft flyout
- 380 ft flyout
Quality save there. . . . .
These awards have given me more out-loud laughs than any columns all year long.
And the BR comments have been priceless; “Are you kidding me?” you had me laughing pretty hard about that Lidge outing.
Thank you for mentioning Manny Parra…I’ve had to watch the guy all year, and it’s been ridiculously frustrating…he nearly throws a complete game shutout vs. the Dodgers on around 100 pitches, then pitches one of those “the only way I can find the strike zone is to barrel it down the middle” games where he tosses 80 pitches in 3 innings. The guy clearly has the stuff to make it in the majors but he’s a total headcase who breaks down every time someone gets a bloop single on him. I think there should be an award for “pitcher you would least want to have on the mound on a big game”. Parra’s a shoe-in.
[...] Posnanski unveils his NL Les Sweetland Award, which names the worst starting pitcher in the National League, and it goes to Milwaukee's own, [...]
How could you not name it after Hugh “Losing Pitcher” Mulcahy? What kid of nickname did Les Sweetland have?
I disagree on Liriano. He did pitch similarly to Hochevar (including a game against the Red Sox where he struck out 8 hitters but gave up a ton of hits and runs….FanGraphs did an article on that game) but his ERA was only in the 5s and his BA/OBP/SLG against wasn’t nearly as bad as Berken’s.
Hmm, I think you overlooked Carlos Silva. The M’s are paying him over $11 million not to pitch. He finished his second season of a mysterious injury that nobody understands. However both seasons he’s gotten six or seven starts, been blown up, and banished to rehab. Not Vernon Wells bad, but one of the worst contracts in baseball.
Way to snark it up. Have you bought a place on the East coast? Have you come down from the high of watching the Yankees “win” that pennant?
You know the real interesting thing about Les Sweetland? His career hitting stats. 272/341/338 in 325 at-bats. Perhaps he was miscast as a pitcher.
In the October 1949 edition of Baseball Digest, there is a story about Fresco Thompson, Burt Shotton’s coach, bringing the lineup card to the umpires before the game. The umpire asked Thompson what the last name of the pitcher was. He said it was Sweetland.
Klem asked “What’s that say after Sweetland?”
After consultation with Shotton, Thompson explained, “It says Sweetland-and others.”
Losing Pitcher Mulcahy, while not a good pitcher, really wasn’t THAT bad. Not as bad as Sweetland, anyway, if you look at them side by side. Mulcahy just pitched more games for equally bad teams. FWIW, Mulcahy had a 90 career ERA+, Sweetland a 77.
I still can’t believe that Brad Lidge didn’t win this award. I mean, he turned the 9th inning into a roller coaster that left me curled into a ball swearing I was giving up this baseball fan thing for curling or gymnastics or something.
His control problems had control problems and he looked like a wounded deer out on the mound.
Sticking with him as long as the Phillies did was understandable, but mostly stupid and non-logical.