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What Was The Best Season Ever by a Reliever? - an Analysis
Relievers. Who are they? What do they do? Until one bright spring day in 1993, nobody knew the answers to these simple questions. Then, MLB scientists made a breakthrough in their labs in the bowels of the Astrodome, and Mariano Rivera sprung forth from his mother’s womb fully formed and sawed off Jason Giambi. But the question they couldn’t answer is ‘what is the best season ever by a reliever?’. At the time, the technology was simply not expansive enough to begin delving into this question. Now, thanks to huge leaps in science, we can finally answer something that has plagued the minds of man since the dawn of humanity. Now, clearly, the answer is Francisco Rodriguez, since he’s the single season save leader and that’s the best stat to measure relievers by. But let’s ignore that. You can just look up which reliever has the most WAR in a single season, which is 1975 Goose Gossage by bWAR (8.2!?!?!) or 1977 Bruce Sutter by fWAR (5.2). The reason for this difference is because BaseballReference uses runs allowed to calculate bWAR, and FanGraphs uses FIP to calculate fWAR. Since relievers pitch such small sample sizes, there’s often a large gap between their FIP and their runs allowed (RA). Since we’re looking at the best season, and not the best player, I’m going to use bWAR (and thus RA) for this exercise. (If you don’t know what FIP is, it stands for Fielding Independent Pitching, which looks at only the outcomes of at-bats which are solely between the pitcher and the batter - home runs, walks, and strikeouts. These stats are thrown together and then given a normalizing factor so that the average league FIP matches the average league ERA. FIP is a wonderful predictive tool, to the point where it is more predictive of a pitcher’s ERA next year than a pitcher’s ERA is. I’d rather not use it here because it doesn’t look at the actual results - if I was trying to find the best reliever, and not the best season, then I’d use FIP.) Using a simple value added stat is incredibly biased towards 1970’s middle relievers who would throw 100+ innings in a year, though. WAR is a counting stat, so the more they pitch, the more they rack up. What about bWAIP? One BBRef search later, and I have this table.
To begin with, bWAR uses RA for its calculations, which uses both earned and unearned runs. Dennys Reyes, Bill Henry, Blake Treinen, Rich Gossage, Fernando Rodney, Dennis Eckersley, and Joey Devine all had more RA/IP in their respective seasons. (The difference between their ERA and their bWAIP isn’t solely explained by this, but it’s good enough for now. We’ll get to that in a moment). This leaves 1986 Rob Murphy and 2016 Zach Britton. Why don’t they stack up? The answer is a little thing I’d like to call ‘run environment’, which is encapsulated by BaseballReference’s stat RA9Avg. It takes what an average pitcher’s run allowed/9 innings (RA/9) was that year, and then adjusts it for park factors, for the defense, and for who that specific pitcher faced. If a pitcher had a relatively high run environment, it means he would be pitching in batter’s parks, faced tough opponents, had a bad defense behind him, etc. For a perfectly average pitcher, their RA/9 will match their run environment. For Murphy, his run environment was 4.11. For Britton, it was 4.32. For Papelbon, it was a whopping 5.00. This makes a huge difference - Papelbon may have gotten slightly worse results, but he was starting from a much more difficult positions. For another good way to illuminate the differences run environments can cause, I can bring up one of my favorite WAR comparisons! In 1965, Jim Maloney equalled Sandy Koufax in bWAR (and surpassed him if you count batting WAR) despite throwing 80 fewer innings with an ERA 0.50 higher. How did he do this? Simple. Sandy Koufax played in cavernous Dodger Stadium with a strong Dodger defense behind him, and so had a run environment of 3.49 RA/9. Jim Maloney, pitching at batter-friendly Crosley Stadium with a poor Reds defense behind him, had a run environment of 4.34, 0.85 more than Koufax. Since Maloney is expected to give up far more runs than Koufax and only gives up somewhat more runs, he has a large bWAIP lead. Run environment is 99% of the explanation behind ‘why does WAR give this weird result?’ questions. Most of the best reliever seasons by ERA have relatively a low run environment - after all, good defense and a friendly park factor really helps a reliever keep the runs down. Fernando Rodney had a run environment of 3.72 in his 0.60 ERA season, because he pitched at the Tropicana and had the Rays defense behind him. Mariano Rivera consistently had a high run environment (career average of 4.72) due to pitching in Yankee Stadium with horrible, horrible, horrible Yankees defenses behind him going against tough AL East opponents. He never had that ‘lucky’ season with a sub-1 ERA, which would likely have put him on this list. He has to live with the stigma of simply being the greatest reliever of all time, unfortunately. Papelbon had an incredible season in a run environment that was incredibly ill-suited for having an incredible season, so his bWAIP is leaps and bounds ahead of anyone else. So is Jonathan Papelbon’s 2006 the greatest single season by a reliever ever? Well, maybe. Pound-for-pound, it certainly is. But some relievers can pound more often than others, even if they're not pounding quite as hard. Should 70’s and 80’s relievers be penalized for being slightly worse in twice as many innings as Papelbon? John Hiller’s 1973 is a good candidate if you prefer quantity over quality - 7.9 bWAR in 125 innings in relief. Of course, you can flip it around - why penalize Papelbon for pitching less when relievers of that era were expected to pitch less? With the bWAIP, it’s safe to say Papelbon was more dominant in his role than Hiller was in his. Are there arguments for other pitchers and other seasons? Absolutely. Perhaps you prefer FIP for some reason - then you can probably give the nod to 2003 Eric Gagne, with 4.7 fWAR in 82 innings. I don’t think FIP works well for this type of analysis, because it doesn’t deal with actual results, but you do you. Perhaps you want to dive into BABIP and pick a season that wasn't as lucky - this seems like a fool's errand, since the best reliever seasons are all lucky ones. Of course, if you believe the best ability is availability, the nod goes to Mike Marshall, who appeared in 106 (!?!) games for the 1974 Dodgers. His 2.42 ERA is tarnished somewhat by the 3.33 run environment at Dodger Stadium at the time, however. Marshall apparently still has very interesting ideas on training to be able to pitch that many innings, but no MLB training staff will let him near their pitchers for some reason. Now, I know we’d all like someone else to have the best relief season ever in baseball - someone who didn’t attack teammates, someone who didn’t watch porn in the clubhouse, someone who doesn’t hit Manny Macha - ok, I’m fine with that one. But why couldn’t it have been someone like Eric Gagne, or Robb Nen, or Heathcliff Slocumb? I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything negative about those guys. Maybe it’s just time to move on, and let bygones be bygones. As I understand, Papelbon is just 24 hours from picking a new team, so it’ll be exciting to see him back in the league. Hopefully, he doesn’t choke his comeback.
How much (negative) WAR would I accrue playing on a Major League team for a full season?
I heard Sam Miller mention on a recent episode of Effectively Wild that you have to figure the WAR of a civilian would be considerably less than zero, possibly up to negative 20. Let's do the math. We'll assume a few things before we start. I am mandated by law to play every inning of every game. I am me, an overweight 30-year-old. This thought experiment doesn't put me on a specific team, just a general baseball season. WAR is composed of six parts. Batting, fielding, baserunning, positional adjustment, league adjustment, and replacement level. I'm going to skip league adjustment because it requires me to do calculations for the whole league and it doesn't really change the player's final WAR that much. We'll assign values to these from simplest to hardest.
Fielding
I will not be allowed to take the field. This is simple. 0 runs.
Positional Adjustment
As I won't be taking the field, I'd be relegated the the Designated Hitter position. The positional adjustment for 162 games of DH is -17.5 runs.
Replacement Level
The formula for replacement level runs is Replacement Level Runs = (570 x (MLB Games/2,430)) x (Runs Per Win/lgPA) x PA If I play 162 games and bat 9th (because duh) I figure I'd get ~600 PA. I came to this conclusion thusly: The two players with the most PA in 2019 were Marcus Semien with 747 and Whit Merrifield with 735. They were both leadoff hitters who played 162 games. So if I average that number, a leadoff hitter would get ~741 PA over the course of the season if he plays every game. The difference between a full season of a leadoff hitter and a number 9 hitter is 1 PA per game minus 1 PA every 9 games. This is because the leadoff hitter will always have one more PA than the number 9 hitter at the end of a game, unless the number 9 hitter wat the last batter to come up in the game. This would happen roughly once every nine games. So 741-(162-(162/9))= 597 PA. So let's do the calculation based on that. (We'll use 2019 numbers.) (570x(2430/2430))x(10.296/186516)x600= 18.9. This brings me up to 1.4 runs.
Batting
In response to a Chris Hayes tweet musing on whether or not he'd get a hit against a full season of Major League pitching, Eno Sarris wrote an article for Fangraphs discussing the idea. He concludes that Hayes would get about 2 hits in a season. If we assume I'm roughly at the level of Hayes (he's ten years older than me, but seems to be in better shape), I'm going to say nah. If they pitch to me like a regular Major Leaguer, there is no way in hell I would make contact, let alone get a hit. However, they will quickly realize they don't have to pitch to me like a Major Leaguer. This will change two things, to varying degrees, depending on how far they go with it. The first is whether or not I actually end up getting a hit. If I'm pitched somewhere around 70 MPH with few breaking pitches, I'm sure I'd get a couple of hits. However, I doubt this would happen, for a couple of reasons. This brings me to the second thing, walks. If I were pitched to as a big leaguer, I'd get on base via walks. It wouldn't be close to Major League average, as my eye is not close to Major League average, but at the same time I have much less incentive to swing, so I'd probably be doing that less. Which brings us back to pitchers throwing softer in order to avoid walks. First, let's analyze how that works in real baseball. I think that while taking something off your fastball does improve a pitcher's control, it hits diminishing returns quite quickly. My reasoning for this is twofold. First, pitchers are conditioned to throw the way they throw. Slowing down too much changes everything. It messed with their mechanics in ways that wouldn't necessarily be positive. The second point is that throwing a ball from 60 feet six inches away into a box roughly 500 inches square is really hard, even for a Major League pitcher. Take 2019 for example. In 2019, non-pitchers batted .256. Pitchers, on the other hand, batted exactly half that, .128. As a result of pitchers being that much worse at hitting, the average fastball thrown to them was 92.4 MPH, as opposed to 93.2 MPH thrown to non-pitchers. While their walk rates were only 3.1%, well below the non-pitcher rate of 8.7%, I believe this is due mostly to pitchers' ineptitude at taking walks. This is because the drop in velocity only improved their Zone% from 41.6% to 49.9%. Not an insignificant difference, but still really close in context. You'd think pitchers would take off even more than the less than 1 MPH they do when throwing to pitchers, all it does is improve Zone% by 8.3%, but they don't. So let's assume the average fastball I see is 89 MPH. I still have a hard time believing I'd get a hit on one of the slower pitches in that range. If all I saw was the lower bounds of this range over the course of a full season, sure. But that wouldn't be the case. I'd be seeing very few of those lower bounds pitches, not to mention a nice amount of breaking balls to keep me honest. I'm going to stick with 0 hits. I'm going walk rate will probably be somewhere around pitchers' walk rates. Again, my guessing pitches would be abysmal, but if I'm smart, I'd swing as little as possible. Working the count won't be a thing, and I probably won't be able to stick to my 'swing as little as possible' rule as well as I'd like, so 3% seems reasonable. 3% of 600 PA is 18 walks. That gets me to a .000/.030/.000 slash line. Yeah, that looks about right. The first thing we have to do to determine my batting runs is calculate my wOBA. Using 2019 numbers, that would be (18walks x.69walkconstant +0didn'tdoanythingelse )/600PA =.021 wOBA We then determine wRAA ((.021wOBA -.320lgwOBA )/1.157wOBAScale )x600PA = -155.2 wRAA There is a further adjustment based on league, but since I won't be putting myself on any specific team, I don't need to do this part. -153.8 runs
Baserunning
Well the good news is that I'd only get on base 18 times. Simulating baserunning stats isn't exactly easy. Luckily, I noticed that players' sprint speeds are fairly strongly correlated with their BSR. When I put all the 2019 sprint speeds and BSR into excel, the conversion equation it gives me is (Sprint Speed x 0.0086-0.2348)=BSTimes on Base Great. So now all there is to figure out is my sprint speed. I asked my wife to clock me running down the block at full speed, but she didn't seem so jazzed about the idea. Well if you want something done, you gotta do it yourself. Before I get into the numbers, bear in mind I was running down a 40 ft driveway with a flip phone in my hand, only gave myself about 5 feet to get to full speed, pressed the button at the starting point, probably started slowing down early, and then pressed it again at the ending point. Science. I clocked myself at 2.08 seconds. I measured out the distance and it came out to 485 inches. Which is 233.2 in/sec. Convert that to feet, and I was running at 19.4 ft/sec. Which was below Brian McCann's 2019 league minimum speed of 22.2 ft/sec, but not so far off that it would make me think I did something wrong. Good enough for me. So if we plug my 19.4 ft/sec into the equation, we get -0.07 BSR per times on base. I expect to get on base 18 times, so it comes out to a -1.2 BSR for the season. -155 runs.
Conclusion
Finally, the last step is to convert runs to wins. The 2019 Runs/Win number was 10.296. So if I divide -155 by 10.296 I end up with -15.1 WAR. Yikes. Let's put that in context. According to Fangraphs, I would cancel out any season of any great player if we were on the same team and then some. 1923 Ruth? Gone. 2002 Bonds? We would net -2.4 WAR. 2013 Trout? Not even close. If I were were to replace Edgar Martinez on the 2001 Mariners, the winningest team in modern history, they'd only win 96 games, but hey, we'd still make the playoffs! Same with the 1998 Yankees. And this is the conclusion we should come out with. I would not necessarily ruin the greatest teams of all time. So I deserve a shot. TL;DR -15.1 WAR, but I deserve a shot.
State of baseball scorebug designs (As of Feb 11, 2021) - A more detailed writeup
So apparently I’ve found my calling on this sub as a scorebug connoisseur - So let’s review all the scorebugs all the regional and national channels has used for MLB for 2020, and I’ll give them a score on a scale from 1 to 10. Mostly I’ll speak on the design, but I’ll bring up some points on legibility. This will be a more detailed writeup for every scorebug, so this will be a long post. If you want to see the score bug’s design again as a refresher, just click the network name, I’ve capped them all for your convenience. Hope I beat the buzzer for offseason posts and if I miss a scorebug I’ll amend this post. Won’t do MLB International bug because I literally can’t access that. TBS https://preview.redd.it/rmsj6n26fqg61.png?width=402&format=png&auto=webp&s=f37752163485f8e70058898fcf164ae14a51860d It’s still the industrial-metallic style they’ve used since 2018. I’m very slightly annoyed of batter-pitcher info asymmetry, where the batting average/tonight’s batting results isn’t on the same footing as the pitch count and is not shown. To be fair the pitch count indicator is clear, and TBS has obviously found the winning formula since they haven’t budged from 2018’s design at all. It has enough info and it presents them decently, still no radar gun info tho, that was kicked after the 2017 experiment. Only thing of note is that for 2020, the bug is placed in the lower third now, and third outs have now discarded the special “MID/END 8” splash, opting for the same TBS/MLB logo fly-in with the exact “scorebug initiation” animations when it returns from commercial but in reverse. Not the best, I prefer the special third out splashes as it highlights the physical scoreboard metaphor where it’s imperfect, and I find the metallic design to be just a tad outdated for 2021, but it’s readable, and certainly better than the humongous brick for 2016. Ugh. It’s alright. 6/10 ESPN https://preview.redd.it/gx52uyb7fqg61.png?width=1760&format=png&auto=webp&s=6bf616116efaa0dccf38d19379def7ecd7049e77 The same 2018 endeavor returns with the oversized bug with one extra addition for the playoffs - The series scoreline. It’s oversized, but it does manage to feature BOTH batter and pitcher info, even if pitch counts are in its own box which makes the drawers of the players below the team boxes look like an afterthought and just slapped on. Extra credit tho: They included the batting order of the player AB! Speaking of afterthoughts, you know how the team boxes as a whole, aka the colored rectangles have the same height as the play action boxes in black? Well, stupidly, ESPN just shoved the series scoreline ONLY for the two team boxes, so the dumb pitcher and batter info juts out the bottom like a sore thumb. I mean, you could pull the bar all the way across to at least make the whole thing a tidy rectangle right? Or hell, do it like the out-of-town tracker on the right where they found something to occupy the space so it’s even. Uh. I prefer the original 2016 Helvetica SNB design, at least that thing doesn’t take up 1/3 of the screen. You tried. 4/10 Fox (ARI, DET, MIA, KC, ATL, STL, MIN, CIN, SD, TEX, LAA, CLE, MIL, TB) https://preview.redd.it/88pjinl4fqg61.png?width=412&format=png&auto=webp&s=31a041f63a4ac48644679beed1671c8935cc61dd Hallmark of just good design. From the neatly ordered rectangle in the lower-right-hand corner, to the timeless home run splash with concise info, to the right-positioned base indicator that transforms into line scores at will, to the rich and neatly-stacked pitcher-batter duel with radar guns and the batting order, need I say more? Fonts are high contrast, legible, and stunning beautiful to look at while not being distracting. One thing to note tho, during the playoffs they switched the yellow base lights to white for the indicators for a game or two and because of how everything is black and white in the side panels, I thought the bases loaded indicators were bases empty for a half-second. Clear highlight color like yellow solves the issue. Don’t play with fire again. Timeless. 10/10 NBC Sports (OAK, SF, PHI, CHW) https://preview.redd.it/zj2uuuv2fqg61.png?width=614&format=png&auto=webp&s=f45dbcbd35fc6353ca694cd028a70b3e77507096 NBC is always one step behind on these things. Still obnoxious (for 2020) skeuomorphic and glossy team bars, and the complete absence of much pitcher-batter info. All you get is a pitch count and a radar flash for every new pitch. It’s passable for some year like 1998, that’s for sure, but when other stations have freaking leap-frogged your designs and became more informative, maybe spruce it up a little? I suspect heavily that NBC saves a lot of manpower by not having their crews work extra to throw up the new pitcher and batter every 3 minutes, but I mean, you have the pitcher splashes for every bullpen summon. Come on. Your home run splash is still epic though. Works but should try harder. 6/10 AT&T SportsNet (HOU, COL, SEA, PIT) https://preview.redd.it/gekpj541fqg61.png?width=626&format=png&auto=webp&s=9d715c2044521d51cb52dace21f69a8567e6936a Very, very weird. First of all, I’d just like to say how much I hate when scorebugs are one-sided. Play-by-play? Fine. When you can’t even award the courtesy of popping a home run splash to your opponent, that’s low. Such is the ballad of AT&T’s graphics. Seriously, it just ticks up the runs and empties the base lights. It’s a weird design where the ball-strike count is inexplicably shoved into the corner next to the giant bar for the pitcher and his pitch count. No batter info anywhere. There are so many weird elements, like the vertically-aligned out lights that confuses me for a good five seconds before I realized they are out lights. A redo is necessary, but a rethinking is where it’s at. Change it. 2/10 SportsNet LA (LAD) https://preview.redd.it/xg45mskzeqg61.png?width=524&format=png&auto=webp&s=d16c1a55b149adbb7844c35a97a0ec9cde1d477b I’ve always had a soft spot for the Dodgers’ scorebug. First of all, they do innovate, this year, their scorebug has adopted a new flatter design. Their base indicators are LIVE, and update immediately instead of after the play, and the run odometecounter design as players score and it updates is cool af. It’s also the ONLY scorebug where you get extremely-detailed batter info, including the results for his last AB! Why aren’t we all doing this? But the pitcher is unnamed as a result and his count shoved into a corner. It is really pleasing, BUT it falls into the AT&T trap on not offering your opponents the home run graphics. Oh well, for a regional bug it can only do so much. Also they ditched the third out light for a lowly cross-dissolve. Why? Be impartial. 8/10 MASN (BAL, WSH) https://preview.redd.it/6jai38zxeqg61.png?width=470&format=png&auto=webp&s=729d7e5083acc9f63f5d748a071b6472da4c79d6 Do you only want the bare minimum? Do you absolutely hate any form of design? Do you want ZERO home run graphics, no names anywhere, and barely any pitch counting? I mean, when your infamous 2012 bug for the 30-run TEX showing has its own HR splashes, you gotta look into the mirror and figure out why the regression in design. Idk, is this a fucking PowerPoint slideshow all this time? Small W on the design tho, your bases are faux 3D! Yay! Too visually drab, this is so bad. AT LEAST it’s clear, but it’s not informative at all really. Death knell: your radar gun OBSCURES the ball-strike count! Some graphics won’t kill you. 2/10 Sportsnet (TOR) https://preview.redd.it/3wh942queqg61.png?width=430&format=png&auto=webp&s=04796fbb3c70c7588a3b082e4c24de933666e4a0 Because this is a straight copy of Fox’s bug, like seriously, even down to where the inning, outs, and ball-strike count are placed, I’ll only focus on the differences. The immediate disappearance of the ball-strike count once the ball is in play is novel, you’re the only people who did it and it makes a huge amount of sense. It is unneeded and I might have yoinked it for my own design. But the pitcher is still active on the mound after a ball put in play, so why take that away? Seriously though, your home run splash where the text flies in, truly rock. Unique spin with very, very minor complaints. 9/10 SNY (NYM) https://preview.redd.it/uenzs05teqg61.png?width=406&format=png&auto=webp&s=de98e3bd39b1dd9d60e92db0ab065771e9932428 After years of the godawful, bland, and extremely-outdated blue box, we get this. Still an evolution with the same home run animations, but everything is flatter, slimmer, and a little more colorful. Something about how sanitized it is still make it drab, but at least we don’t have to stare at that blue blob again, even if Large Attractive homered under it. No batter info anywhere tho. Decent evolution. 6/10 YES (NYY) https://preview.redd.it/1w4oaj4qeqg61.png?width=420&format=png&auto=webp&s=2499f6c0113106cf3a6f24860b282285f4d85101 Now this is a scorebug I’ll have to say NO too. First of all, low-hanging fruit, no names anywhere. Fine, that’s also an NBC problem. But why on God’s Green Earth is the active play indicators (bases, outs, ball-strike count) split BETWEEN two sides? I literally have to dart my eyes around to even catch up on occupied bases and THEN see the count. Also wth is with the semantics of “Pitch x” for the pitch count? I know it is semantics but it looks like the next pitch is x, instead of x+1 pitches. Small complaint, but does clarity not matter any more? Needs a redesign. 4/10 NESN (BOS) https://preview.redd.it/cu189xmneqg61.png?width=350&format=png&auto=webp&s=8ed197dd5597180b9a0a12e62d7f05bee8530f18 Welcome to MS Paint: The Scorebug. I know people meme flat design as being created with MS Paint — But this? This is actually MS Paint, not even kidding. NEW this year is finally, a pitcher name. Wowwee, gotta wait several millennia before they bring the hitter name in. They finally decoupled the pitch counter from the main element. But somehow this isn’t bare minimum. Whatever happened to the 3D one in 2011? AT least that one IS a design. This one just had some spotlight transition, there is literally no design. Not even 3D bases. No design. 1/10 Marquee Sports Network (CHC) https://preview.redd.it/uhf4kspleqg61.png?width=788&format=png&auto=webp&s=b69008256de7a9e79b524030ab2d37aa425e8df3 I’ve saved the worst for last. Here’s some homework for you, take a look at the scorebug image, and tell me how many outs there are for this current play in the image. Answer: There are two. If I can quiz you on what a scorebug is supposed to represent, you have COMPLETELY failed. Even though, you have actual batter-pitcher info! With names! The fact I can’t tell how many outs because of your dumb neutral colors design deserves a zero. And also wholly inflexible too, can’t even put up a graphic in real-time for Alec Mills’ no-hitter, just zero runs and some weird “Final” graphic where it sits on top of the bug for a few seconds after the final out before it descends. Also, the only network to use “2-run homer” as a nomenclature for your splashes. The graphic wants to be good but it isn’t. Your network is solely dedicated to baseball. You can’t get baseball info right. Your radar blocks out the ball-strike count for a good few seconds. Biggest L ever. 0/10 IN CONCLUSION - Just copy what Fox is doing. Even I did. EDIT - Some paragraph spacing fixes, and finally fixed the network name for TOR. Sorry Jays fans.
How much WAR would a perfect (yet shy) leadoff man accrue in a Major League season?
This is part 3 of my "How much WAR would ________ get?" series. You can find How much (negative) WAR would I accrue playing on a Major League team for a full season?here and How much (negative) WAR would a potato accrue playing centerfield for a Major League team for a full season?here.
That's right, boys and girls. We're back with a new conundrum. Let me set the stage. Speedy McHitterson has been discovered to be a perfect leadoff hitter. He makes every play in center, he steals second at every opportunity, he has a perfect eye, and when he's thrown a strike, he gets a hit every time. However, he's incredibly shy and afraid to overstep his bounds. This means he'll never swing at a pitch outside the zone, even if he knows he can hit it. He also will never go past first base on a hit, so every his is a single. Speedy is afraid of stepping on teammates toes, literally and figuratively, so he won't make any plays in the field that weren't meant for him. He's also fearful of being perceived as too overconfident, so stealing third is out of the question, let alone stealing home. But for the things he does do, he has a 100% success rate. To the categories!
Positional Adjustment
Speedy, like Tate, will be manning center for a full season. 162 games of CF is worth 2.5 runs.
Replacement Level
As previously established, the average leadoff hitter would have ~761 PA per 162 games. But Speedy is no average leadoff hitter. Speedy will have a 1.000 OBP. Meaning compared to the average 255 on-base events for an average leadoff man, Speedy will have 761, which is an extra 506. Following the logic from last time, getting on base an extra 506 times will result in another 56 PA (If one out of every nine extra on-base events result in an extra PA). Which, in turn, will result in an extra 4 PA (I think). So in the end of the day, Speedy will end up with 821 PA on the season. So if Replacement Level Runs = (570 x (MLB Games/2,430)) x (Runs Per Win/lgPA) x PA then 821 PA will be (570x(2430/2430))x(10.296/186516)x821 coming out to 25.8 Runs. 28.3 Runs
Fielding
This one, it turns out, is quite simple. Similar to how we determined a potato's fielding runs, we compare this perfect player to the 2020 Cincinnati Reds centerfielders. To recap, in 2020, 227 balls were fielded by Reds center fielders. 86 of them went for singles, 22 went for doubles, 3 went for triples. There were no inside-the-park home runs. There were 109 catches made, plus 7 sac flies. This gives opponents a .490 wOBA on balls hit to Reds center fielders. Speedy, being perfect, would allow a 0 wOBA (his middle name is Fielder). Home run robberies are out of the question because, you know. So we'll compare them the same way we did last time, with the same formula we use to determine batting runs batting runs. First we determine the amount of opportunities a center fielder would get in a full season. In 2019, center fielders made 20962 plays. That's about 700 per team over a full season. So the calculation would go thusly: ((.000wOBA -.490lgwOBA )/1.1857wOBAScale )x700Opportunities = 289.3 runs I just realized something really cool. I actually calculated Tater to have this precise number of negative runs, because his wOBA allowed would be exactly double the average. This means if Speedy and Tate were to alternate games, they would average to a league average fielder. 317.6 Runs
Batting
We've already established a few facts. Speedy McHitterson will get about 821 PA in a season. He does not swing at balls outside the strikezone. He hits every ball in the strikezone for a single. This would result in a 1.000/1.000/1.000 slash line, but we would still need to determine how many walks and hits he'd get. So I put together a little table to figure that out.
Count
Frequency
Zone
Out of Zone
Strike odds
Ball odds
Strike overall odds
Ball overall odds
0-0
1.000
95745
89033
.518
.482
.518
.482
0-1
.518
39460
53598
.424
.576
.220
.298
0-2
.220
14985
33022
.312
.688
.069
.151
1-0
.482
37702
33833
.527
.473
.254
.228
1-1
.552
35402
38838
.477
.523
.263
.289
1-2
.415
25414
44600
.363
.637
.150
.264
2-0
.228
13872
10640
.566
.434
.129
.099
2-1
.418
21098
17739
.543
.457
.227
.191
2-2
.491
37457
33526
.528
.472
.259
.232
3-0
.099
4573
2930
.609
.391
.060
.039
3-1
.251
9652
6289
.605
.395
.152
.099
3-2
.384
21163
16146
.567
.433
.218
.166
So to explain: the "Frequency" column is the overall frequency of the count, assuming no swings (which is important, as I'll explain in a second). This was determined by the following columns. "Zone" is pitches in the strikezone on that count. "Out of zone" is pitches outside the strikezone on that count. The next two columns are the percentages of a ball/strike in each count. Knowing that, we can tell the frequency of each count, if the batter never swung. 0-1 is going to be the odds of a strike on 0-0. 0-2 is going to be the odds of a strike on 0-1, times the odds of 0-1 occurring in the first place. 1-1 is the overall odds of a ball on 0-1 plus the overall odds of a strike on 1-0. We can use this chart to work out the number of walks of Mr. McHitterson. If he swings at every ball in the zone, and they all go for hits, the only way for him to get walked is if he's thrown four straight balls. According to this chart, that only happens 3.9% of the time, which we can now use as his walk rate. A 3.9% walk rate with 821 PA comes out to 32 walks in a season. Which leaves him with 789 hits, all for singles. Let's plug that into our wOBA formula. (32walks x.69walkconstant +789singles x.870 singleconstant )/821PA =.863 wOBA And from wOBA to wRAA: ((.863wOBA -.320lgwOBA )/1.157wOBAScale )x821PA = 385.3 wRAA 702.9 Runs
Baserunning
To start, we give Speedy the same boost we gave Tate for never hitting into a double play. Over 821 PA, that comes up to 5.9 Runs. But the real value will come from stealing bases. To refresh, Speedy will steal second every time it's available. Afraid of looking like he's showing off, he will never attempt a double steal or a steal of third or home. We'll make the assumption that overall, the situations he's on base (always) will look like the league averages of occupied bases. There were 55998 plate appearances with men on first in 2019. Of those, 34240 (61%) were just a man on first. 12347 (22%) were first and second. 5026 (9%) were first and third. 4385 (8%) were bases loaded. This means that in 70% of situations with a man on first, second base was open. With a SB rate of 100% of the 70% of times on base (which is identical to the number of PAs) McHitterson had, this puts him at 575 steals for the season (that would be a record, by the way). Fangraphs gives .2 Runs per SB. This adds 115 Runs to our count, which comes out to a total of 121.8 baserunning runs. 824.7 Runs
Conclusion
824.7 is a lot of runs. If we do the 10.296 Runs/Win conversion it comes out to 80.1 WAR. As I said, that's a loooooooot. [Speedy could split time with Tate and they'd still combine for 32.5 WAR. It would take over five Taters to cancel out a Speedy.] EDIT: In my excitement, I accidentally confused myself with a potato.I'm the one who'd combine for 32.5 WAR. I'm the one who would need to be cloned five times to cancel out a Speedy. Tate and Speedy would actually combine to have a 17.6 WAR, which is still better than the best single-season WAR of all time. Two Taters would more than cancel out a Speedy. If you put Speedy on a team that literally did nothing else, he'd still make them roughly a .500 team. TL;DR 80.1 WAR - Holy Fuck Coming soon.....If Shohei Ohtani were actually Superman, how much WAR would he get?
Better Know the Ones Left Off the Ballot #20: Jeff Francis
Second one of the day! This is actually as many as I got to last year, so as long as I do one more, I've done better this time. If you're wondering what this is, basically the Hall of Fame has too many people who are eligible for the ballot, so a Selection Committee cuts the list down to a manageable size. Here we take a look at the players they decided to cut. The rest of the players I've already looked at can be found at the bottom, and away we go!
Jeff Francis
Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor: 6 Career bWAR (11 years): 9.6 (10.1 w/o batting) Stats: 72-82, 4.97 ERA, 93 ERA+, 217 GS, 1291.0 IP, 869 K, 384 BB, 1.442 WHIP League Leading Stats: Fielding % as P 4x (1.000, 2005-07, 2011) Awards: None Teams Played For: Rockies (2004-08, 2010, 2012-13), Royals (2011), Reds (2014), Athletics (2014), Yankees (2014), Blue Jays (2015) The story of Jeff Francis reminds me of a quote by former ESPN columnist John Sickels: "If you have a top prospect, you should never be disappointed when he turns out to be Lyle Overbay." I think I have a similar statement: "If you're the Colorado Rockies, and you have a top pitching prospect, you should never be disappointed when he turns out to be Jeff Francis." With the way he played as a prospect, Overbay could have very well been predicted to set the league on fire, but he "only" had a nice long career, being an average-to-above-average first baseman. Jeff Francis, likewise, was fantastic as a prospect, and did just all right in the MLB. But in both cases, expectation and reality must meet somewhere, and these two share the distinction of riding that line. Another thing the two have in common? Neither ended up on the Hall of Fame ballot. I already talked about Lyle, so here's what I have to say about Jeff. To put it lightly, Jeff Francis had a nice college career. To put it heavily, the lefty's stats his last two years looked like this:
20-4, 1.35 ERA, 173 IP, 31 BB, 229 K
While it may have been true he was playing in Canada, that's still a statline you don't pass up in the first round of the 2002 MLB Draft. The Colorado Rockies certainly didn't, because they had the ninth pick, and driving six truckloads of money to Mike Hampton's doorstep hadn't solved their pitching woes. The pick actually made Francis the highest drafted Canadian player ever. Well, second highest, since fellow Maple Leaf Countryman Adam Loewen had been chosen just 5 picks prior. Still, Francis was a can't-miss future stud practically his whole minor league career. Just 4 runs allowed in his first 7 starts in low-to-mid A. 12-9 with a 3.47 ERA in a full high-A season, putting him at #93 on the Baseball America list. Promotion to AA resulted in his best season yet, starting 17 games, winning 13 of them, and allowing only 25 earned runs in 113.2 innings while also striking out 147 like it was no big deal. Moved on up to AAA, went 3-2 with 49 strikeouts and a 2.85 ERA in Colorado Springs. By the end of that stretch, his 2004 minor league numbers were sitting pretty at 16-3, a 2.21 ERA in 24 starts, and 196 strikeouts in 154.2 innings across double-and-triple-A. At season's end, he'd receive Baseball America's Minor League Player of the Year Award. That trophy very often signified a lengthy and successful Major League career in store for the awardee. Other recipients include Derek Jeter, Jose Canseco, and Dwight Gooden. And now Jeff Francis adds his name to that list. Only reason he didn't have better stats was because the Rockies called him up in late August. After Jeff Francis' first two starts, he'd allowed 14 runs, all earned. Welcome to the Rockies! Wait, both those games were on the road? Oh dear. After his year concluded with 7 Major League starts, he laid claim to a 5.15 ERA, 8 home runs allowed, and a .286 batting average against. All of this was actually about par for the course when it came to Rockies pitching, even if you account for 5 of his 7 starts coming away from Denver. And yet, given his minor league pedigree and the hype around having an actual good pitcher in Colorado, big things were still expected of him. Thanks to those expectations, his award for pitching very well, and a good spring training to boot, the 2005 Colorado Rockies starting rotation would have Jeff Francis as its third member. Now some might be rather surprised and say "letting a rookie with a 5.15 ERA in the Major League games he's started be your third rotation piece is insane!" To that I say two things: first, this is the Rockies. Second, they've done this before. In 2001, former first-round pick Jason Jennings pitched a complete game shutout in his first start as a Rockie, but struggled down the stretch, before a nice spring training and hype around a good Rockies pitcher slotted him as the number 5 starter for 2002. His year ended with a record of 16-8, only the third time a pitcher of any experience had ever reached that number of wins for Colorado. It also ended with him as the staff ace, standing atop what was left after established arms Denny Neagle and the previously mentioned Mike Hampton exploded. Jennings ended up winning Rookie of the Year, not because his numbers were especially impressive (his 4.52 ERA was the worst among qualified rookie starters, and he only had 13 Quality Starts, 9 of which weren't at Coors), but because he did all that as a rookie pitcher on the Colorado Rockies. The apparently Herculean task of pitching moderately well for that team had been accomplished by someone in their first full season, and for that, the voters agreed Jennings should be rewarded. Colorado's pitching had not gotten much better since then (including Jennings, who had slowed down as of late), and they were hoping that the card they'd put up their sleeve could help them here. That card, Francis, was their third starter, for better or for worse. How'd it go? Jeff Francis started more games for the Rockies that year than any other pitcher. That's good! He also had more wins (14) and strikeouts (128) than any other Colorado pitcher. That's even better! He also laid claim to a 5.68 ERA, a WHIP above 1.600, and a measly 0.3 bWAR from the mound. That's not very good! One might even call that bad! Well, one might, if one were talking about anybody other than a rookie pitcher for the Colorado Rockies. Francis even provided some hope for the future of the team, because if you looked at his Home/Away splits, he actually pitched better at Coors than he did elsewhere. He even duplicated Jason Jennings' rookie number of 13 Quality Starts, but reversed the locational division by pitching 9 of them in Denver. Colorado still lost 95 games, but Francis did show up on a couple Rookie of the Year ballots. As previously mentioned, the voters saw he had 14 wins as a rookie on the team that played half their games in Home Run Derby: The Ballpark. 2006 carried a lot of promise for the Rockies pitching staff, and somehow, some way, they didn't let down. Francis did win fewer games, going 13-11, but he did so with a 4.16 ERA, over 1.50 lower than in 2005. The best part was it was second best on the staff, and only barely avoided being third. Jason Jennings (3.78) had returned to form, and number 2 starter Aaron Cook (4.23) blossomed into a legitimate option. Between the three of them, they only allowed 52 home runs in 600+ innings, roughly half of which were pitched at a veritable baseball trampoline meetup every time teams played there. Francis even pitched a complete game shutout against the eventual World Series Champion St. Louis Cardinals, and he did it at Coors Field no less. The bullpen showed up too, with dependable closer Brian Fuentes saving 30 games, a 40-year-old Jose Mesa finding remnants of his better self, and youngsters like Ramon Ramirez and Manny Corpas doing their part as well. Them and the rest combined to allow 812 runs that year, the lowest total a Rockies team had ever allowed over a 162-game season. Pity the offense fell asleep. Todd Helton had a down year, as his .880 OPS was his lowest in almost ten years (this man was so good). To supplement, the regular hitting core of Matt Holliday, Garrett Atkins, and Brad Hawpe just didn't do enough to finish better than 76-86. However, the groundwork had been set, and with actual good pitching for the first time in what seemed like forever, the Colorado Rockies and Jeff Francis could, possibly, compete in 2007. That next year, the Colorado Rockies won the NL Pennant. The biggest reasons that this happened were Matt Holliday and Todd Helton improving on their already stellar hitting numbers, Brad Hawpe batting in runs like there was no tomorrow, second baseman Kaz Matsui and rookie phenom Troy Tulowitzki holding the middle infield hostage with their amazing defense, and the dependable backstop of Yorvit Torrealba behind the dish. Add in a platoon at center field that had Steve Finley in it for some reason, Garrett Atkins having a down year in the field but still coming in clutch at the plate, and more utility players than you could shake a stick at, and you have the 2007 Rockies. That's the narrative that formed in the months and years following Rocktober. It also completely ignores just how instrumental the pitching was to that team. That staff and bullpen combined to allow just 758 runs, blowing the previous year's new low to pieces. Only 8 games would be started by pitchers whose ERAs were above 5 at the end of the year. That number had never been below 30. While bullpen arm Ramirez may have lost his touch, Fuentes and Corpas didn't, and they were joined by Jeremy Affeldt, LaTroy Hawkins, and Matt Herges as the best bullpen Colorado had ever seen. And hey, did I mention the rotation? While Jennings had been traded and Cook would do well before an injury, everyone else stepped up. Josh Fogg, who had struggled the past two years, put together his best season as a Rockie. Offseason acquisitions Rodrigo Lopez, Jason Hirsh, and Taylor Buchholz proved they could do just fine in Denver. A young fellow by the name of Ubaldo Jimenez even got his licks in, winning 4 games and striking out 68 in 15 starts. And then, at the top of the rotation, sporting a 17-9 record and 165 strikeouts which were both best on the team by a mile, was Jeff Francis. He had emerged as the ace, even receiving Cy Young consideration at the end of the year. This 26-year-old was the future of this team's pitching. Allowing just three runs in two playoff starts showed he could perform in the postseason as well. Ignore the 6-run outing in the World Series, that doesn't count. Clearly, the Rockies would be a force to be reckoned with for years to come, and any challengers to their throne would have to go through Jeff Francis, whose nerves of steel didn't care of he was pitching a mile above sea level or on the moon. Or at least, that's what it seemed like. Don't get me wrong, Francis' 2007 year was great, and he earned the single fifth-place Cy Young vote he got. However, his numbers weren't the stuff that aces are made of, and his ballot inclusion strikes me more as "including the best pitcher on the team that won the pennant" than it does a vote for the fifth best pitcher that year. His 4.22 ERA wasn't even the best on the staff, and his 25 home runs allowed were far from exemplary. The excitement that surrounded that Rockies team was incredible, but it also cast aside any warning signs that Francis' numbers might have shown. The 2008 season would see him start Opening Day against the Cardinals, only for it to get rained out in the third inning. Thus his first real test came against the Arizona Diamondbacks. The last time they met, Francis threw a Quality Start, which just so happened to be Game 1 of the NLCS. Francis, who up to this point had owned Arizona, allowed 12 hits, 3 home runs, and 5 runs to take the loss. His next start was against the Diamondbacks again, but this time at Chase Field, which was a venue that he had not lost at in his four trips there. This visit would see Arizona lay 3 home runs on him again, and plate 7 runs for him to take the loss again. Cracks were beginning to show. By the end of June, Francis was 3-7, had allowed 63 earned runs and 17 homers, and was on his way to the DL with shoulder inflammation. After a couple rehab starts showed he was back in tip-top shape, he came back, and started 7 games, 6 of which were Quality Starts. He also got shut down in the middle of September, since the Rockies were out of playoff contention by that point, and his coaches felt it would be better for his shoulder. Francis' final numbers were 4-10, an ERA of 5.01, and 21 homers allowed in 24 starts. Things went even further south when it was announced in February of 2009 that the September shutdown hadn't stopped him from requiring arthroscopic surgery. Francis would miss the entirety of that year's season, further delaying the opportunity for his return to form. In spring training of 2010, it was determined he still wasn't quite ready, and he began that year on the DL. After a couple more rehab starts went his way, he returned in May, winning his first contest back against the Nationals after tossing 7 innings of 1-run ball. That season would see still more ups and downs, with eight of his starts being Quality, and eleven not so much. He finished the year 4-6 in 19 games started with an ERA of 5.00, but there were signs that things were improving. His FIP of 3.88 was the lowest of his career. His K/BB of 2.91 was the highest of his career. His 1.361 WHIP was the lowest it had been in years. Even his home/away splits were still roughly equivalent. And yet, the Rockies, who would most likely have needed to tender a contract of around $7 million to retain the lefty, didn't see that sort of value in him anymore. They granted him free agency at the end of the season, and just three years after being the star pitcher on a World Series team, Jeff Francis was without a job. Was it worth it for anybody to take a chance on him? The Royals had just completed a 95-loss season, and were still rather far away from serious contention, but needed somebody to start games, so they gave Jeff Francis a call. A $2 million offer over one year got accepted, and a 6-16 record, 4.82 ERA, and overall "meh" season later, Kansas City bid him adieu. The Rockies, feeling sorry for the poor sap after a deal with the Reds fell flat, re-signed him for a couple years, watched him go 9-12 with an ERA hovering right around 6, and figured the good times had passed, turning him loose after 2013. In 2014, the Reds tried again. 8 triple-A starts and one losing MLB start with Cincinnati led to a waiver claim by the Oakland A's. Then 9 games in relief and one loss as an Athletic led to a trade to the Yankees. Two games of cleanup pitching and one win with New York led to a trip to free agency because they released him. Francis finished the year signing a contract with Toronto in October, and the Blue Jays were the only team he played for in 2015. He pitched in 14 games before getting reassigned to the triple-A Buffalo Bisons for the rest of the year, and once he wasn't brought back for the next year, Jeff Francis announced his retirement that December. Sure, Jeff Francis wasn't the best at pitching. Sure, he lost more games than he won, and he could never really be considered "elite." Sure, injuries derailed his career from ever getting back to where it once was headed. All that may be true. But when it comes to Rockies pitching development, that's honestly par for the course. Actually it's a bit better than par. Maybe a birdie, but not quite an eagle. Jeff Francis' career went way better than many other Rockies top pitching prospects. Who remembers Chin-hui Tsao? Or Lariel Gonzalez? Or Dough Million? Exactly. Okay, you probably didn't remember Jeff Francis either, but trust me, he's better than those guys. All in all, the story of Jeff Francis doesn't get the credit I think he merits, especially for the part where he was the first Canadian pitcher to do a bunch of stuff. First Canadian to start a World Series Game 1, first Sorry-sayer to pitch to another Hockey-Lover, first Regular-Tim-Hortons-drinker to start Opening Day... too much? Jeff Francis would visit the Hall of Fame in a Colorado Rockies cap for his 64-62 record, 742 strikeouts, and 8 years played for the team. He'd also wear his gold medal he won at the 2015 Pan America Games as part of Team Canada. But wait, there's more! Too much more. Dear me. #1: Randy Choate #2: Kevin Gregg #3: Dan Uggla #4: Josh Hamilton #5: Delmon Young #6: Willie Bloomquist #7: Grady Sizemore #8: Kevin Correia #9: David DeJesus #10: Rafael Betancourt #11: Clint Barmes #12: Adam LaRoche #13: Grant Balfour #14: Randy Wolf #15: Rafael Soriano #16: Chris Denorfia #17: Bruce Chen #18: Cody Ross #19: Scott Baker
The AI and pitcher usage (and other game suggestions).
I know I can't be the only one who plays Franchise and notices the AI tends to be extremely quick to jump to the bullpen, whether it be when you're playing against them or when you watch a game. Considering the limited amount of pitchers available is going to be five at most in a typical game (starter + four relievers. If you use a starter, problems have happened), this struck me as counterproductive. I think it has a lot to do with why relievers tend to have such terrible ERA's over long seasons, because they're overworked into oblivion. The AI also seems to do some pretty unique stuff when managing pitcher usage overall so I decided to pick a couple of the default teams and sim some seasons (5-6 for each team) to see what trends came out. I used a custom league with only the default teams in there. No DH in both conferences, random divisions, 162 9-inning games, 99 ego all around. The teams I picked to sim were: Jacks: 4 SP, 3 RP, 1 CP. Starters are horrible, bullpen is really good. Crocodons: 4 SP, 3 RP, 1 CP. Great starters, awful bullpen. Buzzards: 3 SP, 2 SP/RP, 2 RP, 1 CP. Meh rotation, terrible bullpen. Moonstars: 4 SP, 1 SP/RP, 2 RP, 1 CP. Elite rotation, great bullpen Moose: 4 SP, 1 SP/RP, 2 RP, 1 CP. Above average in both. I figured that was a wide enough range of teams to pick from. So here's what I found:
In general, starters will pitch anywhere between 55-60% of a team's innings and average just over 5 innings per start. Even the team that used its starters the most, the Moonstars, barely had them average 5 and a half innings per start. In the extreme case of the Jacks, starters pitched only 52% of the team's total innings.
Even the best starting pitchers in the game rarely average 6 innings per start. I'm talking even the Alisha Woodrow, Jovita Pulo types, the A+ or S tier types. The most innings any starter threw in a full 41-start season was 253 (Hurley Bender), which is just 6.17 IP/start. For reference, even in the shortened 2020 MLB season, with teams being careful of pitchers arms and bullpen usage at an all time high, 5 or 6 starters went past 6.17 IP/start. It feels like every AI team is managed by Kevin Cash is what I'm saying.
The AI does weird things with the SP/RP types. If there's less than 4 starters, a SP/RP will be used exclusively as a starter, except they typically barely average 4 innings per start. If there's 4 starters and a SP/RP, the long reliever will likely be the least used bullpen arm all year. Don't ask me why but it happens.
Closers get abused like little else, particularly if the starting rotation is not good. I've had seasons where a closer throws well over 200 innings. This all leads to closers typically having the worst ERA on the team and a huge amount of losses, because they get used while exhausted and blow a lot of games.
All AI pitchers average a LOT of pitches per plate appearance, typically somewhere between 4 and 4.25. I think the AI and their Joey Votto-like approach in early counts really contributes to this. This just contributes further to starters lasting a lot less and facing less batters, relievers getting tired, etc. For reference, 2020 marked a high point in MLB's recent history in terms of pitches per PA and the MLB average was 3.96.
I think a small tweak to either increase starter stamina slightly or make the AI slightly more aggressive would be a good way to solve this, because currently the AI is way too eager to dive right into a 4-man bullpen. Maybe if we had 5-6 relievers (with lowered stamina) instead of 4 I could see the current AI decisionmaking work, but I'd prefer simply starters pitching deeper into games.
Also, sort of unrelated, but this game would really benefit from adding an "approach" feature that gives batters and pitchers more individual tendencies to set them apart from one another bc as of now, two hitters with 80ish power and 60ish contact are the same thing, occasional traits aside. I think you could add the following: For hitters:
You could also add "Extreme" on both ends of the spectrum. This would not only make each player way more unique and memorable, it would also give added depth to acquiring players in franchise mode, bc you'd have to take your ballpark and pitching staff into consideration. Tiger Den is your home ballpark? Load up on flyball hitters. Swagger Center? Lefties who pull the ball would be great. Etc. (Also, please add basic defensive shifts into the game if this idea gets considered). For pitchers:
Pitcher approach: Power Pitcher, Junkballer, Finesse Pitcher
So for example, a Power Pitcher would rely more on their fastballs, a junkballer would throw a ton of breaking and offspeed stuff and a finesse pitcher would nibble a bit more and look to clip the edges all time. And more of the sort. I would also really like new Traits that affect pitcher stamina, like a starter with the "Workhorse" trait who loses stamina at a lower rate once he gets past 70 pitches or something, I don't know, just throwing ideas out there. This was kinda all over the place, but I hope it's enough to spark some convo. Also, idk how to tag MetalHead Software so they can see the suggestions (I'm new here), if someone could do it it would be dope.
Welcome back to year seventeen of the Alabama Slammers Franchise Report! Here are the links to the previous versions if you want to catch up (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026, 2027, 2028, 2029, 2030, 2031,2032, 2033, 2034, 2035, 2036). Previous Season Highlights: Andy Schaffer wins Cy Young 20-year-old Marco Vazquez leads the league in batting average, hits, doubles, and triples Edgar Sanchez wins seventh straight gold glove 6 players make all-star team 106-win regular season Lost in NLCS 4-2 Start of Offseason: As with the previous versions, I’ll list the moves I made, the rationale behind those moves, the season results, and the future outlook. Here are the salaries heading into the offseason. \Unless stated otherwise, all players were re-signed to their one-year arbitration estimate* Departures (non-trades): Ernesto Bernal Bernal was discovered by my scout in 2022 and spent fifteen years with the organization. He’s the franchise’s all-time leader in games, at-bats, WAR, runs, hits, total bases, singles, doubles, triples, RBIs, and stolen bases. He’s the greatest player in franchise history and it really hurt to part ways with him, but all good things must come to an end. He signed a 5/$84m deal with the Rangers, which seems reasonable, and had a solid year. I received a supplemental first-round pick upon his signing. Drew Romo Romo looked to be on his way out, so I let him walk as a free agent. He didn’t sign with a team and retired at the end of the season. He played his entire 12-year major league career with the Slammers and was a huge reason we had six Cy Young award winners during his tenure. Eric Lawrence Lawrence struggled last year in the majors, so I gave him a season in AAA to work things out. He looks ready for the big leagues again and will be an opening day starter or get traded. Jeff Hopper Hopper was excellent during his six years with us, highlighted by his 2035 campaign when he finished third in the MVP voting. He wanted 8/$232m to re-sign, which was too expensive for my tastes, and ended up getting 6/$156m from the Jazz, which is still too expensive for me. I don’t see this contract ending well. Move #1: Hired a new trainer. I heavily prioritize prevention and this guy is good at preventing all types of injuries. Here’s my old trainer. Move #2: Slammers Receive: Edwin de la Torre Diamondbacks Receive: Alex Rivera, Luis Arguello, Mike Dooner, Harold Coppola, Bryn Hill De la Torre is my third baseman fantasy. He has elite batting potential, above average fielding ability, excellent baserunning, great character, durable injury proneness, and bats from the left side of the plate. I gave the Diamondbacks an assortment of young and talented players, but I would’ve gladly given them twice as much. Guys like de la Torre just don’t exist. Move #3: Slammers Receive: Jonathan Hubbard Padres Receive: Eric Clark Hubbard might not be anything special to the Padres, but he’s beautiful to me. He’s a right-handed hitter, has elite defensive ratings, doesn’t expect to start, is durable, and has the sparkplug personality trait. I needed a very specific player and Hubbard met all of my criteria. He’ll start against lefties and play a decent amount against righties in an attempt to keep Steve Flores healthy for the playoffs. Move #4: Signed Andy Schaffer to a 5/$105m extension. Schaffer is 26 and just won a Cy Young, this seems like a pretty safe deal. Move #5: Signed free agent Tommy Noonan to a 3/$30m deal. After looking through the available in-house, trade, and free agent replacement options, I decided the best course of action was to roll the dice on Noonan. I’ve seen players bounce back from the Guru before, so hopefully Noonan does just that. If he falls off a cliff, I’ll only owe him $15m after this year. Move #6: Added a Dominican Rookie League team. We haven’t gotten much out of our scouting discoveries, and I think it might be partially due to them spending so much time in the international complex, so we’re adding a Dominican Rookie League team for them to develop in – The Kiev Blue Claws. Don’t ask me why the team is in Ukraine, it’s just what the owner wanted. I promoted every player from the international complex, and I’ll continue to promote new players as they’re discovered. I’m interested to see how this works out. Move #7: Slammers Receive: Chris Joiner Mets Receive: Joe Poffenberger Poffenberger was given strong consideration for the starting catcher job this year, but I decided to go with Gutierrez instead. There was no need to keep Poffenberger around in the minors, so I swapped him for a guy that can provide some depth in a year or two. In-House Moves (Preseason): Sean Vahey remains on the major league roster after joining during roster expansion last season. He will be a member of the bullpen. Jose Gutierrez promoted from AA. Will be the primary starter at catcher vs. RHPs. Bobby McCallum promoted from AA. Will start at first base. Seung-hwa Kim promoted from AA. Will start in left field. Bob Banks will slide to DH with the promotion of Kim. Final Financial Situation: We have about $34m in available budget room to start the year, so shouldn’t need to make any trades for cash, and we might even complete the owner goal of ending the year with a balance of +$23m. He’s been hounding me about that one for a while. Here are the salaries heading into the season. Move #8 (Part 1,Part 2): Slammers Receive: $14m Slammers Lose: Chris Dearborn, Nate Holston Turns out we needed some more cash. Holston is a career minor leaguer, but Dearborn might have a real MLB future. I’ve seen too many players with his profile flame out though, so I’m willing to take the risk he doesn’t amount to anything. Season Outlook: This is the most excited I’ve been about a season in a while. It’s always fun to cruise to 100-win seasons with established teams, but we’re going with the youth movement this year. Our five through eight hitters have a combined zero days of major league service, so I’m really trusting my scout that these rookies are ready to perform. The pitching should remain elite, so if the young guys come through, we should roll to another division title. Batters: Primary Lineupvs. RHPandvs. LHPwhen Healthy (\DH enabled in both leagues, lineup vs. RHP shown below)* RF – Marco Vazquez Vazquez cooled off a bit at the plate as compared to last season but upped his defense to boost his overall value. He made his second all-star team and won his first gold glove. CF – Wil Mireles Mireles had another excellent season but will be leaving as a free agent. He wants 8/$256m to re-sign, which is too much for me. 2B – Edgar Sanchez Sanchez continued his march towards the hall of fame with another great year. He made his third all-star team and won his eighth gold glove. DH – Bob Banks Banks moved to DH this year, which should be the least taxing position, but missed about a month to injury. When healthy, he performed below his usual standard. Hopefully, he gets back on track next year. LF – Seung-Hwa Kim Kim had a solid rookie year and will be back for a sophomore campaign. He’s 26-years-old but still looks to have a lot of untapped potential. 3B – Edwin de la Torre De la Torre had a monster rookie season, winning rookie of the month in September and taking rookie of the year honors. He’s 21-years-old, so should be around for a long time. 1B – Bobby McCallum McCallum started off the year on a crazy hot streak. He won rookie of the month in April and June and was on pace for 65 home runs and 167 RBIs. He cooled off tremendously as the season progressed but was still good enough to finish third in the rookie of the year voting. C – Jose Gutierrez I feel pretty good about my decision to go with Gutierrez at catcher. He played great defense and was league average at the plate, which is all I could ever ask for. As an added bonus, his personality trait was revealed as sparkplug. SS – Steve Flores Flores came back from a year-long injury and played great. I would love to keep his defense around forever but it’s probably better to go ahead and move him before he gets injured again. I have a solid replacement in Eric Lawrence. Bench C – Danny Wells Wells has been pretty much the same player since he debuted in 2032 but I’m ok with that. As long as he continues to play excellent defense, he’ll stick around. IF – Justus Evans Evans had a pretty good five-year run for a guy that used to be a pitcher. I have plenty of in-house replacements though, so he’ll leave as a free agent. IF – Jonathan Hubbard I brought in Hubbard to replace the fragile backup, so of course he got injured. He missed a month with a separated shoulder but did what was asked of him when healthy. OF – Andy Vera Vera is overqualified to be a bench player, but I have an excess of outfield talent and he’s the worst of the bunch. He might get a shot to start in center field next year with Mireles departing. Replacements IF – Chris McClain It’s a good thing I kept the fragile backup middle infielder around. He filled in for Hubbard for a month and didn’t kill us. OF – Mike Honeycutt Honeycutt filled in for Banks and was pretty good in his limited opportunities. Depending on the rest of the roster, he might get a backup role next year. Pitchers: Pitching Staff when Healthy SP – Corey MacDonald I took the pitch count off MacDonald since his injury proneness was upgraded to iron man and he continued to stay healthy. He played well and made his seventh all-star game. SP – Gilles Palacios Palacios had one of his best seasons yet, winning the pitching triple crown and collecting his fourth Cy Young award. He wants 7/$245m to re-sign, but I’m going to try to find a way to bring him back. More than likely, I’ll have to sign him in free agency. SP – Andy Schaffer Schaffer decided to take it easy after winning a Cy Young last year and getting a contract extension. Hopefully, he goes back to his Cy Young ways next season. SP – Eddie Copping I had strongly considered a long-term extension for Copping in the offseason but I’m glad I held off. He struggled this year, posting his worst season yet. I think he’ll be fine going forward, but I’m much less worried about his performance without a long-term deal. SP – Bobby Butler Butler might not be done as a major league starting pitcher, but he’s done with the Slammers. He suffered a partially torn UCL in spring training, then suffered an eight-month setback in August. Hopefully, he still has some trade value when he returns. RP – Alan McCarter McCarter has been getting worse the last two seasons, but I’ve kept him around for his prankster personality trait. I’ll try to find someone in the offseason that’s also good at baseball. RP – Tommy Noonan Noonan isn’t the world beater he used to be but he’s still a really good reliever. I’m glad I brought him back. RP – Jose Macias Macias was solid for the second straight season and will be back next year. RP – Sean Vahey Vahey had a tough start to the season but established himself as one of the best relievers in the game by the end of the year. He’ll probably be around for his remaining five years of team control. RP – Jose Aguilar Aguilar once again performed like one of the best relievers in baseball, making his fifth all-star game. He has two more team friendly years on his contract, so will definitely be back. RP – Mike Bentley I was browsing through player profiles about halfway through the season and did a double take when I got to Bentley. All of a sudden, he had an 80-grade changeup and wanted to be a starter, which definitely wasn’t the case last year. I kept him in the bullpen until rosters expanded, then let him work as the sixth starter the rest of the season. He did well in his five starts and will be a member of the rotation next year. Hopefully, I can still sign him to a cheap extension. Oh yeah, he also won reliever of the year. RP – Steve Hixson Hixson wasn’t as good as last year but he’s cheap and durable, so I’ll probably bring him back. RP – Jonathan Kelsey It’s always nice to have an iron man reliever that’s capable of competently starting 31 games. He moved to the rotation when Butler was injured and gave us 190.1 solid innings. Unfortunately, he’s an upcoming free agent, so probably won’t return. Replacements RP – Chris Larkin Larkin was called up and given Kelsey’s bullpen role when Butler was injured. He wants to be a starter, but I don’t feel comfortable with his movement, so he’ll remain in the bullpen or get traded next season. RP – Joe Cope A 32nd round pick in 2032, it took Cope a while to figure things out in the minors, but once he did, he rose quickly through the system. He was called up when rosters expanded and struggled in limited appearances, but I think he’ll be one of the best relievers in the game in a year or two. RP – Mike Blake Blake was also called up when rosters expanded, and he pitched well in his three appearances. He looks like he could be a solid starting pitcher, but I have better options ahead of him, so he’ll have to take a bullpen role in the majors. Season Results: We didn’t do our usual raping and pillaging during the regular season but still won 104 games and took our eighth straight division crown. The Cardinals actually took the lead from us at game 130, but we took it back thirteen games later and pulled away late. The pitching continued to be dominant and the offense was amongst the league best. Other than Butler, we’re fully healthy going into the playoffs and will go with a playoff rotation of Palacios, MacDonald, Schaffer, and Bentley. Copping and Kelsey will move to the bullpen. Our first-round opponent is the 94-68 Rockies. Their 3-5 hitters (Eric Zuniga, Noe Renteria, Robby Teeter) are terrifying, but they don’t have much pitching. We should be able to take this one. Divisional Series Game 1, Rockies Win 5-3 – We played well overall but couldn’t overcome Renteria’s four RBI performance. Three players had solo home runs in the loss. Divisional Series Game 2, Slammers Win 5-4 – MacDonald gave up four runs but the bullpen provided 3.2 scoreless innings to hold on for the win. We had fourteen hits in the contest and Sanchez led the way with two RBIs. Divisional Series Game 3, Slammers Win 6-4 – New starter Mike Bentley had a great outing, striking out eight while giving up two runs over six innings. Banks led the way on offense with three RBIs. Divisional Series Game 4, Slammers Win 8-1 – Schaffer pitched a gem, going seven scoreless innings and striking out nine. Everyone chipped in on offense en route to fourteen hits and eight runs. Divisional Series Game 5, Slammers Win 12-8 – We knocked out their starter in the first and continued to pile on in the 12-8 victory. Kim led the way with two homers and three RBIs, winning series MVP. Next up is the 101-61 Cardinals, led by young ace Eddie Salinas. They have a deep and balanced roster, so I could see this going either way. The winner should take the World Series. NLCS Game 1, Slammers Win 6-4 – The rookie McCallum put the team on his back with a three-home run, five RBI performance. MacDonald gave up four runs in his second straight appearance, but Aguilar and Noonan closed out the game with 3.1 scoreless innings. NLCS Game 2, Slammers Win 10-3 – It was Banks putting on his superman cape this time, with a four RBI performance. Bentley gave up two runs over 5.1 innings. NLCS Game 3, Slammers Win 3-2 (12) – This one was close throughout, but a bases load walk by Kim in the top of the twelfth provided the game deciding run. Schaffer, Aguilar, Noonan, and Macias combined to allow two runs over twelve innings. NLCS Game 4, Slammers Win 2-1 – Palacios came out on top in a pitcher’s duel and we swept the series. McCallum was named MVP, mostly off of his game one performance. We’re once again facing off against the Red Sox in the World Series, and this should just be a victory lap. They have a very good rotation (Jorge Morones, Bobby Dibble, Rob McDowell, Josh Sheppard) but no one worth mentioning on offense. It’ll be a major upset if we lose this one. World Series Game 1, Slammers Win 8-2 – We started off the series with a bang, getting home runs from McCallum, Banks, and de la Torre. MacDonald gave up two runs over 6.2 innings and Aguilar closed out the rest. World Series Game 2, Slammers Win 7-4 – The Rookie Kim led the way with a pair of two-run homers. Then Bentley struck out eleven and gave up two runs over six innings. World Series Game 3, Red Sox Win 3-1 – Red Sox ace Morones shut us down in the loss, but we can win the series without seeing him again if we win two of the next three. World Series Game 4, Red Sox Win 9-7 – We were on track to win this one before a complete meltdown by Macias and Noonan in the eighth. They gave up a combined five runs in the inning and the offense couldn’t bail them out in the ninth. World Series Game 5, Slammers Win 6-2 – We really needed this win. MacDonald and Vahey combined to hold them to two runs over nine innings and Banks led the way on offense with three RBIs. We’ll head back home and look to close out the series. World Series Game 6, Slammers Win 14-5 – This one was close until a nine run explosion in the fourth inning put the game away. Every starter other than Kim had at least one RBI. The Red Sox first baseman won series MVP in the loss, but we’d much rather have the title than an individual award. We’re really starting to roll now, as that’s our third title in six seasons! The young guys came through when it mattered and will hopefully lead us to many more titles in the future. Here are the rest of the playoff results and MLB standings. Top Prospects: The top prospects list continues to be in flux, as we promoted three players and traded another three from last year’s edition, but we still have a lot of good players. 1.) Hector Ruiz Ruiz was an honorable mention the last two years because I don’t trust international amateur free agent signings, but I’m ready to buy the hype now. If he can stay healthy and reach his full potential, he’s a 10 WAR player. He’ll begin next season at AA. 2.) Victor Lacayo I’m starting to get some serious mileage from these international amateur free agent signings, as that’s how the top two players on the list were acquired. Lacayo has monster hitting potential for a middle infielder and could be elite defensively if he gets a slight bump to his range. Worst case, he’ll a great bench player. He’ll begin next year in A. 3.) Jake Maddox Maddox continued his steady climb through the system and looks just about ready for the majors. Depending on what his ratings look like at the start of next year, he might make the opening day roster. 4.) Chris Joiner I had a trio of guys last year that I thought were in line to take Justus Evans spot, but the acquisition of Joiner probably ended their major league chances. He plays above average defense at three positions, has the potential to be an elite hitter, and has excellent baserunning skills. He’ll begin next season on the opening day roster. 5.) Felix Lopez Lopez could probably fill the role Joiner will take next year, but he’s still young, so I’ll give him a year in AAA to round out his skills. I like everything about him but his range, so hopefully that improves next year. 6.) Chris Overcash Overcash looks ready for the majors but I don’t have a place for him, so he’ll start next season in AAA. I’ll get him some experience in left field, and he’ll be first in line as an injury replacement. 7.) Gabe Depass If Depass had durable injury proneness, he’d be top two on the list. He’s a great talent but you can never put too much faith in a pitcher with normal injury proneness. He’ll start next season at A. 8.) Brad Cole Cole is a very interesting player. Other than his outfield error, he has everything you’d want in an outfield prospect, so I’m hoping that improves next year in A. I was able to scoop him up in the sixth round since he was listed as a pitcher coming out of the draft. 9.) Nate Bianco Bianco’s movement still hasn’t improved, so I’m starting to cool on him a bit. He performed well in A- though and will begin next season in A+. 10.) Chris Brown Rest in peace Chris Brown. If he makes it back from his torn UCL, he’ll be restricted to bullpen duty. Honorable mentions: Andy West, Bob Larson I usually don’t include players like this on the list, but these two curiosities have very interesting ratings profiles and dominated the competition in A. They’ll both begin next season in AA and I’m hoping their ratings catch up to their production. Eric Whittington, Israel Lopez Both of these guys were listed as starters coming out of the draft, but I’ve put them in their proper roles as relievers. Between the two of them, I’m sure one will make the majors. Sam Leintz Leintz can’t stay healthy, so he’ll probably get traded. Too bad, since I used a first-round pick on him last year. Promoted to MLB: Bobby McCallum, Seung-Hwa Kim, Jose Gutierrez Future Outlook: We have some tough decisions this offseason with Palacios’s upcoming free agency and logjams in the infield and outfield. Eric Lawrence deserves to start, as do a number of minor league outfielders, but we also have a lot young entrenched starters in the majors. I’m not sure yet how I’ll build the roster, but these are good problems to have. It’s not a question of how we win, but how do we win the most. Hopefully, we can push towards 120 wins next year. Here is the budget and salaries heading into the offseason.
Hey Baseball buddies! Hope everyone had a relaxing Thanksgiving weekend...and following week. I'm back now, and it's time to get balls deep on the rest of this list. This year’s Hall of Fame ballot includes 11 first time players. None of them are first ballot locks and some of them are guaranteed to fall off the ballot after one year of eligibility. So once again, we’re taking a look at all the ballot rookies, starting from the bottom. We've previously covered Nick Swisher, Michael Cuddyer and AJ Burnett, so it’s time for… Dan Haren Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor: 30 Career bWAR (13 years): 35.1 Stats: 153-131, 3.75 ERA, 2013 K, 2419.2 IP, 1.181 WHIP, 109 ERA+ Awards: All-Star x3 (AL 2007, NL 2008, ‘09) League Leading Stats: Starts x3 (34, 2006; 34, 2007; 34, 2011), WHIP (1.003, 2009), K/BB x3 (5.15, 2008; 5.87, 2009; 5.82, 2011) Teams Played For: Cardinals (2003-04), A’s (2005-07), D-backs (2008-2010), Angels (2010-2012), Nationals (2013), Dodgers (2014), Marlins (2015), Cubs (2015) Throughout the ‘90s, David Cone picked up a reputation as kind of a gun for hire. Twice the Blue Jays brought him in mid-season for playoff pushes. The Yankees signed him longer term to solidify a rotation that won four rings, and Boston brought him in at the end of his career to try and stoke their own championship fires. He was a six-time all-star, a Cy Young winner and a fringe HoF candidate who was always happy with the “hired merc” persona. Dan Haren was kind of like that, only more mediocre. Daniel Boone* Haren first gained the attention of scouts while he was pitching at Pepperdine, along with teammate Noah Lowery. In their junior years, Haren put up a 2.22 ERA and was named WCC Player of the year, while Lowery posted a 1.71 ERA en route to being named WCC Pitcher of the year. Both players skipped their senior season and declared for the MLB draft; a draft in which the Giants would take Lowery in the first round, with the Cardinals drafting Haren in the second. Lowery seemed to be on his way to a good-to-above-average career in SF until the Giants medical staff decided that he needed to be sacrificed upon the alter of Dave Dravecky and completely mis-managed a circulatory issue into a career ending forearm injury that cost Lowery a rib in the process. Meanwhile, Haren was completely fine, he was just in St Louis. He appeared in 28 games over two seasons, making 19 starts and throwing 4.2 shutout innings in the 2004 World Series, but the Cards wound up sending Haren to Oakland, along with Kiko Calero and future Mexican Baseball League gold glover Daric Barton, in a trade that netted them Mark Mulder. In response Haren, clearly happy about being relieved of the burden of pretending that St Louis has the best fans in baseball, entered the prime portion of his career. From 2005 to 2010, Haren’s age 24 to 29 seasons, ol’ Dirty Dan was a legit dealer. 85-64, 3.55 in 1343 innings, with 1176 K, to the tune of a 3.61 FIP, 1.173 WHIP and 123 ERA+. Over that span, he would make all three of his all-star appearances and be good for 27.1 bWAR, including back to back 6+ bWAR seasons in 2008 and 2009. In the middle of that stretch, the A’s traded Haren to Arizona in exchange for a massive haul of prospects that included Carlos Gonzalez, Brett Anderson, Greg Smith, Dana Eveland and Chris Carter. Three of those guys would go on to have notable big league careers, but only one would make any noise in an A’s uniform because Billy Beane was always playing a game of keep away with himself. The back half of Haren’s career, 2011-2015 was less successful. Haren kept on doing exactly the same things he’d always done, just with ever diminishing returns. Two full seasons in LAA, including his last really good effort in 2011. A season in DC. Back to LA proper for a season in Dodger blue. Then 21 games for Miami in 2015 before the Cubs traded for him to try and get them over the hump a year before they were really ready for prime time. (This was three years after a deal to trade Haren straight up for Carlos Marmol fell through. A deal which, while not being on quite the same level as Lou Brock for Ernie Broglio, would have been hilariously lopsided, nonetheless. Haren was still good for 500 innings of league average ball over his last three seasons; Marmol once finished third in the league in hit batters, despite only throwing 74 innings. A stat we celebrated by making him our closer. And sure, he gave us one pretty solid season, but then he started blowing saves like he was a drunken college student in Seattle during Fleet Week and you know what? I’m getting off track.) Unlike Cone, Haren was never a guy who embraced the “missing piece” role. When the Angles let him walk after the 2012 season, Haren told the LA Times “I’m sick of changing teams.” And, since baseball is a petty bitch with a weird sense of humor, Haren would naturally be forced to change uniforms four times over the next three seasons. A large part of the reason for Haren’s decline can be attributed to his change in velocity. Haren was never exactly a fireballer, but in the early portion of his career his fastball could routinely end up in the lower-end-of-the-lower-end of the 90’s and he could dial it up into the 93-94 range when he needed. By the time the Angels declined his option in 2012, however, his fastball was down to the high 80’s (a fact he’s kind of leaned into and embraced: his Twitter handle is @ithrow88). His last season in the bigs, Haren’s 86 MPH average was the second slowest non-knuckleballer in the majors. Haren was able to remain effective because he’d always had impeccable control. At no point in his career did he ever walk more than 55 batters in a season and there were just three full seasons in his career when his BB/9 ratio got above 2. But he wasn’t ever known as a Maddux-type pitcher who lived life on the black. Instead, Haren liked to use his ability to throw any pitch at any time as a means of coming right at guys and challenging them where they live. When it worked, it worked: Haren struck out over 200 batters three times and was the active leader in K/9 ratio when he retired. But all that reward came with an ever increasing amount of risk as well: Haren coughed up 305 homers in his career, 54th all time. Back in 2016, Haren directly addressed his lack of both velocity and fear in an amazing, now sadly deleted, tweet: “Sometimes when the count was 3-1, I would just throw it down the middle and hope for the best. People pop up in batting practice, right?” (The quarantine has slowed him down a bit, but Haren has historically been a highly entertaining Twitter follow) Dan Haren spent 13 seasons in the major leagues, dividing nine of those years more or less evenly betwixt the A’s, Dbacks and Angels. He made the most starts in Oakland and professed to be happiest in Anaheim, but he goes into the Hypothetical Hall with the Diamondbacks, as a nod to his two all-star appearances with the team and the two best overall seasons of his career. He’s also fifth all time in franchise history for bWAR for pitchers (13.1), sixth in ERA (3.56) and fourth in WHIP (1.132). Chances of making the Hall: Worse than his chances of making an MLB comeback, better than his chances of winning the fastest pitch competition at your local ballpark. Chances of leaving the ballot this year: 100% *not his actual middle name, but fuck. It should be, right?
Better Know the Ones Left Off the Ballot #18: Cody Ross
We're only a week-and-a-half from the revelation of who gets into the Hall! So I gotta speed this up! Which I've said every single time it hasn't been crunch time but it hasn't happened quite as much as I'd like! We'll see how I do this time! Done with the exclamation points now. If you don't know what this is, the Hall of Fame ballot has a lot of people who qualify for it (10 years of MLB experience), but aren't on it because they were deemed not noteworthy enough. We look at the guys that weren't up to the Selection Committee's standards. You can find the ones that make that number up there so big at the bottom. Now to this dude named Cody.
Cody Ross
Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor: 1 Career bWAR (12 years): 13.5 Stats: .262/.322/.445, 104 OPS+, 904 H, 132 HR,356 XBH, 508 RBI, 449 R League Leading Stats: Double Plays as OF (4, 2007) Awards: 2010 NLCS MVP, World Series Ring (2010) Teams Played For: Tigers (2003), Dodgers (2005-06), Reds (2006), Marlins (2006-2010), Giants (2010-11), Red Sox (2012), Diamondbacks (2013-14), Athletics (2015) Cody Ross could be one of the more irritating players to have on your team. One week he'd play like a superstar, the next week he wouldn't get a hit and drop a flyball. What he lacked in consistency, he made up for in longevity, managing to qualify for the Hall of Fame ballot. Didn't make it though, which is why he's here. How could someone who played so well (be it sparsely) and who took the nickname "Smiles" for his oh-so-charming grin get left off by the Selection Committee? Did they make a mistake? What with being a high school All-American and pitching a five-inning perfect game one time, Cody Ross from Carlsbad wasn't a surprising pick for the Tigers in the 4th round of the 1999 draft. Even after going 31-for-142 in Rookie League for a .218 average, 15 of those 31 hits were for extra bases, so to the next level he went. Turns out he got better the higher level of competition he faced, going from a .706 OPS in Rookie ball in 1999 to a .753 OPS in single-A in 2000 to a .798 OPS in high-A in 2001 to a .859 OPS in double-A in 2002. No more perfect games thrown, though, because this was the early 2000s, and two-way players were the type of fantastical beast a grandparent might lull a child to sleep with stories about. After keeping the trend up in AAA in 2003, Ross got a call from the Detroit on July 4th. They wanted him to celebrate America's birthday with them in Kansas City. The Tigers had also won only 20 of the 84 games they'd played that season so things weren't going so great. Maybe Ross could help bring some much needed relief. Or he could ground out, reach on an error but not come around to score, then get hit by a pitch after which manager Alan Trammell subbed in a pinch-runner. And then he got to watch his team lose. Certainly a non-ideal way to start your career, but you just gotta keep at it and- oh you're back in the minors a week later. Hey, it's fine. Keep it up, and you'll get back in no time. That he did, coming up as soon as the rosters expanded, and once he was back, he proved he wanted to stay. In in his 20th ever plate appearance, in his 6th ever game, for his 4th ever hit, Cody Ross hit a grand slam off Cliff Lee. Sammy Sosa went almost 10 years before hitting his first slam, but it took Cody Ross just six games. Apparently the baseball gods didn't want him getting a big head after that, because just two plate appearances later in the same game, Ross tore his ACL trying to reach first on a sacrifice bunt turned E1. Bye bye majority of 2004. He still made it into 60 games with the AAA Las Vegas 51s, but was finished after that. "But wait a second," I hear you say, "surely you mean the Toledo Mud Hens, because they were Detroit's triple-A affiliate during that time, while the 51s were associated with the Dodgers." Remarkably observant, but that brings me to my next point. At the beginning of 2004, the Tigers decided that having bottom-5 pitching in the MLB was not how they wanted to continue (ignore the part where their offense was just as bad if not worse). As a result, Ross was shipped off to LA for relief arm Steve Colyer, and played for the 51s, hitting .273/.328/.538 with 14 homers. Not bad, not bad at all. Would it be enough to propel him into the majors next year? After spending the first three months of the 2005 season in Nevada, Cody Ross got the call he'd been waiting for. Then, in 14 games between June 26th and July 10th, he... went 4-for-25 with one double and but a single RBI. Back to the minors it was. He'd finish his time in Vegas batting .267/.348/.509, but hadn't yet proved he wasn't like all the other AAAA hitters. He would get chance in spring training, and he took it, making the Opening Day roster, and even appeared in the first game of the season versus the Atlanta Braves, pinch-hitting for Derek Lowe. Flew out and stranded two but he was playing. His fifth game and second start of the season went a whole lot better. Facing the Pirates, in his 59th career plate appearance, Ross hit his second career grand slam. Barry Larkin needed 8991 plate appearances to get two grand slams, and Ross did it in less than 1/150th of the time. Seeing as how hitting home runs was fun, he decided to do it again the next inning, but fell a baserunner short of a slam this time. The Dodgers were so thankful for his contributions that they traded him just a week-and-a-half after that performance. Then again, their outfield already had Kenny Lofton, J.D. Drew, and these up-and-comers named Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp, so that makes sense. And so Ross made his way across the country once again, this time to Cincinnati. The Reds watched him break his finger in his debut game, then assigned him to the AAA to rehab the injury. Called him back up once that was done, only to trade him to the Florida Marlins right after. Those Fish were in the middle of an... interesting season. Three days before they bought this guy with two grand slams in 30 career games, they had a record of 11-31. That was because owner Jeffrey Loria blasted all his best players off into oblivion for nickels and dimes on the dollar because he was mad at the city of Miami for not building him his own stadium, but that's another story. Ross would serve as their 4th outfield option for the rest of that season, making it into 91 games, more than quadrupling his career total up to that point. Sure, he'd bat .212/.284/.396 over that time, but don't ignore the 11 homers and 37 RBIs, including a 3-home-run, 7-RBI onslaught versus the 97-win Mets. Ignoring the part where he did that on 9/11 against a team from New York, it was the best offensive performance of the year. In case you misread that, a dude who didn't have a regular starting spot and was batting .228 at the time had the best offensive performance of the year in the MLB. That performance actually put the Marlins at a 73-71 record, only 2 games back of the NL Wild Card, and made them the first MLB team to claw back above .500 after being 20 games under in the same year. Even after they fell to 78-84 at the end of the season, the Marlins seemed like they were sticking with him. Mainly because he was cheap, but a performance like that didn't hurt. It seemed, after a long and winding road, that Cody Ross had finally found a team that wanted him. The Marlins kept Cody Ross around for another three years, and unintentionally introduced the world to Dr. Cody and Mr. Ross. His 2006 season could be considered the genesis of the poorly-hitting and betrayal-minded Mr. Ross, but his 2007 season in Florida bore witness to the birth of his better half, Dr. Cody. Once his 12th game of the season was over, his average would never fall below .275 again, and at the year's conclusion, the Doctor would finish at a magnificent .335/.411/.653. The big dents in his MVP campaign were the fact he only played 66 games after missing just over 2 months of the season with a hamstring issue, and the fact the Marlins finished 71-91. The beginning of the next season saw another appearance from Mr. Ross, which resulted in a batting average of .209 in mid-June, despite the other side's best efforts including 10 home runs in May. Dr. Cody would overpower his nemesis for the next month, over which he batted .367 with 5 homers and 21 RBIs in 25 games. The two personalities would continue flip-flopping for a month each until the Toy Cannon (now that's a nickname) finished the year hitting .260/.316/.488 with 22 homers. Not bad for his first year as a regular member of the lineup. Man showed he deserved it too, putting up some real nice fielding numbers in the outfield, including a perfect fielding percentage in 101 games in center. The team was better this year too, going 84-77, though still not good enough for the playoffs. Over his next 271 games, Dr. Cody would bat .323/.375/.512 over 555 at-bats, and Mr. Ross would bat .201/.257/.352 over 458 at-bats. Add it all up, and during his time in a Marlins jersey, Dr. Cody and Mr. Ross combined to give Cody Ross a line of .265/.322/.465 with 80 home runs and a 104 OPS+. Thankfully for the team, the only half on-hand when it came to fielding was Dr. Cody, who contributed 2.4 dWAR with significant time spent in each outfield position. Never made the playoffs, unfortunately, since 87-75 didn't cut it in 2009. And yet, as with all good things, bad things, and in-between things, his time in Florida had to come to an end. Having been, for all intents and purposes, an above-average player for the past several years, Ross had been rewarded with several pay raises, from league minimum his first year all the way up to an expected salary of over $6 million at the end of 2010. The Marlins, who were rather stingy when it came to such extravagant contracts, put their 29-year-old outfielder, who already had 1.6 bWAR to his name that season, on waivers. It made more sense than that might imply, as Florida was out of contention by this point, and they had several younger outfielders to whom they wanted to give playing time. Names like Logan Morrison, Cameron Maybin, and Mike "I won't be Giancarlo for another couple years" Stanton were waiting in the wings, and while Cody Ross was good, he'd been more Mr. Ross than Dr. Cody as of late, and wasn't going to factor into the team's future plans. Thus, on August 22nd of 2010, The San Francisco Giants claimed a perfectly viable outfielder off waivers. Who would show up for them? The San Francisco team that Ross joined was one that was on the fringes of playoff contention at 69-56, but had gone 9-11 over the past 20 games and were in desperate need of a spark. With an outfield core of Pat Burrell (eh), Aaron Rowand (could be better), Nate Schierholtz (uh oh), and Andres Torres (literally who?), someone like Cody Ross seemed like a premium pickup at a time like this. Particularly if, since he'd recently spent several weeks in a slump, Dr. Cody could show up for the end of the season. Unfortunately, the Giants got Mr. Ross, who went .195 over the next 20 he played. Even after the Doctor showed up to go 13-for-32 with 3 homers in the final 13 games of the season, that still only raised the team's average to .235 on the month, which was rather disappointing from a team that had maintained a monthly average above .260 four out of the five other times. Turns out, that was still good enough, because the Giants pitching went off in September. That month, the starting rotation allowed just a 2.36 ERA, spearheaded by Tim Lincecum, Madison Bumgarner, and Jonathan Sanchez, who went a combined 12-4 with ERAs of 1.94, 1.13, and 1.01, respectively. The bullpen, somehow, was even better, allowing a minuscule total of 9 runs, one of which was unearned, in 80 innings for a microscopic ERA of 0.90. Brian Wilson was a perfect 11-for-11 in save opportunities, and Sergio Romo and Santiago Casilla combined for 12 holds across 24.1 innings, and together only allowed one run. Because of that unreal display, The Giants went 19-10 in September, just good enough to capture the NL West with a record of 92-70. They, and their new starting outfielder Cody Ross, were off to the NLDS. SF would face the Atlanta Braves, who had ridden the bats of Chipper Jones, unlikely All-Star Omar Infante, and rookie Jason Heyward, and the arms of Tim Hudson, Jonny Venters, and Billy Wagner to a 91-71 record and the NL East crown. Chipper was out of commission for the Division Series, and they missed him dearly, especially in Game 1. Tim Lincecum pitched one of the best playoff games of the 21st century, going the full nine, only allowing 2 hits and 1 walk, and striking out fourteen. The final score was 1-0, with Dr. Cody's bat driving in Buster Posey for the only run. All four games of the series would be decided by one run, and the Toy Cannon fired off three RBIs, one in each game the Giants won. Talk about clutch hitting and surgical precision. On to the NLCS, where the Doctor would have to face another Doc, Roy Halladay. The only reason Lincecum's impeccable Game 1 wasn't the consensus best playoff pitching performance of this millennium is because it might not have been the best pitching performance of that week. The day before, Roy Halladay of the Philadelphia Phillies threw the second playoff no-hitter in history against the Cincinnati Reds, facing only one more than the minimum after a borderline full count call didn't go his way. It was his second no-hitter of the year, having pitched a perfect game in May against the Florida Marlins. Hey, wait, who was batting 6th in that game? Why it was none other than Mr. Ross, who kicked off a stint as his worse half with that loss. This time, however, Halladay would have to contend with Dr. Cody. And this was a Dr. Cody who was hot off an NLDS where he certainly would have won the MVP if they gave those out. In the first game of the NLCS, after Halladay had faced the minimum through seven batters, Cody Ross stepped up to the plate, and took him deep for a solo home run. Then, two innings later, he did it again, for another solo shot. Those two runs would be critical in a game that eventually ended 4-3 in favor of the Giants. They also set the tone for how Dr. Cody would be slice and dice his way through the Championship Series. He'd go 5-for-18 for the rest of it, hitting 3 doubles and another home run along the way. He drove in 5 (three of whom were himself) and scored another to be responsible for 6 of the 19 runs from San Francisco in a close series. For his contributions, Ross was awarded the 2010 NLCS MVP, because that's what you get after notching a slugging percentage of .950 in a 6-game series. He cooled a bit for the World Series, going 4-for-17 with a double and a home run in a 5-game dispatch of the Texas Rangers to win his very own World Series ring. The Giants, clearly thankful to him for the concoctions he'd prescribed his opponents, gifted Ross a $6.3 million contract for one year. He was yet again a member of an outfield platoon, playing the majority of his games in left, and remaining as inconsistent as ever. When he was on, he hit .311/.444/.600. When he wasn't, he hit .204/.344/.307. Unfortunately for the Giants, Dr. Cody yielded a lot of time to Mr. Ross in 2011, leading to a rather disappointing finish of .240/.325/.405, his lowest batting average and slugging percentage in five years. San Francisco likewise reverted, going only 86-76, which wasn't even good enough for a wild card spot. Mr. Ross even did the unthinkable and showed up in the field, putting up a rather dismal -1.4 dWAR en route to a trip to free agency. Having just had the worst season of the past several years at the age of 30, one might expect Ross to quietly ride off into the sunset with his World Series ring and call it an a-okay career. However, Dr. Cody and Mr. Ross still had business to attend to. In January of 2012, the Red Sox signed Cody Ross to a one-year, $3.5 million contract. His role was clear: outfield depth. You don't get signed to a team with 2011-MVP-runner-up Jacoby Ellsbury and superstar Carl Crawford on it and expect to be starting the most games on the team in the outfield. Then Cody Ross started the most games in the outfield for the 2012 Boston Red Sox. Injuries galore gutted that team, with Crawford and Ellsbury combining for just 105 games. Ross played more than that by himself, even after he missed a month with a broken foot. What's more is it seemed like Dr. Cody stuck around for the majority of the season, bouncing back to .267/.326/.481 with 22 homers and 81 RBIs. Good enough for a 115 OPS+, Ross' best score over a full season in his career. Pity it didn't translate to the rest of the Red Sox. With key contributors missing so much time (Adrian Gonzalez and David Ortiz even got in on the action), a starting pitcher crop that treated a 4.50 ERA as the floor, and heavy inconsistency in the bullpen, Boston followed up their missed-it-by-that-much 2011 season with a 69-93 showing. Ross, who wasn't a part of the future, was let go, and after he was named the 22nd best free agent available by MLB Trade Rumors, expected a big payday. That he got, with a 3-year, $26 million contract with the Arizona Diamondbacks. He'd be the highest paid outfielder on a roster with youngsters AJ Pollock, Gerardo Parra, and Adam Eaton on it. He'd ultimately disappoint given the contract, playing all of 177 games across two seasons, and hitting .268/.322/.378. Perhaps most startling was the fact he hit only 10 home runs for the Dbacks, a number he had cleared in every single season prior where he'd played more than 20 games. After they didn't like what they saw, Arizona pushed the cancel button in April of 2015, buying out the rest of his contract to release him. A league minimum offer from the Oakland A's was accepted, but after 9 games of going 2-for-22, he wound up released less than a month later. That would be the last we heard from Cody Ross, after he didn't get offered another contract for a year, and retired via a Twitter announcement. Glad this story had a better ending than that other story with a split personality. Wish I could remember what it was called. Cody Ross was certainly an interesting player. He had such stark streaks so succinct and startling (try saying that five times fast). I don't think I've ever seen another player with so very defined lines as to whether they were on or off. All the other stuff was pretty neat too, from hitting two grand slams within his first twenty hits, to getting perfected by Halladay only to hit two dingers off him in the playoffs, to the stuff I didn't even cover. Like how he's probably a top five all-time batter who hits right-handed and throws left-handed, or that one time he hit three grand slams in 2009, or how he first wanted to ride bulls in the rodeo. He's quite an interesting specimen to grace the history of the MLB. Not Hall-of-Fame ballot-worthy, though. Playoff heroics and interesting aspects set aside, 904 career hits and nothing that could even be classified as "All-Star" levels of quality mean no ballot for you. Even then, certainly not a bad player to write about. Ross visits the Hall in a Florida Marlins cap for his 502 hits, 80 home runs, and 297 RBIs with the team. He passes by someone who looks suspiciously similar in an Arizona Diamondbacks hat with what appears to be a devilish grin on his face. Geez Louise there are 17 of these #1: Randy Choate #2: Kevin Gregg #3: Dan Uggla #4: Josh Hamilton #5: Delmon Young #6: Willie Bloomquist #7: Grady Sizemore #8: Kevin Correia #9: David DeJesus #10: Rafael Betancourt #11: Clint Barmes #12: Adam LaRoche #13: Grant Balfour #14: Randy Wolf #15: Rafael Soriano #16: Chris Denorfia #17: Bruce Chen
Better Know the Ones Left Off the Ballot #15: Rafael Soriano
Once again we find ourselves here. This series takes a look at people who qualified for the Hall of Fame ballot (10 or more years played in the MLB), but were found wanting when weighed by the Selection Committee, who are in charge of that sort of thing. All the rest are linked at the bottom. Now to the guy.
Rafael Soriano
Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor: 40 Career bWAR (14 years): 13.8 Stats: 24-28, 207 SV, 2.89 ERA, 591 G, 343 GF, 636.1 IP, 197 BB, 641 K, 1.078 WHIP League Leading Stats: Saves (45, 2010) Awards: All-Star (2010) Teams Played For: Mariners (2002-06), Braves (2007-09), Rays (2010), Yankees (2011-12), Nationals (2013-14), Cubs (2015) Maybe the Selection Committee has something against relief pitchers. Maybe they're biased towards the name Rafael. For whatever reason, two elite bullpen arms with the Spanish spelling of the name of the red Ninja Turtle were left off the ballot this year. You can find out about Rafael Betancourt if you haven’t already, and if you ask me, I think Soriano deserved to be on the ballot even more. Betancourt was certainly a very good pitcher, and did what he did for quite a long time, even after debuting in the majors at 28 years of age. That should most definitely be applauded. The biggest difference is that when Soriano was at his best, he was undeniably one of the greatest relievers in the game. His Hall of Fame Monitor score, 40, is the highest of any of the qualified candidates I've covered. He's also the second best relief pitcher to ever wear number 29. Now to figure out why the Committee passed on someone with a sub-3.00 career ERA and over 200 saves. Rafael's Storyano began in 1996, when the Seattle Mariners signed him as an international amateur out of the Dominican Republic. A scout watched him play for twelve minutes, and gave him a $5,000 contract. He would end up as the best international signing the Mariners would ever have, if you don't count that Edgar guy, or that Ichiro guy, or that Felix guy, or a dozen other guys. Heck they signed this guy named Ortiz who... I'm getting off track. Sori. Rafael's first two seasons were spent off the mound, as he was signed as an outfielder. Problem: he did not do very well at the hitting bit. He finished his 1998 season of rookie ball with a very Sorryano batting average of .167. Expecting to be released that offseason, he was surely surprised to find out he was actually recruited because the Mariners' scouting figured the cannon attached to his right arm could be used for throwing guys out from the mound instead. His next season was his first at any level above Rookie ball, and it was at a position he hadn't played professionally before. Soriano started 14 games for the Everett AquaSox of the A-league, and went 5-4 with a 3.11 ERA and 83 strikeouts in 75.1 innings pitched. I think Seattle might've known what he was talking about. Over the course of the next two seasons, Sori moved up to double-A, and got named one of the best prospects in Seattle's slew of talent. Just one month into his age-22 season, he got a call from the big dogs: the Mariners wanted him to join the Major League squad. This came after not being able to showcase his talents in spring training due to immigration not believing he was 22. Frankly, if you saw him pitch, that would be hard to believe. Might as well call him Rafael Hoaryano. Sori's first appearance in the Majors was in relief, after Joel Piniero threw six strong innings and left the game with Seattle up 6-2. It also came against the Boston Red Sox, whose lineup included Johnny Damon, Manny Ramirez, and Nomar Garciaparra. And remember, he's facing the 2002 versions of those guys. After three innings of work, Soriano had faced ten batters, allowed two hits and no runs, struck out Shea Hillenbrand, and earned himself a save in his first Major League appearance. In his next outing, he'd strike out 5 in two innings of work versus the Blue Jays. That was apparently all manager Lou Piniella needed to see, because the next time Soriano threw a pitch for the Mariners, a week and a half later, it was as a member of the starting rotation. Somehow, less than a year after the Mariners won 116 games in a season, they felt it was perfectly okay to have a 22-year-old start for them after five innings of big league work. Seattle, man. Facing the Baltimore Orioles, Soriano threw 5.2 innings, allowed three runs, and struck out two. Unfortunately, he took the loss, as the Mariners only managed two runs. Seven more starts would leave him with an 0-3 record and 32 strikeouts in 47.1 innings pitched before he got shut down due to a shoulder injury. Seems his luck was Pooriano. After he came back, the Mariners decided to reassign him to the minor leagues to focus on developing other pitches, since, you know, he only started doing this a couple years ago. He'd finish his season as a San Antonio Mission, but had had his first taste of the Show and wanted to get back to settle the Score-iano. Many people began taking notice of Sori’s promise, and despite his rookie limits being broken, he moved up the prospect boards of lots of publications who devote much more time to that than I do. His first couple months in 2003 were spent starting games in AAA, before the Mariners once again needed pitching help, and so he got recalled in the middle of June. This time, their need was in the bullpen, and Soriano showed they couldn't have made a better choice. In 34 games and 45.1 innings of relief to finish the season, Rafael Soriano allowed just 7 runs. That's a 1.39 ERA over three months. He struck out 58 batters, walked just 9, allowed 23 hits, and got named Rookie of the Month that August to boot. All this at 23 years old. When the cannon is firing that well, it's pretty hard to Ignore-iano. In 2004, he started off the year with... five runs allowed in two total innings pitched across three games. And he took the loss in two of those games. That's the kind of start he'd be apt to Deplore-iano. Guess it's time for another trip to the minors. After a couple starts as a Tacoma Rainier seemed to have ironed out the kinks, he came back in May, but something still seemed off. He got sent back down after just 1.1 innings over 3 games, which saw him still find time to surrender a run. Discomfort was arising in his throwing arm, and after longer than it should have taken, the problem was finally diagnosed as a torn UCL, and he would pitch no More-iano. Although he would lose a year of pitching, Sori was still only 25 when he came back to Seattle in September of 2005. Only getting into 7 games, but still performing, allowing just 2 runs and striking out 9 in 7.1 innings. Oh, also, kind of important, the Mariners sucked now. Still, his cannon was primed and ready to leave a mark as a future part of the pitching Core-iano. 2006 was the first time he spent the whole season on the Major League roster, and he made the most of it. Slotted into the role of setup man for newly anointed closer J.J. Putz, Soriano pitched 60 innings in 53 games, struck out 65, and notched a 2.25 ERA. Probably would've been lower if a Vlad Guerrero line drive hadn't struck him in the head and sidelined him for all of September with a concussion. Thankfully, it appears there were no long-lasting effects from the hit. At least, for Soriano, because it may have caused the Mariners to get brain damage. That winter, Seattle apparently wanted more starting pitching. In a move that I’m sure made sense to someone at the time, they traded Sori to the Atlanta Braves for middle-of-the-road left-handed starter Horacio Ramirez. Ramirez would go on to put up a 7.16 ERA in 20 starts as a Mariner before he was released. Did Soriano's cannon do any better as he wheeled it into Atlanta? In the year 2006, Indians closer Bob Wickman had a fantastic setup man named Rafael who would end up taking over for him following his departure from the team. In 2007, he was an Atlanta Brave, and had a different fantastic setup man, also named Rafael, who also took over for him following his departure from that team. He never pitched again after 2007. Do you have evidence of a conspiracy? Email any findings to [email protected]. Soriano, the second of those to Rafaels, did pretty well in his role, finishing the year with 19 holds. Tacked on a couple saves as well after the Braves released Wickman in late August to give Sori a chance at closer. After 2008 became lost due to a something in his elbow Tore-iano, 2009 would be his first whole year spent as a closer. He'd finally get the chance to let that cannon fire. 27 saves in 31 opportunities, a 2.97 ERA, and a career high 102 strikeouts in 75.2 innings. Not too shabby. Listed as the 22nd best free agent available by MLB Trade Rumors, many people pictured him getting pretty big money. That he did, with a one-year, $7.25 million contract making him one of the higher-paid relievers in the game, and the highest paid pitcher on his team. Weird thing was, it was an arbitrated contract from the Braves, who had expected him to test the market rather than accept their offer. And didn’t they have Tim Hudson, Derek Lowe, and Javier Vazquez making upwards of $10 million? Yes, but don't Worryano, you’re getting ahead of me. A day after he accepted the contract, he was traded for Jesse Chavez. His cannon would be firing elsewhere, and frankly, the battalion he joined were really doing him a Favoriano, as they couldn't have been a better fit. The Tampa Bay Rays had just completed a season that saw them finish 84-78 despite a fantastic hitting core. Particularly egregious were two highly-paid relievers exploding due to age. Troy Percival and Chad Bradford turned 39 and 34 respectively, and both showed it that year, putting up a combined -0.1 bWAR despite making over $8 million between their two contracts. Neither were brought back, and rather than go after a big-name free agent, they decided to use that space on a single, $7.25 million contract. Since the Braves hadn't expected Soriano to accept arbitration, his trade price was not high. In their mind, it was too much money. But to the Rays, it was at best an effective bullpen arm, and at worst just a retread of Bradford and Percival that they could dump after a season. In other words, it was low-risk, high-Reward-iano (you're on thin ice). After seeing how effective he'd been at closer, helped by a good spring training, Sori was given the closing job. At the end of the year, in 62.1 innings pitched and 48 save opportunities, he had not only converted a league-leading 45 of them, but had also allowed only 14 runs, 12 of them earned. Of the 64 games he appeared in, the Rays won 57 of them. He became the first person to win two DHL Delivery Man Monthly Awards in the same season when he didn't allow a run in May and saved 11 games in July. Then he won a third one after saving 10 games and allowing just two runs (one unearned) in August. One of those saves would see Soriano throw nine pitches and get three strikeouts for the 58th immaculate inning in MLB history, the 6th one to result in a save. At season's end, in a league that still had Mariano Rivera, Francisco Rodriguez, and peak Jonathan Papelbon, the reliever who collected more AL MVP and Cy Young votes than any other bullpen arm was Rafael Soriano. He finished 8th in the ballots for the AL Cy Young, ahead of a very good season from Royals reliever and person-who-has-a-very-similar-last-name Joakim Soria, and an 18-win campaign by Justin Verlander. He also came in 12th in AL MVP voting, ahead of every other pitcher. Even David Price, his teammate who finished second in the Cy Young running, didn't show up on any MVP ballots. But Sori did, collecting 21 votes all-told. Guess that's what happens when your season looks like this: 1.73 ERA, 36 hits and 4 home runs allowed, 57 strikeouts and 14 walks in 62.1 innings, 45 saves, 0.802 WHIP. Seems one season as a Ray really let Rafael unleash and Roariano. His team also had the best record in the league, which means they made the playoffs. Even if they got dispatched by a very good Rangers squad, Sori still found time to slip a save into his first postseason experience. That offseason, because he did very well as a member of the Tampa Bay Rays, they were left with the feeling that just one season was Satisfactoryano (you could have ended this several paragraphs ago and it would have still been too played out). After a season like that, there's no way they could afford the caliber of cannon that his arm commanded. Who could? The 2010-11 offseason had a myriad of good free agents. People like Adrian Beltre, Carl Crawford, and Cliff Lee were the biggest names, with future Hall of Famers like Vladimir Guerrero and Jim Thome also on the market. Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera were also possible opt-outs. Based on of that, where do you think MLB Trade Rumors ranked Rafael Soriano? HOW ABOUT 7TH? RIGHT ABOVE THE ACTUAL MISTER SANDMAN HIMSELF? That's how good he was believed to be. People expected him to not only match up to Mo in the coming years, but possibly surpass him. The Yankees, seeing that as a threat to their closer’s legacy, decided to pick up both Rivera and Soriano to ensure the two wouldn't be competing to see who was better. With the best closer of all time firmly entrenched at that role, Sori entered the familiar role of setup man. Based on his apparent talents, some felt that assignment was Derogatoryano (you have got to be kidding me), and even he might have been affected by that percetpion. After a month-and-a-half in pinstripes, his cannon was clearly misfiring. Having allowing only 12 earned runs over the course of the previous season, he had already given up 9 before April was over. A DL trip with elbow trouble kept him out of action until August, hopefully restoring him back to his former Gloryano (I swear if you don't stop). He did fine down the stretch, holding 14 games in the last 2 months of the season. His team also won 97 games, so back to the postseason! This time, Sori got to lose to the Tigers in the ALDS, even taking a loss despite only allowing one run in 4.2 innings of work. The next year would surelybe different, with Sori all ready to be the best setup man he could be for Mariano's final season. That is, until Mo went down with an injury and Soriano was called upon to be the closer. No big deal, just the expectation of emulating the greatest closer in the history of mankind. And wouldn't you know it? He actually did it. Sori's final line for 2012 was a 2-1 record, 2.26 ERA, 42 saves, 69 strikeouts in 67.2 innings, and a 20th-place MVP finish. He even saw the Yankees make it past the Orioles in the division series this time, tossing three-and-a-third scoreless innings along the way. Those pesky Tigers swept them in the ALCS, but Sori had left his mark. After turning in a season at closer that resembled Mo himself, he declined his contract option, and entered the market once again, Having just clearly confirmed that whoever signed him would get all of what he still had in Store-iano (you need to stop). After being named just the 17th best free agent by MLB Trade Rumors (ugh, Snore-iano), he accepted a 2-year, $28 million contract with the Washington Nationals. He was immediately made the closer, because, you know, that's what you do when someone emulates Mariano Rivera. In the two seasons he spent as a National, Soriano never well and truly recaptured his better days exhibited in Mo's stead in New York or his only year in Tampa Bay. His record was 7-4 and his ERA was 3.15. Not exactly what you want when you make a reliever the fourth highest-paid player on the team, but by no means a Bore-iano (I am begging you to stop). Still a serviceable closer, though, saving 75 games over those two years, the most he saved for any single team and the third most in the National League over that span. Who was he behind? Oh just a couple nobodies named Craig Kimbrel and Aroldis Chapman. Whatever that counts Foriano (that was your worst one and they've all been awful). So you'd expect, after some stats like that, he'd get a nice new contract that offseason. The problem there was that Soriano suffered a slump at the worst possible time. After only allowing 5 total runs through his first 41 appearances in 2014, he surrendered 17 in the last two months of the season. He lost the closer job, and his reputation took a nosedive. As a result, he'd spend six months in free agent Purgatoryano (I will stab you) before the Cubs threw him a pro-rated $2 million contract in June 2015. This after two years of getting paid over $20 million and saving 75 games. Just goes to show if you go cold at the wrong time, even with a great pedigree, other teams don't want to take a risk opening the (don't say it) Dooriano (I swear upon all that is holy). It also didn't help that he was 35 now. Chicago decided to take a chance on him, and despite the fact he won 2 games in 6 July appearances, those would be his only games as a Cub. That offseason, following another visa dispute preventing him from joining the Toronto Blue Jays, Soriano decided to retire. The cannon had finally become decommissioned. Rafael Soriano, in my humble opinion, should have been on the ballot. As a reliever, he showed up in not one, but two AL MVP races. Only three other relievers have achieved that distinction in the 21st century: Mariano Rivera, Joe Nathan, and Greg Holland. The first was the greatest closer to ever live, the second will most likely spend several years on the ballot, and the third is still playing, but very likely will appear on the ballot as well. All that, and Sori gets left off. In particular, I think he should've been on because of a certain Heath Bell who appeared on the ballot last year. Here's a comparison of their career stats: Bell: 628.2 IP, 3.49 ERA, 112 ERA+, 168 SV, 637 K, 1.269 WHIP, 7.1 bWAR Sori: 636.1 IP, 2.89 ERA, 144 ERA+, 209 SV, 641 K, 1.078 WHIP, 13.8 bWAR Why did Bell show up on the ballot and Soriano didn't? My current theory is that Bell made it to three All-Star games, while Soriano only made it to one. Bell still didn't have as good numbers as Sori in two of those three All-Star seasons, but who am I to suggest that's a bad way to figure out who's on the Hall of Fame ballot? Anyway, regardless of how he stacks up against other players, Sori's career is one that deserves to be remembered in some way. So keep him in your Memoriano. I absolutely detest how many of those I was able to come up with. While he had better seasons in New York, more saves in Washington, and more time played in Seattle and Atlanta, Soriano's career wouldn't be what it ended up being without his time in Tampa Bay. For that, he would visit the Hall in a Rays cap, marveling at the fact that his last name and Mariano Rivera's first name share five letters. Here are more #1: Randy Choate #2: Kevin Gregg #3: Dan Uggla #4: Josh Hamilton #5: Delmon Young #6: Willie Bloomquist #7: Grady Sizemore #8: Kevin Correia #9: David DeJesus #10: Rafael Betancourt #11: Clint Barmes #12: Adam LaRoche #13: Grant Balfour #14: Randy Wolf
How much (negative) WAR would a potato accrue playing centerfield for a Major League team for a full season?
This is part 2 of my "How much WAR would ________ get?" series. You can find How much (negative) WAR would I accrue playing on a Major League team for a full season?here.
So yeah. I wasn't satisfied with just knowing how much negative WAR I would get. I needed to know how much WAR an inanimate object, say, a potato, would cost a Major League team. And more importantly, am I closer in value to said potato than I am to an actual big leaguer? Once more there are assumptions. This is a magic potato. It has everyone convinced it is actually a competent center fielder. So no rearranging the fielders to compensate for having an inanimate object on your roster. But as soon as the play starts, all involved simultaneously say "oh fuck" as they realize they have been fooled into believing this tuber can play baseball. We will go through the components as we did last time, rearranging the order a bit.
Positional Adjustment
Tate will be manning center for a full season. 162 games of CF is worth 2.5 runs. Looking good so far!
Batting
We can discuss whether a potato (or a carrot, for that matter) even with a human-sized strike zone would pick up a couple of walks (I think so, actually), but for the purposes of this exercise, we will assume Tate will go .000/.000/.000. Which brings us to the matter of plate appearances. As everyone knows, magic potatoes will fool people into believing they are decent lead-off men. So Tate will lead off 162 games. According to Baseball Reference's batting splits page, in 2019 there were 22824 PAs from the #1 spot in the lineup. This averages to ~761 per team. However, never making it on base will seriously diminish Tater's plate appearances. In 2019, leadoff hitters had an overall OBP of .335. This comes to a total of 255 on-base events for the average leadoff hitter. So I think 1 out of every 9 of those missing on base events will cost an individual player a PA. So we can subtract 28 PA from the 761 an average leadoff hitter would have, leaving Tate with 733. From here we convert to wOBA. It's .000. That was easy. We then determine wRAA ((.000wOBA -.320lgwOBA )/1.157wOBAScale )x733PA = -202.7 wRAA Well there goes the positive RAR we started with. -200.2 RAR
Baserunning
Here's the thing. If you don't get on base, you don't get (or lose) baserunning WAR. WAIT! That's not true! By never hitting into a double play, Tate can actually come out positive in this component. In 2019, there were 32598 double play situations:
1--, 0 out
12-, 0 out
1-3, 0 out
123, 0 out
1--, 1 out
12-, 1 out
1-3, 1 out
123, 1 out
Total 2019
9974
2574
798
664
12158
2923
1864
1643
Percent of total PA
.053
.014
.004
.004
.065
.016
.010
.009
In 733 PA
39
10
3
3
48
11
7
6
Total 2019 GIDP
996
248
53
65
1326
434
185
159
GIDP Percentage
.010
.096
.066
.098
.109
.148
.099
.097
In 733 PA
3.9
1
0.2
0.3
5.2
1.7
0.7
0.6
GIDP Value
.411
.565
.777
.961
.224
.429
.478
.752
Final Value
1.608
.551
.162
.245
1.167
.732
.348
.470
Let me explain. I took all double play situations found what percentage each one was of the total season PAs. I then multiplied them by 733 to determine how many of each situation Tate would face in a season. I then took the total of double plays in each situation to average determine the likelihood of a DP in each one. I then multiply that by the number of DP situations our hypothetical potato will be in. Knowing that Tate will never make contact, we know he will also never hit into a double play. Knowing this, every double play an average player hits will add value to Tater's WAR. To determine the negative impact of a DP, you take the run expectancy of the base-out state had the player made just a plain old out (if they don't make an out it gets incorporated in the batting section), and subtract the run expectancy of the base-out state after the double play. One I get those, I multiplied that by the number of double plays Tate hypothetically saved by never making contact. The last thing to do is just add up those values. This gets us to a 5.3 RAR for baserunning! -194.9
Replacement Level
If Replacement Level Runs = (570 x (MLB Games/2,430)) x (Runs Per Win/lgPA) x PA then 733 PA will be (570x(2430/2430))x(10.296/186516)x733 giving Tater a boost of 23.1 RAR. -171.8 RAR
Fielding
This last category is the most difficult to determine, and thusly the most controversial. For weeks I've been thinking about how I could capture the damage done to a team by replacing their center fielder with a potato. I tried understanding UZR and DRS, but that stuff is impenetrable. Alas, I came up with an idea. I would use brute force. I will go through every ball hit to center in a team's season, and mark down what I think the outcome would have been had the center fielder vanished as the ball hit the bat. If there's another fielder there to make the play, nothing changes. If there's one not too far away, maybe it changes a little. If there's nobody else in the vicinity, it would change a lot. But first, I needed a team. I settled on the Reds because their outfield was close to average by both UZR and DRS, in 2020 and also in the span of 2018-2020. In addition, the same holds true of their center fielders. I would never have been able to do this if it were not for two things. Firstly, Baseball Savant. The ability to filter for every play to your exact specifications and have video for each of those plays in the list was essential. The second is the 2020 season. There is no way in hell I would go through a full season's worth of balls to the outfield. But in 2020, Reds centerfielders only made 227 plays out there. Much more manageable. Now, I want to warn you as I was doing the list I couldn't shake the feeling that I was being too conservative with my estimates. It felt like I was marking too many would-be-triples as doubles and too many would-be-inside-the-park-home-runs as triples. I only ended up with like four homers which is probably way too little. I tried to compensate and make up for it by stretching it here and there, but I don't think that did much. I'll post the spreadsheet HERE and the Baseball Savant page it's based on HERE, and if anyone wished to re-do the list, I'll be happy to add it in an edit. So here's what I came up with. In 2020, 227 balls were fielded by Reds center fielders. 86 of them went for singles, 22 went for doubles, 3 went for triples. There were no inside-the-park home runs. There were 109 catches made, plus 7 sac flies. This gives opponents a .490 wOBA on balls hit to Reds center fielders. I didn't check it, but I'm going to assume that's close to average. After going through each play one by one, I determined that if there were a potato in center instead of a human, they'd end up with 52 outs, 4 sac flies, 28 singles, 96 doubles, 43 triples, and 4 inside-the-park home runs. If that seems like too little, you're probably right. But this is what I came out with and we're going to go with it. If this were to happen, opposing batters would end up with a .980 wOBA. From here, we treat it the same as we would treat a hitter's wOBA. We determine the amount of opportunities a center fielder would get in a full season. In 2019, center fielders made 20962 plays. That's about 700 per team over a full season. So we'll use the same formula we use to determine batting runs. ((.980wOBA -.490lgwOBA )/1.1857wOBAScale )x700Opportunities = 289.3 runs -461 RAR Hoo boy. That's quite a number. If we convert it to wins we end up with close to -45 WAR. You'd need three of me to equal the damage this guy would do. If you had Tate in center, you could replace an average right fielder with 1923 Babe Ruth, left fielder with 2002 Bonds, and first baseman with 1927 Gehrig and still come out 5 WAR behind. -45 wins turns a 100 win team into a 55 win team. It turns a .500 team into a 36 win team. Before we even start counting WAR, we assume a 48 win replacement level. This guy knocks all that out on his own, making you start from scratch. TL;DR -45 WAR. No, don't ever do this.
1. Hitters who took a first-pitch strike instead of swinging took a 21-point hit to their batting average (from .345 to .321). 2. Once a hitter takes that first pitch strike, he won’t return to the same odds of success again until getting to a 2-1 count. 3. The pitch count should have a direct impact on each swing you take at the plate. Certain pitch counts favor the hitter and certain ones favor the pitcher. Just as the smart pitcher takes advantage of the times he is “ahead in the count,” the smart hitter understands when he has the advantage. In these situations, the hitter must capitalize. Divide the number of hits by the number of at-bats. The answer tells you the battering average, or the fraction of the time that a batter turned an at-bat attempt into a successful hit. For example, if a player had 70 Hits and 200 At-Bats, his Batting Average is 70 ÷ 200 = 0.350. Batting average by count with less than two strikes is simply the fraction of bails put in play that went for hits. Given enough data, we could think of this as the chance of getting a hit given the ball is put in play. Conversely, batting average with two strikes is the probability of a hit given the batter puts the ball in play or strikes out. Batting Average by Count and Pitch Type Fact and Fallacy M any baseball coaches, sportswriters, and tele-vision announcers have commented on the fact that batting averages are low with two strikes or high with less than two strikes. For example, Thomas Boswell, in an article he wrote criticizing Ted Williams' theory that you should take the And they’re right to emphasize the first pitch of an at-bat, of course. In 2014, major-league hitters are batting just .221 with a .592 OPS after the count starts 0-1, as opposed to .268 with a We have all heard the numbers regarding batting averages in certain counts. When hitters have less than two strikes the batting average is much higher than hitting with a two strike count. It all makes sense to me and I certainly encourage my hitters to avoid getting into a count where the pitcher has the… Batting average analysis, more than interesting statistics, a treasure chest of information to help hitters develop a positive plan for each plate appearance. If you think back to most any baseball game that you watched, professional or amateur, you can no doubt recall some hitters who had some terrible looking plate appearances. The 2-1 pitch can be considered a "neutral" count for all practical purposes, and the 3-2 pitch, while producing a probable batting average of only .190, does have a .420 OBA expectation due to the .284 probability of drawing a walk. All other counts are distinctly favorable to the pitcher. Batting Splits By Counts ~ Top Ten Batting Average Leaders In American And National Leagues For 2009! Batting splits by counts, a complete year end summary of how the top 10 hitters from the American and National Leagues fared in each of the 12 possible counts hitters can find themselves in.
The Top 3 Baseball Hitting Drills to Improve Batting Average!
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