One, two, one, two, three, four.

Sorry. Those were links to the first four parts. Anyway, now it’s time to fill the circle of this series. This final piece isn’t really much of an analysis, but sort of a potpourri of interesting trivia. Trivia’s where these five weeks started, after all. Hopefully there was sufficient analytical substance to the first four parts. (Or any.)

Here is an interesting tidbit to start: only two batting title qualifiers have ever had a higher ISO than OBP in a season. One was Barry Bonds in his insane, 73-HR 2001 season (.536 ISO, .515 OBP–I told you it was insane). The other was Matt Williams in 1994. Take a look at the 1994 OBP and ISO scatter chart among qualifiers, with a line of y=x for reference:

I trust you to figure out which one belongs to the current manager of the Washington Nationals. He had a .319 OBP and a .339 ISO that season. (And, FYI, that lonely dot in the lower left belongs to 24 year old Twins catcher Matt Walbeck and his .204/.246/.284 in 359 PA. And that one insanely close to the .500 OBP? Frank Thomas.)

And Barry Bonds’s 2001? Well, just take a look:

Yeah.

(I kind of wanted just to show that chart.)

That only two players ever had a single season, let alone career, with a higher ISO than OBP, a good way to measure a player’s relative prowess at each facet of hitting is to look at the gap between those statistics.

Care to guess the player with a career OBP below the historical average of .333 who has the smallest gap between his career OBP and ISO? To the surprise of nobody, it’s:

Dave Kingman

Kingman posted a career .302 OBP and .242 ISO, making him the ultimate in empty power. By Kingman’s last year, 1986 with Oakland, all he could do was hit home runs. He had 35, while hitting .210/.255/.431, which even in 1986 was only good for a wRC+ of 86. Kingman also has the 2nd highest ISO period among those with a sub-.333 OBP, behind Russell Branyan (.253 ISO, .329 OBP).

Expand this list, by the way, and it feels like a pretty accurate indicator of players who provided solid and at times even great power, but weren’t great offensive players. The top 10: Kingman, Steve Balboni, Ron Kittle, Branyan, Tony Armas, Alfonso Soriano, Dick Stuart, Matt Williams, Tony Batista and Mark Reynolds. The debuts of those players range from 1958 (Stuart) to 2007 (Reynolds), so this phenomenon is not exactly a 21st century one. It does, however, divide pretty well along pre- and post-expansion lines.

Among players who debuted before Stuart, the next smallest gap here belongs to a Hall of Famer: Ernie Banks, with a .330 OBP and .226 ISO. He’s 18th on the list, so that’s about where the last paragraph’s thesis breaks down. During his career, 1953-71, the league-wide non-pitcher OBP was .329, so Banks was about average reaching base, but provided a ton of value from his years at shortstop and his power (1953-71 ISO: .135).

Wally Post is 19th, and he debuted in 1949, making him the top pre-1950 debut player on the OBP minus ISO list, and the smallest gap belonging to someone who debuted before 1940 belongs to DiMaggio, who debuted in 1937. He ended up with a .324 OBP and .164 ISO in his 10 seasons with the Bees, Reds, Pirates and Giants. We’re talking, of course, about Vince DiMaggio, not Dom.

Go back all the way to 1901 and you find the career of:

Albert Samuel “Hobe” Ferris

Hobe Ferris played from 1901-09 and never led the league in home runs, but was in the top 7 five times in a nine-year career on his way to 40 career home runs. His .102 career ISO came in a time frame when league-wide non-pitcher ISO was .077, but he only produced a career .265 OBP (vs. the league’s .310). A second- and third-baseman with a good defensive reputation (backed up today by his +70 career fielding runs on Baseball Reference), he also may have been the first power threat in MLB history who didn’t reach base effectively. His best season was actually during the nadir of the dead ball era, his penultimate year in 1908 when he hit .270/.291/.353 for a 109 wRC+. This was mostly due to an unusually efficient year reaching base, but even his .083 ISO was better than the league’s .069.

All-time, however, Ferris’s OBP-ISO gap ranks as just the 166th smallest out of 692 who meet the 3000 PA, sub-.333 thresholds. The 167th smallest belongs to another turn-of-the-century player, the infamous Bill Bergen, who was just bad at everything. In general, you’re just not going to find turn of the century players whose ISO’s are particularly close to their OBP’s, because ISO’s were so low 100 years ago.

To start getting into the other types of players–good OBP, not so good power–let’s remove any cap on the OBP and see what happens at both ends of the list of OBP and ISO gaps. Again, 3000 PA is the cutoff.

10 Lowest Gaps: Kingman, Mark McGwire, Balboni, Kittle, Branyan, Juan Gonzalez, Sammy Sosa, Ryan Howard, Armas, Soriano

10 Highest: Roy Thomas, Miller Huggins, Eddie Stanky, Eddie Collins, Max Bishop, Richie Ashburn, Ferris Fain, Johnny Pesky, Luke Appling, Muddy Ruel

So, apparently Mark McGwire’s .263 career batting average is a little misleading…as in, perhaps the most misleading batting average of all time. He posted a .394 OBP and .325 ISO. The other three players who weren’t on this list when sub-.333 OBP’s were removed are Gonzalez, Sosa, and Howard. None of them have spotless resumes, but they are bound to be the 2nd to 4th best hitters on that list in most any ranking of these players, subjective or objective. After Howard, the next few players on this list who had an OBP above .333: Richie Sexson (15th), Albert Belle (20th), Jose Canseco (25th), Andruw Jones (28th) and Greg Vaughn (30th). All probably better hitters than Kingman and certainly better hitters than Balboni.

Meanwhile, Roy Thomas has the highest such difference, with a line from 1901-11 of .282/.403/.329. (He debuted in 1899.) From 1900-06, Thomas led the majors in walks every year except 1905. He hit a fascinating .327/.453/.365 in 1903, for a 138 wRC+.

We might think that everybody with a large gap is from the dead ball era, but such is not the case. Richie Ashburn (1948-62) and Luke Appling (1930-50) carved out Hall of Fame careers. They got away with a lack of power by hitting .300 in their careers. These next two players weren’t career .300 hitters, providing value more so with high walk rates, and how can we talk about players who got on base but didn’t hit for power without them:

Eddie Stanky and Ferris Fain

Stanky (.410 OBP, .080 ISO) played from 1943-53 and Fain (.424 OBP, .106 ISO) from 1947-55, and they might be the two most famous players in MLB history in terms of reaching base without being much of a power threat. They were pioneers of the you’re-never-pitching-around-me-but -I-will-foul-off-pitches-and-work-a-walk-anyway school of hitting, especially Stanky, who only hit .268 and slugged .348 in his career. (Roy Thomas could have been the “pioneer” of this if power were more of a thing when he played.) Stanky’s most striking season in this regard was probably 1946 when he hit .273/.436/.352. Fain, meanwhile, had a .455 OBP and .066 ISO in his last season in 1955.

Just as the first list in this piece lacked many dead-ball era players, this list of large OBP-ISO gaps seems to lack 21st (and late 20th) century players. The first player to debut after 1980 that we meet on the list, in the 13th place?

Luis Castillo

Castillo’s offensive production was almost entirely in his .290 batting average. If batting average says little about McGwire, it says almost as little about Castillo, who posted a career .368 OBP and .061 ISO.

The first good hitter on the list (with his career 97 wRC+, Castillo was decidedly average) is Dave Magadan, 23rd, with a .390 OBP and just a .089 ISO. He had a 117 career wRC+. Magadan’s 1995 season with Houston was his wildest as he managed an OBP of .428 with an ISO of just .086.

Two spots below Magadan is one of the three who started us down this month-plus-long path:

Wade Boggs

Boggs had a .328/.415/.443 career line for a 132 wRC+. In his rookie season in 1982 (381 PA), he was already producing a .406 OBP…with an ISO of just .092.

We might as well wrap up with our other two above-.400 OBP, under-.200 ISO players since 1961. Joe Mauer (.405 OBP, .146 ISO) and Rickey Henderson (.401 OBP, .140 ISO) have wRC+’s of 134 and 132 respectively. Their OBP-ISO gaps of .261 and .259 rank among the 200 largest gaps, or roughly the 90th percentile.

There are plenty more angles, more than I can cover, that one could take with this. At this link you can find the list of players with 3000 PA since 1901, ordered from the largest OBP-ISO to the smallest, with extra stats (as I didn’t change or remove the default dashboard stats).

There has been plenty of conjecture on the timing and amount of Mike Trout’s next contract.  People gravitate towards round numbers and that’s why you often hear talk about ten years and $300 million.  I heard one pundit refer to 10/300 after his first season, and have heard several refer to these figures during this off season.  But is 10/300 even realistic?

The first step of his analysis is to look at the early years of a contract extension.  For a player that hasn’t even hit his arbitration years, we’ve seen discounting of the players pre-arbitration and arbitration years on their way to seven- or eight-year contracts.  So while the disbursement of money in a player’s early years might not be a one for one match with what they would be from the arbitration process, they’re generally close, if not a little smaller for some players.  The theory seems to go that the player trades off the potentially bigger payoff of arbitration awards, in return for secure, guaranteed and somewhat smaller annual contract value on a multi-year deal.

Mike Trout will break records, but not only on the playing field.  If he goes to arbitration, we’ll see amounts not seen for 1st, 2nd and 3rd-year arbitration-eligible players.  We can quibble about what those amounts will be but I’m guessing on the low end they might be $10 M/$15 M/$20 M, and on the high end $15/$20/$25.  Mike Trout has achieved so much in so little time that he might have quite a bit of leverage to earn a full payout of potential arbitration amounts, in the early years of a multi-year contract extension.

So the value of the early years of Mike’s next contract might look like this:

Note: the table shows possible values of the early years of his contract.  Actual payments will probably be much different.  If he signs in 2014, then he will likely get much more than $500,000 in year 1.  Or there might be a bonus that gets spread across these early seasons.  I’m stipulating values here because I believe they’re easier to predict.

The rest gets easier, in one sense.  What is Mike Trout worth during his free-agent years, from the age of 26 to approximately 32.  Is he worth $30 million, $35? or even $40 million per year?  Remember, the Angels are buying out his peak seasons.  This is creme de la creme.  It’s similar to A-Rod from the age of 26-32 where he earned $25 million per year in 2001 dollars and was worth every penny.

Angels management might be a little worried about not signing Mike this year because those free-agent years could get really expensive if next season he puts up even more stupendous numbers.  But my question is, should they be worried?  That’s why I look at two different scenarios.  One, sign him this offseason.  The second, pay him minimum again this year and give him the big contract next offseason.

What you notice about scenario one, right off, is that $35 million per year seems like a lot of money.  But when you total it up over the seemingly magic number of big baseball contracts, ten years, it only totals to $270 million.  For Trout to be paid 10/300, the Angels would have to value his free agent years at $40 million per year.  Dave Cameron’s crowd sourcing project of predicting the salary of signing Trout to a single season came out to be around $40 million.  To guarantee $40 mill for 6 consecutive seasons which are four years off from occurring seems to be one helluva lot of risk for the Angels to assume at this point.

Especially because the Angels don’t necessarily need to be in a rush to assume that much risk.  So I’m making a prediction here.  If Mike Trout gets a ten-year contract extension this year, it will be for less than $300 million.  I think of $270 as being a sort of ceiling for him this year.  $220 to $250 million, might be much more realistic.

That leads us to scenario 2.  Sign him in 2015.  And let’s assume Trout puts up another monstrous season, one where the Angels will supposedly rue not securing the big fish to a long-term contract, the year before.  What are his free agent seasons valued at this point?  $40 million is still probably absurd but let’s follow this along and see where it goes.  The contract now is 10/$340.  But when you look at the average cost of Mike Trout across the years he remains an Angel, you get $27 million across ten seasons in the first scenario, and $30.9 million across 11 seasons in the second scenario.  So you’re paying a premium of $3.9 million per year for waiting one extra season before signing him.  But don’t forget, in return for waiting that extra year, you also tack on another year of Mike Trout goodness at the end of his contract.

When you consider the extra year, the real difference between the two scenarios is $3o to $35 million.  That’s not pocket change.  But consider this, the Angels have paid the Yankees $30+ million to take Vernon Wells off their hands for two years.

The other thing to consider here is if there is some natural market ceiling on annual salary for any player.  If so, Mike Trout might approach it.  Dave Cameron mentioned this possibility in the crowdsourcing piece.  If $40 million is just too high a number for any player to be valued at annually, then waiting til next off season could be the much better scenario if his free-agent seasons top off at $36 or $37 million.

If the Angels can get Mike Trout at say 10/240 this season, they should probably jump on it.  But if him and his agent aren’t budging off 10/270, or higher, it’s probably best to wait one more season.

Note: I have no idea if I’m the first to do this, but quite frankly I don’t care.

Every year, the Gold Gloves are awarded, and people get pissed off about whom they are awarded to. Every year, the Silver Sluggers are also awarded, and…well, no one really gives a fuck about the Silver Sluggers. Why? Hell, I don’t know. They don’t have the “storied tradition” of the Gold Gloves, the “time-honored legends” or the…uh…”legendary honors”? Look, people like to use weird cliches about how things used to be, and then Mike Bates writes quasi-racist articles¹ about it.

Personally, I enjoy the Silver Sluggers–sarcastically using them as superlatives for a player (“He’s won four, he must be good!”), looking forward to the nominations and announcements of the winners, but most importantly, arguing over them. It’s no secret that most awards are controversial–not just in baseball, but in all walks of life. People have differing opinions, and the technology available today makes it easier than ever for those opinions to be spouted furiously for the whole world to hear. In baseball, though, we are different. We have FACTS! We have EVIDENCE! We have STATISTICS!

What was the point of that disjointed rant? As I mentioned earlier, there has been many a bad pick for the Gold Gloves. However, the same is also true for the Silver Sluggers, and aside from Jeff Sullivan, no one seems to give a damn about it. Well, given that I am no one (see what I did there?), I decided that a damn should be given about it. I tracked down all of the Silver Slugger winners, back to 1980 (when they were first awarded), and saw if their wRC+ was the best at their respective position². What did I find?

Well…There were quite a few snubs. There are now 34 seasons of Silver Sluggers, which means there are 613³ Silver Slugger winners. Of those, 226 (36.9%) were undeserving by my methodology. Most of these were forgivable oversights, but some were simply awful choices; I have presented to you today several of the latter, for your viewing pleasure.

Below, you’ll see the 10 worst Silver Sluggers of all time, as measured by difference between the winner’s wRC+ and the deserved winner’s wRC+.

10. AL Outfield–1991

Winner: Joe Carter (123 wRC+)

Deserving Winner: Danny Tartabull (168 wRC+)

In his last season with the Royals before he headed to the Bronx (and to Seinfeld), Tartabull had the best season of his career, putting up 4.5 WAR for the Royals despite accruing only 557 plate appearances. His fielding was just as poor as it had ever been (-21 Def), meaning that all of his excellence had to be derived from his offense, and it was. In those 557 plate appearances, he batted .316/.397/.593, for a .430 wOBA and a 168 wRC+, highest among all outfielders. But was he good enough to win the award that is given to the best offensive players? Evidently not, as that honor went to Joe Carter and his .273/.330/.503 triple-slash, .361 wOBA, and 123 wRC+. Tartabull was clearly superior to Carter, so why did he get robbed?

It wasn’t for a lack of consistent position–although he would become a full-time DH later in his career, Tartabull started in right field for 124 of the 132 games that he played. Looking at traditional stats, Carter is only marginally better than Tartabull (33 HRs and 108 RBIs for the former, 31 HRs and 100 RBIs for the latter), and he still had a 43-point lead in batting average. Neither of them had won any Silver Sluggers prior to this, although Carter would win one the following year⁴. In this case, I suppose the voters picked Carter because he played the most, even if his aggregate offense was worth less than half that of Tartabull (23.4 wRAA  to 47.9 wRAA). As you’ll soon see, this oversight was acceptable compared to some of the other egregious ones.

9. AL Designated Hitter–1998

Winner: Jose Canseco (110 wRC+)

Deserving Winner: Edgar Martinez (156 wRC+)

The 35-year-old Martinez was still going strong at this point, putting up at least 5 WAR for the fourth of six consecutive years. His 5-win season in 1998 was primarily based on his ability with the bat, as he played 150 of his 154 games at DH. The Mariners were certainly happy with his production, as he hit .322/.429/.565, for a .427 wOBA and a 157 wRC+. However, a certain time-traveling outfielder was instead rewarded with the Silver Slugger, and it’s not hard to see why.

While Martinez hit for a good amount of power, Canseco outslugged him by a mile, or at least in the one area the voters care about. Martinez only had 29 round-trippers, compared to 46 for Canseco. Yes, Canseco also only batted .237 with a .318 OBP, .354 wOBA, and 110 wRC+, but that’s not important–he hit 46 dingers!

Reputation probably didn’t play a huge role with this one, as each player had won three times before (1992, 1995, and 1997 for Martinez; 1988, 1990, 1991 for Canseco⁵). The (theoretical) ability to drive in runners also wasn’t important, as the two players had nearly identical RBI lines (102 for Martinez, 107 for Canseco); moreover, both were equally durable (672 PAs for Martinez, 658 PAs for Canseco). In the end, the ability to hit the ball out of the park was what stole the award from Martinez, even though both rate stats and cumulative stats (12.7 wRAA for Canseco, 53.5 for Martinez) agreed that other factors were important as well.

8. AL Third Base–1995

Winner: Gary Gaetti (111 wRC+)

Deserving Winner: Jim Thome (158 wRC+)

In his first season qualifying for the batting title, Thome didn’t disappoint, as he gave the Indians six wins above replacement level; he was solid with the glove (1.1 Def at third), but his work with the bat set him apart: He smashed 25 home runs in 557 plate appearances, while hitting .314/.438/.558 with a .433 wOBA and 158 wRC+. Nevertheless, he would be disappointed at season’s end–no, not because the Indians lost the World Series, but because he got robbed of an award to measure the best offensive players at any given position!

Anyway, while Thome’s blossoming power was nothing to shrug at, Gaetti’s power was even more impressive, as he hit 35 homers in only 21 more plate appearances. However, his game suffered everywhere else, as he batted only .261, got on base at a .329 clip, and had a wOBA and wRC+ of .360 and 111, respectively. Both of them played the majority of their games at third base, so both were judged against each other; Thome, though, was unarguably better, which was reflected in wRC+ and wRAA (46.2 for Thome, 13.1 for Gaetti). However, the voters have a tendency to not listen to rational arguments, so Gaetti’s superior home run and RBI totals (96 compared to 73 for Thome) gave him the sought-after crown.

7. AL Outfield–1994

Winner: Kirby Puckett (124 wRC+)

Deserving Winner: Paul O’Neill (171 wRC+)

Because 1994 was shortened by the strike, counting stats from this season have to be taken with a grain of salt. One counting stat in particular was the deciding factor in this race, and I’ll soon reveal what it was. O’Neill was in pinstripes for the second of nine straight seasons, and he lived up to the lofty standard that the garb carries. In 443 plate appearances, O’Neill had 4.3 WAR, despite a Def of -10.7; this was due, then, to the fact that he demolished his way to a .359/.460/.603 line, with a .450 wOBA and 171 wRC+. But did the voters care? No, because a wife-beater was supposedly better.

Puckett was certainly good in 1994, hitting .317/.362/.540 with a .381 wOBA and 124 wRC+ in 482 plate appearances. O’Neill, though, had more than double the wRAA (43.6 to 19.3), and the sizable wRC+ lead; in addition, ONeill actually outhomered him, 21 to 20, and had the aforementioned advantage in batting average. Going down the Triple Crown checklist, that leaves one category: RBIs. O’Neill brought 83 runners home–an acceptable total, to say the least. Puckett, however, blew him out of the water, with 112 RBIs–in 108 games! That’s pretty impressive, if you care about such things, and God knows the voters care. Hence, the Silver Slugger was not given to its rightful owner, all because of one useless stat.

6. AL Designated Hitter–1996

Winner: Paul Molitor (114 wRC+)

Deserving Winner: Edgar Martinez (163 wRC+)

Should Martinez make the Hall of Fame? Probably. Will he make the Hall of Fame? Given his recent history, I’m inclined to say no. Would winning two deserved Silver Sluggers have helped his case? Well…Again, nobody really cares about this thing, so probably not. But the point of all of these rhetorical questions is: Martinez was a boss in 1996 (as he was in 1998). The second of six straight five-win seasons, Martinez was a full-time DH, meaning that he had to crank out the offense constantly if he wanted to remain a high performer. He most certainly did crank, to the tune of a .327/.464/.595 triple-slash, with a .450 wOBA and 163 wRC+ in 634 trips to the plate. You wouldn’t know that from looking at the awards, though, as the guy that deserves to be in Cooperstown was shut out by the only guy at his position that is in Cooperstown. What caused this?

While Martinez didn’t hit a whole lot of long balls–his .269 ISO was derived primarily from his 52 doubles, not his 26 homers–Molitor was even worse, hitting only 9 round trippers in 728 plate appearances. What the voters proved in 1996 was that they didn’t depend solely on primitive statistics like “home runs” to determine a player’s worth. They used advanced statistics for the modern age, like batting average and runs batted in! In those regards, Molitor had clear advantages over Martinez, with a .341 average and 113 RBIs. Now, Molitor’s dearth of walks and power meant that his OBP and SLG were a mere .390 and .468, respectively, which in turn meant that his wOBA was .372 and his wRC+ was 114, which in turn meant that he was completely inferior to Martinez in rate and counting stats (23.0 wRAA, compared to 62.2 for Martinez), but he had 113 RBIs! And a .341 average! That’s gotta count for something!

This was not, however, the only big-boned brouhaha that brewed in 1996…

5. NL First Base–1996

Winner: Andres Galarraga (123 wRC+)

Deserving Winner: Jeff Bagwell (173 wRC+)

In Bagwell’s second of four 7-WAR seasons, he put up some serious numbers for the Astros, hitting .315/.451/.570 with a .433 wOBA and a 173 wRC+ in 719 plate appearances as a first baseman; with a -7.8 Def, he needed to mash to earn his keep. Galarraga was also a relatively poor defender (-7.5 Def), so the same went for him. He also hit quite well, or so it would appear; his triple-slash was .304/.357/.601, which gave him a .402 wOBA in 691 plate appearances at first–not that far off from Bagwell. Why, then, was the wRC+ gap so large?

‘Twas about the elevation, dearie. Galarraga played for the Rockies, meaning he played half of his games at Coors Field, meaning he was expected to hit like a monster. While the aforementioned batting line was rather good by major-league standards, it was merely adequate by the mountain standard, and his 123 wRC+ and 39.3 wRAA reflected that. By contrast, Bagwell played in the Astrodome half of the time, which was not particularly good to hitters as a whole⁶; thus, his 173 wRC+ and his 60.1 wRAA.

Obviously, the voters were unaware of the effects a player’s home park can have on his all-around production, or else they would have discounted Galarraga’s 47 home runs and 150 RBIs. With this next case (well, these next few cases, really), though, there’s no excuse.

4. NL Pitcher–1985

Winner: Rick Rhoden (18 wRC+)

Deserving Winner: Mike Krukow (71 wRC+)

My theory is that the voters are all secretly supporters of the DH, and they all want to see it implicated across both leagues. How else can you explain 15 of the 34 pitchers (44.1%) that have won being undeserving, or that the four worst picks (of any position) were all pitchers? Anyway, Krukow was quite good (for a pitcher) with the bat in 1985, slugging his way to a .218/.259/.345 line, with a .271 wOBA and a 71 wRC+; looking at more traditional stats, he hit one home run and had three RBIs in 66 trips to the plate. He was also pretty good with the arm, accruing 3.1 WAR in 194.2 innings for the Giants in his second of six years by the bay.

Rhoden was also solid on the mound in his seventh of eight years with the Pirates, putting up 2.6 WAR in 213.1 innings pitched. He won the Silver Slugger the year before (and actually deserved to), so maybe the voters were just lazy and assumed he hit well the next year. Make no mistake, though–he did not hit well at all in 1985. His triple-slash was an anemic .189/.211/.230, meaning his wOBA was .200 and his wRC+ was 18; he also went homerless, and had only 6 RBIs. His offense (or lack thereof) cost the Pirates 7.2 runs, three times that of Rhoden (-2.4). For reasons that escape me, that performance was apparently Silver Slugger-worthy, and now the wrong man has gone home with the award for yet another year. But don’t you worry–it gets much, much worse…

3. NL Pitcher–1998

Winner: Tom Glavine (37 wRC+)

Deserving Winner: Mike Hampton (91 wRC+)

Hampton is best remembered for two things: Signing the largest contract in baseball history (for the time) with the Rockies and proceeding to stink up the joint before getting traded to the Braves; and being a pretty damn good hitter. Like, a better career wRC+ than Ozzie Guillen good. Yeah, that’s a bad comparison to make, whatever. The point is, Hampton could hit, and 1998 was no exception–in his penultimate year with the Astros, he had a .262/.348/.328 batting line, which translated to a .312 average and a more than satisfactory 91 wRC+. Glavine, on the other hand, was a less than satisfactory hitter, both for his career and in this year⁷. He batted a mere .239/.250/.282, which only gave him a .237 wOBA and a 37 wRC+. Cumulative stats reflect this as well, as Hampton’s offense was worth 5.6 runs more than Glavine’s (-1.2 to -6.8 wRAA). Triple-crown stats don’t reveal anything–neither player homered, although Glavine had seven RBIs to Hampton’s two.

The reason for Glavine’s victory here was likely twofold. One, Glavine pitched better than Hampton, with the former’s 2.47 ERA in 229.1 innings dwarfing the latter’s 3.36 ERA in 211.2 innings. Second, Glavine had a better reputation, which is where it gets complicated. See, Hampton was a good hitter, and Glavine wasn’t (as footnote 7 should make perfectly clear); however, according to reputation, both of these men were good hitters (for their position), as they took home a combined nine Silver Sluggers. The difference between the two? 1998 was the end of Glavine’s run of Silver Sluggers, whereas the next year (i.e. 1999) was the first of five straight for Hampton⁸. In this case, Glavine’s notoriety, which was built up prior to 1998, won him the award, while Hampton’s fame won him a few later (see footnote 8).

Without a doubt, the 1998 pitcher’s Silver Slugger was one of the worst in the history of the award. Sadly, there are two years that were even worse.

2. NL Pitcher–1983

Winner: Fernando Valenzuela (20 wRC+)

Deserving Winner: Tim Lollar (78 wRC+)

Lollar’s career was pretty unremarkable–he put up 2.5 WAR in 906.0 innings for four teams. In 1983, he pitched for the Padres, and he was in line with his career numbers–0.4 WAR and a 4.61 ERA in 175.2 innings. At the plate, though, he was a revelation–well, comparatively speaking. He hit .241/.292/.345 in 65 plate appearances, which gave him a .285 wOBA and a 78 wRC+, best in the National League among qualified pitchers. Valenzuela’s career was notably more remarkable, as his career WAR was 38.5 over 2930.0 innings for six teams. In the year in question, he pitched well for the Dodgers, accruing 3.9 WAR over 257.0 innings (with a 3.75 ERA). Hitting did not work out quite as well, to say the least: In 105 plate appearances, his triple-slash was .187/.194/.253, which translated to a .199 wOBA and a 20 wRC+.

Lollar was much better than Valenzuela, by both advanced and basic stats–they both hit one homer, but Lollar had 11 RBIs to Valenzuela’s 7. Lollar’s offense only cost the Padres 1.7 runs below average, whereas Valenzuela’s took nearly 10 runs away from the Dodgers. This is one of the more puzzling awards (though not as puzzling as the next one); my best guess is that Valenzuela rode on the coattails of his incredible rookie year in 1981⁹. Unfortunately, this was not the darkest hour for the prestigious honor that is the Silver Slugger award; no, that time would come six years later, in a travesty greater than any that came before it,

1. NL Pitcher–1989

Winner: Don Robinson (43 wRC+)

Deserving Winner: Bob Knepper (111 wRC+)

Given that Bob Knepper’s career wRC+ is 3–yes, three–I’m inclined to believe that his 1989 season was a fluke. The second-to-last season of his career, 1989 didn’t go well for him as a pitcher–he put up a 5.13 ERA while costing the Astros and Giants -0.8 wins over 165.0 innings. As a hitter, though, he was never better–somehow, he managed to get on base in 32.7% of his trips to the plate, with a decent .372 slugging percentage for good measure. His competence in these two areas was enough to compensate for his sub-Mendozan batting average (.186) and bring his wOBA and wRC+ to .324 and 111, respectively.

The antithesis to this would be Robinson, who was quite good on the mound (at least by traditional stats), with a 3.43 ERA in 197.0 innings for the Giants, but was completely ineffective at the plate (even for a pitcher). The owner of a respectable career wRC+ of 60, Robinson sunk down to 43 in 1989, as he only batted .185/.195/.309 (.226 wOBA). In what world was that worth more than Knepper? A world where the voters for most major awards rely on archaic means of measuring player performance–i.e. homers and RBIs. Knepper only knocked one out once in 55 plate appearances, while Robinson did it thrice in 82 PAs; Robinson also out-ribbied Knepper, seven to three. When the dust had settled, Knepper was worth 0.5 wRAA, while Robinson was worth -5.4; despite this, the Silver Slugger went to Robinson.

***

Having finally finished with this torturous exercise, I now see why people don’t place any value in the Silver Sluggers. They’re pointless awards, given out solely on reputation and not actual performance. Anyone who takes them seriously is just aksing for…Wait, what’s that? The Orioles won HOW MANY Silver Sluggers?

In summation: The Silver Slugger is the best award in baseball, and it’s a shame that the level of respect for it is as low at it is.

———————————————————————————————–

¹Just to be clear: I thoroughly enjoyed the article, and don’t consider Bates to be racist in any way.

²A little bit about the methodology: I decided on wRC+ (as opposed to, say Off) for two reasons. First, I wanted to see who the best hitters were, not the best offensive players, meaning baserunning was not to be included. Is that small-minded? Probably. Is the award in question called the Silver Slugger/Baserunner, and is the award itself a combination of a silver bat and a silver pair of cleats? Certainly not. Second (and more rationally), I wanted to measure the best hitters overall, not in terms of aggregate value; using Off or wRAA would benefit players that played longer. To pull some numbers out of my ass as an example, a guy with a 140 wRC+ is a better hitter than a guy with a 130 wRC+, but if the latter received 700 plate appearances while the former only received 550, Off or wRAA (or any counting stat) wouldn’t reflect that. But, just to be safe, I also put each player’s wRAA somewhere in the writeup.

³In 2004, there were two AL catchers that won–neither of whom was deserving.

⁴That would also be undeserved; Carter’s 120 wRC+ in 1992 paled in comparison to Shane Mack and his 142 wRC+.

⁵Oddly enough, all of those were deserving. Canseco’s wRC+s of 169, 157, and 152 in 1988, 1990, and 1991, respectively, were among the three best among qualified outfielders in those years, and Martinez’s wRC+s of 165, 182, and 164, respectively, were the best among qualifying DHs in those years.

⁶Side note: Why did this never happen? Come on, people–I expected more from you.

⁷Glavine won four Silver Sluggers over the course of his career (in 1991, 1995, 1996, and 1998). Care to speculate as to how many of those were justified? That’s right, none! In those years, Glavine’s wRC+s were 50, 41, 81, and 37, respectively, when Tommy Greene (94 wRC+ in 1991), Kevin Foster (65 wRC+ in 1995), Jason Isringhausen (84 wRC+ in 1996), and Hampton were far better. Also, in case you were wondering, Glavine’s career wRC+ is 22.

⁸Of those five, three (1999, 2001, and 2002, with wRC+s of 111, 106, and 112, respectively) were the right choice, and two (2000 and 2003, with wRC+s of 56 and 52, respectively, when Omar Daal and Russ Ortiz had wRC+s of 83 and 81, respectively) were not.

⁹He won the Silver Slugger in that year as well, and that was also undeserved, as his 55 wRC+ was outshined by Gaylord Perry’s 71 wRC+.

(Note: “Patience” here is really shorthand for “ability to get on base,” whether that’s via hits or walks. But it’s pithier and generally gets the point across as to what I’m trying to look at.)

In one of the Thursday chats on FanGraphs with Eno Sarris, I posed the following question, which he posted and the chatters answered collaboratively: Name the three players (minimum 3000 plate appearances) in the expansion era (since 1961) with a career on-base percentage above .400 and an isolated power number below .200. (Answers at the end of this post.)

In the entirety of baseball history, 36 players with 3000 plate appearances have achieved such numbers, and 24 since the beginning of the 20th century, but there are only three such players in the past 50 years. This is not particularly surprising; you won’t see many career lines such as Ty Cobb’s .366/.433/.512 anymore, or even Paul Waner’s .333/.404/.473.

But just how has the relationship between hitting for power and getting on base changed through the years?

Since we started at the individual level, let’s continue there. Let’s start with the last 20 years, from 1994-2013. Excluding pitchers, the league-wide on-base percentage was .338 and the league-wide ISO was .159. Over that time period, 761 players have had 1500+ plate appearances. How they break down on OBP and ISO lines:

Now, 1901-1920, during which time only 377 players had 1500+ plate appearances and the league averages were a .326 OBP and .082 ISO:

In either era, a substantial majority of players had either both an above average OBP and ISO, or both were below average. However, that majority is 59% in the last 20 years and was 68% in the deadball era. So one conclusion we can draw is that fewer players now sacrifice power to reach base or vice versa than they did in the olden days. (Whether they did so consciously or not.)

However, this breaks down if we go to extremes.*

From 1994-2013, 13 players had an OBP 10% above average and ISO 10% below average, while there were 15 players with an ISO 10% above average and OBP 10% below average. Overall, 3.7% of all players with 1500 PA are here.

From 1901-1920, 8 players had an OBP 10% above average and ISO 10% below average and 5 players had an ISO 10% above average and OBP 10% below average. Overall, 3.4% of the players with 1500 PA.

Players who get on base without power or hit for power without getting on base are basically as common now as they were in the dead ball era. But it’s also less common now for a player to sacrifice one or the other to any degree.

What about this power-patience relationship league-wide?

First, below are some league-wide stats over various time frames (excluding pitchers):

Time Frame	OBP	ISO	BB%	HR%
1901-present	.333	.130	8.7%	2.0%
1901-1920	.326	.082	7.6%	0.4%
1994-present	.338	.159	8.8%	2.8%
1901-1960	.341	.111	8.5%	1.2%
1961-present	.332	.142	8.8%	2.4%

The comparison between 1901-1920 and 1994-2013 really isn’t surprising. Most fans know that the dead ball era was not a time to hit for power, while the most recent times have generally been more offense-happy, especially the late 90s/early 00s.

In that chart we also see all of post-1900 baseball divided into two eras, divided along the Baseball Reference-identified beginning of the expansion era. OBP was actually higher before the Sixties while power was lower.

For now, I want to conclude with the year-by-year ratio of extra bases (2B+2*3B+3*HR) to bases reached (H+BB+HBP), graphically. I realize this might have some flaws similar to those of OPS, but a simple ISO/OBP ratio be even worse in that regard. I wanted to strip out total plate appearances or at-bats, and just look at the average number of extra bases that were earned each time a player reached base, which the selected method essentially does. The difference between ISO/OBP and the ratio selected is, on average, about 4%. At any rate this should do for a quick comparison:

A lot of famous seasons like 1930, 1968, and 1987 are identifiable on the chart. (The lowest ratio of the expansion era actually occurred in 1976, not 1968, however.) Also, it wouldn’t greatly surprise me if Babe Ruth is single-handedly responsible for the sharp increase from 1918 to 1921. (He got on base a lot, of course, but his power was the thing.) Most importantly, however, it’s clear that over time the ability of Major League player to hit for power has gone up relative to their ability to get on base. This too is not surprising to those familiar with baseball history.

And so all of this really only gives us a limited idea of the relationship between reaching base and hitting for power over time. Over the next few weeks, we’ll go further into things, both on the individual level and league level. Working backwards, next week will focus on the data underlying the above line chart.

Answers to the initial question:

Joe Mauer (.405 OBP, .145 ISO)
Rickey Henderson (.401 OBP, .140 ISO)
Wade Boggs (.415 OBP, .115 ISO)

*It’s not a Rickroll, it’s a Joelroll, which is even better because it rhymes.

Adam Wainwright pitched a decent game Monday night in Game 3 of the NLCS, throwing 7 innings and giving up 6 hits, no walks and striking out 5. He had a game score of 62, usually a sign of a well-pitched game, and he ended up with the loss because the Cardinals offense chose to take the night off. Brian Kenny (@MrBrianKenny) of the MLB Network started a movement called KillTheWin, his quixotic effort to have the win eliminated as a baseball statistic. I wrote a couple posts at my blog Beyond The Scorecard because I thought it was an interesting idea and seemed like a fun issue to research and will include the links at the end of this post, but Wainwright’s game got me thinking–how often in the postseason is a pitcher not justly rewarded for a good effort?

As the use of starting pitchers has changed over time, the win has become a far less effective metric in judging pitcher effectiveness. I don’t remember how I stumbled across using a game score of 60 as my marker of effectiveness (probably at Kenny’s suggestion) and like any other single number it’s not the entire story of a pitching performance, but it grants the opportunity to separate pitching effectiveness from a lack of offensive production or bad defense. Including Monday’s game there have been 1,393 postseason games played since 1903, meaning there have been 2,786 starts in postseason history–this chart shows the breakdown of wins, losses and no-decisions for those starters in that time frame:

In the postseason, starting pitchers won almost 36% of their starts. This covers the entire spectrum of postseason play, from the games in the early 1900s when a pitcher typically finished what he started all the way to examples like Saturday where Anibal Sanchez was removed after 6 innings (and 116 pitches)…and throwing a no-hitter. Different times, to be sure. With this context, this chart shows how often a pitcher who had a game score of 60 or greater was credited with the win:

Definitely an improvement over the general trend, but still, a pitcher who pitches well enough to attain a game score of 60 or greater has done all he can–he’s given up few hits and walks and struck out a decent number of hitters. In short, he’s kept base runners off base, the primary job of a pitcher and almost 35% of the time has nothing to show for it, or even worse, is tagged with a loss. This chart shows these numbers since the playoffs were expanded in 1969:

The introduction of relievers definitely hurt the cause of these starting pitchers, with almost 40% of pitchers who threw very good games not receiving a win. On the flip side, it is gratifying to see that only around 9% of wins go to pitchers who were the beneficiaries of being on the right side of 13-12 scores or games along those lines–justice exists somewhere. This last chart shows the record by game score stratification:

Who was that unlucky pitcher with a game score greater than 90 who received the loss? Nolan Ryan in Game 5 of the 1986 NLCS.

The 10-15 regular readers of my blog hopefully are aware that I typically write with my tongue firmly lodged in my cheek, and the win is so entrenched in baseball lore that removing it as a point of discussion simply won’t happen, but it doesn’t mean that it has to receive the emphasis it does. When we have the wealth of data that sites like FanGraphs places at our fingertips, we don’t have to rely on a metric that was formed at the inception of organized baseball that is a relic today, particularly one that doesn’t give an accurate portrayal of pitching performance around 35% of the time. Kill The Win–maybe not, but we can certainly de-emphasize it.

#KillTheWin blog posts:

The first one, which lays out definitions and rationale

The second one, which expands it

A final one, an exercise in absurdity

Introduction

What is the best pitch of all-time?  Is it Mariano Rivera’s cutter?  Is it Randy Johnson’s slider?  Is it Walter Johnson’s fastball?  I do not know.  What I do know is that this question is nearly impossible to answer, so let’s simplify things a little.  What was the best pitch thrown during the 2013 regular season?  On a rate basis, PITCHf/x would lead us to believe that the best pitch thrown by a qualifying pitcher was Yovani Gallardo’s cutter with a wFC/c of 4.95.  In other words, for every 100 cutters thrown by Gallardo, he saved 4.95 runs above a pitcher who throws an “average” cutter.  What does this really mean though?  This system of calculation is based off the changes in run expectancy due to the outcome of each pitch, which is extremely complicated and tedious to calculate.  I felt that there had to be a simpler way to quantify the quality of a pitch. 

Background

Back in August, I posted an article entitled “Baseball’s Most Extreme Pitches from Starters, So Far” that posited the idea of total bases per hit allowed.  In other words, I wanted to look at who was getting hit the hardest.  Now, it was rightly suggested in the comments that this wasn’t the greatest way to determine a pitch’s quality.  For example, let’s look at the following two extremely hypothetical examples.  One pitcher throws his fastball exactly 100 times.  In those 100 pitches, he throws 99 of them for strikes.  On the 100^th pitch, he gives up a home run.  Now, by looking at TB/H, this pitch has a rating of 4.00, which is the worst possible rating.  However, he only gave up 0.04 total bases per pitch, which is excellent.  By comparison, the second pitcher throws exactly 100 fastballs as well.  He gives up 100 singles.  By TB/H, his fastball has a rating of 1.00, which is significantly better than the first pitcher.  However, he gave up 1.00 total bases per pitch, which is awful.  If a pitcher gave up a base runner each time he threw a pitch, he probably would cease throwing that pitch very quickly. 

That got me to thinking that total bases per pitch may be a much better way to determine the quality of a pitch, but there are also glaring problems with this method as well.  For example, 100 balls thrown in 100 pitches would a value of 0.00 total bases per pitch.  Clearly, a pitcher’s ability (or inability) to throw a pitch for a strike needed to be incorporated as well. 

Proposed Solution

To try and solve the problems suggested above, I propose the following simple formula:

adjTB/P = [1B + 2*2B + 3*3B + 4*HR + xBB] / Pitches

where,

xBB = Balls/4

With that said, I know some pitches are thrown out of the strike zone intentionally (i.e. the waste pitch).  At the end of the day, a waste pitch only puts you one step closer to walking a batter and adds one pitch to the pitch count.  Every coach would prefer their starter to throw a Maddux each time out, so efficiency is the name of the game.  In order to test this formula, let’s look at a sample calculation.

According to Baseball Prospectus and their PITCHf/x leaderboards, A.J. Burnett threw 614 four-seam fastballs this regular season.  On those 614 pitches, he allowed 10 singles, nine doubles, five home runs, and had 202 of those pitches called balls.  Burnett allowed 58 total bases and 50.5 xBB.  Doing some quick arithmetic, he allowed 0.1767 adjTB/P. 

At first glance, I’m sure your reaction is similar to my initial reaction.  Okay, so what does that mean?  On its face, a correct response may contain the words “I’m not really sure”.  If we look at the summation of each four-seam fastball thrown by starters this year, we find that the league allowed 0.1800 adjTB/P, so A.J. Burnett threw a slightly above average four-seam fastball this year.  To come to that conclusion though, you’d have to know both a player’s rate and the league rate.  We can present this information in a much nicer and easier to understand way. 

To do this, I decided to turn to the old standby from every scout in baseball, the 20-80 scale.  As you’re probably well aware, the 20-80 scale attempts to rate a player’s skills numerically.  50 is average.  60 represents exactly one standard deviation above average.  30 represents exactly two standard deviations below average, and so on and so forth.  By taking the weighted standard deviation of the data set, we can determine how many standard deviations above or below average a certain pitch is.  Looking at the full season data, the weighted standard deviation for four-seam fastballs is 0.0262 adjTB/P.  Another quick calculation tells us that A.J. Burnett rated as 0.13 standard deviations above average.  Converting that on a 20-80 scale rating, Burnett’s four-seam fastball gets a rating of 51.  On quick glance, the 51 rating makes much more sense than 0.1767 adjTB/P, which helps solve one of our problems.

Results

Now that we understand how to calculate the values and what they mean, let’s look at a scale for whose four-seam fastball really excelled and whose really was problematic.  To qualify for the full season, 600 total four-seam fastballs had to be thrown.  This gave me 103 qualified starting pitchers.  The Top 10 qualified starters were:

For comparison, the Bottom 10 qualified starters were:

On a monthly basis, a minimum of 100 four-seam fastballs had to be thrown.  The best and worst pitches each month this season were:

Only three starters qualified as above average in each month of the regular season.  Their monthly ratings are shown below.  No starter qualified as below average in each month this season. 

I plan to continue this study by analyzing both other pitch types and relievers.  Baseball Prospectus provides data for the following pitches: four-seam fastball, sinker, cutter, splitter, changeup, curveball, slider, screwball, and knuckleball.  At the completion of all the pitch types, I’ll post the ratings for complete repertoires as well.  If well-received, I’ll try and provide monthly updates as next season rolls along.      

Mike Podhorzer has looked into the relationship of a batters’ average fly ball distance as it relates to their HR/FB ratio, and has found results that will allow others to more accurately project a hitter’s home run totals from year to year.

This got me thinking. Which can be a good or bad, but in this case, the authors’ labor produced a fruitful return. While a hitters’ HR/FB ratio can fluctuate indiscriminately from year to year, Podhorzer has proven a batters’ average fly ball distance is a better indication of a player’s true talent power production. In the same light, my study looks at how a player’s swinging strike rate (SwStr%) is a better indication of a pitcher’s strikeout potential than K/9.

My assumption was that K/9 and SwStr% have a strong relationship. But, how strong of a relationship is it? To find this out, I took all qualified starter seasons from 2003 to 2013, which gave me a sample size of 933 pitchers, and ran a correlation between their SwSTR% and their K/9. The results showed that there is an exceedingly positive correlation between SwSTR% and K/9, to the tune of a .807 correlation coefficient and a .65 R².

What is important to note is that there are very few pitchers present in the sample with a SwStr% above 13%, which may be symptomatic of something larger. Getting batters to swing and miss is difficult. The more often you can get a batter to swing and miss, the more valuable you are as a pitcher. As a result, the higher the SwStr%, the smaller the sample size becomes. For example, Johan Santana (2004) and Kerry Wood (2003) are the two lone dots to the farthest right on the graph with SwStr% of over 15: wow.

After the relationship between SwStr% and K/9 ratio became unmistakable, I calculated what a particular SwSTR%s translates into, as far as K/9, with the formula Y=68.473*x+0.8435, and got this chart:

The next step is to take what we have discovered and apply it to a sample. The chart below shows each qualified pitcher for 2013, their SwStr%, xK/9, K/9, and K/9-xK/9.  xK/9 is what we would expect a pitcher’s K/9 to be based off of their SwStr%, and K/9-xK/9 shows us how much a pitcher over-performed or under-performed their SwStr% and xK/9.The first set of ten names are the pitchers who outperformed their xK/9 the most, and the second list of ten names are the players who underperformed their xK/9 the most.

The results show that Ubaldo Jimenez, Yu Darvish, and Jose Fernandez are the pitchers who have outperformed their xK/9 the most in 2013. These three pitchers also have great a great amount of deception and/or command (deception in Jimenez’s case: because, no one has ever called Ubaldo a control artist). And, while they may have outperformed their true talent in 2013 to an extent—they all had remarkable years—maybe that deception and control, which SwStr% does not take into account, leads to less swings by batters and more pitches taken for strikes, as opposed to swung at for strikes.

Perhaps xK/9 is more helpful when we look at pitchers who underperformed their SwStr%, like Jarrod Parker and Kris Medlen. Both of these pitchers had down years compared to what their projections suggested, but their xK/9s seem to be optimistic about their futures. Parker showed a .18 improvement in his K/9 from the first half to the second half of the season, while Medlen showed almost a full point improvement going from a 6.81 K/9 in the first half to a 7.67 K/9 in the second half.

While xK/9 may miss something—deception and command—when it comes to pitchers that outperform their SwStr%, xK/9 seems to find a reason to be optimistic when it comes to pitchers like Kris Medlen and Jarrod Parker who have underperformed their SwStr% and strikeout potential.

Devon Jordan is obsessed with statistical analysis, non-fiction literature, and electronic music. If you enjoyed reading him, follow him on Twitter @devonjjordan.

When Colby Rasmus was dealt to the Blue Jays from the St. Louis Cardinals in a blockbuster trade on July 27, 2011, there were mixed emotions in Toronto regarding the deal. On the one hand, he was (and arguably still is) just a few years removed from being a blue-chip, five-tool prospect with power and plus defense. On the other, there was the much-publicized family feud with then-Cards manager Tony La Russa, the seemingly lethargic attitude at bat, in the field and in media interviews (a reputation unaided by his laid back, southern drawl), the strikeouts, and most of all: the unshakeable stigma of not living up to his foretold potential.

The overwhelming consensus as the deal was struck and following it as well was one of relative indifference, and with good reason. After coming over from St. Louis in 2011 he didn’t exactly set the world on fire in a 35-game stint with the Blue Jays (.173/.201/.316). His slash line from last year (.223/.289/.400) seemed to be building on 2011 and the mounting strikeouts failed to endear him to a disgruntled Blue Jays fan base hungry for something to cheer about. With his average at .225 on April 28, this year looked to be more of the same. It has become increasingly clear however, that something has changed this season. Before being sidelined by an oblique injury, Colby was putting together an impressive season—despite receiving next to no credit for it. He hadn’t missed a step since coming off the DL either, homering in each of the four games after returning, becoming just the 10^th different Blue Jay to do so.  Unfortunately, it lasted just six games as Rasmus was sidelined by an errant Anthony Gose warm-up throw to the face.

Let’s start with the traditional measures: a .276 average, 22 home runs, and 66 RBI to go along with an .840 OPS in 118 games. He is now one of only four Blue Jays all-time to hit 20 bombs in back-to-back seasons (the others are Vernon Wells, Jose Cruz Jr., and Lloyd Moseby). He will finish up one off his career high of 23 home runs set last season and 9 off his best mark of 75 RBI also set last year. These totals would obviously be higher as well had Rasmus not missed a month due to an oblique strain and even more time because of his facial injury. As of September 19 (before going down for a second time and after missing a month), he was near the top of many major statistical categories for AL centre fielders: second in home runs (22), slugging (.507), and OPS (.845); third with 66 driven in and 4^th with 49 extra base hits. Last year, Colby went 24.2 plate appearances in between home runs and this season he was at 20.8, which practically equates him with Baltimore star Adam Jones (Jones went deep every 20.9 plate appearances). Colby’s 2013 home run prowess on average per game as a centre fielder is also superior to the likes of Carlos Gomez, Mike Trout, Shin-Soo Choo, and Andrew McCutchen. He went deep every 6.6 games in 2012 and every 5.4 on average this year. Even with the time he’s missed, only Jones, McCutchen, Trout, and Gomez have driven in more runs as a centre fielder in Major League Baseball. Rasmus’s .840 OPS is surpassed only by Trout, McCutchen and Choo. Those are impressive stats and equally impressive company to be grouped with.

Even given the aforementioned statistical information, there are always those who will refuse to qualify a player’s worth and contribution without the use of sabermetrics and so in fairness this aspect must be investigated as well. I cannot pretend I understand the drawn out calculations though I understand what the numbers mean. I will be firstly using Baseball-Reference’s WAR data summarized by ESPN. Colby Rasmus has a wins above replacement of 4.8, fifth best of any centre fielder in baseball. Simply put, the number is great and to put it in perspective, he trails just Trout, Gomez, McCutchen and Jacoby Ellsbury in this regard. He is ahead of players considered league-wide to be great, or at least above-average: Adam Jones, Shin-Soo Choo, Austin Jackson, Desmond Jennings, Andre Ethier, Matt Kemp (in limited time), Michael Bourn, Denard Span, and Curtis Granderson (in limited time, and might be over the hump, I know) to name a few prominent ones. FanGraphs also puts Rasmus at 4.8 WAR, and according to their rating system both Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs would qualify him as an All-Star (a player with 4-5 WAR is deemed All-Star-worthy).

As we have seen, Rasmus obviously brings quite a bit to the table offensively, but what about defensively? What if I were to suggest that he has a better defensive WAR and range factor than Mike Trout? Or that there are only three players with over 100 starts in centre (Leonys Martin, Ellsbury, and Gomez) that have a greater dWAR than Rasmus? And only three with a better range factor? These are all in fact true statements. He sits at 1.6 dWAR compared to -0.8 for Trout and has a 2.77 range factor compared to Trout’s 2.61 mark. Obviously Trout’s oWAR (10.1) and WAR (9.2) are off-the-charts good and this is not an attempt to bolster Colby Rasmus at the expense of Mike Trout. But a point needs to be made, so bear with me. Mike Trout’s dWAR was 2.2 last year in 108 starts in centre and as aforementioned, it is -0.8 this year in 106 starts. His range factor was 2.7 last year and 2.61 this season. He had 268 total chances in 886 innings in 2012. In 2013, he had only 273 in 937 full innings in centre field. He is less valuable defensively to the Angels, has apparently less range, and has gotten to fewer balls.

2013 Mike Trout vs. Colby Rasmus

However, a crucial point remains: Trout made a name for himself (and rightfully so) last year as an elite defensive player to complement his superb offensive skills. His reputation as a defensive wizard has stuck with him into this season—there has not been any mention about any defensive regression. Instead he is heralded as a possible MVP candidate despite the fact the Angels will miss the postseason as they did last year. And just as Trout’s reputation as an above-average fielder has outlasted his ability (only up until the end of 2013), the opposite has been true for Rasmus. His status as an underachieving strikeout machine has overshadowed his amazing progression as an all-around player. Consider the power, the average, runs driven in, and OPS combined with the much-improved wins above replacement numbers (overall, offensive, and defensive). His overall WAR of 4.8 is a career high by over one full win (3.6 in 2010), defensively he has improved every season since 2010 and now sits at 1.6. Offensively he is at 3.5 wins above replacement and has improved by at least two runs every year in that category since becoming a Blue Jay.

Colby Rasmus as a Blue Jay

I think it is safe to say that he has become more of a well-rounded player but more importantly, he is on an upward trajectory. Conversely, take the highly-coveted, soon-to-be free agent Shin-Soo Choo, who at age 30 is seemingly regressing defensively (a career-worst -1.9 dWAR both this and last year). His offensive numbers are impressive, don’t get me wrong, but it remains to be seen how much longer he can be an effective outfielder. A .424 on base percentage with 20+ homers is nice, but Baseball-Reference reveals that his WAR (4.0) is still lower than Rasmus’s (4.8) with the latter seemingly on an upswing. I do think Choo is good, but it is all but certain that he will be overpaid and consequently Colby Rasmus will look like a far better option.

I believed I have put forth at least a half-decent argument that Colby Rasmus is extremely valuable and even elite. I argue that his numbers on average rival the best in the game at his position and that he should get a little more credit for his impressive body of work. Some would point out that perhaps I have not examined his numbers from all possible perspectives, which I plan to do now using various data presented by FanGraphs. A comparison of this season with his 2011 and 2012 campaigns reveal ominous similarities. He struck out 29.5% of the time in 2013, which is actually up from 23.8% last year, and walked an insignificant 0.6% of the time more often (he still only walks 8.1% of the time). His BB/K ratio is also down to 0.27 from 0.32 in 2012 and 0.43 in 2011. He swung at 29.3% of pitches out of the zone in 2013 compared to 31.8% last year, and while perhaps showing a bit more patience, the number from this season equals his career average exactly. He has swung at basically the same amount of pitches inside the zone this year and last, and 2013’s mark of 67.2% is slightly off his career average of 70.6%. As for the balls he made contact with: while the percentage of pitches he made contact with inside the zone is almost exactly the same as 2012, the pitches he made contact with outside the strike zone was at 55.4% from 62.2% last season. So is he simply getting lucky by swinging and missing more often, thereby not making weak outs and having a shot at the next pitch? There may be some truth to that considering (as we have seen) that he swings at almost the same amount of pitches out of the zone as last year. On the other hand, he did strike out more in 2013 than 2012, which may discount the luck idea. The main bullet point here is that there does not seem to be much deviation from this year and the two preceding it and that there must be another explanation to help explain his success.

Based on these findings, one might think Rasmus would have had a similar year in 2013 to 2012 and 2011. But the numbers do not corroborate this as we have clearly seen. So what is different? BABIP. Rasmus has the worrisome distinction of having an unusually high batting average on balls put in play. BABIP can have a profound effect on a player’s batting average and a player with an unusually high or low BABIP will likely regress back to their career rate the following season. Proponents of sabermetrics will also convey that a very high BABIP may suggest that a player is having a fluky season. As for Rasmus, his batting average on balls in play was .356 this season compared to .259 last year and .267 in 2011. During his breakout 2010 campaign, it was .354. These are not small discrepancies. He hit .276 both this year and in 2010 and .223 and .225 last year and 2011, respectively. There is a definite link and it seems to have to do with BABIP. He has averaged .298 over his career in that department, which is considered normal.

So for the most part, he has been either well above or below it throughout his five years in the big leagues. Is he just having an especially good year? We won’t know until next season if he will regress but there are a few reasons to think he will be fine. His 2010 and 2013 numbers are more of what people expect than the years in between based on his ability. Maybe a .356 batting average on balls in play isn’t outrageously high and maybe 2012 was the fluky year. This season Rasmus hit a greater percentage of balls in play for line drives (22.0%) than ever before in his career (average: 19.5%). Also, more of his fly balls left the yard this season (13.2% last year and 17.3% this season). So maybe he is hitting the ball harder, and a few extra fly balls are hanging up just long enough to clear the fence. Although, ESPN’s Home Run Tracker considers just three of his home runs to have “Just Enough” distance while the other 19 were no doubters or had cleared the wall by “Plenty”. Another interesting point is that Mike Trout’s batting average on balls in play over the last two years is .379. Will he be able to keep that up? It is as much a question for Trout as it is for Rasmus.

This analysis of course not definitive but it merely is alternative to the fluke theory. It is possible that Rasmus can repeat his stellar 2013 season. One thing is clear though: this year, he was up there with the best centre fielders in the business. This was shown using traditional measures as well as new-age sabermetrics. He was near the top in most significant offensive and defensive categories and had he not been hurt he would have set career-highs and perhaps received a little more (and well-deserved) credit. He flew under the radar and it’s unfortunate that he is not appreciated as he should be. If he has a good 2014, I believe he will finally shake the lackadaisical, under-achieving, strikeout machine stigma and instead be seen as a quietly confident, budding star with an ability to hit for average and power to go along with graceful and effortless defense.

I’ll admit it: I feel like a trendsetter most of the time.

Usually it’s how I justify to myself my terrible clothing taste, or bad haircut, or lack of interest in Breaking Bad, or why I don’t get invited to many social events.  But this time, my friends, surely this trend will carry on, for at least a year!  And it will all be because of me, or at least I will tell myself that.

So what trend is it that I’ll be initiating today?  I’m going to abjectly speculate on who the next baseball commissioner should be.  And I’m going to do it a year in advance, before you get tired of hearing all of the names mentioned that have no chance at ending up on the 31st floor of 245 Park Ave.   So, without further ado, let’s begin speculation season, shall we?

One of the names surely to draw a lot of attention in the “Commish Search 2k14” (as it will surely be named) is one Robert Q. Costas, known to many as NBC Sports Anchor Bob Costas.  Bob has had a long love affair with baseball, including writing a 197 page manifesto of objective revelations in his year 2000 book, “Fair Ball: A Fan’s Case for Baseball.”  For those that haven’t read it, it’s a fascinating read, even thirteen years after writing.  In it, he proposes numerous ideas, many of which took over a decade to be implemented, such as instant replay in the playoffs (obviously still not fully implemented), daily interleague play to balance the size of each league, and even tweaks to the wild card system to punish teams for not winning their division, a practice that started in 2012.

In addition, as a baseball outsider (and by that I basically mean a non-owner or league official), Bob is able to objectively look at what is holding baseball back from a fan’s perspective, as well as some of the economic challenges.  In the Selig administration, we saw the Brewers, formerly owned by Selig, move to the National League, conveniently bettering the revenue situation of the team, now having a well-traveling rival fan base only 90 miles to the south.  In the Costas administration, the head of the organization would have no indirect benefits from having a team switch locales or leagues.  While this may seem like an outside chance of occurrence, it brings me to my next point.

Bob Costas is well regarded by the league.  Or at least, as a commentator.  In a sport that has so heavily relied on voices, with Vin Scully, Jack Buck, and the like, Bob Costas served as the “voice of a generation” for a short period in the 80s and 90s when NBC had somewhat robust MLB coverage.  Unfortunately now, Costas sits on the fringes of baseball, with a cameo gig at MLB Network, and the center of the NBC Sports lineup, which has not broadcast a Major League Baseball game this century.  His position within the MLB organization (albeit somewhat marginalized on MLB Network) should position him well to take a visible post within the Major League Baseball Executive Suite.

The last item, the “not really an outsider but not really on the inside” element to Bob is surely what will do him in.  The owners will largely want someone who will grow the game’s revenues, which doesn’t necessarily mean “make the sport more enjoyable for the fans.”  The precedent has largely been set, such as the addition of interleague play, which resulted in attendance spikes for the first 5 or so years, but have since returned to pre-interleague levels (outside of a few regional rivalry games).   A short term revenue increase is seen as a valuable addition to the sport, rather than the long term viability of America’s pastime.  This obviously is not a phenomenon unique to baseball, but one with which baseball struggles more than its sporting counterparts.

The only unfortunate thing is for us fans is that the man most suited to resolve those  philosophical struggles is the one most likely to be relegated to covering the appointment of the new Commissioner on the league’s own television network.

In fantasy, the 5 categories are meant to evaluate the overall value of a pitcher, and players that are best able to predict future value can win serious jelly beans. A pitcher accumulates Ks by defeating individual batters, while a low WHIP indicates that he can avoid putting opposing players on base. ERA evaluates a pitcher’s run prevention skill. Saves and wins are meant to measure a pitcher’s ability to dominate opposing teams, whether for an inning or an entire game. However, wins compare poorly with quality starts and W+QS when correlated with commonly used pitching statistics.

The chart below shows the correlation between wins, quality starts, and the combination of the two with other commonly used pitcher evaluation metrics. By calculating the correlation between these 3 categories and other pitcher metrics such as FIP, OPS allowed, batting average against, homeruns allowed per 9 innings, and runs above average by the 24 base/out states (RE24), we can measure not only the relationship between the variables, but also how much they differ from each other.

None of these statistics correlate as well with wins as they do with quality starts and W+QS. In fact, the difference between QS and W+QS is negligible in every case. This result makes sense—since QS make up the majority of the W+QS total, the two are almost identical in the chart. The actual values of each correlation are less important that the overwhelming conclusion that wins do not have much to do with pitcher skill, while the difference between QS and W+QS is negligible.

 Why, then, might it be useful to use W+QS? These results show that it may not be very different from using quality starts, but is far more reliable way to judge a pitcher’s performance than wins alone. W+QS double count the games when a pitcher goes somewhat deep into a game, pitches fairly well (3 ER or less), and exits the game while leading his opponent. This scenario might not be much different than the QS by itself, but it does retain an element of “winning the ballgame for your team”, which is what the win category somewhat accurately captures. A winning pitcher is generally on a winning team, although that statement may not mean much.

W+QS may be an unnecessarily complicated way to repeat the same evaluation standards as quality starts, but some players may prefer it simply because it retains the W while relegating it to a position of less importance. Maybe owning a great pitcher like James Shields doesn’t have to be so frustrating after all.