rolling sabermetrics and statistics thread

Just digging into Ted "Big Klu" Kluszewski's career a little bit and happened upon this remarkable stat, which seems unlikely to ever be repeated for even a month, much less four seasons:

At his four-year peak, Big Klu had more homers than strikeouts.

Wow. Anyone done it since 2011 (min. 20 HR)?

https://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/10091.html

Bonds and Brett the only two guys on there after 1956.

Mattingly came very close a number of times in the '80s: he had consecutive years of (HR/K) 23-33, 35-41, 31-35, 30-38, 18-29, 23-30.

Interested in the other extreme, too. Teams will put up with 200 K if you hit, what, at least 30-35 HR. Wonder if anyone's been over 200 K and under 20 HR? That would seem to be a quick ticket out of the league.

Yoan Moncada had 17 HR and 217 K in 2018

Drew Stubbs in 2011 had 15 HR and 205 K

(xpost) Yikes! That's gotta be the worst ever. Maybe even more amazingly--that's not an easy thing to fix--he came back the next year and hit 25 HR with only ("only") 154 K, and hit .315.

So Stubbs is slightly worse. Also kept his job--I'm clearly wrong about that.

9 of the 39 190+ K seasons in MLB history were achieved by a Chris, Khris, or Kris.

Negro League stats incorporated in with MLB, pretty cool

https://apnews.com/article/negro-leagues-statistics-4a204a3cac0527ab5be750783fd411df

A rundown of all the changes on all-time seasonal and career leaderboards:

https://www.mlb.com/news/stats-leaderboard-changes-negro-leagues-mlb

I had no idea this was happening! Amazing!

I had no idea Josh Gibson died age 35.

And in 1947, making it one of the most poignant moments in the Ken Burns film. (Jan. 20: I assume the Dodgers had already announced their intention to bring Robinson up.)

not sure how i feel about this

on one hand, it's cool that some great players get recognition

on the other hand, waiting until essentially all the negro leaguers are dead and then claiming them as part of its history is kinda fucked up for an organization that specifically banned them for 50 years!

on the other other hand, it's all just numbers and lists; does it really matter

saw someone suggest that we treat pre-fully-integrated baseball (i.e., before the red sox called up pumpsie green in 1959) kind of like the deadball era -- it happened, but it operated under circumstances so different as to be barely applicable to today's game. that will never happen -- we're too attached to ruth and dimaggio and williams etc. etc. -- but it's an interesting thought

It's weird: Baseball Reference still has Cobb first, but they also--and have for a year or two now--have Oscar Charleston second and Jud Wilson fifth. Is it that Gibson's career was too short? (But wouldn't bRef be using the same benchmarks as MLB?)

Howabouttttt.....

giving Sadaharu Oh the all-time home run title?

From a friend:

“I caught part of an interview on NPR with the guy who started doing the research. There were no databases so he had to enter stats from each game by hand. He said that one game took about 30 minutes and he had 16,000 games. Yikes.”

(xpost) The one caveat I'd throw up about that is the occasional ex-MLB player who went over to Japan and went from being a journeyman to a star. There were a handful of famous examples in the '80s I'm blanking out on. Obviously we've seen a number of Japanese players go in the other direction and become stars and superstars and Shohei. Maybe the overall depth 50 years ago wasn't what it became later?

Bob Horner!

I'm not sure I follow the argument though. There were no gentlemen's agreements excluding hundreds of Japanese players from MLB - this harmonizes American professional baseball nothing more. If someone wants to create a composite chart of the world's baseball players, including Cuba and the DR etc - nothing's stopping them

RANDY BASS

For every Randy Bass mention, I am legally obligated to repost this amazing story (esp. if gyac has yet to encounter it).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_the_Colonel

Yes--Randy Bass! His '85/86 seasons in Japan, which were Bonds-like numbers (54/47 HR, .350/.389) after a six-year, .212/.284/.326 career. Anyway, it's an interesting point about Oh. Posnanski had him #85 on his list, with, as remember, lots of evidence (beyond just his HR) that he would have had a great MLB career. If they were to make that change, I'd be fine with it.

Wasn’t Davey Johnson huge in Japan? I just read a book about American players in Japan you think I’d remember

Had a big year there in '76, yes. (Mind you, unlike Bass, he was a legitimate MLB star who hit 43 HR with the Braves one year.)

randy bass was also part of the fabled* 1980 denver bears team that also featured a young tim wallach and very young tim raines among other recognizable names

*also* randy bass spent 2005-2019 in the oklahoma state senate as a democrat

I'm excited about the Negro Leagues stats announcement, this will hopefully lead to a lot of new research and debate.

However, incorporating their stats into MLB doesn't really address the real problem. We don't know whether Josh Gibson would have had a higher BA than Ty Cobb had they played in an integrated MLB. A lot of the weaker pitchers that Cobb faced wouldn't have been in the majors if the league had been integrated. I don't know what Cobb's BA would have been, but surely a lot lower than .366. And you could make the same argument about Gibson. Putting Gibson and Cobb on the same leaderboard gives the illusion that they were contemporaries whose stats can be compared (which is possible post-1947, or post-1961 expansion), but it's not so straightforward.

(actually, if we're going to fantasy book an integrated MLB pre-1947, then a racist like Cobb might have refused to join it and instead found a white-only minor league to play in, in which case we might not know his name today)

One of the most extreme disparities between the two WARs that I've seen in a while: Tyler Anderson leads all MLB pitchers in bWAR with 4.0, while in fWAR he's 57th with 0.9.

I almost always use bWAR as a matter of habit--I just find it easy to look up and navigate--and the two are usually more or less in sync. But fWAR is clearly the better one here. I don't know how they arrive at that 4.0. Good ERA (2.63) for a lousy team, and under 7 hits per 9 innings, but that's about it. Anderson leads the AL in walks given up, he strikes out under six batters per 9 innings (I didn't think anybody was that low anymore), and his FIP is 4.77.

bWAR is supposed to be less accurate for pitchers iirc? But yeah I’ve seen the difference between his ERA and his FIP (the latter basically in line with his career numbers) as partial explanation; he’s been getting bailed out by position players.

Must be the case, although that generally happens with good teams. Is fielding the one thing the Angels can do?

No. I think it’s just insane luck.

I don't think he's less than a one win pitcher. His game logs look very good, only once below five innings. He accrues about the same amount of WPA over his starts as Crochet, Tarik Skubal, Tanner Houck, and Cole Ragan, more than Erik Fedde, Logan Gilbert, and Jack Flaherty.

Seth Lugo is the AL starter that really outdistances everybody there.

His change-up is really, really good.

Siri, post an overlay of his 4SB/CU deliveries.

(^^^referring to Anderson there)

Here's an interesting one - Dylan Cease has a total WPA this year of 0.348, compared with Anderson's 1.717. Fangraphs has Cease at 2.4 WAR, Anderson at 0.7.

Speaking of Flaherty, the maybe not so lousy team put up a five spot on him tonight, Phil. Seemed to take advantage of just about every mistake.

there is something awry with aaron judge’s defensive stats. fangraphs has him at -4.9 runs and soto at +1.7, and whether you believe soto is having a better overall defensive year than judge (even accounting for the fact that judge has played about a quarter of his time at DH), judge is not closer in defensive value to a full time DH than he is to soto. some of this may just be small-sample noise, but I wonder if there is some sort of systematic error here considering they play next to each other: there could be something about how they are positioned that is confusing the zone ratings. I don’t really have a deep enough knowledge of defensive stats these days to be confident, but it reminds me a bit of NBA adjusted plus-minus stats and how I was pretty convinced nikola jokic was being shorted and guys like kentavious caldwell-pope were being rewarded for playing so many minutes together

That definitely sounds wrong; Judge has been consistently good for his career defensively, Soto consistently mediocre.

Padres closer (and all star) Robert Suarez - bWAR is 1.8, fWAR is 0.6?

Padres closer (and all star) Robert Suarez - bWAR is 1.8, fWAR is 0.6?

― timellison, Monday, July 15, 2024 12:33 PM (nineteen minutes ago)

i haven't followed the changes in WAR calculations between these two sites that closely recently so i don't want to speak *too* confidently, but generally/historically speaking fangraphs pitcher WAR is more FIP/predictive stats based whereas BR's is based more on outcomes. in suarez's case his ERA is 1.67 but his xERA is 3.07 and his xFIP is 3.87 so i'd imagine that's where the discrepancy is coming from

yeah barring rare exceptions the bbref/fg differences in pitcher WAR almost always even out after couple more years worth of data

Lost track of Nate Silver for a long while, but the election led me to the Substack he does now. In a recent post on Kamala Harris--pros and cons--this, one of the pros, made me laugh:

12. It’s not that Biden can’t win — maybe the polls have been way off all along or there will be an alien invasion or something. But any election that Biden could win, any reasonable Democrat should be able win at this point. He is probably a below-replacement-level candidate.

https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-case-for-and-against-kamala-harris

Joe Biden, -0.3 WAR.

9/9, 9. First time I've used Gene Garber, I think, famous for ending Rose's 44-game hit streak in 1978. Vintage Rose: he complained after the game because Garber wasn't man enough to throw him a fastball.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1sm1rOUfTg

https://i.postimg.cc/TP6qp28r/grid.jpg

"In Rose's final at bat in that game, in the ninth inning, he struck out against Garber, but Rose was critical for Garber not throwing more fastballs. 'He was pitching like it was the seventh game of the World Series,' said the Reds' 'Charlie Hustle.' Garber was not amused. 'I had an idea,' said the Atlanta reliever, 'that Rose was hitting like it was the final game of the World Series.'"

Meanwhile, Rose starts the AB by trying to lay down a bunt.

Wrong thread...I don't know how that happened, but I can't be bothered re-posting.

there is something awry with aaron judge’s defensive stats. fangraphs has him at -4.9 runs and soto at +1.7, and whether you believe soto is having a better overall defensive year than judge (even accounting for the fact that judge has played about a quarter of his time at DH), judge is not closer in defensive value to a full time DH than he is to soto. some of this may just be small-sample noise, but I wonder if there is some sort of systematic error here considering they play next to each other: there could be something about how they are positioned that is confusing the zone ratings. I don’t really have a deep enough knowledge of defensive stats these days to be confident, but it reminds me a bit of NBA adjusted plus-minus stats and how I was pretty convinced nikola jokic was being shorted and guys like kentavious caldwell-pope were being rewarded for playing so many minutes together

― brony james (k3vin k.), Saturday, July 13, 2024 7:02 AM (nine months ago) bookmarkflaglink

it’s early, but gonna go ahead and claim victory on this one

From Posnanski today: who is/was the Ultimate Replacement-Level Player?

But the right answer is Mario Guerrero. Guerrero played for four teams in his eight-year career from 1973 to 1980 and was always filling in for somebody or other. With the Red Sox, he was often playing for an aging Luis Aparicio. For the 1975 Cardinals, he played a lot in place of the less-tattooed Mike Tyson. He went to California, where he would spell Jerry Remy and Dave Chalk. Then he went to Oakland, where, for some reason, they played him every day before having him back up Rob Piccolo.

Through it all, he had a career WAR of exactly 0.0. And he was so remarkably consistent about it. He never had a 1.0 win season. And he never had a minus-1.0 win season. He just kept going, 70 OPS+, slightly below-average defense, slightly below-average baserunning, available when needed. There really is something beautiful about it.

Vaguely remember him.

Do defensive metrics differentiate between making a play easily and making a play but it was a lot closer than it should have been? I could ask the internet but asking ILB is usually more interesting.