Career WAR
So in my downtime I’ve been slowly compiling historical stats for the world. I’ve got all 22 seasons of offensive and fielding data, and the first seven seasons for pitching data.
The spreadsheet with all the data I’ve got so far can be found here.
For the batters, the season count is how many times the player appears in the spreadsheet. If a player played on two teams in a given season, he’ll appear twice, so it’s not an exact representation of how many seasons they appeared in the majors.
The positional columns are the fielding statistic developed, including positional adjustments based on games played. If two fielders were close in a given season on the raw data, but one played more game, that guy will have a higher run data based on the adjustments. So just take that into account.
FRAA is just a sum of all the positional columns.
wRAA is exactly what is, weight runs above average based on wOBA.
wSB is just a gauge for how much a player contributes by stealing bases.
FRAA, wRAA and wSB is all expressed in runs.
Total WAR is expressed in wins.
The pitcher sheet is pretty self-explanatory.
I’ll update the pitcher sheet once I get more time.
Vin Scully – Season 22 – L.C.’s Golden Gloves
I know I said I was going to post this almost immediately after the full season 22 WAR numbers were up, but I got distracted and totally forgot about it. I can’t remember if I explained the changes to the defensive metric I’m using, and I’m too lazy right now to go back and check. Essentially what it is, is converted chances minus league average rate converting total chances times the value of an out for the specified season. The full equation for those so inclined is ((PO+A)-((PO+A+E+minus play – plus plays)*lgavgrate) )*outvalue. A plus play is considered a play that a normal fielder wouldn’t make, and thus is subtracted from the total amount of chances, while a minus play is essentially treated as an error as it’s a play the fielder should have made, though not all minus plays would have been an out in the engine, there is no way of knowing without combing box scores, and like Sweet Brown, ain’t nobody got time for dat.
For a demonstration I’ll use Ed Stockton‘s numbers from last season, in which he had 193 PO, 362 A, 11 E and 22 + plays. The league average conversion rate for chances at SS was .96, while an out was worth .296 runs. So the formula would look something like this: ((193+362)-((193+362+11+0-22)*.96))*.296=9.63.
The calculations for catcher and first base are a little different, but revolve around the same concept.
The numbers posted are raw numbers without positional adjustments for calculating total WAR, which is why they are different from the numbers on the spreadsheet I posted for season 22.
Catcher
AL: Richard Clapp – NB – 23.2
NL: Yamid Beltran – CH1 – 16.5
First Base
AL: Nicholas Dreifort – LA – 7.3
NL: Frank Nakamura – NO – 5.8
Second Base
AL: Otis Justice – MIN – 6.5
NL: Al Javier – TAC – 2.9
Third Base
AL: Huston Kielty – TUC – 7.5
NL: Al Barrios – BUF – 5.6
Shortstop
AL: Ralph Simpson – TUC – 13.4
NL: Carlos Gonzalez - HON - 8.7
Left Field
AL: Harry Figureoa – FLA- 5.4
NL: Albert Locke – COL – 4.3
Center Field
AL: Denny Beard – RIC – 6.8
NL: Harry Manto – BUF – 6.1
Right Field
AL: Cesar Arrojo – MIN – 3.5
NL: Julio Sosa – OK – 3.5
Vin Scully – Season 22 – Full Season
I’ve got the final numbers for season 22.
We’ll just get the easy one out of the way as we all know Malcolm McCartin is going to win the NL Cy Young Award. This year he’s been worth four wins more than the next closest pitcher in the league, which is surprising because he’s in frickin Colorado of all places.
In the AL, Mike Lawrie ended up pulling away in the last quarter to take the crown in terms of WAR. We’ll see how the votes fall.
NL MVP should go to Sid O'Keefe at 8.6. The next two closest people in the NL were Richard Flores at 6.4 and Jordy Mitchell at 6.2.
Despite not making it to the playoffs, the AL MVP should go to Max Daniels at 8.1. Ewell Torrealba and Giovanni Boyd were at 7.2 and 7.1 respectively.
AL ROY should go to Phillip Harris with 4.3 while NL ROY is a tie between Al Javier and Rob Watson at 3.6.
I’ll have the LC’s Golden Gloves here in a day or so.
The full spreadsheet for both pitchers and batters can be found here.
Season 22 – Third Quarter – Power Rankings
Rather than write out the power rankings, I figured it’d just be easier to post the screenshot from the spreadsheet.
I’m debating whether or not to separate the rankings into AL and NL. Thoughts? My thinking is because the AL has the DH, they have a distinct advantage when it comes to wRAA numbers. Any DH worth his spot is able to overcome the 19 fielding runs they get penalized for being a DH. On the flip side, a pitcher in the NL gets penalized because they have to bat. I’ve seen some pitchers over the course of a season “cost” their team an entire win because of their hitting.
On the flip side, NL pitchers have it a lot easier, and compared to their AL counterparts, have better numbers because they don’t face a DH.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to see that five of the top six teams in pitching are NL teams, while the top six hitting teams are in the AL.
Anyway, mull it over, let me know what you think. I didn’t separate them this time, though the NL teams are highlighted blue.
Season 22 – Third Quarter WAR
I’m not going to bother writing up something short on what the third quarter pitching WAR numbers are, as I basically laid it all out in the little chat message. McCartin is the clear favorite in the NL, with Lawrie, Oliva and Bourchard fighting it out in the AL. If I had to bet, I’d bet on Bourchard was his BABIP is near .300, and the other two are well under .300. I’d expect them to fall back a little, but hey, who knows.
As far as batter WAR figures, in the AL it’s a close race between Giovanni Boyd, and Ewell Torrealba. Interesting enough, neither are playing on a team that looks like they’re going to make it to the playoffs.
To find that player, you’d have to go down to Dennis Park with Little Rock, who is definitely overplaying his ratings offensively.
In the NL, clearly Sid O'Keefe is the favorite for NL MVP in my opinion.
Season 22 – Quarter Two – Malcolm McCartin Update
As you probably noticed from the spreadsheet I posted with the batter data, McCartin is absolutely dominating National League hitters this year. Even by his own standards what he is doing is absurd this year. The closest pitcher, Pep Zimmerman, is nearly two whole wins behind McCartin at the halfway point. Assuming he keeps up this pace for the rest of the year, and his .259 BABIP suggests a regression back to the mean, he’s on pace for a WAR over 10.
I haven’t gotten around to dumping all the previous season’s pitcher data into my WAR sheet, but I’ve been able to grab all the batter data, and a 10 WAR has only been done three times; Twice in season two, when the engine was a little “tardish’ and once in season 19, when Alex Zhou put up a 10.03 WAR.
Sidenote: Speaking of Zhou, he has the highest career WAR total of any batter in Vin Scully, active or retired, at 103. Who’s second on the list, you ask? Well that would be Luke McFeely at 85.2. I think it’s safe to say both should be in the hall of fame soon.
Back to assessing season 22 pitchers. The American League things are a little closer, with Lawrence Busby, and Olmedo Oliva tied at 3.6. However, there are four pitchers within half a run of those two in the AL: Ossie Borchard, Albert Granados, Mike Lawrie, and Pasqual Elcano. Of those four, I expect Granados to fall back a little, as his .250 BABIP suggests he’s over-performing a little.
I would do worst pitchers so far, but we all know that they consist of a bunch of Los Angeles players. So there really is no need.
To view the complete sheet, the link can be found here.
Season 22- Quarter Two – Batters
I’ll start this post by stating that the WAR spreadsheet that I used to base these numbers off of made a lot of changes since the last time I posted.
Gone are the arbitrary fielding numbers that I worked up off of MikeT23′s PPI system. In are the new modified fielding percentages developed with jtrinsey. Essentially it takes the number of outs generated by a player, divided by the number of chances, with minus plays included, and plus plays subtracted from the total chances. So a player with more + plays than errors will see his total fielding percentage over 1.000.
This gets us to the number of plays above average a player converted into outs, and since the wOBA calculator tells us how much each out is worth during the season, we multiply the two together to tell us how many runs a player was worth in the field.
The top defenders at each position will save about 12-17 runs over the course of a season based on full season numbers, from the limited tests I’ve seen. So gone are the days where a player is worth 40 runs from fielding alone.
I’ve also included the baserunning component of WAR for the first time. From what I’ve seen, the top base stealers in the league will be worth two wins, at most.
Most Valuable Players – Q2
Giovanni Boyd moves into the front-runner position for the AL, and he’s a clear front-runner at this point. Since I named him as the Q1 MVP, Marv Brinkley has done squat, but that’s to be expected since LA has been abandoned.
Jordy Mitchell has also fallen back into the peloton since I named him Q1 MVP for the NL.
Currently Sid O'Keefe has a slight lead over Alex Zhou. It’ll be interesting to see what happens the rest of the way. Speaking of Zhou, first ballot hall of famer, right? He has to be.
Least Valuable Players – Q2
Both Sherm Kerr and Harry Manto are at the bottom of the NL in terms of WAR. Yes, Harry Manto, the guy I tried to say saved something like 40-50 runs last year with his defense in CF. He’s putting in good defense this year again, but the fielding runs stats aren’t worth as much now.
In the AL, Monte Winn is clearly the least valuable player by about .6 wins at this point.
I’ll have pitcher data later, but if you want a sneak peak at the full spreadsheet, click here.
Season 22 – Quarter Two – Power Rankings
The big movers during the second quarter of season 22 were Scottsdale, who jumped up 18 spots into the top 10, and Minnesota, who fell all the way from number 9 to 23. It shouldn’t be surprising to see Los Angeles at the bottom of the rankings. Hopefully we get a new owner in there soon and sort that mess out.
Vin Scully Power Rankings
1. Hartford – 41.1 – NC
2. Seattle – 36.2 – NC
3. Little Rock – 33.2 – +5
4. Salem – 27.2 – -1
5. Colorado – 26.4 – +2
6. Jacksonville – 25.2 – NC
7. Richmond – 25.1 – -3
8. Scottsdale – 24.8 – +18
9. Trenton – 24.4 – +3
10. Louisville - 24.3 – +6
11. Austin – 24.1 – -6
12. New Orleans – 24.1 – -1
13. New York – 23.9 – +4
14. Atlanta – 23.7 – +7
15. Washington – 23.6 – -5
16. Tacoma – 23.1 – -3
17. Honolulu – 22.5 – +1
18. Oklahoma City – 22.4 – -3
19. Florida – 21.5 – -5
20. Chicago – 21.5 – NC
21. New Britain – 21.1 – +6
22. Memphis – 21.0 – +7
23. Minnesota – 19.7 – -14
24. Detroit – 19.2 – -1
25. Toronto – 18 – -1
26. Anaheim – 17.6 – -7
27. Dover – 15.8 – +4
28. Cleveland – 15.6 – -6
29. Tucson – 14.4 – -4
30. San Francisco – 12.7 – -2
31. Buffalo – 12.1 – +1
32. Los Angeles – -3.4 – -2
WAR is sum of both pitcher and batter WAR. Check out the breakdown by each category here. Total column is sum of WAR B and P. wRAA, FRAA, and wSB are based on league average.
What happened to New York?
Going into this season, the New York Highlanders had eight straight seasons above .500, and six straight seasons with 90+ runs. As of this writing the Highlanders sit three games under .500, at 24-27. Certainly at the start of the season I wasn’t expecting them to be performing like this. So what’s going on?
Well, like most things in baseball, it’s a combination of hitting and pitching performances being down compared to last year.
Starting out looking at the offensive performances:
Out at New York this year are Nicholas Dreifort, LA, Rafael Barrios, and Hector Wheat, both still a free agents, and Brian Song, SCO. While losing Song wasn’t a big deal, he was -0.7 WAR last year, the other three combined to be about 1.8 WAR.
The two free agent signings that came in to replace those guys were Khalil Lee, 4.2 WAR last season, and Raul Castillo, 2.9 WAR, both of whom came from Detroit. While Lee has been earning his salary so far this season, he’s currently on track to get to about 3.5-4 WAR this season, Castillo has not been, currently about -.3 WAR so far this season.
The other two replacements in the everday lineup, Alex Blake, and Torey Martinez have also been slightly worse than replacement players so far this season.
Outside of those three players, the rest of the offense has actually been performing above last year’s statistics, which suggests that maybe the pitching is to blame.
The biggest disappointment for the Highlanders has to be Darrell May who is pitching essentially just above replacement level, a year after posting an incredible 7.08 WAR.
But it’s not just May who’s having a down year so far, it’s the entire rotation.
Mike Lawrie, Willie Rooney, and Ricardo Cairo are all on track to post worse stats this year than last. Cairo is on track to be no better than a replacement player this year
The only new starter to the rotation this season has been Julian Gonzalez, replacing Freddy Martin who signed a big contract over in Austin.
As an entire staff, New York’s whip this year is 16 points higher than last, and has already given up 243 runs this year. Last year they only gave up 573 the entire year. They are almost halfway to their entire total and we’re a little more than a quarter of the way through the season.
So where do they go from here? Well I definitely don’t see them sitting at or near .500 the rest of the year, their pitching staff is just too good for that to happen. Between Rooney, Lawrie and May, they have three excellent starters, and possibley the best reliever in the majors in Don Burch. But there are some definite improvements that could be made, particularly up the middle.
Season 22 – First Quarter WAR Spreadsheet
I’ve uploaded the first quarter WAR spreadsheet with the full breakdown for all players in the league.
Logan
