Merry Christmas Baseball Fans!

December 24, 1947 Kansas City Call

Royals Hall of Weighted WAR

Adam Darowski has done some really cool work on something he calls wWAR, which stands for weighted wins above replacement. The main idea is to give players some extra credit for big and/or extended peaks by double counting single season WAR over 3.0 (referred to as wins above excellence or WAE) and triple counting single season WAR over 6.0 (wins above MVP or WAM). So a 4.0 WAR season would translate to a 5.0 wWAR season, a 7.0 WAR season becomes a 12.0 wWAR season, etc. Exceptions are made for catchers, who need to exceed 2.0 WAR to accumulate WAE, and relief pitchers who accumulate WAE for WAR over 1.5. Adam has also added a postseason component, using a weighted version of win probability added. I encourage you to read more in depth about wWAR here. Adam has "repopulated" the Hall of Fame with the top wWAR players in history, which you can see here. Of interest to Royals fans will be the inclusion of David Cone, Bret Saberhagen, and Kevin Appier. Adam's work naturally led me to think about what a Royals Hall of wWAR would look like.

(I guess this is where I have to include a disclaimer that I don't think WAR is perfect or tells us everything we need to know about players, nor would I support Cooperstown or the Royals Hall basing induction only on stats. But unless you've actually watched all 6,800+ Royals games (I'm looking at you, Denny Matthews), the numbers are the best way we have to compare players, and the best all-around number we have is WAR.)

Methodology: Unlike Adam, I did not use WAR per 162 games. It makes sense for his Hall so that early players are not penalized for playing shorter schedules, but the schedule has stayed mostly the same in Royals history. The only player significantly affected by this is David Cone, whose big 1994 looks crazy big if you prorate it over a full 162 game season, and would vault him into the Royals Hall of wWAR. It doesn't seem to me that players deserve credit for things they didn't actually do for the team.

Also unlike Adam, I haven't deducted negative post-season WPA. I figure players shouldn't be penalized for being on a Royals team that reaches the playoffs. I have added credit to players with a positive post-season weighted WPA (double their WPA in ALCS plus three times WPA in the World Series). These numbers end up having little effect. They don't make or break anyone's Hall inclusion/exclusion; Paul Splittorff is the only Hall member whose ranking on the list changes.

Like Adam, I'm keeping the number of Hall of Famers the same. There are 17 current RHOFers, so I'll include the top 17 eligible Royals by wWAR.

The results: Turns out the actual RHOF matches up pretty well with the Royals Hall of wWAR. 15 of the 17 members are the same. Actual RHOFers Freddie Patek and Cookie Rojas are out while Charlie Leibrandt and Darrell Porter are in. Rojas is not anywhere close (just 4.7 wWAR, good for 70th in team history), but Patek barely misses (17.9). Using straight WAR, Patek (16.6) is higher than Steve Busby (15.5). But with Busby's higher peak, he jumps into the Hall of wWAR ahead of Patek.

Here are the members of the team Hall of wWAR, along with five players not yet eligible that have reached the wWAR standard, noted in italics. Bold indicates players that are in the real RHOF.

Just missing:

23. Joakim Soria 21.2 wWAR

24. David Cone 20.0

25. Tom Gordon 18.0

26. Freddie Patek 17.9

27. Kevin Seitzer 17.4

28. Al Fitzmorris 16.6

29. Joe Randa 15.3

30. Steve Farr 15.2

31. Mike Macfarlane 15.0

32. Danny Tartabull 14.5

32. Buddy Black 14.5

Alex Gordon 2011 Defense Highlights

In honor of Alex Gordon's Gold Glove, and one of the truly elite seasons in Royals history, here are all of Alex's 2011 defensive gems I find on MLB.com:

many more after the jump

Cardinals Join '87 Twins In Rare Club

The sloppy pitching and defense on display for much of the 2011 playoffs flew in the face of the old cliche "pitching wins championships."

The 2011 Cardinals squeaked in as the NL wild card despite giving up 4.3 runs a game in the regular season in a year when the NL average was 4.1. Their offense scored 4.7 a game, carrying them to 90 wins. Their pitching and defense did not step up in the playoffs either - they allowed the same 4.3 runs per game in the postseason. The already good offense kicked it up a notch to the tune of 5.6 runs/game.

Not park adjusting, and rounding to the tenth decimal, the 2011 Cards join the '87 Twins as the only champs to have had below-average run prevention in the regular season.

Satchel Grips A Ball Grips Satchel

July 17, 1948 Chicago Defender

2009-11 fWAR All-Stars

This is what the ideal 25 man roster might look like strictly using the objective measure of the past three seasons' worth of Fangraphs WAR. (You can compare it to the '08-'10 All-Stars here.)

Run Scoring & Prevention By World Series Champs

I have posted charts plotting Royals seasons by team ERA+ and OPS+ in the past, charts that were inspired by posts on Bay City Ball and The Hardball Times. The Hardball Times piece by Paapfly was especially interesting to me. It seemed to show that pitching was an absolute must to win a championship, but many sub-par offensive teams have managed to win it all. This seemed to prove the adage that pitching is indeed what wins championships. Here is my version of Paapfly's chart plotting champions by their team ERA+ and OPS+:

I recently found myself reading through the comments on Paapfly's post, and then on a thread about the article on Tangotiger's The Book Blog. Commenters pointed out several flaws with using OPS+ and ERA+ as the measure of a team's offense and defense. Paapfly himself took those suggestions to heart and wrote a second piece in which he made some adjustments but still used ERA+ and OPS+.

Several commenters mentioned runs scored and runs allowed would be the way to measure. And of course, nothing gets closer to the heart of offense and defense than runs. As far as I know, no one took the suggestion and plotted the World Series winners by runs scored and allowed. I have done that below, comparing each championship team's RS/G and RA/G to their respective league's seasonal average. There is no park adjustment, something that would probably improve the accuracy a bit, but the raw numbers were good enough for me. It does tell a different story than OPS+ and ERA+:

This restores a little sanity on the offensive side, shoving the vast majority of winners into the upper right quadrant of above average in run scoring and prevention. It does uphold the importance of run prevention, given that the 1987 Twins are the only champs to allow more runs per game than the league average. (The 2011 Cardinals will try to be the second.) Those Twins are even more freakish since they were only an average offensive team. There are seven teams that won it all with a below average regular season offense (1916 Red Sox, 1924 Senators, 1965 Dodgers, 1969 Mets, 1985 Royals, 1995 Braves, and 2005 White Sox). All seven of those teams had superb run prevention. The 1985 Royals are the worst offensive champs by this measure, scoring just 4.2 a game in a year when the AL average was 4.6.

The average champion has scored .5 runs per game above average, and allowed .6 fewer runs per game, perhaps suggesting a slight edge to teams who excel at run prevention more than run scoring. But the vast majority of the time, it is both pitching and hitting that win championships.

Joe Posnanski:

..."Pitching wins championships." I don't think that's quite right. I think there are more great offensive teams that have won the World Series than great pitching teams. It's just that most of the great offensive teams also had at least good pitching. The 1992 Toronto Blue Jays heavily leaned offense -- they finished ninth in ERA. But that's pretty unusual.

On the other hand, several of the best pitching teams to win the World Series -- and the 2010 Giants fit right in -- had subpar offenses (at least until the playoffs). So I don't know that it's right to say that pitching wins championships. But I do think it's fair to say that you have a better chance to win a championship with great pitching and terrible hitting than the other way around.

Top rWAR Players of the KC A's Era (1955-67)

Position players:

Rk	Player	WAR	From	To	G	H	2B	3B	HR	SB	CS	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
1	Willie Mays	116.6	1955	1967	1992	2316	369	102	499	268	77	.310	.385	.587	.972
2	Hank Aaron	103.9	1955	1967	1997	2487	424	78	468	185	52	.318	.377	.572	.950
3	Mickey Mantle	95.3	1955	1967	1746	1751	241	44	434	122	22	.303	.432	.586	1.018
4	Eddie Mathews	78.9	1955	1967	1920	1863	279	55	397	51	29	.270	.375	.499	.874
5	Frank Robinson	75.8	1956	1967	1786	2004	375	59	403	171	65	.304	.392	.563	.955
6	Al Kaline	73.9	1955	1967	1825	2082	354	61	299	107	43	.307	.385	.509	.894
7	Ernie Banks	60.3	1955	1967	1948	2058	333	78	421	42	43	.279	.336	.517	.853
8	Ken Boyer	58.1	1955	1967	1916	2073	309	66	276	103	75	.289	.351	.466	.816
9	Roberto Clemente	52.6	1955	1967	1821	2238	332	117	166	73	40	.314	.352	.463	.815
10	Rocky Colavito*	45.8	1955	1967	1762	1687	278	19	366	19	26	.268	.361	.492	.853
11	Vada Pinson	43.7	1958	1967	1435	1746	313	90	181	204	73	.299	.343	.477	.820
12	Ron Santo	42.7	1960	1967	1214	1284	212	47	198	23	26	.285	.365	.485	.850
13	Harmon Killebrew	41.2	1955	1967	1424	1301	181	15	380	7	8	.264	.375	.538	.913
14	Brooks Robinson	39.9	1955	1967	1564	1637	281	47	156	19	19	.280	.330	.424	.754
15	Roger Maris*	38.4	1957	1967	1363	1246	177	40	270	21	9	.260	.348	.483	.831
16	Orlando Cepeda	38.1	1958	1967	1388	1606	287	22	268	112	56	.309	.359	.528	.886
17	Norm Cash	37.0	1958	1967	1244	1110	145	29	235	37	24	.275	.385	.500	.885
18	Luis Aparicio	34.2	1956	1967	1775	1811	251	76	62	435	110	.258	.305	.341	.646
19	Carl Yastrzemski	33.4	1961	1967	1064	1201	258	33	139	52	42	.298	.380	.482	.861
20	Willie McCovey	33.0	1959	1967	1077	947	135	32	232	15	16	.276	.369	.536	.905

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*played for A's


Pitchers:

Rk	Player	WAR	From	To	G	W	L	W-L%	IP	BB	SO	ERA	ERA+
1	Don Drysdale	60.0	1956	1967	475	190	150	.559	3130.1	786	2307	2.98	122
2	Jim Bunning	59.1	1955	1967	467	192	133	.591	3059.0	800	2398	3.07	124
3	Sandy Koufax	54.5	1955	1966	397	165	87	.655	2324.1	817	2396	2.76	131
4	Larry Jackson	50.8	1955	1967	524	181	166	.522	3019.0	764	1582	3.45	113
5	Bob Friend	44.8	1955	1966	466	169	180	.484	2935.1	627	1479	3.35	112
6	Whitey Ford	44.7	1955	1967	412	193	91	.680	2640.2	823	1662	2.72	134
7	Warren Spahn	42.2	1955	1965	414	197	135	.593	2810.2	691	1299	3.20	111
8	Juan Marichal	42.1	1960	1967	253	144	68	.679	1924.1	403	1417	2.67	134
9	Bob Gibson	36.6	1959	1967	280	125	88	.587	1904.0	704	1582	3.12	124
10	Robin Roberts	34.6	1955	1966	401	149	157	.487	2682.2	463	1374	3.72	102
11	Camilo Pascual	31.7	1955	1967	412	153	144	.515	2510.1	891	1931	3.61	107
12	Jim Maloney	31.4	1960	1967	219	106	65	.620	1416.1	605	1302	3.04	123
13	Billy Pierce	30.6	1955	1964	347	132	90	.595	1894.2	528	1149	3.23	118
14	Frank Lary	29.5	1955	1965	347	128	116	.525	2158.2	613	1094	3.49	114
15	Hoyt Wilhelm	27.6	1955	1967	669	92	89	.508	1539.2	484	1135	2.50	145
16	Milt Pappas	27.2	1957	1967	331	138	98	.585	2059.1	608	1206	3.36	110
17	Chris Short	26.8	1959	1967	329	96	83	.536	1578.1	540	1130	3.25	110
18	Vern Law	26.1	1955	1967	389	140	116	.547	2268.1	441	937	3.54	106
19	Turk Farrell	26.1	1956	1967	490	99	101	.495	1547.2	409	1080	3.42	105
20	Bob Purkey	25.8	1955	1966	350	126	107	.541	1983.1	448	755	3.71	106

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used