Friday, October 28, 2011

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.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

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.)

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

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.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

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


*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