Bill James Stability Index Graphed

Bill James has a fascinating article on his website (subscription required) tracking the stability of five different areas of baseball history (see key in the above graph) plus the overall stability measured as the average of the five factors. The data was calling out to me to be turned into a line graph, so here it is. I've used a rolling four year average trend line for the numbers James provided. (He didn't include the numbers for every year, just pointed out certain years in a narrative summary.)

Royals Home Run Rates By Stadium

There's been plenty of talk around the interwebs about the Royals abysmal home run numbers to start the 2014 season, as well as their impotence throughout their history: Mike Engel did a great breakdown of KC homer rates at home and on the road and in different eras, Engel also discussed the topic with Jeff Herr on the KC Baseball Vault, Rob Neyer chimed in, and JoePo revisited the infamous Balboni record. As if more needed to be said on the topic, I started poking around at how their homers have broken down by ballpark. Here's the top ten by total homers:

1. Kauffman 2271

2. Angel 220

3. Metrodome 200

4. O.co 182

5. US Cellular 180

6. Tiger 179

7. Fenway 170

8. Yankee II 147

9. (old) Arlington 146

10. Progressive 139

More interesting are the home run rates by stadium. The Royals have had at least 500 plate appearances in 30 different stadiums. Here are their rates at all of them:

Safeco?! Safeco has been as much of a homerun graveyard as Kauffman until the fences were moved in last year. 33 Royals have homered in Safeco, with Raul Ibanez and Mike Sweeney leading the way with five apiece. I suppose it's mostly a fluke, but it's also more proof that it's not impossible to hit homers at a reasonable rate in big parks like the Royals sometimes seem to suggest. None of the current Royals have done much damage at Safeco: Alex and Billy have two, Hosmer one.

At first I was surprised to see Municipal at the bottom, but then I remembered there was no DH those years and of course they were an expansion club. Ed Kirkpatrick, with 26, was the only player to hit even 20 homers combined in the four years at Municipal. Bob Oliver, Lou Piniella, John Mayberry, and Amos Otis were the only others with 10 or more. The run scoring environment was neutral at Municipal, but I don't know exactly about home run factors. I believe the LF-CF-RF dimensions when the Royals played there were 369-421-328, so there were certainly no cheapies to be had.

Fenway and Yankee II are both a little lower than I'd expect considering the short dimensions in left and right respectively. They've hit dingers at a much higher rate at Yankee III in the short time it's been open.

And not surprisingly, but sadly, Kauffman is way down at 23rd on the list. Like you already know, Kauffman is indeed a tough park to homer in, but it's not as tough as the Royals have made it look. Visiting teams consistently out-homer the Royals in their own ballpark. According to Engel, the Royals have homered once every 54 PAs in Kauffman history while their opponents have gone long once every 46 trips to the plate. In the words of GOB Bluth, "Come on!"

5/13 Update: It occurred to me after posting the above that it is probably more instructive to limit the data to the DH/Kauffman era, so here are the Royals homer rates by stadium from 1973 through today. Ignoring '69-'72, Tiger Stadium takes over the top spot, while Safeco strangely remains at the top of current stadiums. (The Royals hit two dingers in three recent games at Safeco, which actually dropped their all-time Safeco rate.)

Integrating the Segregated Era With Strat-O-Matic

My dad played some Strat-O-Matic baseball as a kid, but he never did introduce it to my brothers or me for some reason. I'd been mildly curious about Strat for awhile, but when they released a set of Negro Leagues All-Stars back in 2009, I had to check it out. I ordered the board game, the Negro leagues card set, and a set of Hall of Famers. My then three year-old son was interested in rolling the dice for me for a little while, and I enjoyed getting to put some of the Negro leagues legends into action as I learned the basic game. The game went on the shelf for awhile, with the hope that my son would get into the gameplay more when he was a little older. We pulled it down last fall, and six year-old Henry was indeed a little more into it, and can find the results of each dice roll on the cards by himself now. My interest in the game was re-piqued, and I started getting curious about learning the advanced version of the game. So I decided to draft four teams made up of Negro leaguers and pre-integration Hall of Famers to learn with. The first step was choosing the pool of players. I decided to make the "league" split evenly between Negro leaguers and Hall of Famers, so chose the top two players at each position from each set, plus some extra pitchers and bench players, and went about drafting four teams. For the draft, I ignored which set the player came from, and ended up with what four all-star teams might have looked like between roughly 1900-1946 had the insanity of segregation not existed. Here's how the four teams (which I named for their respective first picks) shaped up (click to enlarge):

Much to the chagrin of my wife, I started rolling some games ("Why would you want to play by yourself?!") to try out some of the advanced rules. But then I started getting a little too into the results and how these players were performing against each other. In the tiniest of ways, it feels like righting the wrong of separating the best players from each other during their era. Next thing I knew, I had dreams of playing a full 154 game season for each team (a total of 308 games), partly for the fun of just playing the game, and partly to come up with some oh so satisfying stats from these guys playing together. It's a great way to fill the baseball void in the off-season. I'm about a quarter of the way there, and just took a long time tabulating the stats from the season so far, and figured I might as well share them here in case anyone else finds it enjoyable. (After I explained what I was doing, even my wife allowed she could see how it might be compelling to integrate the segregated era.)

The team results aren't particularly interesting since they are arbitrary teams, but so far, it seems I picked evenly. Here are the wins and losses:

Charlestons 21-18
Gibsons 20-19
Smiths 19-20
Ruths 18-21

More fun to me are the individual leaderboards. The league has been extremely high scoring, with teams each scoring around six runs a game. The average ERA is 5.21 and average OPS is .826. Without further ado:

The '69ers

The 1969 MLB expansion class of the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals, Kansas City Royals, Seattle Pilots/Milwaukee Brewers, and San Diego Padres have wrapped up their respective 45th seasons in baseball. Only the Royals and Padres have weathered the years in the same city. The Pilots lasted all of one season in Seattle before relocating to Milwaukee, while the Expos spent 36 years in Montreal before shifting to DC for the last nine. As for all-time records, the Padres bring up the rear with a .464 winning percentage, and the other three clubs are bunched up between .478-.481:

Despite the futility of the last two decades of Royals baseball, they have always retained the best all-time record among the '69ers. The Nationals are starting to nip at their heels though.

More importantly, the Royals have also tasted by far the most playoff action and success:

WS=championships, Penn=World Series appearances, Poff=playoff appearances

So while things couldn't have been much worse in the recent past for the Royals, we are fortunate to have had the glory years of roughly '71-'89. The other three clubs have had good to great years, but nothing approaching the sustained success of those Royals teams.

When the four teams play each other, the Royals again come out in front with the best winning percentage. As the only team remaining in the American League, they don't see the other '69 babies too often anymore, but they really beat up on the Brewers when Milwaukee was still an AL town:

1985 World Series Win Probability Added

Dane Iorg had two plate appearances in the '85 World Series, and they were both game enders. In the second game, he pinch-hit with two outs in the ninth and the Royals trailing 1-3. Their win probability was just 5% when he strode to the plate, and 0% after he flew out to right field. His second PA was a little more eventful. As you may have heard, Don Denkinger called Jorge Orta safe at first to lead off the bottom of the ninth inning in game six with the Royals trailing 0-1. Then Denkinger failed to catch an easy foul pop-up, then Denkinger gave up a single to Steve Balboni, and then Denkinger allowed a passed ball to allow the runners to move up to second and third. The win probability now actually stood slightly in KC's favor at 54%. Denkinger gave up a single to Iorg, two runs scored, and Iorg's hit was worth a swing in win probability of 46%. You can see what a monumental moment it was by the big red spike in the graph above.

Series MVP Bret Saberhagen comes out looking great thanks to his game three and game seven starts. WPA also gives Denny Jackson plenty of credit. Jackson pitched a good game one in a losing effort, and shut down St. Louis in an overlooked but crucial game five win to keep the series alive. Onix Concepcion got exactly zero plate appearances in the series, but gets a big WPA credit for his pinch-running in that game six ninth inning. He ran for Balboni, moved to second on a bunt, to third on a passed ball, and scored on Iorg's single.

2013 In Review: The Run Creators

Check out the above graph of the game-by-game accumulation of win probability added by the offense and defense and see if you can tell which one was better for the Royals last year! I'll give you a minute.

Lazy cliche spewers like to say pitching and defense win championships. People more interested in accuracy should try popularizing a new saying, something like, "the right combination of run creation and prevention will get you into the playoffs, where anything can happen." Doesn't have the same ring to it I guess. But the 2013 Royals were yet another example that you usually do have to score a little bit to be a playoff team. And another example that it's hard to score when you don't walk or hit dingers. Here's where the Royals offense ranked in the AL in a bunch of categories:

So pretty much all they did well was avoid strike outs, hit for average, and run the bases. The "little things" that don't contribute a whole lot to run scoring. They were mediocre at getting on base, and completely devoid of power, which led to an 11th place finish in run scoring. There were two stretches during the season when the offense completely disappeared that are glaringly obvious on the WPA chart at the top of this post. Between May 6 and June 4, the offense sputtered out 3.2 runs per game during a 6-22 stretch that effectively torpedoed the season. When the team got on a roll after the all-star break, it seemed as though they had dug themselves out of the hole they dug in May. But while the team deserves kudos for bouncing back the way they did, it's also true that there was never a strong chance for a playoff appearance after May. The offense had another terrible stretch from August 12-24 while their record fell from 62-54 to 64-64.

On the rare occasions that things were clicking on offense, it was Eric Hosmer, Billy Butler, Salvador Perez, and Alex Gordon carrying the load. But on the whole, they couldn't overcome the damage inflicted by out-machines Alcides Escobar, Mike Moustakas, Chris Getz, Elliott Johnson, and Jeff Francoeur. If the offense could have managed to just be league-average, which would have required them to score about 50 more runs, the Royals would have had a great shot at playing post-season baseball.

Finally, here's a look at how some Royals hit relative to their position. Instead of being compared to the whole league, this is OPS+ compared to the other AL players at respective positions:

The complaints about Butler from some in Royals-land never look sillier than when you directly compare him to average DH numbers. It's true that all he can do is hit. It's also true that there is a spot in the Royals lineup almost every game for someone to just hit. I personally like having a guy to put into that spot who is an excellent hitter. Call me crazy.

2011-13 fWAR All-Stars

Here's a look at what a team made up of the best players judged by fWAR over the last three seasons might look like. For all the spots except the bench, it's a strictly objective measure of who has the highest fWAR by a player with significant time at each position. I have to use a little subjectivity to put together a sensible bench. The second best catcher by fWAR is obvious, McCutchen as the fourth outfielder is obvious, but then I tried to round it out with super-utility man Zobrist, the second best shortstop in Reyes, and a big bat who can also play the field in Beltre. This leaves off some guys with higher fWAR (most notably Dustin Pedroia and his 17.4 fWAR) just because they don't fit into what I view as the most typical bench construction.

Of course Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera are tied in fWAR over the last three seasons. Trout barely played in 2011 though, so...yeah.

There is surprisingly little change from the 2010-12 team. Among the position players, Trout is the only new name. He took Josh Hamilton's spot. In the starting rotation, Clayton Kershaw replacing Roy Halladay was the only change. There's a little more turnover in the bullpen: Greg Holland, Koji Uehara, Kenley Jansen, and Aroldis Chapman are in, while Sean Marshall, Matt Belisle, Matt Thornton, and Rafael Betancourt are out.

In A Small Way, The 2013 Royals Were A Repeat Of 1985

Looked at from a certain angle, the 2013 Royals team was a dead ringer for the slightly more lauded 1985 squad. The above graphic charts every Royals team by run prevention and run scoring as compared to that season's AL average. (The actual formula is (RunsPerGame / ALavgRunsPerGame)*100.) Lower is better for run prevention, higher for run scoring. As you can see, 2013 and 1985 are right on top of each other, and are the two most run-preventingest teams in Royals history. A closer look at the similarities:

Pythagoras would tell you the 2013 team was actually a game better. Here, I'll let him tell you:

Thanks P.

Had the 2013 offense been just league average, Pythagoras would have put their record at 93-69, also known as the Detroit Tigers AL Central winning record.

Two Great Royals Starts In One Day

I greatly enjoyed watching Danny Duffy & James Shields have back-to-back great starts in a split doubleheader in Detroit earlier this month, and it made me wonder about other double whammy starts in team history. I used a game score of 65 as the arbitrary cut-off for an excellent start, and found the below 12 instances when both Royals starters reached that mark in a doubleheader. Duffy (70) and Shields (68) combined for the sixth best average game score out of the 12 twin bills in question.

Over the first eight Royals seasons (1969-77), there were nine doubleheaders in which both KC starters were good enough for a 65+ game score. Then as doubleheaders became a rarity, so of course did doubleheaders with two excellent starts. It didn't happen again until 1990 when Kevin Appier and Luis Aquino turned the trick, then not again until 2001 with the legendary duo of Jeff Suppan and Chris George. That was the last time until Duffy & Shields, Inc. this season.

AL Central At The Break

Our Royals stumble into the All-Star break with a five game losing streak and a .7% chance of making the playoffs according to Baseball Prospectus. Dreams of meaningful second half baseball are slipping away. Here is a look at some of the stats that explain how we got here.

This is my trusty chart comparing the starting pitching in the division. On one hand, the Royals are much improved in this area. On the other hand, they are still barely mediocre. Getting a quality start 58% of the time is impressive. At last year's break, that number was 36%. The rotation has put the team in position to win more often than not, but the offense and bullpen haven't taken advantage. The staff is on pace to eclipse Dayton Moore's mostly meaningless goal of throwing 1,000 innings.

Here are the top 15 starters in the division by WAR. I've averaged Fangraphs' FIP-based WAR and Baseball Reference's runs allowed-based WAR.

Kind of depressing that James Shields would be the fourth best starter for Detroit by this measure.

And now this chart!

Collins and Herrera give me a sad.

Here are the most effective pitch types in the division (by Fangraphs pitch type values):

Fastball: Max Scherzer 17.7 runs above average
Slider: Justin Masterson 14.7 RAA
Curve: James Shields 3.9 RAA
Changeup: Chris Sale 9.0 RAA

Turning to the batsmen, here are the most productive in the division so far:

Miguel Cabrera: kind of good? Tigers all up in the top of this chart too. You know how awesome Alex Gordon is? There are four Tigers above him. Encouraging to see Hosmer's name though.

And also this chart!

Oh Moose. That is the lowest WPA for a batter in all of MLB, and if you include pitchers, only Joe Blanton of the Angels has hurt his team's chances of winning more than Moustakas. Prospects will break your heart.

In conclusion, all of the teams in the division not named Tigers don't really need to bother showing up for the rest of the year.

Alternative Starting Pitcher Records At The Break

The traditional pitcher win/loss record does not exist anymore as far as I'm concerned, but I do enjoy tracking some alternative records using some more telling stats. Below are what Royals pitchers records look like using win probability added, game score, and quality starts as measures.

Win Probability Added - A “win” for every start with positive WPA.

Shields	14-6
Santana	9-9
Guthrie	9-10
Davis	8-10
Mendoza	6-9
Chen	1-0
Smith	0-1

Total       47-45

Game Score - A “win” for every start with a game score of 51+.

Santana	14-4
Shields	14-6
Davis	9-9
Guthrie	9-10
Mendoza	6-9
Chen	1-0
Smith	0-1

Total       53-39

Quality Start - A “win” for every quality start.

Shields	15-5
Santana	13-5
Guthrie	10-9
Mendoza	7-8
Davis	7-11
Chen	1-0
Smith	0-1

Total       53-39

Royals Ding Dongs Home And Away

Chili Davis

The fantastic new batting splits function of the Baseball Reference Play Index continues to amuse. Here now is a look at how Royals players have fared when it comes to homering home and away from Royals/Kauffman Stadium. Ignoring the years spent at Municipal Stadium ('69-'72), I found the 40 players to hit at least 20 homers either at home or on the road during their time spent with the Royals. Those 40 players hit 45% of their dingers at home, 55% on the road. Here are the players with the biggest raw difference between home and away dongs (all of whom hit more on the road):

	Away	Home	diff
George Brett	181	136	-45
Steve Balboni	73	46	-27
Hal McRae	95	74	-21
Darrell Porter	41	20	-21
Wally Joyner	31	13	-18

Perhaps more interesting is a look at the extremes of percentage of homers home and away. Here are those that were much more likely to homer on the road on a rate basis:

	Away	Home	Home%
UL Washington	20	6	0.23
Wally Joyner	31	13	0.30
Darrell Porter	41	20	0.33
Eric Hosmer	22	11	0.33
Matt Stairs	25	14	0.36

Hosmer has twice as many road dongs compared to home in his young career. That is not a trend that carries over into his overall hitting however. He has a career wOBA of .321 at Kauffman compared to .313 on the road. Hos could be due for quite a few round-trippers at home this year.

Now here are the real freaks, the guys who somehow have hit more dongs at huge Kauffman Stadium than on the road. First on a counting basis:

	Away	Home	diff
Chili Davis	9	21	12
Dean Palmer	18	25	7
Mark Quinn	19	26	7
Billy Butler	49	54	5
Jermaine Dye	41	44	3
Alex Gordon	40	42	2

Second, on a rate basis, which actually follows the above list exactly:

	Away	Home	Home%
Chili Davis	9	21	0.70
Dean Palmer	18	25	0.58
Mark Quinn	19	26	0.58
Billy Butler	49	54	0.52
Jermaine Dye	41	44	0.52
Alex Gordon	40	42	0.51

I extended both of those lists to six players to include Alex. Interesting that both Billy and Alex have hit more at home than on the road, though I have no idea what it means, if anything.

Chili Davis played only one year in Kansas City as the 37 year old DH in 1997. In a career that featured 350 long balls, 1997 was the only single season he hit 30. Perhaps even stranger, an incredible 21 of those came at Kauffman, which is a tie for the most home dingers in a season by a Royals player:

Rk	Player	Year	HR
1	Chili Davis	1997	21
1	Dean Palmer	1998	21
3	Carlos Beltran	2002	19
4	Steve Balboni	1985	17
4	Mike Sweeney	2000	17

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 1/4/2013.

Royals Killers

The Baseball Reference Play Index, one of the seven wonders of the modern world, has a new batting splits function (currently in beta) that I've of course fallen into a wormhole playing with. Below are a bunch of lists of the hitters who have faced the Royals the most or done the most damage against them. First up are the top 20 players by plate appearances against the Royals and their stats in those PAs:

Rk	Player	From	To	G	PA	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
1	Paul Konerko	1999	2012	225	949	117	222	40	0	42	142	107	137	.271	.360	.473	.834
2	Paul Molitor	1978	1998	205	920	125	242	46	5	17	81	76	89	.293	.352	.423	.775
3	Cal Ripken	1981	2001	206	885	125	237	50	6	37	130	86	83	.303	.371	.524	.895
4	Reggie Jackson	1969	1987	223	873	105	196	32	1	37	126	97	172	.256	.340	.445	.785
5	Rod Carew	1969	1985	205	862	107	263	38	14	10	90	83	61	.345	.408	.471	.880
6	Rickey Henderson	1979	2002	189	853	143	199	35	2	17	62	133	98	.283	.401	.411	.812
7	Robin Yount	1974	1993	198	836	113	232	50	7	18	94	50	91	.303	.347	.458	.805
8	Harold Baines	1980	2000	203	824	91	220	42	2	27	101	71	114	.294	.353	.464	.817
9	Magglio Ordonez	1997	2011	190	823	112	234	45	0	31	131	52	85	.310	.355	.492	.847
10	Wade Boggs	1982	1999	183	808	100	230	34	5	7	62	106	43	.332	.418	.426	.844
11	Frank Thomas	1990	2007	182	802	120	199	45	0	37	121	122	86	.303	.411	.540	.952
12	Lou Whitaker	1978	1995	184	801	98	197	45	5	18	79	84	87	.283	.360	.440	.800
13	Omar Vizquel	1989	2012	199	790	101	190	23	3	7	57	76	61	.278	.347	.351	.698
14	Jim Thome	1992	2011	193	787	133	194	34	1	49	139	127	182	.299	.414	.582	.996
15	Brian Downing	1973	1992	201	777	88	176	27	4	25	95	94	92	.265	.361	.431	.792
16	Toby Harrah	1971	1986	195	771	85	167	33	5	15	68	84	77	.251	.342	.383	.726
17	Bert Campaneris	1969	1983	182	754	89	161	17	6	0	49	55	87	.238	.294	.281	.575
18	Rafael Palmeiro	1989	2005	172	747	110	191	53	2	41	126	92	83	.296	.383	.574	.958
19	Ivan Rodriguez	1991	2010	179	735	94	231	52	4	21	103	44	88	.337	.376	.516	.892
20	Carlton Fisk	1972	1993	182	734	98	178	40	7	26	100	59	100	.272	.338	.473	.811

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

Generated 1/3/2013.

I compared the career OPS of those 20 players to their OPS against KC. Here are the five who improved the most against the Royals:

Player	OPS v KC	OPS	diff
Cal Ripken	0.895	0.788	0.107
Ivan Rodriguez	0.892	0.798	0.094
Rafael Palmeiro	0.958	0.885	0.073
Rod Carew	0.880	0.822	0.058
Jim Thome	0.996	0.956	0.040

And the five who performed the worst against the Royals compared to their career norm:

Player	OPS v KC	OPS	diff
Bert Campaneris	0.575	0.653	-0.078
Reggie Jackson	0.785	0.846	-0.061
Paul Molitor	0.775	0.817	-0.042
Toby Harrah	0.726	0.760	-0.034
Paul Konerko	0.834	0.858	-0.024

After the jump are many more lists of the top Royals nemeses.