Pic Dump III

Wathan & Bo argue with replacement umps at a spring training game

1888-89 KC Cowboys manager Bill Watkins

1922 Blues

Prince Fielder Comps

I don't have much new to add to the Prince Fielder hubbub, but I did crunch a bunch of numbers to average what his top 10 similar batters through the age of 27 did in the next nine years of their careers. The numbers reflect what everyone except Mike Ilitch expects: two or three more highly productive years followed by a sharp decline during the bulk of the insane nine year contract. I expect Fielder to outperform the average of his comps by a bit—he has averaged 4.4 fWAR over the last five seasons, so it would be reasonable to expect similar production for the next couple of years, whereas his comps project just a 3.3 WAR in 2012 and '13. Fielder has been incredibly durable so far in his career, and his comps don't keep up with his playing time (of course, he probably won't be able to either). Still, I would hate to have the last five or six years of that contract looming over my team's future. The problem for the Royals of course is that Fielder's remaining productive years may overlap with what is the Royals hoped for window.

Here is the boring explanation of the below numbers: The top is Fielder's actual career to date, and the bottom is the average of his top 10 comps. To get the WAR numbers, I took the OBP & SLG of his comps and plugged them into this spreadsheet. I set the league average wOBA to .325, and rated Fielder at -5 UZR/150 at first base for each season (which is kind since he has been a -6.4 over his career and should only get worse). I also plugged the numbers in at DH, but it turned out WAR came out almost exactly the same for a -5 UZR/150 first baseman as for a DH. The last line totals the age 28-36 average seasons of his comps.

So nothing earth shattering here. Fielder joining the division is probably bad news for the Royals in the short term and good news in the long term.

Royals & A's Defense Independent Perfect Games

My main strength as a blogger is finding cool ideas from other people and applying them to the Royals. The latest such idea to tickle my fancy is defense independent perfect games (DIPG), as dreamed up by David Wishinsky. He defined a DIPG as a nine inning game with no walks or home runs allowed. As suggested by Tom Tango, zero hit-by-pitches should also probably be included, which I have for my lists below. I have also included eight inning complete DIPG, of which there have been six in Royals history. There is yet to be an extra inning DIPG by a Royals player. There have been 96 regular season DIPG by the Royals, or about 2.2 per season. They have gotten more rare as complete games have; In the 2000s, there have been nine DIPG, or only .75 per season. No Royals pitcher pulled the trick in 2010 or '11.

Zack Greinke's insane start in 2009 shows up with four DIPG between April 18 and May 26. He only had eight starts in that span.

Kevin Appier might be the best pitcher in team history, but he only had one DIPG, and it came in an eight inning loss. Bret Saberhagen pulled the trick an impressive 15 times in the regular season, plus once in a pretty memorable World Series game seven.

Most DIPG games:

16: Bret Saberhagen

10: Mark Gubicza

7: Dennis Leonard

7: Larry Gura

6: Al Fitzmorris

5: Dick Drago

The team's record in DIPG is 84-12. Saberhagen took four of the losses. 

Tom Tango also suggested making the definition stricter by requiring 13 strikeouts in an eight inning game and 15 K in a nine inning game (the reasoning behind those numbers being that the pitcher would have a 0.00 FIP for the game). No Royals player has reached that height. It has only happened 12 times since 1919 in all MLB. The most strikeouts a Royals pitcher has had in a DIPG is 10; Greinke did it twice, Mark Gubicza once and Rich Gale once.

The Royals have been on the wrong end of a DIPG 99 times; Catfish Hunter, Jimmy Key, and LaMarr Hoyt lead the way with three DIPG against the Royals each--except Hunter did it again in the '76 ALCS, the only pitcher to do it vs. the Royals in the playoffs.

The full list of Royals and KC A's DIPGs after the jump.

80-82: Some Early 2012 Projections

I've been having fun with a cool spreadsheet developed by Jeff Zimmerman that allows you to plug in expected playing time and performance for a full team and an expected win-loss record is spit out. Check out Jeff's post about it here. I've entered in my current guesses for the 2012 Royals (subject to change, but informed by past performance, Bill James projections, fan projections on Fangraphs, and my gut), and the magic spreadsheet says 80-82. As you can see, I'm not bullish on the pitching. Many of the hurlers have potential to put together better years than I've entered, but their track records don't inspire confidence. See any projections you think are way off?

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