Extracting Memories: 1951 Monarchs Home Opener

2011 Royals Pitcher wOBA & WPA Records

WOBA AGAINST

.236 Greg Holland

.261 Luis Mendoza

.302 Louis Coleman

.305 Everett Teaford

.308 Joakim Soria

.314 Tim Collins

.314 Aaron Crow

.315 Jeremy Jeffress

.316 Blake Wood

.318 Bruce Chen

.320 Felipe Paulino

.322 Luke Hochevar

.336 Nathan Adcock

.340 Jeff Francis

.373 Danny Duffy

.390 Kyle Davies

.394 Sean O'Sullivan

.414 Vin Mazzaro

minimum 40 batters faced

wOBA = ((.72 x BB) + (.75 x HBP) + (.9 x 1B) + (1.24 x 2B) + (1.56 x 3B) + (1.95 x HR))/PA

WPA RECORDS

Bruce Chen 14-11

Felipe Paulino 9-11

Luke Hochevar 13-18

Sean O'Sullivan 4-6

Jeff Francis 12-19

Danny Duffy 7-13

Kyle Davies 2-11

team total: 68-94 (.420)

a "win" is a start with a positive win probability added

20/20 And Ignoring Caught Stealings

Jeff Francoeur has had a fantastic year. With his 20th ding dong against the White Sox tonight, much was made about him joining the 20HR/20SB club, something that only three other Royals have done (Amos Otis, Bo Jackson and Carlos Beltran). So yeah, quite a few homers and swipes for Frenchy. But has Francoeur really had such a good year on the basepaths? One of my biggest baseball pet peeves is how stolen bases are routinely only mentioned as a total of successful attempts, ignoring how many times the player was caught. If you only know the number of successful attempts, you do not know much.

If I'm crunching the numbers from this page correctly (no sure thing), the average stolen base from 1969-2010 was worth .200 runs, while the average caught stealing was worth -.408 runs. Multiplying those values by stolen bases and caught stealings and adding those totals together, you can get an overall run value for stolen base attempts. It has taken Frenchy 32 attempts to get to 22 steals, good for a whopping run value of .3. If he had gone 2-for-2 on stolen base attempts, no one would be talking about it, but it would have helped the team more than going 22-for-32.

Still, it has been somewhat of a rarity for a Royals player to hit 20+ home runs and have a positive run value on stolen base attempts. Frenchy and Alex are both doing it this year, barely. If they can finish the year in the black for stolen base runs, it will make 28 such seasons in Royals history. But don't make the mistake of thinking Frenchy is reaching the same plateaus Beltran, Otis and Bo did.

Here are the 20 HR/positive stolen base runs seasons, ranked by stolen base runs:

Municipal Stadium Marker Is Back!

In April, 2010 I discovered that the Municipal Stadium historical marker had disappeared from 22nd & Brooklyn. Uni Watch also reported on it. Jeff Logan of the KC Baseball Historical Society tried to find out what the story was without satisfying results, but he got the impression the sign was in Parks & Recreation storage with no plans for it to be returned. I emailed city councilmen asking for info and/or help without any response. I drove by the spot again sometime in the winter of '10-'11 and the sign was still gone.

But today I swung by the corner again with no hope of seeing the sign--but it was there! Twitter e-migo @KC22ndBrooklyn tells me he saw the sign this past spring, so it has been back for a little while. It has been moved slightly from its previous position, and is anchored in dirt and grass instead of cement. One of the two benches that used to be there is back. Perhaps the plan all along was for the removal to be temporary while the corner was redone. In any event, it is a relief that the sign has been returned to its rightful spot, honoring the most hallowed patch of land in KC baseball history.

George Toma On Willie Aikens's Saliva

“Most tobacco juice stains spat by ballplayers come out without much trouble. The exception is Willie Aikens. There's something in his saliva that makes his squirted juice tough to remove.”

—George Toma, October 25, 1980 The Sporting News

Royals Five Year Bests

My two most recent I70Baseball.com pieces have looked at the top three position players and pitchers for each rolling five year period of Royals history by rWAR. The following is what those lists looks like combining the hitters and hurlers to get the top three players regardless of position:

1969-73
16.2 WAR Amos Otis CF

13.9 WAR Dick Drago P
10.2 WAR John Mayberry 1B

Bad Outs On The Bases

Here's a little junk stat I just dreamt up. My goal was to measure how often a player makes a frustrating out on the basepaths relative to how often he is on base. There is no reward for good baserunning, only a penalty for making outs. That's why it's a "junk" stat. It is not an overall measure of baserunning. The "bad outs" bucket includes pick-offs, caught stealing, running into outs after a flyball, trying to stretch for an extra base after a hit, etc. I added those up and divided by total number of times on base minus home runs. (No one makes a bad out on the bases after hitting a home run.) The exact equation is (PickOffs+CaughtStealing+OutsOnBases)/((H-HR)+BB+HBP+ReachOnError). Here's how AL teams look through August 17:

If, like me, you feel like the Royals make a lot of frustrating outs, you are correct. I am surprised to see the saber-friendly Rays at the bottom of this list. Here is how individual Royals runners have done:

Let's hear it for the slow guys! They aren't adding anything with their speed, but at least they aren't driving us crazy creating outs on the bases either.