Ranking the Champs
World Series Winners Since 1985

After the White Sox won the World Series, there was an interesting discussion at espn.com, including a column deeming them the best champion of the last 20 years, and a poll where they came in third, behind the 2004 Red Sox and 1998 Yankees, in order. Naturally, there is some sort of proximity bias, which is why we think Tiger Woods is better than Jack Nicklaus. A few years ago, these same people were saying the ’98 Yankees were the greatest team of all time, which means that the three best teams ever were assembled in the last eight years. Realistically, we’re overrating recent performances, so I tried to come up with some sort of objective way of comparing teams from recent seasons.

Since all the teams involved are already World Champions, I wanted to heavily weigh regular season performance; dominance over a long stretch compounds their postseason success. I also incorporated individual performance, because teams with star power are more memorable, which is something like “greater” in terms of baseball teams. As it works out, my formula basically ranks the champions in order of regular season wins, with small adjustments for fluky postseasons, lucky wins and star-studded lineups.

To calculate a Championship Score start with zero points, then make the following adjustments:

Add 3 points for each regular season win above 90.
Add 1 point for each Pythagorean win above actual regular win, subtract one for each one below.
Subtract 1 point for each regular season win below 90.
Subtract 5 points if not a division winner.
Subtract 1 point for each LCS/WS loss.
Add ½ point for each regular season win over 90 by LCS/WS opponent, subtract ½ point for each one below.
Add 3 points for each MVP/Cy Young winner.
Add 2 points for ROY winner.
Add 1 point for each All-Star.
Add 1 point for each Gold Glove.
Add 1 point for each 50-75 VORP player, 2 points for each 75-100, 3 points for each 100+.

As it works out, here is the top 20:

20. 1987 Minnesota, -2.5: This team probably did not belong in the playoffs. They’re still the only team to make the playoffs while being outscored in the regular season, which contributed to their negative Championship Score. Viola and Blyleven got hot at the right time, and they got unlikely contributions from dogs like Tim Laudner.

19. 1997 Florida, 1.5: The ’97 Marlins were the team for whom Wayne Huizenga bought a title. Still, the only memorable parts were Luis Castillo’s game winning hit in game 7 and Livan Hernandez winning the series MVP. Neither signed as a free agent, and Castillo’s still there 9 years later despite the firesale.

18. 2003 Florida, 2.5: It’s dubious to have two of the three worst World Champions as your only two titles in history. Still, they’re World Championships, so nobody will complain. This iteration had precious little star power, with only the pre-2005 Derek Lee.

16.t 2000 New York (A), 4.5: After two straight World Championships, the Yankees collapsed in 2000 before a hot second half got them in the playoffs. By the time they reached the Series to play their rivals from Queens, there was enough psychological intimidation that the Mets wilted in 5.

16.t 1995 Atlanta, 4.5: I was surprised that the Braves only title came in so low on the list. This group came along before Andruw Jones, but they had a young Chipper Jones, Javy Lopez and Steve Avery to go with one of the best Greg Maddux seasons from his run of dominance.

15. 1996 New York (A), 10: The birth of the Yankee dynasty was a different monster, with Mariano Duncan leading the offense in VORP, and journeymen like Joe Girardi and Gerald Williams playing an important role. The current crop of homegrown Yankees was mostly up at this point, and they’ve pretty much given up on that strategy, making one costly mistake after another.

14. 1985 Kansas City, 14: George Brett and Bret Saberhagen led the team past their Missouri brethren to make these Royals the only champs from the last 20 years to go seven in both the LCS and WS.

13. 1990 Cincinnati, 17: This team was not supposed to be in the World Series, four games later, Mike Gallego of the A’s said in shock that they weren’t supposed to lose the series. Here’s another Mariano Duncan sighting, this time getting Lou Piniella his ring, excusing tirades for 15 years longer.

12. 2001 Arizona, 19.5: No other team had as good of a 1-2 punch in the starting rotation as Schilling and Johnson. The ’87 Twins had Viola and Blyleven, the ’04 Red Sox had Schilling and Martinez, and the ’00 Yankees had Clemens and Pettite (familiar, eh?). One of the more memorable Game 7’s in recent memory featured both of them coming together to take down the Yankee dynasty.

11. 1991 Minnesota, 20.5: Speaking of memorable seventh games… This Twins team was a legitimate champion, getting a little lucky that the A’s had something of a down year in the middle of a pretty dominant run.

The countown from 10-1 will be up tomorrow.

Extra Long Final Edition of End of Season Awards

“Morning came and morning went. Pick up your money and pack up your tent. You ain’t goin’ nowhere.” –You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere

If some teams start slow and end fast, there have to be teams whose strong starts were quashed to make up for the lost ground. In a year where unusually many teams rebounded, two teams in the mid-Atlantic region took the brunt of those recoveries. After encouraging starts, both the Nationals and the Orioles crashed, burned, rotted, and then were used as fertilizer before the season was over.

Many have used Nick Johnson’s injury as the reason for the Nationals’ collapse, but it was more of the collective coming back to Earth that coincided with Johnson’s R&R that disheartened them so completely. For all the talk of their record in one run games early in the year (23-7 at one point), the Nats gave new meaning to regression toward the mean, finishing 30-31 in one run contests. If it’s any consolation, the team finished .500, outperforming their Pythaganport projection pretty substantially (outscored by 43 for the year), but they still finished last in the NL East, just as it was supposed to go.

Baltimore’s fall was even more dramatic, going from first place in the NL East in July to 4th place, 14 games under .500, and 21 games out of first/playoffs. It seems like just yesterday that they were trying to pick up Phil Nevin for a playoff push, but soon thereafter, Lee Mazzilli was fired, leaving Sam Perlozzo with the unhappy business of packing in the losses (22-33). Even though the team tried to distance itself from this second instance of Raffy Palmeiro dabbling in performance enhancers, I can’t help but thinking it had at least three profound effects on them. First, they lost his performance, as Palmeiro put up a pretty solid line of .269/.337/.463 line before the ASB. After his suspension, Palmeiro was completely ineffective. Jay Gibbons hit well in his place, but he would have been better used in the OF, where Sammy Sosa, Eric Byrnes and B.J. Surhoff all failed to get on base at a .275 clip. Second, Palmeiro’s situation had to hurt the team’s chemistry. There is no way to measure how he hurt them, but there’s no way everyone was exempt from the turmoil, especially when he dragged Miguel Tejada under the bus with him. Finally, I think they actually benefited from all of Palmeiro’s negative press, as it functioned as an excuse and a distraction from a downfall that was happening anyway. Perhaps it would not have been as severe if Palmeiro avoided his misdeeds, but the team was due for some slippage, and nobody bothered mentioning it with a couple of Palmeiro stories coming out each week.


“The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone causes Galileo's math book to get thrown at Delilah who sits worthlessly alone, but the tears on her cheeks are from laughter” –Tombstone Blues

For the success of teams who fancy themselves “small ball” teams over those the media calls “Moneyball” teams. Look first at the late pennant races in the Majors, the A’s lost out to the Angels, the Red Sox blew a lead in the AL East and ended up losing the division title, and the Dodgers never even made a run. Also, the final four contained three teams that have pretty old-schools lineups, strategies and managers, along with Tony LaRussa’s raking Cards. Yup, Tim McCarver and Joe Morgan can smile now that Ozzie Guillen is attempting four steals a game and Vlad Guerrero swings at 59’ bouncers. Yessir, Chris Burke and Mike Lamb not only need rings, they need to play long enough that casual baseball fans think they’re stars and they cash in for $5 million a year next time they hit the open market. Too bad we didn’t get really lucky, getting to see Scott Podsednik steal home in the World Series so we can really understand good baseball strategy.

I’ll admit, I was being a bit facetious. First, the divide between numbers and eyes isn’t as sharp as some people think it is. Most teams play to their strengths, running more with fast players, pitching around hitters less with Roger Clemens, and so on. Even the concept of Moneyball as a strategy gets misconstrued in this sense, as Billy Beane identifies his team’s relative strengths and fills holes with players that best complement them. Moneyball is not a monolithic set of rules or strategies, but an approach that privileges adaptability and staying ahead of the curve. Anybody who watched this year’s iteration of the A’s could clearly see that the team had changed from plodding station-to-station thumpers with lead hands to plodding station-to-station glovesmen with great K/BB ratios. Newer A’s, such as Jason Kendall and Mark Kotsay have extremely low K-rates. In games, there might be a more noticeable difference in strategy between a team like the A’s and one like the White Sox, but it isn’t nearly as profound as analysts would have you believe, and they consist mainly of small ball teams mathematically wasting outs. At very least, the resurgence of the out-wasting strategy could swing back away from the OBP plodders, giving the sabermetrically minded GMs a shot at some cheapies but goodies.

But the biggest problem I have with giving credit to small ball teams is that they are given credit for all of the wrong things. The White Sox were fourth in the AL in HRs, but only ninth in runs scored, meaning they did an extremely bad job getting runners on base in front of their mashers. With such an offensively generous home field, it would seem easy to outscore the D-Rays, but not so. In total, they only scored 56 more runs than Minnesota, bad as their offense was. The decidedly non-small ball Paul Konerko was the only Chicago regular with an EqA above .290. Chone Figgins was a revelation for the Angels, giving the team versatility, speed and decent on-base skills, but Vlad added about 34 more runs to the offense in 125 fewer plate appearances. More importantly, both teams were excellent at run prevention. It’s easy to credit Scott Podsednik for the White Sox improvement, but their success has a lot more to do with the improvement of Jon Garland and Mark Buehrle to go with the Jose Contreras redemption party. In Los Angeles, Bartolo Colon had perhaps his best season, and Earvin Santana had an exceptional rookie season to go along with solid campaigns by Paul Byrd, John Lackey and Jarrod Washburn. Bottom line: Moneyball or small ball boils down to scoring more runs than you allow. The teams that supposedly succeeded due to their offensive “smart ball” really got by with exceptional pitching.

“I’d do anything in this God Almighty world if you’d just let me follow you down.” -Baby, Let Me Follow You Down

To Red Sox Nation which seems to have doomed the 2005 season and possibly the next few seasons as a result of some undue sentimentality. Lots of factors go into constructing a winning team, but memories of past glory should not be one of them. Consider, for a moment, what would have happened if the Sawx didn’t come back from that 3-0 deficit, if the Yankees didn’t spend the better part of a week with their hands firmly affixed to their own throats. Would the Red Sox look anything like they do now? Jason Varitek would not have received a guaranteed four year deal as a catcher in his 30s. Mark Bellhorn would not have lasted well into the season. Kevin Millar would be gone. I have trouble believing Bill Mueller and Gape Kapler would have stayed on the team on the basis of their intangibles. Curt Schilling would not have had his contract automatically extended through his age 41 season for winning the Series, although that option year might not look so grim if he hadn’t pitched those extra games on his paper mache ankle. They would have had much more roster and payroll flexibility to restructure the bullpen and plug their holes.

Still, I expected the Red Sox to win close to 100 games and take the division this year based on the changes they made. I didn’t like the signing of Renteria at the price, as he’s a below average player against righties, which, if you haven’t noticed, is most PAs. I liked that they brought in Wells and Clement, but thought the Varitek contract was mostly a PR job for the fans. Maybe Kelly Shoppach will never pan out as a starting catcher, but $40 mil is a lot to pay in order to avoid finding out. Bottom line, if they had not won the World Series, they probably would not have resigned Varitek and they would have done a much better job patching up the bullpen than Jeremi Gonzalez and John Halama. A few games in October should never have that much of an impact on the team’s future.

This off-season, the fans should pose much less of an obstacle between the front office and a good team. They can trade for a Troy Glaus to play first base, promote Kevin Youkilis and Dustin Pedroia to starting IF status, and trade Manny’s burdensome contract for flexibility at the cost of a few runs against an otherwise improved offense and defense. The most recent rumors I’ve heard include Ramirez for Beltran straight up, which seems like a great deal for Boston, swapping an aging hitter who has the benefit of a great park inflating his numbers for a stud whose value will never be lower. Another rumor includes Mike Cameron and prospects. Either way, they need not overpay for Johnny Damon. Let him be New York’s mistake; maybe not next year, but soon, and for the rest of his contract.

Thanks for staying with me through all of that. I'll be back early next week with a column on the best WS champions of my lifetime (hint: the '05 Sox are not the best).

More End of Season Awards

“It’s a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor. No, I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.” –Maggie’s Farm

For Ryan Howard, who finally got a chance to hit in the Major Leagues and made sure he’ll never have to do any more work down on the farm. He finished with the highest VORP among National League rookies, hitting 41 XBHs in 88 games. When teams decided not to let proven studs Pat Burrell and Bobby Abreu kill them in the second half of the season, walking them a combined 107 times in 637 PAs, Howard picked up the slack to lead the team in slugging and OPS. With a core of Howard, Utley, Burrell, Abreu and Jimmy Rollins, the Phillies have a very dangerous lineup of players in or near their primes for next year.

The problem, of course, is Jim Thome’s situation, which accounts for Howard’s partial season. Already spending all of 2004 in AAA and behind Thome when he was probably ready for the majors, Howard faced more time in the minors and a potential trade until Thome broke down. Now, Philly is on the hook for three more years of Thome’s huge deal. Sure, he was a masher when Philly dangled those extra years to lure him away from Cleveland, but now he’s 35, clearly diminished, and rehabbing a severe injury. Big and slow players can age very quickly, and Thome has fallen from the face of the team a calendar year ago to being an albatross whose salary will burden the team in a search for rotation help. The Phillies will try to trade Thome this off-season, but will likely have to cover about 2/3 of his salary and will get precious little in return. The worst case scenario is that Philly can’t find a taker for Thome, keeps him, and Charlie Manuel feels obliged to play the big-ticket item ahead of Howard.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend. When I was down, you just stood there grinning.” –Positively 4th Street.

For all of the teams that overcame being completely written off at some point to come back and contend. It seems to me that there have never been so many teams who were so bad, but became so much better by the end of the year. Atlanta, Houston, Oakland, Cleveland and New York all looked terrible at one time or another, but all ended up with winning records, at least competing for a playoff spot into the last week of the season.

Both Atlanta and Houston looked like lost causes in March, combining to lose Carlos Beltran, Jeff Kent, J.D. Drew, Russ Ortiz, Jaret Wright, some of Lance Berkman and most of Jeff Bagwell. Fast forward to October, and they played one another in the NLDS, which is a credit to good player development and great managerial skills. Bobby Cox and Phil Garner had different challenges in season, Cox with a glut of holes to fill with rookies and Garner having to overcome another terrible start to climb back into a pennant race, but both got the most out of available resources.

Oakland and Cleveland looked like they were headed in different directions before the year, with Oakland starting a mini-rebuilding project after trading Mulder and Hudson, and Cleveland building on a good year by adding Kevin Millwood and some bullpen help. Both offenses, stumbled out of the gates, though, with Casey Blake, Aaron Boone, Jason Kendall and Scott Hatteberg hitting like their bats were made out of balsa wood. Once the Indians started hitting like they were meant to hit and the A’s got a truckload of help from the DL and Sacramento (Bobby Crosby, Rich Harden, Dan Johnson), both teams went crazy and sped into the Wild Card race. When Crosby and Harden got injured again, the A’s fell back, losing out to Los Angeles de Los Angeles down the stretch. Cleveland faltered as well, losing a highly publicized 6 of 7 in the last week, including a three game sweep at the hands of the White Sox quadruple-A team.

The Yankees had perhaps the most incredible comeback of the year, because their team was not built to endure hardship, but did so anyway. With a top-heavy roster that relied on John Flahertys and Bubba Crosbys to fill in the gaps, and precious little left in the high minors, injury or failure at the Major League level looked dangerous. After starting 15-30, losing Carl Pavano, Kevin Brown and Jaret Wright to injury and Tony Womack to woeful ineffectiveness, Brian Cashman had to snap out of a two year slumber and do some General Managing. He dug up Aaron Small (an inexplicable success), Shawn Chacon (a more explicable one, given a 1-7 record but strong peripherals in Coors) and Robinson Cano (who they must have forgotten about or else he would have been traded years ago). The Yankees did as the Yankees do, going on a second half roll, winning the AL East and, at very least, lasting longer than the Red Sox.

High Five Friday
World Series Edition

Today I’ll interrupt the regularly scheduled Awards column to interject a word or two on the current state of the game. The World Series is relatively important, after all, and far be it from me to shamefully neglect the most important part of the Major League Baseball season, the culmination of seven months of games and years of preparation by all of those involved. Without delay, here is the World Series special edition of High Five Friday:

1. Outside of anyone’s control, but playing an important role in the series nonetheless is the field. In a short series, we often overlook the effect that park factors have on the game. Looking at Houston’s postseason so far, though, it’s hard to overlook the importance of their park: the Ausmus HR that sent game 4 of the ALDS into extra innings would not have left many stadiums, and Lance Berkman and Albert Pujols homered into the short LF porch, the now infamous Crawford Boxes (although Pujols’ shot would have left any stadium, including Yankee Stadium before the moved the fences in).

It’s unfortunate that Enron fell apart, primarily because we lost the ability to poke fun at the Astros’ home field by calling it Homerun rather than Enron. Well, I guess it was unfortunate primarily for the other things, but this part is bad too. Truly, though, Minute Maid gave up 108 runs to a standardized 100 this year, adding offense by enhancing HR production 112-100 and more than doubling the average of triples (triples are susceptible to huge park factors due to their infrequency). The number is even better for RHB, up to 116 HR over the last three years. Chicago’s heavily right-handed lineup will certainly continue trying to get around on anything inside as their primary means of offense.

The Cell in Chicago is similar in its effects on HR hitting, and is actually substantially easier for HRs (second to only Coors at 133), but suppresses overall run scoring to the tune of three per 100 runs scored. With pitching depth on both sides, the deep ball will be a huge factor in the series.

2. Speaking of pitching, both teams have a wonderful staff, and would never have made it even to the playoffs with a league average rotation. But who has the advantage? I hate to sound brash, but it’s Houston, and it is not close. Six of the seven potential WS games would be thrown by the top three starters, and Chicago’s top three combines for a very respectable 16.7 SNLVAR (Contreras, Buehrle, Garland), while Houston’s historic troika put up an outstanding 25.7 SNLVAR (Clemens, Pettite, Oswalt). Yes, Garcia was better than Bakce, almost twice as productive. Yes, Clemens struggled down the stretch. Yes, Chicago’s staff has been dominant in the playoffs. I don’t care; Houston has a remarkable rotation, one of the best ever, and there’s really no comparison.

3. I’ll make a bold prediction: the bench for either team will not decide the series. Chicago has basically completely neglected its bench in the playoffs, while Houston had to go deep in the marathon against Atlanta, but otherwise have avoided that dreg as best they can. Jeff Bagwell’s plenty famous, but he’s not what he was, even at the start of the season, so there’s no use expecting greatness from him. It’s almost scary to think what would happen if one of Chicago’s regulars went down early in the series. We might be sentenced to a week of Geoff Blum’s .152 EqA, or we might get lucky and get to watch Willie Harris continue his career-long replacement level impersonation. Here’s hoping the walls are padded, the infields soft and the Gatorade jugs well stocked.

4. Last year, the baseball world was abuzz with Phil Garner after he turned around the good ship Stro and brought them within a game of their first World Series. This year, Ozzie Guillen has received similar praise for his flippant style and substantial success. Both men have followed comparable playbooks for teams with strong starting pitching and defense and not enough ability to get on base. Their strengths run parallel in many ways: good pitcher usage to keep the starters healthy, wisely abandoning the one inning relief ace mantra and going with the hot arm as long as it will ride, and knowing when to say no to the likes of Jose Vizcaino and Timo Perez. On the other hand, they’re both fans of throwing away lots of outs and putting low-OBP speedsters ahead of their boppers. Teddy Atlas likes to say that styles make fights, and this fight will be more like Chris Byrd vs. Fres Oquendo than Gatti vs. Ward. That is to say that the style of play will cater to purists and enthusiasts, but not to the casual fan. I say screw the casual fan; the casual fan is responsible for Tim McCarver, the scoreboard shell game and 10 Yankees-Red Sox stories a week.

5. The Andrew LP has scratched, as I feel like I need to reiterate the similarity of these two teams. Morgan Ensberg, meet Paul Konerko. Willy Taveras, meet Scott Podsednik. Brad Lidge and Bobby Jenks; Jon Garland and Roy Oswalt; Aaron Rowand and Jason Lane. It might seem difficult to pick one team over the other, but in pretty much every head-to-head matchup, the Astros seem a little deeper and a little better. I’m sticking with my mid-season prediction and taking Houston in 6, but if there’s something to emotion, Chicago could stay on their tremendous roll.

If Not For You
The Best of 2005

If you are reading this, there is a fair chance that you have some interest in what I have to write about baseball. Perhaps, if I'm especially lucky, you have some respect for my knowledge/analysis of the game. Certainly not on the level of a Jim Souhan or Jay Mariotti of the BBWAA, but maybe I should fill out a sort of award ballot anyway. But I’ve written at length about several awards, so I prefer to discuss some of the more memorable storylines of the 2005 season through a cheesy gimmick. With an emphasis on the Minnesota in Minnesota Baseball Central, I’m using Bob Dylan lyrics as inroads to some of the best stories of the year past. While I fully realize how far I’m straying from the point of these lyrics, I have an intuition that Mr. Dylan won’t much care (read: notice). So, with a nod to Bill Simmons for the award format (not to mention the several-edition column length), here are some of my favorite personalities and events of 2005.

“And the Good Samaritan is dressing; he’s getting ready for the show. He’s going to the carnival, on desolation row.” –Desolation Row

For Bud Selig, who stood by and watched baseball players abuse steroids for a decade before he finally became holier than thou and put the kibosh on the MLBPA. Begat by someone who negotiates with labor unions, I’m familiar with the travails of contractual drug testing. I’m not even criticizing Selig’s policies; the one he brought before Congress might be a great idea, and we’re already seeing some results from the currently codified program. Instead, I cannot get the image out of my mind of a smug Selig testifying that he has worked to keep steroids out of the game and that he thinks that they are a scourge for baseball. We found out after the fact that Raffy Palmeiro was lying and he got more negative press than Kevin Federline. We knew Selig was lying as he testified, and he was praised for his testimony. More than anything, the reaction shows just how low the bar is now set for Selig: he has screwed up so badly that we now expect him to lie and manipulate and disappoint from the outset. He’s much like George Bush in that respect, I keep going back and forth between thinking he’s a tremendous jackass and thinking he’s remarkably incompetent.

“Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn. Suicide remarks are torn from the fool's gold mouthpiece. The hollow horn plays wasted words, proves to warn that he not busy being born, is busy dying.”

And

“Advertising signs that con you into thinking you're the one that can do what's never been done, that can win what's never been won. Meantime life outside goes on all around you.” –It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)

For two managers experiencing big letdowns, Lou Pinella an Dusty Baker, respectively.

First, it’s hard not to feel sorry for Pinella, who basically turned water into wine in St. Pete, squeezing everything possible out of those Devilish Rays. He somehow managed to throw his players down a staircase while maintaining their loyalty when he started complaining that the front office did not make good on their pledge to increase payroll. Think about that, he’s telling his players that they’re not good enough to win, but they respected him enough that they empathized rather than staging a mutiny. He stuck with Scott Kazmir and started seeing results near the end. He gave Johnny Gomes a chance to play despite a Dunn-y K-rate, and was rewarded with an OPS above .900 and a HR every 16 ABs. He even got Jorge Cantu and Julio Lugo to look like one of the better keystone combos south of Baltimore. But he never got his extra payroll, so he was stuck using players who either were not ready yet, (Seth McClung, Joey Gathright) never will be ready (Mark Hendrickson, Damon Hollins), or are ready for their pills and tapioca (Hideo Nomo, Eddie Perez). Still, there’s no reason to cry for Sweet Lou, since he’ll probably be making a star manager’s salary on top of his cool $2.2m buyout in 2006.

As for Dusty, it seems like just yesterday that he was bolting the Bay Area for the chance to be the guy who finally wins it all on the North Side. Now, he’s the second highest-profile manager in his own city. After coming within Steve Bartman of making the World Series, the Cubs have fallen on hard times, losing huge chunks of playing time from Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, Nomar Garciaparra and Scott Williamson this year. In their stead, Dusty found plenty of top-of-the-order PAs for Neifi Perez and Corey Patterson, effectively killing Derek Lee’s shot at the RBI portion of the Triple Crown. Even with Lee’s monster season, Chicago only manager 79 wins and pulled the buyer-to-seller metamorphosis by acquiring then dealing Matt Lawton over the course of several weeks. Dusty wasn’t at the bottom of every category, though, as he did a far better job than any other manager at abusing his pitchers, especially those who are still vulnerable to long-term injuries. Carlos Zambrano and Mark Prior finished behind only Livan “Who’s playing for second?” Hernandez in terms of Pitcher Abuse Points in all of MLB. Kerry Wood may have joined them at the top of the list had not the abuse of seasons past done their work on his sinews. Even if the Cubs remained healthy next year, it would be hard to imagine them rallying around Dusty Baker. Maybe it’s time to hand over the reigns to his son, who has him beat by a mile in the precociousness category.

“It’s a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor. No, I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.” –Maggie’s Farm

For Ryan Howard, who finally got a chance to hit in the Major Leagues and made sure he’ll never have to do any more work down on the farm. He finished with the highest VORP among National League rookies, hitting 41 XBHs in 88 games. When teams decided not to let proven studs Pat Burrell and Bobby Abreu kill them in the second half of the season, walking them a combined 107 times in 637 PAs, Howard picked up the slack to lead the team in slugging and OPS. With a core of Howard, Utley, Burrell, Abreu and Jimmy Rollins, the Phillies have a very dangerous lineup of players in or near their primes for next year.

The problem, of course, is Jim Thome’s situation, which accounts for Howard’s partial season. Already spending all of 2004 in AAA and behind Thome when he was probably ready for the majors, Howard faced more time in the minors and a potential trade until Thome broke down. Now, Philly is on the hook for three more years of Thome’s huge deal. Sure, he was a masher when Philly dangled those extra years to lure him away from Cleveland, but now he’s 35, clearly diminished, and rehabbing a severe injury. Big and slow players can age very quickly, and Thome has fallen from the face of the team a calendar year ago to being an albatross whose salary will burden the team in a search for rotation help. The Phillies will try to trade Thome this off-season, but will likely have to cover about 2/3 of his salary and will get precious little in return. The worst case scenario is that Philly can’t find a taker for Thome, keeps him, and Charlie Manuel feels obliged to play the big-ticket item ahead of Howard.

Baby Please Don’t Go

Today marks the final edition of my departed Twins series, examining the performance with the Twins, and after leaving the Twins of everyone who played a meaningful amount of time in both positions. To rehash the details, I’m conglomerating a 3-year VORP average for Twins players and comparing it to the VORP average after the players left Minnesota. For more details, see the original article. Today, I finish with the last couple of departures from after the 2001 season, and finally get to add up the numbers and make some conclusions.

2001

Hector Carrasco (3-year Minnesota VORP avg 9.7, Post-Minnesota VORP avg 17.7): Carrasco is one of the most fascinating cases in all of Major League Baseball, and he has become one of my favorite players. After spending 12 years as a pretty average middle reliever with a decent K rate and a BB rate a little on the high side, he found himself 34 years old, past his prime and out of a job. He spent 2004 trying to find his way back to the Majors unsuccessfully, and reportedly begged Nationals’ GM Jim Bowden for a chance before the 2005 season. He was so far off the radar that he wasn’t even listed in the Baseball Prospectus 2005 Annual, which includes profiles on over 1,600 players. If a couple of injuries got Carrasco back to the Bigs for a last hurrah, it would be a nice story, a sort of nostalgia not unlike Carlos Baerga pop up every once in a while. Instead, Carrasco came up on April 21st, sustained minor injuries in a car accident in early May, stayed with the team, and DOMINATED out of the pen for four months. But it gets better. Now 35 years old, Carrasco asked into the starting rotation after injuries depleted the Nats, even though he had never started a game in the major leagues through roughly 600 games played. But it gets even better. According to the Washington Post, Carrasco added a solid changeup to his previous power repertoire (heavy fastball, hard slider, split-finger fastball, according the The Scouting Notebook). Carrasco was outstanding as a starting pitcher, throwing only four innings in his first start, but taking on a normal starter’s workload thereafter going 1-0 in 22.7 IP with only 2 ER, 11 BB, 23 K, 12 H and 1 HR in his first four starts. He gave up 4 ER in his last start, a hopeless cause on the last day of the season, but it doesn’t make the story any less incredible. On top of all of that, Carrasco plans to enter next season as a starting pitcher.

Matt Lawton (25.0, 15.8): After years of seeming like the most competent Twin for several years, Lawton was jettisoned just as they started to win. In fact, his tough luck has continued, just missing the playoffs with the Mets in 2001, spending three rebuilding years in Cleveland from ’02-’04, then finding himself in Pittsburgh in ’05. Midway through the year, a trade to Chicago brightened the postseason outlook, until they collapsed. Then they turned around and spun him off to the Bronx, where the Yankees came from way behind to finally get Lawton into the playoffs… except that he’s not on the postseason roster. Despite that, he seems like the type of player who could thrive as a role player on a very good team, a patient lefty with a little pop and a solid glove in RF. Lawton was at his best with the Twins, but that should come as no surprise as he was traded in the midst of his age 29 season. His decline is natural, he’s not to fault for it, and the Twins are not to credit for it, beyond trading him at the right time.

Conclusion

Cumulative avg VORP with Minnesota: 299.4
Cumulative avg VORP post-Minnesota: 211.5

The gap widens to 279-142.9 if I exclude Ortiz, but I see no reason to do so, since his non-tender was subject to the same systematic analysis as the rest of the decisions. The larger point here is that the Twins have done a pretty good job knowing when to let their players go. Players typically have not blossomed after leaving Minnesota, so I’ve spent roughly 4,000 words disagreeing with J.C. Romero’s off-the-cuff assertion that players succeed after leaving. Romero has to play, though, and I don’t, so I have time to write 4,000 words to disagree with him.

Perhaps a more illustrative approach is to look at the number of players who improved, on the whole, versus those who declined, on the whole:

14 players had a better VORP avg in their last three years with the Twins
8 players had a better VORP avg after leaving the Twins.

Nearly two out of every three players the Twins have let go has been worse after having left. That number impresses me considering the perception that many of the players they lose are due to financial reasons rather than personnel reasons. In other words, Ryan has to tighten the belt from time to time, but he knows just where to punch that new hole in the leather.

One other point of interest is the increasing number of free agents over the last four off-seasons. Minnesota lost virtually no one after the 2001 season: Lawton was traded at the deadline and Carrasco left, but was not signed by anyone for the 2002 season. As the team has won, they have had more turnover, which I attribute primarily to two factors. First, as the team wins, it becomes more expensive to maintain. A .280 hitter on a division winner looks more valuable than a .280 hitter on a cellar dweller. All of the sudden, he’s tenacious, and he does all of the little things that help a team win. As a corollary, the team faces pressure from the hometown fans to maintain the corps of a successful squad (see: Varitek, Jason). Second, the team was very young in 2001, succeeded while entering their collective prime, then dispersed at or near the end of their arbitration years when they got more expensive.

Finally, here is a lineup entirely of players the Twins of jettisoned in the last 4 seasons:

Bobby Kielty, CF
Matt Lawton, RF
David Ortiz, DH
Corey Koskie, 3B
A.J. Pierzynski, C
Doug Mientkiewicz, 1B
Dustan Mohr, LF
Christian Guzman, SS
Denny Hocking, 2B (or Jose Offerman, ugh)

Bench: Henry Blanco, C; Jose Offerman, Util; Buck Buchanan, OF; Mike Restovich, OF

SP: Kenny Rogers
CL: Eddie Guardado

I Hear Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

As I enter the 2002 Twins’ losses, I find myself thankful that so many musicians have faced so much hardship in their relationships so that I can continue the naming scheme for these columns. I have once again collected my baseball reference books and opened some crucial web links, so I’m ready to roll. Before I begin, I discovered something disturbing while looking at the 2002 Twins’ stats: Tony Fiore had the 5th highest VORP among their pitchers. That does not account for leverage, so he was almost certainly not one of their five best pitchers, but we’re talking about a team that won its division siphoning lots of innings to a pitcher who relies almost exclusively on a palm ball.

2002

Buck Buchanan (3-year Minnesota VORP avg 2.6, Post-Minnesota VORP avg 5.3): Buck was a mule of a player, and I’m not quite sure how he didn’t hit for more power. It would seem that if a man of his size even made contact, it would fly a mile. Maybe he would have had more staying power if he was cut from the Jeromy Burnitz/Richie Sexson all-or-nothing mold, as his game seemed to lack anything distinctive. Blame my unhealthy obsession with Rob Deer if you like, but I think we need more of these players.

Jack Cressand (5.1, 8.5): Cressand had the same predicament in both Minnesota and Cleveland: he had a very solid year for a middle reliever followed by a very disappointing year. Replaceable as players of his ilk are, he did not receive a third chance, and he is probably now out of the Majors for good.

Mike Jackson (16.5, 5.6): The thermometer had popped out of Mike Jackson by the time he came to Minnesota, but the intimidation factor of his low-billed cap was good for a 3.27 ERA in 55 very low leverage IP. He did not find work in 2003, but resurfaced for the Pale Hoes in 2004, where a weaker defense exposed his inability to miss bats. He’s a good example of cheap and readily available bullpen help that the Twins utilized quite well in the early aughts before turning it over to their farmhands.

Matt Kinney (4.9, -1.6): My only lasting impression of Matt Kinney is that he was dubbed a future star by a fantasy baseball magazine I read before my 2002 draft. I almost drafted him, but a no. 5 starter on any team is a questionable pick. I let him slide, and he has yet to check in below 4.50 for a full season’s ERA. After failing miserably in a season long audition for Milwaukee, he will probably struggle to ever get regular playing time again.

David Ortiz (20.4, 68.6): Here’s the big one. Even though the Twins have come out ahead on a vast majority of the players so far, the disparity on Ortiz might outweigh all of their gains. What makes Ortiz’s departure different from others? In a way, he’s similar to Koskie in that he was let go after struggling to stay healthy. In another way, he is similar to Bobby Kielty who steadily improved, but never broke out. In still another way, he is like Todd Walker (not part of this series due to his timing), who just never quite fit the organizational mentality of speed, defense and fundamentals. Unlike the others, Ortiz had already demonstrated that he had power and plate discipline, and it was probably just a matter of time until he broke out. It’s easy to criticize the move now, but I did not understand it at the time, even with Mientkiewicz coming off of back to back seasons with an OBP over .365. If nothing else, Ortiz could form a devastating DH platoon with Fatthew Lecroy that could double as some C/1B depth. For a team lacking power, that seems like a pretty solid prescription. Even now, I find myself pondering what this year’s lineup would look like with Ortiz at least a couple times each week.

Not Listed: Javier Valentin had nearly a full season’s worth of PAs with the Twins, but only four during the period of investigation. Casey Blake never had more than 25 PAs in one season with Minnesota.

A couple of 7th inning musings while watching Los Angeles de Los Angeles and the Yankees on ESPN:

-Here’s the situation: runners on the corners, nobody out. Juan Rivera hit a sharp grounder to A-Rod at third, and Garrett Anderson broke for second. A-Rod looked Jose Molina back to third, then made a throw to second, where Robinson Cano jumped off the bag before the ball arrived to avoid contact. Quick summary: Garrett Anderson slides into second; Robinson Cano catches a throw while not standing on the bag and not trying to turn a double play and not straddling the bag. According to the rule book (and every reasonable interpretation), Anderson is safe at second. Joe Morgan, though, insisted FOUR separate times through the inning that he thinks Anderson should have been called out. WHY? As a longtime Major League second baseman and a successful former manager, I assumed that he had a working interpretation of the rules. He disproved that theory today, infuriating me in the process. His justification is that he was trying to avoid getting hurt, which seems to be part of the game. If a catcher gets the ball from an outfielder, blocks the plate with the ball before the runner gets there, then runs away before the runner came home to avoid injury, the runner is safe. How is this situation any different? Position on the diamond and that is all. Needless to say, my TV has been on mute for the last couple of innings.

-I did keep the sound on long enough to hear Miller and Morgan laud Mike Scioscia for running a one out squeeze play with the bases loaded later in the evening. Miller pointed out that Earl Weaver would have said, “Play for one run, score one run,” to which Morgan responded, “Well, I’ll take one run over zero.” Uggghhhhh.

Misguided as his rationale may be, I’ll admit that Morgan is actually right in this situation. Even though one run isn’t as valuable in an 8-6 game in the 7th as it would be in a pitchers’ duel, it actually worked out statistically in this situation. My initial reaction was that it was probably a bad idea, despite Erstad’s batting problems. But judging by the expected runs matrix, a bases-loaded, one out situation would be expected to yield 1.529 runs, while a second and third, two outs situation yields .607 runs, with one already scored. If Scioscia is confident that Erstad will convert the squeeze, it adds a full run of probability, making it a better idea by a razor-thin margin. The problem is that it’s not 100% likely that he’ll convert the bunt. Here, though, congratulations Erstad.

You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go

Yesterday I started the project of valuing the Twins who left the team over the last few years. Today, I will continue with 2003, with the other years to follow. If there was a year that would kill the Twins through free agency, one would think that this would have been it based on the talent of the players lost. Instead, they won one more division title before falling off a bit. There are lots of players to value, so I’ll get right to it.

2003

Eddie Guardado (3-Year Minnesota VORP avg 21.0, Post-Minnesota avg 15.4): When Everyday Eddie left the Twins, it was supposed to really hurt them, as they did not have a ready replacement at the end of the bullpen. Coupled with the loss of Hawkins, the bullpen looked substantially weaker. Obviously, Rincon, Nathan and Crain have made up for the difference, but it makes me wonder if this would be a good time to cash in on a couple of those proven relievers. Nathan has the aforementioned closer tag, which could fetch a good return. We know there is a market for Romero, and they could definitely use Liriano out of the pen to get him some seasoning and save his young arm some stress. Even after losing those two, the bullpen would retain Rincon, Crain, Liriano, Bowyer and Guerrier, with Bonser ready to step in if needed. The Twins need to make a splash on offense, and Terry Ryan has demonstrated that he knows that trading from a deep bullpen can yield strong marginal gains. Again, Ryan succeeds by letting a player go after piling an injurious amount of stress on his arm.

LaTroy Hawkins (21.1, 16.2): Hawkins is the poster-boy for the “closer mentality.” Just like it is difficult to measure a clutch hitter, but we still know that David Ortiz is one, it is difficult to measure a player who struggles under pressure, but Hawkins is one. He alone could be responsible for overvaluation of the proven closer label. In the five year’s from which this data comes, he had a VORP of 25 or better in three of them (’02-’04) when he was not a closer. When he had to close in ’01 (when he walked almost SEVEN! Per nine innings) and ’05, he couldn’t top a VORP of 8.0.

Denny Hocking (1.0, -3.9): Hocking’s drop from dead-on replacement level was pretty much due to playing more in Colorado. Call me crazy, but I don’t think any rebuilding plan should include players who will NEVER succeed.

Bobby Kielty (13.7, 5.8): Kielty was a legitimate bounty when he was traded for Shannon Stewart in the middle of the 2003 season (for in-season trades, I’m only using the stats from the team where he played the majority of the year). He struggled as a regular in Toronto, but landed them Ted Lilly in a trade with Oakland, who remained infatuated with his plate discipline. Kielty showed improvement when healthy this year, but he’s already 28. He could still improve, but he needs to stay healthy and secure a full-time job.

Doug Mientkiewcz (19.7, 4.8): Doug’s average with the Twins is misleading, as his production fluctuated wildly, from over 38 to 3 runs of VORP before getting traded to Boston. Ryan waited a little too long here, as he fell apart right before getting traded for an A-Ball pitching prospect. But who knew? I was ready to anoint him the no. 2 hitter after his strong walk rate in 2003, but it all fell apart. The worst part is that he isn’t even good defensively any longer. He was average to very good from 2001-2003, saving 28 runs over the three years, but he struggled this season, costing the Mets 4 runs in the field in part-time duty.

Eric Milton (21.2, -3.1): Milton’s splits are extreme: 18.7 VORP with Philadelphia in ’04 and -25.0 this year in Cincinnati. Putting a pitcher whose only really big weakness is the HR in an absolute bandbox is a bad idea for everyone involved. Cincy’s front office is primarily at fault for thinking he could help the team, especially for eight figures. I don’t think we should absolve Milton’s agent, though, as it was a terrible idea to let his client fail so badly. Agents are paid to manipulate data to make it look better, so it’s highly unlikely that his agent didn’t know that Milton would have trouble keeping the ball in the park. Now he stands to make no money after the contract, while he could have signed one more lucrative deal if he signed in a pitcher’s park for the next three years.

Dustan Mohr (3.5, 8.1): My biggest surprise looking back at Mohr’s stats is that he has never had a very good year at all. He’s already entering his age 30 season and his best single-season VORP is only 14.4 with SF. True, he has been better overall since leaving, but his last two years with Minnesota were roughly equal to his ’04-’05 totals.

A.J. Pierzynski (30.2, 16.5): During one of the late season White Sox games on ESPN, the commentators said that Pierzynski had never fit in on any of his previous teams until he got to Chicago. Maybe it’s just me, but I always loved him as a Twin, and got the impression that he was one of the team’s leaders, albeit through a peculiar form of leadership. Perception shapes reality for Pierzynski, as he has basically had the same offensive season the last two years (VORPs of 15.2 and 17.7 respectively), but his season in SF was treated as a disaster, and this year in Chicago has been deemed a success. If he was as disruptive as reported in SF, it’s no wonder that he was reviled. Production is production, though, and he brought nearly as much to the table in both years. Another example of Terry Ryan cutting bait at precisely the right time.

Kenny Rogers (23.8, 35.0): Even though he made a big leap in performance for consecutive years after leaving Minnesota, Rogers probably does not demonstrate the Twins’ failure to get the most out of their players. He was 38 when he came to Minnesota, and thought to be on his last legs. His dominance this year was surprising; his strikeout rate was down and his walk rate was up. There’s the possibility that he pulled a Mike Mussina and added a new pitch just for the hell of it, and it turned out to be a difference maker. It’s also realistic to think that Orel Hershiser is an exceptional pitching coach, but other than that, I’m out of ideas.

Not listed: Michael Nakamura and James Baldwin for a lack of substantial IP.

Three different times during the first 6 innings of the Angels-Yankees game, I was struck by how much John Lackey looks like Napoleon Dynamite. I couldn't find a picture of him slack-jawed as he was mid-game, but there's some resemblence.

And while you're indulging me, for an even more indulgent and pathetic fantasy than my own writing, check out this website.

Kiss Today Goodbye
The Sweetness and the Sorrow

Seeing as I have not written anything specific to the Twins in a few weeks, and my site is at least nominally about the Twins, I feel like I should start trying to pander… er, return to the topic.

Earlier in the summer, I touched on the subject of departed Twins in response to J.C. Romero’s comment that he needed to leave so he could fulfill his potential. If nothing else, he gets at the important point that the Twins are among a handful Major League teams that succeed despite a surprisingly high turnover rate. Just in terms of (semi-)regular position players, this year’s Twins lost Blanco, Mientkiewcz, Guzman and Koskie, not to mention Restovich, Offerman and Gomez. So was Romero right? Do former Twins experience more success after leaving the team? My initial reaction was that they do not, and that Romero was using selective examples (namely David Ortiz) to prove his point. Today I’ll embark on the first part of a quest to prove or disprove that hypothesis, using VORP averages for players for the last three years they were regulars with the Twins and after they left.

Sample questions: I’m using anyone who had even a small amount of playing time with the Twins and with other teams. I’m not accounting for injuries, even though VORP is a cumulative stat. David Ortiz was often injured as a Twin, depressing his VORP totals, and Corey Koskie has been injured for a good deal of his first season away from Minnesota. These players illustrate my justification: Injuries are part of the game, and Terry Ryan decided to cut loose both Koskie and Ortiz because they were injury prone. One has since avoided the DL and become America’s Sweetheart, while the other had a freak broken thumb. Finally, I’m only going back to 2001, the start of the Twins current run of success. The seasons leading up to it had much to do with building the team that would win three straight AL Central titles, but I want to avoid comparing prime players to declining players somewhat, and there is a diminishingly small number of players before that year.

2004 Departures:

Henry Blanco (Minnesota VORP avg: -8.0, post-Minnesota VORP avg: 2.2): Blanco is employed as a backup catcher because he is an excellent defender, and has a reputation for handling pitchers. When the Twins needed him to play 100+ games, the holes in his swing turned black (get it? Black holes: sucking in everything around them), though his defense stayed solid. As a full-timer, he hit the free agent market, but landed as a backup anyway. Although Dusty Baker found regular playing time for Neifi Perez, not even he could justify playing Blanco in front of Barrett. As a result, Blanco turned in a performance slightly above replacement level.

Pat Borders (1.4, -6.3): Nobody expected much from him either year, nobody got much. Although he was definitely better as a Twin, it’s hardly even worth mentioning.

Aaron Fultz (6.9, 23.2): I wrote about Fultz’s success a couple of weeks ago while looking at the Phillies playoff chances. While they missed out by a game, Fultz is not to blame, as he shaved nearly a walk and a half off of his ‘04 BB/9, yielding less than half of his previous ERA (2.24, 4.86). Credit Charlie Manuel with getting the most out of Fultz through proper usage.

Christian Guzman (13.3, -9.7): Guzman’s failures have been well publicized, and I think the cause has not to do with leaving Minnesota, but with the Ullger-imposed swing change that sapped him of all of his power. After Guzman came back from his season-ending injury in 2001, he started beating the ball into the ground and trying to run it out. The strategy immediately cost him several points of batting average, and lots of slugging, as he dropped about .100 points the next year. Moving from turf to grass made the problem even worse, and now that he has reportedly lost a step, the problem gets worse. If he could recapture his old swing, some of his triples may only go for doubles, but I’m sure Frank Robinson would be happy with a line drive here and there.

Corey Koskie (36.6, 11.0): As I mentioned earlier, much of Koskie’s regression comes from a freak injury (broken thumb) that actually occurred against the Twins. Koskie was not retained partially because of his age and history of back injuries. His missed time may make Terry Ryan look like a prophet, but the injury had nothing to do with his back. While the extra rest may have been exactly what Koskie needed to keep his back from acting up, we can’t give Ryan credit for a second degree potentiality. Still, when Koskie was healthy, he slugged only .398, playing far below the level he established in Minnesota. Ryan would be foolish to think that his regression is an anomaly rather than an effect of his age, and following through on the rumored Koskie for Morneau swap would not only be misguided, it would be moronic.

Jose Offerman (7.3, -0.3): Offerman was a revelation for the Twins in 2004, getting hit after hit, but still does not play nearly the defense to start anywhere. His peripherals changed very little, but he hit far less singles. Offerman’s stats will fluctuate at this point in his career due to small sample sizes, but he’s probably not done yet, and may never be.

Mike Restovich (2.5, -0.1): It would have been nice to have Restovich around this year when Hunter and Stewart were both hurt and Gardy was forced to patch together an OF with Mike Ryan, Jason Tyner and Mike Cuddyer, leaving the lineup bare of power and the IF bare of a Major League third baseman. That’s not to say that Restovich is a star, but a hometown guy with some versatility has at least some purpose.


Not listed: Augie Ojeda (out of Majors), Joe Beimel (pitched 1 2/3 innings for MN), Seth Greisinger (pitched 5 innings for ATL in ‘05)

Tomorrow, I’ll go through the departures from 2001-2003

My Letter To Patrick Reusse
Sent on Monday, 10/3

Dear Mr. Reusse,

You are the second Star Tribune writer in the last week to make an argument that seems to be a logical fallacy. After Joe Christensen, you have made the syllogism that a) Johan Santana is the best pitcher in the Major Leagues (thus, the AL as a matter of course), b) that Santana has pitched better for the complete season than any other pitcher in the American League, and better in the last month of the season than any other pitcher in the American League, and c) that Santana will not, and more importantly SHOULD not win the Cy Young award. If the Cy Young is not about being the best pitcher and having results commensurate with that ability, then what is the purpose of the award?

Wins are indeed an important statistic; they determine which teams play into October and which teams go home. They do not demonstrate a level of performance for a pitcher. Bartolo Colon has more wins because his team has given him more run support and, perhaps, more bullpen support. He should be awarded for his team's success, and he will be, as he is going to the postseason. But his individual performance does not approximate Santana's. Baseball Prospectus tracks a stat that measures value added by a pitcher adjusted for neutral support. Santana has added 7.6 wins over a replacement player, while Colon has added 6.6, a deficit amounting to about 15%. Why would you vote for a pitcher who is 85% as effective as another just based on the rest of his team's performance?

I believe you have voted irresponsibly.

Andrew Berg

Big Papi Squares Off With Big Money

In the last column I wrote, I defended a Minnesota product for a post-season award over a big market, big money mercenary who has led his team to a division lead. Today, though, I’m going to do the exact opposite, furthering the blasphemy by picking a Yankee. After writing on behalf of Randy Johnson last week, I should probably wait to make Alex Rodriguez’s MVP case, but I won’t.

On Friday, Jim Rome summed up the irrational hype surrounding Ortiz, asking, “Has he ever not got a hit in a big situation?” Now, obviously that’s not true. Ortiz has had a penchant for the dramatic, and has certainly come up big on a timely stage. Even stats bear out his clutch hitting, as he’s been the second most clutch player in the American League this year, according to a new Baseball Prospectus statistic that adjusts performance based on game state. The question is whether that clutch performance makes up for a deficit in overall performance, which we can also look at using stats.

Looking at the stats by which most voters will vote, A-Rod seems like the natural choice. Any time a position player finishes in the top three in BA, HR and RBI, it makes a pretty good case for awards. He is currently second in AVG, first in HR and fourth in RBI, while Ortiz goes two out of the three, leading in RBI, sitting one HR behind A-Rod’s pace and checking in with a sub-.300 BA. Obviously, his value is not tied up in his ability to slap singles, but in his ability to take and rake, which he does extremely well. He mashes XBHs on 49% of his hits and obliterating his personal best in free passes (100 compared to last year’s 75). A-Rod, though, mash pretty well for himself, actually out SLG’ing Ortiz .618 to .603, but with less XBH, meaning he hits for singles better. While it may seem like luck, A-Rod hits more singles than Ortiz year after year, because he’s much faster, and perhaps a more talented overall hitter. Further evidence of A-Rod’s speed advantage comes in stealing 21 of 27 SBs and hitting into a career low 8 DPs, while Ortiz has 1 SB and 13 GIDPs despite having a much lower ground ball rate.

It is difficult to weigh these stats against each other, although it does look as though A-Rod has a meaningful edge looking just at raw stats, excluding defense. Other sources provide a more holistic look, though, which puts them all together for us. In terms of raw offense, BP has EqA and VORP, measuring total hitting as an expression of average and through a cumulative approach. In EqA, Ortiz isn’t even the best DH, checking in at .335, ten points behind Travis Hafner. A-Rod, though, leads the league with a .348 EqA, one point ahead of teammate Jason Giambi, and doing so through a huge amount of PAs. Ortiz fares better in terms of the cumulative VORP, placing second with 82.5 runs above replacement. A-Rod is much stronger here as well, recently passing Albert Pujols for second in all of baseball with 102.7, or more than 17 runs more than Ortiz.

And we still have not considered defense.

Some of the Baseball Tonight idiots (Reynods, Brantley, I’m looking at you) have said that they would almost never vote for a DH as the MVP of the league, but that Ortiz is a special case. Really? The special case is when a DH has probably been the second best offensive player behind an infielder, and by a pretty wide margin? A-Rod has actually come back down to Earth in his second year at the hot corner, playing the position below league average. Ortiz has been dead on league average defensively as a DH, which has absolutely no value by definition. A-Rod’s rate2 at 3B is 94, costing six runs against average every 100 games, and totaling a 9 run deficit for the season. For the sake of comparison, it would be more useful to look at A-Rod compared to replacement level defense, as Ortiz at 3B would be pretty much exactly replacement level. If the two had exactly equal offensive production and A-Rod was below replacement level on defense, it would be more valuable to have the DH in the lineup, but in reality, A-Rod has been worth 11 runs above replacement (Ortiz) in the field, adding to the 17 offensive runs he has over Ortiz.

Putting them together to make up wins, A-Rod has been an 11 win player (10.9 WARP), compared to Ortiz’s 8.0. Three full wins is tremendous. Even conceding that Ortiz has been remarkably clutch, does the timing of the hits (which are already accounted for) make him 37.5% move valuable? Not unless a huge number of his hits are “clutch,” and A-Rod has no clutch ability at all.

Ortiz has always been one of my favorite players, but I am admittedly ambivalent about his breakout in Boston. I always felt that he was a stud in Minnesota, and I feel like Red Sox fans take too much credit for him being a star. Theo did not discover Ortiz; he merely picked him up when the Twins couldn’t afford two starting first basemen. I don’t like the Big Papi alter ego, and I still harbor some ridiculous hope that he will one day come back home to fulfill his potential as a Twin. Perhaps I’m biased, perhaps it gives me the distance to make a fair comparison. Either way, I’m certain that A-Rod has been more valuable than Ortiz in 2005.