Bill: I was looking at some of Jacob deGrom's age comps by similarity score, and for his age-30 and age-31 seasons, it was Sonny Siebert both seasons. I just barely remember him from when I started watching baseball in the early '70s; he seemed like a pretty decent second or third starter, nothing more. I was surprised looking at his career box by a) what a late start he got (27 his rookie year), and b) how good he was early on (both of which support his similarity to deGrom).
Was this mostly just a reflection of the era in which he arrived ('64-67), or did he seem like someone destined for a HOF-type career?
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 8/27/2022
No, he never seemed like he was on target for the Hall of Fame, and I don't think he was. The fact that he got a late start was frequently mentioned, and I still remember a Sport Magazine article about Siebert which starts out something like "Sonny Siebert is an older man in a young man's game." He had spent a little too long in the minors. The Indians at that time had tons of young pitchers; I believe there was an Indians minor league team in 1963 or thereabouts that had Sam McDowell, Luis Tiant, Tommie John and Siebert, plus Cleveland a year or two later came up with Steve Hargan, who for a month or two in 1966 or 1967 was commonly said to be the best pitcher in the league. I always assumed that Siebert was behind schedule mostly because he got pushed behind all of these other guys, but I've never confirmed that.
The comparison that shows DeGromGrom as comparable to Siebert may not be era-adjusted. It might be, just guessing, that that is comparing 1960s stats to 2020s stats without adjusting the standards.
Siebert I think was also a really good hitter.I think one year maybe he hit 6 home runs. Should check this stuff out, but I'm just being a little lazy this morning.
-------------------
Bill: Question someone on my message board passed along from Twitter this morning: Which team would win a seven-game series?
(for these purposes Madison Bumgarner and Shohei Ohtani are ineligible)
Does the answer seem obvious to you, or do you find it as intriguing as I do? I wonder if defense--the team of pitchers also has to man the other eight positions in the field--would tip the scales towards the position players?
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 8/7/2022
That could be a good point. An infield of four relief pitchers could be ugly.
Your query excluded Shohei Ohtani and Madison Bumgarner, but there are a lot of good-hitting pitchers in every era--Zack Greinke, whose career OPS is 75 points higher than Bumgarner's, Jacob deGrom Grom, Noah Syndergaard, Adam Wainwright. It might come down to which pitchers you chose. On the other hand, there are also a lot of position players who were pitchers (and good pitchers) in college--i.e. Bobby Dalbec, Jon Papelbon, Mark McGwire. So I don't know.
Re your argument…baseball is not 50% pitching; it is less than that. It is 50% offense, 50% defense, but defense includes fielding, so the pitching is just 40-42%. So the batters/fielders might win, 58-42.
-------------------
Bill: Have you seen the new Nolan Ryan documentary, Facing Nolan? Here's a funny tracer. Early in the film, Rod Carew says something to the effect that he always knew he'd go 0-4 when facing Ryan; in 73 career AB, Carew hit .301 against Ryan, with 3 doubles, 2 triples, and 2 home runs (for a slugging pct. of .561).
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 9/26/2022
-------------------
Bill: Follow-up to yesterday's BABIP question: Kevin Gausman's BABIP this season, .366 at the moment, is the highest since 1901. Jay Jaffe had a piece on this a few days ago:
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fip-or-flop-why-kevin-gausman-isnt-part-of-the-al-cy-young-conversation/
His conclusion was that there were some factors at play other than just bad luck.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 9/21/2022
OK. I'd blame the shift, myself.
-------------------
Bill: Two-part question:
1) Would you have sent Verlander out to pitch the 5th last night?
2) If yes, is there any point in the 5th when you would have pulled him?
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 10/29/2022
We were at a concert. I didn't see the game.
-------------------
Bill: A comment on your "Fourth power is actually generous; 10th power might be more accurate" response.
One place where the 10th-power relationship is absolutely accurate is in card collecting (I was a casual collector in the ‘90s). It's basically Hall of Fame or nothing when it comes to the value of cards. Players like Reggie Smith, Jack Clark, Orel Hershiser, Vida Blue, etc.--really good players who had 90% of a HOF career--their cards are worthless soon after they're off the ballot. That's even true of guys like Kenny Lofton, Lou Whitaker, and Dwight Evans, players who probably should be in the HOF. It's kind of silly, and has very little relationship to a player's actual value.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 11/28/2022
Right. I don't collect cards, but I did go to a card show in the 1990s, I think, and was very surprised that I was able to buy Minnie Minoso cards for like a dollar. That was before he was in the Hall of Fame.
-------------------
Bill: The question about Teddy Higuera yesterday got me to look up his career box, and, while I know WAR is not your thing, I find this quite baffling: In 1986, Clemens' breakthrough season, Clemens threw more innings than Higuera, gave up fewer runs, fewer earned runs, 50 fewer hits, fewer walks, fewer HR, and struck out 30 more batters. Higuera led in Baseball Reference's version of WAR, though, 9.4 to Clemens' 8.8.
Does that make any kind of sense? I looked up their win shares for 1986, and you have Clemens at 29 and Higuera at 25.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 11/21/2022
No, I couldn't explain that. Higuera was a great pitcher, though, for just a few years. My guess would be that the slightly absurd WAR for Higuera vs. Clemens in 1986 is based on two things:
1) the belief that Milwaukee County Stadium in 1986 was a better hitter's park than Fenway (which of course is not TRUE, but there's a one-year fluke in the data which gives that appearance), and
2) Some sort of nonsense about fielding. If you assume or believe or conclude somehow that Boston's defense in 1986 was much, much better than Milwaukee's and then you subtract the defensive contribution from the pitcher's results, you could reach that conclusion. Again, not true; Boston's defense in 1986 was somewhere between "bad" and "horrifically terrible", with one or two good defensive players.
-------------------
Bill: Kind of a follow-up to a point you made last month about second-tier players being forgotten.
Andruw Jones and Torii Hunter were very different players, but if you take a step back, they a) were both primarily center fielders, b) both won numerous Gold Gloves (10 for Jones, 9 for Hunter; all were consecutive), and c) both ended up with almost identical OPS+ marks of 111 (Jones) and 110 (Hunter).
Hunter played well into his late 30s; Jones started to fade quickly after 30. They're somewhat close in WAR on Baseball Reference (62 for Jones, 51 for Hunter); not sure how they fare in Win Shares.
But in the HOF voting right now, Jones is almost at 70% while Hunter is at 0%. I don't think Hunter is a HOF'er, Jones I'm still a little iffy on. But the gap there in voting greatly exaggerates the difference in their actual value.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 12/31/2022
Andruw Jones is not "iffy"; Andruw Jones is a completely unqualified candidate who has sort of inexplicably developed a base of delusional fans who imagine that he should be a Hall of Famer. But good point about Torii Hunter.
-------------------
Bill: A comment on the combined World Series no-hitter (and of course interested in your own opinion).
I was chastised on a message board for not greeting it with the requisite excitement--"jaded" was the charge, I believe. But you can't really manufacture excitement where there is none, and personally I just didn't care. The thrill of a no-hitter, to me, is in one guy trying to dodge a thousand minefields and reaching the other side, not in seeing one guy pitch five no-hit innings (happens many times a season) and three or four other guys pitch an inning each of no-hit baseball (which, according to Joe Posnanski, happened 4,421 times last year). When the Phillies hit five home runs the game before, that was cool. But it wasn't nearly as exciting as seeing Reggie or Pablo Sandoval hit three in one game.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 12/13/2022
When Pat Seerey hit 4 home runs in a game, that must have been the coolest thing ever. There were like 900 people in the Ballpark, but if you ask about it now, there'll be 200,000 who claim they were there.
No, seriously…there is an issue there. One of the great questions of the game is "What do people enjoy about baseball?" What makes it popular; what makes it seem a part of your life?
I would agree that the World Series no-hitter--which actually was not a no-hitter according to the rules announced by Fay Vincent in the early 1990s--but I agree that it was kind of a yawner, and this isn't because you or I are jaded; it is because it wasn't a real thing. It's like a diamond with a cloudy, cracked area in it, or a beautiful river that smells like dead fish, or a swimming pool with an alligator. There is a "value" that is being missed there, very much like the original things that drove us into sabermetrics, only more important.
-------------------
Bill: Something that puzzles me about Sal Bando, who died yesterday.
During his '69 to '74 peak, Bando received steady MVP support, finishing second once and in the top 4 three times. But when he came up for the HOF, he only received three votes (less than 1%) and was gone. It was a relatively soft year, too (1987), with Billy Williams getting in on his sixth try, and Catfish Hunter barely making it on his third.
I would think there would have been a decent amount of overlap in those two groups of voters. How did Bando fall out of favour in the intervening decade? Not that he'd necessarily get into the HOF, but I would have expected him to hang around on the ballot for a number of years.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 1/23/2023
This is a question capable of study, but I think you are assuming a degree of overlap between voting on those two things…assuming a degree of overlap greater than what actually exists. I would bet we could identify at least 25 players who had more MVP support than Bando did, but who also never reached 5% in the Hall of Fame voting.
But I would fall back on a familiar trope of mine, something I have written for almost 50 years. I remember when Dick Allen was first on a Hall of Fame ballot, I think he drew 4% or something, but I wrote that Allen would eventually be in the Hall of Fame. I remember being ridiculed for suggesting such a thing.
But the numbers outlast everything else. Essentially, what I wrote then was "100 years from now, people will have forgotten who Dick Allen was, will have forgotten all of his controversies and forgotten all of his juvenile, team-destructive behavior; it will be as if it didn't exist--but his numbers will still be there, exactly the same as they are now."
Statistics are the bones of baseball history. After you are dead, if your body is left out in nature, if it is a hot, dry environment, all of your flesh and skin and organs will rot and will disappear in about two months--but your bones will last 100 years. The same with a baseball player. A clear memory of who he is, who he was…half of it will disappear 10 years after he retires, 90% of it will disappear 30 years after he is gone. But his statistics will last as long as baseball is played, as long as there are record books.
Bando is the opposite of Dick Allen in certain respects. The stuff that people will forget over time, as was true of Don Mattingly or David Ortiz or Cal Ripken or Willie Stargell or Rod Carew or Ken Singleton…99% of that was positive stuff. But not too much of it gets remembered.
-------------------
Bill: A friend and I were messaging each other about Clemente the other day, our mild surprise that Posnanski didn't include him in the first class of some HOF thing he's doing. What I wrote: "The other thing is, he managed a .317 lifetime average during the most pitcher-dominant decade post-deadball. Put him in the PED era, and I bet he averages .345 (without PEDs) with 30 HR a year; put him in Colorado during that era, and I bet he would have hit .400 one season.
Later I thought, "Is there any validity at all to any of that? Am I just picking numbers out of the air?" That's my question: am I?
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 2/20/2023
Clemente was a great player, but many people romanticize how great he was and overlook his limitations. Theoretically putting him in Colorado is not a way to "normalize" his numbers; it is a way to DE-normalize his performance so as to make it look greater than it is. Talking about steroids is just babble; Clemente didn't use steroids, and 99% of the other stars in the history of the game didn't, either, so why are we talking about that. Batting average is important and valuable, but using it as a stand-in for all offensive performance is not appropriate. Clemente had perhaps the worst strikeout/walk ratio (relative to his era) of any truly great hitter. He grounded into a large number of double plays. His power was limited although meaningful, and he did play in a poor home run park. He made a LOT of errors. He wasn't a base stealer.
There were at least four outstanding right fielders born in 1934--Aaron, Clemente, Kaline and Maris, plus Frank Robinson who was born in 1935. Among those five Aaron was the greatest player, I think, with Robby second, and then Kaline and Clemente are close enough that you can't realllly say with confidence which was the greater player.
In ideal conditions, would he have hit .400? Sure. So would Musial, Aaron, Mays, Carew, Wade Boggs. Clemente was a great player. I don't see the point in trying to make him look even greater.
-------------------
Bill: In the '85 Abstract, you used part of your Tigers essay to research this basic question: at what point does a hot start become meaningful. I won't try to summarize all the data here, but your basic conclusion as applied to the Rays this year (now 12-0) would be--I think--you should take their start seriously.
I find them really interesting because: 1) they're usually blowing the opposition away; and 2) they've had a noticeably weak schedule.
How much does the second point mitigate the first?
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 4/14/2023
Not at all. Their schedule hasn't been that weak, and the difference between how well you play against "weak" teams as opposed to average teams isn't anything. That's a basketball/football argument that gets transplanted into baseball. In football, you play three straight opponents that will finish 3-13, 4-12, 3-13…well, sure, you're got a meaningful advantage. In baseball it doesn't really change the odds very much.
Tampa Bay is a really good team. I watched the whole Red Sox series. The list of things that the Rays did better than the Red Sox would go on for an hour. They're going to win 90 to 99 games. And 13-0 is impressive.
*******
Of the Rays first 13 games, 5 have been against the Red Sox and the Yankees. The other teams are presumed weak, might actually be weak or might not, but by the end of year the weighted winning percentage of those opponents will probably be .450 or better.
The random chance that an average team will go 13-0 against average opposition is .000 122. The random chance that an average team would go 13-0 against .450 opposition is .000 421. So yes, it is mathematically RELATIVELY different, comparing one to the other, but in practical terms, it isn't. It is one in 2400 as opposed to one in 8000.
-------------------
Bill: I'm pretty caught up in Luis Arráez's season right now, I think because I grew up watching Rod Carew flirt with .400 so many times through the '70s. Here's a sampling of how late in the season it was before Carew dropped under .400 for good:
Four obvious comparisons for Arráez from the past ~50 years, and what they did through their first ~2000 plate appearances (Arráez up till today, the other four for full seasons):
Question: Am I jumping the gun, or do you think he belongs in their company? Boggs had the fastest start, but I was struck by how close he is to Ichiro and Gwynn.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 6/23/2023
You're jumping the gun. But Arraez could be the most interesting of the group, because he is doing this in a time when many of us were wondering whether it could still be done.
-------------------
Bill: I will miss this...Someone on a message board today noticed the Rays' extreme home/road split, wondering if that was unusual. So I looked into it: it would seem so for teams this good. All post-war teams that have won 108 games or more, with their home/road winning percentages:
I guess the question is, is this just a meaningless blip, or does it suggest some flukiness to the Rays that will catch up to them?
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 6/15/2023
There is not space left in the season that you would PREDICT it would catch up with them. Odds are it will flatten out a little bit.
-------------------
Bill: Can you think of any well-known precedents for Alek Manoah's ordeals this year? He gave up 3.2 BB/9 his rookie year, then 2.3 BB/9 his second year; a third of the way into 2023, he's walking almost 6.5 batters per 9 innings. That's the most obvious issue right now, but his H/9 are also way up, and his K/9 are a little down.
He can't find the plate, and he's gone from a Cy Young contender to one of the worst starters in the AL. My first thought is that he's hurt, but surely the Jays wouldn't continue to trot him out there if that's true.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 6/3/2023
Well, I'm sorry to tell you, but you stated the question in such a way that it's difficult to find anything in there that would be a contribution to understanding. If you take a player who has a single characteristic, you can almost always find 20 players or 1000 players who share that characteristic. If you take two characteristics--this player is at Point X and then moved to point Y--then you can isolate a study group, which might be 5 players or 200, who have those two characteristics.
The more data points you add to the description, the more each player becomes unique, so that if you have 6 or 8 data points, generally every player is unique .But if everybody is unique, then nobody is unique; it is merely that they all have their own career arcs.
You've got a list of characteristics here…BB/9 in his rookie year, his second year, his third year, also his H/9 going up and his K/9 going down, and also you've specified that we're looking for WELL KNOWN examples. It's too much. Everybody is unique at that point, so nobody is unique, so there is really nothing there to be studied. Sorry.
-------------------
Bill: I got lost in the weeds on the Alek Manoah question...A more basic version: can you think of any precedents for a young, Cy Young-caliber pitcher his first season or two who completely fell apart without any underlying health issues?
I thought of Wayne Simpson, for some reason, but nope, rotator cuff.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 6/5/2023
It is historically very, very common for outstanding pitchers to lose effectiveness after one or two good years; in fact, I would guess that that is more then rule than the exception. I would guess that more than half of great young pitchers in history DID burn out than not.
Your assumption that there is no underlying health issue seems very questionable to me. I would suggest that there almost certainly IS an underlying health issue; we just don't know what it is yet.
-------------------
Bill: Are you familiar with Pat Jordan's writing (and if so, are you a fan)? He was a drafted prospect who never made the majors and became a writer for Sports Illustrated.
I'm reading The Suitors of Spring, profiles of various pitchers published in 1973. I found the Sam McDowell chapter to be a fascinating snapshot of lofty psychoanalysis just a few years before you launched the Abstract. One of a few explanations offered as to why McDowell doesn't win more games:
"He seems to be afraid that if he let his talent grow to its fulfillment, he might cease to possess it, and it, in turn, would possess him. So he treats his talent like some unruly growth he must periodically prune before it becomes unmanageable."
McDowell's alcoholism is never mentioned, and that I understand (possibly not even known yet). But also barely mentioned are all the mediocre Cleveland teams he pitched for. I'm enjoying the book, but in that regard it feels like a real time capsule.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 8/1/2023
Oh, he writes fantastically well, and I think anyone has to admire that. Not always clear to me that what he is saying has been thoroughly thought through.
-------------------
Bill: Thanks for answering my many questions over the years (117 by my count--I went through and saved them). One more before you go.
What I am I missing with Rougned Odor--meaning, how does he keep a job? His batting averages the last five seasons (working backwards) have been .203, .207, .202, .167, .205. In fairness, the first of those seasons he hit 30 HR, and he was in double figures the next three seasons (but probably not this year). He doesn't appear to be an outstanding fielder, he strikes out a lot and doesn't walk much, and he doesn't steal bases anymore. Does he have a reputation as the greatest clubhouse guy in the world?
I may be a little biased here as a Jays fan who remembers his dust-up with Bautista.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 8/21/2023
Juan Samuel syndrome. Juan Samuel was kind of a sensation when he first came up, very young, a second baseman, extremely fast. He was perceived as a potential superstar in the building.
He struck out a
lot, couldn't actually play second base (or any other position) very well, and
he didn't get better. His weaknesses kind of swallowed him up, but it took a
long time for the league to come to grips with what had happened to him. He was
still a "great athlete", still had star potential. It took a long time for EVERYBODY to accept
that this is just what he is. No matter where you put him, there is some reason
that it doesn't work.
