The Futility Infielder

"Blame me if you must, but don't ever speak ill of the Program! The Program is rock solid! The Program is sound!"-- Homer J. Simpson

My pal and frequent sparring partner in baseball arguments -- I'll call him Nick because he hates Nicholas, Nikolai and Nickypoo -- took exception to one of my assertions in yesterday's BP piece on Hall of Fame pitchers, and I thought our back-and-forth on the topic would provide an interesting glimpse into the idea behind what I've done.

With the Hall's honor sullied by several bad decisions, mostly at the hands of the now-reconstituted Veterans' Committee, the stated purpose of my mission was to produce a system by which we could evaluate the existing standards of the Hall using advanced performance metrics. We would then apply those standards to the candidates on the ballot, and those above average, the ones who would raise the standards of the Hall, would get the vote on our quasi-ballot. Over the course of two articles and some 10,000 words, I came up with four hitters and four pitchers that did so.

As I did for the hitters, I used BP's Davenport Cards to quantify the average Hall of Fame pitcher in the currencies the Davenport uses, Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP, in this case version 3, which is for use in cross-era comparisons), Pitching Runs Above Replacement (PRAR) and Pitching Runs Above Average (PRAA). I filled in a spreadsheet with each pitcher's career totals, and I also calculated their five-year WARP3 peak (PEAK) and came up with a weighted score (WPWT) that's just an average of the peak and career totals. Basically, we're crediting a player's best seasons twice so that the greatest ones float to the top, and the good ones who just stuck around forever are placed appropriately. What I came up with was a line which showed the average Hall of Fame pitcher's credentials in these advanced statistical categories:

           PRAA   PRAR   WARP3   PEAK   WPWT

AVG HOF SP  239   1002    97.0   44.9   70.9

Okay, that doesn't mean much sitting by itself, but it will soon. Iin a comment on Jack Morris, whose candidacy I once supported, I made the following comment: "Davenport-wise, Morris would be a below-average Hall of Famer, one who's in the same cluster as the elected [Whitey] Ford and [Jim] Bunning, as well as candidates [Dennis] Martinez and [Jimmy] Key."

Nick, a consummate Yankees fan, took issue with this perceived slight of ol' Whitey and wrote to ask whether I'd like a knuckle sandwich. He also asked, "How could a guy with a career ERA+ of 132 be in the same ballpark as a pitcher with a 106 career ERA+. Ford a below average Hall of Famer?"

That's a very good question, and to answer it, here's another chart showing the five pitchers' lines, along with that average again.

           PRAA   PRAR   WARP3   PEAK   WPWT

AVG HOF SP  239   1002    97.0   44.9   70.9

--------------------------------------------

Ford        238    994    95.5   36.5   66.0

Martinez     38    939    94.5   34.7   64.6

Morris       27    916    90.2   38.8   64.5

Bunning     161   1020    86.8   39.3   63.1

Key         195    817    87.4   37.7   62.6

In every category above, Ford is below the average -- microscopically so in the two run-total categories, and within a few whisker on career value, but substantially below in terms of his peak -- nearly two wins above replacement a year. I made a comment in the piece:

Whitey's usage patterns were greatly affected by pitching for the Yankees, who would often shut him down in September to keep him from racking up gaudy win totals (lest they have to pay him more) and to preserve his arm for the World Series, where he was the master, holding many important Series pitching records.

So how could Morris be so close to Ford despite an ERA+ that's 25 percent worse relative to the league? The system emphasizes wins above REPLACEMENT level, which means AVERAGE has some value, and lots of innings at average has a good amount of value. Morris pitched about 700 more innings than Ford, which boosts his career above replacement upward, though it's not quite as high as the Chairman.

This didn't satisfy Nick too much, and about an hour later, two burly men arrived at my door, bearing lead pipes and brass knuckles and offering to "show me how it all adds up." I managed to fend them off long enough to craft this answer:

The Davenport system is designed to isolate the player's individual contributions from his team, making all kinds of adjustments. It adjusts for the level of offensive support a player received (by discarding the pitcher's actual W-L record), the quality of defense (neutralizing the effects of balls in play behind him), his park (which in Whitey's case was built to favor lefties), his era (which for Ford was low scoring, with high totals of innings pitched commonplace), and the extra-curricular things which boost his credentials (World Series rings, Cy Young awards, etc.). Within that context, a slightly larger chunk of what Whitey accomplished was due to his pinstriped teammates, relative to the ways other Hall of Famers were helped by their teammates.

The system sees Whitey's best seasons as worth 7 to 9 Wins Above Replacement. That's good, but it's low for a Hall of Famer -- 10's are superstar seasons, and Whitey never had one of those (which is highly unusual for a Hall of Famer), let alone multiples within a five-year span -- which would have boosted his peak score.

I am not saying that my method is the only means of evaluating a Hall of Famer, or even the best method of ranking Hall of Famers, just that it's a very worthwhile one for leveling the playing field so as to more clearly debate the merits of potential Hall of Famers.

Rocco Knuckles and Bobby Leadfingers (they told me their names) were suitably impressed, letting me off with a few firm punches in the solar plexus while shouting stuff like, "That's for disparaging the all-time leader in winning percentage for a lefty!" and "That's for saying Whitey's below average!" and "Pinstripe this!" The last thing I remember before passing out was a blow to the face accompanied by the phrase, "Count da rings, baby!"

The moral of the story: It's a dangerous business trying to get people to look at baseball statistics a new way.