The Futility Infielder

In this week's Hit List, I made note of the fact that Ken Griffey, Jr. had tied Mickey Mantle on the all-time home run list with his 536th dinger on Sunday. Since then, Griffey has missed three games with what's been reported as both hamstring and foot problems, with one report saying that he had actually pulled part of a tendon in his foot off of the bone and that his season was potentially over. It seemed quite a shame, since Griffey is in the midst of his best season since 2000, hitting .301/.369/.576 with 35 homers in 555 plate appearances, more than he had in the previous two seasons combined.

Wednesday brought a refutation of that assessment:

Trainer Mark Mann said it would be "premature at this point" to say surgery would be necessary, and "we fully expect him to play again in the 2005 season." Two years ago, Griffey required season-ending surgery on his right ankle.

"The MRI showed nothing like what he had a couple of years ago with his ankle," Mann said. "It's not as if he pulled it off the bone. It does show inflammation in the area. A strain by definition does involve inflammation of the tissue, and it can be associated with a tear."

It's been a long time since I found myself rooting for Griffey; I was thoroughly a fan during his Seattle days, but his ugly exit there and his perpetual whining once he was traded led me to write this about him in 2001:

Ken Griffey Jr. Whines, Again: So what else is new? It's gratifying to watch Griffey wallow miserably in the bed which he's made for himself. He whines because he wants to leave Seattle to play closer to home. He whines because he finally gets to choose his city, only to find his salary severely hampers the team's ability to field a competitive team (it doesn't help that he signs with a mid-market club which throws around nickels like they're manhole covers). He whines because they attempt to break up that team of underpaid underachievers and retool. He probably whines when he does long division and gets a remainder. Grrrr...

Ouch. Time and the man's tribulations have tempered my distaste for Griffey, especially as I've watched the infinitely more odious (not to mention juiced-up) Barry Bonds climb the home run ladder and go places where just a few years ago we all though Junior was headed. Given that Griffey has missed almost the equivalent of two seasons over the past four coming into this year (to say nothing of half of 1995), he should have been well over 600 by now, only the fifth player to cross that mark, with a shot at catching Hank Aaron. It didn't happen that way, of course.

To the extent that I pay any attention to the Reds -- via the Hit List, especially -- I've enjoyed checking in on Griffey's resurgence, and his current tie with Mantle, another player who lost an untold number of homers and games to his physical ailments, provides a good opportunity to compare the two. Here's how they stack up via several Baseball Prospectus metrics, including the Jaffe WARP Score system (JAWS):

         BRAA   BRAR  FRAA   WARP3   PEAK   JAWS
Mantle   1191   918   -42    154.4   62.1  108.3
Griffey   894   634     1    130.9   57.9   94.4

BRAA and BRAR are Batting Runs Above Average and Above Replacmeent, FRAA is Fielding Runs Above Average, WARP3 is Wins Above Replacement Player (the adjusted-for-all-time version), PEAK is his best consecutive five-year string (allowing for injuries, which tosses out Griffey's abbreviated '95) and JAWS is the average of the WARP3 and PEAK totals. The comparison isn't especially close in any of these categories, though it is worth noting that Mantle still has a 276-game edge on Griffey. Nonetheless, Junior is already well qualified for the Hall of Fame, would rank fifth among Hall centerfielders on the JAWS scale. Mantle is fourth, behind only Willie Mays, Ty Cobb, and Tris Speaker. Among active players, Griffey trails only Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Greg Maddux on the JAWS scale.

Loyal reader Marc Normandin of Beyond the Box Score has used some Baseball Prospectus metrics, Equivalent Runs and Fielding Rate, to create a metric of his own called Net Runs Above Average. By his reckoning -- and I haven't checked his methodology very closely yet -- he shows Mantle at 62.36 NRAA per 162 games, Griffey at 48.11.

I'd put it at much closer than that, though my answer uses replacement level instead of average for the comparison; in the end, since our concern is the distance between the two players, the difference comes out in the wash. Using the common convention of equating 10 runs to one win via WARP3 (which has already normalized for everything else) we get:

Mantle: 
154.4 WARP3 * 10 = 1544 runs above replacement
15444 runs/2401 games * 162 games = 104.18 runs/162

Griffey: 
130.9 WARP3 * 10 = 1309 runs above replacement
1309 runs/2125 games * 162 games = 99.79 runs/1622

Or about 4.39 runs per 162, a little less than half a win per year once you project out to a full schedule. Given that this penalizes Mantle for his pinch-hitting -- I don't have my old MacMillan Baseball Encyclopedia handy for the exact number, but he's got 111 fewer games played defensively than total, though some of them were partial -- perhaps it would be better to go on a per plate appearance rate and simply use Batting and Fielding Runs Above Replacement. Projecting out to 550 PA as a season (Mantle averaged 550.5 per year over the course of his career) we get:

Mantle:
1181 BRAR + 231 FRAR = 1412 RAR
1412/9909 * 550 = 78.37 runs per "season"

Griffey
894 BRAR + 287 FRAR = 1181 RAR
1181/9072 = 71.60 runs per "season"

That's 6.77 runs per season, or about 2/3 of a win, about half of Normandin's estimate. That's not exactly neck-and-neck close, but it's no disgrace on Griffey's part either. In any event, I've resolved to try to enjoy the latter-day Griffey, especially as he climbs the home run ladder. Here's hoping he's healthy enough not only to return this season, but to reel off a few more good ones like it. When the alternative is thinking about the tainted Bonds pursuing Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron, anything is better.

Oh, and here's hoping somebody drills Bonds in his surgically repaired knee if and when he returns this year. That would be freakin' hilarious, ROTFLMFAO territory. I really want nothing but misery for the man, given the shame he's brought to the game. That's a topic for another day, however.

• • •

As a champion of futility infielders everywhere, I should note the recent exploits of one Kevin Hooper, a 5'9", 160-pound utilityman playing for the Detroit Tigers' Triple-A affiliate, the Toledo Mud Hens. In the Hens' final game of the regular season, with a playoff spot already wrapped up, manager Larry Parrish took Hooper up on his offer to play all nine positions in a single game. Hooper started at catcher, moved around the infield and then the outfield, and wrapped things up by pitching a 1-2-3 ninth inning to save a 4-3 win. According to The Toledo Blade:

The video board kept track of his progress using an icon with his head on Superman’s body and checking off each position he had visited.

...Hooper made three putouts: catching a [Jason] Grilli strikeout, a diving catch in left field to end the sixth inning and snagging a high fly ball in right field in the eighth.

The “Superman” theme song was played each time he stepped to the plate.

In the ninth, he forced Bobby Hill to ground out to third, struck out Jorge Velandia swinging and made Paul Chiaffredo ground out to third.

...Hooper had pitched one inning before in his career, with Columbus last season. He had never played catcher, first base or right field and named catcher as the hardest position.

Hooper isn't exactly a prospect. A 28-year-old hitting .240/.291/.304 in his fourth year of Triple-A, with a grand total of nine minor-league homers and a sub-.700 OPS in seven seasons (a career line of .271/.347/.341 coming into the year), this is likely his moment in the sun. It's a nice one, though, and you've got to be happy for him.

• • •

In more good news, the assignments for Baseball Prospectus 2006 have been handed out, and I'm pleased to announce that I'll be covering two teams, my first time in doing so. Tradition dictates that I'm not really supposed to advertise which ones, but suffice it to say that one of them was one of my first choices, and the other is one I've written a fair amount this summer; I feel pretty confident of where I'm headed with the essay topics for both. If the early discussions are to be believed, I may also be contributing a back-of-book essay, which would be the icing on my cake. I'm afraid I'll have to remain vague on the specifics for awhile, lest I ruffle any feathers, but I can't help sharing my excitement. With Mind Game's release only a couple of weeks away, we'll have enough specifics to discuss soon.

BP 2006 is being co-edited by Steven Goldman and Christina Karhl. The latter continues to soak up positive publicity for her professional coming-out. This past Sunday's New York Daily News carried a short piece (scroll down past the tennis stuff). Check it out:

The sports world can be an ugly and intolerant place when it comes to gender and sexuality, but when the sports writer formerly known as Chris Kahrl came out professionlly as a woman last month, nobody treated the news like it was a sign of impending apocalypse.

"That's part of the better place we're in today," says Kahrl, a Baseball Prospectus columnist. "We've made progress since the '60s, '70s and '80s. Everyone I've talked to about it - family, friends, colleagues, readers, men and women - have reacted favorably."

Kahrl, 37, has been living as a woman for about two years but came out professionally last month. There was no grand announcement, no press conference - she simply bylined an Aug. 11 Salon story about the Oakland Raiders as "Christina" instead of "Chris."

"I had suppressed that part of my life for so long, but you don't get any do-overs in life," Kahrl says. "I was fortunate enough in terms of my name - at least I'm not named 'Godfrey.' I could have just let it alone as just 'Chris,' but this is where I'm going in my life. This is an opportunity to note what has been a fundamental change."

Good stuff. Anyway, the work on BP06 begins next week with the submission of player lists for the teams were covering. I can't believe it's all happening so fast, but I'm thrilled nonetheless.

• • •

So Tuesday night I'm half-watching the Dodger game from the West Coast, flipping through the latest issue of MacWorld, when I noticed that editor-in-chief Jason Snell dropped Baseball Prospectus into his monthly column. Snell noted that Baseball Prospectus Radio was among the podcasts he's subscribed to, and specifically that he'd been listening to Will Carroll "deconstruct baseball's steroid scandal." Not something I expected to see, but very cool. It turns out Snell has been a BP subscriber for awhile and has connections to a couple of BP authors, Carroll included. We swapped a couple of emails and he's even got a baseball research project on his stove. He seemed just as tickled to have a few MacWorld readers among the BP staff. Good taste, I guess.