The Futility Infielder

The day after my JAWS-flavored take on the starting pitchers on the 2008 Hall of Fame ballot ran at Baseball Prospectus, my take on the relievers is up as well, thus -- to my great relief -- completing this year's series (the reliever portion is free, the starter one is sub-only). For those who have been following the series from year to year, the results among the pitchers shouldn't come as a surprise; my system identified Bert Blyleven, Rich Gossage and Lee Smith as Hall-worthy and the rest... not so much. That trio joins Tim Raines, Alan Trammell and Mark McGwire from among the hitters to make up the JAWS Class of 2008 photo.

As I wrote in the starters piece, Blyleven ranks among the top 20 pitchers of all time according to JAWS. He's the highest-ranked pitcher who's eligible for the Hall but not in:

Pitcher            PRAA  PRAR  WARP3   Peak   JAWS   SUP
Walter Johnson      818  1994  209.6  109.5  159.6         HOF
Cy Young            943  2024  213.8   99.5  156.7         HOF
Roger Clemens       666  2016  199.6   83.9  141.8
Greg Maddux         481  1689  180.3   86.0  133.2
Pete Alexander      593  1520  160.1   91.0  125.6         HOF
Christy Mathewson   480  1285  149.1   92.9  121.0         HOF
Tom Seaver          439  1576  152.2   75.8  114.0    96   HOF
Warren Spahn        324  1598  153.3   72.9  113.1         HOF
Randy Johnson       428  1570  147.0   77.3  112.2
Lefty Grove         520  1456  138.5   81.9  110.2         HOF
Kid Nichols         494  1248  131.2   84.1  107.7         HOF
Steve Carlton       264  1509  137.0   71.6  104.3   104   HOF
Phil Niekro         262  1485  137.7   67.5  102.6    97   HOF
Robin Roberts       304  1448  129.8   74.8  102.3         HOF
Gaylord Perry       266  1512  132.9   68.8  100.9    96   HOF
Tom Glavine         296  1341  137.4   63.7  100.6
Bert Blyleven       323  1546  135.1   65.3  100.2    97
Bob Gibson          329  1260  120.7   76.3   98.5         HOF
Hal Newhouser       311  1109  111.0   83.0   97.0         HOF
Fergie Jenkins      290  1384  125.1   68.4   96.8   101   HOF
...
Nolan Ryan          210  1661  128.1   59.4   93.8    95   HOF
Jim Palmer          203  1116  100.8   63.9   82.4   109   HOF
Don Sutton          141  1371  112.2   48.2   80.2   105   HOF
Catfish Hunter        1   820   70.0   51.9   61.0   112   HOF

It's true Blyleven has one of the lowest WARP peaks shown above, but he more than holds his own with his enshrined contemporaries. His secondary peak measure, PRAA, puts him 30-60 runs past Carlton, Niekro, Perry, and Jenkins, and more than 100 beyond his other enshrined contemporaries -- Ryan, Palmer, Sutton and Hunter; only Seaver outdistances him. Spoiled by the half-dozen of those aforementioned peers who won 300 games from the mid-'60s to the mid-'80s, when the days of the four-man rotation dominated, the BBWAA hasn't elected a starter with fewer than 300 wins since Jenkins in 1991. Note the last column, which compares the run support of those contemporaries in a park- and league-adjusted index similar to ERA+, where 100 is average; Blyleven got three percent less support than the average starter during his time, comparable to many of those contemporaries but nonetheless something which kept him from attaining 300 wins.

For the relievers, I use some extra information -- BP's Reliever Expected Wins Added (WXRL) stat:

WXRL accounts for the discovery that a reliever at the end of a ballgame has a quantitatively greater impact on winning and losing (a ratio called leverage) than a starter does. It measures that impact by comparing a team's chances of winning based on the game state (bases, outs, score differential) before he enters and after he leaves. For the purposes of measuring a pitcher's Hall-worthiness, it functions as something of a career/peak hybrid; one can accumulate a high total via performing well under high-pressure situations for shorter periods or in more moderate pressure situations for longer. Two years ago, I put aside an earlier kludge and began incorporating WXRL totals into a Reliever's Adjusted JAWS score via the formula RAJAWS: ((0.5 x WXRL) + JAWS).

...Given the small sample size of Hall of Fame relievers, it's worthwhile to check out the RAJAWS leaderboard for some perspective. The list is somewhat incomplete, as our play-by-play database currently only goes back to 1959, so it's missing the first seven years of [Hoyt] Wilhelm's career, four years of Lindy McDaniel, and seven of Stu Miller (all denoted with asterisks below), to say nothing of their forebears. Nonetheless, we can get a pretty solid idea of where this year's candidates rank with regards to the enshrined and the two active pitchers who are likely bets to reach the Hall soon after retirement, Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman. Here's the provisional version of the RAJAWS Top 20:

Pitcher             WARP   Peak   JAWS   WXRL  RAJAWS
Mariano Rivera      93.9   62.6   78.3   62.5  109.5
Dennis Eckersley   120.8   53.7   87.3   35.1  104.8   HoF
Rich Gossage        88.4   56.0   72.2   53.8   99.1
Trevor Hoffman      82.2   49.2   65.7   62.3   96.9
Hoyt Wilhelm        96.5   47.6   72.1   39.0   91.5*  HoF
Lee Smith           83.7   47.3   65.5   47.0   89.0
Rollie Fingers      80.1   49.4   64.8   45.8   87.6   HOF
John Franco         80.9   41.2   61.1   44.8   83.5
Tom Gordon          85.5   46.7   66.1   33.8   83.0
Billy Wagner        66.7   49.2   58.0   44.9   80.4
Doug Jones          66.5   48.2   57.4   33.0   73.8
Lindy McDaniel      72.0   44.1   58.1   31.3   73.7*
Bruce Sutter        59.0   47.6   53.3   37.4   72.0   HOF
Roberto Hernandez   66.8   46.5   56.7   28.2   70.7
Stu Miller          63.5   43.6   53.6   34.1   70.6*
John Wetteland      58.5   46.5   52.5   35.0   70.0
Tom Henke           59.9   42.7   51.3   36.8   69.7
Tug McGraw          60.1   38.5   49.3   39.6   69.1
Dan Quisenberry     55.2   48.2   51.7   34.0   68.7
Kent Tekulve        64.7   40.3   52.5   30.3   67.7

Rivera surpassed Eckersley atop this list last year. With Gossage apparently poised for enshrinement after receiving 71.2 percent of the vote last year, the day where six of the top seven relievers via my system are enshrined isn't far off. In that regard, the election of Sutter two years ago may have been the best thing to happen to the Goose. As I said on my XM spot with Chuck Wilson yesterday, Sutter as the save specialist and Eckersley as the ninth-inning specialist represented easily definable data points for the evolution of the modern closer. The recognition of Gossage's transcendence of that ever-narrowing niche has created a groundswell of support such that his vote totals have increased dramatically over the last four votes:

Year  Votes   Pct
2004   206   40.7%  Eckersley elected
2005   285   55.2%
2006   336   64.6%  Sutter elected
2007   388   71.2%

It's probably just a coincidence that those numbers parallel the widening exposure of my JAWS project, which began in '04 as well, but I can't help feeling a tiny measure of satisfaction at this trend nonetheless.

In any event, I've got a fair bit of Hall of Fame-related media lining up for next week:

• a radio appearance on KTRH 740 AM in Houston, Monday at 7 a.m. ET / 6 a.m. CT, discussing Roger Clemens' appearance on 60 Minutes. You can listen via their website. I may be doing more Fox affiliate "phoners" that morning as well.

• a BP chat on Tuesday, 2 PM Eastern, just as the voting results are announced.

• a radio appearance on Sports Xtra 1360 AM in San Diego, Tuesday at 3:40 p.m. ET / 12:40 p.m. PT. You can listen via their website.

• my regularly scheduled appearance on Sports Radio 1470 in Toledo, Wednesday at 4:10 p.m. ET.

• an XM Radio appearance to be named later.

Should be another busy week!

Labels: chat, Chats, JAWS, radio