Absolutely nothing.

I consider myself to be relatively knowledgeable when it comes to sabermetrics in baseball.  I do my best to learn new statistics that come out, and search to find the flaw in certain stats so that I’m not spouting them off incorrectly.  When I heard a radio host on WEEI comparing Alex Gonzalez’ and Marco Scutaro’s UZR/150 after about 20 games, I fully understood that they should just shut the hell up.  One huge issue I have right now with sabermetrics is WAR.

WAR, on the surface, is a great statistic.  It’s pretty much context driven, and encompasses just about all tangible, measurable numbers, without leaving any room for the intangibles often attributed to otherwise flawed players.  In layman’s terms, Jason Varitek’s WAR gets no boost for him being the greatest game caller in MLB history.  That’s a good thing.  My problem with WAR comes down to one thing.  How does anyone truly know who’s WAR is what? [...]

When Ruben Amaro finds out Herr had 110 RBI, Chase Utley will be Wally Pipp'd

As we learn more and more all the time, statistics in baseball can lie.  The back of the baseball card statistics used to tell us something, but thru the years we’ve learned that to get a true take on a player’s performance, you must dig much deeper. I’m going to take a look at some off the wall statistics, and figure out how the hell they ended up being there.  I mean seriously, most baseball aficionado’s know that Bob Welch won 27 games in  1990, but why him?  Today I will look at the strange case of Tom Herr’s RBI binge in 1985.

Tom Herr once had 110 RBI with 8 HR’s, while Barry Bonds had 90 RBI with 45 HR’s.  Tom Herr’s a better RBI guy than Barry Bonds, right? (Joe Morgan nods in agreement)  Well, of course not, but what led to these seasons?  Herr came to the plate with a 449 runners on base, and knocked in a whopping 108 (24%) of them.  For his career Herr knocked in 16% of all baserunners, so he clearly overachieved at driving in runs in 1985.  While a lot of that can be attributed to season to season luck, there was more in play.  In 1985, Herr’s BABIP was .315, as opposed to a career BABIP of .297, certainly higher than normal, but that increased to .363 with men on base.  Where he also got lucky was who was hitting (and running) in front of him.  Herr led the league in sacrifice flies that year.  A guy with a career .350 slugging percentage leading the league in sac flies simply doesn’t make sense, he was not a flyball hitter.  Herr’s 110 RBI season can largely be attributed to the speed of rookie Vince Coleman and a career year for Willie McGee.  The two guys hitting in front of Herr combined for 28 triples and 166 SB’s, and only 11 HR’s.  When those guys got on base, they were flying around the basepaths and getting into scoring position regularly.  Looking back, it’s not surprising that Herr knocked in 110 runs, it’s surprising he didn’t knock in more.

Bonds on the other hand came to the plate with just 369 runners on base, and drove in a paltry 13% of them.  Why was he so “bad” at driving in runs?  Did Herr have an innate ability that did Bonds not have to drive in runs?  Of course not.  Those 369 baserunners came in 262 plate appearances for Bonds.  He hit .331 in those plate appearances, so clearly he didn’t shrink under the pressure of hitting with runners on (and neither does J.D. Drew).  Bonds, amazingly, was walked 101 times in those 262 plate appearances with runners on base. 56 of those walks were intentional.  To put that in perspective, no other player in MLB history has been intentionally walked more than 45 times in a full season. Talk about real fear, not the Jim Rice media generated fear (who was intentionally walked 77 times in 16 years).  Holy shit. With runners on base, the pitchers wanted no part of Bonds, and would rather put an extra runner on than have to throw him strikes.

Here we are in 2010, and Ryan Howard just got a 5 year/$125 million contract on top of the 2 years he already had, primarily based on homeruns and RBI.  The homeruns are great, the RBI clearly need some context, and the Phillies are unaware of that.  Ryan Howard drives in about the same percentage of baserunners over the course of his career as David DeJesus.  How anyone can still use RBI as a useful statistic in evaluating a player is beyond me, and the Herr/Bonds examples above just do more to clarify this.

Definitely not the face you want to see from your closer

Joe Borowski’s league leading 45 saves in 2007 despite a 5.07 ERA is often used to destroy the notion that saves are an important stat.  While it’s true that saves aren’t indicative of how well a pitcher has performed, should Borowski’s season be used as an example of this?

Let me start by saying that looking at any closers stats for a season creates SSS problems.  Borowski threw just 65.2 innings in that 2007 season, CC Sabathia surpassed that number on May 24^th in 2009.  So even looking at important rate stats, a few blowups could potentially skew how we look at a closer, once we’ve decided to look past saves.

Joe Borowski wasn’t quite as bad in 2007 as his 5.07 ERA would suggest.  Simply put, when he was bad, he was terrible.  Borowski gave up 37 earned runs in 2007.  He managed to give up 16, or 43% of those runs in his five losses.  Those five losses covered….wait for it……3.2 innings!  So he gave up 43% of the runs he gave up all year in 5.5% of his innings total.  Remove both those innings and those runs and his ERA in all other outcomes other than a loss is 3.05.  So since he was only truly terrible for 5.5% of his innings, he wasn’t as bad as many (including me several times) would make him out to be.  When he shit the bed, he really shit the bed.  He may not have been Mo, but the ERA, along with the save stat, certainly is misleading isn’t it?  In save situations he had a 3.73 ERA and a 3.85 FIP.  In non-save situations he had a 9.60 ERA, but just a 5.27 FIP.  While he was bad in non-save situations, he was also unlucky.

A closer’s job, for the most part, is to save games, and other than a few major blowups, Borowski was pretty solid.  There are 18.7 billion reasons why saves are a flawed stat, and while on the surface quoting Borowski’s season makes sense, the deeper look at the stats reveal that I’ll probably leave Borowski out of my next “saves are dumb” argument.  Of course, if whomever I’m arguing with thinks saves are worthwhile, I know they clearly haven’t looked into Borowski, so maybe I’ll just keep that piece in my back pocket.

the 1 was cooler anyway

Mariano Rivera got a save in the Yankees’ 6-2 win over the Angels last night. Mo getting a save isn’t anything strange in and of itself, as he has over 500 of those in his career, but the way he got it was rather amusing to me. Now, here at M&A, we’re pretty big fans of stats. However, no stat is perfect and some stats are just better than others. I’m sure this is preaching to the choir, but looking at OPS, OPS+, wOBA, wRC+, and VORP is a better judge of a player’s offensive abilities than dingers and ribbies. ERA, FIP, K/9, K/BB, etc., are much better indicators of a pitcher’s worth than how many wins that pitcher has. Rate stats are generally much better than counting stats. Which brings us back around to one of the silliest counting stats of all: the mystical, magical save stat.

Take what happened, exactly, in last night’s game. Joba got the last two outs in the eighth (or TEH EIGHTH!!11eleventy!!! if you prefer), getting out of what was a situation of decent leverage with a nice double play, then came back out for the ninth. Again, the score was 6-2 Yankees. They had a 98% chance of winning the game before Joba did anything. He issued a leadoff walk to Mike Napoli. Annoying, but still not anything to panic about. He struck Brandon Wood out swinging, then got Reggie Willits to fly out. None of these at-bats were particularly stress-inducing. Eric Aybar, representing the last out, hit a weak ground ball to shortstop. It was an easy out, except Jeter booted it. Highlighting how silly counting stats can be at times, this play wasn’t called an error by Jeter, but a hit by Aybar. Go figure.

Anyway, with a 99% win expectancy, Girardi promptly took Joba out and put in Mo, who, in Mo style, got Abreu to ground out to second on four pitches. With two men on, Abreu could have, theoretically, homered to make it 6-5. And then Hunter, after him, could have homered to make it 6-6. Or, Abreu could have reached, and Hunter could have hit a grand slam to make it 6-6. So the tying run was on deck, making it a save situation with one out to go; Mo got the save.

I didn’t have a problem with Girardi having a quick hook with Hughes in the ninth inning of Game 3 of the 2009 World Series. It was the World Series and Hughes had been struggling in the postseason. In a situation as big as the WS, you do whatever possible to murder any possible momentum the other team could gain, and Mariano is very good at doing that. Maybe Girardi just had terrible visions in his head of then-Angel Teixeira’s grand slam off Edwar Ramirez in 2008, and Abreu’s grand slam only a couple of days earlier. Maybe he thought Joba had already gotten out of one high-leverage situation in the eighth inning and wasn’t going to chance it in the ninth. But overall, taking out Joba for Mo last night just seemed like an overreaction to me.

And, of course, of all the silly counting stats, saves are one of the silliest. The last three AL save champions were Joe Borowski, Francisco Rodriguez (who got Cy Young and first-place MVP votes for setting the all-time single-season save record!), and Brian Fuentes. The year Borowski was AL save champion, he had a 5.07 ERA and 1.431 WHIP, blowing eight saves along the way. By WAR, he was the third most valuable reliever on his own team. 2009 Fuentes and his rather pedestrian stats was the fourth most valuable reliever on his own team. K-Rod had a pretty good year in his 2008 save champion year, but was less valuable than Mariano Rivera, Jonathan Papelbon, Brian Fuentes, Brad Lidge, Kerry Wood, Grant Balfour, Jonathan Broxton, Joe Nathan, Chad Qualls, Ramon Ramirez, and Matt Thornton that year. And that’s just talking about relievers! Whew. In other words, he wasn’t close to being deserving of a #1 MVP vote just because he reached some arbitrary number on a counting stat. (Many props to JGS at RAB.)

Oh well, at least we were spared Kay being all gossipy about Joba saving the game for Hughes. Which means we had to listen to him talk about how amazing and magical and mystique and aura-y it was that the last #42 was going to get a save on Jackie Robinson Day. Win some, lose some.

I'm bout to go Donnie Moore on someone

How the hell does a guy pitch to about the league average, yet lose 27 games in a row?

From May 6th, 1992 to July 24th, 1993, Anthony Young won zero games while losing twenty-seven. What a horrible pitcher, right? Even knowing that wins and losses are not a good way to judge a pitchers performance, it takes a lot of poor luck to go thru what Anthony Young went thru. Much worse pitchers have won a lot more games than Anthony Young did.

444 (or Fo Fo Fo if you’re Moses Malone). That’s how many days Anthony Young went form the first loss of the streak to the last. He pitched in an astonishing 76 games from start to finish, winning zero of course, yet managing to save 16(saves another tits on a bull statistic). Why (besides being the Mets), did the Mets continue to throw him out there? The answer is, he just wasn’t that bad a pitcher. Not only did the streak span 76 games, but he ran the gauntlet of roles, with 17 starts, the aforementioned 16 saves, and a ton of middle relief appearances.

7 of Young’s 17 starts were quality starts (at least 6 innings, 3 ER or less). Included was a 7 inning, 2 run performance in which the Mets managed only 3 hits and 1 run. Another performance consisted of 6 innings, 3 ER and the Mets this time managed 6 hits to go with their 1 run. Next up on the “It sucks to be Anthony Young tour”, a 6 inning, 3 hit, 0 ER performance in which he left with a 1-0 lead. The Mets promptly gave up 8 runs in the next 2 innings, costing Young another shot at victory. Another gem, a 6 inning 3 ER performance in which the Mets commit a modest 4 errors, and allow Young to take another loss. The best of the bunch would have to be a dominating performance by Young against the Padres, 8 innings, 3 hits, 2 runs, 7k’s, 0 walks. The Mets offense that day? One hit. To quote Harry Doyle, one goddamn hit? As a reliever Young wasn’t spared either. He threw 2 innings of relief, gave up 1 hit, struck out 2, walked no one and took a loss. How? A runner attempted to steal 3rd, the catcher threw the ball into LF, and Young was hung with yet another loss. I’m beginning to think tRA, or teammate rallying ability (alex gonzalez™) may be a legit statistic. Did his teammates hate this poor bastard?

As if we needed more evidence to denounce pitchers wins as a useful statistic, Anthony Young’s journey to infamy is just more evidence. Too bad Young didn’t play for the 2008-2009 era Mets, his journey would have been spared with a torn labrum or elbow ligament. You really have to wonder how he didn’t go all Donnie Moore on someone. Anthony Young: Proof that life is indeed a bitch.