Remembering (Incorrectly) Bill Buckner

For some reason I can’t remember, I was looking at Bill Buckner’s career stats – as I became a diehard baseball fan in the 1980s he was on the downside of his career, but my recollection was (outside of the hightop black shoes and misplay in Game 6) that he was an excellent hitter and solidly underrated player (sort of a predecessor to Mark Grace).   Looking back at his career stats, we see that he won a batting title in 1980 with the Cubbies, led the league in doubles a few times, and amassed 2715 hits over his two decade career.  2715!!!!  For reference, here is the list of the 15 players that have at least that many hits and aren’t in the hall of Fame.  Of those 15, five are obviously HOFers (Rose, Jeter, Biggio, Chipper and Griffey Jr).   Another three are surefire HOFs if you ignore the PED issue (ARod, Palmiero, and Bonds), and another is a surefire Hall of Famer whom I assume will pass through without steroid issues (Ivan Rodriguez).  Very select company, to say the least.

Looking at these numbers made me start thinking about who had accumulated the least bWAR though they enjoyed long, productive and relatively lauded careers.  Though baseball-reference’s Play Index, I did a search of players since 1972 who have accumulated at least 2000 hits and less than 30 bWAR.   Lo and behold, our hero “tops” the list:

Player	WAR	H	BA	OBP	SLG
Bill Buckner	14.3	2603	0.290	0.322	0.411
Ruben Sierra	17.0	2152	0.268	0.315	0.450
Juan Pierre	17.5	2173	0.296	0.345	0.361
Todd Zeile	19.2	2004	0.265	0.346	0.423
Joe Carter	19.3	2184	0.259	0.306	0.464
Orlando Cabrera	21.5	2055	0.272	0.317	0.390
Michael Young	25.7	2270	0.301	0.348	0.443
Garret Anderson	25.7	2529	0.293	0.324	0.461
Mark Grudzielanek	26.5	2040	0.289	0.332	0.393
Garry Templeton	27.8	2096	0.271	0.304	0.369
Don Baylor	28.3	2131	0.261	0.342	0.436
Carlos Lee	28.4	2273	0.285	0.339	0.483
Paul Konerko	29.2	2211	0.282	0.358	0.496
Marquis Grissom	29.7	2251	0.272	0.318	0.415

(For reference, Mike Trout has accumulated 12.9 bWAR through is career to date.)

By a significant margin, Buckner posted the worst bWAR of the group, beating out a group of players that, much like Buckner, I think most people would consider “solid” if not great players. Ruben Sierra hit over 300 career HRs, Joe Carter hit a World Series walkoff HR and nearly 400, Don Baylor won an MVP in 1979.   As you dig into Buckner’s numbers as well, it is not just that he was a liability in the field (he certainly was below average, posting a –12 fWAR over his career), but his adjusted OPS+ of 100 (exactly league average) confirms that Buckner’s accumulation of counting stats masked his liabilities as a hitter (low power, few walks) as well as a fielder.

Another fond memory of childhood destroyed by the evil empire of sabermetrics…

Sell High on Jordan Zimmerman

Jordan Zimmerman is a hot topic in baseball (real and fantasy) this season.   Zimmerman has worked for the past couple years in the shadow of Stephen Strasburg, but this year finds himself in the top 10 in ERA for a Washington Nationals team many are picking to reach the World Series.  I was reading David Schoenfeld’s Sweetspot chat this afternoon and Schoenfeld identified him as someone who would absolutely contend for the Cy Young award this year; Zimmerman also changed hands in our @Ottoneu league yesterday, the keystone return that a rebuilding owner received for a $39 Matt Holliday and a $10 Jaime Garcia.   Amongst Ottoneu starting pitchers, Zimmerman ranks 7th in baseball in points scored, while sporting a microscopic 1.69 ERA. 

The ERA looks great – but beyond that ERA, I don’t see a ton of reason for optimism.  Through Zimm’s 58 IP this season, he has generated a career low 7.3% swinging strikes (below the league average of around 9%), and his K/9 correspondingly stands below 6 – a career low and down from his 9.04 K/9 as a rookie.  Relatedly, Zimmerman is throwing fewer first strikes (58% against a career number of 65%) than ever before. 

Opposing hitters over his career have hit a fairly consistent .245, but this year are hitting .195 on the strength of Zimmerman’s .230 BABIP number (using Fangraph’s xBABIP calculator, we would expect that number to sit at .318).    His artificially low HR/FB of 4.1% is unlikely to remain as low as it has been through the first quarter of the season.

A closer examination of his game log yields similar pessimism.  Zimmerman has logged 8 starts this season.  Two were against the Miami Marlins (wRC+ of 66, by far the worst in baseball).  Two additional starts were against the White Sox (29th, 71) and the Mets (25th, 91).    A 5th was against the Reds (18th, 95) and 6th against the Dodgers (almost an exact league average wRC+ of 99), leaving 2 of 8 starts against above average hitting teams (the Tigers and the Braves).   

As the season wears on, Zimmerman will need to throw more first pitch strikes – and even if he does, he will see more balls drop in for base hits and/or leave the yard.  At $17, he is an interesting asset in Ottoneu LWTS leagues.  However if you can find an owner that considers him closer to ace than league average, you would be well advised to sell – replacing his production over the next 150 innings will be easier than you think.

SSS Be Damned — Let’s draw some definitive conclusions

It’s now May 13th, and we are approximately 25% of the way through the baseball season.  Most informed observers of the game will, correctly, point out that we are still early in the season to be drawing conclusions based on 35 games worth of data.  Nevertheless, I’m getting sick and tired of the “small sample size” answer (even though it is probably correct more often than not), and so I spent some time today looking through the early season performances trying to ferret out a few conclusions that we CAN draw even though we’re not half way to the All-Star Break.  In no particular order:

(1)  Paul Konerko is about done.   First things first:  Paul Konerko is an incredible baseball player, and has probably been underrated most of his career because he played 1B during the steroid era.  His career line of 282/358/497 and 426 HRs is elite (for reference, Hall of Famer Billy Williams finished his career with a 290/361/492 and 426 HRs), and Konerko has become beloved on the South Side and he’s played all but a handful of his career games in a White Sox uniform.  Nevertheless, Father Time appears ready to extend his undefeated record – 2013 is Konerko’s 37 year old season, and currently holds a 214/273/349 triple slash.  His walk rate has dipped from 12.1% in 2011 to 6.5% this season and his Ks are up from 13% to over 18%.   Baseballheatmaps.com shows us than in 2011, his flyballs were averaging 287 feet, but those flyballs are down to 258 this season.  It pains me to say it, but Paulie, he gone.

(2)  Wow was I wrong about Dustin Ackley.  I wrote here that people in a panic over Dustin Ackley’s 2012 campaign were misguided, and with a little luck on balls in play, Ackley could be a decent hitter (and already is a very good defender at 2B).  Well, fast forward to 2013 – that was way off.  I see nothing in Ackley’s profile that portends a turn around at the plate, and I’ve had the misfortune to watch more than a few Mariners games this season.  Ackley looks off balance and lost at the plate, pull happy but sporting no power when pitchers do make the mistake of throwing fastballs middle in rather than soft stuff away.   Ackley’s discipline as a 23 year old rookie has completely evaporated, and though he makes slightly more contact now, the contact is weaker than ever before (ISO has dropped from 144 to 102 to 050).   He’s hitting grounders at a 56% rate now and pitchers are throwing fewer and fewer strikes to him.  If you can find anyone still willing to bank on a turnaround, sell for whatever you can get.

(3)  Jeremy Guthrie?  C’mon.    I confess that I’ve never understood Jeremy Guthrie – he came out of Stanford and today as a 34 year old still averages over 92 on his fastball.   But he has over 1200 IP in the majors and sits on a 4.20 ERA/4.62 xFIP – certainly he has some innings eater value, but beyond that I’ve never understood why he couldn’t generate more whiffs than his career 5.45 K/9.   Fast forward to 2013, Guthrie through 7 starts has thrown 47 innings and is 5-0 for Kansas City, sporting a 2.28 ERA.  Why?  Well, not hard to see why:  his HR, walk and K rates are exactly in line with career norms, but his strand rate is 93% and BABIP is .250.   With the bases empty, hitters have hit 246/325/509 against Guthrie with 7 HRs – with runners on, 224/246/269 with zero homers.  Guthrie is going to come crashing down hard – hopefully it will be another fantasy owner that feels the blow.

Next time:  Early season hot starts to believe in.

Ottoneu League 52 — Deeper Stats

We’re only 3 weeks into the baseball season, but for those of us Ottoneu players the wheeling and dealing has been going for months.   I’ve started to keep a spreadsheet that allows me to track team performance at a slightly more granular level than the stats provided by the site (basically, Points/Game for hitters and Points/IP for pitchers).  Below is a table showing some additional information on the teams performances through 20 or so games.

Team	Points	IP	P PTS	H PTS	OBP	SLG	OPS	P/PA	HR/9
Frosted Mini Weeks	2703.0	243.1	1312.7	1390.26	0.348	0.480	0.829	1.364	0.889
We Got Wood	2543.4	221.1	1260.3	1283.13	0.324	0.459	0.784	1.288	0.692
The Syndicate	2517.9	240.1	1296.5	1221.36	0.317	0.419	0.735	1.117	0.787
MoPain MoGain	2456.5	270.2	1269.9	1186.56	0.327	0.416	0.743	1.145	0.866
The Crying of No. 49	2428.5	261.2	1279.9	1148.62	0.337	0.427	0.764	1.215	0.861
Chicago Chiefs	2195.0	178.2	891.0	1304.00	0.354	0.422	0.776	1.210	1.212
WAR Horse	2141.0	150.2	901.2	1239.80	0.338	0.450	0.787	1.257	0.959
Durham Tobacconists	2101.2	168.2	824.2	1277.02	0.342	0.444	0.786	1.267	1.124
Enrico Palazzo	1997.2	171.2	787.5	1209.68	0.349	0.420	0.770	1.200	0.946
Shoeless Joes	1996.4	169.1	761.0	1235.45	0.354	0.446	0.800	1.263	1.224
Knights	1960.9	190.0	988.0	972.90	0.332	0.387	0.719	1.055	0.947
Lucky Strikes	1062.0	73.2	395.3	666.72	0.307	0.356	0.662	0.913	0.615

I would welcome any thoughts that you readers have on the info – for me a few things jump out:

(1)  The league is quickly separating into two groups – the top 5 teams are on pace to throw between 1700-2100 innings (against the Otto maximum of 1500), so the points lead they enjoy may be deceptive, and the next 6 teams (and Lucky Strikes is in complete rebuild mode after his 2012 championship).  Of the top group, WGW may be benefitting from some luck in the Pitching/HR department, but they and FMW are hitting with power the other three teams don’t yet show.

(2)  Two teams from that 2nd group – Chicago Chiefs and Shoeless Joes – lead the league in team On Base Percentage at .354, while 3 of the top 4 teams in scoring right now have the lowest team OBP, which may portend issues when the innings pitched equalize.

(3)  I find it interesting how close 9 of the 11 competing teams are in hitting, all within 150 points of each other, except for FMW (110 points ahead of the 2nd team) and Knights (200 points behind the 10th place hitting team).  The Knights SLG of .387 may turn this club into a seller if we don’t see a turnaround soon.

(4)  Joes and Chiefs look like they may have been a little unlucky with the gopher balls, so coupled with strong OBP, they may bear watching as the season progresses.

I will update periodically as the season progresses and teams either ascend or look to the future.

@KenPomeroy and the 2013 NCAA Tournament

This blog is almost entirely about baseball, not by conscious decision but more because that is the sport I follow most closely.  Since moving away from Durham, North Carolina, I’ve remained a college hoops fan though I’ve not followed as closely, so please take the following with as many grains as salt as required.  For some time I have been a big fan of @kenpomeroy and his college hoops ratings system.  Similar in approach to many of the themes of the saber revolution in baseball, kenpom ratings attempt to offer some insight beyond traditional numbers.

Of particular interest for this discussion are his Adjusted Offense and Adjusted Defense ratings.  At the highest level, they try to assess how efficient college teams are on either end of the floor, realizing that points scored or points allowed are limited because they fail to take into account the pace at which a team plays (i.e., high octane offensive teams may play excellent defense, but the mere fact that they allow more possessions likely means they will also allow more points).

Looking at the 2013 numbers, even the casual fan would find some comfort in the eye test and the top teams in the kenpom rankings – the best defensive team in the country is Rick Pitino’s Louisville Cardinals (no surprise to anyone that has followed Pitino’s teams over the years) and the best offensive team is Indiana.

Over the years, what is interesting to me is that I have tracked those few teams that have managed to find their way into the top 5 in both Adjusted Offense and Adjusted Defense.  Below is a table going back to 2003 that shows those teams that were ranked in the top 5 on both sides of the floor:

	Teams — Top 5 on AdjO and AdjD
2003	Kentucky
2004	Duke, UConn
2005	UNC
2006	Florida
2007	UNC
2008	Kansas, Memphis
2009	None
2010	Duke
2011	Ohio State
2012	None

Over these 10 seasons, there have been 10 teams that met the criteria.   In 2008, those two teams (Kansas and Memphis) met for the national championship (and went to overtime to decide who cut down the nets).  In 2004, those two teams (Duke and UConn) met in San Antonio in the National Semifinals (to this day the only Final Four game I have ever attended in person), and UConn came back to beat Duke and two days later cut down the nets against Georgia Tech.  In 2005 and 2006, UNC and Florida rode their balanced attacked to national championships.

In 2003 and 2007, the teams in the top 5 in both were eliminated in the Elite 8 – Dwayne Wade posted a triple double to lead Marquette over Kentucky in 2003, while Georgetown squeaked by UNC in overtime one step short of the Final Four in 2007.  The lone outlier – Ohio State’s loss in the Sweet 16 to Brandon Knight’s 15 footer with 5 seconds left, sealing a 62-60 victory over top seeded OSU.

How is this all relevant to 2013?  Well, according to kenpom only one team managed the top 5 in both offense and defense this year – the #3 Seed Florida Gators.  Most pundits out there seem to be picking Louisville, or Indiana, even occasionally Kansas.  My bracket?  I don’t care if this isn’t a statistically valid sample — I’m trusting @kenpomeroy and going with the Gators to cut down the nets in Atlanta.

NCAA Midwest Region — Pitino, Krzyzewski or Izzo?

March Madness is about to begin — the bracket came out last night and Louisville took the overall #1 seed.  The Midwest Region is interesting not only because it contains my alma mater, but it is stacked in terms of coaching firepower — the region contains 6 former national champions: Louisville is led by Rick Pitino who cut down the nets in 1996 with Kentucky, Tom Izzo won it all with Mateen Cleaves in 2000 and still coaches #3 seed Michigan State, while Coach K has won 4 titles, most recently in 2010 when Gordon Hayward’s 45 footer at the buzzer barely missed banking home.

Krzyzewski’s career in the NCAA Tournament is longer than either of his competitors, but the three legends have similar records in the Big Dance:

	W	L	Win %	Tourneys
Krzyzewski	78	24	0.765	28
Pitino	42	15	0.737	16
Izzo	37	14	0.725	15

The records don’t tell the entire story, of course.  In the course of those 26 tournament appearances, Coach K has been a #1 seed 12 times and a #2 7 times (this year will be K’s 8th #2 seed).  By contrast, Pitino took Kentucky to the NCAAs as a #1 4 times in 5 years in the mid 1990s, but in this his 10th tourney appearance at Louisville, it’s only his second top seed – he’s also been a #4 seed 4 times, and a 9 and a 10.   From 1999-2001, Tom Izzo took his top seeded Spartans to the Final Four, but since then has guided two #5 seeds to the Final Four (2005, 2010).

Since the advent of the 64 team field in 1985,  *** I looked back at the W/L records for each tournament.  The following table shows in gory detail the performance of each seed — from the #1 seeds all the way down to the winless #16 seeds:

SEED	W	L	Pct
1	426	117	0.785
2	307	130	0.703
3	232	131	0.639
4	188	135	0.582
5	158	136	0.537
6	166	134	0.553
7	113	136	0.454
8	102	135	0.430
9	76	136	0.358
10	89	136	0.396
11	67	132	0.337
12	61	132	0.316
13	29	112	0.206
14	18	112	0.138
15	6	112	0.051
16	0	112	0.000

The table offers something of an “Expected Value” for each seed — so when Tom Izzo takes a 5 seed to the National Semifinal game, it is a more impressive feat in some ways than if Coach K takes his #1 seeded Blue Devils to the Championship game.   To determine an expected winning percentage for each coach, I took each year’s seed, applied the expected value based on the table above, and averaged the result over the years each coach appeared in the NCAAs.  The results:

	W	L	Win %	Expected Win %
Krzyzewski	78	24	0.765	0.720
Pitino	42	15	0.737	0.641
Izzo	37	14	0.725	0.582

Given the teams that Coach K has brought to the tournament, he has performed slightly above what would be expected.  Pitino has overachieved to a greater degree, but Izzo’s performance jumps off the charts — he has parlayed an average NCAA appearance ending in the 2nd round to nearly a Final Four appearance.

Of course, Given that 19 of Krzyzewski’s 26 appearances have been a 1 or 2 seed, it is challenging for K to “overperform” his seeding except by winning a championship.  As a corollary, painful losses (like last season’s to 15 seed Lehigh) penalize Coach K to a greater extent than do losses when Pitino brings his 10 seeded Cardinals to the Big Dance.

Mike Krzyzewski is the best basketball coach of the last 40 years, and only John Wooden is even the discussion of comparables all-time.  Nevertheless, of the 3 great coaches in the Midwest Region in 2013, Tom Izzo’s tournament coaching performances stand out.

*** EDITORS NOTE:  Reader BamBam correctly points out that the records in the table reflect total performance by seeding, not merely stretching back to 1985.

@ProfessorP0TTER: Alternate Viewpoint on Lincecum

As I’ve discussed previously, I hold out little hope that Tim Lincecum is going to be able to remain an effective SP for the Giants this year (and for whomever he plies his trade for after collecting $22M from the Giants in 2013).    At Beyond the Boxscore this morning, @ProfessorP0TTER has an alternate viewpoint.  Of course he is correct to point out that Lincecum’s strikeout rate remains excellent, and I think the point about Lincecum’s bad luck on fly balls leaving the yard has some merit – however, the increase in walk rate to me speaks to Lincecum’s fear of coming over the plate with declining stuff rather than a lack of command, and I wonder if the elevated HR rate will turn out to be commonplace.  In any event, the declining delta between his fastball and change combined with now average FB velocity to me indicates Lincecum is likely to continue to struggle unless he moves to the bullpen as he did in the playoffs and accepts a role as a 2-3 inning shut down reliever ala Goose Gossage in his hey day.