Retired Number Quiz Series: The American League East

As I mentioned last time, I’m going to be publishing a series of articles and Sporcle quizzes over the next few weeks where I’ll look at the top players (by Wins Above Replacement) in each team’s history who do not have a retired number. If you want to try the quiz before reading the full piece, that can be found here. Once you’ve tried that, be sure to come back and read the full piece below, with a team-by-team analysis.

(Please note that to make the list, players must have worn a number with the team for at least three seasons. Also of note: the quiz contains one bonus Baltimore Oriole answer, to account for a St. Louis Brown appearing in their top six players.)

Happy guessing!

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Hall of Fame Ballot Newcomer Bobby Abreu Deserves to Have His Case Heard

[Also posted over at The Crawfish Boxes]


We’re going to go in a slightly different direction with this week’s Friday Hall of Fame preview, the final one before the official announcement of the results next Tuesday. We’re still covering someone on the ballot, it’s just someone without multiple ballots already under his belt, and who I’m not sure will be around for long enough to build up any sort of trajectory towards the Hall (as was the case with Todd Helton, Scott Rolen, Billy Wagner, Jeff Kent , and Larry Walker; see here, here, here, here, and here, respectively).

But Bobby Abreu deserves at least a little attention. And since I’m not convinced that he’ll still be around to get that attention next year (he’s currently at 7.6% in the 2020 Ballot Tracker, but that will absolutely drop when the final numbers come out), I want to take the chance to give him that attention now, before it becomes too late to do so.

And he even has an Astros connection! Although it was mostly a footnote: he was signed by the team out of Venezuela as a sixteen-year-old, and played 74 games for them between 1996 and 1997 before being taken sixth overall in the 1997 expansion draft by Tampa Bay. It’s a little painful given how good of a career he had, but simultaneously understandable given that they couldn’t protect everyone, and the outfield at that time was pretty packed. Less defensible is the Rays decision to immediately trade who quickly became the best player taken in that draft to Philadelphia for someone named Kevin Stocker . Stocker was worth 6.0 bWAR in eight seasons, a total Abreu bested in four individual seasons.

And it might shock you to hear that Abreu had that many good seasons! That’s MVP-caliber play, after all, and Abreu generally did not receive MVP consideration; in fact, those four 6.0-Win seasons amounted to just two 23^rd-place finishes. I would argue that was more a fault with the voters’ understanding than Abreu’s play, though, and if you need more proof, his best MVP finish came in 2009 when he placed 12^th overall. Abreu that year was a 35-year-old putting up solid year, sure, but that year was still arguably worse than half of his other seasons.

Bobby didn’t hit the big, flashy milestones, finishing his career with 2470 hits (just outside of the top 100 all-time) and 288 home runs. His RBI total was similarly a good-but-not-historic 1363, making him 89^th all-time. He did manage to finish with a round number of steals, at 400 (74^th).  And his 574 doubles are actually impressive, tying him for 25^th in history.

Individually, none of that may seem special, but put together, you can kind of see it, right? Abreu’s career totals look like a sort of jack-of-all-trades player, really good at a lot of things, but maybe not elite at anything. A lot of power, and speed, and contact, but probably never the top of the league in any one of them (on that note, he led the league in just two batting categories over his career, doubles in 2002 and triples in 1999). Of course, being really good at everything makes a player a star, in its own way.

But there is one thing I haven’t touched on yet, the one area where Abreu was truly one of the best of all-time: getting on base. His eye for batting was truly incredible, as he finished with 100 or more walks eight seasons; only eight players have done it more times than that. He never finished with the league lead, but that was mostly bad luck from playing in the same league as Barry Bonds in his peak (although Abreu did lead the entire majors with 124 walks in 2006…the year he was traded from the Phillies to the Yankees, meaning that he wound up leading neither league)

In total, Abreu walked 1476 times, 20^th-most in the history of baseball. Add those with his hits, plus his times reaching on HBPs and errors, and Abreu is one of just fifty-five players in history to reach base 4000 times or more. And the list of players to reach that mark and not make Cooperstown is fairly short. Among eligible players not presently on the ballot, it’s just Rusty Staub, Rafael Palmeiro, and Dwight Evans, and Evans came close to induction via the Veterans Committee last month.

Abreu managed a .291/.395/.475 batting line, good for a 128 OPS+, over more than 10000 career plate appearances. That, plus decent fielding (like recent inductee and fellow right fielder Vladimir Guerrero, Abreu was rather good in his younger days, but lost a step or two at the end) is why he managed 60.0 bWAR and 59.8 fWAR for his career. By those marks, he’s the nineteenth or twenty-first best right fielder, respectively, in history.

And they’re hardly alone in that assessment, either, as stats that attempt to filter value through a Hall of Fame lens by combining peak and career totals come out similarly. I’m partial to Hall Rating, with combines the two and then equates it to an OPS+-like stat, where 100 is the Hall borderline and each point over is 1% better than the borderline. By that measure, Abreu comes out at 110, twenty-first all-time and right in between Guerrero and future inductee Ichiro Suzuki. JAWS has him ranked similarly, twentieth among right-fielders at 50.8. And since there are twenty-six inducted right fielders, plus several ahead of Abreu also not in for various reasons (including the still-on-the-ballot Walker, the not-yet-eligible Suzuki, and the permanently-ineligible Joe Jackson), Abreu would slot in perfectly as the median Hall right fielder if he were added to Cooperstown right now.

Ultimately, I am not sure if I would vote for Bobby Abreu this year. I don’t know if I’m totally sold on his case, although it is certainly an interesting case and I feel like I’m almost there. But while the ballot isn’t as packed as it has been over the last few years, there are still more than ten players on it that I think deserve support. I also believe that Abreu is the type of player that deserves to have his case actually deliberated over multiple chances, though, and I really hope he can at least stick around another year. If I had an actual ballot, I might even drop votes strategically to help ensure that he hits the five percent he needs to return in 2021. But if he doesn’t quite manage that, at least we got a chance to finally appreciate just how solid his career was.

The Big Playoff Post Round Up

It's been a while since I've collected all the things I've posted lately, so I have a bunch to catch up on. Going from oldest to newest:

-My final recap of the season was, perhaps fittingly, a loss to the Angels.

-Next, I got to do a round-up on trivia from the 2019 Astros season, and let me tell you, there was a LOT of it!

-Towards the end of the Division Series, I did a round-up of how all of the ex-Astros in the playoffs were doing.

-For some reason, despite my luck in recaps, I was allowed to do an ALCS recap. It was, unsurprisingly, the Game 5 loss. Counting the postseason, the Astros have gone 114-59 in 2019 (a .659 winning percentage), but despite that, they went 16-14 in games I recapped (a .533 mark). I might get asked to recap a World Series game, but uh, maybe I should decline...

-And finally, I got to bring my interest in expansion teams to The Crawfish Boxes, writing about how this year's Astros-Nationals matchup is just the second All-Expansion World Series, and all the history and trivia that entails!

Another AL Preview

For the fifth time, I have a season preview piece running at The Crawfish Boxes, this one focusing on the Yankees. If you're interested in parts one-through-four: Athletics, Angels, Mariners, Red Sox

Hiroki Kuroda's Unique Place in International Baseball History

I want to talk about Hiroki Kuroda for a moment.

Maybe you haven’t thought about him much in the recent past. I wouldn’t really blame you, considering that he left the Majors back in 2014 and hasn’t really been in the public eye (in the US, at least) since. That’s totally fair; he had seven years as a solid starter in the majors, which isn’t nothing, but still…time moves on, you know?

I was basically in the same boat anyway, so I can’t really say that I blame you. Plenty of pitchers have good seven year runs, and even if you’ve like me and have devoted as much of your memory to random baseball trivia at the expense of most other useful things, you just can’t remember all of them all the time. But that just made it all the more surprising when I saw his name pop up recently in some research that I was doing.

In case you haven’t thought about Kuroda’s career lately, it’s worth noting that, when he debuted in the Majors way back in 2008, he was already 33, with over a decade of seasons in Japan already under his belt. Despite his rookie season coming at such an advanced age, Kuroda went on to post a surprisingly strong career line: in 1319 innings pitched, Kuroda posted a 986 to 292 strikeout-to-walk ratio, a 1.172 WHIP, and a 3.45 ERA (good for a 115 ERA+). All of that adds up to 21.7 Wins Above Replacement, in spite of the rather mediocre-looking 79-79 career record.

That would be a good run for just about anyone, but for a pitcher to post that in their ages 33 to 39 seasons is especially impressive! And not only that, he went back to Japan for two more seasons with his longtime NPB* team, the Hiroshima Toyo Carp.

*Nippon Professional Baseball

To have a run like that, at those ages, is pretty exceptional. In fact, Kuroda ranks 55th all time in pitching WAR after age 33. Even more notable are some of the names immediately around him: you’ve got a trio of Hall of Famers (Fergie Jenkins 22.8, Whitey Ford 21.6, Jesse Haines 21.6) and another trio of knuckleballers (Tim Wakefield 22.8, Tom Candiotti 22.8, R.A. Dickey 22.7). That’s interesting company, if nothing else.

And pitching that good late in your career isn’t exactly a guarantee that one is destined for Cooperstown (those knuckleballers are evidence of that, as are numerous others on the list), but it’s also certainly not nothing. Indeed, only 27 Hall of Famers are better. It’s certainly enough to make me wonder: how might Hiroki Kuroda have done if he had started his career in the Majors? Would he be looking at a possible Cooperstown induction? I decided to take a stab at it.

2017 Teams With a Chance to Set Home Run History: The Double-Digit Dinger Club

A few years ago, the Houston Astros shocked everyone by jumping out to a surprising early division lead, and they did it in part by hitting a lot of dingers. As I watched the season progress, an interesting subplot cropped up, beneath the question of whether the surprising young club would hold on to make the playoffs: they had a chance to make home run history.

No individual player was challenging any records, though. Rather, it was a team record the announcers would update viewers on: Most players with double-digit home runs. The all-time record was 11, set by the 2004 Detroit Tigers, who, like the 2015 ‘Stros, had no big masher leading the way; both teams were led by 27-homer guys (Carlos Pena and Evan Gattis, respectively). The Astros ended up tying this mark towards the end of the year, and had two more players finishing the season with 9.*

*Trivia time: almost half of those players aren’t on the Astros anymore, just a season and a half later. I’ll let you know who they are later in the column.

It’s a remarkable set of circumstances that leads to a team having more 10-home run guys than available lineup spots, but MLB was entering a period ideal for this, given the overall upward shift in home run totals. That trend continued in 2016, and another team joined those two atop the leaderboards: the 2016 Twins. Despite losing 103 games, just shy of a dozen Minnesota players went yard ten or more times last year.

MLB has seen yet another increase in home run totals this year, which got me wondering: could we see our fourth 11-10-homer team this year? Is there a better name for that exclusive club? And most importantly, what are the odds that some time has a full twelve players reach that mark? With just over 70 games in the books, lets take a look at the early leaders in 10-homer players, and who else they might see reach that total.

2014 Predictions: AL East

We’re fast approaching Opening Day, so I may as well make my predictions. They’re sure to be wrong, but they’ll be fun if nothing else. I’ll keep the introduction short so I can get right into the predictions, but first, a short description of my methods: basically, I’m going to look at how teams did last year (both in wins and Pythagorean wins, which are based on runs scored and allowed) and what should be different this year. The latter is a broad category that can cover anything from newly-acquired players to injuries to just straight regression to the mean (always an underrated force, but always prevalent).

AL East
Last year: Red Sox-97 wins/100 Pythagorean wins
Rays-92/87
Orioles-85/85
Yankees-85/79
Blue Jays-74/77

What should be different:

Breaking Down This Year's 50 Best Not in the Hall: Which Team Gets Snubbed the Most?

I may as well continue with the Hall of Fame theme I have going on. One thing that I always wonder when filling out my 50 Best Players in the Hall of Fame ballot is if there’s any noticeable bias in who gets snubbed from the Hall. Like, whether there’s a specific position that the voters overlook, or if certain teams get passed over more often than others. I guess it’s also possible it’s my bias, but I’d like to think I’m objective in filling this out.

Anyway, if you need refreshing, here’s the selection of 50 Players I ended up going with this year. I wanted a quick number to look at for Hall worthiness, so I went with Adam Darowski’s Hall Ratings, since 1) that’s exactly what they were designed for, and 2) he includes breakdowns of how much of a player’s Hall Rating came in each season, with each team in total, and so on.

First, we have the straight number of players each franchise had on the list:

Appreciating Todd Helton and Andy Pettitte (and the Hall of Fame, of course)

Within the past week, both Andy Pettitte and Todd Helton made their retirements official. And as expected, people have turned to the Hall of Fame and where these two fit into the conversation. And of course, because I look for every excuse possible to write about the Hall, I may as well jump in with my take.

I’ve said this several times, but I err on the side of a larger Hall of Fame. So I see Todd Helton’s 55.8 career fWAR and 61.3 bWAR and see someone who’s nowhere near the worst choice for first basemen. For his career (as of right now, at least), he has 368 home runs (75th all-time) and 591 doubles (16th). His career batting line is .316/.414/.539 (average/OBP/slugging), making him one of twenty-three players in history with a .300/.400/.500 career batting line (over 3000 plate appearances*). His career OPS+ (which is park-adjusted, remember) is 133, right there with Hall of Famers like Al Kaline, Paul Waner, Orlando Cepeda, Al Simmons, Billy Williams, Joe Medwick, and Tony Gwynn. Granted, there are also non-Hall of Famers in that range, but it’s a good start at least.

*Fun fact: I first had the limit set to 1000 games when I searched this. The 1000 game cut-off includes reliever Roberto Hernandez, who appeared in 1010 games and went 1 for 2 with a single and a strike out over seventeen seasons, giving him a .500/.500/.500 line.

2013 Predictions: AL East

With the season just around the corner, I wanted to begin previewing how the season will go. I like to be pretty in depth with my predictions, looking at last year and then what will be different. With that, I looked at each team’s major changes (drawn from this article, although I was kind of hoping Kyle Lohse would be signed by now to give me a complete sense of the additions) and basically what else will be different.

I know I already wrote about the AL East, but this will give a chance to (A) write a non-Orioles-centric article, and (B) test out a new format. So with that, let’s look at the teams, starting with last year’s division winners.

Replacement Level AL East Preview 2013

For the second straight year, I’ve been asked to participate in Replacement Level’s AL East Preview on behalf of the Baltimore Orioles. I participated last year, but the resulting piece was sadly lost in a tragic fire on the Internets, and I’m certainly not avoiding linking to it to cover up the fact that I gave the Orioles close to no chance to finish with even a winning record, let alone a Wild Card birth.*

*But seriously, it’s here.

To be fair, I had no way of knowing that the Orioles would be historically good in one-run games. The real question, though, is can they do it again in 2013?

Probably not. But there are other ways for them to win, other than never blowing a lead again.

The Historic...2004 Astros?

So, over the summer, there was talk of the Yankees having nine possible Hall of Famers. That seems crazy at first, but think about it.

Derek Jeter is a definite, first-ballot player. Mariano Rivera and Ichiro almost certainly are too, despite being a closer and a late start, respectively. Alex Rodriguez will almost certainly get in someday, steroids and all. Robinson Cano and CC Sabathia are both well on their way to the Hall, and if you don’t believe it, check these out.* Andy Pettitte, Andruw Jones, and Mark Teixeira will have there supporters.

*It’s so much fun to have past research to refer back to.

Environmental Pressures & Player Make-Ups: Stray Thoughts

This is more just a stray thought than a full article. I was reading this piece over at Baseball Nation talking about Zack Greinke and how everyone assumes he wouldn’t be able to handle a big market, but we really have no idea. We really have no idea what causes players to suddenly be good or bad.

For example, there’s a prevalent claim that certain players can’t handle playing in New York. They point to players like A.J. Burnett or Javier Vazquez who failed to live up to expectations when they got there, then turned it around when they left. It’s easy to say things like “They couldn’t handle the pressure”, but is that really the case? Both of them even had at least decent seasons in New York; maybe not their best, but maybe better than you would realize given the narrative. Was it the pressure? Or maybe something else, like a clash with the organization, or personal issues, or any number of things?

Retired Numbers Series: New York Yankees

Ever since I started writing the Retired Numbers Series, I have simultaneously been looking forward to and dreading covering the Yankees. I’ve been looking forward to them because of their interesting history and their long list of candidates to see their numbers honored. I’ve been dreading it because of the sheer volume of players to cover. Although, even then, there are good things about their volume; a small part of me would like to see them run out of numbers below 100 in my lifetime, just to see a player eventually wearing 100.