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May 7, 2008

You Could Look It Up

Strange Relations

by Steven Goldman

Today, I’d like to present to you something of a work in progress. Just as we use PECOTA to gain insight into the future performance of today’s players by comparing them to players of the past, I thought it might be instructive, or at the very least entertaining, to try the same thing on a team level, and look at broad similarities between offensive output and pitching results of teams of the last fifty years.

In this first stage, the plan was to look at the offenses of the 16 teams that had reached the 30-game mark as of last Friday, May 2, normalize the stats, and then compare across the years. I was guided in this by BP stats wizards Clay Davenport and William Burke. Here is how Clay described the process by which we compared teams:

My basic idea was to:

a) translate the stats of all teams from 1957-2008
b) define five axes of performance
1- Hits per contact, ignore strikeouts (H/(AB-SO))
2 - Power, as total bases per hit (TB/H)
3- Walk rate (BB/PA)
4- Strikeout rate (K/PA)
5- Speed (2*SB+CS)/(1B+BB)
c) determine the average value and standard deviation on each axis
d) rate the team by a normalized difference (Power-AvgPower)/(SDPower)
e) square and then sum each of the five components
f) smallest difference is the closest match

Thirteen of the sixteen teams had their closest match score, based on the sum of the differentials, less than 1.0. The Giants’ closest match had a 1.41 score, the A’s closest match had a 1.53, and the Cardinals’ closest match was at 2.43, making them the most unique offense to date this year. Actually, the closest matches for the A’s and Cardinals were each other; I ignored those and went to the next-best scores.

One key factor that Clay leaves out: we were comparing teams at the same point in the season, the 30-game mark. Here are the top six matches produced by the latest Davenport Method:

Toronto Blue Jays: 1991 Seattle Mariners (83-79/5^th/12 GB) .21
The first winning team in Seattle history, the 1991 Mariners had a substandard offense with some intriguing parts that presaged better years in the future. Edgar Martinez, Ken Griffey, Jr., and Jay Buhner hit quite well, and could be counted upon to do so again. Tino Martinez played briefly and hit quite poorly, but he would soon replace first baseman Pete O’Brien, one of several veterans on the club who didn’t hit. Other youngsters playing and struggling were Omar Vizquel, who had a future, and Pee-Wee Briley, who did not. The other chief aged culprits for inoffensiveness beyond O'Brien were catcher Dave Valle, second baseman Harold Reynolds, and designated hitter Alvin Davis. Both teams had strong pitching staffs, the Mariners sporting a slightly younger group headed by Randy Johnson, then in only his third full season. The Mariners would ride the core of this team (plus Alex Rodriguez) to multiple post-season appearances under Lou Piniella. The Jays, who don’t have anything like that kind of group to build around, don’t have the same potential for growth.

Cincinnati Reds: 2004 Arizona Diamondbacks (51-111/5^th/42 GB) .21
This Bob Brenly production probably deserves a space on the short list of worst teams of all time. Thirteen years later, Randy Johnson appears again, but he and Brandon Webb were the only bright spots of substance on the pitching staff, not enough to overcome a team EqA of .236. Luis Gonzalez was the best hitter on the team by a good margin, but he batted only .259/.373/.493, almost all of it at home; he hit only .219/.349/.411 outside of Phoenix. The team as a whole batted .240/.298/.363 when traveling, and finished 15^th in the league in walks drawn. The Reds aren’t quite that bad, but we’re looking at the Diamondbacks at their nadir. Will the Reds hit their own low point this season? It largely depends on whether Adam Dunn gets traded, and if that leads to more playing time for the likes of Corey Patterson instead of Jay Bruce. Even as presently constituted, they’re a small decline in walks and a park illusion or two away from a total offensive breakdown.