If at first … you’re probably not succeeding right now

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It’s not just Albert … Through Friday 5/4, one in four qualified first basemen (6 of 24) has an OPS+ below 60 and a BA of .195 or below, with an average of 2 HRs and 7 RBI.

For a base of comparison, here are the past 10 years’ combined OPS+ numbers for qualified first basemen:

Average OPS+: 126
Median: 125
Worst: 81
OPS+ below 100: 12% (25 of 213)

Since there was an average of 21 qualified 1Bs per year, let’s look at the top 21 qualifiers so far this year. There are 24 qualifiers right now, but presumably some of them will continue to hit so poorly that they will lose playing time and wind up not qualifying; so for purposes of this comparison, it’s farewell, Albert, Gaby & Ike.

This year, through Friday 5/4, the top 21 qualified 1Bs had these OPS+ numbers:

Average: 113
Median: 110
Worst: 46; four are below 80
OPS+ below 100: 38%

And those numbers are boosted by the 236 OPS+ of unheralded Bryan LaHair, a 29-year-old getting his first full-time play, who began the year with a career OPS+ of 98+. LaHair is hitting .380 despite striking out in 34% of his PAs, a rate that would lead to a new strikeout record if he got 655 PAs. I think it’s safe to say that no one has ever sustained a .526 BAbip over a full season.

Moving from the individual to the group view, here are the collective OPS+ produced at first base in each year since 2002:

2002 — 121
2003 — 119
2004 — 116
2005 — 119
2006 — 121
2007 — 116
2008 — 118
2009 — 125
2010 — 120
2011 — 121
2012 — 110

If these numbers were to hold up for the season, the group OPS+ would be 5 points below the lowest mark of the past 20 years,* the median would be easily the lowest since at least 1980,* and the percentage of qualifiers with OPS+ below 100 would be the highest since 1955.

* These points were as far back as I checked the annual figures before growing weary.

As a group, 2012 first basemen have a slash line of .255/.329/.420 (compared to .271/.345/.452 last year), and are averaging 20 HRs, 79 RBI and 70 Runs per 162 games (last year’s marks were 24 HRs, 91 RBI and 80 Runs).

Finally, this table shows the percentage of qualified 1Bs with an OPS+ below 100 for each year since 1955, sorted by the highest percentage. As before, the 2012 qualifiers are limited to the top 21.

[table id=47 /]

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Neil L.

12 years ago

A really interesting study, JA. Thank you for it.

So Adam Lind and company are personally redefining, in 2012, the offensive minimum for everyday first baseman.

Any possible link between diminished run-scoring this year and the hitting woes of first sackers?

At least Prince Fielder is holding up his end of things.

Author

John Autin

12 years ago

Reply to Neil L.

Thanks, Neil.

Since I’m mainly looking at OPS+, which has a 100 base no matter what the scoring level, I can’t see why the first basemen’s OPS+ would be affected by the modest drop in scoring.

Also … we didn’t sign Prince for a 110 OPS+, which would match his worst season.

Tristram12

12 years ago

Reply to John Autin

JA – How about the reverse? Could the lack of hitting by first-basemen be causing the reduced run-scoring in the league?

12 years ago

My team’s in first even with the worst hitting first baseman (Casey Kotchman btw).

Voomo Zanzibar

12 years ago

LaHair did the following in AAA last year:

.331 .405 .664 1.070

With 38 homers.

And 69 PA with the big club:
.288 .377 .508 .885
And 2 homers.

That is 40 homers (calculated using advanced sabermetrics).

Maybe he is the real thing.
Move over Albert.

Doug

12 years ago

Bill Buckner – 5 times (that I counted) under 100 OPS+. That 12 career WAR is real.

Doug

12 years ago

Sorry. Can’t count. Only 4 times for Buckner, same as Karros and Montanez.

Voomo Zanzibar

12 years ago

Interesting to see Cooper and Garvey on that list. Their careers paralleled one another pretty closely. Their HOF votes did not, however. Counting stats and post-season heroics? They were both eligible for enshrinement in 1993. Cooper received ZERO hall of fame votes his first year on the ballot. Garvey got 176 (41.6%) Garvey played what amounted to three more full seasons than Cecil. And in 232 playoff PA he posted: .338 .361 .550 .910 He also won 4 gold gloves while posting negative dWAR each year. _____ Here’s Garvey and Cooper’s rate stats: WAR 34.3 Garvey 32.7 Cooper (both of… Read more »

bstar

12 years ago

Reply to Voomo Zanzibar

Real good comp, Voomo. More info to bolster the perception difference between the two:

Garvey 10 All Star games/made 9 MVP ballots, including a 1st and 2nd

Cooper 6 All Star games/made 5 MVP ballots, including 5th place thrice.

Also, Garvey finished 20th in MVP voting in 1984, one of the seasons listed by JA above. I didn’t check all of them, but this has to be one of the few seasons from the table where a player got MVP votes for his sub-100 OPS+ performance.

Voomo Zanzibar

12 years ago

Reply to bstar

He must have gotten votes for leading the league in double plays.

Of course, he wasn’t the only Padre to get votes.
First place will get you votes.

3rd Gwynn (141+)
13th Gossage (124+ (era), and the league’s best moustache)
16th Wiggins (90+… but 70 steals)
17th McReynolds (CF, 118+)
_______

http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/awards_1984.shtml#NLmvp

And then there’s the Cubbies

1 Sandberg
4 Sutcliffe
5 Matthews
10 Jody Davis
12 Durham
17 Cey
17 Dernier

Voomo Zanzibar

12 years ago

Reply to Voomo Zanzibar

And that was the same year that Willie Hernandez and Dan Quizenberry were #1 and #3 in the MVP voting.

WAR Leaders in the AL in 1984 (and there place in the MVP voting):

Ripken 9.7 (27th) (that is ONE point)
Moseby 7.1 (22nd)
Murray 6.7 (4th)
Trammell 6.6 (9th)
Lemon 6.0 Not on Ballot
Boggs 6.0 Not on Ballot
Mattingly 6.0 (5th)
BuddyBell 5.8 (22nd)
Al Davis 5.7 (12th)
Rickey 5.7 Not on Ballot

Voomo Zanzibar

12 years ago

Reply to Voomo Zanzibar

Huh, that last comment was formatted nicely when I hit Submit…

Voomo Zanzibar

12 years ago

Reply to Voomo Zanzibar

Actually, who cares?
JA puts together a fascinating and intricate bit of research, and I’m talking about the 1984 MVP voting. Sorry…

bstar

12 years ago

Reply to Voomo Zanzibar

No, no, that was informative. That’s what makes the indentation of reply comments work so well on this site…threads within threads can be created. No tangent should be off-limits, in my opinion. Wow, look at all those Cubbies on the ’84 ballot!

Shping

12 years ago

Reply to Voomo Zanzibar

Two of my favorites as a kid, even though, i know, i know, a little overrated at times. But still very fun guys to root for — Cooper with his sweet stance and swing, Garvey the competitior in AS gms and postseason — and maybe, now, a little underrated by those who never saw them play.

And in the end, two guys whose long, consistent careers earned them a couple extra seasons of full-time duty, even when their skills had clearly declined.

Shping

12 years ago

Reply to Voomo Zanzibar

I also noticed something interesting while looking at dWAR for Cooper and esp. Garvey (thanks to Voomo’s note about their career dWARs of -12) My first response was, whoa, those are some pretty bad scores of -1.1, -0.8, etc. But wait a minute. The two best years for Garvey were 1.1 and 0.1 in 1971-72, the two years he played third and made 14 and 28 errors, respectively?!? Hmmm, do his other numbers make up for that, or is that simply because dWAR inherently values 3B that much more than 1B? Then — because I’m fairly ignorant in this area… Read more »

Voomo Zanzibar

12 years ago

Reply to Shping

Mattingly was at negative one in both ’85 and ’86 ?
No.
Nope.
No.
I do not fully understand how dWAR is calculated, but… no.

I watched about 150 Mattingly games a year back then, and both my 13 year old self and the ghost of Phil Rizzuto will tell you… no.

no statistician but

12 years ago

Reply to Voomo Zanzibar

Just repeat after me: Batting WAR works fairly well most of the time, as long as you don’t take the results too seriously. Pitching WAR doesn’t work very well too much of the time and often gives laughable readings. Fielding WAR is a travesty, as are the other methods of rating fielding excellence. No matter how much you refine upon a formula, unless the premises upon which the formula rests are true, accurate, and absolute, then the formula will produce inadequate results. I’m trying to say it politely. WAR is a religion, in a way. Those who formulate it are… Read more »

Shping

12 years ago

Reply to no statistician but

According to Strat-o-Matic, Mattingly, Garvey, Cooper and of course Hernandez were all “1” fielders most of their prime years, while guys like Throneberry and Al Oliver were “4”s who should be replaced for defense in late innings.

Maybe i’ll just continue to go with those ratings for defense and trust the dedicated “priests” at SOM.

no statistician but

12 years ago

Reply to no statistician but

Shping:

Actually that sounds like a fairly sensible approach, if it’s only what you indicate.

Just be careful not to mention it around. You’re in the wrong pew in the wrong church. Excommunication may be imminent. (Irony alert.)

Author

John Autin

12 years ago

Reply to no statistician but

I won’t dare to tackle the anti-WAR argument-slash-tantrum. But as far as Strat-O-Matic goes — and speaking as one who loves that game — is it really reasonable to think that their fielding analyses could be better than modern ones built on far more data? As for Garvey, Bill James documented at length his weak arm and paucity of 3-6-3 DPs, which certainly is one legitimate aspect of his poor dWAR. I can’t specifically explain Garvey’s positive 0,1 dWAR while fielding .902 at 3B in ’72. However, when you consider how many plays are handled or not by an infielder,… Read more »

Shping

12 years ago

Reply to no statistician but

Of course i’m only being half-serious about the SOMatic ratings, but then again, i know there’s a committee that puts a lot of thought into them, and they are simple to comprehend… I’ll bet a twelve-year-old who plays a lot of SOMatic could probably tell us who the best fielders are, better than us with our complex arrays of percentages. I know its not that simple, i guess i just wish it could be. Another interesting fact about B.James and Garvey. I recall that James was often going out of his way to show how overrated Garvey was, but he… Read more »

no statistician but

12 years ago

Reply to no statistician but

To John Autin: No one is saying Garvey was a great fielder at first. What they are saying is that WAR doesn’t really work to show that he was mediocre and Hernandez was far better. In 1987, when the Cubs landed Andre Dawson at the last minute, Keith Moreland was shifted from right field to third base and got the best defensive WAR rating of his career as a starter, -.2. He struggled manfully at the position but was unfortunately and quite visible terrible. He never played third again. The next year the Cubs imported Vance Law from across town… Read more »

John Nacca

12 years ago

Reply to no statistician but

I laughed when I read about this a few years ago, about Gregg Jefferies, who was a noted poor fielder…
=============================
“My favorite Jefferies memory actually happened when he was with the Phillies. He was playing left and the fans kept harrasing him by chanting “You’re a 5.” Doug Glanville was playing center and he was laughing his head off. So Jefferies asked him what it was all about and Glanvile, a Strat-o-Matic fanatic, explained to a perplexed Jefferies that his Strat defensive rating in left was a 5, the absolute worst range factor a player could have.”

John Nacca

12 years ago

To John Autin…I think fielding, even with all the complex formulas we now have, is still an eyeball thing. Derek Jeter for example, is widely viewed as a poor defensive player, yet without checking probably makes very few errors, simply because he has the range of a statue, which we can all see visually. If I remember correctly, from my youth, my impression of Steve Garvey at 1B is someone who NEVER missed a ball hit right to him, but had zero range…unlike say Keith Hernandez who made more errors but moved around like a gazelle. In my opinion, I… Read more »

Mike L

12 years ago

Wading into the Fielding WAR argument with all my usual mathematical defects, it’s fair to say that the way evaluators look at fielding have really changed during my time of viewing. On the extremes, everyone knew that Dick Stuart was horrible and Bill Mazeroski was not. But in between, there was a far greater tendency to view fielding percentage as a key metric, maybe the key metric. Managers wanted “sure handed” maybe even more than they wanted great range. Part of that may have been a gut instinct that an error would have a bigger psychological impact on the pitcher… Read more »

John Nacca

12 years ago

Reply to Mike L

Much like batting average used to be the begin-all-end-all of a players worth. Funny thing is, there are still teams/managers who hold true to that, and even now there are players buried in AAA that have no chance of sniffing a major league roster, when the guy in the bigs is cranking out 85 OPS+ numbers.

Author

John Autin

12 years ago

FWIW … I think there is some validity in all the above criticism of dWAR. And I, too, raise an eyebrow at the big negative number for Donnie Baseball; having seen of lot of both him and Jason Thompson, my personal smell test sets off a massive alarm seeing both rated at -8.4.

Still, in the big picture, I am far more willing to trust a data-based evaluation than I am any individual’s eyewitness observations, including my own, no matter how many games they watched.

Baltimorechop

12 years ago

Reply to John Autin

Baseball-reference recently updated their WAR (I’ve been waiting for a post here about this), but the most important thing is: dWar has changed. It now incorporates both fiedling runs saved & positional adjustment. So, when you look at Mattingly, he’s career dWar now shows -8.4, but he still has an rField of 33. So, under the old style, he’d have a 3.3 dWar (approx). The difference is from the -114 runs he loses as an adjustment for being a First Basemen. Now hard fielding positions (particularly SS and C) appear to have ridiculous dWars because their positional adjustments have been… Read more »

Artie Z

12 years ago

Reply to Baltimorechop

+1 (or more)

Yes, people need to look at how the change in brWAR (I don’t want to call it rWAR because it seems to be different) is calculated. If you take Keith Hernandez, he has a negative dWAR. But if you compare his total WAR with afWAR (WAR if the guy was an average fielder at his position(s) – or WAR without including defense but with a position adjustment) you can clearly see that he’s being given credit for being an above average fielding first baseman.

bstar

12 years ago

Reply to Artie Z

Artie, I think Sean Forman is willing to now call it “bWAR” instead of rWAR, since he has made many updates to the formula and his WAR now looks a lot different than Sean Smith’s “rWAR” or rallyWAR. Here’s the long article on the new changes (if anyone hasn’t read it yet) and a table Sean made to point out the differences in the old rWAR, fangraphsWAR or fWAR, and the new bWAR: http://www.baseball-reference.com/about/war_explained.shtml The biggest difference in dWAR overall is that b-ref has switched from TZ to DRS as their basic system for evaluating defense. This also includes Mike… Read more »

John Nacca

12 years ago

Reply to John Autin

Not disagreeing John, but I think in any sport, you need BOTH stats and the eyeball test. Definitely not equal, but you need a little of both to work. Much like a recipe for a delicious dish. Ted Williams in 1955….as a 36 year old…who in his entire career NEVER posted even a 0.0 dWAR (except his 6-game 1952 season)…had a dWAR of +0.4. Did he all of a sudden become a better then average fielder? The stats say he did, but we all know he was below average. Heck Jeter in 2009 was a +1.2 dWAR, and we ALL… Read more »

Baltimorechop

12 years ago

Reply to John Nacca

There were 7 times Ted Williams had positive fielding runs. If you would’ve gone to baseball-reference last week, he would’ve had 7 years of positive dWars. As I posted above, they have added the positional adjustment to the dWar, making it appear that he had this many negatives.

Similarly, Jeter was worth .6 dWar in his one non-awful year of trying to field SS. He gets an additional .6 just for being a SS under the new dWar.

John Nacca

12 years ago

Reply to Baltimorechop

I didn’t read your post directly above mine…we must have been writing it at the same time….could you if possible explain a little more about this change?

Baltimorechop

12 years ago

Reply to John Nacca

So previously they had oWar and dWar and they added up to the overall War. Now there is afWar & dWar. afWar is exactly what oWar used to be: everything but runs saved (so hitting/running/positional adjustment/replacement level bonus). dWar used to be just runs saved, but now it’s runs saved + positional adjustment. (Thus, afWAR & dWar only equal the total WAR for a player who has 0 or nearly 0 positional adjustment runs). So Keith Hernandez is worth 117 Fielding Runs; which means he would’ve had approximately 11.7 dWar last week. Now, his dWar shows -.6, because they are… Read more »

bstar

12 years ago

Reply to John Nacca

Thanks, Bchop, for interpreting this in a way that’s more easily understandable than Sean Forman’s explanation of the new changes. I’d read over the changes several times but it still hadn’t all sunken in yet, but now I think I understand it fully.

Author

John Autin

12 years ago

Reply to John Nacca

“Did [Ted Williams] all of a sudden become a better then average fielder?” John, since I don’t know the answer to that, I’ll comment on what I find more interesting in your question — namely, the underlying assumption that players don’t have good and bad fielding years. Every year, a few established hitters and pitchers have success that’s well above anything they’ve ever done before. Remember Jose Bautista and R.A. Dickey in 2010? Mike Napoli and Doug Fister last year? And there are other players who have many ups and downs throughout their career; Adrian Beltre and Javier Vazquez come… Read more »

Voomo Zanzibar

12 years ago

Reply to John Autin

It is also possible that fielding is affected by a player’s mental state more so than hitting. I am referring to the player-as-person. Say a guy is going through a bad divorce, or his child is sick, or he just got slapped with a paternity suit, etc. Most likely he is NOT thinking about his life when he is in the batter’s box. But 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, minutes into standing around in Left Field with no action? All kinds of thoughts can creep into the undisciplined mind. Whoops! Didn’t get a good jump on that gapper, was thinking… Read more »

Paul E

12 years ago

Reply to John Autin

There is, in these most modern times, an urgency to quantify for the sake of future performance everything -stock ticker valuation, AAA middle infielder major league performance, voter tendencies,drug-specific pharmaceutical sales, etc…ad nauseum.

The dWAR thing is baffling, to say the least. Again, for the millionth time, I watch Ryan Howard try to pull the 3-6-3 double play and you might as well ask him to scale Everest. Yet, he has light years better fielding values than a similar defensive slug, Prince Fielder. Que se; quien sabe?