In 2011, there were five shortstops in the majors who topped 4 Wins Above Replacement (WAR), using Baseball-Reference’s formula:

Troy Tulowitzki 5.6 WAR
Asdrubal Cabrera 4.8
Jose Reyes 4.7
Yunel Escobar 4.4
J.J. Hardy 4.2

In the context of recent major league baseball, that was a perfectly normal number of shortstops to be in the 4.0 WAR and over range.  Indeed, over the past fifteen full seasons, there have been 82 player-seasons by shortstops of 4 or more WAR, an average of about 5.5 such player-seasons a year.  There have  been at least four shortstops to reach at least 4 WAR in each of the past 15 seasons, and in 2006 there were actually nine guys at short who  reached 4 WAR.  So how are major league shortstops doing in 2012 in this respect?  The answer after the jump. Continue reading →

The Nationals have 89 wins going into tonight’s game against the Braves.  The most wins any second wild-card in the NL can reach after 162 games is now 92 wins.  So Washington needs just four more wins to ensure at least a wild-card game post-season spot.

The Nats in the playoffs would mean that, barring any late injury, Bryce Harper will become the eleventh teenager to appear in an MLB post-season game. Harper turns 20 on October 16, which according to the National League schedule will be a couple of games into the NLCS.  A listing of the ten kids who Bryce Harper is seeking to join as teenage post-season participants is after the jump. Continue reading →

With Buster Posey’s homer and two singles last night, Baseball-reference now has the Giants’ backstop with 5.8 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) for the 2012 season.

Here are the highest WAR seasons by a Giants catcher, over the history of the franchise (minimum, one game caught during the season):
1. Buster Posey (2012) 5.8
2. Roger Bresnahan (1908) 5.6
3. Walker Cooper (1947) 5.1
T4. Buck Ewing (1883 and 1888) 4.6
6. Buck Ewing (1884) 4.5

In-season WAR can do down as well as up. So it’s possible that Buster could, if he slumps in this last few weeks of the season, drop from the top spot on the list above. But the guy sure isn’t in a slump at the moment.

Highest OPS in the Majors Since the All-Star Break (min. 100 PAs):
1. Buster Posey 1.118
2. Miguel Cabrera 1.047
3. Giancarlo Stanton 1.012
4. Albert Pujols 1.011
5. Josh Donaldson 1.007

The Yankees have hit a goodly number of home runs this season, as you have presumably noticed. Through last night’s games the (well-nicknamed) Bombers lead the majors with 207 dingers, through game 138 of the season.  That’s a pace that would generate about 243 homers if maintained over 162 games, which is impressive but it is hardly unprecedented. A 243-homer season would tie for the 11th-most team homers in a major league season.

Where the 2012 Yankees are on record or near-record pace is in hitting home runs off of left-handed pitchers. Details after the jump. Continue reading →

The Giants have opened up a solid lead in the NL West and have the third best record in the NL. It’s been nearly five full seasons since Barry Bonds, the greatest generator of positive sabermetric statistics since Babe Ruth, was left unsigned by the Giants (or anyone else), after an historic 15-year run in San Francisco.  As far as winning games is concerned, the Giants have barely lost a beat since Barry left.  Some comparative win-loss numbers and other team stats after the jump. Continue reading →

A Wins Above Replacement (WAR) number of 8.2 or more is an excellent season number — that’s an MVP-level season performance.  But it’s not exactly rare.  From 1962 on, the Baseball-Reference Play Index shows 91 seasons by position players that rose to the 8.2 or more WAR level.  On average, that’s about two a year, and with two leagues picking MVPs — well, you can see why I described the 8.2 or over level as MVP-type performance.

OK, now how many of those 91 position player seasons of 8.2 WAR over the 1962-2012 period do you suppose have been produced by a position player for a New York City team?  Would you believe there have been only three such player-seasons?  In 1985, Rickey Henderson in his first year with the Yankees, at age 26, put together an awesome 9.8 WAR year (that was no fluke, as Rickey had another 9.8 WAR year, and grabbed the MVP award, with the A’s in 1990). And A-Rod has produced two seasons over 9 WAR for the Yankees: 2005 and 2007.  But that’s it.  Other than those three player-seasons, no Yankee position player from 1962 on has produced more WAR in a season than 7.8, achieved by Robinson Cano in 2010, Derek Jeter in 1999 and Bobby Murcer in 1972.

And then there are the Mets, whose top WAR position-player seasons ever are David Wright’s 8.1 in 2007, Carlos Beltran’s 8.0 in 2006 and Bernard Gilkey’s flukey 7.8 in 1996.  No other Met position player has topped 7.3 WAR in a season.  It is thus not surprising that no Met position-player has ever led the NL in WAR (baseball-reference version) in any season, which happens to be a timely fact because as of now, with a month left in the season, David Wright is actually leading the NL in b-ref WAR, having nudged ahead of the slumping Andrew McCutchen (.588 OPS in McCutchen’s last 21 games).

Most HHS readers will be familiar with the “pythagorean expectation” in baseball. That’s the concept, originally formulated by Bill James, that over time one can get a better sense of a team’s true talent level by looking at its runs scored and runs allowed (within a relatively simple mathematical formula) than at its actual win-loss record. The theory, which has well-stood the test of time and further study, is that actual win-loss records can be subject to random fluctuations in the distribution of runs across games, but that with a large enough sample to smooth out such random fluctuations those runs scored and runs allowed numbers will prevail as the the more accurate determinant of the most talented teams.

The 2012 race for the best pythagorean-expectation-based record in the AL is a tight one right now. Through last night’s games, the Rangers have (using b-ref’s version of the Pythagorean calculation) a record of 76-53, merely one game ahead of the Yankees, whose Pythag record is 75-54. You have to go back to 2005 to find a season in which an Eastern Division team failed to hold the best Pythag record in the AL. After the jump is a list of the season-by-season leaders in Pythag record in the American League during the three-division era. Continue reading →

Who is the “most valuable third baseman in baseball”?  Wins Above Replacement can be one tool to help answer that sort of question, but using a single season’s WAR number can sometimes leave us subject to random fluctuations in single-season performance that may not fully reflect a player’s real, long-term value.  For that reason, I like to use a longer-term test of true WAR-generating results, say for example, over a three-year period.  Let’s try a three-year test over the history of the third base position and see what we come up with as a running measure of who has been the “most valuable third baseman in baseball”. Continue reading →

Going into tonight’s game, Tampa has surrendered a total of 67 runs over its past 33 games. That is, by far, the lowest runs-allowed total over a 33-game sequence by any AL team since the DH rule was adopted in 1973, and is almost unprecedented in the majors since the spitball was banned in 1920.

Fewest Runs Allowed by an American League Team Over a 33-Game Stretch, since 1973:
Rays 67 (July 19-August 23, 2012)
Rays 76 (July 17-August 21, 2012)
Rays 77 (July 18-August 22, 2012)
Rays 78 (July 16-August 20, 2012)
Orioles 78 (August 27-September 29, 1974)
Yankees 78 (June 11-September 12, 1981)
Rays 79 (July 13-August 17, 2012)

Those are the only AL teams since 1973 to hold their opponents under 80 runs over a 33-game stretch. That Yankees streak started with the last day before a players’ strike halted the season, and then picked up with the first 32 games after the season re-started.

Posters and commenters have frequently noted here at HHS that major league hitters are striking out at an unprecedentedly high rate this season.  But it is also true that in 2012 no single team is threatening to break the all-time record for most strikeouts per game by a team.

Here are the 2012 teams whose hitters are currently striking out most frequently, along with their K per game rates:

A’s 8.43 Ks per Game
Astros 8.29
Nationals 8.20
Pirates 8.10
Orioles 8.09

You can compare those numbers to the all-time highest team season strikeout rates, after the jump. Continue reading →