Midway Numerology

With this afternoon’s game, we reach the midway point of the 2005 season.

This, then, is a good time to take stock of where we’re at.

There are a number of different statistical measures that are useful to help describe a baseball team’s performance. Batting average, wins, saves, and RBI are all familiar, even if practically useless to understand the abilities of major league players. In the end, we would like to know WHY the Mariners enter today’s game at 33-46, a .418 winning percentage that is good for 5^th worst in the majors.

Two approaches that are popular among statheads strive to evaluate player performance by using a single number. One of those approaches produces a single accumulated value for the season’s statistics (Runs Created/Runs Saved, for example, or Win Shares—both Bill James creations). A second approach goes further, and strives to put that single number in context (for instance, Lee Sinins uses RCAA/RSAA—Runs Created/Runs Scored ABOVE AVERAGE—to show how an individual’s RC or RS score compares to the league). The guys at The Hardball Times have tweaked James’s open-source Win Shares formulae, and have decided to produce a number (WSAB—Win Shares Above Bench) that put the single number in the context of a “replacement” player, rather than league average. Baseball Prospectus uses the same concept, and adds in positional context (comparing, say, first basemen to first basemen) when divulging VORP (Value Over Replacement Player).

With either the “relative to average” or “relative to replacement player” approaches, we have freely available statistics that, however flawed their calculation might be, provide an interesting way to take stock of both individual and team performance.

According to RCAA, for instance, the Chicago White Sox are today dead last in the league in offense, a full 50 runs created below league average. The reason that they lead the majors in W-L record? Their pitching has saved 92 runs ABOVE league average, whereas only three AL teams have even half that total. (This approach suggests that all of the talk about Chicago’s dynamic “small ball” approach is yet another indictment of the limitations of Ozzie Guillen as a manager.)

Win Shares, meanwhile, are tied to a team’s actual number of victories (3 WS are awarded per team win), so they do not necessarily reward equivalent hitting or pitching performance on different teams with the same number of Win Shares. Thus, they inherently put statistics into a team context before evaluating them. So, on the 33-46 Mariners, Raul Ibanez’s team-high TEN Win Shares, or 5 WSAB, puts his .291/.354/.466 (AVG/OBA/SLG) line into the context of Seattle’s 33 wins, and into the context of Seattle’s other players. Aaron Rowand, the White Sox outfielder who leads the ChiSox in WS by a hitter, has inferior rate stats compared to Raul (.280/.337/.398), but has 11 WS, or 6 WSAB.

Part of the problem here is that Win Shares include separate batting, pitching, and fielding calculations, all of which combine into the complete WS number. The discrepancy between Ibanez and Rowand decreases if we focus just on batting WS, where Raul wins 9.6 to 8.5. In terms of RCAA, Ibanez is +12, while Rowand is -4. (To thoroughly confuse the issue, VORP shows Ibanez at 23.8, and Rowand at 9.7.)

With all of these different measures, most of which have arcane inner workings, it is no wonder that so many otherwise intelligent baseball fans resist claims made by statheads, and then rally behind Joe Morgan-types to attack Billy Beane on the basis of what hagiographer Michael Lewis wrote in Moneyball.

Still, it seems that we could analyze the Mariners’ performance in the first half thusly:

Team	W-L record	RCAA	(AL Rank)	RSAA	(AL Rank)
Los Angeles	49-31	-11	8	54	3
Texas	42-37	26	3	7	9
Oakland	39-41	-34	11	28	6
Seattle	33-46	-19	9	-36	11

This is as good a set of numbers as any to start with. Now, the question is, is below-average hitting and even more below-average pitching what the front office EXPECTED of the 2005 Mariners? Where can we objectively hope to improve? Let’s look at the nine hitting positions first (note that in general, there can be no NEGATIVE Win Shares, which saves Miguel Olivo a ton of embarrassment):

Position	RCAA	WS	WSAB	players appearing in 2005
Catcher	-18	3	-4	Olivo, Wilson, Borders, Rivera, Wiki
First Base	8	10	5	Sexy
Second Base	-8	5	0	Boone, Lopez
Third Base	-2	7	2	Beltre
Shortstop	-13	4	-2	Valdez, Bloomquist, Morse
Leftfield	0	8	2	Winn
Centerfield	-3	7	2	Reed
Rightfield	11	10	4	Ichiro!
Designated Hitter	12	10	5	Ibanez
Bench	-6	0	-2	Dobbs, Spiezio, Hansen, Choo
TOTALS	-19	64	12

Whichever measure we look closely at, catcher and shortstop stand out as the catastrophes, with Bert a close third place. Catastrophes can be good, in that a team full of equally mediocre players is harder to upgrade than one with some strong points (Sexy, Ichiro even in a down season, and Ibanez) and some disasters (Borders and Morse, Bert).

Back to the question, though. Is this outcome what Bavasi, etc., expected to confront them in early July 2005? I have to think, yes. This organization has NEVER developed a worthwhile catcher (Dave Valle is as close as we’ve gotten, and don’t get me started there), and we currently lack any viable backstops in the minors. As soon as we sign Jeff Clement, the #3 overall pick in the June amateur draft, that position has a chance of improving, but it might prove necessary to look for a trade or free agent upgrade behind the plate while we await the arrival of Clement to the Show. The plan for 2005 Mariners’ catcher was apparently: play Olivo, cross fingers.

Shortstop is a different story: we DO currently have a number of potential shortstops in the low minors. Again, though, there is a question of time. And again, with the decision last offseason to rely on players like Pokey Reese (whose value is best appreciated in the imagination, since despite being better than every player who has appeared in 2005 at SS for the Mariners, he is so far below average as a hitter that his glove simply cannot make up the difference) and waiver wire pickups (hello, Wilson Valdez!), we have been forced to bring up Morse, who has the merit of not being quite as bad as Willie Bloomquist.

Perhaps all of that analysis, though, elides the main point, which we have made incessantly here for several weeks. Looking back at the AL West comparison at the midway point, it is the PITCHING that has distinguished us from a real major league team. At least the Rangers combine high-powered offense with their minor league pitching!! I wonder sometimes how poorly this Mariners team would do in the PCL. No matter. Just how bad has the pitching been? Behold.

Pitcher	RSAA	WS	WSAB
Grab Bag	7	6	3	a.k.a Guardado
Homer Boy	5	3	1	a.k.a. Putz
Julio Mateo	4	4	2
Ron Villone	4	3	1
Jeff Nelson	1	2	0
Jorge Campillo	0	0	0
Shiggy	0	2	0
George Sherrill	0	0	0
Bobby Madritsch	-1	0	0
White Flag	-4	0	-1	a.k.a. Thornton
Gil Meche	-7	4	2
Aaron Sele	-8	4	2
Jamie Moyer	-9	3	1
Ryan Franklin	-10	3	-1
Joel Pineiro	-18	1	-2
TOTALS	-36	35	8

You may notice that the entire starting rotation scores below the Human Admission of Defeat in RSAA, although they do better by merit of Win Shares calculations. This chart puts into concrete figures what we have known all season—because it is evident by watching, and because so few of us are able to look away from the train wreck that is the Bill Bavasi Mariners. We’re fans, we’re masochists, we like to watch bloody catastrophes happening to other people, whatever.

Can we improve here? Not any time soon. Critics of Billy Beane in Oakland often chirp that his model wouldn’t look so successful without the “Big Three,” namely, Barry Zito, Tim Hudson, and Mark Mulder. Just so. The small-market A’s have been able to draft, develop, and keep healthy major league caliber PITCHERS as well as position players, so that for every Bobby Crosby they bring up (aha! A shortstop), they have several Justin Duschscherers and Joe Blantons.

It is worth asking (and the fine folks at USS Mariner have engaged in this line of questioning already) just why the many Mariners pitching prospects have all flamed out or been hurt in the last few seasons. Even on the free agent market, pitching is expensive ($7 million a year seemed to be about the going rate for starting pitchers this last offseason), and even more so via trade. Teams that cannot develop their own pitching will not compete. The best you could hope for would be the current Texas Rangers, with powerful hitting and atrocious pitching (but still better than ours), to allow you to compete but then be unlikely to win any playoff series.

Catcher, shortstop, second base, starting pitching. Pretty glaring weaknesses, all. What’s the old adage? You build a baseball team with strength up the middle. Thanks for joining us in Seattle, Mr. Bavasi.