YCPB Awards: Team of the Year

Posted on January 20, 2012 by youcantpredictbaseball

We’ve already written about the utter YCPB-ness of both the 2011 Cardinals and Red Sox. After the Cards won the World Series in similarly unpredictable fashion, we can’t help but crown them YCPB Team of the Year Champions, as well. However, several other teams had interesting seasons of their own.

Diamondbacks: Most people would probably name them YCPB Team of the Year, and we don’t blame them. The Diamondbacks won their division and made it to the NLCS in 2007 (oddly enough, they went 90-72 with a negative run differential), and then proceeded to go 82-80, 70-92, and 65-97 in the next three years. As you can see, before 2011, no one picked the Diamondbacks to do much of anything. We’re not excluding ourselves here; check the 2011 predictions, where Jordan and I both picked them to finish last in the NL West, and I actually said something like “Wow this team sucks.”

Of course, there’s a reason for that. Though most figured the Diamondbacks’ bullpen would improve in 2011 – because there was really no way it could not – their pitching still appeared shaky. With Brandon Webb (RIP) and Dan Haren gone from the Diamondbacks’ rotation, the 2011 rotation was relying on pitchers like Ian Kennedy, Daniel Hudson, Zach Duke, Armando Galarraga, and Joe Saunders, who were either not proven or in the case of Saunders, Duke, and Galarraga, proven to be pretty bad. Right fielder Justin Upton was pretty obviously a stud, but the Diamondbacks seemed to lack offense elsewhere.

The Diamondbacks got off to a 11-15 start and were already 6.5 games out of first by the end of April, which was more or less expected. However, they took off mid-May, finishing the month 19-10 and in first place. They battled the Giants for first until August, but when the Diamondbacks had another 19-10 month and the Giants struggled, Arizona took over first place for good.

Many players contributed to the Diamondbacks’ unexpected 94-68 record – raise your hand if, before 2011, you thought the Diamondbacks would have a better record than the Red Sox – and NL West championship. Justin Upton had a bit of a down year (for him) in 2010, but rebounded to put up an OPS+ over 140; he was a legitimate MVP candidate. Miguel Montero emerged as one of the best-hitting catchers in baseball. Gerardo Parra had been an excellent defensive outfielder who couldn’t hit, but in 2011 he apparently… learned how to hit. Ryan Roberts, their replacement at third base for the traded Mark Reynolds, had a great year.

The pitching, however, was what truly surprised. Ian Kennedy was one of the best pitchers in the NL and Daniel Hudson was also very good. Joe Saunders didn’t have the peripherals, but his results were solid. Josh Collmenter came up from the minors and had a great year, as well. While the bullpen was supposed to improve from OH GOOD LORD COVER YOUR EYES WE ONLY HAVE AN 11-RUN LEAD THAT’S NOT ENOUGH to just okay, it actually turned into a strength; JJ Putz was a great closer, and David Hernandez, who’d been in the Reynolds trade, served as a very solid set-up man.

The Brewers did eliminate the Diamondbacks in the NLDS, but the Diamondbacks fought back from a 0-2 series deficit, and even tied the fifth game in the ninth inning against Milwaukee’s excellent closer John Axford. Still, a season where the Diamondbacks quite easily won the NL West when they weren’t even supposed to compete cannot count as anything but a major success for Arizona – and a quite unpredictable success, as well.

Twins: The AL Central isn’t the strongest division in baseball, but the Twins have been the generally dominant team there, with only a few exceptions, since 2003. They won a thrilling Game 163 against the Tigers to take the division in 2009, and then easily won it in 2010. The Twins had the always excellent Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau – and Morneau had missed the second half of the season with a concussion, but the Twins actually had a better record without him – Danny Valencia had come up from the minors and provided great production, and Delmon Young and Francisco Liriano finally had the fantastic seasons many had been expecting based on their minor league pedigrees. The offense was strong, and their rotation and bullpen were solid, plus Joe Nathan would be coming back from Tommy John surgery.

Instead, the Twins absolutely fell apart. Mauer was okay when he was on the field, but not his usual MVP candidate self, but it was injuries that caused his season to be so disappointing. He only had 333 PAs, and fewer at catcher than Drew Butera, who hit .167/.210/.239. Yes, those numbers are real. Morneau battled concussion symptoms all year and was frequently injured, and his production was also awful – .227/.285/.333, with only four home runs all year.

They were representative of the entire team; almost no one could stay healthy, and those that did were mostly awful. Michael Cuddyer stayed healthy and good pretty much the whole year, and that’s about it. Young and Liriano regressed badly, to put up an OPS of .662 and an ERA of 5.09 (with a walk rate of 5), though, bizarrely and unpredictably enough, Liriano did throw a no-hitter.

If you had some doubts about the Twins before 2011, that made sense. Mauer and Morneau were injury-prone, many of their other great offensive pieces from 2010 were unproven or unlikely to repeat that year, their pitchers don’t know what a “strikeout” is, etc etc etc. If you thought a 94-win team would suddenly go 63-99, last place in the pretty bad AL Central by far, well, you’re lying. That’s why they’re a nominee for YCPB Team of the Year.

Pirates: 1992. Computers were the size of an entire room, Bill Clinton had just been elected, Barry Bonds’ head wasn’t huge, and the Pirates were over .500. A lot has changed since then.

The Pirates didn’t finish over .500 in 2011; indeed, they were a pretty bad 70-92. But their record is mainly due to a poor second half, where they collapsed more or less after this game, which ended on a notoriously bad call. But before then, the Pirates were a respectable 53-48, and had been in first place as recently as the day before – on July 25.

Maybe the most interesting and unpredictable thing about the Pirates was how, exactly, they managed to have a decent record for so long. Charlie Morton was a career 5.98 ERA pitcher before 2011, who ended up with an ERA of 3.88 the past season. Jeff Karstens (career 5.07 ERA, 3.38 2011 ERA) and Paul Malholm (career 4.48 ERA, 3.66 2011 ERA) also pitched very well in terms of results, despite meh peripherals and unimpressive career stats. Joel Hanrahan emerged as a fantastic closer.

At any rate, when we can take inspiration from your season to use as a tagline for our Twitter account – sadly, we changed it, but we were using “because sometimes the Pirates are in first place in late July” for a while – you belong here as a nominee. Congrats, Pirates.

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The 2012 YCPB Hall of Fame Ballot

Posted on January 8, 2012 by youcantpredictbaseball

It’s Hall of Fame time, and with all the discussion around the interwebs about various candidates’ worthiness for baseball’s highest honor, we at YCPB figured we would put in our two cents on the current Hall of Fame ballot. However, great players doing great things is fairly predictable and boring, and so we have omitted great players like Jeff Bagwell and Mark McGwire and Barry Larkin. We value postseason feats as well, but are missing a couple of players who had prominent ones like Bernie Williams and Edgar Martinez. Most of all, we are looking for seasons and moments that remind us all of why we love baseball, so without further ado:

Juan Gonzalez: On July 5th, 1998, in the final game before the Break, Gonzalez hit two homers and drove in four. It was home runs 25 and 26, and RBIs 98, 99, 100, and 101. 101 RBIs before the All-Star Break had people talking about Hack Wilson’s (still) seemingly untouchable record of 191 in a season, and Gonzalez rode that talk to his second MVP in three years. His torrid RBI pace slowed down in the second half though, and he finished the season with 157 RBIs, not even leading the majors (Sammy Sosa with his 66 homers and 158 RBIs did), though his 157 was the best mark in the AL since Vern Stephens and Ted Williams both drove in 159 for the 1949 Red Sox. The best part? While his RBI pace slowed dramatically, Gonzalez was actually a much better hitter in the second half: he hit .293/.333/.590/.923 with 26 homers and 101 RBIs in the first half, and .353/.411/.686/1.097 with 19 homers and 56 RBIs in the second despite 100 fewer plate appearances.

Javy Lopez: Lopez was one of the better hitting catchers out there, with a career .287/.337/.491 line. In 2003 though, he came to the plate only 495 times. Because of that, his rate stats were not counted among the league leaders, but what stats they were: Lopez hit .328/.378/.687/1.065 with 43 home runs in 129 games. Those 43 homers tied him Albert Pujols for fourth in the NL, and his .687 slugging would have been second only to some guy named Barry Bonds. Making it even more remarkable, Lopez caught 120 games that year. Only Johnny Bench, who hit 45 homers in 1970 in nearly 200 more plate appearances, ever hit more homers in a single season as a catcher, and Bench slugged a full 100 points lower than Lopez. Lopez in 2003 slugged 49 points higher than any catcher ever had before or since (minimum 400 PAs) and for that he gets our vote.

Jack Morris: Morris was a very good pitcher, but his Hall of Fame case essentially rests on a single game. No matter how good a pitcher you are, throwing an extra inning complete game shutout in Game 7 of the World Series is as unpredictable as it gets, and while some of his supporters seem to think so, Morris was hardly the best pitcher of his era. He likely would have fallen off the ballot years ago if not for Chuck Knoblauch fooling Lonnie Smith in the 8th, but pitch that great game he did, and through it he seems poised to get over 60% of the actual Hall of Fame vote. That is good enough to get ours.

Tony Womack: The speedy second baseman-turned-outfielder-turned-shortstop-turned-utility guy played seven full seasons, thrice led the league in steals (his 72 stolen bases in 1999 remains the second highest mark of the last 14 years) but only once put together a bWAR of greater than 1. That year, 2004, was by far his best season with the bat, hitting .307/.349/.385/.735, 91+ (all career highs). His career 72 OPS+ ranks 10th worst among the 572 players with 5000 plate appearances since WWII. Point is, the guy was not a threat with the stick. So why does he get our vote? Because while everyone remembers Luis Gonzalez’s World Series winning blooper over the drawn-in infield, it was Womack’s double off Mariano Rivera that tied the game and set that up. A light hitting lefty doubling in the biggest spot possible off a guy who limited lefties to a .187/.226/.209 line that year? Tony Womack hitting arguably the biggest hit in the history of the Diamondbacks? Give that man a plaque.

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Team of the Year Counterpoint: Boston Red Sox

Posted on December 28, 2011 by youcantpredictbaseball

Shortly after their stunning NLDS win over the Phillies, Bexy crowned the Cardinals as the YCPB Team of the Year. Given how the rest of the postseason transpired I can’t really disagree, but at the time I felt that was premature. No one believed in Arizona (heck, I picked them to finish last in my preseason predictions), but at least the NL West is somewhat of a no-man’s land: four different teams have won that division in the last six years, four out of five prior to 2011.

But one team surprised even more the Diamondbacks storming to 94 wins—if there was consensus on anything last winter, it was that the Boston Red Sox were the best team in the American League, and at the very least were going to win the AL East.

The injury bug had hit the Red Sox hard in 2010, but the season was not lost. Clay Buchholz broke out as a top-flight pitcher, and while he probably wasn’t quite 2.33 ERA good, he would serve as a complement to ace Jon Lester, a healthy Josh Beckett, and John Lackey, who was bound to improve after a disappointing first year in Boston. The lineup was losing key cogs in Adrian Beltre and Victor Martinez, but the front office blunted those losses by trading a bunch of prospects for Adrian Gonzalez, and then surprising everyone by signing Carl Crawford to a huge contract. Gonzalez had been one of the best hitters in the game, playing in 160 or more games for four straight years while putting up a .900 OPS in Petco National Park. Crawford was a slick-fielding speedster with some pop who could be counted on as a stolen base threat to complement Jacoby Ellsbury, who was a huge question mark coming off a lost season that saw him play in only 18 games. The Crawford signing also directly weakened the defending division champion Tampa Bay Rays.

Speaking of the Rays, 2011 was supposed to be somewhat of a rebuilding year for them. In addition to losing Crawford, they also lost or traded away their starting first baseman (Peña), shortstop (Bartlett), number 2 starter (Garza), and entire bullpen. James Shields was coming off leading the AL in earned runs allowed, and Ben Zobrist, while still a solid player, had taken a step back after his breakout 2009. Jeremy Hellickson was set to replace Garza, but no one knew how he would do in his first full year in the Bigs, and putting Kyle Farnsworth in the closer role didn’t exactly intimidate opposing teams.

As for the other contender in the AL East, the biggest news of the offseason for the Yankees was not a big name signing, but rather Cliff Lee taking his talents to Philadelphia. After losing Andy Pettitte to retirement, Brian Cashman went dumpster diving, signing Freddy Garcia and Bartolo Colon to Minor League deals which were mocked at the time. While the bullpen looked to be in good shape, the rotation appeared to be CC Sabathia, Phil Hughes, and a bunch of questions. Those questions intensified when Hughes was placed on the DL with inflammation of the ERA after just three starts.

When the season started, the Red Sox were the team to beat in the American League. All 45 of ESPN’s experts picked the Red Sox to win the East. So did I. So did Bexy. If you made predictions, then in all likelihood, so did you. 33 of those experts had the Sox winning it all, and why not? Tampa had weakened, the Yankees didn’t address their primary offseason need, and by all accounts the Sox had the most complete team in the league. Sox fans were overflowing with confidence, and some media members took to writing insanely hyperbolic articles about how good the team was. (Editor’s note—we will link to that article at every possible opportunity)

I’m sure he has taken a lot of crap about this over the year, but it would be a shame to link to that ESPN piece and not point out Steve Berthiaume’s picks. Houston to win their division? The Dodgers to win the wild card? Philadelphia missing the playoffs entirely? Well done.

And then the season started, and the Red Sox got swept out of Texas with Lester, Lackey, and Buchholz all getting lit up. From there they went to Cleveland, where they were promptly swept again. These were close games though, the final one a 1-0 nailbiter where the only run scored on an 8th inning squeeze play. Nonetheless, they limped into Fenway 0-6, tied with the also-surprising-but-not-quite-as-surprising also 0-6 Tampa Bay Rays. A solid west coast road trip (including a four game sweep in Anaheim) helped stanch the bleeding but they dropped four of five to end April and needed a walkoff single from Crawford to avoid being swept by the Mariners at Fenway on May 1st.

That single brought Crawford’s line up to .168/.215/.238 in 108 plate appearances. Adrian Gonzalez was hitting but had only one home run. The pitching though, was looking up. Lester had shaken off his first start and put together an excellent April, as did Beckett. Lackey, after giving up 15 runs in his first 8.2 innings, allowed just three in his next twenty. Even Daisuke Matsuzaka had a run of 15 scoreless innings.

Starting in May, the offense found its stride. The team OPS jumped 109 points from April to May, another 18 points in June, and peaked in July, when the team as a whole hit .298/.373/.501/.874, roughly equivalent to what Alex Gordon (7th in the AL in bWAR) did over the course of the season. Between May 1st and September 1st, they went 71-38, a 105-win pace, and looked like the team everyone thought they would be back in March.

You all know what happened after that. 7-20. Fried chicken and beer. Robert Bleepin Andino. A collapse for the ages that culminated in the most exciting regular season night of baseball in memory (or most heartbreaking, depending on which side you were on). On September 29th, the team that everyone predicted would win the division easily packed their bags and went home for the winter. Serves us all right for predicting.

For the gory details of the Collapse from the Orioles’ perspective, presented far better than I ever could, see Jon Bernhardt’s terrific series here.

A few random notes on the 2011 Red Sox:

Carl Crawford finished the season at .255/.289/.405 with just 22 unintentional walks. That OBP was fourth worst in the AL. He also only stole 18 bases. According to both baseball-reference and Fangraphs, even his defense was a slight negative this year.

On the flipside, Jacoby Ellsbury hit .321/.376/.552, becoming the first 30-30 player in Red Sox history. This might seem strange, but the Red Sox have never been much of a running team. Between Tris Speaker in 1914 and Johnny Damon in 2002, there were only five individual instances of a Boston player stealing 30 bases, and Tommy Harper’s 17 homers in 1973 were the most of that bunch. Prior to Ellsbury, the closest the Sox had to a 30-30 player was Carl Yastrzemski in 1970, who hit 40 homers and stole 23 bases.

During the Collapse, Boston starters allowed 101 earned runs in 128.1 innings, or a 7.08 ERA. They also lasted less than five innings per start.

Robert Andino drove in just 36 runs all season, tied with Brett Gardner for the fewest among 73 AL qualifiers. 10 of those were against Boston, and nine of those were in the final two weeks of the season.

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YCPB Awards: NL Cy Young

Posted on December 18, 2011 by youcantpredictbaseball

AND THE NOMINEES ARE…

Though he reverted to, well, more Kyle Lohse-ish stats by the end of the season – and a side note, a 3.39 ERA is only a 107 ERA+? Please bring back steroids – on July 3, Lohse’s ERA was under three (and had been under three since mid-April), and Carpenter’s was 4.00. Adam Wainwright was on the DL. This team won the World Series. God, how I love the 2011 Cardinals for all the wackiness they provided.

The absurdity of the Atlanta bullpen, specifically setup men Jonny Venters and Eric O’Flaherty, and closer Craig Kimbrel, is worth a mention. Combined, they provided 238.2 innings of a 1.66 ERA, 1.073 WHIP, 10.94 K/9, and K/BB of 3.02. In case you weren’t aware, that is outstanding. With much of Atlanta’s starting pitching either not very good (hi, Derek Lowe) or seriously injured (hi, Jair Jurrjens and Tommy Hanson), the three of them contributed much more to their team’s success than most relievers do. Kimbrel’s numbers were even more ridiculous prior to September 9, when he gave up two runs in a blown save to St. Louis, and posted a 7.36 ERA for the rest of the season; his sharp decline obviously played a large role in Atlanta’s collapse, considering how strongly they leaned on their bullpen, but it’s safe to say being overused earlier in the season contributed to the bullpen ending the season so poorly.

Prior to 2011, Charlie Morton was a career 5.98 ERA pitcher (!!!) with a 1.595 WHIP. But before the season began, Morton studied and aped Roy Halladay’s delivery, and in mid-June his ERA was in the low 3s. His peripherals never matched his low ERA, or came close to Halladay’s – his HR/9 falling from a rather high career average of 1.1, including a ridiculous 1.7 the year before, to a tiny 0.3 certainly helped – and he didn’t pitch as well for the rest of the season, but Morton ending up with a solid 3.83 ERA* and standing out at various points in the year earns him a nomination here.

AND THE WINNER IS…

No one, however, could beat Ryan Vogelsong for your NL Cy Young YCPB winner. Rebecca already covered this a few times, but to summarize: while Vogelsong was originally drafted by the Giants, he was best known for his years on the Pirates, which were, to be honest, pretty awful. He hadn’t even been in MLB since 2006. After failed attempts to get back to professional baseball with minor league deals from the Phillies and Angels, the Giants signed him before 2011, and he emerged as an important part of their excellent rotation. ERA is very far from the be-all-end-all, obviously, but Vogelsong’s 2.71 ERA was the lowest among the Giants’ starting staff. There was a little squabbling about whether Vogelsong deserved the Comeback Player of the Year Awards he won – how can you make a comeback when you were never really very good before, after all – but there is no question that he deserves the YCPB NL Cy Young.

* As a side note, this was good for a 100 ERA+. Just for comparison’s sake, Andy Pettitte came in second in the 1996 AL Cy Young, with a 3.87 ERA – which was a 129 ERA+. Dear lord, we miss steroids. This cannot be said enough.

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YCPB Awards: AL Cy Young

Posted on December 13, 2011 by youcantpredictbaseball

AND THE NOMINEES ARE…

Derek Holland had a bit of a strange year. The young lefty was drafted in the 25th round in 2006, but emerged as a legitimate prospect with very good minor league numbers. In 2010, he played a fairly important relief role for the AL Champion Rangers, especially in the playoffs. The Rangers moved him to the rotation in 2011.

As a fairly decent example of his season, I present his starts from May 19 through August 5.
May 19 vs. KCR: 8 IP, 9 H, 1 R/ER, 5 K, 1 BB
May 24 vs. CHW: 4 IP, 4 H, 4 R/ER, 4 K, 1 BB
May 30 vs. TBR: 5 IP, 5 H, 5 R/ER, 7 K, 5 BB
June 4 vs. CLE: 9 IP, 5 H, 0 R/ER, 5 K, 1 BB
June 9 vs. MIN: 7.1 IP, 8 H, 4 R/ER, 10 K, 1 BB
June 15 vs. NYY: 5 IP, 7 H, 6 R/ER, 0 K, 5 BB
June 20 vs. HOU: 7.1 IP, 6 H, 3 R/ER, 4 K, 3 BB
June 26 vs. NYM: 6 IP, 12 H, 7 R/3 ER (!), 0 K, 0 BB (!)
July 2 vs. FLA: 0.2 IP, 4 H, 5 R/ER, 1 K, 2 BB
July 7 vs. OAK: 9 IP, 4 H, 0 R/ER, 7 K, 2 BB
July 14 vs. SEA: 9 IP, 5 H, 0 R/ER, 8 K, 1 BB
July 20 vs. LAA: 5.1 IP, 9 H, 7 R/ER, 4 K, 3 BB
July 25 vs. MIN: 6 IP, 5 H, 1 R/0 ER, 4 K, 0 BB
July 30 vs. TOR: 9 IP, 4 H, 0 R/ER, 5 K, 1 BB
August 5 vs. CLE: 1.2 IP, 5 H, 6 R/4 ER, 1 K, 1 BB
No, none of that makes any sense. Specifically, check the June 26-July 20 period. Terrible! More terrible! Two totally dominant complete game shutouts! More terrible! There’s nothing odd about Holland’s overall numbers this year, but how he got there earns him a nomination.

- —– -

Brian Matusz was a fourth overall pick for the Orioles in 2008, with very good minor league numbers. He landed in Baseball America‘s top 25 prospects twice, including the top five. His 2010 hadn’t been spectacular, but for a 23-year-old pitching his first full season in the AL East, it was about what you’d expect. I highly doubt anyone saw his 2011 coming.

Matusz missed April and May with a shoulder strain, but his first two starts of the year were solid. After that, it completely fell apart for him. 1.1 IP, 4 R; 5.1 IP, 4 R; 4.2 IP, 6 R; and a disastrous outing against St. Louis, 3.1 IP with 8 R. Carrying a very bloated 8.77 ERA with poor peripherals, Matusz was sent back down to the minors.

When he came back to the Orioles in mid-August, he was even worse. He made six starts to finish the year, and in every one of them, he gave up at least five runs. His first outing was the longest, at 6.2 innings, but his other outings lasted, at most, 5.1 innings. Often they were far shorter than that, like his 1.2-inning outing in Boston (where he gave up six runs), or his 1.1-inning game in New York (where he gave up five runs). He finished the year with a 10.69 ERA, the worst single-season ERA of any pitcher in history, minimum 40 innings. This was a lost year for Matusz, but perhaps as consolation he can look at the pitcher who had that record prior to his 2011 (and who still has the highest ERA in history with a minimum of 50 innings). He turned out okay.

- —– –

Guess who the AL FIP leader was in 2011. No, it wasn’t Verlander – or Sabathia, Weaver, Haren, Felix, Shields, Wilson, Price… it was Brandon McCarthy. Prior to 2011, McCarthy was mostly known as, well, injured. The As signed him before the season, and he had an excellent year. He wasn’t quite as publicized as both our AL and NL Cy Young winners, but McCarthy merits a mention here. Also, you should follow him on Twitter because he is a delight.

- —– -

AND THE WINNER IS…

You know Bartolo Colon. He’d been in the majors since 1997, and won a Cy Young in 2005. (Yes, Johan Santana was robbed blind, but Colon had a great year.) Since that year, though, Colon wasn’t able to stay healthy, and when he was on the field he generally wasn’t very good. He’d even sat out all of 2010.

Reports emerged about Colon pitching in winter ball between the 2010 and 2011 seasons, and the Yankees signed him. More or less, it was viewed as a complete joke, a desperate attempt at getting some sort of pitching depth after the team missed out on Cliff Lee. Weirdly enough, though, Colon impressed in Spring Training. He started the year in the Yankees’ bullpen, but his excellent performance there and Phil Hughes’ injury pushed him into the rotation.

Colon ended the season with extremely solid numbers, and they probably would have been even better had he not clearly been affected by a pulled hamstring injury in mid-June. He was signed as a joke, but Colon ended up playing a fairly large* role in New York’s patchwork, yet effective, rotation. Personally, we got a lot of joy out of him here at YCPB, and that’s why he’s our AL Cy Young winner for 2011.

* get it, large, because he’s fat! We’re hilarious.

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YCPB Awards: NL MVP

Posted on December 9, 2011 by youcantpredictbaseball

AND THE NOMINEES ARE…

When you look back on the record it just looks bad, but honestly, the Florida Marlins had a weird year. They got off to a hot start, more or less keeping pace with the Phillies for first place in the NL East. Then, however, they had an absurdly disastrous 5-23 June that took them out of contention, and finished fifth in the division. A large part of the Marlins’ terrible season was Hanley Ramirez‘s performance. Prior to 2011, Ramirez was a shortstop with a career line of .313/.385/.521, a 136 OPS+. That’s great for just about every position, but when you’re a shortstop, it puts you in the conversation for one of the best players in the game. This year, though, his performance inexplicably collapsed; he only hit .243/.333/.379, all career lows by quite a lot. That’s a below league average stat line, and Hanley is a terrible defensive shortstop. That’s okay when he’s hitting well; it becomes a bigger problem when he’s not. The Marlins may have signed several big-name free agents over the 2011-2012 offseason, but Ramirez returning to his career numbers might be the biggest boost of them all.

On the other hand, the Marlins did have an unlikely offensive boon as well. In almost 1000 career PAs, Emilio Bonifacio had a career stat line of .251/.306/.317, which is a 65 OPS+. No matter what position you play, that’s terrible. In 2011, Bonifacio hit .296/.360/.393, which isn’t spectacular, but were all still career highs and good for a 107 OPS+ in this year’s poor offensive environment. He also had a 26-game hitting streak, second longest in Marlins franchise history. This year alone raised Bonifacio’s career OPS over fifteen points.

Aubrey Huff, who’d spent most of his career on awful teams like the Devil Rays and Orioles, played a major part in San Francisco’s championship season of 2010. He signed another contract with the Giants soon after that season ended, but his 2011 did not go nearly as well. He hit only .246/.306/.370, which isn’t great for anyone, but is downright terrible for a poor-fielding first baseman. Since 2008 Huff seems to be alternating good years and awful years, so maybe the Giants will get another solid season out of Huff in 2012, but for now, his rapid decline from World Series hero to goat gives him a nomination here. Just for kicks, let’s look at his Fangraphs WAR over the past three years: -1.5, 5.8, -0.9.

AND THE WINNER IS…

Before the 2011 season began, the Marlins traded second baseman Dan Uggla to the Braves, but apparently not before rubbing off some of the general weirdness of their 2011 on him. Uggla was a great offensive second baseman; he’d hit at least 30 home runs every year since and including 2007. He actually set a career high for home runs in 2011, with 36, but the rest of his year was very odd. His final stat line, .233/.311/.453, is below his career numbers but not horrible, but how he arrived at that stat line is odd, so to speak. As late as June 9, Uggla’s OPS was a paltry .539, thanks to a .170/.235/.304 line. From that point on, however, he hit .273/.356/.546, complete with a thirty-three game hitting streak that was the longest in the majors since 2006. Uggla’s final numbers might not look that odd, but he never stopped providing YCPB entertainment throughout the year. Just look at those month-by-month stats! Yowza. Congrats, Dan.

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YCPB Awards: AL MVP

Posted on December 6, 2011 by youcantpredictbaseball

AND THE NOMINEES ARE…

Jacoby Ellsbury was a very solid but not spectacular player for the Red Sox over his first two full seasons of 2008 and 2009, putting up a .291/.346/.405 line. That’s a bit below league average, though he led the AL in stolen bases both years and occasionally flashed some spectacular defensive skill. However, 2010 was a complete lost year for Ellsbury, as injuries restricted him to only eighteen games, where he hit a terrible .192/.241/.244 across 83 PA. Even with Boston’s seemingly loaded lineup going into 2011, Ellsbury was a fairly large question mark. Instead, he became the team’s best player, hitting .321/.376/.552 and leading the AL in total bases. As a leadoff hitter, he hit 32 home runs and had 105 RBI, and was the first 30-30 player in Red Sox history. Even through the Red Sox’s awful September, he was tremendous, with an OPS over 1.000. If not for Boston’s late season collapse, he might have won the actual league MVP, and he would’ve been a very good choice anyway. Ellsbury’s emergence from pretty good but not great player, especially one not known for his power, to perhaps the best overall player in the AL – especially coming off a horrible, injury-plagued season – gives him a nomination here.

When the Cardinals traded Colby Rasmus to Toronto for Edwin Jackson, Octavio Dotel, Mark Rzepczynski, and Corey Patterson, many were shocked. Yes, Tony LaRussa had fairly famously never gotten along with Rasmus or Rasmus’ father, but Rasmus was still a 24-year-old center fielder putting up a 110 OPS+ in a year was viewed as a bit of a disappointment for him. The Cardinals got no long-term assets from that deal, but at least for 2011, they ended up having the last laugh. St. Louis won the World Series, while Rasmus, a former top prospect with a great deal of MLB success, put up a line of .173/.201/.316 in 140 PA in Toronto. That line isn’t predictive of what he’ll do in the future, but his awful performance – while the Cardinals went on to win the World Series – earns him a mention here.

The Royals’ acquisition of Melky Cabrera and Jeff Francoeur prior to 2011 was viewed as typical Royals. Francoeur was best known for his quote about displaying OBP on the scoreboard if it mattered… while he played in a stadium that yes, displayed OBP on the scoreboard. Cabrera was a mediocre outfielder coming off an awful year with Atlanta. They’d be joining Alex Gordon in the outfield; Gordon had been a fantastic college player, a second overall pick by the Royals, and a tippy-top prospect, but he had never lived up to the hype in the big leagues, hitting only .244/.328/.405 while getting moved from third base to a corner outfield position. If there were any expectations for this trio, they were low, to put it mildly. Instead, they each had pretty great years. Gordon hit .303/.376/.502, a 140 OPS+, and probably should have been more of an MVP candidate than he was; Francoeur hit .285/.329/.476, with plenty of pop and solid defense; and Cabrera came out of nowhere to hit .305/.339/.470 for a 121 OPS+, when his career OPS+ before 2011 had been 86, with a high of 95. They might have been the best outfield in the AL, if not baseball. For some random counting stat coolness, the Gordon/Cabrera/Francoeur trio was the first outfield in baseball history to have all its regular members hit at least 40 doubles each. The Royals outfield was great in a way no one expected, and collectively, they get a nomination for AL MVP.

AND THE WINNER IS…

Adam Dunn, of course. Dunn went from being one of the most consistent sluggers in baseball to perhaps the worst player in the sport. Jordan covered this pretty well, so please read his piece.

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Six More Trips

Posted on November 28, 2011 by youcantpredictbaseball

Here at YCPB, we are still stunned over just how bad Adam Dunn was in 2011. Last winter, Dunn signed a 4-year, $56 million contract to DH for the White Sox, and things looked good initially when he homered in his second plate appearance of the year. Through seven games, he was hitting a Dunn-esque .240/.424/.520 with a couple of homers, but then he fell into a terrible slump and simply never recovered. By the end, the man who had been one of the most consistent (and predictable) sluggers in baseball finished with an atrocious .159/.292/.277 line in 496 plate appearances.

Nowadays, a player needs 3.1 plate appearances per team game to be considered a regular player eligible to be a league leader in rate stats, which comes out to 502 PAs for a full season. This was not always the case. 145 players qualified in 2011 between the two leagues and the fact that Dunn was not one of them was almost certainly intentional, and designed to spare him the embarrassment of showing up at the bottom of a whole bunch of lists whenever people searched for qualifiers.

So we are going to fire up the hypothetical machine and play “What if Adam Dunn had gotten six more PAs?” (note: we are not speculating as to what would happen in those six PAs, so for the purposes of this exercise, his rate stats are the same as his actual 496-PA season. That said, even six homers would raise his line to a still terrible .171/.301/.330)

.159 batting average: Tied for second worst all-time with 1906 Bill Bergen. Bergen was a legendarily bad hitter, even by catcher standards, even by Deadball Era standards, and even by Deadball Era catcher standards (Bergen actually holds six of the bottom 15 spots on the single-season batting average list, bottoming out at .139 in 1909). Out of 1607 Major League players with 3000+ PAs, Bergen’s .170/.194/.201 career line ranks dead last in all three categories, by 37, 56, and 58 points respectively. This guy was a really bad hitter, and Dunn’s 2011 managed to match his second-worst performance, at least in terms of batting average. Dunn has never been much of a batting average guy, and you can be a productive player with a low average, but when you hit .159, you had better either walk at a Bondsian pace or hit the ball out of the ballpark nearly every time you manage to get a hit. Dunn did neither of those things. Worth noting here that none of Bergen’s seasons would be considered qualified under today’s 3.1-PAs-per-game standards. The worst performance ever using those standards is Rob Deer’s .179 in 1991, a full twenty points better than Dunn’s 2011.

.292 on base percentage: Thirteenth worst in baseball in 2011. This one isn’t nearly as embarrassing as batting average, as it’s merely terrible as opposed to historic. On top of being 13th worst in baseball, a qualified .292 OBP would be 7th worst in the AL and not even the worst on his own team—Alex Rios and his impressive .265 OBP takes that honor, and Gordon Beckham was right behind Dunn at .296. Rios and Dunn both made $12 million last year and are owed a combined $82 million over the next few seasons.

.277 slugging percentage: Worst in baseball in 2011 by a full 30 points. Jason Bartlett slugged .307 for the Padres, and Juan Pierre paced the AL at .327, a full 50 points ahead of Dunn (Juan Pierre!). In fact, in the 17 years since the Strike, there have only been 12 individual seasons of a player qualifying for rate stats with a slugging percentage less than .300 (by 11 players—Brad Ausmus did it twice). Of those, only three were lower than .277: Kevin Stocker’s .274 in 1995, Nick Punto’s .271 in 2007, and Cesar Izturis’ .268 in 2010. Adam Dunn, if he had six more PAs, would have had the fourth lowest slugging percentage in the last seventeen years. This from a guy whose career slugging, even with 2011, is over .500, and who has had two qualified seasons where his slugging was literally double (.554+) what it was this year.

.118 isolated power: 26th worst in baseball in 2011. We picked IsoP (slugging minus batting average—basically a measure of power, as it measures how many of your hits were extra base hits, weighted toward homers) because it’s a stat that plays right into Dunn’s wheelhouse as a low-average big-power guy. Prior to 2011, Dunn’s career IsoP was .271, good for 12th all-time among players with 3000 PAs, and behind guys like Thome, Pujols, Ted Williams, Bonds, McGwire, and Ruth. That .118 IsoP in 2011 would slot him between Casey Kotchman (.116) and Alex Rios (.121) and would place him in the bottom 20% of the league. That there were still 25 players worse than Dunn here sounds like maybe he wasn’t so terrible, but this is a stat that couldn’t be more tailor-made to make a guy like Dunn look good.

11 home runs: Tied for 34th lowest in 2011. OK, lots of people don’t hit a whole lot of homers. Of the 145 qualifiers in 2011, only Jamey Carroll finished the year with zero home runs, but 26 players from Juan Pierre to Derek Jeter to Bobby Abreu finished the year in single digits. Dunn’s 11 homers were the third lowest on the White Sox, but still a shock for a guy who hit 38, 38, 40, 40, 40, 40, and 46 homers in the last seven years. Worth noting that Dunn fell just short of Don Wert’s 1968 record of 12 homers by a player with a sub-.300 slugging.

42 RBIs: Tenth worst in baseball, third worst in the AL in 2011. An everyday player is more or less guaranteed to drive in at least 40 runs. Only six qualifiers failed to do so in 2011 and that is more or less in line with recent seasons. Dunn drove in triple digits in six of the previous seven seasons (and 92 in that seventh). The six who failed to drive in 40 this year all had the excuse of batting at the top or bottom of their respective lineups. Dunn had no such excuse–three quarters of his PAs came batting 3rd, 4th, or 5th.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted on November 24, 2011 by youcantpredictbaseball

Happy Thanksgiving to you & yours. Here at YCPB, we are very thankful to all our readers, triple plays, grand slams by utility infielders, and, of course, the 2011 World Series.

Stay tuned…

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A note to our readers!

Posted on November 5, 2011 by youcantpredictbaseball

We’re still here, just decompressing from the end of the season – and, needless to say, the tremendous World Series. We’ll be back shortly with your YCPB of the Year Awards, and lots of other fun stuff throughout the offseason. Stay tuned!

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