The Best and Worst Hitters’ Parks in MLB 2013

Last summer I discovered that espn.com provides stats for what it calls “park factor”, which for purposes of this post means the ratio between the number of runs scored at a ballpark in any given season divided by the number of runs scored by said ballpark’s occupant (and its opponents) in away games that same season.  I wrote a post last June which evaluates each park’s park factor for the five years ending with the 2011 season.

As we approach the 2013 season (and the 2012 stats have long been in), it seems like a good time to update my earlier post incorporating the 2012 season.  Without further ado, here are the average park factors for all major league ballparks over the last six season (or less for the five ball parks that have opened more recently).

1.  Coors Field (Rockies) 1.301

2.  The Ballpark at Arlington (Rangers) 1.148

3.  Chase Field (Diamondbacks) 1.134

4.  Fenway Park (Red Sox) 1.131

5.  U.S. Cellular Field (White Sox) 1.111

6.  Wrigley Field (Cubs) 1.086

7.  Camden Yards (Orioles) 1.080

8.  New Yankee Stadium (2009-2012) 1.066 [Old Yankee Stadium, 2004-2008, 1.002]

9.  Great American Ball Park (Reds) 1.057.

10.  Comerica Park (Tigers) 1.044.

11.  Kauffman Stadium (Royals) 1.018

12.  Rogers Center (Blue Jays) 1.010

12.  Miller Park (Brewers) 1.010

14.  Citizens Bank Ballpark (Phillies) 1.008

15.  Marlins Park (2012) 1.005  [Sun Life Stadium, 2007-2011, 1.038]

16.  Nationals Park (2008-2012) 0.998 [RFK Stadium, 2005-2007, 0.892]

17.  Minute Maid Park (Astros) 0.986

18.  Target Field (Twins, 2010-2012) 0.983 [Mall of America Field (the Metrodome), 2005-2009, 0.966]

19.  Turner Field (Braves) 0.978

20.  Progressive Field (Indians) 0.960

21.  Angels Stadium 0.939

22.  PNC Park (Pirates) 0.936

22.  Busch Stadium (Cardinals) 0.936

24.  Oakland Coliseum (A’s) 0.919

25.  AT&T Park (Giants) 0.917

26.  Dodger Stadium 0.915

27.  Citi Field (Mets, 2009-2012) 0.904 [Shea Stadium, 2004-2008, 0.886]

28.  Tropicana Field (Rays) 0.889

29.  Safeco Field (Mariners) 0.864

30.  Petco Park (Padres) 0.808

The rankings didn’t change much from last year.  Among last year’s ten best hitters’ parks, U.S. Cellular Park, where the White Sox play, was apparently a great place to hit in 2012, moving it up two slots.  New Yankee Stadium was apparently not a great place to hit, moving it down two slots. Coors Field improved on its status as far and away the best hitters’ park in MLB.

The Marlins’ new park, which looked like a great place to hit in late June of last year, turned out to be only a little better than average for the full season — we’ll have to see how it plays over the next few seasons.

The Royals’ Kauffman Stadium moved up two slots, and the Phillies’ Citizens’ Bank Park fell two slots.  The Astros’ Minute Maid Park also fell two slots.  The Twins’ Target Field was a hitters’ park for the first time in its three year history, jumping it up four slots.  The Pirates and Giants and their respective opponents scored a lot more runs on the road in 2012, causing both PNC Park and AT&T Park to drop three slots.

With another year in the books, the Mets’ Citi Field is developing into as much of a pitchers’ park as the old Shea Stadium.  San Diego’s Petco Park remains the worst place to ply one’s trade as a major league hitter, but Seattle’s Safeco Field narrowed the gap considerably.

Early Aces Candy Cummings, Bobby Mathews and a Few Others: Part I

I was looking at the list of all-time wins leaders on baseball-reference.com yesterday for a possible post about the active pitchers most likely to win 300 games, and I noticed that in 25th place with 297 wins is 1870′s and 1880′s ace Bobby Mathews.  This was more wins than I remembered Mathews having, so I investigated.

Turns out that Baseball Reference gives Mathews credit for his National Association wins between 1871 and 1875.  As I’m sure you know (but for those who don’t), the National Association was the first all-professional baseball league and contained the best players of that era, and by those two criteria was the major league of its day.

Matthews won 132 games (and lost 111) in the five years of the National Association, finishing behind only Al Spalding of sporting goods fame (207-56) and Dick McBride (152-76) for most wins in the Association’s brief history.

Spalding was the top pitcher in the National League’s first year in 1876, going 47-13 to lead the new league in wins and winning percentage, but appeared in only four games for the Chicago White Stockings in 1877 before moving into a management role for the team now known as the Cubs.  Dick McBride made four starts in 1876, went 0-4, and never pitched in the National League (or any other league now considered a major league) again.

Pitchers routinely pitched 500 innings a season against National Association opponents, which doesn’t count probably an equal number of innings pitched in games against non-league opponents.  Not surprisingly pitchers’ arms burned out even faster than they do today.

McBride was either 29 or 31 in 1877 (Baseball Reference says he was born in 1847, but the 1993 ed. of the Baseball Encyclopedia and 2001 ed. of Total Baseball say he was born in 1845), and his arm was likely done.  Spalding was only 26 when he ceased pitching, but he was a very bright young man who saw that the future for a player like himself was in management rather than on the playing field.

Anyway, I saw that baseball reference linked their Bobby Mathews page to a SABR biography.  SABR credits Mathews as the second pitcher to master to the curveball, after William Arthur “Candy” Cummings.  (Here’s the SABR biography on Cummings.)

Because Cummings is the pitcher credited with “inventing” the curveball, he is in the Hall of Fame, while Matthews, who was actually the better professional pitcher, is not.  Them’s the breaks.

It’s unknown if Cummings was really the first pitcher to ever throw a curveball.  However, SABR gives him credit for being the first pitcher to master the pitch and throw it successfully in competitive play.

The story goes that as a young teenager in 1863, Cummings and his friends were at the beach in Brooklyn (Coney Island or Brighton Beach?) winging clam shells into the ocean.  The shells could easily be made to curve in flight, which inspired Cummings to try to do the same with a baseball.

Over the next several years, Cummings diligently practiced his underhand pitching (pitchers were required to “pitch” the ball underhanded in those days, rather than “throwing” it overhand) and experimented to find a way to make a baseball curve consistently.  After graduating from what we would call high school in 1865, Cummings quickly became a top amateur and then semi-pro pitcher, even before he developed a successful curveball.

In 1867, Cummings finally developed a motion and release that enabled him to consistently cause his pitches to break.  He debuted the new pitch in a game between Cummings’ Brooklyn Excelsiors again Harvard College.  To batters who had never seen a true curve before (baseball’s first great pitching ace Jim Creighton famously pitched the ball with a quick jerk of the wrist in 1861 and 1862, before his untimely death at age 21 in the latter year, which gave his pitches movement although almost certainly more in the form of a rising fastball) Cummings’ new pitch was unhittable.

Cummings quickly became the most highly regarded pitcher in the country, so much so that early baseball’s premier sportswriter Henry Chadwick named Cummings the sport’s outstanding player in 1871.

For years, Cummings was the only pitcher in baseball who had mastered the curveball, which made it extremely difficult for hitters to develop a familiarity with the pitch.  While Cummings stood 5’9″ tall, which was not short for a pitcher in those days, he was very thin, never weighing more than about 120 pounds.  He did not throw nearly as hard as Al Spalding, who at 6’1″ and 170 lbs was the largest of the pitchers discussed in this article.  It is doubtful that he would have remained a star once the professional game took over without his signature pitch.

The second player recognized to have developed a curve was Bobby Mathews.  Like Cummings, Mathews was a small man (5′ 5.5″ and 140 lbs) who did not throw hard, even of his day, but succeeded based on his ability to “pitch” — i.e., command, changing speed and location, and the ability to deceive the hitter.

Mathews developed his curve sometime in the early 1870′s.  He claimed that he developed the pitch by watching Cummings throw his. Mathews also spent time during one off-season working out with star catcher Nat Hicks who had once caught for Cummings.

At any rate, as late as the 1873 season Cummings and Mathews were the only pitchers in the National Association regularly throwing a curveball. Mathews is also credited with having introduced the slow raise (a rising change-up) in 1872.

By his peak season in 1874, when he went 42-22 for the second place New York Mutuals, Mathews was likely throwing at least four different pitches (fastball, curve, change up and spitball).  Despite the fact that he did not throw hard, he was the National Association’s leading strikeout pitcher.  Cummings was also a top strikeout pitcher in the N.A., suggesting that both Cummings and Mathews used their curves as their strikeout pitches.  In fact, Mathews referred to the pitch as his “out-curve.”

Matthews had excellent command and knew how to pitch inside, either jamming hitters with the inside fastball or throwing waste pitches over the batters’ heads.  Matthews was notably adroit at hiding the ball from the hitter, both to prevent the batter from seeing his grip on the ball and to disguise his release point.

Matthews was also noted for his focus on the mound and his ability to remember hitters’ strengths and weaknesses.  Finally, he was exceptionally good at adopting techniques he saw other pitchers use successfully.  In other words, Mathews had all the skills of a modern ace, like, for example, Greg Maddux.

Mathews also had a few less savory qualities, however.  Like many players of his era, he was a heavy drinker.  His drinking was so heavy in fact, that later in his career when arm problems had limited his effectiveness, he was fired from teams for drunkenness.

Further, after his baseball career ended at age 35, Mathews suffered a rapid mental decline and died at age 46, likely caused by his history of heavy drinking and the long-term effects of syphilis.  Another great 19th century star Pete “The Gladiator” Browning, the original Louisville Slugger, likely died of the same causes at age 44.  (SABR’s bio for Pete Browning is here.)

Mathews’ New York Mutuals were also at the center of a number of game-fixing allegations during his years with the team.  One involving Mathews centered around his leaving a game in Chicago in August of 1874 with a groin injury which the Mutuals subsequently lost.

However, in July 1876, Mathews unilaterally turned over a suspicious telegram sent to him by a known gambler to the National League, which led to a sting operation resulting in numerous additional incriminating telegrams the League then published in the New York Herald to discourage future game-fixing.  This incident, along with the permanent banishment of four players from the Louisville Grays in 1877, did much to discourage game-fixing in the National League.

Read Part II of this two-part series here.

Can Throwing a No-Hitter Be a Bad Thing?

The Rockies’ Ubaldo Jimenez threw 2010′s first no-hitter and the first no-hitter by a Rockies pitcher ever yesterday against the Braves.  He gave up six walks and notched seven strikeouts, which meant it took him 128 pitches to finish off his no-no.

That’s a lot of pitches for a mid-April game.  In fact, it was the highest single game pitch total so far of the 2010 season.

Jimenez has a history of throwing a lot of pitches in games, finishing second in the NL in total pitches thrown last year just behind Adam Wainright, and at age 26 Jimenez’s at the prime age for a heavy workload.  Still, it’s a lot of pitches to throw in a game this early in the season, and we’ll have to wait and see if it has any effect on his arm as we go further into the young season.

By way of comparison, Bruce Bochy pulled Tim Lincecum after only six shutout innings and 104 pitches yesterday against the Dodgers.  Bochy is an old-school manager who doesn’t worry much about pitch counts.  Lincecum and Matt Cain were respectively fifth and eighth in the NL in total pitches thrown last season.

However, Bochy is reportedly looking for opportunities to keep his starters’ workloads down early this year, with the idea of keeping them fresher in the second half.  Lincecum batted for himself in the top of the seventh inning yesterday, but once the Giants scored two more runs that inning to make it 9-0, Bochy decided that Lincecum had pitched enough.  Three relievers combined for the shutout.

The Padres used Kevin Correia and four relief pitchers to shut out the Diamondbacks yesterday.  Meanwhile, gristled veteran Livan Hernandez did it the old fashioned way: he pitched a true shutout against the Brewers on 112 pitches.  Livan hasn’t been blowing anyone away, but he’s now 2-0 for the Nationals.

The Cardinals and Mets went twenty innings yesterday and used a total of 19 different pitchers in the process.  Given the way relief pitchers are used nowadays, rarely going more than two innings at a stretch, I wonder if we won’t in the relatively near future (the next ten years) have a rule change that eliminates or reduces games of more than, say, fifteen innings.

This issue came up in international play where in the extra innings teams start each half inning with runners automatically on base so that it’s a lot easier to score runs and decide the game.  In Japan’s NPB, games only last 12 innings; if it’s still tied after 12, the games ends as a draw.

American purists think every game should be played to a decision.  That certainly makes sense for post-season games.  However, during the regular season few fans stick around past 14 or 15 innings anyway, so it really isn’t necessary to keep playing.

One possible idea I have is that teams play fifteen innings, and if the game is still tied after 15, then at the start of each inning thereafter, the home plate umpire goes to each manager separately and asks if the team wants to continue playing or will accept a draw.  If either manager wants to keep playing, the teams keep playing.  If both managers want to accept a draw, the game is called a draw, and each team is credited with half a win and half a loss in the standings.

You’d definitely get some gamesmanship this way, because managers might not want to let the other side know they will accept a draw.  Also, managers could change their minds each inning.

Managers could then make a tactical decision about whether or not they will accept a draw in order to keep their bullpen arms fresh.  Obviously, if it’s late in the season, and one or both of the teams needs that win, they just keep on playing to give themselves a chance of getting it.  My guess is that you’d get some of both (draws and games played to a decision) over the course of a season.

The Worst Hitting Position Player Ever

The extreme offensive ineptitude of the free agent catchers (as a group) available this year has got me to thinking about the catcher who was almost certainly the worst hitting position player ever to have a significant major league career.  That player is catcher Bill Bergen, who played semi-regularly for eleven seasons for the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Superbas/Trolley Dodgers between 1901 and 1911.

This was during major league baseball’s greatest pitchers’ era, even better for hurlers than the years from 1963 through 1968.  Even so, Bergen’s batting totals were just astoundingly bad.  Bergen had a career .170 batting average, a career .201 slugging percentage, and (according to Baseball Almanac) a career .395 OPS.  Wow!

What’s even more amazing is how regularly Bergen played.  His hitting was so poor that he was never a true starter.  However, except for 1907 when he was limited to 138 at-bats (was he injured that year?), he accumulated between 207 and 353 at-bats in ten different seasons.

To give Bergen his due, in 1903 he hit a lusty .227.  It was the only season in his career in which he hit better than .190.

It goes without saying that Bergen must have been one of the three or four best defensive catchers anywhere in organized (white professional) baseball.  While the period from 1901 through 1911 seems early in major league baseball’s history today, at that point even the worst major teams didn’t have to put up with a catcher who hit like Bergen unless he brought a lot to the table defensively.

Needless to say, however, the teams on which Bergen played were not good teams.  In his eleven seasons his teams finished with a record above .500 exactly once and finished at .500 one more time.  No matter how good his defense was, it’s hard to win when you are giving hundreds of plate appearances each season to player who hits as poorly as Bergen did, even in the dead-ball era.

To give you a more accurate idea of just how bad Bergen was as a hitter, even in his own era, I decided to compare him to every National League pitcher (Bergen played exclusively in the NL) who played at least semi-regularly (roughly 100 IP) for eight or more seasons between 1900 and 1919.  (Please note my selection criteria is not perfectly exact: I may have missed a couple of pitchers who should have qualified and was perhaps a bit too lenient in allowing in others.  However, it will give you a general idea of what the longer lasting National League pitchers of that era hit.  Also, I excluded players like Walter “The Big Train” Johnson (note that Johnson played his career in the AL), who met the ten year criteria, but got a lot of at-bats in the lively-ball era beginning with the 1920 season, at least if it seemed obvious they hit better in the lively ball era. I also excluded pitchers who played significantly before 1898, which was about the time the batting numbers really started to drop.)

Here’s what I found (players are rated in terms of career OPS):

1. Claude Hendrix .640   2. Jack Taylor .564   3. Lefty Tyler .557   4.  Christy Mathewson .544   5. Hooks Wiltse .521   6. “Long” Bob Ewing .485   7. Larry Cheney .484   8. Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown .483   9. Dick Rudolf .482   10. “Hickory” Bob Harmon .470   11. Deacon Phillippe .469   12. Sam Leever .463   13. Chick Fraser .461   14.  Hippo Vaughn .454   15. “Iron Man” Joe McGinnity .446   16. Nap Rucker .443   17. Slim Sallee .412   18. Rube Marquard .410   19. Vic Willis .399   20. Bill Bergen .395 21. Ed Ruelbach .387   22. Red Ames .363   23. Dummy Taylor .362   24. Tully Sparks .315   25. Togie Pittinger .280

As you can see, there weren’t a lot of good hitting pitchers in the NL during this era.  The AL appears to have had better hitting pitchers at this time, particularly because Al Orth (.663 career OPS) and Jesse Tannehill (.650) jumped to the new league in 1902 and 1903, respectively.  Also, some of the big stars who split their careers between the deadball era and the lively ball era, were pretty good hitters even before clean baseballs were always in play.  Walter Johnson (.616 career OPS), Babe Adams (.532) and Grover Cleveland “Pete” Alexander (.517) got left out of my list, because, while their hitting did not improve tremendously in the lively ball era beginning in 1920, their hitting definitely did improve.  I most notably left in Rube Marquard among pitchers whose careers spanned both eras, because his hitting didn’t improve significantly, unlike most pitchers and position players in the 1920′s.

Just how bad is finishing 20th out of 25 in my list above.  Pretty bad.  Pitchers as a group were much better hitters than they are today, both because starters got a lot more plate appearances than they do today and also because the overall quality of major league play is much higher now than it was then, no matter what the old-timers will have you believe.

Nevertheless, by at least 1885, professional baseball teams had realized pitchers who could get hitters out were a lot more valuable than pitchers who could hit.  By 1900, pitchers were expected to be able to pitch, and if they could hit a little too, well, that was gravy.  If a pitcher was good on the hill but couldn’t hit a lick, that was O.K., so long as he was at least capable of laying down the sacrifice bunt to push the runners up a base.  In short, by 1900 no teams were choosing their pitching staffs based on which pitchers could best swing the stick.

Another thing to note is that while pitchers got a lot more plate appearances per season than they do now, Bill Bergen still got between 100 and 200 more plate appearances per season than any of the pitchers he played with or against.  You have to figure that if even the worst hitting pitchers of that era got as many plate appearances as Bergen got, they would have come close to his numbers.

It would be interesting to read what the Reach Guides of that era thought of Bill Bergen’s defense (SABR’s bio says his defense was impressive).  Because of all the bunting and chop hitting that took place in the deadball era, the best catchers had to be very mobile, and third base and particularly first base were much more important defensive positions than they are today.

On August 23, 1909, Bergen throw out six would-be Cardinal base stealers, and his career average of 1.53 assists per game is probably the highest of any catcher who has played at least 900 games at the position.

Albert Pujols Wins NL MVP Unanimously

Again to no one’s surprise, The Great Pujols won the National League’s MVP award unanimously.  Two things come to mind for me, one negative and one positive, although with even the positive comes with an unsettling undertone.

First, the negative: I’m waiting for the steroid allegations to crop up. Following the ARod revelations, Pujols is the one big bopper left who hasn’t been implicated, and I think it’s just a matter of time following this high for someone to bring him down.  Part of it is that now is the time that reporters will be looking for dirt, because it is absolutely peak news value following this career high.

Americans as a whole love to see the mighty brought down to size and then rise up again as long as the fallen giant shows a little contrition and owns up, at least a little bit, to his or her failings.  It’s a theme that goes back at least as far as Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Aeschlus’ Agamemnon, although they were a bit harder on their fallen heroes in those days.

I won’t be surprised if Pujols turns out to be enhanced.  He is awfully good and awfully big, and in recent years those players with the drive to be the best haven’t shown a lot of scruples about how they get there.  In other words, some of the signs are there.

On the positive side, the only 1Bmen in baseball history who, I think, compare with Pujols at this stage in his career are Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Frank Thomas and maybe Jeff Bagwell.  First base men who hit for average, power and drew a lot of walks.

Of these players, the players that most resembled Pujols in body type were Foxx and Thomas.  This is the down side.  Players as big as Pujols don’t tend to age well.  (Foxx was actually much smaller than Thomas or Pujols, but in his era, he was one of the biggest players in the game).

At the end of the season in which he was age 32, Foxx looked well on his way to beating Babe Ruth’s 714 career homerun total, but he played only full season after that.  Foxx’s heavy drinking added to his aging, but even without it, I doubt he would have played regularly into his late 30′s.

Frank Thomas, perhaps, is a better example.  Through the season in which he was age 30, Thomas played in at least 141 games eight years in a row (O.K., in the strike year 1994, he played in all 113 games the ChiSox played that year, so I’m going to count it).  After age 30, he played in at least 14o games only four times in the final ten seasons of his career.

Pujols will be age 30 in 2010.  At least looking at Thomas and Foxx, I’d sure be willing to shell out to get Pujols on my team in 2010 and 2011, but after that I think it’s a crap shoot.

Pujols runs well for a man his size, stealing 16 bases in 20 attempts in 2009.  However, I’m not sure he’s really fast, as opposed to being a truly great player who really understands the game.  Pujols has now twice stolen 16 bases in a season with a success rate of 80% or higher, but he’s also hit only 14 triples in a nine year major league career.

I’m reminded of Barry Bonds, who didn’t run hard in the last years of his career, even if he could have, but routinely stole bases when the pitcher forgot about him.  In his last six major league seasons, Bonds hit a puny 6 triples, while playing half his games in one of the best triples parks in baseball (AT&T Park’s Death Valley in right center is 421 feet from homeplate, meaning balls hit in that gap roll a long way), but he stole 30 bases in 33 attempts.  Bonds routinely stole second without a throw, because he got such a huge jump off the pitcher when he decided to run.  I suspect a lot of Pujols’ steals come in similar circumstances.

I note that 1Bmen in general rarely play as long as players at other positions.  Mainly, this is because 1Bmen are never particularly fast when young and get downright pokey as they age.  Think Will Clark or Alvin Davis.

As for Lou Gehrig and Jeff Bagwell, both had better body types than Foxx, Pujols or Thomas for long-term success, but neither made to age 40 as professional players.  Gehrig, of course, developed ALS, which effectively ended his career at age 36, while Bagwell developed an arthritic condition in his shoulder, which ended his career several years prematurely at age 37.

Lincecum Wins Second Consecutive Cy Young

Tim Lincecum won his second consecutive Cy Young award in what was the third closest vote since the current scoring system went into effect in 1970.

Using a 5-3-1 system for NL pitchers ranked 1st through 3rd, Lincecum received 100 points, Chris Carpenter 94 and Adam Wainwright 90.  Wainwright actually received the most 1st place votes (12), compared to eleven 1st place votes for Lincecum and nine for Carpenter.

The voters clearly thought that Carpenter was the 2nd best pitcher in the NL.  He received 14 2nd place votes, compared to 12 for Lincecum, five for Wainwright and one 2nd place vote for Javier Vasquez (either a Braves’ fan or one of two sportswriters who apparently felt that Carpenter wasn’t one of the league’s best three pitchers since he didn’t pitch 200 innings).

The final vote strongly suggests that Carpenter would likely have won the Cy Young if he’d pitched at least 200 innings and almost certainly would have won if he’d pitched at least 210 innings.  That was certainly my biggest knock on Carpenter: a team’s staff ace, not to mention the league’s Cy Young winner, is expected to eat up the innings.

Carpenter was certainly great in 2009, but with only 28 starts, there were at least four games where the Cardinals had to make starts with their fifth starter, compared to Wainwright (34 starts) or Lincecum (32 starts).

Wainwright’s 12 first place votes suggests that there are still a substantial minority of voters who consider wins the most important stat for the Cy Young vote.  There aren’t a whole lot of differences in their other numbers, but Lincecum was clearly a little better in terms of ERA, Ks and WHIP, while Wainwright was only slightly better only in terms of innings pitched (233 to 225.1).

However, the fact that Wainwright received only five 2nd place votes and 15 3rd place votes suggests that a solid majority of the voting sportswriters have become much more sophisticated than they were thirty years ago, when wins and won-loss record were the most highly regarded Cy Young stats.

The Giants’ management group is probably seeing the sunny side of Lincecum’s recent marijuana possession plea right about now.  At least they now have something to come back with (“You’re the face of the franchise, but you’ve really damaged your image, especially with families!”) when Tim’s agent asks for a contract commenserate with consecutive Cy Young awards by age 25.  Even so, there’s pretty much no way Lincecum doesn’t get a record-setting extension to take him up to his free agency.

Rookie of the Year Awards

I haven’t really spent a lot of time thinking about baseball’s best rookies this year, and I don’t really have any strong feelings about the choices the voters made.  Chris Coghlin hit .321, had a .390 OBP and an .850 OPS, all while playing a full season for the Marlins, which are sufficiently good reasons to make him the NL Rookie of the Year.

Pretty much the same for Andrew Bailey.  He had 26 saves and an ERA under 2.00, which is terrific for a rookie thrust into the closing role.  I also like the seasons second and third place finishers Elvis Andris and Rick Porcello had.

Going forward, I was thinking that Andrew McCutchen was the NL rookie I’d most like to have on my team.  However, after checking fansgraphs’ estimate of defensive performance and minor league hitting performance, I think that Colby Rasmus is probably the better bet.

According to fangraphs, Rasmus was the second best defender in centerfield in the NL in 2009, behind only Mike Cameron.  McCutchen ranked a hair below average, and Dexter Fowler (a lot of good rookie centerfielders in the NL this year) was ranked the worst defender in centerfielder in the league.

Rasmus and McCutchen are also both a year younger than Fowler (actually, more like six months).  Rasmus had a much better career minor league career OPS than McCutchen, so I think Rasmus is the better bet going forward.

Among the remaining rookies who received ROTY votes, I like Tommy Hansen the best.  He’s the same age (23 in 2010) as Rasmus and McCutchen and had fantastic minor league numbers.  I don’t like him as much going forward as Rasmus or McCutchen only because pitchers are more prone to injury than position players.

Padres SS Everth Cabrera is also 23 next year, but he’s harder to predict going forward than Rasmus or McCutchen because Cabrera’s only significant minor league playing time came at the A level.  In other words, his 2009 major league numbers could be a fluke.

I’d rank Coghlin about even with Cabrera going forward, given that Coghlin is two years older.  The best of the rest is probably the Diamondbacks  Gerardo Perra.  He’ll also be 23 next year, but didn’t hit enough for a leftfielder in 2009 (.729 OPS).

J. A. Happ, Casey McGehee and Randy Wells were all 26 in 2009.  26 year old rookies generally don’t go on to have great major league careers, no matter how well they played during their rookie seasons.  The major exceptions seem to be at catcher and among power pitchers who finally achieve major league control.

Garrett Jones will be 29 next season, and he had a 2009 campaign that is completely aberrant in comparison to his long minor league career.  In other words, the odds are mighty slim that he’ll ever have another major league season as good as 2009.  It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s trying his luck in Japan’s major leagues by 2012.

In the American League, the obvious choice going forward is Rangers SS Elvis Andrus.  He’s only 20 next year, and fangraphs ranked his defense at SS behind only light-hitting Cesar Izturis.

Andrus minor league batting numbers are not impressive, but that has more to due with the fact that he was consistently the youngest player in the leagues he played (I’m not sure about that, but I doubt there were a lot of other 18 year olds playing in the A+ California League in 2007 or 19 year olds in the AA Texas League in 2008).

Absent injury, Andrus looks sure to be a great player for many years.  In fact, he’s probably a fair bet to challenge his 2009 mentor’s record for games played at SS (Omar Vizquel is now the all-time leader).

There aren’t a lot of players who have established themselves as major league-caliber shortstops on both offense and defense by the time they reach their 20th birthdays.  By way of example, Andrus is further along than Alex Rodriguez was at the same age.  In fairness to ARod, he hit .358 with 54 doubles and 36 HRs in 1996, the year in which he turned 21.

I doubt that Andrus is going to come anywhere close to those numbers in 2010, but he doesn’t have to to become a great player.

After Andrus, I like Gordon Beckham.  He’ll be 23 next year, and he’s a former No. 8 pick in the 2008 draft.  He shot through the minors and should become a big star.

One player I’m not particularly enamoured with is Rick Porcello.  He posted only 89 Ks in 170.2 IP this year, after posting only 72 Ks in 125 IP in the A+ Florida State League last year.  He’s young enough to improve his strikeout numbers considerably over the next few seasons, but pitchers with Ks-to-IP ratios that low do not tend to be consistent.

Another thing is that he threw a lot of innings in 2009 for a 20 year old, and he will likely pitch a lot of innings the next couple of seasons as one of the Tigers’ rotation anchors.  He’s got a contract which paid him more than $2 milli0n in 2009 (according to ESPN), so the Tigers have an incentive to try to get the most out of him now, whether or not his arm is developed enough for the strain of high annual IP totals.

I would much rather have the A’s Brett Anderson going forward than Porcello, even if Anderson is a year older, and Porcello had a better 2009 campaign taking into account their home pitching parks.  Anderson struck out 150 men in 175.1 major league innings pitched this year, and struck out 243 in 225.1 career minor league innings pitched.  Anderson’s walks-to-IP ratios are also better than Porcello’s in spite of the fact that Porcello wasn’t striking anyone out.

I’d also rather have Andrew Bailey going forward than Porcello, although it’s close, given that Porcello is a starter.  Although Bailey will be 26 in 2010, his Ks-to-IP and Ks-to-BBs ratios were terrific this year.  Bailey also has strong numbers in the minors, where he was used primarily as a starting pitcher.  In fact, his major league numbers were far better than his minor league career record, almost certainly because he benefited enormously from the switch to pitching in relief.

The last player to receive votes for AL ROTY is the Rays’ Jeff Niemann.  His numbers look almost exactly like J.A. Happ’s right down the line.  The only major difference I see is that Happ is a lefty and Niemann throws right.  Like Happ, Niemann will be 27 next year, which makes him a poor candidate to become a future superstar.

National League’s Best Pitcher

It’s probably a bit soon to be diagnosing who was that National League’s Best Pitcher in 2009, what with the post-season yet to be played and so far in advance of the Cy Young voting.  As a Giants fan, though, I’ve been watching Tim Lincecum all year to see how well he’d do relative to the senior circuit’s other top pitchers the year after winning his first Cy Young Award.  Now that the regular season is over, I can finally take a look and see what I think.

I decided that what I would do is look at what the NL’s top starters did in six statistical categories that I decided were the most important (to me at least): Innings pitched, wins, winning percentage, ERA, strikeouts, and opponents’ OPS.  I’m sure that you are familiar with the first five of these categories.  I decided to add the sixth, opponents’ OPS, because this stat is now available on ESPN’s website, and since the purpose of pitching is to prevent offense, looking at opponents’ offensive production would be useful.  Also, ERA isn’t necessarily the most accurate statistic, in and of itself, because it doesn’t take into account all runs allowed, even though the pitcher on the hill usually had as much to do with the unearned run(s) ultimately scoring as the error(s) behind him.

I didn’t bother to carefully examine the NL’s top relief pitchers, because I think that top closers almost never have the same value as top starters, because the latter pitch so many more innings. For example, of the top ten closers in the NL this year in terms of saves, only two, Jonathon Broxton (76 IP) and Rafael Soriano (75.2 IP) managed to pitch even 75 innings, which is roughly a third of what each of the NL top five starters threw.

There are exceptions, of course (like Dennis Eckersley in 1990 when he had an 0.61 ERA), when a closer is so over-powering that he deserves Cy Young consideration, but seasons like that are truly few and far between.  This year, Trevor Hoffman had the lowest ERA of any closer in the NL (1.83), and he just signed a contract extension to pitch for the Brewers next year for $8 million, less than half what the highest paid starters make.  That tells you something right there.

I then decided that I would use a point system which only awarded points to the top five starters in each of the six categories, for the obvious reason that it’s hard to be the top pitcher if you aren’t at least in the league’s top five.  Here are the lists of the top five in each category:

IP: (1) Adam Wainwright 233; (2) Dan Haren 229.1; (3) Tim Lincecum 225.1; (4) Bronson Arroyo 220.1; and (5) Javier Vazquez 219.1.

Wins: (1) Adam Wainwright 19; (2) Chris Carpenter 17; (3) Jorge De La Rosa 16; (4) Jason Marquis, Joel Pineiro, Josh Johnson, Derek Lowe, Javier Vazquez, Bronson Arroyo, Ubaldo Jiminez, Tim Lincecum 15.

Winning Percentage: (1) Chris Carpenter .810; (2) J.A. Happ, Josh Johnson .750; (4) Adam Wainwright .704; (5) Tim Lincecum .682.

ERA: (1) Chris Carpenter 2.24; (2) Tim Lincecum 2.48; (3) Jair Jurrgens 2.60; (4) Adam Wainwright 2.63; (5) Clayton Kershaw 2.79.

Strikeouts: (1) Tim Lincecum 261; (2) Javier Vasquez 238; (3) Dan Haren 223; (4) Adam Wainwright 212; (5) Yovani Gallardo 204.

Opponents’ OPS: (1) Tim Lincecum .561; (2) Chris Carpenter .581; (3) Clayton Kershaw .588; (4) Javier Vazquez .612; (5) Josh Johnson .626.

One thing to note about Lincecum and his fine opponents’ OPS.  Of the League’s top ten in this category, Lincecum allowed the most stolen bases (20) and had the lowest caught-stealing rate (20%).  Lincecum has a long and unique motion which probably makes it hard for the hitters to see the ball well coming out his hand, but he’s also easy for baserunners to steal against, like a lot of power pitchers.  The trouble holding runners is probably part of the reason why his ERA is relatively high considering how poorly his opponents did at the plate against him.

Back to the scoring.  First, I tried a point system where the winner in each category got one extra point for leading the league, but then using straight numbers.  In other words, a 6-4-3-2-1 system for one through five in each category.  Under this scoring regime, I got the following results:

(1) Tim Lincecum 22; (2) Chris Carpenter 20; (3) Adam Wainwright 18; (4) Javier Vasquez 9; (5) Dan Haren, Josh Johnson 7; (7) Clayton Kershaw, J.A. Happ, Bronson Arroyo 4.

This tells us pretty much what we all knew already: Lincecum, Carpenter and Wainwright were far and away the NL’s three best pitchers this year.  However, the numbers are awfully close, so I tried another scoring system, this one 10-7-5-3-1, which is more weighted to favor the top three in each category, to see if it made much of a difference.  Here are the results of this second scoring system:

(1) Tim Lincecum 36; (2) Chris Carpenter 34; (3) Adam Wainwright 29; (4) Javier Vasquez 14; (5) Dan Haren 12; (6) Josh Johnson 11; (7) J.A. Happ 7; (8) Bronson Arroyo, Clayton Kershaw 6; (10) Jair Jurrgens, Jorge De La Rosa 5.

This second scoring system pushes Wainwright down a little, but he, Lincecum and Carpenter are all pretty close.  My system doesn’t weigh the six categories against one another, so doing so could move the numbers around, based on whichever stats you think are the most important.  Any way you slice it, however, there’s a lot to be said for each of Lincecum, Carpenter and Wainwright as the National League’s best pitcher.

One thing I thought I’d look at to see if I could distinguish the three was how they did on the road.  It’s one thing for a pitcher to dominate at home, especially if he pitches in a pitchers’ park, with the home fans cheering him on and the pitcher knowing how the ball carries to the different parts of the yard, etc.  Here are Lincecum’s, Carpenter’s and Wainwright’s home/road splits in terms of won-loss record and ERA:

Tim Lincecum — Home: 10-2, 1.88 ERA; Road: 5-5, 3.21 ERA.

Chris Carpenter — Home: 8-2, 2.49 ERA; Road: 9-2, 2.05 ERA.

Adam Wainwright — Home: 7-7, 2.05 ERA; Road: 12-1, 3.39.

The numbers for Wainwright are correct: his ERA was one-and-a-third runs better per nine innings at home than on the road, but his record was far better on the road.  This just goes to show that won-loss record in any one season doesn’t mean all that much.  You can pitch much worse, as Wainwright did on the road, but still win a lot more games and lose a lot fewer if your team happens to score a lot of runs on the days you pitch.

It’s clear from these numbers that Carpenter was the best pitcher home and away of the three.  The problem with Carpenter is that both his strikeout total (144) and innings pitched total (192.2) are way below both Lincecum and Wainwright.  Do these deficits overcome just how great Carpenter pitched when he did pitch?  I’ll leave that analysis to some other statistician.

Generally, AT&T Park in San Francisco has a reputation as being a better pitchers’ park than Busch Stadium in St. Louis.  I thought I would check to see if Lincecum was, in fact, benefiting unduly by making half his starts at AT&T Park.

It doesn’t look like it.  The Giants and their opponents scored 650 runs at AT&T Park this year, and only 618 runs in all the League’s other parks combined.  This is a surprising outcome, which I attribute to a small sample size (one year), the fact that the Giants’ pitching was exceptionally good on the road, and the fact that the Giants have a lot of gap hitters who can take advantage of the deep power alleys in SF but don’t have enough power to hit homeruns in smaller parks.

Meanwhile, the Cardinals and their opponents scored 656 runs at Busch Stadium this year and 714 runs in all the other parks in the League combined.  In 2009, at least, Busch Stadium was a better pitchers’ park than AT&T.  Of course, that does not explain why Tim Lincecum was nearly a run and half better per nine innings at AT&T than he was elsewhere this year.  Word around the League, however, is that the slight-of-stature Lincecum wilts in the hot weather.

After all of the foregoing, the race for NL Cy Young Award winner looks to like a beauty pageant to me.  In other words, the “best” pitcher among Lincecum, Wainwright and Carpenter is going to be a decision where personal preferences and biases come into play.

I would certainly be happy if Lincecum won, and the rating system I used has him slightly ahead.  However, crunching the numbers in different ways will, I suspect, lead to different results.  However, I certainly won’t feel that Lincecum got cheated if either Carpenter or Wainwright come out on top.

It will be interesting to see how those subjective factors play out in the voting.  Lincecum won last year in another close race, so voters may throw their first place votes to Carpenter or Wainwright, who both have the advantage of playing on a playoff team.  However, Carpenter and Wainwright may see their votes split because they play on the same team.