July 6, 2009

The WOBAs

Welcome to the Worst of the Best Awards.

While some sports writers (and fans) waste time lamenting that statistics are ruining baseball, I choose to waste my time in a different manner. Using the Baseball-Reference.com Play Index Season Finder, I decided to examine some seasonal benchmarks in an effort to find instances where the statistics would be particularly misleading. Because the irony of the hordes of people bemoaning the analysis of statistics in baseball is that those same people use statistics -- instead of wOBA and DIPS, they prefer RBIs and wins -- to evaluate players. Baseball has always been, and probably will always be, a stat-driven game, it's just the stats we have now are more telling. Anyone who tells you otherwise is an old fuddy-duddy. Or, perhaps, a nincompoop.

With that in mind, I present the WOBAs, the Worst of the Best Awards. In this first installment, I looked at every 100-RBI and 20-win season in the live-ball (1920-present) era -- there were 1,554 of the former and 547 of the latter, by the way -- in order to find players who hit the milestones but were truly awful nonetheless. And believe me, there was no shortage of candidates. So without further ado, the WOBAs:

WORST 20-WIN SEASON
The nominees are:
Ray Kremer, 1930: 20-12, 5.02 ERA, 276 IP, 366 H, 63 BB, 58 K, 29 HR, 99 ERA+
Bobo Newsom, 1938: 20-16, 5.08 ERA, 329.2 IP, 334 H, 192 BB, 226 K, 30 HR, 98 ERA+
Lew Burdette, 1959: 21-15, 4.07 ERA, 289.2 IP, 312 H, 38 BB, 105 K, 38 HR, 87 ERA+
Stan Bahnsen, 1972: 21-16, 3.60 ERA, 252.1 IP, 263 H, 73 BB, 157 K, 22 HR, 88 ERA+
Joe Niekro, 1980: 20-12, 3.55 ERA, 256 IP, 268 H, 79 BB, 127 K, 12 HR, 92 ERA+

Kremer led the National League in starts, innings, hits, and home runs. Yes, 1930 was a historically prolific offensive season, but his pitiful strikeout rate was still second-worst in the NL. His 11.93 hits per nine innings are by far the most ever allowed in a 20-win season; David Wells' 2000 is second-worst with 10.42 H/9. Kremer was an impressive 127-67 (.655 W-L%) over his first seven seasons, leading the NL in ERA twice in that span; unfortunately he didn't make it to the majors until age 31.

Newsom paced the American League in starts, complete games, innings, hits, earned runs, home runs -- basically everything but walks, where his 192 were only good for second, as Bob Feller had 208 that season, the most ever in the modern (post-1900) era; Newsom's total, meanwhile, is the fifth-worst since 1901. Interestingly, he was an All-Star that season and finished fifth in MVP balloting, so his contemporaries obviously didn't read Moneyball. Newsom's 211 career wins -- against 222 losses -- are the second most in history to Jack Powell (245-254) among pitchers with losing records.

Despite 203 wins and a winning percentage of .585, Burdette's career ERA+ is 98, so he might be worthy of some WOBA lifetime achievement recognition. In '59, he led National League in starts, hits and home runs allowed, earned runs, and -- surprisingly -- shutouts. He was also second in innings pitched and complete games (20), but 24th (out of 25) in strikeout rate and 23rd in H/9. He was helped by Forbes Field and it's 462-foot deep center field, as his home ERA (3.72) was three-quarters of a run better than his road mark, all of which gave him the worst ERA+ among the contenders, even though his actual ERA of 4.07 wasn't far from the NL-average of 3.98.

Bahnsen's 3.60 ERA ranked 34th in the American League, and was more than a half-run worse than the league-average 3.07. He allowed the fourth-most hits while pitching the 14th-most innings, and his 9.4 hits per nine innings ranked 37th (out of 41) in the AL. His 41 starts tied for the second-highest total in the league, but his five complete games tied for 32nd, and 40 pitchers tossed more shutouts than Bahnsen's one. Additionally, he was god-awful away from commodious Comiskey Park, posting a .293/.346/.428 line, which doesn't sound terrible until you consider the American League averages in '72 were .239/.306/.343. But what's 125 points of OPS among friends?

Proving once again that Cy Young voters love wins, Niekro ended up fourth in the balloting despite finishing 14th in strikeouts, 19th in ERA, 25th in WHIP, and 27th in K/BB, all while allowing the second-most hits in the NL. He was able to keep the ball in the park, though, yielding just 12 home runs, and his 11 complete games tied for the third most in the league. He was helped greatly by pitching in the cavernous Astrodome, with a home ERA (3.05) a full-run better than his road mark (4.06). Incidentally, the Cy Young finish was the second-highest of Niekro's career, in a season where his ERA+ was his 14th-best.

The WOBA goes to: Stan Bahnsen. While I'd like to go with Kremer or Newsom, given their comical strikeout and walk rates, respectively, the 30s were baseball's offensive heyday. Calling either one the all-time worst would be no different than, say, picking Todd Helton's '00 season with the Rockies as the best ever -- you have to adjust for context. So I'm giving it to Bahnsen, as both Burdette and Niekro had some redeeming stats while Bahnsen basically had none, and he additionally was awful in the second-best pitching year of the live-ball era. Plus his crappy season came with the White Sox. That's enough for me.

WORST 100-RBI SEASON
The nominees are:
Joe Pepitone, 1964: 100 RBI, 647 PA, 28 HR, 24 BB, 17 GIDP, .251/.281/.418, 91 OPS+
Tony Armas, 1983: 107 RBI, 36 HR, 29 BB, 31 GIDP, .218/.254/.453, 85 OPS+
Joe Carter, 1997: 102 RBI, 668 PA, 21 HR, 40 BB, 12 GIDP, .234/.284/.399, 77 OPS+
Tony Batista, 2004: 110 RBI, 650 PA, 32 HR, 26 BB, 14 GIDP, .241/.272/.455, 80 OPS+
Jeff Francoeur, 2006: 103 RBI, 29 HR, 23 BB, 16 GDP, .260/.293/.449, 87 OPS+

Ahh, Joe Pepitone. In the lone 100-RBI season of his career, he managed to hit only 12 doubles, which tied for 76th in the American League. His .281 OBP was the third-worst in the AL, and he made the sixth-most outs. Yet despite a .258/.298/.387 mark at the break, Pepitone was selected to play in his second of three consecutive All-Star Games.

Armas' OBP was dead-last in the league, nearly 30 points behind the second-worst mark (.283), and 74 points off the league average. His strikeout-to-walk ratio was also by far the worst at 4.52, nearly triple the AL-average of 1.56, and he led the league in outs. Finally, he put up a putrid .186/.218/.402 line in road games, though he did jack 19 of his 36 home runs away from cozy Fenway Park. And those 36 round-trippers ranked second in the American League.

Carter in '97 had the 69th-best OBP, and he was totally useless against righties, going .211/.255/.368 against them. He was only sixth in outs, though, with 492. For his career, Carter has three of the seven worst OBP's posted in a 100-RBI season, and five of the worst 22.

Batista finished 82nd (of 83) in OBP, 60 points below the NL average and a mere 337 behind league leader Barry Bonds. He did have a relatively decent second half, going .250/.285/.536 with 68 of his 110 RBIs.

Fantasy-favorite Francoeur finished 76th (out of 80) in OBP, and his mark of .293 was a full 40 points less than the National League average. His 507 outs were the third most in the NL, and his strikeout-to-walk ratio was second-worst. Plus his base stealing was nearly as impressive as his selectivity, as he went 1-for-7. Despite Turner Field not being known as a hitters' park, he was much better there than on the road, where he had just 10 of his 29 homers and posted a .217/.248/.369 line.

The WOBA goes to: Tony Armas. Despite the impressive homer total, I just can't ignore the 31 double plays, the .254 OBP, or the numbers away from Fenway. Though Carter's '97 OPS+ is the worst, his OBP was .290 with a league average of .340; given the conditions in 1980, Armas would have needed to post a .280 OBP to be comparable with Carter, and he fell more than 25 points short of that. And while some 100 RBI-men have made more outs than Armas' 481 -- Sammy Sosa and Jim Rice both had 509-out/100-RBI seasons -- every single one of them had at least 55 more plate appearances than the 613 Armas had. Coincidentally, Carter's 483-out '97 had the next-fewest PAs at 668; the next lowest total? Armas again, with 679 PAs in a 484-out/123-RBI season in 1984.

So those are the first two WOBAs ever; consider yourself a part of history, for some day you will tell your grandchildren that you remember reading the first-ever WOBAs on a gizmo that was called a computer. "A conpuber, Grampa?" they'll say in their adorable and inimitable way, and you'll enjoy a hearty laugh, briefly forgetting that the passage of time has completely ravaged your body and you are mere breaths away from your inevitable demise. You're welcome.

P.S. I'll have more soon, but probably not until last week as I'm forcing myself to work on my Cubs midseason review. Yea!

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