All Rooting Interest Team

In an effort to do something softer I have decided to make a team of players that I root for regardless of ability. A common criticism of sabermetricians is that they too often favor numbers over the human element of the game and I think that at times the criticism can be valid, although it is perfectly acceptable to enjoy both.

What follows are my positional picks for players that I support regardless of how good they are. I will include reasoning for why I root for these players. Some of these reasons will be petty or silly but that is part of being a fan. I avoided naming people who play for the Brewers simply because they play for my team and I did not name any players who I root for simply because they are good. Sometimes hoping for someone to do well is as much fun as watching someone do well.

I would encourage my colleagues here to do something similar.

SP - C.C. Sabathia
Reasoning: in a sport so plagued with steroid controversies it is kind of wonderful to watch a 250 lb man; it's nice knowing that there are professional athletes that I can easily outrun; he hit homeruns in each league last year becoming only the third pitcher in history to homer in both leagues in one season, one of those insane, nitpicky records that makes baseball wonderful, his big grin.

RP - David Aardsma
Reasoning: read this if you haven't yet; he is the first player alphabetically in major league history, replacing Hank Aaron and this is funny to me for some reason; his sister is an actress who appeared on CSI. Her character's name? Sexy Mistress.

C - Mike Napoli
Reasoning: was best friends with the man playing in front of him and by all accounts has been really supportive; his entrance song is "I'm On a Boat".

1b - Kevin Youkilis
Reasoning: on his wikipedia page the following phrases are found: "roly-poly", "pudgy", "fat kid"; Terry Francona's response when asked about his nickname (The Greek God of Walks) was "I've seen him in the shower, he isn't Greek God of anything."; holds the major league record for consecutive errorless games at first base, which is the most arbitrary record possible.

2B - Ian Kinsler
Reasoning: he is a small Jewish kid with asthma playing a professional sport; active in community charity work.

3B - Gordon Beckham
Reasoning: Josie's on a vacation far away come around and talk it over so many things I wanna say you know I like my girls a little bit older I just wanna use your love tonight I don't wanna lose your love tonight I ain't got many friends left to talk to nowhere to run when I'm in trouble you know I'd do anything for you stay the night but keep it undercover.

SS - Marco Scutaro
Reasoning: not necessarily stat-based but is supposedly a strong believer in sabermetrics as memorialized here; the entire trivia section of his wikipedia page is awesome but this in particular is incredible: On June 18, 2009, after being issued a walk by Phillies pitcher Joe Blanton, Scutaro immediately took off for second base and slid in safely.

LF - Juan Pierre
Reasoning: as much as he is crapped on my sabermetricians stories of him showing up early to ballparks and throwing balls against the wall to figure out how to play balls are endearing; is named after Juan Marichal; received the Cool Papa Bell award from the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and Cool Papa Bell is tremendous; robbed Barry Bonds of what would have been career home run number 714 on May 9, 2006.

CF - Curtis Granderson
Reasoning: fellow UIC alumnus; charity work; appeared on TNA Wrestling's Slammiversary PPV but I am deciding not to hold that against him.

RF - Ichiro Suzuki
Reasoning: his swing is awesome and I love imitating it during softball; I wish I was left handed so I could actually use his swing; his arm is astounding; he is probably the best current baseball player named Ichiro; his success makes teams continue signing Japanese players for ungodly sums of money in case they found the next Ichiro; they have not.

DH - Jim Thome
Reasoning: second place finisher in 2007 SI poll asking major league players to name the nicest player in baseball (behind Sean Casey who had 46%!!); put all 10 of his nieces and nephews through college; wordupthome.com

Kudos to You, Mike Scioscia

I've made no secret of my belief that consistently starting Jeff Mathis over Mike Napoli is an act of total insanity. And so far, it looks like Mike Scioscia agrees with me. Although Napoli started off the season playing second fiddle to BFF Mathis, he has gotten more starts (19-11, with 16 of those starts behind the dish and 3 as a DH) and his bat has remained red hot. Put simply, Napoli is absolutely mashing the ball, hitting .328/.444/.642 with 5 HR, 6 2B, and 43 TB in only 19 games. He's already a 1.1 WAR player (as opposed to Jeff Mathis's 0.0 WAR).

Mathis, meanwhile, has come down to earth after a solid first week, and is currently maintaining a .237/.310/.263 batting line (I suppose that's more subterranian than it is "down to earth").

Although OPS isn't the whole picture, particularly since Mathis supporters are quick to label him a defensive whiz kid, here's a game-by-game look at just how much better Napoli has been at the plate than Mathis (each box represents a game in which the player made at least one plate appearance):

Note that at no time was Mathis outhitting Napoli, and that Napoli's OPS has not yet dropped below .850 for even one game this season. If Scioscia continues to play Napoli as often as he has so far (a big question mark given Vladimir Guerrero's imminent return), Napoli is on pace to be a 6.6 WAR player this year. I'm not saying that he will be worth six extra wins, but it seems foolish not to let Napoli show his stuff for a full season (finally). So far, Scioscia is giving Napoli the playing time he deserves and Mike is capitalizing; here's hoping both trends continue.

Napoli vs. Mathis Graphed

Since I hear tell there's a standardized equation for converting pictures to words (and vice versa):

Click on the graph for a full-sized (see: legible) version.

Mike Napoli vs. Jeff Mathis, or: Why Catchers' RAR Could be Renamed "RAJM"

I've been asking myself why Mike Napoli hasn't locked down the starting catcher gig for Los Angeheim yet for about two years now. Currently, Napoli splits time with Jeff Mathis, a former first-rounder who gets the nod from Scioscia more regularly than Napoli due to Mathis's superior defensive skills. This seems logical absent any sort of real analysis; after all, catcher is a tremendously important defensive position (probably the most important), and if a team starts hemorhagging runs behind the dish, bad things will happen.

The trouble for the Halos is that the numbers that should be driving Scioscia's decision just don't add up.

Last year, Mike Napoli hit .273/.374/.586 with 20 HR and 133 TB in only 78 games. He accounted for 17 RAR (runs above replacement) at the plate as a #2, platoon catcher!

Mathis, meanwhile, barely hit his weight, posting a .194/.275/.318 line with 9 HR and 90 TB in 94 games, all of which was "good" for a batting RAR of -18.0 (yes, that's negative eighteen).

There is no platoon advantage, either. Both Napoli and Mathis hit from the right side, and both had roughly identical splits (they hit lefties better, albeit at roughly a league average rate for righties). So not only is neither a platoon candidate in general, but even if their advantages against lefties were pushed to comically absurd levels, the fact that both are stronger against LHPs would make them poor platoon partners.

So at first glance, the winningest team in the Majors last year trotted out a catcher who couldn't stay above the Mendoza line, costing his team 18 runs versus the average farmhand, in roughly two thirds of their 2008 contests. Now, a lot of people (both Angels organization insiders and writers/bloggers) have been claiming that Mathis has improved his hitting (is it even possible to get worse than that '08 line?), and the early results this year, though beyond insignificant statistically, have got to be encouraging for the Mathis camp: in his first three games, Mathis is 4-for-10 with a double, three runs scored, two RBI, and a walk. Of course, the argument for Mathis over Napoli is that Mathis makes up for his shortcomings at the plate with what he does behind it, so if he is in fact a good enough defender to make up that 33 run defecit (Napoli loses two runs for his baserunning according to CHONE, which is the only reason the defecit isn't 35) then any added offensive production in 2009 would be gravy. But is Mathis's defense good enough to make up such a huge gap in run production through run prevention?

Not even close.

Mathis is a very solid defensive catcher, good for 9 RAR behind the dish. But Napoli isn't terrible on defense; he's on the wrong side of zero, but a -1 RAR looks pretty manageable next to all those extra batting runs. Even taking Mathis's extra playing time into account, his total RAR (hitting, fielding, and the whole nine) comes to just two. Napoli's RAR? 23. Napoli was worth 2.3 wins on the short end of a catching platoon; he's a 4-5 win player waiting to happen. Mathis was worth only 0.2, making him a replacement-level catcher in 2008.

The trouble with Scioscia's logic isn't that defense is unimportant for a catcher. Obviously, it's tremendously important (though most sabermetric analysis still rates defense at about half the importance of offense). The trouble is that Scioscia doesn't seem to be paying attention to how much better Mathis and Napoli are than one another at each aspect of the game. Mathis is clearly the superior defensive catcher, though not by an awful lot when that superiority is translated into baseball currency (runs). Napoli is clearly the superior offensive catcher, and by a hell of a lot. A 33 run advantage with the bat is absolutely monstrous. Mathis couldn't overcome it with his 9 RAR catching last year. Neither could Yadier Molina and his 13 FRAR. Nor could Johnny Bench in any of his 17 seasons (not that he'd have needed to; in his prime, the man could hit). Give Mathis Pudge Rodriguez's (arguably the best defensive catcher of all time) 1996 catching skills (33 RAR) and he just barely pulls even with Mike Napoli.

All this should put things in pretty stark perspective: for a hitter like Jeff Mathis to be worth starting over a hitter like Mike Napoli, Mathis would have to be the best defensive catcher of all time. Or he'd have to be really damned good and learn how to hit a little.

There are, of course, extenuating circumstances. As I've already mentioned, Mathis has reportedly improved his hitting significantly (though as encouraging as Mathis's first three games have been, let's not forget that in Napoli's first two he has gone 4-for-6 with 2 2B, 2 HR, 2 BB, 2 R, and 3 RBI for a hilarious week 1 OPS+ of 584). Napoli has also been injury prone, and had arthroscopic surgery on his right shoulder last October (though the procedure was described as "a cleanup"). What effects, for better or worse, this surgery will have on Napoli's offensive and defensive numbers remains to be seen, but even assuming that Napoli regresses and Mathis improves, it seems unlikely that last year's 2 RAR player (in 16 more games!) will overtake last year's 23 RAR player.

Mike Napoli may never have the durability of a Jason Kendall or the defensive skillset of a Pudge Rodriguez (or even a Jeff Mathis, for that matter!), but 120 games of Mike Napoli for an AL West team that needs to fight off the new-and-improved Oakland A's would be tremendous. At the very least, Scioscia should start playing his more valuable player more often. And although he certainly shouldn't ignore the benefits of run prevention, he needs to quantify that run prevention rather than using an overly simplistic "defense > offense" equation when deciding who should gear up more often, because right now he's essentially starting Damian Miller over Mike Piazza in two thirds of the Angels' games.

2008 Positional MVP Picks: Catchers

This is the second installment in a position-by-position look at the most valuable players of 2008. I had initially intended to analyze relief pitchers second, immediately after their SP counterparts, but decided instead to switch to position players first and to then return to RP's near the end of the series. So welcome to Installment #2: Catchers.

Thanks to Jorge Posada’s shoulder surgery and Victor Martinez’s two+ months on the disabled list, the race for the top catcher in the big leagues looks much different this year than it did last year. Five backstops had solid-to-big years. Of those five, two have legitimate shots at the catching MVP, and in a wide-open AL MVP race, one even has a chance at a league MVP—you know, a real award—as well.

But before I rank the top five, I want to give a quick “Honorable Mention” to Mike Napoli, who would have easily cracked the list this year given more than 78 games under his belt. Based on his ridiculous partial season numbers and obvious talent (he’s put together better and better partial years the past three seasons), don’t be surprised if he makes a splash as soon as he gets 120-140 starts in a season.

Also, I feel I should make a few statistical disclaimers for this and all future posts concerning position players. I don’t care all that much about runs scored, and I care a whole lot less about RBIs. Both totals are too reliant on teammates’ performances to be primary metrics for individual awards (even made up awards like these positional MVPs). I don’t mean to suggest that a lot of runs and/or RBIs can’t be indicative of a good player and/or season, but rather that fewer runs and/or RBIs are not necessarily indicative of a comparatively worse player/season. Similarly, I don’t care about batting average in a vacuum, but coupled with OBP and/or BABIP it can show whether a hitter puts a lot of balls into play or takes a lot of walks (or both), and coupled with SLG can show how many of those hits go for extra bases. The relative unreliability of these metrics when cited, as they too often are, “in a vacuum” (without qualification) is much less of an issue in this installment than it will be at the big RBI positions (1B and corner outfielders), but I felt a blanket qualification was in order nonetheless.

And now, on with the top five catchers of 2008:

5.) Russell Martin regressed from his 2007 numbers, but he still put together a respectable season, particularly for a guy who spent 149 games crouched behind home plate. Martin hit .280/.385/.396 (BA/OBP/SLG) with 13 HR for an OPS of .781 (which translates into an OPS+ of 103), an EqA of .283, 22 total win shares, and a VORP of 33.7. His offensive numbers aren’t overwhelming (his SLG, in fact, is downright underwhelming), but they are above league average, and Martin was good enough defensively at a skill position to remain a valuable catcher in ’08. But the other four players on this list pace or outpace him in nearly every category, which makes Martin a third-tier catching MVP candidate this year.

4.) Ryan Doumit may not be a household name, having played his entire career (brief though it has been) in baseball purgatory (aka Pittsburgh), but in 2008 he showed what he’s capable of doing with more than half a season of playing time. Doumit’s batting line this year was .318/.357/.501 with 15 HR, good for an OPS of .858 (OPS+ 125), a .297 EqA, 22 total win shares, and a VORP of 35.8. He’s probably the weakest fielder on this list, but his bat kept him near the top of the catching heap in 2008 even though it wasn’t nearly enough to make him more than a second-tier candidate.

Like Napoli, though, Doumit didn’t play in as many games (only 116 games, 106 of them behind the plate) as any of the other catchers in my top 5, so we can only guess at the sort of year Doumit can put together given 20-30 more starts. He'll be interesting to watch, particularly if he escapes the anemic offense and small-market exposure in Pittsburgh.

3.) Geovany Soto will probably run away with the NL Rookie of the Year award, and, as a rabid Cubs fan, I’m very excited at the prospect. That said, Joey Votto is another deserving candidate, but Soto should (rightly) beat out the Reds’ first baseman due to his excellent defensive numbers at a skill position (good reasoning) as well as the fact that he played for a big market, division-winning team (bad reasoning).

Soto’s numbers are fantastic for a catcher, and even more impressive considering 2008 was his first full season (and only second overall) in the bigs. He went .285/.364/.504 with 23 HR, an .868 OPS (OPS+ 122), .288 EqA, 24 win shares (including a very impressive 9 fielding win shares), and a VORP of 39.3. He beats out Doumit for third primarily because he played in more games (allowing him to rack up higher quantitative statistics, like HRs) and played better defense in those games. Soto is a borderline first-tier candidate for the catching MVP, but the next two men on this list are simply too far ahead of him in VORP, and either comparable defensively or, in the case of my #2 man, not so much worse that Soto can make up such gaps in VORP (in particular), EqA and, to a lesser extent, OPS+.

2.) Three full seasons into his career, Brian McCann has certainly proven that he can punish a baseball. In 2008, McCann’s numbers included a .301/.373/.523 line, 23 HR, .896 OPS, 136 OPS+, .307 EqA, 21 win shares, and a VORP of 51.6. In fact, if I were only looking at offensive statistics, McCann might even be #1 on this list, though it would still be a pretty close race.

However, once defense is added to the equation, McCann’s overall value drops somewhat. Not by an awful lot, mind you—he’s ahead of the next runner up (Soto) in too many offensive categories (OBP, SLG, XBH [66 to 60], OPS, OPS+, EqA, and, in particular, VORP) for his glove to drop him past the number two slot—but faced with a similarly valuable offensive catcher with superior defensive skills, McCann falls short of the top catching spot in 2008.

1.) Joe Mauer returned to his ’06 form (see: ridiculously, ridiculously good) in 2008, compiling a .328/.413/.451 batting line with 9 HR, an .864 OPS, 134 OPS+, .316 EqA, a league-leading 31 win shares (22 batting and 9.2 fielding), a VORP of 55.5, and a substantial amount of MVP buzz. Mauer’s EqA, total win shares, and VORP were all tops among catchers.

Mauer and McCann are both very different (albeit very good) hitters. McCann hits for more power than Mauer does: he chalked up 66 XBH vs. only 44 for Mauer, who collected 31 doubles and 4 triples to go along with his 9 HR. But Mauer is an OBP machine. He takes a lot of walks (84 in ’08) to add to his characteristically high batting average (he won his second batting title this year) as well as to Justin Morneau’s characteristically high RBI totals. In a final offensive analysis, McCann has the edge in HR, XBH, SLG, OPS, and OPS+, but Mauer leads in hits (176 to 153), BA, OBP, EqA, batting win shares (22 to 16.2), and VORP.

Even in an offensive vacuum, Mauer probably deserves the nod for the top catcher of 2008, but adding his higher fielding win shares (9.2 to 4.9) to the equation widens his advantage over McCann in total win shares to 10 (31 to 21), giving Mauer the edge by a little over three wins. Baserunners were more conservative with Mauer than with McCann, as well, running on the Twins’ catcher only 80 times (and getting caught 29 times) as opposed to 120 times on McCann (who threw out two fewer runners—27—in 40 more chances).

Joe Mauer should not be the AL MVP this year, but he was definitely the most valuable big league catcher in 2008, and an easy choice for the top spot on this list.