Clayton Kershaw

the 'stache · #1 08-04-2016, 11:00 PM

And comparing Kaat and Murray is not a fair comparison. For his career, Kaat was 8% above league average for pitchers with a 108 ERA +.

Murray, for his career, was 29% above league average as a hitter with a 129 OPS +. And if you eliminate the late part of his career where his numbers tanked, he's even better. From 1977 to 1990 (14 seasons, and 9,125 PA's, a full career for many players), his career OPS + was 140. 40% above league average for a decade and a half is pretty dominant. To compare to a modern player, Ryan Braun has a career 141 OPS +. If you were a GM in today's game, and could add Braun to your lineup, and get his career average offensive production, you'd flip and speak in tongues to get him. Well, that's what Murray was for the vast majority of his career. A dominant offensive force.

The peak of his career, 1981-1985, was pretty spectacular, given the era. His 162 game averages for that five year span: .304 AVG, 105 runs scored, 183 hits, 33 doubles, 120 RBI, 87 BB vs 83 Ks, and a slash line of .390 OBP/.530 SLG/.920 OPS. A 155 OPS + is pretty damned good in any era. The counting stats aren't as eye popping because there just wasn't a lot of offense in that era. Context is everything. Andruw Jones had a 136 OPS + the season he hit 51 bombs. That looks impressive next to Murray's best season of counting stats (33 home runs in 1983). Yet Murray's 156 OPS + blows Jones' out of the water. Why? The era. Between 2000 and 2009, there were 12 50 home run seasons, and 42 seasons of 40 or more. Between 1980 and 1989, there wasn't a single 50 home run season, and 13 seasons of 40 or more home runs.

Murray was pretty dominant.

There were 140 batters to amass 3,000 or more at bats between 1980 and 1989. Murray had the 8th highest OPS + of those 140 batters. Only two batters in all the Major Leagues had more home runs in the 1980s than Murray's 274: Mike Schmidt hit 313, and Dale Murphy hit 308.

I think you're under-appreciating how good Murray really was.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bravos4evr

well, that's why I compared Kaat to Eddie Murray, neither were super dominant players, and both played a long time and accumulated WAR (70.9 for Kaat, 72.1 for Murray) I tend to think that most guys who go over 60 career WAR at least deserve a long look.

bravos4evr · #2 08-05-2016, 06:14 PM

I don't like baseball reference so I don't use their stats. value is value, 72 WAR is 72 WAR and Murray and Kaat were worth the same yet only 1 is a HOF'er?

the 'stache · #3 08-05-2016, 08:24 PM

Clearly Murray was farther above the average Major League player than Kaat. And if it took Kaat 4 extra years to reach Murray's WAR, is he really as valuable? Nope.

bravos4evr · #4 08-06-2016, 04:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by the 'stache

Clearly Murray was farther above the average Major League player than Kaat. And if it took Kaat 4 extra years to reach Murray's WAR, is he really as valuable? Nope.

for their careers yes they were equally valuable. value is value

you also fail to mention Kaat's high rated defense which doesn't count towards his pitching WAR. (but Murray's counts toward his)

the 'stache · #5 08-06-2016, 11:12 PM

No, they weren't equally valuable. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

If one horse takes two minutes to run a mile, and a second horse takes 2:20 to run the mile, they've both run a mile, but the first horse was much faster than the second. The first horse wins races, and gets put out to stud. The second gets turned into glue.

Kaat needed an extra 4 years, or a career that was 20% longer than Murray's, to get the same value. Not the same. Not even close.

You can dismiss all the stats you want. But the same formulas apply equally to all players in the game's history. And one says, for his career, Kaat was 8% better than the average pitchers in his era. The other says that Murray was 29% better than the average hitters in his era.

Oh, and Eddie Murray was voted into the Hall of Fame in 2003, receiving 85.3% of the vote the first time he was eligible.

Jim Kaat was on the Hall ballot for fifteen years, and never cracked 30% of any vote. He was dropped from the ballot.

85% vote, got in on first try vs. 15 years on the ballot, and never sniffed induction.

But, yeah, they were equally valuable. Uh huh. That's what we call an untenable position.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bravos4evr

for their careers yes they were equally valuable. value is value

you also fail to mention Kaat's high rated defense which doesn't count towards his pitching WAR. (but Murray's counts toward his)

the 'stache · #6 08-06-2016, 11:28 PM

And Kaat gets 6 + WAR from his hitting, which is far more than he'd ever get from his fielding as a pitcher, even as a Gold Glover (which, again, doesn't really mean anything, right? You can't say awards are meaningless one minute, and then turn around hailing the number of Gold Gloves a pitcher has as an indication of how much his WAR should be increased).

Why isn't dWar considered for pitchers? Because they don't get enough chances to justify its inclusion. A starting pitcher throws 30-35 games a year, on average, with some variance depending on the era they pitched in. Kaat played 25 years. He had a grand total of 1,062 defensive chances. That breaks down to about 41 a year, or slightly more than one chance per game. How much do you think WAR will increase by the one ball, on average, Kaat fielded a game?

bravos4evr · #7 08-06-2016, 11:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by the 'stache

No, they weren't equally valuable. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

If one horse takes two minutes to run a mile, and a second horse takes 2:20 to run the mile, they've both run a mile, but the first horse was much faster than the second. The first horse wins races, and gets put out to stud. The second gets turned into glue.

Kaat needed an extra 4 years, or a career that was 20% longer than Murray's, to get the same value. Not the same. Not even close.

You can dismiss all the stats you want. But the same formulas apply equally to all players in the game's history. And one says, for his career, Kaat was 8% better than the average pitchers in his era. The other says that Murray was 29% better than the average hitters in his era.

Oh, and Eddie Murray was voted into the Hall of Fame in 2003, receiving 85.3% of the vote the first time he was eligible.

Jim Kaat was on the Hall ballot for fifteen years, and never cracked 30% of any vote. He was dropped from the ballot.

85% vote, got in on first try vs. 15 years on the ballot, and never sniffed induction.

But, yeah, they were equally valuable. Uh huh. That's what we call an untenable position.

so I didn't say they were equal players on a year by year basis, but the RESULTS of their career say they provided equal value.

so what? the voters were mostly morons back then who still thought batting avg and RBI's had value (as well as pitcher wins). Voters are smarter now.

There are only 4 pitchers IN MLB HISTORY who aren't in the HOF, with more fWAR than Kaat, Tommy John, Mike Mussina, Kevin Brown and Curt Schilling, all 5 (including Kaat) are in the top 30 of starters all time per fWAR. (and 2 of them, Brown and Schilling, have had the PED thing associated with them)

BTW, 4 of Kaat's last 5 seasons he was a pen arm so he accumulated his WAR in 21 seasons of starting.

(oh and fWAR adds defensive production to batter WAR along with baserunning this is why it doesn't show up on pitcher WAR stats)

KCRfan1 · #8 08-07-2016, 08:26 AM

So BA and RBI's don't have value?

steve B · #9 08-07-2016, 01:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bravos4evr

so I didn't say they were equal players on a year by year basis, but the RESULTS of their career say they provided equal value.

so what? the voters were mostly morons back then who still thought batting avg and RBI's had value (as well as pitcher wins). Voters are smarter now.

I think that's somewhat unfair to anyone who evaluated players years ago. I'm not sure what date would be appropriate, but the newer stats were used by very few people until fairly recently.

As an example, I went to the SABR convention in 2002, and one of the talks was about a system teams were using to track some detailed player data by video. Really neat system, each pitch was filmed and annotated with situational info that was entered into a searchable database. The teams traded tapes, and since messing with the data would spoil it for everyone apparently it worked really well. Being able to pick up tendencies and tells for both pitchers and batters was a big benefit.
And at the time, only six teams were using the system.

The only pro I can think of who might have been trying anything similar earlier was Earl Weaver, who had those 3x5 cards of his. (I'd love to get hold of a handful of those! ) Varitek did something similar to help prep, and was supposedly really happy to use the video system as well as his own.

And if that's the state of the art for baseball pros ca 2002 I can't imagine most writers were doing much at all.

--------------------

Interesting debate about cumulative value vs peak value. I can see an argument for each side. I often hear people downplay a player as merely building up stats by hanging around a long time. I don't quite buy into that, since some part of me says "hey, the amount they get paid now, if a guy is merely average there's got to be some reason they don't just replace him with random prospects until one sticks. Which did happen regularly for a few years, taking some of my favorite players out of the game because they could supposedly be easily replaced with a younger player for less than the veteran minimum. Like Brian Daubach, not spectacular, but a solid slightly above average player. The big contract kicked in for 2002, went from 400K to 2.3 million. Then he was allowed to go into free agency and Chicago would only sign him to a minor league deal putting him back at 450-500K over the next couple years.
A fairly common career arc at the time, and a situation where the CBA didn't do much for the average player.

Steve B

the 'stache · #10 08-07-2016, 10:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bravos4evr

so I didn't say they were equal players on a year by year basis, but the RESULTS of their career say they provided equal value.

Murray 129 OPS + career. 29% above league average for his career.
Kaat 108 ERA +. 8% above league average career.

29% >>>>> 8%. In fact, 29% is more than three times better than 8%. What part of that is unclear to you?? If Jim Kaat had pitched 29% above league average for his career, then you could say they provided equal value. That didn't happen.

Look at their career totals, and their 162 game averages:

Murray averaged 686 plate appearances per 162 games played. He had 12,817 career ABs, or 18.68 seasons worth of baseball.
Kaat averaged 202 innings pitched per 162 games played. He had 4,530 1/3 IP, or 22.42 seasons worth of baseball.

What this boils down to is that Eddie Murray played about four fewer seasons of baseball than Jim Kaat (3.74 to be precise). So, if their career fWAR is comparable (72.0 for Murray, 70.9 for Kaat), Kaat played 3.75 more seasons to get nearly the same value that Murray did.

At 202 innings pitched per 162 games, here's another way of saying it. If Murray and Kaat started their careers on the same day, and then, several years later, Murray retired, Jim Kaat had to throw another 755 innings to reach his 70.9 fWAR. And he was still a win below Murray at that point.

And, again, as far as their career peaks are concerned, there is no comparison to be made. Murray's peak was at a Hall of Fame level. Kaat's was not.

There are 62 starting pitchers in the Hall. JAWS ranks Kaat the 102nd best starter in history. There are 40 starters not already in the Hall that are more deserving than Kaat. He was a workhorse starter that ate up a lot of innings for a long time. A nice pitcher, but not one worthy of enshrinement in Cooperstown.

Quote:

I think Eddie Murray deserves it even tho his peak was not "hall worthy" because there is something to be said for being around a long time and being above avg.

His peak was not Hall worthy? Are you freaking kidding me?

Do you understand the concept of context? I've referred to it multiple times. You have to look at what other players in the same league were doing in any given season. He was top 5 in the American League MVP five years in a row between 1981 and 1985, and was 6th in the MVP in 1980. Six years in a row top 6 in the MVP vote, with a composite 152 OPS + (52% above league average) isn't a Hall worthy peak? LOL, ok.

Here's where he finished in the American League in OPS +

1980 8th
1981 3rd
1982 2nd
1983 2nd
1984 1st
1985 5th
1986 7th

Clearly not an elite peak.

Kaat's best full season ERA + was a 131 in 1966. 31% above league average. Murray's six year OPS + composite was 21% better than Kaat's best season.

Jim Kaat received Cy Young votes once.....once in his 24 year career. The Cy Young Award was first given out to a pitcher in both leagues in 1967. Kaat was a rookie in 1972. In a quarter century of baseball, Kaat received never received a single vote outside of the 1975 season. Not top five, or top ten. Not even a single vote.

But the voters for these awards were idiots, right?

Or, maybe, just maybe, it was because Jim Kaat just wasn't that great of a pitcher??

I'm done with this part of the conversation.

steve B · #11 08-06-2016, 09:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bravos4evr

I don't like baseball reference so I don't use their stats. value is value, 72 WAR is 72 WAR and Murray and Kaat were worth the same yet only 1 is a HOF'er?

They actually switched some of their calculating of WAR to the system that the site you like uses after discussing it with them. So maybe they're not so bad eh?

Steve B

bravos4evr · #12 08-06-2016, 10:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by steve B

They actually switched some of their calculating of WAR to the system that the site you like uses after discussing it with them. So maybe they're not so bad eh?

Steve B

I'd have to look into that, but I'm not a big fan of ERA+ vs FIP nor OPS+ vs wRC+ or wOBA. Plus, Fangraphs using both UZR and DRS on defense is a plus too.

Plus, to be honest, Fangraphs has writers who cover the game, prospects, scouting etc and will follow up discussion on stat validity. BR just seems to be a reference place that was designed in 1992 and never updated. lol

I think it's probably fair to use either,but not to swap between the two so as to back up a particular argument.

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