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Friday, May 11, 2007 |
The Index Of Suckiness
ToyCannon in a recent Dodger Thoughts thread noticed that the Dodgers are using an awful lot of bad hitters. In fact, 47.3% of the Dodgers' cumulative plate appearances are going to sub-replacement (negative VORP) players. The Dodgers are near the top in the NL (the Cards take the lead with 55.5%), but I thought it would be interesting to run the same stats for the AL:
The number one Enemy of the People so far is Shea Hillenbrand (105 PA with a -9.6 VORP to show for it), but not very far behind him is Garret Anderson:+---------+-------------+------+ | team_id | neg_vorp_pa | pct | +---------+-------------+------+ | CHA | 710 | 60.7 | | TBA | 655 | 50.6 | | KCA | 599 | 45.5 | | MIN | 559 | 43.1 | | TEX | 486 | 38.3 | | ANA | 475 | 36.9 | | NYA | 449 | 33.7 | | OAK | 413 | 31.8 | | DET | 407 | 31.3 | | CLE | 359 | 28.1 | | BAL | 267 | 19.8 | | TOR | 194 | 14.7 | | SEA | 139 | 12.5 | | BOS | 148 | 11.4 | +---------+-------------+------+
A lot of the names on the bottom half of that list aren't unexpected, but at least we may say of Tommy Murphy or Brandon Wood that they can be reasonably expected to improve; likewise of Chone Figgins, returning from a hand injury. Of Mike Napoli, well, he's treading water at best. Getting back to the Dodgers, let's have a look at their players:+------------------+------+-------+ | player_name | pa | vorp | +------------------+------+-------+ | Shea Hillenbrand | 105 | -9.60 | | Garret Anderson | 98 | -1.00 | | Erick Aybar | 84 | -1.20 | | Mike Napoli | 76 | -0.70 | | Jose Molina | 51 | -2.50 | | Chone Figgins | 37 | -4.10 | | Tommy Murphy | 12 | -0.80 | | Brandon Wood | 11 | -2.20 | | Matthew Brown | 1 | -0.30 | +------------------+------+-------+
The news is good and bad here: on the one hand, nobody's plumbing the depths of sucktitude, but what you see is a whole laundry list of starters who should be doing better. Nomar, in particular, nosing out James Loney for the starting first base job just doesn't make sense given his production, but since he's got the big contract, he'll be given every opportunity to straighten himself out. Rafael Furcal seems to be channeling his bad start last year, and Wilson Betemit is being Wilson Betemit. I would not be surprised if Juan Pierre is playing close to his level of ability (i.e., he ends up being worth ten or fewer runs over the course of a season). There's reasonable hope for most of these players, but it's interesting that the offense is so offensive this early.+-------------------+------+-------+ | player_name | pa | vorp | +-------------------+------+-------+ | Juan Pierre | 162 | -0.10 | | Nomar Garciaparra | 143 | -0.50 | | Rafael Furcal | 119 | -2.40 | | Wilson Betemit | 81 | -2.20 | | Ramon Martinez | 57 | -4.60 | | Wilson Valdez | 55 | -0.80 | | Brady Clark | 43 | -0.20 | | Marlon Anderson | 20 | -0.60 | | Mike Lieberthal | 18 | -1.30 | | Brett Tomko | 14 | -1.30 | | Mark Hendrickson | 12 | -1.60 | +-------------------+------+-------+
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