Relievers by pitch value - Craig Kimbrel is the bomb

I took a look yesterday at qualifying starting pitchers using PitchF/X pitch values to find the top ten and bottom ten values using repertoire as criteria. In other words, if you put together the value of all their pitches, which pitcher had the deadliest set of pitches. Kershaw came out on top with Verlander a close second. Nova came in dead last among the 85 qualifiers with Ricky Romero right ahead of him. These findings were not surprising. Today, I want to put that same test to relievers who qualified. There are more qualifiers with relievers and unlike the starters, the results did not always jive with other standard measures of rating pitchers.

Okay, here is how it works. I took each qualifying relief pitcher and added up the value PitchF/X assigned for each of the pitches each threw. That gave me a total value of all the pitcher's pitches. For example, Jonny Venters of the Braves had a two-seam fastball value of -0.3 runs below average. His sinker was worth -2.6. His slider was worth 3.1 runs above average and his change-up was worth 0.5. Add them all up together and you get a total value of 0.7 runs above average for all his pitches. With 135 relievers qualifying, Venters finished 103rd. This is a bit of a disconnect compared to his finish with fWAR, which was 94th.

Anyway, here are the results, starting with the top ten:

1. Craig Kimbrel:  27.7   devastating fastball   devastating slider
2. Fernando Rodney:  26.5    his change-up was the second deadliest pitch among relievers.
3. Aroldis Chapman:  23.4   His two-seam fastball was the deadliest pitch
4. Brad Ziegler:  20.2   A bit of a surprise. His sinker is killer.
5. Grant Balfour:  19.6   The surprises continue.
6. Ryan Cook:  18.4
7. Kenley Jansen:  18.3   The best cutter since Rivera
8. Jake McGee:  17.4   Great fastball
9. Jim Johnson:  15.6   Throws everything well
10. Jason Motte:  15.6     Motte the Hoopla

Those results are surprising. The top three are not. The rest, definitely.

Okay, now the ten worst:

1. Rhiner Cruz:  -11.6
2. Phil Coke:  -9.2   Except for the ALCS when he looked untouchable. 
3. Livan Hernandez:  -8.9   How does he keep getting a job?
4. Matt Reynolds:  -8.5
5. Jeff Gray:  -8.3
6. Kameron Loe:  -7   His sinker sunk him.
7. Chad Qualls:  -5.4
8. Heath Bell:  -4.3
9. Chris Resop:  -3.9
10. Clay Hensley:  -3.7

As I said yesterday, I am not advocating that we rate pitchers by looking at their pitch values. I just find it interesting and an alternative way of looking at pitching results.

Rating by pitch values - Clayton Kershaw is really good

Every year I like to look at the pitch values given by PitchF/X. There are lots of ways to look at how valuable pitchers are (or aren't). There is WAR, FIP, and a few others that are in vogue for finding such value. But I like pitch value because it tells you what pitchers use and how successful they are at using it. I like using PitchF/X instead of Fangraphs pitch value data because PitchF/X breaks out the fastballs by type such as four-seam, two-seam and sinkers.

So what I've done is found the 85 starting pitchers who qualified with enough innings pitched. I then exported their PitchF/X pitch value to a spreadsheet. And then I added up the value given to each pitcher's total value for all pitches he throws. For example, Zack Greinke received 10.9 runs above average for his four-seam fastball, 6 for his two-seam, -2.4 for his cutter, 0.9 for his slider, 2 for his curve and -0.4 for his change-up. Add them all together and his pitches were worth 17 runs above average. That was good for 17th best among the 85 starters.

The single most valuable pitch in baseball in 2012 was R.A. Dickey's knuckleball. That makes sense for a couple of reasons. For one, he throws it all the time with only a few fastballs and curves once in a while. And while that pitch was the most valuable, he came in fourth overall among the 85 starters.

The single worst pitch of 2012 was Ervin Santana's four-seam fastball which had a value of -29.3. Wow! That's awful. But his slider was worth 11 among other pitches, so he only finished tenth worst in total value for the season.

Here are the ten least valuable pitchers based on pitch value.

1. Ivan Nova:  -26. Everything he threw ended up in the batter's sweet spot.
2. Ricky Romero: -25.4
3. Bruce Chen: -22.7
4. Jeremy Guthrie:  -22.1
5. Ubaldo Jimenez:  -21.9
6. Luke Hochevar:  -20.2
7. Tommy Hanson:  -19.7
8. Rick Porcello:  -18.7    -17.8 on his slider!
9. Henderson Alvarez:  -17.8
10. Ervin Santana: -15.9

It must give heartburn to Royals fans that three of their pitchers were in there. I would think that most of Jeremy Guthrie's problems came from his time in Colorado.

The ten highest rated pitchers based on pitch value:

1. Clayton Kershaw:  40.8  26 on just his two-seam fastball alone!
2. Justin Verlander:  37.4   Had a positive value on every pitch he threw.
3. David Price:  36.3
4. R.A. Dickey:  34.7
5. Gio Gonzalez:  33.9
6. Felix Hernandez: 31.3
7. Jered Weaver: 29.9
8. Matt Cain:  26.5
9. Chris Sale:  24.7  positive numbers on all his pitches.
10. Johnny Cueto:  21.1

By the way, I don't expect this to be the standard way of looking at pitcher value. I just like this as an alternative in an attempt to get a well-rounded look at each pitcher. The spreadsheet I used is below if you want to see the numbers. You can click on it to see it better. Tomorrow, I'll look at the relievers.

Adam Wainwright is a projector's dream

When I imagine people who project players for a coming season, I think of huge spreadsheets, fast computers and a lot of trying to figure out how a player is trending. But those who project Adam Wainwright have to consider him like a dream. He has his parameters from year to year that you can count on. Some players are up and down in peaks and valleys. Not Adam Wainwright. He is a projector's dream.

And you would think that would not be the case coming off of a major surgery that cost him his entire 2011 season. But forget the record and forget the ERA, Adam Wainwright was the same pitcher in 2012 that he was in 2010 and 2009. Don't believe me? Here, take a look:

Here are some numbers for his last three seasons starting with 2009 and ending with 2012:

• FIP - 3.11, 2.86, 3.10
• K/9 - 8.19, 8.32, 8.34
• BB/9 - 2.55, 2.19, 2.36
• HR/9 - 0.66, 0.59, 0.68
• GB% - 50.7%, 51.6%, 50.8%
• HR per season: 17, 15, 15

I know that the Cardinals and Wainwright just cut off contract extension talks for the time being. Wainwright says the door isn't closed but that it just didn't work out at this time. But seriously, has any team ever had an easier time knowing what they are paying for? Sure, Wainwright pitched about twenty less innings in 2012 than usual because of the team being cautious with his rebuilt elbow. But still. Negotiations should be easy on this one.

Adam Wainwright did not get the pretty stats in 2012 that he had in 2010. But he was the same pitcher. His results were pretty much the same except his BABIP was higher and more runs scored as a result. But otherwise, he was the same exact pitcher.

His quality start percentage should get back to 2010 and 2009 levels as he is allowed to go deeper into games again. There is no longer a need to baby him a year later. But that doesn't mean he'll have a great spike in all these stats we've talked about. Knowing Wainwright, he'll be the same pitcher he's been for three years now and the win/loss percentage and ERA will depend on what goes on with batted balls and those who play behind him.

Otherwise, Adam Wainwright is about as predictable a pitcher as there is. And that is a good thing.

Toradol use by Jon Lester and others is frightening

Jon Lester of the Boston Red Sox was quite candid about his frequent use of toradol injections in a recent ESPN.com article. And quite frankly, that's frightening. I first wrote about this last July with help from my wife who was a nurse for decades in hospitals in Illinois and here in Maine. She was horrified that athletes were being injected with this stuff on a regular basis. The ESPN.com article linked above not only states that doctors have been injecting this for Lester and others, but that team trainers, who are not authorized to make such injections are doing so as well.

The key thing to note here is that toradol is typically used after an operation to aid with inflammation. It is not supposed to be used long-term. There are serious side-effects for some patients. In my previous article on the subject, I copied this quote from drugs.com:

"Toradol is used short-term (5 days or less) to treat moderate to severe pain, usually after surgery. It is used alone or in combination with other medicines."

There was also this warning of side effects:

"Toradol can also increase your risk of serious effects on the stomach or intestines, including bleeding or perforation (forming of a hole). These conditions can be fatal and gastrointestinal effects can occur without warning at any time while you are taking Toradol. Older adults may have an even greater risk of these serious gastrointestinal side effects."

So how, then, did this specific model of usage come to professional sports? And does the fact it did show that teams AND players are complicit in finding any "legal" means for subjecting athlete bodies with anything that can aid in the performance of producing a sporting act? I think it does. This is the culture of big-money sports.

And this being the nature of sports, is it any surprise that the constant quest of aiding the body in the performance on the field has led to the PED problem the sport now faces? The only real difference between the PEDs that are legislated against and things like toradol, cortisone and blood transfusions or whatever it is that athletes do is that some are legal and some are not. Lester repeats over and over that toradol is legal.

Yes, it is legal. But is that the point? The only point of legislating against PEDs and its users should not be the "cheating" aspect so often associated with such usage. The point is about the long-term health of the athletes. Putting the focus on the former instead of the latter helps baseball and other sports to overlook the abuse of what are legal drugs used in non-standard ways.

I have watched a bazillion games on television. I have seen the trainers on the Yankees hand out pills and a cup of liquid to all Yankee players before a game, yes, even to Derek Jeter. Perhaps these are only pain killers. But should pain killers be used when there might not be pain? Even over-the-counter pain killers have side effects. Who knows, maybe they are only vitamins or salt pills. But the level of blind trust is the problem. Trainers dispense. Players ingest.

The story from ESPN and the words coming from Jon Lester are frightening. They are also illuminating. They do not make the doctors in the Red Sox' locker room or the pitcher all that much different than some clinic down in south Florida and the athletes that may or may not have used there. Lester and the physicians and trainers in Boston show that the money is so big and the pressure so great that injections of a drug so totally out of its normal usage model illustrates why players take PEDs. Toradol is a PED. Other pain killers and muscle relaxers may be legal, but they are PEDs too.

It's time to stop worrying about who is cheating and start worrying more about what we allow players and teams to risk with athletic bodies. Oh, and that story's disclaimer that there is not a definitive link between the emergency Clay Buchholz experienced and toradol is just another symptom of an eye being covered up just before it gets poked out.

MLB season preview from Big Leagues Magazine

When I was a kid, one of the best parts of the year was going to the store and buying a preview of the upcoming baseball season. It was magical and I devoured those things from cover to cover. If I remember right, they cost about a buck and a half each year. Here it is forty years later and I can actually say that I was a small part of bringing one of these season previews to life. How cool is that? The media is different, of course. Instead of newspaper stock and ink that ran on your hands, the preview is electronic and it is called Big Leagues Magazine. And it is a vast publication!

And the cool part? It only costs $4.95 to read. In today's prices, that is a latte and a doughnut (apparently, Chrome doesn't think "donut" is a word). I wrote the previews for the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays.

Interested? All you have to do is go here and sign in and pay the $4.95 and you will have hours of baseball entertainment. Not only are there team previews, but each team also has features on some fantasy topics and the top prospects. There are also several excellent articles added to make up a huge body of baseball reading heaven. The quality of writers is topnotch too.

I would be honored if you would check it out as I am really proud to be a part of this exciting publication.

The remarkably similar careers of Tim Hudson and Roy Halladay

Before launching further into the thought process of the bombastic heading of this post, some declarative statements need to be made. First, Roy Halladay has been a much more valuable pitcher over his career than Tim Hudson. Roy Halladay has won two Cy Young Awards and probably should have won another. Tim Hudson has never won a Cy Young Award and probably never will. Roy Halladay has accumulated ten more wins above replacement in his career according to Baseball-reference.com and twenty more according to Fangraphs. But all that being said, a lot of the same end results are remarkably similar.

Let's start with some basic (and now mostly discredited statistics):

Roy Halladay: 199-100 .666 winning percentage,  3.31 career ERA

Tim Hudson:  197-103  .654 winning percentage, 3.42 career ERA

That's pretty darned close, isn't it? Halladay has pitched 403 times and compiled 2,687.1 innings. Hudson has pitched 406 times with 2,682.1 innings. Those numbers are virtually identical.

Tim Hudson has given up 2,504 hits and 210 homers. Roy Halladay has given up 2,594 hits and 224 homers. Those numbers are pretty darned close too.

For his career, Roy Halladay has allowed a .666 OPS against with 3,811 total bases allowed. Tim Hudson has allowed a .674 OPS against with 3,675 total bases allowed.

Roy Halladay has allowed 987 earned runs. Tim Hudson has allowed 1,019. That is a total difference of 32 runs for virtually the same amount of innings pitched.

Roy Halladay has faced 11,005 batters in his career. Tim Hudson has faced 11,157. Roy Halladay has induced batters to hit into 248 double plays. Tim Hudson has turned 282 ground balls into double plays. Tim Hudson has allowed 55 sacrifice flies, Roy Halladay, 59.

Roy Halladay has a .625 winning percentage on the road. Tim Hudson has a .620 winning percentage on the road. Roy Halladay has won 90 games on the road. Tim Hudson has won 93.

Roy Halladay has pitched 94 times when his own team scored two runs or less and has won 19 of those games. Tim Hudson has pitched 91 times when his own team scored two runs or less and has won 19 of those games.

A batter leading off an inning against Roy Halladay has hit a home run 69 times against Roy Halladay in 2,737 chances. A batter leading off an inning against Tim Hudson has hit a home run 67 times in 2,764 chances.

Roy Halladay has a combined OPS against of .672 against non-pitchers. Tim Hudson has a combined OPS against of .688 against non-pitchers.

Tim Hudson has only loaded the bases with no outs 28 times in his career. Roy Halladay has only put himself in that position 32 times. Roy Halladay has an OPS against of .661 in high leverage situations. Tim Hudson has an OPS against of .657 in high leverage situations.

Are a lot of these statistics cherry-picked? Well, yes, sure. And in the final analysis, Roy Halladay has been the better pitcher. His K/BB ratio is much better, his xFIP is much better and so forth. The purpose of this post was not to build a case that Tim Hudson has been as good as Roy Halladay. But perhaps the purpose has been to show the final results have been much more similar than you might have thought.

From the department of meh - Alberto Callaspo

The off-seasons is filled with the news of signings. As such, MLB Rumors never gets shut down on this computer. Some of those signings bring a stir of interest as a team will sign a budding star to a contract to avoid arbitration or an interesting free agent that might make the team out of Spring Training. But an awful lot of them are of the kind that leave you simply making a mental checklist of the event. These are the "department of meh" signings. This week's main candidate was the two year contract the Angels gave Alberto Callaspo.

Now Callaspo is not without his usefulness. Since he has moved to third base, he has become a good fielder there and his last two seasons have shown his walk rate to record its highest numbers of his career as he has suddenly become a very patient hitter. For example, he only swung at pitches out of the strike zone less than twenty percent of the time in 2012.

But those two facts above are the only two reasons to have any kind of warmth for him as a player. When you think of third basemen, you think of guys with at least a little bit of thump. Guys like Headley for the Padres, Longoria for the Rays, Wright for the Mets and Beltre for the Rangers. Thump is not a word you would ever associate with Alberto Callaspo. He hit twenty doubles in 2012 with ten homers. He has a career ISO of .108. Compare that to Beltre's .196 or even Lowrie, the A's new third baseman, whose career ISO is .177.

It is this lack of thump along with a series of seasons of offensive ups and downs that have kept Callaspo as one of the weaker offensive performers for his career. That career now spans since 2006 with four full seasons and three partial ones. For his career, Fangraphs gives him a -7.7 score as an offensive player (runs above replacement). Baseball-reference.com gives him a big fat zero, so that site is more bullish.

If we go by the Fangraphs number and look at all batters in that same time frame, Alberto Callaspo ranks 268th among his peers in baseball for offense. He is tied at that number with Jason Bartlett. Just above him is Hank Blalock and Ryan Sweeney. So yeah, that is hardly impressive company.

And so that means that all of his value as a player, the value that leads the Angels to shell out just a shade under $9 million for his next two seasons, comes from his glove and his positional or replacement value. Those figures calculated by the stat sites make sense most of the time, but personally, whenever a player's entire value comes from his glove and from the positional value of the position he plays, that is a bit of an off-put here.

According to Fangraphs' valuation system, that salary comes in below what he was worth to the Angels as a player in each of the last two seasons. There is no argument here on how their valuation system works. But when a guy is a negative, or at best, a league average offensive player (depending on the site), is not a great base runner, then paying for just his glove and his position hardly seems attractive. No doubt, it could be worse. He could have a meh glove too. But his contract would present just a bit more interest if some of his value at least came from offense.

Phillies' Erik Kratz is a very good catcher

Erik Kratz proves something I have been saying for an awfully long time. Year after year of watching guys like Olivo and Barajas and a half dozen other old catchers playing for a couple of mil a years is kind of stupid. There has to be catchers in the minors that can do just as well or better than the geriatric "clubhouse" guys who general managers and manager seem to adore. Erik Kratz played eleven minor league seasons and played 766 games down there. Most of that time was spent in the Toronto organization that drafted him in the 29th Round of the 2002 draft. Thankfully, and fittingly, Kratz got some playing time in 2012 for the Phillies, and ended up opening some eyes.

Kratz spent 2009 and 2010 in the Pirates' organization. He sat in Triple-A while the Pirates decided to start Doumit, everyone's worst catcher in baseball for the last several seasons. Puzzling. At least him sitting at Triple-A for the Phillies is a little more understandable in 2011 because the Phillies have had a very good catcher in Ruiz. But when Ruiz got hurt, Kratz got a chance to play and he did not disappoint.

I have long been fascinated with catching metrics that are not in your every day stats. The kind of work that Mike Fast did before getting hired by the Astros was groundbreaking but still hasn't become mainstream. Lookout Landing, that hotbed of inspiring stat work recently included a post by "Matthew" that was basically written to see where the Mariners were in their catching work. But he came up with his own stats that in large part agreed with what Fast did, but also included 2012. While Matthew does not deliver his entire list, he rated Erik Kratz as fifth best in baseball at framing pitches.

It should be stated that catching for the Phillies means catching guys like Lee and Halladay who are going to get some calls other pitchers do not. But still, coming in fifth gives Kratz a huge amount of value.

Then add in that Kratz threw out 45% of base steal attempts when the league average is 27% and we are getting someplace fast. Add to all these goodies in that Kratz held his own on offense and finished with a 114 OPS+ and it is easy to say, "Where you been, big fella?"

Kratz is a big reason why the Phillies do not have to be overly concerned about Ruiz serving his suspension to start the season. Kratz is terrific and should have gotten a chance in the majors a long time ago. At least a couple times a year, I will rant and rave on how and why GMs and teams hang on to these revolving door catchers that add no value and get contracts year after year simply because they are "veteran catchers." Kratz is Exhibit A on why that has always been a bad model and cheaper and more effective catchers simply have to be out there among all those minor league receivers.

Super Bowler

What do you do when you wake up on a lazy Sunday morning and all you have to look forward to is Super Bowl commercials? Yeah, if you have no emotional investment in the two teams that are playing and a halftime show of Beyonce throwing her boobs and butt around, inspiration is hard to come by. And there is little sense writing some epic piece on baseball when half the world is waiting for a football game. So what is an uninspired writer to do on a Super Bowl Sunday like that? Find a baseball connection.

Let's drift back to 1952 and a pitcher named, Joseph Super. Super was born in 1932 according to his Baseball-reference.com page and only pitched one year in the minors for  D-League teams in Georgia. One of them was an affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates, which leads me to believe that it might be this guy. The part in his obituary about him playing in an old timers' league and being inducted into its Hall of Fame is fairly strong but still speculative evidence.

Anyway, old Joe Super wasn't that super in his one year of minor league play. It looks like he did pretty well for the Fitzgerald Pioneers but struggled for Brunswick Pirates. He had 176 professional baseball innings pitched and then disappeared from B-R's view.

Now we need a "Bowl." Well, the closest we could come there is to Grant Bowler. Grant at least made it to the majors.

Grant Tierney Bowler was born on October 24, 1907 in Denver, Colorado. He also died there in 1964 and is buried here. He pitched for the Chicago White Sox in 1931 and 1932. He did not do very well. He never won a game, though he did have one complete game in his three big league starts. He had one hit in ten MLB at bats.

Bowler also played four years in the minors and was not very good there either with a 15-27 record that included a 4.94 ERA. His minor league career followed a brief pitching experience at DePaul University where he did not pitch very effectively either. How he ever made it to the majors is a mystery.

There you have it. Here is my Super Bowler post about two nondescript players you'll probably never hear about again. I hope the commercials are funny at least.

Adrain Beltre - a product of his environment

Adrian Beltre will be heading into his Age 34 season with fifteen years already accumulated in his Major League Baseball career. Since his first (partial) season was at age 19, it seems like Beltre has been around forever. And Beltre has a chance to put up the kind of counting stats that will guarantee him a spot in the Hall of Fame, especially when you combine his fielding stats. But if you look at Beltre's career, his numbers have fluctuated greatly from season to season. Mariners fans have to be looking at what Beltre has done over his last three seasons and wonder what the heck happened. And Beltre had that one big year for the Dodgers and several not so big years there. Park effect has really been a factor in Beltre's career.

Where Beltre currently plays his home games is good news for him when it comes to piling on the rest of his counting stats because it is such a good hitters' park. For example, in his two seasons there, Beltre has a triple slash line at Ameriquest Field of .328/.369/.608. Yes, those numbers are pretty. But Beltre spent the bulk of his career playing his home games in Seattle and Los Angeles. Here are his slash lines in those two parks compared to his career line:

• Dodger Stadium: .253/.316/.423
• Safeco Field: .252/304/.411
• Career Stats: .280/.331/.476

It becomes really obvious that all those games in those two ballparks had a severe impact on Beltre's career. Out of curiosity, I wanted to get rid of the stats in all three of his home ballparks to see if that could gives me some insight of what kind of offensive player Beltre really is. I realize that other stats already do this such as wRC+ and OPS+ for example. But I wanted more organic counting stats to see the difference.

So what I did was to take his career stats and subtracted all the stats from Dodger Stadium, Safeco Field and even Ameriquest since that park has inflated his stats a bit the last two seasons. I did not bother with his one season in Boston. So taking out those three parks, the rest of the stats give him a career triple slash line of .292/.340/.496. This, to me, gives a truer picture of the kind of offensive player that Beltre has been. Sure, I know these are sloppy stats because all the rest of his non-home stats have come in all kinds of different parks and conditions and I am no mathematician. But I do believe that this triple slash line gives a better picture.

If you take the triple slash line of his non-home stats and use those numbers for his whole career, Beltre would have 96 more hits than his 2,227. He would have 51 more doubles than his current 463. He would have fifteen more triples than his career 30. Surprisingly, the home run total works out almost the same and his walk and HBP totals go down. Here is a picture of my spreadsheet. Click on it to make it larger.

Now I realize that Beltre's career will be measured without any of this hoopla. And heck, he is already rated according to JAWS as the twelfth best third baseman ever. And that is only going to rise the longer he plays. Beltre seems destined for the Hall of Fame no matter what his numbers were in LA and Seattle. I just feel that those two parks dragged him down to make that HOF vote a little less than a slam dunk years from now. The odds are good that he will reach 3,000 hits, 450 homers and 1500 runs batted in if he plays five more seasons. 

In other words, the combination of his offense and defense will give him a ticket. They just might have been a little prettier if he hadn't had all those plate appearances in those two unforgiving offensive ballparks.

Jordan Pacheco - fooled by batting average

During the last week, I have been extolling the virtues (or lack thereof) of my first ever mock draft. And to be honest, the results so far show that despite comforting words from my MLB Dirt colleagues that I would do fine, I didn't. I am gaining new respect for the people that write about fantasy baseball and who are successful at playing it. Jordan Pacheco is the third of four players I have written about now who fooled me with his batting average and on-base average. As it turns out, those two stats are like gold plating aluminum foil.

I feel stupid, frankly. Pacheco quietly put together over 500 plate appearances for the Colorado Rockies last season. Who knew and how did I miss that?  He sort of symbolizes all that is wrong with the Rockies as they have spiraled into ridicule over the last couple of seasons. Pacheco is a guy who is going to give you a good batting average with little power playing two positions that require some power (first and third), can catch on occasion and can't field any of his positions. And frankly, his numbers are inflated by his home ballpark. And I was excited about picking him? Duh.

Pacheco was drafted as a second baseman / shortstop type. In his first year in the minors, he played those two positions and also third and did not play any of those positions well. The following year, the Rockies had the bright idea of converting him to catching. That first year, he had 21 passed balls in 44 games. But the Rockies kept trying and he finished his minor league catching career with a 24% success rate throwing out base runners and had 51 passed balls in just 294 games. He also made 27 errors behind the plate.

But the Rockies must have been intrigued anyway because his offensive numbers looked good. He hit at every level and had a minor league .308 average with a .380 on-base average. The batting average has translated to the majors but not the on-base percentage. In 2008 and 2010 in the minors, Pacheco walked eleven percent of the time. So far in his major league career, that rate is 4.2 percent. He only walked 22 times in 505 plate appearances for the big club.

And it turns out that his numbers are a Coors mirage. Pacheco's OPS at Coors was .878. His OPS away from Coors was .646. Twenty-five of his forty extra base hits were hit at home. And he is much better against left-handed pitching than he is against right-handed pitching by almost 80 points. He had a good on-base percentage against lefties and none at all against right-handed ones.

So Jordan Pacheco has no position, has offensive stats that are inflated by Coors, never walks, has little power and looks bad against right-handed pitching. Obviously, I am not very good at this fantasy draft thing. Not good at all. 

Jose Altuve under a microscope

This is the third post in which I try to rate how well I did on my first ever mock draft. To this point, I liked my catcher (Mauer) and did not much like my shortstop (Desmond). Today, I take a look at my second baseman, Jose Altuve. When I was looking at the available second basemen, I saw Altuve's name and I saw the .290 average and .340 on-base percentage along with the 33 steals. Those things looked pretty good to me so I picked him. I knew nothing about the guy except that he was Freddie Patek-kind of short. Altuve is listed at five foot, five inches which is ridiculously short for a baseball player. I wish now that I had known more than just his size and a few counting stats.

It turns out that Altuve was tied with Murphy of the Mets as the sixteenth best second baseman in baseball last season. Since there were twenty-two qualifying second basemen last year, sixteenth isn't very good. What hurt Altuve the most in his ranking was his fielding. And this was a big surprise for me. Of all second basemen that qualified for the batting title, Jose Altuve ranked next to last with his fielding.

The reason this is such a surprise is that Jose Altuve has better than average range. Both his range factor and his range factor per game were above average. But still, his fielding earned him -15.8 runs in 2012. Among ALL qualifying middle infielders, including shortstops, only one scored worse than -15.8 (Weeks). Heck, even Jeter scored better at -15.2. And that was despite Altuve coming in sixth in putouts and seventh in assists.

The problem, it seems for Altuve is he simply did not convert enough of his chances in the field. If you look at scouting reports, part of the problem seems to be his release is not quick enough and he doesn't have a strong enough arm. Then again, what would expect for an arm from a guy who is five foot, five inches tall?

Jose Altuve is not a bad offensive player. His offense rated at 5.9 runs above average and his base running rated at 4.2 runs above average. He did steal 33 bases, but he was thrown out on 11 attempts, which makes his success rate of 75% marginal. But he did score 80 runs for a team that was woeful on offense, so his on-base skills are noted here.

His patience at the plate improved a lot over the 55 games Altuve played in 2011. In that small sample size, his rate at swinging at pitches out of the strike zone was 41.3% according to PitchF/X. And he improved that to 29.4%. For a guy with Altuve's game, that needs to come down even more. But he hardly ever swings and misses. He did so at a remarkably low 4.1% in 2012.

Altuve hits his fair share of line drives at 20.2%, but he hits a lot of ground balls. His ground ball to fly ball rate is 1.94. That is extremely high on the ground ball side. His BABIP on those ground balls was .277, so it works out okay for him since the league average is .238. One interesting fact, though, is that since he hits so many ground balls, he only popped out to the infield two times in all of 2012. At least he isn't hitting into cheap outs.

All in all though, I probably could have done better with my choice, which shows I shouldn't perform a writing career change and focus on the roto world. But there is a flicker of hope. Two projection systems I looked at believe Altuve will continue to improve offensively while improving defensively to at least not so harmful. Apparently, that is the best I can hope for.

Ian Desmond - regression candidate?

I participated Sunday night in my first ever fantasy mock draft with the folks from MLB Dirt and others noted for their skills in that realm. As such, I was a bit of a saltwater fish trying to adapt to a freshwater pond. I was pretty high on my shortstop, Ian Desmond, until I started to dig this morning into his numbers a little more closely. Once I did, his 2012 numbers looked a little suspicious and less likely to be repeated.

I liked Desmond when he appeared on the board because of his combination of power and speed. He stole 21 bases in 27 attempts, good for a 78% success rate. His base running is not a fluke. Base running hardly is. His success rate was his best as a professional player and that shows he is getting more selective and is more savvy with his steal attempts. And his attempts have been consistent since he came into the league as the Nationals starting shortstop. So half of what I wanted, I will get.

The power number is another thing. His first full season, Desmond's homer to fly ball rate was 7.7%. In his second full season in 2011, that number slid a little bit to 6.1%. That means that his first 1,224 plate appearances did not show any big power. He showed a little more pop in the minors, but not enough to expect what he did last year.

Suddenly, in 2013, Ian Desmond's homer to fly ball ratio jumped to over 18%. Whuh? This jump is reminiscent of the jump that Kirby Puckett made all those years ago when he went from a slap hitter to a home run hitter overnight. But how many Kirby Pucketts come along? Heck, now I'll have to do a study, but for now, my best guess is that such a jump after that many major league plate appearances seems a bit rare.

Without delving a bit deeper, and until proven otherwise if he can repeat that homer rate, his home run total seems a bit of a fluke.

Ian Desmond is not a patient hitter. He swung at 38% of pitches out of the strike zone in 2012. That was the nineteenth highest in baseball. His swing percentage of 54.6% was the seventh highest in baseball. So yeah, the guy goes up there to hack away. As such, his walk rate is a puny 5.5%. The point of stating all this is that any on-base value Desmond is going to have is based on his batting average. And since Desmond hit a good .292 last season, his .335 on-base percentage was at least respectable.

But there are two signs that his batting average had quite a bit of luck involved. First, Desmond hits a lot of ground balls. For his career, his ground ball to fly ball ratio is 1.58. That is plenty high on the ground ball side. That came down to 1.38 in 2012, but that still makes him a ground ball heavy batter. And when he hit the ball on the ground in 2012, his average on that batted ball type was .306.

.306!? Just to give you an idea on how inflated that sounds, the league average BABIP for ground balls is .238. Desmond beat that by 68 points! Perhaps he beats a lot of ball out. Perhaps he hits his ground balls hard. His career BABIP on ground balls is .271, so that is lower, but still over league average. The career average is much better to expect than a repeat of a .306 BABIP on ground balls.

The second marker of a much less successful 2013 season for Ian Desmond would be his success rate on his line drives. Ian Desmond does not hit a lot of line drives. His 17.9% on line drives was the twelfth lowest in baseball among qualified batters in 2012. And that line drive rate was the highest of his career, which has averaged a very low 16.8%. Line drives are obviously and easily the most successful batted balls of all and Desmond does not hit a lot of them.

But when he did hit a line drive in 2012, holy smokes was it effective. When Desmond hit a line drive in 2012, his average on such hit trajectories was .753 with a BABIP of .740. The league average on such hit trajectories is .718 and the league average BABIP was .709. To be fair, Desmond has done this his entire career so like his ground balls, he has beaten the average BABIPs on such hit trajectories for three seasons now.

But he never hit .292 before. From all these things talked about in this post, it seems reasonable to expect regression in 2013. Two projections consulted for this piece have his batting average to fall in the high .270s range with a drop in homers from 25 to either 18 or 20. And again, with his lack of patience at the plate, a drop in average will mean a drop in his overall offensive game since so much of his on-base average is based on his batting average.

The good news is that Ian Desmond has been improving as a shortstop in the field. He scored positive numbers there for the first time in 2012 and he has always had great instincts and a cannon for an arm. The Nationals are going to be a team to beat in the National League East and all Desmond has to do is hold down the shortstop position and any offense he brings is a bonus. But as I have found out, drafting him for fantasy purposes based on his 2012 numbers might have been kind of misguided.

My first ever roto draft and Joe Mauer

Thanks to my colleagues over at MLB Dirt, I participated last night in my first ever mock draft. I had no strategy since I had no clue what I was doing and I never anticipated it would last three hours. But it was fun and it was a good exercise for a baseball writer because it forces you to think about players at different positions and make value judgements as to their relative worth. I picked Verlander first and Sabathia second. That meant that most of the great hitters were unavailable. So I picked the best of what was left in each of the next ten rounds or so. By the end, I was pretty happy with my team. The bonus of the whole thing is that I now have twenty-four stories I can write, one for each of my players. Today's inaugural entry is on Joe Mauer.

I was able to pick Mauer very late in the draft. I think I got him in the sixth round or thereabouts. This just goes to show how far his stock with people has fallen since his MVP season in 2009. It is perhaps also a verdict at how low the Twins have fallen and nobody seems to pay any attention. But after looking at Joe Mauer's 2012 season with fresh eyes, what am I missing?

After all, the triple slash line is pretty darned impressive: .319/.416/.446. That was good for a 141 OPS+ in what has become a pitching era. His on-base percentage led the American League. We are not talking peanuts here.

Another part of the fall in perceptions is that he doesn't just catch anymore. He caught 74 games, DHed 42 games and played first base another 30. And most people think his value lies only because he is a catcher. As if. The guy, no matter where he was playing, got on base 41.6 percent of the time! Baseball-reference.com valued his season at 4.1 rWAR. Fangraphs.com came in higher at 5.0. That is hardly invaluable. Others say his salary, which is huge, is only valid if he is a catcher. Well, maybe. But Fangraphs pegs his value last season at $22.5 million, just a slight hair under his $23 million salary.

I do not have any quibble with that though because of all the value he gave the Twins in those years before he was making big money. I know that's not the way the world works, but the way I think, if a player's overall career value is way above what he has made in his career, he has been worth every penny.

I have already mentioned his triple slash line for his 2012 season. His career line is now: .323/.405/.468. What we see in Joe Mauer is one of the best hitters of his generation. His season in 2009 was obviously an outlier. But it was in the same way that Wade Boggs' was in 1987. Few would not call Wade Boggs a Hall of Fame player. And right now, Mauer's career stats are very similar to Boggs. Oh Boggs will probably have a higher peak and Mauer still has to go through his regression years, but still. Joe Mauer has been fantastic.

Consider a couple of things. In today's strikeout happy baseball, Joe Mauer's career strikeout percentage at 10.4 is lower than his walk percentage of 12.3. And as far as the walk percentage, he is only getting better as his 14% in 2012 was the best of his career. For his career, Mauer has only swung at 20.3 percent of pitches out of the strike zone. For his career, he has swung and missed only 4.1 percent of the time. This is a remarkable hitter.

He is not going to hit 28 homers. So what? Put him on the Yankees and he is sung praises around the world. Put him on the Red Sox and he would be their best player and Nick Carfardo would have a good attitude.

Joe Mauer fell to me in a late round because he is an undervalued player. Because he plays for the Twins and because he doesn't wallop a bunch of homers, he isn't sexy? Because his hair always looks so nice, he has become a joke? Oh please. Just mark him down in 2013 for .320/.400/.450 because you know it is going to happen. He is one of the players of this generation people will talk about for a long time.

Vernon Wells - Anatomy of a career's death

Vernon Wells was drafted in the first round with the fifth overall pick of the 1997 draft. His first full season for the Toronto Blue Jays showed promise in 2002 when he drove in a hundred runs. His star exploded in 2003 when he led the league in hits, doubles and total bases. After two middling seasons in 2004 and 2005, he again had a terrific season in 2006. He rallied for decent seasons in 2008 and 2010. But he never became the superstar 2003 promised. His last two seasons have been so bad that Wells has become a symbol of sorts of what can go wrong with a career and a GM decision. What this post will attempt to show is that the signs were there all the time.

Toronto Blue Jays general manager, Alex Anthopoulos, was heralded as a genius when he was able to unload Wells on the Angels an off season move before the 2011 season. The move has probably been the most mocked trade since Babe Ruth. It cost then Angels' GM, Tony Reagins, his career and led to the hiring of Dipoto. Dipoto, who has a reputation for using the new metrics from the analytic world most likely have never done the Wells deal if he was in office at the time.

And that is because there have been signs since 2004 that Vernon Wells had serious flaws in this game. In his early years (2002, 2003), Wells had good line drive rates which led to league average BABIP rates. But the flaw of his game in those years was a lack of taking walks. In his first three seasons, his walk rates were 4.9, 4.2 and 5.7 percent respectively.

His walk rates rose by a couple of points in subsequent seasons while his career lost some of its luster. So that really is not a smoking gun even though his last three seasons have seen his walk rates again plummet and even worse, his O-Swing rates rise dramatically.

What Tony Reagins should have seen and what Alex Anthopoulos undoubtedly saw was that there were several items in Wells' stats that showed that a little less bat speed would accelerate these hidden problems to the point that he would start tumbling to the point of uselessness.

Okay, these stats have been hinted at for long enough. Let's get to them. Two of them are striking. The first is that since 2004 and with a minimum of 5,000 plate appearances, Vernon Wells has had the highest infield popup rate in baseball. There is nobody even close. Damon is second and almost a percentage point and a half behind Wells. And this is not something that is new in Wells' career that suddenly rears its head. It has always been there. Wells never had a season where this rate was less than 12.2% and most years it was much higher. His career rate is 16.3% and that is what it has been since 2004.

It was mentioned earlier in this piece that Wells started his career with good line drive percentages. His first full season of 2002 showed a line drive percentage of 24.4% and his terrific season of 2003 showed a line drive percentage of 21.6%. But starting in 2004, his line drive proficiency dried up. And again, if we look at all players since 2004 with at least 5,000 plate appearances, nobody has a lower line drive percentage than Vernon Wells. Since 2004, his line drive percentage is 16.6%. And since 2009, his line drive percentages have been particularly woeful: 14.8, 15.9, 12.3 and 15.7.

Though those line drive percentages have been particularly bad in the last four years, the signs started way back in 2004 as they never again came close to his 2002 and 2003 seasons.

Add the low line drive percentage to the high popup to the infield percentage and you have a recipe for a low BABIP and again, continuing the theme of looking at 2004 to today and nobody with 5,000 plate appearances since that time have had a lower BABIP than Vernon Wells.

Combine a low BABIP, low line drive percentage, high popup rate and the fact that he puts a lot of balls in play thanks to low walk and strikeout rates and you have a recipe for the death of a once promising career.Wells had once improved his plate discipline to respectable levels but in the last three years, that discipline has gone out the window meaning even less good contact than before.

These numbers put the nail in two coffins. The first was Reagins' who should have seen these and the second was in the Blue Jays before Anthopoulos who gave him this massive, intractable contract that makes the whole story worse.

The Angels have tried to shop Wells all winter. But in today's day and age with analysts in front offices, nobody is going to make the same mistake the Angels did. They are stuck with a player who once looked like he was heading to a superstar career. Instead, he turned into the conversation of worst trades and contracts of all time.

The first pitch means a lot

There is one statement I can make that I absolutely cannot get wrong. The first pitch of every plate appearance will be either a strike or a ball. A batter might put the ball in play on that first pitch, or it might hit him. But it does not matter. It is either a ball or a strike. And whichever that first pitch is has a lot to do with how successful a pitcher (or batter) is going to be. This is such a no-brain thing that you know pitching coaches have been stressing it since time began. Or perhaps I am giving them too much credit because the percentage of first pitch strikes has not always remained static.

How much difference does it make? In 2012, if the pitcher started the plate appearance with a first pitch strike, the subsequent plate appearance averaged a .612 OPS. If that first pitch was a ball, the plate appearance led to an .822 OPS. That is a 210 point swing in OPS. Is that significant? It sure seems like it to me. 

And those results seem to be rather static. For example, in 2011, when a first pitch was a strike, the plate appearance led to a .606 OPS and a first pitch ball led to an .821 OPS. In 2010, it was .615/.824. In 2009, it was .629/.852. The spread is pretty similar from year to year. The conclusion we can make here is that throwing a first pitch strike leads to a lower OPS and is thus important.

And for some reason, pitchers are getting the message. Whether it is an improvement in talent, some help from the umpires, or whatever, the bottom line is that the last three years--notably considered pitchers' years--first pitch strikes have risen somewhat dramatically and league OPS has tumbled. Smoking gun? I'm sure there are other factors, but yeah. It has to have some impact. 

Look at the charts I have put together. The first is my data. The first column is the total number of plate appearances that started with a strike. The second is the total number of plate appearances that started with a ball and that gives us a first-pitch strike percentage. The rest of the chart shows whether the pitcher was ahead in the count when the ball was put in play or whether he was behind. I thought those two items were interesting too and did show a slow change over time from 2001 to 2012. The last column is the league OPS for each season.

You should notice that things stayed pretty close in range from 2001 to 2009. There was just a slight increase in first pitch strike percentage. But the last three years have shown a dramatic rise in first pitch strikes. The chart should illustrate it better:

I am not smart enough to say that Point A is caused by Point B, but look at a similar chart that tracks OPS over the same time period:

I am sure that I am not breaking new ground here. It was simply something that caught my interest and I thought I would share it with you. Let's look at some individual pitchers for a minute.

In 2012, the three starting pitchers with the lowest first pitch strike percentage were Ubaldo Jimenez, Edinson Volquez and Ricky Romero. Jimenez and Romero had really disappointing seasons. Volquez had a slightly better season in 2012 than he did in 2011, but some of that had to do with pitching his home games in San Diego instead of Cincinnati. When Jimenez threw a first pitch strike, he had a 4.60 strikeout to walk percentage. When he threw a first pitch ball, his strikeout to walk percentage sank to 0.68. So yes, it mattered a great deal what he did on the first pitch.

The highest first pitch strike percentage belonged to Cliff Lee, which is no surprise at all. And that made a dramatic difference for Lee. When he threw a first pitch ball, his OPS against was .821 in the subsequent plate appearances with a 3.00 strikeout to walk ratio. When he threw a first pitch strike, his strikeout to walk ratio ballooned to 13.25 and his OPS against was .564.

For relief pitchers, the two leaders in first pitch strikes were Jason Motte and Craig Kimbrel. Yeah, those two guys had pretty good seasons. The two with the lowest first pitch strike percentage were Carlos Marmol and Ramon Ramirez, certainly not two relief pitchers that instill confidence when they take the mound.

Baseball has changed from 2001 to 2012. You can point to PEDs if you want to. But from what these stats tell me, the biggest difference has been a rise in first pitch strikes. There is a cause and effect in a plate appearance on whether the first pitch is a strike or a ball. And the stats show that first pitch strikes have been on the rise and are much higher than they were in 2001. Strikeouts have risen to record levels. Throwing first pitch strikes will not guarantee you will be a successful pitcher. But it sure does help.

Plenty of closer candidates for the Tigers

The Papa Grande era in Detroit is over. And that is probably for the best. Despite his 110 saves from 2010 to 2011 and despite being perfect in 2011, Valverde saw a serious reduction of his ability to fool or blow away major league hitters in 2012, particularly late in the season. And the eccentric closer was completely pounded during the last two post seasons. So now Valverde is gone and the Tigers need to find another closer. They were linked to Soriano most of the off season. That did not happen. Other closers came and went off the board. Some raised eyebrows at the unusual restraint of deal-making. But the truth is that the Tigers have plenty of candidates for the closer position. Let's take a quick look.

The most quoted name linked this winter to the closer's role has been Bruce Rondon. Rondon is yet another Venezuelan and is going to be 22 years old. The Tigers have stated publicly that they are confident that Rondon can step into the role. Rondon did save 29 games for Tigers' minor league affiliates last season and has big time swing and miss ability. But there are two things that make this move a bit scary.

First, Rondon has a rather alarming walk rate in the minors. This walk rate of 5.1 has elevated his overall minor league WHIP to 1.240. The second problem is that he has never pitched at the big league level and only had a small sample size of outings at the Triple-A level. Others can point to Kimbrel of the Braves and say that it can be done. After all, Kimbrel had a high walk rate in the minors. Where the comparison fails, though, is that Kimbrel had a much higher minor league strikeout rate and had a much lower WHIP.

Rondon seems like either wishful thinking or a long shot at best.

But that is okay because the Tigers have two other candidates. The first is Phil Coke. I have watched Coke for many years now and had never seen him turn into such beast mode as he did against the Yankees in the 2012 ALCS. Such a display, not only of stuff, but of emotion and competitiveness leads me to believe that he has the mentality for the role. The Tigers would lose his situation status for lefties, but they still have Duane Below.

Al Alburquerque is another possible closer. He certainly has the "stuff" to throw up there. Alburquerque missed a huge chunk of 2012 due to injury but was effective in the few innings he had. His strikeout rates are ridiculous and are in the Kimbrel-type territory. Alburquerque also walks a lot of batters but get a load of this stat: In 56.2 major league innings, Alburquerque has given up 27 hits. Woof. The Tigers wouldn't make a wrong turn at Alburquerque.

Then there is Joaquin Benoit, a guy the Rays turned around in 2010 when they recreated him as a strike-throwing artist. I like a closer that is not going to create his own drama with walks. And since those amazing Rays got a hold of him, his walk rate the last three seasons has been terrific. Benoit has periods of inconsistency, But there is no doubt here that he could do the job.

One last candidate is Brayan Villarreal, yet another Venezuelan, with big stuff and control problems. Villarreal would need to lower his walk rate as his strikeout rate is not quite as impressive as Alburquerque.

The bottom line here is that the Tigers can easily work this out and give the ninth inning to one guy and get the game finished in the win column. I have serious doubts they will really give the role to Rondon, but I have been wrong before. Alburquerque intrigues me the most with his strikeout ability with Coke being a close second based on what I saw in the post season. Either way, Valverde won't be missed and the ninth inning will be a lot quicker in Detroit this season.

How patient will Rays be on Wil Myers?

The recent acquisition of Shelley Duncan gives the Rays a bit more reliability in their left-field platoon paired with Sam Fuld. Duncan is a known quantity with a career .755 OPS against left-handed starters. Duncan can also provide the same flexibility with lefty-swinging James Loney at first base. Duncan blunts a bit of the question mark of if Brandon Guyer will ever hit major league pitching. But while Fuld provides excellent range in the outfield with somewhat questionable offensive capabilities, Duncan is more stodgy in the outfield. Will such a combination test the Rays and tempt them to see if Wil Myers can make the jump?

Myers, of course, is the highly-rated prospect gained from the Royals in the James Shields trade. While Royals fans like the idea of improving the rotation, there were collective groans about losing Myers, the most fascinating hitter in the Royals' organization. And rightly so.

Myers is only 22 years old but after Trout and Harper last year, the dynamic has changed for how young you can hope prospects to perform once they hit the majors. Myers flew through the lower minors since he was drafted in 2009. He hit a bit of a lull upon hitting Double-A in 2011 but blew it up in 2012 and then did very well in Triple-A as well. Baseball America touts his plate discipline skills and ability to hit for average. They rate him as the Rays' Number 3 prospect. Baseball Prospectus rates him first in the Rays' organization.

The Rays have never seriously played the clock on their young players like other teams. David Price, Matt Moore, Jeremy Hellickson, Evan Longoria and Desmond Jennings are recent examples of really young players that the Rays have turned to if it gives them a better chance to compete. With that track record, it seems logical that Myers will not be artificially delayed because of service time issues.

If the Rays bring Wil Myers to Spring Training and he blows up the joint, perhaps the temptation will be strong to go with talent over proven major league players that are less talented. There is no doubt that the Rays would have done their homework when scouting him. There would be less of a need to "see what he can do" in the minors first.

Myers has struck out at a higher rate once he reached the higher minors and those rates (over 20%) are a bit of a concern. But it is hard to ignore that in 99 games at the Triple-A level, Myers put up a .932 OPS.

Yes, Myers will test the Rays and tempt them if he has a good spring. But the odds have to be taken that he will start the year in the minors. If the Rays struggle offensively out of the gate, that temptation will prove too strong and Myers will get the call. Either scenario is lip-smacking in the anticipation department.

The all time African-American team

Saying, "Happy Martin Luther King" day just doesn't feel right. And it is mostly because I lived through those days and they were not happy days. The world was upside down and upheaval was everywhere. It seemed that society was flying apart at the seams. Growing up in Bergenfield, New Jersey, we were somewhat shielded from the strife. Bergenfield was mostly Irish, Italian and Jewish at that time. But four miles away was a town called Teaneck and riots were occurring there. We heard about it and we were scared. But I am one that believes that celebrating Martin Luther King's life is the right thing to do. His cause was right and just. He fought it courageously and was gunned down way too soon.

So to honor his life today, the idea was to come up with an all African-American team of the greatest players at each position. That seems right too since it was Jackie Robinson's history-making introduction to the majors that opened the doors to others that have graced us with their play ever since. And Jackie Robinson preceded King and was a first step in what King and others were to accomplish. We still have a long way to go. Until all people are not only treated equally but that we all understand that all have the right to be created that way, we still have work to do.

Again, in honor of King and Robinson and with an eye on the grander themes than baseball, here is one Fan's thoughts on the all time African-American team. The criteria is based on statistics from 1947 to 2012. There is a debate if this list should include Hispanic players and it is a valid debate. But we can debate that another time. They were not included in this list.

Outfield:

We'll start with the outfield since this one is easy.

• Barry Bonds in left
• Willie Mays in center
• Hank Aaron in right.

Not only were they the three best ever for their race, but they are probably two, three, four all time for all players. You can pick that order though.

Catcher:

Again, this is easy. It has to be the one and only:

• Roy Campanella

Campanella's career was tragically cut short due to a spinal injury. But in his ten seasons, he packed in three MVP Awards. His offense for a catcher was great with a career .860 OPS, but he was also great defensively as he threw out 57% of all base steal attempts during his career. The rest of his contemporaries averaged 42% during that time. 

Now it gets a little harder. 

First base: 

• Eddie Murray

This ended up as a toss up between Murray and Frank Thomas. There were other greats like Ernie Banks and Willie McCovey, but they split time in their careers between other positions--McCovey in the outfield and Thomas as a DH.

Second base: 

• Joe Morgan

You would like to put Jackie Robinson in here for what he did. But Morgan was simply the best. Lou Whitaker and Willie Randolph are a distant second and third.

Shortstop:

• Derek Jeter

Jeter beats out Banks by a nose with Barry Larkin and Ozzie Smith a bit behind. Jeter had the highest wOBA among them and the highest wRC+ along with the highest WAR.

Third base:

• Dick Allen

This one was extremely tough to pick. Allen played more first base than third and also played the outfield. But there really wasn't anyone else.

Starting pitcher:

• Bob Gibson

Fergie Jenkins a close second.

Relief pitcher:

• Lee Smith

There was nobody else that was close.

There you have it. One Fan's all time African-American team. And while you are at it, you must go and listen to Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. You will be moved.