THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

No to artificial turf though!  Part of what made 80s baseball possible was the turf.  I tolerate the turf at Rogers Centre, but it pains me.

Good point.  The reason that the 1970s shortstops were such horrible hitters (and presumably such fantastic fielders) was because of the perceived need for fielding.  What we need are changes to force the runs per game closer to 4.0 than 5.0.  Bringing back the high strike will do that.  Raising the mound.  Push the fences back.

It should be noted however that typical fans likely prefer more runs to less runs (i.e., the post-1994 baseball had tremendous run scoring).

Since 1995, runs per game in the post-season is 3.90.  From 1969-1993, it’s been 3.93.  In the entire history of playoff baseball, it is 3.91.  Strange, isn’t it?

Regular season, those numbers are: 4.67, 4.26, 4.59.

Since 1903, the runs per game is 4.42.

I wouldn’t have guessed that.  Wonder if it has anything to do with the 5 man rotation.

And, if I remember right, of the teams that made the playoffs since 1969, their regular season runs scored was 5.0, and their regular season runs allowed was 4.0.  Basically, they were +0.5 runs better than league in each of offense and defense, in a league environment of 9.0 RPG total.  Our expectation, for a random regular season matchup of these playoff teams, would have been a total of 9.0 runs scored per game.  But, it was 8.0 runs per 27 outs.  My guess is that since you only use your better pitchers (and they are heavier-weighted) be it in 1972 or 2002, that all playoff teams follow the same usage pattern for pitchers.  And, it’s possible that teams/players approach the game a bit differently.  There’s definitely some fascinating research that can be done along these lines.

Tim Raines 1, Retrosheeters 0:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/sotd/archives/217

I (incorrectly) stated that Raines erred when he said his first MLB at-bat came against Nolan Ryan on July 25th, 1980, when it clearly game against Dick Tidrow on May 28, 1980. I figured this out since May comes before July. But, I was absolutely wrong, and Raines was right.... It turns out that the game Raines “first” batted in was a suspended game. Raines batted only when the game was resumed later in the season, and this was on a date after he had already faced Nolan Ryan in his first at-bat. Because of baseball rules, all the statistics get recorded as having occurred on the original date of the game. So, in B-R.com’s databases (and all other baseball databases), Raines is shown as having batted on May 28, 1980 when in fact he never batted on that date.

One day, MLB will come to its senses when it comes to streaks and milestones, and adopt the same human calendar as the rest of the country.

Anyone with Tim Raines stories or research, especially as it pertains to the HOF, please email me.

I’m working on my Tim Raines for HOF site.  This is my first article:
http://raines30.com/c21.shtml

None of the links on the left menu are active, so don’t bother clicking them.

My next order of business is doing comps to Rickey, Gwynn, Molitor, and Lou Brock.

Not that it really matters to your overall point, but Bobby Bonds maybe should be included as one of the top ten leadoff hitters of the Retrosheet Era even though he didn’t make the Hall. He was a better hitter in the leadoff spot than Biggio.

Here’s my next article:
http://raines30.com/c22.shtml

***

JP: I actually selected players that are Hall-worthy.  Biggio is likely to make the Hall, while Bobby won’t.  If I include Bobby Bonds and Brian Downing and Brett Butler, then my comparison group is “some guys worthy of the Hall and some guys outside-looking-in”.  Since Raines will stand shoulder to shoulder with the 10 Hall-worthy leadoff hitters, or 9 Hall-worthy + 1 just-outside, it made more sense to me to stick with my approach.

"Section 1” of the main Raines page is now open.

I now understand your approach (although I’m not sure why you included Jeter since you excluded other SSs); I just think it offers more questions than it answers, which often can detract from a solid HOF argument.

Bobby Bonds performed much better in the leadoff spot than his son over twice as many plate appearances. Barry Bonds is not Barry Bonds because he put up an .812 OPS from the leadoff spot (same thing as a leadoff hitter with Morgan for that matter, probably Biggio also).

Bobby Bonds performed better than Tim Raines in the leadoff spot (Raines of course had a better career). Ditto Downing. Without adjusting for era and park right now, Raines at leadoff is also rubbing shoulders with Knoblauch, Brady Anderson, Tony Phillips, Dykstra, Butler, and Lofton in terms of OPS (I probably could find more given the 2000 PA criteria)—guys that are almost certainly not getting voted in the Hall. Sure, rate stats like OBP and SLG aren’t the best measuring stick of a leadoff hitter, but that is what you brought to the table.

While a HOF discussion should certainly include comps to similar players who are in in the Hall, it should also comps similar players who are not in. Anyone who promotes the “Raines as the Comparable Leadoff Hitter to other HOFers” argument should also recognize there are probably more than a handful leadoff guys similar to Raines that aren’t in. If we accept this “Raines is comparable through rate stats to other HOF leadoff hitters” as a bona fide litmus test, then we have to re-ask questions about players like Bonds and Downing, which may a good thing. However, when the focus is to make a case for a certain player, those type of debates, while entertaining and often educational, often detract from that players accomplishments and can often lead to backlash against a viable candidate down the road.

For the record, I am a firm believer that Raines should be in the HOF.

Everyone, even including Tango, seems to be so accepting of evaluating Raines as a ‘leadoff’ hitter. I have no real idea why that is valid, in any substantive sense. It seems to give Raines an unfair advantage, since many managers put mediocre offensive players at leadoff out of ignorance, and allows to him to avoid being compared with the cleanup-type sluggers who also create 6.6 RC/G.

I’ll go out on a limb and speculate that, on an avg team, the best offensive player (creating 6.6 RC/G) is more valuable with a more typical profile (more power), and batting cleanup (assuming the same number of PA as Raines). Just a guess.

David, I’m comparing Raines to the Hall-worthy (10) leadoff hitters, not the average ones.  And I’m comparing Raines to the #3 Hall hitters (26 of them).  So, I’m not avoiding comparing Raines to great hitters.

I am trying to avoid bringing in LWTS which gives better balance to walks and HR, so that’s the purpose of my approach.  On a pure sabermetric argument, Raines for HOF is a quite easy sell. 

JP, your point is valid, but I definitely disagree that my approach will have any kind of backlash whatsoever.

As for the SS issue, if I kept Aparicio, this would lower the standard I’d be comparing Raines against.  Jeter being in the group raises the standards.  Jeter could be a SS or RF, same for Tejada and alot of the good hitting SS.  I won’t remove them, because the make the comp group that much tougher.  Imagine if ARod was in a comp group… I can’t take him out!  I want to make the comp group fairly tough, because it’s the company Raines keeps that will make him shine.

As for Bonds, I did say that it wouldn’t matter much, if at all, since he made up 3% of the sample.

New article for today:

http://raines30.com/c23.shtml

Mariner fans vote:
http://www.lookoutlanding.com/poll/1196113586_mdbTZdYL

46 for Raines in the Hall, and 40 no (53%).

And that’s one of the smart blogs.  Man, we’ve got one hill to climb.

HOF fans:
http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?t=70758

Currently at 61%.

***

As per home page: every eligible player with at least 1500 runs scored is in the HOF.  Raines is at 1571.

Will Carroll:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=685

I’ve had an email chat with Will, informing him, much to his surprise, that Paul Molitor was a self-admitted cocaine user:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/sports/2001987767_molitor25.html

Molitor, while house-sitting for the agent, was “sleeping off a wild night of cocaine abuse. ... On Christmas Eve, Paul invited some friends to my house for a cocaine party. After the revelers left, long after midnight, Paul was unable to sleep. High on cocaine, he stayed up all night. He unplugged all the telephones, then finally fell asleep somewhere between 6 and 7 a.m.

“While he was sleeping, his parents, six sisters, and brother were gathering for a family Christmas dinner at his parents’ St. Paul home. When Paul didn’t show by 11:30 a.m., his family became concerned.”

The police were eventually called, and Molitor was jolted into breaking his addiction.

Molitor, a player whose numbers and drug habits compare closely to Raines, was voted in on 85% of the ballots.  Clearly, the writers paid no attention to the drug habits of a young All-American White Boy.  So far, the writers have treated Raines very fairly in this regard.  Bloggers?  Not so much.

Will’s post, if not updated, is inflammatory and biased.

Tim Raines took action after the 1982 season to inform management that he was addicted to cocaine and wanted rehab.  He then opened up and told Montreal’s top newspaper guy (Michael Farber, currently an SI writer), who wrote the full story for the Montreal Gazette, which won an award for sports article of the year.  Has any young player ever done such a thing?

He was clean coming into the 1983 season.  I take Raines on his word.  I also find it rather coincidental that Raines’ worst season with the Expos was 1982, the year he admitted to playing under the influence.

The bottom line is: Raines deserves the same treatment as Molitor.  Whatever Will Carroll and Scott Long want to write about Raines, do so.  But, write the exact same thing at the exact same time (one month prior to Hall ballots being submitted).  What’s that?  Carroll and Long didn’t write anything about Molitor?  Way to be fair, guys. 

Instead of singling out Raines by sensationalizing the story because everyone is talking about his Hall chances, why not include all the players from that era?

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=686

Jay Jaffe says practically exactly the same thing that I do to Will and Scott.  He was nicer about it, and he’s probably not the Raines fan I am.  So, if you think my post is too slanted, I ditto every single word of Jaffe’s post on the subject:

Also, I want to address the cocaine angle pointed out in Will Carroll’s post below. First of all, Scott Long’s linked piece erroneously states, “His best seasons were when he was under the influence.” In fact, Raines admitted to using cocaine and checked himself into a rehabilitation facility in 1982, following his second full year in the majors. Far from being his best year, that season was a comparatively disappointing one for Raines, who hit .277/.353/.369, worth 5.5 WARP—his worst until 1990, his final year avec les Expos.

Second, while Long (via Joe Sheehan) makes note of recent inductee Paul Molitor’s own admitted cocaine usage and its lack of impact on his reception from the Hall of Fame voters—then again, he’s a member of the 3,000 Hit Club along with choirboys like Ty Cobb and Pete Rose—neither Long nor Carroll acknowledge the potential for a racial double standard being applied here. Molitor, of course, is white, while Raines is black, and I don’t have to tell you which skin color is often connected to “recreational use” and which one to “addiction to narcotics.” Why should Raines not be forgiven if Molitor was?

Third, and this has nothing to do with either Long or Carroll, but while Raines used cocaine, to my knowledge he has never admitted to smoking crack, an allegation which surfaces elsewhere on the Internet. The crack epidemic was only beginning around the time of Raines’ admitted usage, and based on what we know about crack’s highly addictive nature, it would have almost certainly had a more debilitating effect on his career than in its powdered form.

Which does raise a point Will failed to acknowledge: while there may possibly be some short-term performance benefit to using cocaine, the high potential for addiction, the rapid buildup of tolerance requiring greater quantities, and the deleterious physical effects of continued usage make this a route of performance enhancement that can’t be taken seriously. Think about it another way: of the hundreds of professional athletes who have found trouble with the white lady, wouldn’t you think at least one ego-inflated Canseco type would come forward to tell us how it improved his career?

In any event, Raines was up-front about his youthful dalliance with cocaine, and over the course of his career, his candor became a point solidly in his favor, something that gave him credibility when dealing with the media or counseling teammates. Would that more of our Hall of Fame candidates followed his example by coming clean about their own past transgressions.

The Raines site is now live.

***

When I google:
raines cocaine “hall of fame”
I get 11,200 results.
And googling:
molitor cocaine “hall of fame”
I get 1,310.

If I remove cocaine from the list, I get:
194,000 for Raines
65,800

So, 6% of articles involving Raines and the Hall mentions cocaine.  That number is 2% for Molitor.

If instead of “cocaine”, I put in “drugs”, I get 3% Molitor articles implicated, against 24% for Raines.  Isn’t that just dumbfounding?

Look for Raines and Hall of Fame, and you get 194 thousands articles.  Include the word drugs, and you get back 24% of them.

Look for Molitor and Hall of Fame, and you get 66 thousand articles.  Include the word drugs, and you get back 3% of them.

There’s a likely double-standard here.  And, I have to believe that Molitor being the All-American White Boy selected Third Overall has something to do with it, compared to Black Raines.

It’s also possible that some of those articles that include drugs don’t deal with Raines, but with other guys on the ballot like McGwire.

A couple of more updates:
http://raines30.com/reviews.shtml
http://raines30.com/c30.shtml

More updates on the site.

***
Richard Griffin (certainly not my favorite journalist) of The Toronto Star, responding to the Molitor/Raines treatment:
http://www.thestar.com/Sports/article/284889

And yes there is an unfair differentiation between black players and white players when it comes to drugs.

I’m glad to see this in print.