250. Scott Kazmir- Career: 3.43. 5 Consecutive: 3.56. Average: 0.49. 3 Highest: 2.69. 10 Highest: 3.43. All-Star Seasons: 1. MVP Seasons: 0.
He's probably most remembered for being traded for Victor Zambrano by the New York Mets. He was also traded by the Rays to the Angels, when the Rays basically gave up on the 2009 season. His 2010 season was pretty terrible and if he continues with another bad season this year, he might fall out of the rankings which, as improbable as it could be, could happen. His best season was the 2007 season his fWAR was 5.3. He went 13-9 with an ERA of 3.48. His K/9 was 10.41 which was his highest for a full season. His BB/9 was 3.88. His FIP (fielding independent pitching) was 3.45 which was the second best season that he had. It was basically his best season by almost any measure, including WAR.
249. Andy Ashby- Career: 4.07. 5 Consecutive: 3.34. Average: 0.29. 3 Highest: 2.31. 10 Highest: 4.44. All-Star Seasons: 0. MVP Seasons: 0.
His best season was 1997. His FIP was 3.58, which was the best mark he got for any full season. I would have expected that 1995 would have been his best season. He had a better ERA, a better K/9 rate, and a better won-loss record. However, he had a better BB/9 rate, a better HR/9 rate, and he pitched 8 more innings. It appears that he was slightly more valuable in 1997 then he was in 1995. This appears in his WAR which was 3.5 compared to 3.0.
248. Mike McCormick- Career: 3.56. 5 Consecutive: 2.26. Average: 0.22. 3 Highest: 3.06. 10 Highest: 4.38. All-Star Seasons: 2. MVP Seasons: 0. While McCormick had two all-star seasons he also had 8 seasons where he was below the level of a replacement level pitcher. This severely hurt his ranking and it shows as players ranked right around him do not have as many of all-star seasons as he does but they also do not have as many season below 0 WAR. His two best seasons were 1960 and 1967. We'll compare and see where they're getting these rankings. In 1960 he was 15-12 with a league leading 2.70 ERA, he was 6th in the league in WHIP with a 1.158 mark, 10th in BB/9 with a 2.312 mark, a 2.369 K/BB ranked 10th, .534 HR/9 which ranked 3rd, and came in 5th in ERA+ with a 130. He made the all-star team but did not get a Cy Young vote. In 1967, he went 22-10 with a 2.85 ERA, his WHIP was lower at a 1.147 but it wasn't a top 10 finish. His BB/9 was higher at a 2.8. His K/BB was 1.85 and his HR/9 was 0.9 which was higher and his ERA+ was 118, so not as good of a season. This is reflected in his WAR 5.8 in 1960 compared to 5.0 in 1967.
247. Rollie Fingers- Career: 4.88. 5 Consecutive: 2.5. Average: 0.29. 3 Highest: 2.1. 10 Highest: 4.86. All-Star Seasons: 0. MVP Seasons: 0.
His best season was 1981. His WAR was 4.1. Jon Heyman wrote in his Hall of Fame post why Bert Blyleven is not a Hall of Famer and Jack Morris is, that WAR rewards pitchers who pitch a lot of innings and strikes out a lot of hitters. Fingers pitched 78 innings in 1981 and his K/9 was only 7.0. Not exactly dominant numbers on either end. However, the rest of his numbers were pretty impressive. His ERA was 1.04, he led the league in saves with 28. He allowed 9 (!) runs in his 78 innings. His ERA+ was 333 and his WHIP was 0.872. I'd say he was rewarded with his high WAR with great pitching. The anti-WAR diatribe of Jon Heyman will be discussed later.
246. Ramon Martinez- Career: 4.71. 5 Consecutive: 2.84. Average: 0.34. 3 Highest: 2.25. 10 Highest: 4.55. All-Star Seasons: 0. MVP Seasons: 0.
His best season according to fWAR was 1990 at 5.1 and that same season got him a 4.1 rWAR. All in all a pretty good season. He won 20 games. There's many posts out there on why wins are not a good way to measure a pitcher's ability, if you haven't read it, I'd suggest using Google to search Keith Law on wins or Joe Posnanski on wins. Either one of them can explain much better than I can. When evaluating seasons by WAR, I have found that the easiest way to evaluate pitchers and judge how we used to using wins is to multiply the pitcher's seasons WAR by 3. A 5 win mark is equal to roughly what we'd consider a 15 win season (which is where we usually evaluate pitchers as having an all-star caliber season). So, if we use that mark, we average fWAR and rWAR and multiply by 3. So Ramon Martinez was really only worth about 14 win season by our regular measure. Now, this isn't an exact science (not that baseball is, in general) just something I use to approximate true value.
No comments:
Post a Comment