Imagine if you (i.e. the average reader) were suddenly dropped onto a major league baseball team. You'd be virtually useless in the batter's box - striking out each time (if you're lucky), and you'd be a defensive liability, forcing you into the DH position.
Assuming that you strike out on three pitches in every at-bat (which is probably being overly conservative but whatever let's roll with it), your wOBA would be .000. That's not a good number. Over 600 plate appearances that translates to something like 180 runs below average.
The DH positional adjustment is -17.5, and the replacement bonus we'll take as 20 runs. Your WAR would therefore be approximately -18 (meaning that you should be paying whichever team you were on almost $100M a year to make up for the fact that you're playing).
While this is an amusing little exercise, consider this: Jose Vidro, over 600 PA last season, would have been worth about -3 wins. That's 15 wins over someone who can't play baseball.
The best player in the game, Albert Pujols, posted a WAR of about 9 in 2008. The difference between him and Vidro? 12 wins, only a little bit less than the difference between ol' Turbo and someone who can't play baseball at all.
Let's present this in another way.
We paid him $6,000,000 to be our starting DH last year. What the hell.
Not a serious piece of analysis, just an amusing train of thought.
4 recs | 89 comments
Eventually a pitcher would bean one of us
Jeff Sullivan - January 2, 2009
I'd like to think I could lean into one.
Also, what is the chance a pitcher misses the strike zone enough to walk us without me taking the bat off my shoulder?
Edgar for Pres - January 2, 2009
I thought about this
I assume that they’d walk us sometimes but not very often, because they could get away with grooving fastballs
Graham MacAree - January 2, 2009
Also, our outs wouldn't be as costly
because we’d strike out every time so we could never hit into double plays.
Edgar for Pres - January 2, 2009
Although our outs would never advance a runner so that makes our outs less valuable
Edgar for Pres - January 2, 2009
Just lay down the bunt.
Two Rs and Two Ls - January 2, 2009
I think that would be more terrifying than trying to take a hack.
JonBBT - January 4, 2009
Really?
I don’t think I would lean into a major league fastball.
brayden04 - January 2, 2009
What if I paid you $400k?
I’d lean into as many as you wanted.
Edgar for Pres - January 2, 2009
I would lean into about three and then suffer an injury and take the rest of the season off
like Carl Pavano
seattlebruin - January 2, 2009
I dunno....
it’s easy to say you’d lean into pitches…
I don’t know if I would. I guess if I was getting hit on the leg or arm. But getting hit in the body would suck. Head of course would suck too. Maybe…Who knows.
brayden04 - January 2, 2009
Heh, I got hit at 85 in HS
it hurts like hell, but I’d do it three times for $400k
seattlebruin - January 2, 2009
I got hit by 87
although I got hit right in the meat of the thigh… that wasn’t too terrible
I was also extremely proud of myself for getting a bat on it the next time up.
Jack Moore - January 2, 2009
I got hit by a guy throwing somewhere between 80 and 90
I know he clocked over 90 and ended up pitching in the low minors.
However if you played high school ball or higher (like me) I think you’d eventually get lucky and get a hit or two in the season. If they just piped fastballs you’d catch up to one or two eventually, then they’d just start throwing junk or something, and it’d be more than 3 pitches an at bat.
However, if you’ve never picked up a bat, you’d be bailing out of the box so far you’d never even see the pitches.
Smegmalicious - January 2, 2009
yep, same thing for me
I got hit by 85-90 right in the shoulderblade, two at bats in a row
Not my day
Nowadays though, I’m the one dishing out the pain, as a college pitcher I hit anyone I want and never touch a bat :)
mariners124m - January 4, 2009
If I had my pads I'd do it without blinking
Graham MacAree - January 2, 2009
Like the ones they use in Cricket?
Susheel Ramasahayam - January 3, 2009
I don't think you get to make up rules.
Kirsten Schlewitz - January 3, 2009
I would if I were the home team
Graham MacAree - January 3, 2009
If you get 650 PA per season
400k works out to be about $600/HBP. Thats pretty good money. Get one of those fat elbow pads and it wouldn’t be too bad.
Edgar for Pres - January 3, 2009
Also, you wouldn't be -18 WAR if you got hit by 650 pitches in a season, your OBP would be 1.000
and your OPS 1.000 as well
seattlebruin - January 3, 2009
Actually, I'd imagine you'd be more valuable than Albert Pujols if this were to happen
seattlebruin - January 3, 2009
According to AC's WAR spreadsheet, a player who gets hit by 650 pitches would be worth
roughly 22 WAR or $100M per season
seattlebruin - January 3, 2009
I now know what I need to do with my life.
Aaron Campeau - January 3, 2009
That's when the catcher starts setting up on the outside corner every time
and the umpires start enforcing the “you have to at least try to get out of the way” rule. If you could get The Blob on your team (and somehow keep his feet inside the batters box) he could probably take up most of the strike zone with his elbows, and then this might work. He would have another advantage too, because if he took one in the gut it would be liable to bounce back at the pitcher at hundreds of miles per hour! Mutants will be the new roiders.
chaney - January 4, 2009
Why don't you get a walk and then "sprain" an ankle running to first.
Slurvey - January 2, 2009
Depends on how high it was.
Aaron Campeau - January 3, 2009
I'm going to take this literally and picture me sitting on Stephen Hawking sitting on a chair.
R.J. Anderson - January 2, 2009
We'd at least take pitches.
In each plate appearance, the pitcher would have to throw at least 3 ptiches. And there’s a small chance we could foul something off, or luck out and get a hit.
Sklyansky - January 2, 2009
I think some of us that played high school ball(anybody here play college ball?) could probably manage a few hits off of a replacement level pitcher,
after we’d seen enough pitches. A few of us(not I) might even be able to get an XBH or two.
Goose - January 3, 2009
I think the baseline should be
Player A’s 2005 campaign.
When you space it out over 650 PA, -100 hitting (+ 20 replacement -17.5 defense) gives around -10 WAR if he was a DH.
Edgar for Pres - January 3, 2009
I'm a better baseball player then Steven Hawking
Corco - January 2, 2009
No you're not.
Graham MacAree - January 2, 2009
Hawking is great for chemistry, too.
andrewgolfsalot - January 2, 2009
It's at least theoretically possible that I'll make contact
Corco - January 2, 2009
although Hawking in wheelchair has a greater surface area and a smaller batters box
so he’s more likely to get HBP or walked
Corco - January 2, 2009
so yeah I'd take Hawking over me
Corco - January 2, 2009
Offset by the fact that he would get hit by more pitches
Graham MacAree - January 2, 2009
late
Corco - January 2, 2009
stupider
Aaron Campeau - January 3, 2009
Where does Hawkings' chair fall on the chart?
That thing is pretty hi-tech. I bet it could out-hit Rich Harden.
Harry Pavlidis - January 2, 2009
I know how to lay down a bunt
JLC - January 2, 2009
Duh.
JI - January 2, 2009
Someone here has to be able to play a better left field than Carlos Lee.
JI - January 2, 2009
I would not be a defensive liability at 1b
Scruffy Lefty - January 2, 2009
I'd actually be a reasonable catcher
I was just trying to be as conservative as possible.
Graham MacAree - January 2, 2009
How well do handle popups?
JI - January 2, 2009
Better than Jeffie
Graham MacAree - January 2, 2009
WTF
Aaron Campeau - January 3, 2009
There goes all chances you had with him.
Kirsten Schlewitz - January 3, 2009
He compliments his weaknesses
JI - January 3, 2009
I'd fucking own the league
if I had this bad boy
Dewey N - January 2, 2009
Kind of reminds me
how as a kid we used to take the big-fat red “wiffle ball bats” (not the cool little yellow ones) and fill them half full of sand and then put a nut in them to hold the sand. Every blue moon the sand would end up coming out, but until then we could send tennis balls to the moon.
chrisisasavage - January 2, 2009
Mark McQwire?
JI - January 2, 2009
"Pros: hit a homerun every time."
Fuckin’ technology.
Teej - January 2, 2009
What if I took a lot of roids in the next month or so?
I could be ready by spring training.
JLC - January 2, 2009
According to Bonds
You also need something called skill to be able to play the game.
Fin - January 2, 2009
How much would Michael Jordan needed to have paid the White Sox to crack the starting lineup?
I mean, I don’t have $100M lying around to buy myself onto a team, but MJ has a bunch of money. Back when he was on his little hiatus from basketball, he hit .202/.285/.266 in AA. Actually, that’s a really good walk rate. Roughly .104 BB/PA against a league walk rate of about .085 BB/PA.
Nevertheless, Michael Jordan was a poor hitter in AA. I would maybe guess that he would project to hit about like Al Leiter in the majors? Leiter has a career wOBA of .121. Over 600 PA, that works out to about 110 runs below average.
MJ made a lot of errors for an outfielder (11 in 119 games), but he’s a good athlete so figure that he could maybe be a -10-run corner outfielder.
Overall, that’s -110 for hitting, +20 for replacement level, -5 for position, -10 for fielding, so 105 runs below average. So about -10.5 WAR, or 7-8 wins better than someone who can’t play baseball at all.
Back then salaries were lower, so I’m not really sure how much teams paid for marginal wins. Maddux and Clemens were a couple of the best pitchers around back then and they made ~$5M/year. Figuring that ’94 Maddux would have been making at least around $20M today, say that a marginal win in ’94 only cost about $1.25M.
Given all of those assumptions, Jordan would only have needed to pay the White Sox about $13M to play in ‘94. If he was still as good today, he’d need to pay them about $58M to play. (So maybe Kobe or LeBron would need to pony up that much money to play for some MLB team if David Stern ever gives them a vacation for gambling.)
Fun fact! Michael Jordan’s ISO in AA beats Willie Bloomquist’s ISO in AA .064 to .055. And Jordan played in a tougher environment for hitters.
Other notables in the 1994 Southern League: Jason Giambi hit .223/.318/.363 in 56 games, which was enough to get him promoted to Tacoma. He also spent most of his time at third base. Also, Brooks Kieschnick, Chris Weinke, Pokey Reese, Doug Glanville, Shane Halter, some fellow named Alex Rodriguez, Chris Widger, Desi Relaford, Derek Lowe, Armando Benitez, Brad Radke, Esteban Loaiza, Ron Villone, Tanyan Sturtze, LaTroy Hawkins, Scott Sullivan, Jason Schmidt.
ubelmann - January 2, 2009
Another way of looking at this would be to say that Al Leiter would be about -11 WAR as a DH
So Vidro was only about 8 wins better than a pitcher who is bad at hitting would have been as a DH. Carlos Zambrano has a career .270 wOBA, which is just slightly better than Jose Vidro’s .268 wOBA from last year.
ubelmann - January 2, 2009
This reads like a rough draft of an interesting article you'd see at HBT or Fangraphs
JI - January 3, 2009
I'm way too drunk to read it but the subject kine makes me sakivate
Aaron Campeau - January 3, 2009
sakivate away, just dodge those pitches
abender20 - January 3, 2009
So you are saying that I am closer to the mountiantop than I once thought?
Robert - January 3, 2009
Ah, BS!
Certainly I’d close my eyes and swing for the fences every time, a la Felix. Surely in ONE of those swings, I’d make enough contact to hit the ball into the OF. Of course I can’t run, so I’d somehow manage to turn a surefire double into an out…
PositivePaul - January 3, 2009
Maybe you'd be better off just trying to foul off pitches
There must be some value in making the pitcher rack up a higher pitch count.
Edgar for Pres - January 3, 2009
I wonder how many pitches I could foul off before I struck out
if I was just trying to foul pitches off. Getting good contact would probably be next to impossible but i feel like maybe I could get the barrel of the bat in front of a pitch if i took a half assed swing.
Edgar for Pres - January 4, 2009
It's almost as though you realize that some of us are scared of maths and need funny examples to help.
Kirsten Schlewitz - January 3, 2009
My WAR? You're one of them!
I wonder how much it cost the Oakland A’s to have Herb Washington on the roster for all of 1974.
abelard - January 3, 2009
FWIW
He did have a positive WPA, so his SB/CS added a whole 0.12 of a win above average. You could argue that he was slightly above replacement level, though it might be interesting to look in depth at the full opportunity cost of having a dedicated pinch runner. It’s probably not much worse than having a replacement-level 12th reliever who pitches in blowouts or a replacement-level PH.
ubelmann - January 3, 2009
How would you figure out the strike zone for a chair?
.Taylor - January 3, 2009
I'd give anything to see some rich asshole pay $100,000,000...
…to join a Major League Baseball team for a season. It’d be like Little Big League or Rookie of the Year, but a lot less heartwarming.
Freeing Ray Schafer - January 3, 2009
I'd rather go to the moon
Edgar for Pres - January 3, 2009
I don't think you're getting to the moon for $100M
seattlebruin - January 3, 2009
space then
Edgar for Pres - January 3, 2009
I bet you could get there for 100 million
but good luck getting back
Corco - January 3, 2009
The Russians will do it for $20 million
Link
What could go wrong?
Big Jared - January 3, 2009
What a ripoff
The Mexicans will do it for $200
Corco - January 3, 2009
Space != the moon
seattlebruin - January 3, 2009
The moon! = cheese
Wrong reply button. I blame Captain Morgan.
Big Jared - January 3, 2009
Little Big League has the happiest ending of any movie ever.
joof - January 3, 2009
And it's not like he's forced to give up control of the team
He just relinquishes it until he finishes his education.
Freeing Ray Schafer - January 3, 2009
That's not what he's referring to
JI - January 3, 2009
is there a minus WAR?
msb - January 3, 2009
I think it would be WBR then.
Fin - January 3, 2009
Yes
any player below replacement has a negative WAR value
JI - January 3, 2009
See: Vidro, Jose
andrewgolfsalot - January 4, 2009
My WAR is higher than Graham's
Just FYI
Jeff Nye - January 3, 2009
WAR
what is good for?
bondslegend - January 5, 2009
pretty much everything
JI - January 5, 2009
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