Baseball Stats

So, for the past little while I've been working on a project of trying to compile all-time teams for each of the 30 currently extant Major League baseball franchises, in other words to pick the best 25-man roster out of their historical players. And, of course, only allowing the team to count players as they appeared with that team, so the Mets don't get Willie Mays in all his glory. At first I did this just subjectively: I looked over the most prominent players in team history and tried to pick the ones who looked best. Then I got objective, and devised a stat that I thought did a pretty good job of picking people who were good for a team for a good long while, with a relatively good mix. Then I noticed that there are lots of stats for how-good-people-are compiled by people other than me, and I'd try using one of those. So, here are some results:

I'm only going to give results for the team that I know, namely the Mets, because I think the three versions of the Mets make an interesting case study. Here's the subjective version:

Position Players:
31    Mike Piazza     Starting Catcher
17    Keith Hernandez     Starting First Baseman
13    Edgardo Alfonzo     Starting Second Baseman
5     David Wright     Starting Third Baseman
7     Jose Reyes     Starting Shortstop
1     Mookie Wilson     Starting Left Fielder
15    Carlos Beltran     Starting Center Fielder
18    Darryl Strawberry     Starting Right Fielder
8     Gary Carter     Backup Catcher
5    John Olerud     Backup First Baseman
20    Howard Johnson     Backup Infielder
24    Rickey Henderson     Backup Outfielder
10    Rusty Staub     Backup Outfielder

Pitchers:
41    Tom Seaver     Starter
16    Dwight Gooden     Starter
57    Johan Santana     Starter
22    Al Leiter     Starter
36    Jerry Koosman     Starter
45    John Franco     Reliever
47    Jesse Orosco     Reliever
75    Fransisco Rodriguez     Reliever
48    Randy Myers     Reliever
49    Armando Benitez     Reliever
40    Braden Looper     Reliever
30    Nolan Ryan     Reliever

Now here's the first objective version, with my methodology. For position players, I took their OPS+ stat, adjusted on-base plus slugging percentage, and multiplied it by plate appearances. I used OPS+ because it is adjusted for different eras, which is, I think, useful for this kind of thing. Then I multiplied that by fielding percentage; I know, I know, fielding percentage is considered a mediocre stat, but I wanted to account for fielding and (to be totally honest) I wanted for David Wright to come out ahead of HoJo. But I think it's justifiable. Anyway, for pitchers I just took ERA+, another metric adjusted for different time periods, and multiplied it by innings pitched. Except that in both cases I took the square root of the length-of-career value, PA or IP. That was just trial and error; I found that taking it whole allowed weak players who were there forever to sneak in, and taking the log allowed seriously one-hit wonder players to look way better than they were. Also, for relief pitchers, I used games pitched instead of innings pitched. Anyway, here's the result:

Position Players:
Catchers:     31     Mike Piazza     Starter       /        9     Jerry Grote     Backup
Infielders:     17     Keith Hernandez     Starting 1B      /        7      Ed Kranepool      Backup 1B
                   13     Edgardo Alfonzo     Starting 2B
                   5       David Wright       Starting 3B         /       20      Howard Johnson      Backup 3B
                   7       Jose Reyes        Starting SS
Outfielders:        21       Cleon Jones      Starting LF      /       22       Kevin McReynolds      Backup OF
                         15       Carlos Beltran      Starting CF       /       12      Lee Mazzilli        Backup OF
                         18       Darryl Strawberry      Starting RF

Pitchers:
Starters:      41     Tom Seaver        36       Jerry Koosman       16      Dwight Gooden       22       Al Leiter      50      Sid Fernandez
Relievers:      45      John Franco
                    49       Armando Benitez
                    47       Jesse Orosco
                    13      Billy Wagner
                    25       Pedro Feliciano
                    99       Turk Wendell
                    45       Tug McGraw

And now for the other objective version. This uses the "wins above replacement" statistic from baseball-reference.com; I just went down the list of WAR in team history and assigned people to roles from the top down. Here's what I got:

31 Piazza/12 John Stearns catching
17 Hernandez/5 Olerud at 1B
13 Alfonzo at 2B
7 Reyes at SS
5 Wright/20 HoJo at 3B
21 Jones/22 McReynolds in LF
15 Beltran/1 Wilson in CF
18 Strawberry in RF

41 Seaver/36 Koosman/16 Gooden/32 John Matlack/50 Fernandez in the starting rotation
45 Franco/45 McGraw/47 Orosco/49 Benitez/38 Skip Lockwood/33 Ray Sadecki/34 Bob Apodaca


Not a lot of disagreement about the starting position players. I had Mookie in LF on the subjective version, later feeling like he wasn't really a left fielder, and one of the two objective versions didn't include him at all. I think I gave a little too much weight to the past few years for pitching in the subjective versions (Santana and K-Rod). I also think that Matlack over Leiter in the rotation seems very questionable to me. But really. John Stearns catching? Skip Lockwood, Ray Sadecki, and Bob Apodaca over Billy Wagner? Seriously? I have to say, I certainly think the WAR stat breaks down for relief pitchers. I also think my metric is at least as good. And quite honestly, I think that there are a lot of stats like WAR, all of which give very slightly different results, and I don't really think there's any definitive way to say which is best. I'm not sure what the methodologies are, but I produced fairly similar results and better if anything with a very simple measure. Anyway, an interesting experiment in both stat-making and in subjectively judging things, I'd say.