John Means 2019 vs. Justin Verlander 2006 ROY Season

[DrungoHazewood]

39 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

At the age of 20 Aparicio started his minor league career with Waterloo in the IIIL league, Class B ball.  He had a .727 OPS and 20 steals.

At the age of 20 Richie Martin was plyaing for Florida in the SEC.  Got drafted, ended up in the NYP League where he had a .695 OPS, and between there and college he had 27 steals.  That's pretty darned close.

At 21 Aparicio had a roughly .700 OPS in AA.  Incomplete records, so we're not quite sure of his OBP.

At 21 Martin slumped a little and had a .649 OPOS between high A and AA.

At 22 Aparicio got called up to the White Sox, where he started almost every game but only had a .653 OPS (72 OPS+).  Led the AL with 21 steals, but even worse than today no one stole bases, so kind of whatever.

Richie Martin kind of got sidetracked at 22, I think he was hurt, so you can't really blame him for hitting .224 in AA.  At 23 he raked, putting up an .807 OPS in AA, which is better than any mark Aparicio ever put up at any level.  He also stole 25 bases.

Aparicio basically kept hitting crappily for the next 16 years.  I'm not making this up, he had full seasons as a regular where he OPS'd .614, .623, ..625, .647, .583.  

Martin had to adjust to skipping AAA altogether and being forced into the starting lineup of a very poor MLB team.  He's currently OPSing .545 at the age of 24.  But since bottoming out at a .458 OPS in mid-May, he's OPS'd .588 as a rookie.  That's better than Aparicio OPS'd in 1967 as an 11-year MLB veteran.  The 2nd half this year Martin is OPSing a very Aparicio-like .621, albeit in a @wildcard level of microscopic sample that it takes some pretty heavy doses of codeine-based cough syrup to buy into.

Aparicio was consistenly over-valued throughout his career because he led the league in steals year after year.  Nobody had stolen any bases since the 1910s, and it was kind of astonishing to see this little guy from Venezuela stealing 20, 25, then 50 bases in one year.  He got all kinds of MVP votes for it, despite being what we now see as a 2-5 win player every year.  Martin has no such advantage.  He has the speed and ability to steal 20, 30 or more bases a year, but probably won't because we now get math.

Aparicio was also recognized as a plus-plus defensive shortstop.  But as our friend @weams is so fond of reminding us, all defensive metrics are crap all of the time.  Is it that far-fetched to believe that Aparicio was merely pretty good, and so is Martin?  Or that Martin is really a plus defender hiding behind the obscuring effects of near constant shifts that Aparicio rarely dealt with?

And don't forget, Aparicio played most of his career in the pre-draft era.  While he was post-integration and himself from Central America he never played against the waves of players we now see from the Caribbean and Asia.  Scouting was not as advanced as today, the information revolution was decades away.  Martin has run the gauntlet through multiple levels of much higher scrutiny and competition.  It's quite likely that if you dropped a 25-year-old Luis Aparicio into today he'd look a lot like Richie Martin, just with a swing path that would immediately get tinkered with to get him a ton more flyouts to medium left.

Is Richie Martin going to Cooperstown?  Probably not, but then again there are a handful of .650-OPSing shortstops that are in...

[Moose Milligan]

2 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

At the age of 20 Aparicio started his minor league career with Waterloo in the IIIL league, Class B ball.  He had a .727 OPS and 20 steals.

At the age of 20 Richie Martin was plyaing for Florida in the SEC.  Got drafted, ended up in the NYP League where he had a .695 OPS, and between there and college he had 27 steals.  That's pretty darned close.

At 21 Aparicio had a roughly .700 OPS in AA.  Incomplete records, so we're not quite sure of his OBP.

At 21 Martin slumped a little and had a .649 OPOS between high A and AA.

At 22 Aparicio got called up to a kind of poor White Sox team, where he started almost every game but only had a .653 OPS (72 OPS+).  Led the AL with 21 steals, but even worse than today no one stole bases, so kind of whatever.

Richie Martin kind of got sidetracked at 22, I think he was hurt, so you can't really blame him for hitting .224 in AA.  AT 23 he raked, putting up an .807 OPS in AA, which is better than any mark Aparicio ever put up at any level.  He also stole 25 bases.

Aparicio basically kept hitting crappily for the next 16 years.  I'm not making this up, he had full seasons as a regular where he OPS'd .614, .623, ..625, .647, .583.  

Martin had to adjust to skipping AAA altogether and being forced into the starting lineup of a very poor MLB team.  He's currently OPSing .545 at the age of 24.  But since bottoming out at a .458 OPS in mid-May, he's OPS'd .588 as a rookie.  That's better than Aparicio OPS'd in 1967 as an 11-year MLB veteran.  The 2nd half this year Martin is OPSing a very Aparicio-like .621, albeit in a @wildcard microscopic sample that it takes some pretty heavy doses of codeine-based cough syrup to buy into.

Aparicio was consistenly over-valued throughout his career because he led the league in steals year after year.  Nobody had stolen any bases since the 1910s, and it was kind of astonishing to see this little guy from Venezuela stealing 20, 25, then 50 bases in one year.  He got all kinds of MVP votes for it, despite being what we now see as a 2-5 win player every year.  Martin has no such advantage.  He has the speed and ability to steal 20, 30 or more bases a year, but probably won't because we now get math.

Aparicio was also recognized as a plus-plus defensive shortstop.  But as our friend @weams is so fond of reminding us, all defensive metrics are crap all of the time.  Is it that far-fetched to believe that Aparicio was merely pretty good, and so is Martin?  Or that Martin is really a plus defender hiding behind the obscuring effects of near constant shifts that Aparicio rarely dealt with?

And don't forget, Aparicio played most of his career in the pre-draft era.  While he was post-integration and himself from Central America he never played against the waves of players we now see from the Caribbean and Asia.  Scouting was not as advanced as today, the information revolution was decades away.  Martin has run the gauntlet through multiple levels of much higher scrutiny and competition.  It's quite likely that if you dropped a 25-year-old Luis Aparicio into today he'd look a lot like Richie Martin, just with a swing path that would immediately get tinkered with to get him a ton more flyouts to medium left.

Is Richie Martin going to Cooperstown?  Probably not, but then again there are a handful of .650-OPSing shortstops that are in...

Damn, way to lay it down.

I was figuring you'd simply say the quality of pitchers that Martin is facing is better.  

[SurhoffRules]

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

- Most pitchers with below-average strikeout rates fade away pretty quickly.  Almost every HOF starter began life with a better-than-average K rate, most well above average.  K rate is basically a pitcher's margin.  Most lose it over time and eventually get a point where they're not viable anymore.  Verlander's early career switch made him an exception.  We'll see what happens with Means.

Since 2013 (per Fangraphs) there have been 999 qualifying starters seasons. 243 were thrown by pitchers with an average fastball under 90 mph. Discounting the 10 of those that were thrown by Wakefield and Dickey you're left with these medians(couldn't get ERA+ in the FG custom report for some reason).

	Age	ERA	K/9	BB/9	H/9
>= 90	27	3.68	7.82	2.72	8.4
< 90	31	4.02	6.22	2.54	9.27

Digging a litter further these starters made up over 40% of those seasons under the 90mph mark were thrown by guys like this:

Name		Avg Age	Seasons
Mark Buehrle	32.0	9
Bronson Arroyo	33.0	7
Jered Weaver	28.4	7
Paul Maholm	27.5	6
Aaron Harang	34.0	5
Barry Zito	31.2	5
Derek Lowe	36.0	5
Jason Vargas	29.8	5
Livan Hernandez	34.0	5
Ted Lilly	33.0	5
Andy Pettitte	37.3	4
Bartolo Colon	41.5	4
Dallas Keuchel	27.8	4
Dan Haren	32.5	4
Doug Fister	29.3	4
Joe Blanton	27.5	4
Kyle Hendricks	27.0	4
Kyle Lohse	33.5	4
Mike Leake	27.0	4
Randy Wolf	32.5	4
Wandy Rodriguez	31.0	4

I suspect the ERA gap between the real soft tossers and the rest of the league is much less than it would be if the list wasn't heavily selected for productive veteran pitchers who were allowed to continue pitching as they lost velocity. Loving what Means is doing, but I think it's fair that folks would be rosier on his future if he had a few more mph on his fastball. I think he's certainly focused on the things in his toolbox that he needs to be to have a shot at a long and productive career.

[DrungoHazewood]

6 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

Damn, way to lay it down.

I was figuring you'd simply say the quality of pitchers that Martin is facing is better.  

Of course I selectively left out a lot and framed Martin in the best possible light.  Aparicio was almost certainly a plus-plus defender at short for 15+ years, while it's an open question as to whether Martin will ever post a .600 OPS or be a positive fielder at all.  I think the likely case is that Little Louie ends up with about 10,000 more career PAs than Martin.

[Moose Milligan]

3 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Of course I selectively left out a lot and framed Martin in the best possible light.  Aparicio was almost certainly a plus-plus defender at short for 15+ years, while it's an open question as to whether Martin will ever post a .600 OPS or be a positive fielder at all.  I think the likely case is that Little Louie ends up with about 10,000 more career PAs than Martin.

I'd agree.  I still have a little hope for Richie as a utility guy, although I think Wilkerson has that position locked down for the next few years.  I'd like to see if Richie could come around with the bat a little bit.  

[DrungoHazewood]

7 minutes ago, SurhoffRules said:

Since 2013 (per Fangraphs) there have been 999 qualifying starters seasons. 243 were thrown by pitchers with an average fastball under 90 mph. Discounting the 10 of those that were thrown by Wakefield and Dickey you're left with these medians(couldn't get ERA+ in the FG custom report for some reason).

	Age	ERA	K/9	BB/9	H/9
< 90	27	3.68	7.82	2.72	8.4
<= 90	31	4.02	6.22	2.54	9.27

Digging a litter further these starters made up over 40% of those seasons under the 90mph mark were thrown by guys like this:

Name		Avg Age	Seasons
Mark Buehrle	32.0	9
Bronson Arroyo	33.0	7
Jered Weaver	28.4	7
Paul Maholm	27.5	6
Aaron Harang	34.0	5
Barry Zito	31.2	5
Derek Lowe	36.0	5
Jason Vargas	29.8	5
Livan Hernandez	34.0	5
Ted Lilly	33.0	5
Andy Pettitte	37.3	4
Bartolo Colon	41.5	4
Dallas Keuchel	27.8	4
Dan Haren	32.5	4
Doug Fister	29.3	4
Joe Blanton	27.5	4
Kyle Hendricks	27.0	4
Kyle Lohse	33.5	4
Mike Leake	27.0	4
Randy Wolf	32.5	4
Wandy Rodriguez	31.0	4

I suspect the ERA gap between the real soft tossers and the rest of the league is much less than it would be if the list wasn't dominated by productive veteran pitchers who were allowed to continue pitching as they lost velocity.

This year the median strikeout rate of starters through age 25, min 10 starts, is 8.45.  For those over 30 it's 8.13.  Not appreciably different for those over 35.  So that may not be a good metric - pitchers at all ages have some distribution around average.

What would be better would be to look at all pitchers at some age, say 24, in the year 2000.  Take everyone more than 20% above average in K rate and compare the rest of their careers to the group that was 20% or more below average at 24.  The high-K pitchers will have a total value several multiples higher than the low-K group.  That's a near certainty without even doing the research.

[esmd]

57 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

Damn, I totally read that wrong.

It's not a good comp from a stuff perspective.  But from a stats perspective it's an interesting look.

True.  I'd just be curious about comps that match up better from both perspectives.  Drungo, as usual, came through.

[SurhoffRules]

28 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

What would be better would be to look at all pitchers at some age, say 24, in the year 2000.  Take everyone more than 20% above average in K rate and compare the rest of their careers to the group that was 20% or more below average at 24.  The high-K pitchers will have a total value several multiples higher than the low-K group.  That's a near certainty without even doing the research.

Name			K/9+'00	K/9+Car	WAR Career
Brian Meadows		55	66	2.7
Jimmy Anderson		68	55	3.4
Brian Rose		75	74	0
Jeff D'Amico		83	83	7.1
Tomo Ohka		83	74	11.1
Jim Parque		85	82	1.6
Scott Downs		87	102	8.1
Carl Pavano		88	80	21.1
Joe Mays		91	69	5.4
Scott Elarton		91	81	-0.5
Mike Johnson		92	94	-0.5
Chris Fussell		94	94	-0.7
Doug Davis		96	100	22.4
Paul Rigdon		98	89	0.2
Jaret Wright		100	99	7.1
Eric Gagne		104	149	13.4
Kelvim Escobar		113	124	23
Eric Milton		115	99	12.3
Tim Hudson		120	86	45.2
J.C. Romero		124	111	1.3
Kyle Farnsworth		128	138	6.8
Scott Williamson	162	157	5.6

Your class of 2000 (24 year old, min 50 innings). Lot of noise and lots of folks that ended up in the bullpen. Remove Hudson from the list and the above average and below average look pretty similar. I still agree with you and suspect one year isn't enough data to see a trend.

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

One key item overlooked, Verlander was 23 years old when he won ROY in 2006. Means is 26 years old and that matters. Means still has room to improve, but usually you expect the younger player to have more potential to develop into a star player. 

If Means was 23 years old and putting up these numbers, the Orioles might have their future top of the rotation ace. Maybe Means will still be that, but it's a little less likely. He seems to be a smart ball player and that will serve him well over his career. 

[Tony-OH]

2 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

- I don't think you should discount 50 innings difference.

- Verlander is a different type of pitcher.  His strikeout rate was low as a rookie, but over the subsequent couple years he changed something (maybe switching from a sinker to a four seam?) and became more of a prototypical power starter in the same family as a Clemens or a Halladay or Mike Scott or a hundred others.  That's not John Means.

- Most pitchers with below-average strikeout rates fade away pretty quickly.  Almost every HOF starter began life with a better-than-average K rate, most well above average.  K rate is basically a pitcher's margin.  Most lose it over time and eventually get a point where they're not viable anymore.  Verlander's early career switch made him an exception.  We'll see what happens with Means.

- Verlander's fastball has 5 mph on Means, and he's 36.  It's a little astonishing that he throws about as hard at this point in his career as he did as a rookie.  If Means is a normal pitcher he'll have lost 3-5 mph on his 90 mph fastball in a decade.

I hope Means wins the ROY, he's a great story.  But we should be happy if he ends up with a third of Verlander's career.

Dear Dr. Killjoy,

The OP was just discussing John Means' rookie of the year consideration worthy season. I don't think he was suggesting they will have similar careers or are similar pitchers.

Signed,

Fun Police

 

[DrungoHazewood]

6 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

Dear Dr. Killjoy,

The OP was just discussing John Means' rookie of the year consideration worthy season. I don't think he was suggesting they will have similar careers or are similar pitchers.

Signed,

Fun Police

 

Sorry, I tried to make up for it by advocating Richie Martin for the Hall. 

I do like John Means a lot even if I don't think he's quite Justin Verlander...  Actually I almost always hate those mid-game interviews from the dugout, but I rather liked Means' last night.

[DrungoHazewood]

8 minutes ago, OsFanSinceThe80s said:

One key item overlooked, Verlander was 23 years old when he won ROY in 2006. Means is 26 years old and that matters. Means still has room to improve, but usually you expect the younger player to have more potential to develop into a star player. 

If Means was 23 years old and putting up these numbers, the Orioles might have their future top of the rotation ace. Maybe Means will still be that, but it's a little less likely. He seems to be a smart ball player and that will serve him well over his career. 

I think that matters less with pitchers.  Hitters, position players, often have a predictable aging pattern.  Pitchers are all over the place.  I think they're almost as likely to peak as rookies as at any other time.  Or they'll have three peaks with injuries and weird periods of ineffectiveness in between.  Or they'll be mediocre for six years then turn into Lefty Grove for a while.

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I think that matters less with pitchers.  Hitters, position players, often have a predictable aging pattern.  Pitchers are all over the place.  I think they're almost as likely to peak as rookies as at any other time.  Or they'll have three peaks with injuries and weird periods of ineffectiveness in between.  Or they'll be mediocre for six years then turn into Lefty Grove for a while.

Good point, it's not as unusual for a 26 years old pitcher to continue to grow as a player. Rich Hill has a peaks and valley pattern to his career that you would never see from a position player.  

[Tony-OH]

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Sorry, I tried to make up for it by advocating Richie Martin for the Hall. 

I do like John Means a lot even if I don't think he's quite Justin Verlander...  Actually I almost always hate those mid-game interviews from the dugout, but I rather liked Means' last night.

Haha. I don't think John Means is going to have a Verlander career either. 

[GuidoSarducci]

5 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

At the age of 20 Aparicio started his minor league career with Waterloo in the IIIL league, Class B ball.  He had a .727 OPS and 20 steals.

At the age of 20 Richie Martin was plyaing for Florida in the SEC.  Got drafted, ended up in the NYP League where he had a .695 OPS, and between there and college he had 27 steals.  That's pretty darned close.

At 21 Aparicio had a roughly .700 OPS in AA.  Incomplete records, so we're not quite sure of his OBP.

At 21 Martin slumped a little and had a .649 OPOS between high A and AA.

At 22 Aparicio got called up to the White Sox, where he started almost every game but only had a .653 OPS (72 OPS+).  Led the AL with 21 steals, but even worse than today no one stole bases, so kind of whatever.

Richie Martin kind of got sidetracked at 22, I think he was hurt, so you can't really blame him for hitting .224 in AA.  At 23 he raked, putting up an .807 OPS in AA, which is better than any mark Aparicio ever put up at any level.  He also stole 25 bases.

Aparicio basically kept hitting crappily for the next 16 years.  I'm not making this up, he had full seasons as a regular where he OPS'd .614, .623, ..625, .647, .583.  

Martin had to adjust to skipping AAA altogether and being forced into the starting lineup of a very poor MLB team.  He's currently OPSing .545 at the age of 24.  But since bottoming out at a .458 OPS in mid-May, he's OPS'd .588 as a rookie.  That's better than Aparicio OPS'd in 1967 as an 11-year MLB veteran.  The 2nd half this year Martin is OPSing a very Aparicio-like .621, albeit in a @wildcard level of microscopic sample that it takes some pretty heavy doses of codeine-based cough syrup to buy into.

Aparicio was consistenly over-valued throughout his career because he led the league in steals year after year.  Nobody had stolen any bases since the 1910s, and it was kind of astonishing to see this little guy from Venezuela stealing 20, 25, then 50 bases in one year.  He got all kinds of MVP votes for it, despite being what we now see as a 2-5 win player every year.  Martin has no such advantage.  He has the speed and ability to steal 20, 30 or more bases a year, but probably won't because we now get math.

Aparicio was also recognized as a plus-plus defensive shortstop.  But as our friend @weams is so fond of reminding us, all defensive metrics are crap all of the time.  Is it that far-fetched to believe that Aparicio was merely pretty good, and so is Martin?  Or that Martin is really a plus defender hiding behind the obscuring effects of near constant shifts that Aparicio rarely dealt with?

And don't forget, Aparicio played most of his career in the pre-draft era.  While he was post-integration and himself from Central America he never played against the waves of players we now see from the Caribbean and Asia.  Scouting was not as advanced as today, the information revolution was decades away.  Martin has run the gauntlet through multiple levels of much higher scrutiny and competition.  It's quite likely that if you dropped a 25-year-old Luis Aparicio into today he'd look a lot like Richie Martin, just with a swing path that would immediately get tinkered with to get him a ton more flyouts to medium left.

Is Richie Martin going to Cooperstown?  Probably not, but then again there are a handful of .650-OPSing shortstops that are in...

We judge players relative to the era they played in.  Back then shortstops weren't expected to be sluggers.  Look at Mark Belanger.  Yes I realize were notable exceptions like Ernie Banks.   But look at who was the shortstop for the Yankees from 1957 to 1965. Tony Kubek with a career OPS of .667 (he did have a couple years slightly over .700 and one year of .789 but only in 45 games)

Its why Cal was a better shortstop than Nomar Garciaparra