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Name me two similar contemporary Mets

iramets Mar 07 2007 07:58 AM

Contemporary with each other's playing career, that is, and not necessarily as Mets, so long as you've seen a lot of them. By similar I don't mean results, though that would be nice, but "style" of play. You might name me two righthanded sluggers with low OBP who crowded the plate and tended to pull everything, for example, or two lefthanded pitchers with wicked curves and control problems.. The reason I want them to be approximate contemporaries is this: I want to compare how they did against the same batters (or pitchers) and see what that tells us about pitcher/batter matchups. I spent several hours yesterday looking up this stuff on retrosheet, and I remain troubled by the validity of the sample sizes. I think the fact that Aaron hit Seaver pretty good but not Koosman is odd, because Aaron was a righthanded batter, but I'd like to check and see if Aaron hit any other hard-throwing contemporary lefties particularly well, or if this is just due to small sample size. The problem here is that there are no Met pitchers comparable to Seaver or Koosman. (Well, maybe Matlack.) So propose some matched sets, and I'll investigate.

Edgy DC Mar 07 2007 08:09 AM

Larry Bowa and Bud Harrelson. Bowa wasn't much of a Met, but Harrelson wasn't much of a Phil.

iramets Mar 07 2007 09:22 AM

Edgy DC wrote: Larry Bowa and Bud Harrelson. Bowa wasn't much of a Met, but Harrelson wasn't much of a Phil. I've got some raw (I mean RAW) data for Bowa and Harrelson. By 'raw' I mean not only unformatted and fairly unscientific (I started out at a threshold of 30 ABs, and kept raising it as the task looked overwhelming) but weird stuff kept showing up in the data, mainly I suspected that retrosheet's record are not altogether reliable. Why should Bowa compile 46 ABs against Bob Welch and Harrelson compile none? Why should Harrelson bat 66 times against Marichal and Bowa a mere 21? Why should a rat, a pig, a dog have life and thou have none, I know, but still....it seems screwy.

Johnny Dickshot Mar 07 2007 09:40 AM

Bruce Berenyi and Victor Zambrano

Edgy DC Mar 07 2007 10:29 AM

The contemporary part is the tough part. Obviously, a team doesn't like to keep two similar players. Doug Sisk and Roger McDowell. Ron Gardenhire and Brian Giles Mike Jorgensen and Danny Heep. Darryl Boston and Brian McRae. Alex Treviño and Junior Ortiz. Benny Agbayani and Butch Huskey. Fernando Viña and Jose Vizcaino. Larry Elliott and Tim Harkness.

seawolf17 Mar 07 2007 10:30 AM

I know Victor seems like he's been haunting us forever, but Berenyi definitely retired in 1986.

Johnny Dickshot Mar 07 2007 10:33 AM

Sorry I don;t understand a thing

MFS62 Mar 07 2007 10:40 AM

Jorgensen and Kranepool. Later

Yancy Street Gang Mar 07 2007 10:55 AM

If you're looking for a hard throwing contemporaries to Seaver and Koosman, and they don't necessarily have to be Mets, I'd go with Gibson as the righty and Carlton as the lefty. Or is that not what you're looking for?

iramets Mar 07 2007 11:09 AM

I'm not sure. I picked Mets because I thought that where the greatest expertise would lie, but we've all seen Gibson and Carlton a ton of times too. I'm not sure how this data will shake out. I've thought about the Harrelson/Bowa matchups a bit. Bowa broke in a few years after Harrelson and played a few more years, so that really would explain most of the disparities against Marichal and Welch. Marichal was out of the league by the early 70s, when Bowa had played just a few seasons, and Welch didn't break in until 1978, Bud's final year. So maybe retrosheet isn't so screwy after all. Keep those matchups coming, folks. What I mostly want is for both similar players to have faced the same pitchers/batters during the same period. Ryan and Gooden, both flamethrowing righthanders, would not work, for examples, because while they may have faced some of the same batters, there's obviously a big difference in how a young Jose Cruz Sr would bat against a flamethrowing righty and how an elderly Cruz senior would. There are six pitchers on the list whom either Harrelson or Bowa or both have faced a significant number of times, against whom they have pretty similar records. Do these pairs have much in common that you can see? Harrelson Steve Blass 56 11 2 0 0 5 0 9 0 2 0 .196 .262 .232 Steve Carlton 90 23 4 2 0 16 0 18 0 1 0 .256 .368 .344 Fergie Jenkins 73 16 1 1 0 7 1 18 0 0 0 .219 .287 .260 Phil Niekro 74 15 0 1 0 10 0 6 0 0 0 .203 .298 .230 Gary Nolan 71 11 0 2 0 5 0 8 0 0 0 .155 .211 .211 Mike Torrez 22 5 0 1 0 6 0 2 1 0 0 .227 .414 .318 Bowa Steve Blass 41 8 0 1 0 3 0 1 0 0 0 .195 .250 .244 Steve Carlton 47 12 1 0 0 1 0 4 0 1 0 .255 .271 .277 Fergie Jenkins 58 13 0 0 0 0 0 7 1 0 0 .224 .237 .224 Phil Niekro 116 26 1 1 0 6 0 11 0 3 0 .224 .262 .250 Gary Nolan 33 6 2 0 0 0 0 2 0 1 0 .182 .182 .242 Mike Torrez 66 15 1 1 0 8 1 3 0 1 0 .227 .311 .273 AB H 2B 3B HR BB IBB SO HBP SH SF AVG OBP SLG I also found two pitchers who were diametric opposites for Harrelson and Bowa: Harrelson Burt Hooton 35 12 3 0 0 1 0 6 0 0 0 .343 .361 .429 Fred Norman 30 4 2 0 1 3 0 7 0 0 0 .133 .212 .300 Bowa Burt Hooton 86 15 1 0 0 3 0 10 0 3 0 .174 .202 .186 Fred Norman 45 15 6 2 1 1 1 4 0 1 0 .333 .348 .622 Not much in common there--Norman was a lefty who threw off-speed stuff, as I recall, and Hooton threw a knuckle curve with his right arm. I'll have to use James' Guide to Pitching to see if I can find similarities or differences here. . BTW, Yancy, Bud spanked Gibson pretty good : .333 .459 .417 in 60 ABs, and Bowa hit him pretty well, too, though not nearly as well, in 63 ABs.

iramets Mar 07 2007 08:51 PM

SCREEEEECH!!!!! I'm derailing this thing before anyone gets hurt, and I'm changing the direction. I tried to do too much, combining a fun game for nostalgic Mets fans and a floor wax, namely that economy sized bottle of "HARDATA"--I'm broadening this out to take in ANY contemporaries in the same league and years who closely resemble the other's batting or pitching techniique. I'll accept say Willie Stargell and Wilie McCovey, two left handed power hitting firstbasemen of the 1960s NL. I'll accept Frank Roboinson and Hank Aaron, two right handed powerhitting corner OFers of the mid-50s-early 70s, mostly in the NL, but some AL. I'll accept John Tudor and Bob Ojeda. I'll accept Vada Pinson and Billy Williams. Dave Parker/Ken Griffey, sr. I'll accept bottles, bones, old clothes...

attgig Mar 08 2007 10:31 AM

baseball-reference anyone? eg: http://www.baseball-reference.com/s/stargwi01.shtml Similar Batters 1. Willie McCovey (883) * 2. Fred McGriff (876) 3. Gary Sheffield (863) 4. Andres Galarraga (862) 5. Jose Canseco (852) 6. Duke Snider (845) * 7. Sammy Sosa (844) 8. Jeff Bagwell (844) 9. Jim Rice (843) 10. Manny Ramirez (840) look down the list and find someone that played at the same time as the guy. right? is that all you're looking for? if you're looking for playing on the same team at the same time, I'd go with Edgy and say that managers usually don't like to do that.

iramets Mar 08 2007 01:07 PM

Well, I gave up on the same team at the same time--too rare, it's true. But I doubt that managerial preference has much to do with it. "Hmmm, I seem to have Frank Robinson playing left field and Hank Aaron playing right. Don't want two players with the same skills. Better dump one of them ASAP, preferably for a corner outfielder who's a light hitter, unaggressive baserunner and lackadaisical fielder, just to give me some variety." I suppose I could use simscores. But I thought maybe your memories of players who seemed very similiar would be a more community kind of way to go.

iramets Mar 08 2007 02:11 PM

Here's a problem with simscores--they focus on results, not methods. So the number comparison to Nolan Ryan, for example is Steve Carlton. Not very useful if you want to see how batters do facing each of them, as one's a lefty, the other's a right, one's a fastball guy, the other relies on his slider, etc. The Number two comparison is, well it's pure number two. A knuckleballer with a long career. Would you ever say, "Hey, this guy hit Niekro pretty well, he probably can hit Ryan too, they're similar pitchers." Not this side of the nuthouse, you wouldn't. You get a few decent comparisons later on: Early Wynn's not bad, Clemens is good (the first time those three words have appeared on the CPF, I think). But I think we're better off using our memories. Steve Carlton (755) * Phil Niekro (749) * Don Sutton (720) * Gaylord Perry (713) * Bert Blyleven (676) Early Wynn (653) * Roger Clemens (645) Tom Seaver (643) * Warren Spahn (597) * Fergie Jenkins (589

Edgy DC Mar 08 2007 02:16 PM

Nolan Ryan is a pretty rare fish. Hard to compare anybody to him.

iramets Mar 08 2007 02:37 PM

Quite true. But it highlights the way simscores are compiled. For my purposes, the list would be all righthanded power pitchers: Hideo Nomo, JR Richard, Schilling, Jim Maloney, Seaver, Clemens, Kerry Wood, Early Wynn, etc., perhaps arranged in rough order of high BB/IP ratio.

Edgy DC Mar 08 2007 02:48 PM

Why not Dwight Gooden and Bob Gibson?

Yancy Street Gang Mar 08 2007 03:09 PM

Anybody who faced both Gibson and Gooden would have done so at very different stages of their career. My best suggestion is Seaver and Gibson, for maybe a five year period from 1968 to 1972. Although Gibson was probably a stronger pitcher at the beginning of that period and Seaver would have been better at the end. Maybe make it 1969 to 1971. It's only three years, but you'd be able to compare how some of the best hitters in the NL did against the two pitchers over that span.

Edgy DC Mar 08 2007 03:13 PM

No, I mean why are they not on the Ira list of "Most Similar to Nolan Ryan." Young Gooden sure had the fastball/curve combo.

iramets Mar 08 2007 03:27 PM

Add Hoot and Doc. I'd actually be interested to see guys who resemble Ryan in other ways, now that we've got a list together of righthanded power pitchers, stuff like HBP and BB, which I think Ryan was high on the lists of. Also of course very low H/IP ratios too. For my purposes, in terms of timeline and leagues, of course, I'm still coming up empty here.

Yancy Street Gang Mar 08 2007 03:40 PM

What about Seaver/Gibson?

iramets Mar 08 2007 03:53 PM

The problem is that retrosheet has only lifetime matchup figures--you can't specify years. So Gibson would be facing, say, a Willie Mays in his prime (when Gibson was making rookie mistakes) and Seaver would be be facing a Mays who was fading from 1967 on. So if I found out Mays hit Gibson better than he hit Seaver, I wouldn't know if that was true or if it just reflected Mays's declining abilities.

iramets Mar 08 2007 05:40 PM

Maybe I should summarize the data: The seven lefty batters (Willie McCovey, Wayne Garrett, John Roseboro, Willie Davis, Bud Harrelson, Al Oliver, Eddie Mathews, Richie Hebner) who hit a collective .325 off Gibson (681/221) with 27 HRs, also hit Seaver well: 468/147= .312 , 16 HR, especially when you consider that some of them aren't offensive behemoths to begin with. 312 with 16 HRs is probably better than their collective performance would be against an average righthander, much less a great right hander. Now we'll do it the other way: Seaver's top 7 betes noires, by the same standards (over 60 ABs with the highest OPS lifetime), were Matty Alou, Joe Morgan, Rick Monday, Willie Davis, Dusty Baker, Willie McCovey, and Steve Garvey, who hit a collective 218 for 653 (.334) off Seaver with 36 HR. (I wonder how Seaver did against the Dodgers during the Garvey-Monday-Baker-Davis years? I mean, Jeez!) I'm thinking at this point that Seaver and Fergie Jenkins (and Gibson and Drysdale) may be better matchups, since they're closer contemporaries. But this is interesting, if inconclusive. Against Gibson (and remember McCovey and Davis appear on Gibson's own list of BNs, above) this magnificent seven went 505/146 = .289 with 14 HR, which (honestly) looks like those seven guys' average output against a right-handed pitcher.

iramets Mar 09 2007 08:41 AM

Actually, if you adjust to equalize the ABs, Seaver's performance against Gibson's betes noires is very close to to their performance against Gibson: The guys who batted .325 with 27 HRs vs Gibson in 681 ABs batted .312 with 16 HRs vs Seaver in 468 ABs, but if you multiply 468 by 1.45 to equalize ABs to those vs. Gibson’s, that’s .312 and a little over 23 HRs. This would suggest that the batters who hit well against Gibson (other than these 7 cases) would also hit well against Seaver. It also occurred to me that we could dispense with the stats for a bit here, and simply look at the names of the top hitters against particular pitchers. Since the charts can be arranged in the order of OPS, I could compare the names of batters who batted over, say, 50 times against each of them, and see how many show up at the top (and at the bottom )of both lists. BATTERS WHO HAD 50+ ABs VS GIBSON WITH BELOW .500 ops: Tony Perez Bill Mazeroski Jerry Grote Randy Hundley Bob Lillis Bobby Wine Sonny Jackson Jim Hickman Lee May Hal Lanier Tony Taylor Glenn Beckert all of whom had sub-.500 OPS in over 50 Abs vs. Gibson. I'm guessing that Grote isn't going to show up on Seaver's list, so let's cross him off Gibson's, leaving us 11 guys who still potentially qualify. Let's see how many show up on Seaver's list: BATTERS WHO HAD 50+ ABs VS SEAVER WITH BELOW .500 ops Chris Speier John Bateman Frank Taveras Enos Cabell Ted Sizemore Don Kessinger Roger Metzger Ron Hunt Derrel Thomas Willie Montanez Um, that's o-for ten. I suppose the thing to do is to check out each list and see how well the players on each list did vs. the other pitcher. The long-term goal here would be to identify the TYPE of batter who does well against a particular pitcher, and then to see if that TYPE of batter also does well against other similiar pitchers. Gibson, for example, has three genuiine power hitters on his list of batters he did very well against: Perez, Hickman and May were all pretty good righthanded power guys, yet Gibson did well against them, and Taylor, Beckett and Hundley were pretty fair stick-men as well. At a glance, Seaver seems to have done very well against mostly non-hitting glovemen: only Montanez and Hunt were above -average stickmen, and not very far above average.

iramets Mar 09 2007 12:22 PM

Here's how Seaver did against the ten* batters who did worst (sub-.500 OPS in at least 50 ABs) vs. Gibson: 479/ 110= .230, with 9 HR This looks pretty impressive to me. In a shade under 500 ABs, these guys hit only 9 HRs and batted just under .230. Considering that some real hitters (Perez, May, Hickman, etc) are on the list, and thatt his list was generated by using only those batters who had done poorly against Bob Gibson, we may on to something. What, exactly, I can't say yet, but his is interesting. *Neither Grote nor Bob Lillis ever batted against Seaver