20 May 2011, by Eric
Kenneth Morgan, P&P's resident statistician, helped kick off 1990s First Basemen Week by investigating the ultimate 1990s first baseman stat-line. Then throughout the last two weeks, you heard testimonies as to why certain players are the most 1990s first baseman. Today, with the support of baking metaphors, Kenneth helps bring us home with a statistical investigation into which 1B of the decade is the most 90s. Tweet Kenneth @KCMorganUW.
The numbers you see preceding each ingredient are the weightings I gave each one, out of 100. So, the ten ingredients you see listed above are in order of importance. How did HR% end up on top of the heap? I think I’ll let The Simpsons explain:
Mark McGwire: “Do you want to know the terrifying truth? Or do you want to see me sock a few dingers?!”
Everyone: “Dingers! Dingers!”
-The Simpsons, “Brother’s Little Helper”, Oct. 3 1999
If you notice the date that this episode aired I think it effectively summarizes the mindset of the 1990’s baseball fan.
First basemen also enjoy walking, lacing doubles down the line and into the gaps, and driving other teammates in. You might be wondering why HBP% was included. Can you think of another defensive position where a higher percentage of players wore as much armor while at-bat? Mo Vaughn, Mark McGwire, Andres Galarraga, et al. Sure, I guess we’ll wait those extra 10-15 seconds for you to undress your elbow and shin pads and lumber on down the first baseline after a walk or HBP.
Did you know that during the 90’s Andres Galarraga was hit 100 times, while Eddie Murray was only hit ONCE in 4000+ plate appearances? Were pitchers scared of Eddie’s charging-the-mound capabilities? For someone with the nickname “steady” he must’ve done a lot of contorting in the box to avoid all of those close shaves!
Let’s now put all of these ingredients into our oven and see if it gives us the 1990’s first baseman we wanted. I used a process in the same vain as how Mr. Carson Cistulli calculates his NERD and SCOUT scores on Fangraphs.
Step 1: I looked at statistics compiled from 1990-1999 for all qualified first basemen. I only looked at 1B who had at least 3000 plate appearances, sorry Travis Lee. This left me with 17 first basemen: Mark McGwire, Frank Thomas, Jeff Bagwell, John Olerud, Fred McGriff, Cecil Fielder, Mo Vaughn, Will Clark, Wally Joyner, Mark Grace, Mark Palmeiro, Eddie Murray, Don Mattingly, Gregg Jefferies, Eric Karros, and Andres Galarraga.
Step 2: I calculated the averages, standard deviations, and z-scores for all 10 of the statistics listed above.
(A Z-score is a measure of how many standard deviations a certain number is away from the mean (average) of a distribution. For a real-world example, let’s say we decided to graph the height of everyone who played in the MLB in the 1990’s. The shape of this graph would closely resemble the shape of Mount Everest; whose tallest point would represent the average height (probably 5’11” or 6’0”) of these players. Most MLB players from the 90’s would be closely grouped around this average and about 70% of them would be between 5’9”-6’3”. Former Mariners 2B Joey Cora (5’7”) would have a Z-score of about -2.0, as he was well below the average height of his peers. Former Mariners SP Randy Johnson 6’11” would have a Z-score of about +2.0-3.0 as he towered above the average MLB player and his height was extremely unique compared to 1990’s MLB players.)
Step 3: Find the average z-score for each first baseman, weighted appropriately by the weights listed in the ingredients.
-Our goal is to find the most 1990’s first baseman, not the best from this decade, nor the worst from the decade. Essentially we’re looking at the person who was most “average” in relation to the other 16 players in this group that we’re using. In order to find this player, we’re looking for the one whose average z-score is closest to 0.0. This may seem odd for a goal to be 0, but remember that 0 here means average. Average is our goal.
Step 4: Scale results onto a 0-100 scale, where 100 represents the most 1990’s first baseman possible!
Step 5: Graph!
Sweet cuppin’ cakes, John Olerud scored a perfect 100/100 (meaning he had a z-score of EXACTLY 0.0)! I didn’t know what to expect out of this somewhat arbitrary experiment to find the quintessential 1990’s first baseman. I like the order of this list though, especially the top three. John Olerud, Fred McGriff, and Will Clark. That’s about as 1990’s as you get!
[caption id="attachment_3200" align="aligncenter" width="223" caption="The face of the 1990s"]
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All stats via Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference.
20 May 2011, by Ted
Wes Marfield lives in Kansas City and perpetually believes the Royals have a chance to make the playoffs. His writing has appeared on Deadspin and CollegeHumor.com. He also Tweets infrequently @PapaMarf, though he mostly created his account for the Steve Balboni avatar.
This lumbering brute had an up-and-down career. Honing his craft in Southern California, it wasn’t long before he was belting out hits across the country in front of sold out crowds. Although our hero’s stock pinnacled after picking up some much-deserved hardware in 1994, his legend and outward appearance still strike a chord with fans that were lucky enough to cross paths with this mountain of a man in his prime.
That last paragraph could easily be describing legendary Grammy-winning rocker Meat Loaf. It can also sum up the career of former Royals Rookie of the Year Bob Hamelin. So when I think of a 1990s first baseman, my mind drifts back to memories of a man affectionately known as “The Hammer.”
I use the term “first baseman” loosely here, because Hamelin was primarily used as a DH while the more sure-handed, light-footed Wally Joyner spent the majority of the time manning the Royals other hot corner in the early-to-mid 90s. But according to his 1990 Upper Deck rookie card, Hamelin was a first baseman. And that’s good enough for me.
Major League Baseball, as you’re probably well aware, didn’t complete a full schedule in 1994 due to the players’ strike. But by the time the season came to an abrupt end on August 11, an overweight, glasses-wielding 26-year-old named Bob Hamelin had captured the hearts of Kansas City fans. He burst onto the scene with six home runs in April, and racked up 24 long balls and 65 RBI in the shortened campaign that eventually culminated in him taking home American League Rookie of the Year honors.
The Royals were four games back of the division leading White Sox at the time of the strike, finishing with a respectable 64-51 record. KC’s “Boys in Blue” posted an 83-79 mark in 2003 to finish the year above .500, but that was the only time they’ve done so since “The Hammer” roamed first base, the on-deck circle, and the postgame cold cut line. So it’s only fitting the best season the Royals have had since winning the World Series in 1985 was transpiring while a similarly portly man was crooning “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” to packed arenas across the country, picking up a Grammy along the way.
Like most good things from the decade, both men fizzled out of the spotlight by the turn of the millennium. Hamelin never regained his Rookie of the Year form, and played his last Major League game in 1998 after injury-plagued stints with the Tigers and Brewers. Mr. Loaf clung to his chart-topping hit, but has yet to produce another swoon-inducing ballad like to the one that shot him to fame. He made a pseudo-comeback on “Celebrity Apprentice,” so who knows – maybe we haven’t seen the last of “The Hammer” yet. Hell, Wally Backman is still coaching minor league baseball, so anything is possible.
Personally, I’d prefer to just hold on to the memories of a slovenly man huffing around the bases as a half-empty stadium waved inflatable hammers in his honor. And he’ll be hard pressed to make a better exit from the game than his abrupt retirement in the middle of a minor league contest in 1999.
Legend has it that as a member of the Toledo Mud Hens, Hamelin grounded out, took himself out of the game, kicked some loose equipment in the dugout and told his manager simply “I’m done.”
Maybe the game passed him by. The hitters got bigger, stronger, and devoted themselves to not-so-legal workout regimens that “The Hammer” had no interest in. Maybe the injuries caught up to him. Maybe he just lost interest in the game that made him a Kansas City celebrity in the mid 1990s. Guess we’ll never know for sure. But play one more inning in a minor league game with a path that wasn’t certain to ever lead him back to the show?
Bob Hamelin did a lot of things for baseball. He just wouldn’t do that.
19 May 2011, by Eric
David Meir Grossman writes under his full name so you don't get him confused with the actually famous David Grossman. He currently writes for Lapham's Quarterly, and has written for io9 and Thought Catalog. He lives in Brooklyn. Twitter here, tumblr here.
Sign up with Eric Karros and join the Dodger Blue Crew! Those might not have been the exact words, but I remember the feeling I saw when Eric Karros' smiling mug popped up on the Dodger Stadium big screen: that ain't right. The former leader of the Dodgers kids klub, Mike Piazza, had just been traded, and in what must have been a desperate PR move Karros was named temporary leader, the Omar Sulieman of getting free Dodger trading cards.
In retrospect, the move made perfect sense. It would have seemed odd to push newly acquired Gary Sheffield so soon, especially with an Ol' Reliable like Karros around. The first of what would be five straight Dodger Rookies of the Year, Karros had quickly established himself as type of player Tommy Lasorda wanted: powerful. Although ROY runner up Moises Alou had a now-noticeably larger batting average and OBP, who cared about such things in 1992? Karros had twenty dingers and eighty-eight RBIs. He could hit big, and and he could stand around.
And it stayed that way for a while. Karros would flirt with excellence from time to time, mainly in '95 and '99, but on the whole stayed around .260 and twenty-five homers his entire career. He stuck around with the Dodgers for eleven years- seemingly because he showed up and did his work. There was little truly remarkable about Karros, but he became an institution in the way only players who don't leave can. That Los Angeles is a town that loves flash and noise is a cliché, and Karros became fan club president because he embodied the opposite of that, what every kid looks for in a hero ballplayer- a distinctly local hero, someone who will show up everyday and you can claim as your own. We had to share Piazza with the rest of the league, and eventually Florida and New York. Eric Karros was ours.
19 May 2011, by Eric
Jennifer Allen is a diehard Cubs fan living in Alexandria, Virginia, with a large collection of recreational softball jerseys with the number “17” on the back. She is still waiting for her date with the now-single Grace.
There is a certain appeal held by young, good-looking baseball players in any town. In a sports-obsessed city like Chicago, looks can make an above-average player into something of a legend. As a true player off the playing field as well as on, his star power increases exponentially. In the 1990s, that star was Mark Grace.
As a young girl growing up in the Chicago suburbs, I was born a Cubs fan. The first game I ever watched on TV with my dad was the now-famous “Ryne Sandberg game,” on June 23, 1984. I was 20 days old. As much as I liked Ryno, I was in love with Mark Grace from a very early age. The first Cubs shirt I ever picked out for myself had a “17” on the front. I was a Mark Grace girl.
Mark Grace came up to the Cubs in 1988. At first, the new kid was over-shadowed by the well-known club stars, like Sandberg, Andre Dawson, and Greg Maddux. But the blonde-haired first baseman with the black eye grease quickly caught the attention of the women in Chicago. His frequent attendance at the Wrigleyville and Rush Street bars certainly boosted his ascent into dating legend. His fans all wanted to be the one who slipped “Gracie” their phone number at the bar. One might even say that increased crowds at Chicago bars during the 1990s were thanks to Mark Grace and his hard-partying ways.
As he got older and a little less skinny, “Mark Grace” remained the answer to any female asked to name the sexiest Cubs player. The wad of chewing tobacco he kept in his mouth during games wasn’t enough to turn them off. Grace readily admitted that he would rather spend his time smoking and drinking at the bar than weight lifting with the team. He didn’t care if his double would easily be a triple by another player. Who needs to be fast when you have women slipping you their underwear at a bar?
The consummate bachelor (even when he wasn’t), Grace readily admitted that his extracurriculars were more important to him than his baseball stats. When it was exposed that Rafael Palmeiro, the first baseman the Cubs traded away in 1988 to make room for Grace, took steroids throughout his storied career, Grace nonchalantly remarked on a radio show that he had never wanted to take steroids because he liked his sex life too much.
Even the fans who weren’t old enough to meet Grace at a bar were in love with him. Teenage girls swooned over him, wearing his jersey to Cubs games and hoping that he might notice them in the stands. They longed to be old enough to meet Grace at a bar on Rush Street or slip him a number that wasn’t their parents’ number. Grace had an ageless appeal, such a guy’s guy – always dirty from the game and constantly wiping his spit on the sleeve of his jersey. The scruff on his chin, his natural swagger as he walked up to the plate, everything about Grace made him a teenage (and not-so-teenage) dream.
When the Cubs decided not to re-sign Grace after the 2000 season, his female fans were devastated. No Cub came close to Grace in terms of sex appeal. Some looked to Kerry Wood, another attractive and personable young star, but he didn’t quite embrace the same “fan-friendly” lifestyle as Grace. No player since has been able to replace him as the ultimate Cubs ladies man and it looks like his reputation as Chicago’s Wilt Chamberlain will remain intact for many seasons to come
19 May 2011, by Ted
Alan Siegel is a writer in Washington, D.C. Contact him at asiegel05@gmail.com.
Mo Vaughn didn't stand in the batter's box, he wedged his big body into it, hunching his shoulders and dipping his head under what I always assumed was an imaginary door frame. It's too bad I was born right-handed. I would've spent my Little League years imitating his swing, which cut through the strike zone like a pendulum and finished high in the air. I loved watching him golf opposite-field homers over the Green Monster, a decade before David Ortiz made his bones doing the same thing.
