Happy Birthday Cal!

Times are bleak for Orioles fans, so it is only appropriate that we step back and appreciate Orioles great Cal Ripken who celebrated his birthday (August 24^th) yesterday. Ripken’s legacy is usually discussed in terms of his career accomplishments—2,632 consecutive games played, 3,184 hits, 431 home runs, 19 All-Star games, etc., and he is universally regarded as one of the top five shortstops of all-time. Sometimes overlooked, however, is that he had some truly amazing individual seasons, with the best being 1991.

In 1991 Ripken won the Home Run Derby, All-Star Game MVP, Silver Slugger, Gold Glove, MVP, AP Player of the Year, and Sporting News Player of the Year. He had a .323/.374/.556 triple slash line with 210 hits, 46 doubles, 34 home runs, and an MLB leading 368 total bases. The .556 slugging percentage was second in the majors, ahead of notable sluggers Barry Bonds, Frank Thomas, Ken Griffey Jr., Rafael Palmeiro, Jose Canseco, Albert Belle, Cecil Fielder, and Will Clark. His OPS of .940 was third best in baseball (162 OPS+), as was his wOBA of .407 (156 wRC+). Combine this great hitting with great fielding (both Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs have only Tony Gwynn being a better fielder in baseball in 1991) and the positive positional adjustment for playing shortstop, and Ripken easily leads both Baseball-Reference (11.0) and FanGraphs (11.1) in Wins Above Replacement (rWAR and fWAR respectively). Ripken was the only player to reach above 8.3 in either rating, which includes pitchers.

To get the best feel for Ripken’s dominance, however, is to compare him to the other shortstops that played enough to qualify for end of season awards. Barry Larkin was the only shortstop who hit remotely in the same stratosphere as Ripken (.302/.378/.506, .884 OPS, 143 OPS+, .399 wOBA, 152 wRC+), but he only played in 123 games and was not as great a defender. Ripken’s defense and durability matter significantly, as Larkin and the next-best shortstop in baseball, Ozzie Smith, combine to roughly equal the value of Ripken (combined 10.5 rWAR, 11.2 fWAR). The disparity is even more striking if you consider only American League shortstops. The other four AL shortstops (Travis Fryman—even though he played a bunch of 3B, Mike Gallego, Ozzie Guillen, and Alvaro Espinoza) to have enough plate appearances to qualify for end of season awards combined for 10.3 rWAR and 11.3 fWAR. Ripken was simply playing shortstop at a level that was unrivaled by his contemporaries in 1991, and has rarely been reached in the history of baseball.

The only disappointing part of Ripken’s season was that the Orioles were still an absolutely dreadful team. Their 67-95 record was the second-worst in the American League, and they finished 24 games behind the Blue Jays in the division. It is scary to think about how that team would have done if Ripken had not had his historic year. According to Baseball-Reference, Ripken produced 11 of the 20.3 rWAR Orioles position players produced, and the pitchers collectively only produced 0.5 rWAR. FanGraphs is kinder to the rest of the Orioles, as the O’s position players other than Ripken accumulated 15.8 fWAR. Unfortunately, Orioles pitchers sported a 4.59 ERA (the worst in baseball) even though their FIP was 4.07, and the Orioles hitters were not good enough to lift the pitching. Obviously none of this was Ripken’s fault—as voters appreciated by awarding him the MVP—and it is good to remember that special individual effort in these hard times—especially when you realize Adam Jones, Nick Markakis, Matt Wieters, and J.J. Hardy (the Orioles four best position players) have combined for 9.0 rWAR and 11.1 fWAR this season.

Feeling bad for Toronto and Tampa fans

For the Tampa Bay Rays and the Toronto Blue Jays (and theoretically, the Baltimore Orioles), the margin for error is so small because they have to compete directly with the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, the juggernauts of baseball. It is natural to wonder what Tampa and Toronto would be able to accomplish if they played in any division other than the AL East. Well, one way to examine the issue is with Baseball-Reference’s Simple Rating System (SRS), which measures the number of runs/game each team is better or worse than the average team. The factors used to determine this are run differential and strength of schedule. Tampa and Toronto have an SRS of .4. While that may not look impressive, the only teams with a better SRS are the Yankees (1.7), Red Sox (1.3), Phillies (1.1), and the Rangers (.9), with the Braves also having a rating of .4. By this system, four of the top eight teams in all of baseball are in the AL East, and the Rays and Blue Jays are better than any team from the AL Central, NL Central, or NL West. While this might be a bit hyperbolic, it seems clear that the Rays and Blue Jays would be able to compete in any of those divisions. Fans of those teams could be getting excited over a pennant race, instead of knowing that their season is going nowhere.

And in case you’re wondering how the Orioles would be outside of the division—they would still be awful.  The only teams with a worse SRS than the Orioles’ -.9 are the Cubs (-1 SRS) and the Astros (-1.2 SRS). So put the Orioles in any division besides the NL Central, and they are still comfortably in last. Put the O’s in the NL Central, and they might not be last, but they wouldn’t be anywhere near the top either.

Lack of talent for Orioles shows in standings

As we enter the last two months of the regular season, the Orioles have only four position players who have accrued more than one win above replacement this season according to Baseball-Reference and Fangraphs: Adam Jones, Matt Wieters, J.J. Hardy, and Nick Markakis (both have all four as above 1 WAR and have no other Orioles position players reaching that threshold). According to Fangraphs, all non-DH Yankee position player starters have over 1 WAR, and Baseball-Reference lists seven (Derek Jeter being the only one not to have accrued 1 rWAR yet). The four Orioles have a combined 9 fWAR—Curtis Granderson and Alex Rodriguez have combined for 8.8 fWAR. Jones, Wieters, Hardy, and Markakis have combined for 6.9 rWAR—or .3 rWAR below the sum of Brett Gardner and Granderson’s rWAR. The picture is not any prettier looking at the rest of the division. Carl Crawford is the only Boston starter with a fWAR below one, and Scutaro joins him according to Baseball-Reference, leaving seven Red Sox with 1+ rWAR (like the Yankees). Adam Jones’ team-leading 2.8 fWAR and Matt Wieter’s team-leading 2.3 rWAR are dwarfed by Dustin Pedroia’s 6.7 fWAR and 6.1 rWAR. Tampa has seven players with 1+ fWAR and nine players with 1+ rWAR. Toronto has a similar amount of +1 WAR starters—but they also have arguably the best player in baseball in Jose Bautista and a resurgent Yunel Escobar who are clearly superior to anyone on the Orioles.

The pitching viewpoint isn’t any prettier. Zach Britton has the highest fWAR, but that is damning with faint praise, as he has only accumulated 1.7 fWAR. Worse, in his last two divisional starts he has pitched a combined one inning (!) and allowed 17 runs (but only 13 earned…). Regardless of whether you prefer rWAR or fWAR for pitching, each team has at least one dominant pitcher where the Orioles have none. Ricky Romero for Toronto, James Shields and David Price for Tampa, Josh Beckett and Jon Lester for Boston, and CC Sabathia for New York clearly outclass any of our pitchers. Even more galling is how our division rivals are able to turn retreads such as Freddy Garcia, Bartolo Colon, and Matt Albers (former Oriole) into valuable pitchers while the Orioles turn retreads Mike Gonzalez and Kevin Gregg into even worse retreads, and transform the team’s most promising pitcher, Brian Matusz, into a pitcher who has been worth -.5 fWAR and -.9 rWAR.

Today, the standings show the Orioles 25 games behind the Yankees in the division (and 24 behind the Red Sox). The reason is simple—the Orioles do not have anywhere near the talent that the rest of the teams in the division do. And as this is not likely to change anytime soon, Orioles fans should become even more accustomed to residing in the basement in the AL East.