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.