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Just like last year, I’m making a post for the 2008 All-Star game that includes the Win Probability graph and stats since it’s about to go poof from the site.

A couple weeks ago Retrosheet released its 1999 dataset, and now it’s available in the FanGraphs variety.

We now have full win probability statistics for 1974 - 2008.

One of the best parts of this site is the accessibility of David Appelman and his willingness to improve and/or update the site to feature more statistics and new parameters for those numbers. The newest addition to the Fangraphs statistical team is calendar year rankings. By going to the leaders page you can now sort not only by month or last 7/14/30 days, but also by the last 1, 2, or 3 calendar years.

For instance, did you know that Ryan Howard, with 145 home runs, has the most in the last three calendar years? Or that Alex Rodriguez ranks second, with 131, fourteen less than Howard?

How about the best and worst WPA counts for hitters in this same span?

BEST
1) Albert Pujols, 18.68
2) Lance Berkman, 17.49
3) David Ortiz, 17.29
4) Vladimir Guerrero, 12.57
5) Ryan Howard, 11.88

WORST
5) Jose Lopez, -3.59
4) Yuniesky Betancourt, -3.73
3) Jack Wilson, -3.86
2) Brandon Inge, -4.24
1) Ivan Rodriguez, -4.93

Hmm. Of the worst five contributors over the last three calendar, two are from the Tigers and two are from the Mariners. In terms of context-neutral wins (WPA/LI), Pujols and Berkman switch places; Berkman’s 17.34 comes in ahead of Pujols’s 16.69.

How about starting pitchers and WPA?

BEST
1) C.C. Sabathia, 9.06
2) Johan Santana, 8.92
3) Roy Halladay, 8.89
4) Brandon Webb, 8.67
5) John Smoltz, 7.91

WORST
5) Dave Bush, -1.94
4) Carlos Silva, -2.79
3) Livan Hernandez, -3.46
2) Jason Marquis, -3.64
1) Matt Morris, -7.83

Wow. Numbers 2 and 3 combine for -7.10 and Morris still comes in 7/10 of a win worse than them. In terms of WPA/LI, Johan reclaims his spot atop the throne with a 10.77, a full 1.60 wins ahead of second-place Brandon Webb’s 9.17. Santana also has the best K/BB (4.45) in this span, as well as the highest LOB% at 78.7%.

It has been reiterated recently that instead of using current seasonal statistics to evaluate players it would be much more accurate to use a rolling projection. While these calendar statistics do not necessarily weight the past any differently they do allow us to see which players have been good enough recently so as to trounce atypical poor early performance.

Does anyone remember a stranger season in recent memory than the one Cliff Lee is currently putting together? As we’ve covered extensively here, Lee came out of the gates pitching like 1988 Orel Hershiser, dominating opponents with ridiculous performances that seemingly came out of nowhere, but lately, he’s been hit hard and watched his ERA rise significantly - he’s just barely edging out Shaun Marcum for the AL Lead as of today. However, his core performance hasn’t regressed nearly as far. Look at his by month performances:

April: 0.48 BB/9, 7.65 K/9, 0.24 HR/9, 1.80 FIP, .195 BABIP, 81.6% LOB%
May: 2.10 BB/9, 6.55 K/9, 0.52 HR/9, 2.99 FIP, .346 BABIP, 79.7% LOB%
June: 2.20 BB/9, 10.47 K/9, 1.10 HR/9, 2.99 FIP, .437 BABIP, 70.3% LOB%

He got lucky in April, so maybe karma is coming back to haunt him, but really, a .437 batting average on balls in play is not regression to the mean - it’s regression so far past the mean that it can’t even see it with a telescope. It might be tempting to look at Lee’s 5.51 ERA in June and determine that he’s back to being what he always was, but the old Cliff Lee was never a 2 BB/10 K/1 HR pitcher. His core stats from June would fit right in with Johan Santana’s career line. June is simply not an example of Lee reverting to previous form.

As Lee continues to post months with a FIP below 3.00, we’re going to have to continue to revise our estimate of his true talent level upwards. This is a classic example of why I couldn’t care less about a pitcher’s ERA. His run prevention results of late hide the fact that he just continues to assert that he’s a better pitcher now than he’s ever been.

FanGraphs now has Win Probability statistics for 1974 onward, with the exception of 1999. They are also now park adjusted with the exception of this current year. I’m working on that.

Roger Clemens leads all pitchers in WPA with 75 wins. Greg Maddux is second with 55 wins.

Barry Bonds leads all batters in WPA with 124 wins. The next best batter is Rickey Henderson with 67 wins.

I’ve made some changes to the leaderboards. You can no longer display all the rows, but there is a handy export button which will let you export all the rows into either excel or a csv file. If this is a real issue for you, let me know, but I have my reasons for removing the show all rows feature. I’m hoping the export option makes this a non-issue.

I’ve also added a month select feature which will let you filter for any particular month, including the last 7 days, last 14 days, and last 30 days. Now you can know that for the last 7 days, Jay Bruce leads the majors with a 1.06 WPA.

There’s also been some minor changes to the game log pages. I’ve repeated the headers so you can figure out what each column is further down the table. This has always been an issue for me and hopefully the game logs are now considerably more readable. I’ve also added the same export options that are available in the leaderboards.

For those of you who don’t browse our post archives from many years ago, you may be interested in knowing that we have a tool where you can enter the text of your article and it will put html tags around the player names linking them back to FanGraphs.

It’s mainly use it internally, but there are some sites such as Baseball Analysts that have been using it on a regular basis for years now.

I made a few updates to the Linkifyer to make it work a little better. It’s not perfect, but it will now link Minor League players in addition to Major League players.

Just copy and paste your article text in the text box, hit the “Link Players Now” button and presto! You now have linked players.

I can remember May 22, 2002 like it was six years ago yesterday as I did not even need to look up gamelogs to remember the very first major league start of Mark Prior. A high school sophomore at the time, I would often use my lunch period to watch day games on either Gameday or MLB TV; on that day I was lucky enough to watch Prior make his Mark. Get it?

Breezing through the Pirates hitters with the greatest of ease, this would begin a five-game stretch in which the Cubs rookie struck out 43 hitters in 28.2 innings. Calm, cool, and collected, his fluid windup provided such an intimidating presence on the mound. On the whole, his rookie season consisted of 147 strikeouts in 116.2 innings; just 38 walks; a 3.32 ERA, 3.16 FIP, and a 1.17 WHIP; and a .230 BAA. He finished seventh in Rookie of the Year voting but, in just 19 starts, had risen almost entirely to the top of the Cubs rotation.

If there were any doubts his 2003 not only erased them but helped make people forget said doubts ever crept into their minds. Finishing 3rd (to Eric Gagne and Jason Schmidt) in Cy Young Award voting, Prior went 18-6 with a 2.43 ERA. His WHIP went down to 1.10 and he struck out 245 hitters in 211.1 innings. His FIP of 2.47 suggests his ERA was right on the money and he allowed just 15 home runs.

Prior pitched game six of the NLCS where some guy in the crowd prevented a ball caught in foul territory that Moises Alou forgave six years later (Question: Why isn’t Alex Gonzalez criticized more? His play was worse!).

The next season, an injury-riddled one, looked a lot like a slightly poorer version of his rookie year. Check it out:

2002:19 GS, 116.2 IP, 98 H, 14 HR, 38 BB, 147 K, 3.32 ERA, 1.17 WHIP
2004:21 GS, 118.2 IP, 108 H, 14 HR, 48 BB, 139 K, 4.02 ERA, 1.35 WHIP

In 2005 he missed more time, albeit not as much as the year prior (get it?), and pitched pretty well; though not as well as someone determined to be the next 300-game winner would be expected to pitch. That year he struck out 188 batters in 166.2 innings, posting a 3.67 ERA, 3.85 FIP, and 1.21 WHIP.

Missing most of the next season his actual playing time in 2006 proved disastrous. In nine starts he posted a 7.21 ERA and a 1.69 WHIP. His FIP of 6.60, which suggests his ERA may have been a bit high, was still high in its own right. 2006 would also be the first season in which Prior struck out less batters than innings pitched and posted a BB/9 above 3.64. After stranding runners to the tune of 76.7%-79.4% he posted an LOB of just 62.0%.

He missed last season with more injuries and the Cubs decided to let him go. Signing a low-risk deal with the Padres this offseason, hope still existed that Prior could shake the injury-plagued status that accompanies him everywhere these days and be, at the very least, a league average pitcher. This weekend’s news changed everything.

News surfaced this weekend that Prior, still just 27 years of age, would have surgery and miss the entire 2008 season. Often the player associated most with regards to Dusty Baker’s poor handling of pitchers, Prior will again miss significant pitching time due to a faulty shoulder. As Sam Panayotovich points out, it’s a shame because Prior had the abilities to dominate the league at the age of 23; now he’ll be lucky to make 20+ starts in a future season.

When Prior returned from the DL in 2004, Cubs announcers remarked that fans now felt their season had begun with their ace making his return. As my friend Evan Brunell remarked yesterday, “Now you know the season has really begun when ‘Mark Prior out for the season’ hits the newswire.”

Oh, how the tides have turned, and oh how sad of a downfall it has been.

Couple quick updates to the stats pages. Each section now has a header and each section is now linkable. So if you’d like to send someone to the Plate Discipline stats or the Pitch Type stats, you no longer need to tell them to scroll to the bottom of the page. Just click on the header you’d like to link to get get the appropriate link.

And if things look a little weird, just reload the page by hitting F5 or the reload button on your browser.