Angry David Hernandez Might Have a Point
It’s difficult, as a human person, not to arrive at the conclusion that the world is riddled with injustice. Epictetus felt it keenly. Marcus Aurelius felt it keenly. Owing to the infancy of medical science at the time, probably a lot of other ancients felt it keenly, as well.
Among those feeling it keenly in the year 2018, however, seems to be Cincinnati reliever David Hernandez. On Thursday, the winners of the Silver Slugger Award were announced. Hernandez, it seems, was unimpressed by the results.
It should be noted immediately that Michael Lorenzen and Hernandez were teammates in 2018, so there’s certainly a case to be made that bias is at play here. It should also be noted that, in this case, the “people” who “vote on awards” are major-league managers and coaches. These are important points to establish.
What’s also probably important to establish is that Hernandez, whatever the weaknesses of his rhetorical style, doesn’t lack for evidence.
| Name | Team | PA | BB% | K% | AVG | OBP | SLG | wRC+ | Bat | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Michael Lorenzen | Reds | 34 | 5.9% | 26.5% | .290 | .333 | .710 | 173 | 3.0 |
| 2 | Kolby Allard | Braves | 3 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 1.000 | 1.000 | 1.000 | 472 | 1.4 |
| 3 | A.J. Cole | – – – | 4 | 0.0% | 25.0% | .333 | .333 | 1.333 | 336 | 1.2 |
| 4 | Vidal Nuno | Rays | 2 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 1.000 | 1.000 | 1.000 | 486 | 0.9 |
| 5 | Kyle Gibson | Twins | 2 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 1.000 | 1.000 | 1.000 | 481 | 0.9 |
| 6 | Dan Jennings | Brewers | 3 | 0.0% | 33.3% | .667 | .667 | 1.000 | 358 | 0.9 |
| 7 | Rick Porcello | Red Sox | 7 | 0.0% | 42.9% | .429 | .429 | .714 | 207 | 0.9 |
| 8 | Enny Romero | – – – | 1 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 1.000 | 1.000 | 2.000 | 721 | 0.8 |
| 9 | Randy Rosario | Cubs | 2 | 50.0% | 0.0% | 1.000 | 1.000 | 1.000 | 410 | 0.8 |
| 10 | Brandon Woodruff | Brewers | 10 | 10.0% | 10.0% | .250 | .333 | .625 | 151 | 0.6 |
This is the batting-runs leaderboard for pitchers from 2018. Batting runs account for everything that occurs at the plate. Walk? That’s a way to first base. Grounder to third? That’s also included, in its way. Most of the leaders here have a figure that’s just above zero because most pitchers regress to something even worse than that that.
Not Lorenzen, though. Over 34 plate appearances this year, he hit four homers and slashed .290/.333/.710. Overall, he recorded the top batting line of the year among pitchers with as few as 10 plate appearances:
| Name | Team | PA | BB% | K% | AVG | OBP | SLG | wRC+ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Michael Lorenzen | Reds | 34 | 5.9% | 26.5% | .290 | .333 | .710 | 173 |
| 2 | Brandon Woodruff | Brewers | 10 | 10.0% | 10.0% | .250 | .333 | .625 | 151 |
| 3 | Brent Suter | Brewers | 32 | 12.5% | 18.8% | .192 | .323 | .346 | 87 |
| 4 | Clayton Kershaw | Dodgers | 57 | 12.3% | 19.3% | .239 | .340 | .283 | 82 |
| 5 | Hyun-Jin Ryu | Dodgers | 30 | 6.7% | 43.3% | .269 | .321 | .308 | 78 |
| 6 | Dan Straily | Marlins | 43 | 18.6% | 44.2% | .161 | .350 | .194 | 74 |
| 7 | Carlos Martinez | Cardinals | 36 | 0.00% | 30.60% | .242 | .235 | .394 | 63 |
| 8 | German Marquez | Rockies | 65 | 0.0% | 16.9% | .300 | .300 | .350 | 60 |
| 9 | Zack Greinke | Diamond | 71 | 4.2% | 22.5% | .234 | .269 | .297 | 51 |
| 10 | Max Scherzer | Nationals | 78 | 1.3% | 17.9% | .243 | .274 | .271 | 47 |
The actual winner of the Silver Slugger, blameless German Marquez, did reach the .300 threshold, but he also recorded just a single extra-bast hit — a homer off a position player pitching — this season. Lorenzen, on the other hand, hit a double and four homers in roughly half the plate appearances.
Homers like this one, after a weird bunt thing:
There are certainly moments when one is wrong to feel aggrieved. For right-hander David Hernandez, however, this isn’t one of them. His teammate Michael Lorenzen both (a) probably deserved but also (b) didn’t win the Silver Slugger Award for pitchers. An injustice has probably occurred. A minor, minor, minor injustice.
Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.
“Who needs to stinkin-bunt?!”
A bunt is the only chance I’d have of reaching base in a big league game.
Id have a better chance on a walk, HBP, or error,
At no time does the bat leave my shoulder. There was an article a few years ago that estimated a 10% chance of a walk even if the pitcher absolutely positively knows you aren’t going to swing. I’ll take my chances on that 10%.
You should show that article to Dee Gordon.
Sam Miller went ahead and explored this idea even further.
http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/22381495/put-coach-how-much-embarrassment-willing-endure-play-major-league-baseball
Awards and the HoF (which also incorporate awards to some extent) will always be dubious when they are voted upon largely by idiots (managers, coaches, sportswriters).
Managers don’t actually do much. Their primary purpose is to stay out of the way and avoid doing dumb things like bunting. Smart teams are realizing they’re basically fungible, and look for guys who will do as they’re told by the front office.
Found David Hernandez’s FanGraphs account
Weird that so many of these “smart teams” pay their managers several million dollars per year then, no?
Mike Scioscia was the highest paid manager in the league, last season.
Alex Cora was the lowest.
But please, do go on.
While I wouldn’t go so far as to say managers, coaches, and sportswriters are idiots, many of them do not follow players on other teams as closely to be able to make comparisons with other players. Managers and coaches who have played against particular players know their general strengths and weaknesses to know how to pitch/defend against them, but not necessarily be able to rank their stats against those of others.
But if you are going to vote on these kinds of awards, they should at least consult some online list of statistical leaders, which isn’t very difficult to find, so I might call them more “lazy” than “idiots”.
I wouldn’t even call them lazy. I would say they just have much much much more important things to do with their time than perform a deep statistical dive to accurately assess who was the best hitter among people who don’t hit.
Damn Carson I just went from 0 to angry in less time then it took that Lorenzan bomb to leave the park, why you gotta do that
Italian grandma voice: Voters, why you so dumb?
So, is there an explanation for the inexplicable? This one seems like such a no-brainer…
One argument against Lorenzen is that 34 PA is light even for pitchers.
I doubt there were SS with that few PAs.
I can imagine some people having a 40PA filter when looking at batting stats for pitchers.
On the other hand you’d think JD Martinez would have been under some arbitrary cutoff for OFs, too, yet here we are.
That’s a fair point, but…
The usual way to deal with big disparities in PA is to take the difference of the two batting lines, to see how good/bad the guy with fewer PA would have had to be to end up like the guy with more PA. In this case, that’s not possible because Lorenzen had more TB than Marquez, despite half as many PA. Which seems like it should have been a clue.
I like to think that Descartes’ evil demon is real, and uses his utmost power and cunning to screw with seemingly mundane events for no better purpose that to cause us all to question our very existence. That’s my explanation for the inexplicable.
Maybe it was held against him that he only had 19 PA as a pitcher? 14 of his PA’s (Including two of his homeruns) came as a PH, and he even singled in his only PA as a RF this year.
Ohtani.
Which position exactly should he have won for the award for?
He did have some at bats while pitching during inter-league play. Considering that JD received two awards for DH and OF, it stands to reason they took his total stats as an OF and DH when considering the award at each position. Would we do the same then for Ohtani?
Possibly highlighting a greater injustice: there’s no Silver Slugger award for pitchers in the American League at all.
Hopefully Lorenzen didn’t miss out on any incentive compensation. That would be a slightly greater injustice.
Lorenzen is a pre-arb player, so he doesn’t really have the leverage to get contract incentives like a Silver Slugger bonus.
Bartolo Colon, on the other hand…
Oven mitt. On Bartolo’s other hand is an oven mitt.
Kershaw had a suprisingly good year at the plate. Outhit a bunch of position players on his own team. I’m impressed.
Move Kershaw to 2B then?
comment deleted by my stupid self.
That was quite an impressive bat flip by Lorenzen. Is that the best bat flip by a pitcher ever? Unless, say, someone at InstaGraphs can provide a gif-filled post showing otherwise, I’m going to assume yes.
Babe Ruth had a nice bat flip.
I know that bat flip is sweet, but Marquez isn’t undeserving.
Only one other pitcher hit .300 over the past five seasons (min. 20 PA). (Bonus points: Who was it?) At min. 60 PA, Marquez had the 27th best average in all of baseball last season. I know 60 PA is a low bar, but it’s… something.
And has been noted by others, Marquez’s 65 PA triples Lorenzen’s 19 PA as a pitcher. In 19 PA, anything can be fluky. Lorenzen’s 2 HR were tied with three other pitchers, and was only one more than Marquez’s 1 HR.
I know it’s splitting hairs because the sample sizes are really small, but I’d take the one that hit 4/1/5/.300 in 65 PA over the one that hit 3/2/5/.294 in 19 PA.
As I’m bored at work, I created a Bat statistic that I feel is more appropriate for pitchers. It’s basically wRAA, but instead using the average pitcher wOBA. This doubles as an above replacement statistic as I doubt the replacement level wOBA for pitcher differs at all. I then used park factors which I feel should be mentioned above as Coors Field always looms. The leaders are as follows for wRAAP (weighted runs above average pitchers):
1. Lorenzen 8.0
2. Scherzer 7.0
3. Marquez 6.9
4. Kershaw 6.9
5. Greinke 6.5
6. Straily 5.3
7. Suter 4.4
As this is a counting stat it takes into account Lorenzen’s smaller sample size.
Awesome work! That makes more sense than dealing with a leaderboard full of AL guys who got lucky in interleague and never had their suckiness revealed.
Does that show Lorenzen’s as-pitcher batting, or all of it?
Are we suggesting that counting stats (weighted runs) can’t have negative values?
No, these are the top seven. There are several pitchers that were negative. I suppose I should shown the bottom few (Folty, Nova, and Nola at -4.2,-4.3,-5.2). I just rescaled it so we were comparing pitchers to pitchers.
Does it really though?
Dont get me wrong, I appreciate the work but one of the problem with small sample sizes is how wildly things can fluctuate. If you give Lorenzen 20 more PA’s its entirely possible, likely even, that his numbers drop significantly. If he goes 2-20 (which is his career rate BTW) in those extra PA’s his slash is .215/.254./.431 and we are not having this discussion.
TL;DR – this award is pretty dumb lol.
As the average pitcher wOBA this season was .132 and his career wOBA is .328, 20 PA would likely have given him another 3 or 4 runs. But even if he had .132 wOBA over those extra 20 PA he would have the same number of runs. That’s how the against average stats work and balance sample size. It’s like if someone has a 5 WAR first half of the season; even if they’re replacement level the rest of the way they will still have a 5 WAR season.
It should be noted that, yes, this award is not for anything particularly significant. But fun though!
Obviously, but a player can also be below replacement level and lose WAR in the second half as well. Once he hits 5 it is not locked in as his floor for the year. If there is no negative component to this stat to account for equally terrible play I question its usefulness.
But yeah, its not really worth debating lol.
Ive thought about this to much and if I am Lorenzen I would be peeved. He is not winning any Cy Youngs. He is lucky if he gets to start rather than relieve. This might be the only significant milestone of his career. Sure no one in the general public gives a tomato, but to him and his, he was rather significantly robbed.