Lyle Overbay & Graphs

Lyle Overbay passed through waivers yesterday which registers as a non-shocking development given the Jays inactivity in moving him to another team over the last year-plus. Overbay has a quiet genius about him in that he was consistent throughout his career.

In 2004, his first full season in the majors, he posted a WAR of 2.4. The next year? 2.5. The year after that? 2.5. Then he had a down (and shortened) season with the Blue Jays, but after that, his WAR have been 2 and 2.4. This season he’s on pace for around 1.5 wins, depending on playing time, but his career WAR should top the 14 mark without hassle.

Overbay’s consistency got me wondering: just how common are two-win first basemen? So, I went back and looked at 2002-2009 using our leaderboards with a per-season minimum of 300 plate appearances at first base. I tallied each year up by the amount of players who had at least five WAR or greater and so on. Each player is only counted once; meaning Albert Pujols is in the 5+ WAR column only and not duplicated in the 4+, 3+, and 2+ columns as well. Here’s the graph:

Last season appears to be a golden age for first basemen, both elite and above average alike. Let’s take this a step further, though, and combine the first basemen into two groups: those who produced 2 or more WAR and those who produced fewer than 2 wins. From there, let’s make it interesting and make the grouping in which Overbay belonged to during each season yellow. Here’s how that looks:

What does this tell us? Well, besides the obvious – that Overbay was often above 2 WAR – that he was in the first base minority in 2008, 2005, and 2004. Maybe, then, it’s not a surprise that he was traded following the 2005 season, and trade rumors heated up for him once against after the 2008 season.