The 2008 Oddibe Award

A good buddy of mine, RJ Anderson of Beyond the Box Score, sent me the introduction to a book he plans on writing, way back in March, and graciously allowed me to expound upon what he had been discussing. Essentially, RJ had, using the Lahman Database, found that the average slash line for all hitters from 1960-2006 was .259/.326/.395. Further utilizing the same database, he then found that the player whose career most closely matched this line was Oddibe McDowell, who, at .253/.323/.395, was closer to the average than anybody else.

Taking this discovery to the next level, I began to find the most average hitter each year by taking the average slash line in baseball in a given year and finding the hitter whose season most closely resembled that performance. It wouldn’t be fair to use the overall total from 1960-2006 as a constant because that would mean players from 2004 would be held to standards from 1962, but if you click the link above, you can see the winners of what I deemed The Oddibe Award, from 1981-2007. For the record, Jhonny Peralta was last year’s winner, with Curtis Granderson taking home the honor in 2006, a year before posting a tremendous statistical season.

This year, the average NL line was .260/.331/.413; the average AL line was .268/.336/.420. Finding players whose slash lines exactly match these is next to impossible, so instead I went looking for players in the general vicinity. Unfortunately, two of the closest players split time between leagues, so below are the players who came closest to either of the average slash lines:

Aaron Rowand (NL): .271/.339/.410
Jeremy Hermida (NL): .249/.323/.406
Casey Kotchman (AL+NL): .272/.328/.410
Ken Griffey (AL+NL): .249/.353/.424

From the looks of these four, the honor would seem to lean in the direction of Kotchman, but what happens when we introduce WPA/LI to the mix, which essentially tells us how many wins above an average player you were worth. A WPA/LI of 0.0 would designate you as a league average offensive performer. Rowand’s was 0.25, as was Hermida’s; Kotchman chimed in at 0.22; and Griffey at -0.01, making him the closest to the average among the four candidates. This puts me in a dilemma: I would like to say that Kotchman is the 2008 Oddibe Award Winner, but Griffey’s WPA/LI doesn’t lie. His slash line, however, is significantly off in the BA and OBP area. What do you think out there? Kotchman, because his slash line is right on par with the average, and his wins above average are under 1/4 of a win above average? Or Griffey, who is a little more off with the slash line but essentially the definition of average with WPA/LI?