Pwn3d - Tom Seaver

For this installment of Pwn3d, I thought I would take a look at the stats from the other side of the ball. Instead of looking at a dominating hitter, let’s delve into the numbers of a dominating pitcher…
  

During Tom Seaver’s career, he faced 309 batters that had at least 20 plate appearances against him. As you’ll soon see, Tom Terrific ruled the mound. A mere eight batters managed to hit over .400 against Seaver, while 111 players couldn’t even crack .200. That’s a Mendoza to Williams ratio of 13.9! Granted, Seaver did face his fair share of pitchers that are part of that group who couldn’t hit Tom, but that is still an amazing display of dominance. 

This is exemplified by the fact that 34 batters struck out at least one third of the time against Seaver. The most glaring example being Tony Perez who was Seaver’s favorite strikeout victim with 44 Ks, compared to a meager five walks.

In the same vein, only six players out of our sample of 309 batters never struck out to Tom Seaver: Craig Reynolds, Wade Boggs, Lou Whitaker, George Brett, Marty Barrett and Ken Landreaux. 

Another amazing feat is that Tom was rather stingy with the long ball. Approximately half of the sample players hit a home run off of Seaver with only a dozen breaking the five home run plane, which included such sluggers like Hank Aaron, Ron Santo, Steve Garvey, Joe Morgan, Willie McCovey, Ron Cey, Darrell Evans and Willie Stargell. Pretty impressive crowd, however, the one who smacked the most taters off of Tom Terrific was Rick Monday? 

Yup, Tom Seaver was Rick Monday’s favorite long ball pitcher with 11 home runs. And while Monday’s performance was good, it was not pwn3d worthy in this writer’s mind. That performance goes to the rarely discussed Steve Ontiveros, who somehow made Tom Seaver tremble whenever he was at the dish. The highest batting average Ontiveros had against any pitcher was Tom Seaver (.500) and the most home runs hit (2). Considering that Ontiveros hit a paltry 24 home runs in his career, I find it amazing that he hit even two against Tom Seaver. Also add the fact that Ontiveros somehow managed to draw 10 walks versus 2 strikeouts against Seaver. 

On the flip side, Don Sutton was truly pwn3d by Tom Seaver with 22 PA and no hits, but Sutton was a pitcher. So, we’ll move one spot down the dominance list and fall on Bob Aspromonte who shouldn’t even have bothered dressing and leaving the locker room when Seaver was on the mound. Aspromonte was an abysmal 1 for 25 against Seaver, but did manage to draw one walk and hit one sacrifice fly. But I won’t even call that performance the worst against Seaver. I think that title goes to Dal Maxvill who was a lowly 4 for 46 against Seaver, and struck out an amazing 20 times in 50 plate appearances! 

Seaver Pwn3d You!	You Pwn3d Seaver!
4 for 46 with 20 Ks!	9 for 18

Pwn3d - Mike Schmidt

It is time for another installment of Pwn3d, where we dissect the statistics and figure out which pitchers padded Mike Schmidt’s stats or tore him to pieces. Unlike the previous Gwynn and Boggs posts, when dealing with a slugger like Schmidt, one cannot look at batting average alone. Therefore, the selections may be a little more subjective. 

Even though batting average is not the harbinger for Schmidt, let’s get the formalities out of the way. Mike hit over .400 against 16 pitchers during his career (minimum 20 PA), while batting under .200 against 34 pitchers. This gives old Schmidty a Williams to Medoza ratio of 0.47. But heck, who went to see Mike Schmidt play with the hopes of him slapping a single into right field? Absolutely no one, because we watched Mike for the dingers, and good gracious did he deliver.

However, like peanut butter is to jelly, home runs come with strikeouts. Lots of strikeouts. In fact, Schmidt faced 169 pitchers with a minimum of 20 PA, and struck out to every single one of them except for five: Mike Caldwell (23 PA), Steve Trout (38 PA), Greg Mathews (25 PA), Zane Smith (26 PA) and Tim Leary (26 PA). Pretty wild, eh? 

Want to see something even wilder? Of those 169 pitchers, every one of them walked Schmidt at least once, except for Dennis Eckersley (35 PA), Gary Nolan (22 PA) and Tim Leary (26 PA). Talk about intimidation. 

Add on top of that the fact that Mike Schmidt hit a home run against 141 of those 169 pitchers (83.4%!), with both Jerry Reuss and Bob Forsch lit up for 11 taters each. Insane! 

But with the yin, comes the yang. Almost half of the 169 pitchers struck Schmidt out at least 20% of the time. Steve Rogers, Bill Bonham and Tom Seaver all struck out the Mighty Jack at least 30 times. 

Last what we’ll parse is OPS, the true measure of who did and did not get pwn3d by Mike Schmidt. Fred Norman tops the list with the highest OPS against Schmidt at 1.655. Mike DESTROYED Norman almost every time at the plate. Half of Schmidt’s hits against Norman were home runs (6 HRs out of 12 H). In fact, 83.3% of Schmidt’s hits against Norman were for extra bases. 

Way down at the other end, Tim Leary had the best OPS against Schmidt, but he doesn’t win the prize. Scott Garrelts gets those honors with his absolute domination of Schmidt. Schmidt batted a lowly .050 against Garrelts and struck out 45.5% of the time for an anemic OPS of .336. 

Schmidt Pwn3d You!	You Pwn3d Schmidt!
1.655 OPS	.336 OPS

Pwn3d - Wade Boggs

Pwn3d is a series that highlights players who either dominated or were dominated by an opposing pitcher/batter.   A minimum 20 Plate Appearance limit is required.

My first entry in this new series focused on my all-time favorite player, Tony Gwynn.  This entry will be about one of my least favorite players, Wade Boggs.  My distaste for Boggs is solely subjective, as I know he was a fantastic hitter.  However, until Boggs' collapse later in his career, all I ever heard about was Wade Boggs.

I guess it was my first taste as a child of "big city markets."  People and media were/are all nutso over Boston and New York players, even though small market teams had better players.  Even living in Southern California, I was more likely to see Wade Boggs on my television than Tony Gwynn, and it drove me nuts.

Out of all of my friends, if they were given the choice between Boggs and Gwynn, it was always Boggs.  People also always seemed quick to pick on Gwynn for his weight, yet ignore all the immoral/insane shit Boggs (allegedly) did.  Regardless, in the end, Tony Gwynn outlasted Boggs in the collective memory of baseball lore, and that makes me happy.

Yet, Boggs was a great baseball player, who somehow smacked 3,010 hits with all that chicken grease on his fingers.  So, using a 20 Plate Appearance limit, Boggs batted above .400 against 26 pitchers (Gwynn had 45).  I call this the Williams Line, since Teddy Ballgame was the last player to break this magical barrier.  At the other end of the spectrum, Boggs battled below .200 (Mendoza Line) against nine pitchers (Gwynn had 6).  This gives Boggs a W/M (Williams to Mendoza) ratio of 2.89 (Gwynn's was 7.5).  :-) 

For Boggs’ over .400 pitchers, the list includes only two prominent standouts, Brett Saberhagen (.450) and Phil Niekro (.407).  Those who kept Boggs under the Mendoza Line included Bob Welch (.195) and Dan Quisenberry (.105)

However, the #1 most abused and #1 least hit pitchers on the list are... 

Boggs Pwn3d You!	You Pwn3d Boggs!
9 for 17 (.529)	2 for 25 (.080)

Pwn3d - Tony Gwynn

It’s Saturday, and I no longer have a backlog of posts ready, so I’m going to try out something new today.  If you look at my top menu, you’ll notice that I have eight running serials.  Seven of those serials have a specific day to be posted, while the Spot the Ǝrror serial fills in the blanks when I need a break from writing, researching, etc. 

When I came back to the blogging world after my hiatus, I decided that I needed structure in order to keep this blog viable.  Otherwise, I’d post sporadically about a current whimsy and then the next thing I know, I’m posting once a week and losing interest quickly, which causes readers to lose interest compounding the spiral effect.  That’s why I’ve created a programming schedule of seven serials and one floater.

While this may sound strange, I like it because it keeps me active.  I even keep track of page views for each serial to determine what’s working and what isn’t.  In essence, I’ve become the writer, director, producer , PR man and CEO of my own blog “channel.”  I’ve even decided to let each serial run at least 13 “episodes” with a full season run being 26.  Yeah, I know, nerdy, but it’s my blog.

Knowing that some of these serials will not stand the test of time, or will just run their course, I keep a list of potential serials to fill in the time slots.  So today, I’m going to run a pilot named Pwn3d, and your feedback is appreciated…

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Pwn3d is a series that highlights players who either dominated or were dominated by an opposing pitcher/batter.   A minimum 20 Plate Appearance limit is required.

During Tony Gwynn’s career, he amassed 3,141 hits and hung his cleats with an amazing .338 lifetime batting average.  What is even more impressive is when you dig into his numbers you find that Gwynn had the number of a lot of pitchers, while only a handful had Gwynn swinging in stitches.

Using a 20 Plate Appearance limit, Gwynn batted above .400 against 45 pitchers.  We will call this the Williams Line, since Teddy Ballgame was the last player to break this magical barrier.  At the other end of the spectrum, Gwynn battled below .200 (Mendoza Line) against a mere six pitchers.  This gives us a W/M (Williams to Mendoza) ratio of 7.5.  I just created a new SABRmetric!!!  

Of Gwynn’s over .400 victims, the list includes Hideo Nomo (.560), John Smoltz (.444), Kevin Brown (.423), Jamie Moyer (.417) and Greg Maddux (.415!!!).  Some impressive pitchers were destroyed by Gwynn, but as one would expect, most of the pitchers he brutalized were not well known.

As for those who Gwynn apparently forgot to video tape and scrutinize, it is a veritable list of Who and Huh?  The likes of Shane Rawley (.182), Mike Remlinger (.182), Mel Rojas (.167), Omar Olivares (.120) and Dan Schatzeder (.111).  Not exactly a five-ace rotation.

While these insights are amazing, I have left off the #1 most abused and #1 least hit pitchers on the list.  Envelope please…The winners are:

Gwynn Pwn3d You!	You Pwn3d Gwynn!
11 for 19 (.579)	1 for 20 (.050)

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So what do you think?