Who Was Better? Mattingly vs Posada vs O'Neill vs Bernie

It's a slow Tuesday so I thought I'd throw this up here. I wanted to start a winter series of "Who Was Better?", a look at a few baseball players and trying to figure out who was better. The first one is Don Mattingly vs. Jorge Posada vs. Paul O'Neill vs. Bernie Williams. All four of these will probably be together in Monument Park someday but it's interesting to debate who was the best out of the 4. Below is their WAR graphs from FanGraphs and I'll talk about each candidacy briefly below. But I'm going to put up a poll on the right side and I would like you to let us know who you voted for and why in the comments below. Let's get started:

Click to expand. Original graph here

So which one was the best? Let's examine:

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Working the Count: Yankees Pitches Per Plate Appearance Over the Years

We talked a bit in the last post about the gritty, gutsy Yankee teams of the past. One of the observations brought forth was that this was not only a team that seemed to be good at taking pitches and working counts, but one that also produced the results in good hitter who got on base at a good clip. Let's change the subject now and look at pitches per plate appearance. The general logic in P/PA is that the more pitches a player sees, the better chance he has to either get a good pitch to hit or draw a walk, and the more pitches that team sees, the faster they tire the starting pitcher or face inferior pitchers in the bullpen (although the results don't always correspond). Let's work back from 2010 to see how those teams fared in P/PA (for qualified hitters only in the years we talked about in the last post):

Gardner's patience has made him an even more valuable asset (Yahoo)

2010 (3.90 P/PA)
The Yankees sport 6 regulars above league average with Brett Gardner on a historic P/PA pace. Cano and Granderon's spots on this list show, however, that 2010 results haven't exactly been tied to P/PA (though 3.42 ties Cano's career high). Swisher continues to be a high P/PA guy for the Yankee and A-Rod, Posada, and Teixeira provide a patient middle of the order to wear down opposing pitchers. 3.9 P/PA is a lot: if you think about it, this means that an average run through the Yankees batting order produces over 35 pitches meaning that starters will be lucky to get around the lineup 3 times.
 

	Pit/PA ▾
Brett Gardner*	4.61
Curtis Granderson*	4.11
Nick Swisher#	4.04
Alex Rodriguez	3.96
Jorge Posada#	3.95
Mark Teixeira#	3.87
League Average	3.83
Derek Jeter	3.54
Francisco Cervelli	3.54
Robinson Cano*	3.42
Team Total	3.90

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 8/5/2010.

2009 (3.88)
Nick Swisher was a huge addition to this team and the list as he came over to the Yankees after leading the majors in 2008 (at 4.53) and takes over for Bobby Abreu who was a P/PA cog in the Yankees lineup. Mark Teixeira has impressive first-year results as well as he takes over for the patient Jason Giambi in the lineup. Amazingly only Jeter (who had an MVP-type season but has been below league average his entire career) and Cano fall below the league average putting this group at a very impressive 3.88 P/PA for the entire 2009 season.

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The "Nitty Gritty" Yankee Teams of the Late 90s

Last night I got into a discussion with a few friends about baseball. The discussion moved at one point to the Joe Torre teams of the late 90s. I had mentioned how on base percentage was, in my opinion, the most important statistic to measure a team's offensive efficiency--though I mentioned a hollow OBP without power was worthless. I was trying to explain weighted on base average (or wOBA, a category that Dave Cameron of FanGraphs does much better and Alex Remington of Big League Stew adds to) when one of my friends piped up and said that the the offense of those 90s Torre teams were built less on OBP and more on taking pitches and their nitty, gritty mentality. Although I think that pitches per plate appearance has a good deal to do with OBP (more pitches seen usually means patience, more pitches wears out the pitcher and causes them to throw more balls, etc.), I thought that this idea that these Yankee teams didn't win because of OBP and wOBA was false. It turns out I was right.

I think most of this misconception lies in the fact that OBP wasn't exactly a mainstream topic before 2003 when Michael Lewis' Moneyball hit the scene. The truth is that teams were thinking about this before that time, but like good organizations do, they decided not to share that trade secret with others. If you take a look at those Yankee teams, you remember Paul O'Neill's warrior-like ABs, but you forget how they ended many times: with him jogging to first base. Using FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference (and a 50 PA minimum), here was what those Yankee teams looked like:

"The Warror" did more than just foul off pitches (Yankee Yapping)

1995
I add this one in just to show when the change occurred. Obviously, this was not a Torre team (Buck Showalter ran the show), but some of the seeds of Torre teams were planted. The 1995 Yankee team put up a .357 OBP which was good for 2nd in the American League. But the OBP was pretty empty of power. Although they had 280 doubles (2nd in the AL), they had only 122 HR (12th out of 14). Paul O'Neill had 22, Bernie Williams 18, Mike Stanley 18...and no one else had more than 7. The starting infield of Don Mattingly, Pat Kelly, Tony Fernandez, and Wade Boggs accumulated 21 combined. While Paul O'Neill (.387 OBP, .388 wOBA), Bernie Williams (.392 OBP, .385 wOBA), and Wade Boggs (.412 OBP, .373 wOBA) carried the offense, Dion James (.317 wOBA), Luis Polonia (.304), Tony Fernandez (.296), and Pat Kelly (.293) all were black holes. The team made the playoffs as the first American League Wild Card but they were disposed of in a tough 5-game loss in the American League Division Series to the Seattle Mariners.

1996
In 1996, the Yankees got rid of most of the dead weight from the 1995 lineup. They replaced Dion James with Tim Raines (.383 OBP/.377 wOBA), Luis Polonia with Ruben Rivera (.381/.368), Tony Fernandez with Derek Jeter (.370/.353), and Pat Kelly with Mariano Duncan (.352/.364). The team OBP ticked up to .360 and the hitting improved even further when they swapped Ruben Sierra for Cecil Fielder mid-season. Paul O'Neill continued to be a force in the Yankees lineup, walking 15.5% of the time and putting up a .411 OBP. The team gave way too many PAs (219) to Andy Fox (probably the worst Yankee hitter of the past 20 years that they've given that many PAs to) and Gerald Williams was never the answer in left, but this team was able to win the World Series because of those improvements it made.

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Stat of the Day -- Old Guys and RBIs

From Baseball-Reference.com (and why you don't sign guys past 33 to long-term deals...). An interesting list to say the least. You have two of the most famous players in the history of the game (the Babe and Stan the Man), two mid-90s warriors (O'Neill and Galarraga), two steroid players (Palmeiro and Sheffield), and now Raul Ibanez (who is working on his best season currently). A-Rod just reached 33, but as a Yankee fan, I hope he too is on this list in a few years.

Just 7 players have gotten at least 100 RBI in each season at ages 34, 35, and 36:

                   From  To   Ages Seasons Link to Individual Seasons
+-----------------+----+----+-----+-------+------------------------------+
 Raul Ibanez       2006 2008 34-36       3 Ind. Seasons
 Gary Sheffield    2003 2005 34-36       3 Ind. Seasons
 Rafael Palmeiro   1999 2001 34-36       3 Ind. Seasons
 Paul O'Neill      1997 1999 34-36       3 Ind. Seasons
 Andres Galarraga  1995 1997 34-36       3 Ind. Seasons
 Stan Musial       1955 1957 34-36       3 Ind. Seasons
 Babe Ruth         1929 1931 34-36       3 Ind. Seasons