The World According to VORP
By Kevin Horn
I hope every baseball statistic nut knows about www.baseballprospectus.com. It’s probably the premiere statistics website on the internet. They created a statistic called VORP or Value Over Replacement Player. It has to do with the averages of statistics at that position and whether you are above or below it. The Blue Jays have an offensive VORP of 48.4 cumulative for their starting 9. The Jays have lost by giving up Carlos Delgado this off-season, as his VORP is 12.3 and his replacement Eric Hinske has only managed 8.1. However, I want to compare Toronto’s total team VORP to that of the Red Sox and Yankees, two clubs who were supposed to be vastly superior to The Jays at the start of the season (and would probably be considered so now by the average fan). The Yankees VORP is 73.4, however it should be noted that Rodriguez, Jeter and Sheffield count for 51.6 of this. The Red Sox cumulative VORP comes in at an even 80, with Damon and Varitek being the biggest contributors to that number. But what is this teaching us? Toronto’s offense hasn’t produced the numbers that The Red Sox or The Yankees have, but their record is almost equal to that of Boston and superior to that of New York. Let’s also examine the AL’s two best teams, the Orioles and the White Sox. The Orioles cumulative offensive VORP is 83.5, putting them on the same level as the Red Sox. The White Sox VORP is 29.4, the lowest of the ones we have examined.
The pitching statistics will help contribute to this story. The Blue Jays have the best VORP in the starting rotation, and would be vastly superior would it not be for Ted Lilly’s -14.0. The Yankees have the weakest rotation and bullpen, and the Red Sox bullpen is the best of the group, making their team’s total average 0.9 above the Blue Jays 27.0. The Orioles possess a team pitching VORP of 51.5, which shouldn’t surprise anyone considering they are dominating the division. The interesting thing is that they only have one starter with a really high number (Bedard at 16.4). The key to possessing a high team VORP is not two or three good starters, but a solid pitching staff from top to bottom, which the Orioles possess. Let’s look at the White Sox pitching as well. They have an overall staff VORP of 90.7, easily the best in the league.
So, after this endless supply of statistics and data you don’t care about, what does it teach us? That a) I doubt Chicago’s success is sustainable, despite their rotation being filled with Yankee cast-offs Contreras and El Duque, and b) pitching wins you a ton more games than hitting does and
c) for people who were thinking offense isn’t the problem the Jays thought it was, they were wrong. Their best player is in the negative VORP (that being Vernon Wells). It’s no mistake that the teams with the best ERA’s are playoff teams. Hopefully this information gives my fellow Yankee haters some hope, as with three regular starting pitchers in negative VORP they don’t seem to be getting better any time soon. Just using some great statistics at your fingertips can help you get behind the real stories, hopefully you guys can take a look at the VORP as well as the ton of statistics baseball prospectus keeps and use them to increase your enjoyment of our great game of baseball.
"Hinske Haters"
An interesting thing happened a week or so ago, on the Blue Jays swing through Tampa Bay and Baltimore. Eric Hinske has always had a single heckler in T-Bay booing him and taunting him. He doesn’t know why he gets heckled, and he has never even met the guy. Just chalk it up to one of those weird things that happens in sports, right along the lines of "DARRRRRRRRRRYL" "DARRRRRRRRYYYLLLL" back in the 80’s. A random occurrence right? Well the during the last series in Baltimore, this thing snowballed. A group of guys, probably around 20 or so, actually left their seats to go stand at ground level during Hinske’s at bat. They proceeded to boo him and taunt him whenever he was hitting. The Blue Jays announcers couldn’t make any sense of it, and it seemed like a random occurrence. But it kept happening. It’s interesting I think. Hopefully if anybody knows anything about this, let us know because it’s a story I would like to follow. Or, create a Hinske Haters club at Fenway Park or Yankee Stadium. He might hate me for it, but it’s a way to get a headline!
