The best Astro in my lifetime

by Stephen Higdon on Nov 24, 2008 12:49 PM CST

With the doldrums of an offseason that will lack any real interest setting in, I've committed myself to playing around with Astros data to see if the numbers agree with my memories.

Last night and into today, I played around with the numbers in an attempt to answer: who's been the best Astro, offensively, in my life time? I chose wOBA as the measure of offensive prowess. For those of you unfamiliar with wOBA, here's brief description and you can click the link for the formula:

Do we really need another statistic? Yes, we do. Instead of trying to take two statistics (OBP, SLG) and combine and correct their flaws in the hopes of getting one number, we prefer to start from scratch...When you look at wOBA numbers...just think OBP, and you’ll be fine. In other words, an average hitter is around 0.340 or so, a great hitter is 0.400 or higher, and a poor hitter would be under 0.300.

I was torn on how I would define Astro, so there are two tables: one in which the minimum AB as an Astros is 1500 (approximately three season) and one in which the minimum is 2000 AB (approximately four seasons); the cutoff for data inclusion coincides with my birth year, 1986. The envelope please:

I must admit, I was surprised by the table, but there are some great names listed here. Congrats Moises.

This table coincides a little bit more with my memory than the one above, but I'm shocked at how low Craig is on the list.

So there you have it, either Moises Alou or Lance Berkman have been the most offensively charged Astros bats in my life time. Thoughts? Reactions?

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You're not picking up base running / stolen bases.

If you had a stat like Win Shares (well, that includes defense too) which includes the running game, I suspect Biggio would score much better. Bill James said that Biggio was one of the greatest players of his time because he could do so many things well. Think about Biggio’s incredible ability to avoid hitting into double plays during the height of his career. If I recall, he went a whole season without a GIDP.

Also, OBP doesn’t include HBP, which discriminates against Biggio’s strength at getting on base somehow anyhow. Biggio is 16th all time at “times on base,” a stat which includes HBP, and ranks him higher than such OBP specialists as Wade Boggs.

Finally, Biggio played farther past his prime than just about anybody on your table. That undoubtedly hurt him, considering his atrocious OBP late in his career. At his peak, I would take Biggio as the best offensive player in Astros history. But it would be close with Bags at his prime.

By the way, I loved Alou as a hitter. Astros’ fans don’t give him enough credit. I hated it when Drayton let Alou go sign with the Cubs. But Alou’s defense was terrible after his knee surgery.

by clack on Nov 24, 2008 2:39 PM CST reply actions

I agree

As I get acclimated more in MySQL, I’ll start churning out something that includes base-running and possibly even defense.

The formula for OBP includes HBP, just not IBB.

The Crawfishboxes
A good friend of mine used to say, "This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains." Think about that for a while.

by Stephen Higdon on Nov 24, 2008 2:43 PM CST up reply actions

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