Chronicles of the Lads

MY 100
I hope you’ve all been following Halofan’s Top 100 Angel Countdown over at Halos Heaven, which recently wrapped up with Tim Salmon being named The Greatest Angel of All the Times. Halofan polled several Halosphere figures to create the list, of which I was one. He has graciously allowed me to post the ballot I submitted a few months ago, so I’m going to talk about it here.

One of the difficulties in amassing such a list is that there is no right and wrong answer. One has to weigh hitters versus pitchers, try to account for defense, evaluate the impact of a relief pitcher vis-a-vis a starting pitcher, decide how much postseason heroics are worth, and possibly even look at what contributions someone made off the field. And not only do you have to figure things out, but you have to weigh it all together.

As such, there are a lot of subjective decisions. One player might out-perform another on the field, but perhaps he meant less to the franchise. There’s no evidence to that sort of thing, it’s all in perception, and that’s fine. The strength of Halofan’s list is that he polled several Angel fans, all of whom have their own equally valid ideas.

But my criteria were based more on on-the-field concerns, and I only regarded how a player did in an Angel uniform. I don’t care about what Frank Robinson or Rod Carew did for other teams; this is about your time as a Halo only.

Before getting to my ballot, I’ll address a couple of places where I appear to differ with my fellow voters.

Two Pitchers
Here are the performances of two Angel pitchers:

Pitcher     IP   SO:BB  ERA+
Pitcher A  2675   1.92  118
Pitcher B  2181   1.86  115

Pretty similar, huh? The only real difference is the 500 innings. Going off of that, you’d have to give the edge to Pitcher A, wouldn’t you? It seems pretty clear: he's just as good a pitcher, maybe a bit better, and pitched more innings.

But let’s add one more category:

Pitcher     IP   SO:BB  ERA+  No-Hitters
Pitcher A  2675   1.92  118        0
Pitcher B  2181   1.86  115        4

Does that really change things, that Nolan Ryan was more spectacular than Chuck Finley?

To me, it doesn’t. Yes, I know he was a superstar in an arid time. I know that when he was on, he was the best show in town. But those aren’t my criteria; my criteria have to do with who was better on the field as an Angel. Finley pitched more innings for the Angels than Ryan did, and was slightly more effective than Ryan was.

Of course, Ryan pitched more innings per season (this was partly his era, as well), so maybe I’m missing something by just looking at ERA+, which compares to the league average. For instance, a guy who has a 115 ERA+ in 250 innings may be more valuable than a guy with a 118 in 200 innings. So I might be selling Nolan short. Let’s look at how each pitcher did compared to a replacement level pitcher.

Here are their seasonal Earned Runs Prevented Above Replacement in descending order, as reckoned by me (I set replacement level at league-adjusted ERA [as per BB-ref] plus 0.60):

Finley    Ryan
 55.9     57.8
 53.5     46.7
 47.4     42.5
 40.8     39.1
 35.4     27.2
 25.0     18.6
 24.7     15.6
 24.0     13.3
 22.7
 17.1
 14.3
  7.2
  6.3
  2.7

Look, Nolan Ryan is one of my all-time favorite players. He’s a great pitcher, a deserving Hall of Famer, and a gentleman. And if you want to argue that his marquee value moves him up the list of greatest Angels, that’s your prerogative.

But if you look at what was actually accomplished on the field, I just don’t see the argument that Nolan was a greater Angel than Chuck Finley.

Garret Anderson
Halofan’s poll ended up with Garret Anderson at number five. My ballot had him ... well, not as high, as you will soon see.

Basically, the argument against Garret Anderson being in the top twenty is that he’s had only three good years, and a bunch of mediocre years.

People are often resistant to the idea that most of Garret’s career has been that of a mediocre hitter, but it’s true. People in particular like pointing out his RBI, which have been impressive, and dismiss his low OBP by saying that his job is to drive in runs, not set up runs.

My counterargument is this: it is no batter’s job to just do one or the other. Complete hitters will excel at both, to varying degrees. For most of his career, Garret has only been good at one of these things.

It doesn’t just show up in OBP; it’s there in his runs scored, too. Do you know how many times Garret Anderson has scored 100 runs in a season? Zero. Not once.

He has scored 90+ runs twice, and 80+ runs five times. In eleven seasons.

Yeah, yeah, that’s a team-dependant statistic … but what about Tim Salmon, who was often conjoined with Garret in the middle of the Angel batting order? He has scored 100 runs twice, 90 five times, and 80 seven times.

Troy Glaus? 100 twice, 90 three times, 80 four times. And Troy’s at a disadvantage, in that his last two seasons with the Angels totaled only 149 games between them. (And he scored 100 runs on the dot in those two seasons.)

There are twenty-one Angels with 2500+ at-bats. Ten of them might be considered “RBI guys”, in that they averaged eight or less at-bats per RBI, meaning they were driving in a run at least once every other game, or at least 80 for a full season. Here they are ranked by Runs Scored Per Run Batted In, along with a column for At-Bats per RBI:

Player    R/RBI   AB/RBI
Edmonds   1.137    6.48
Grich     1.079    7.36
Downing   1.051    6.92
Glaus     1.016    5.75
Salmon     .967    5.79
Baylor     .920    5.94
Joyner     .882    6.31
Davis      .841    5.65
DeCinces   .840    6.00
Anderson   .794    6.21

Now, the top three guys would often bat high in the lineup, which on one hand might be unfair, but on the other hand proves the point. Garret Anderson’s offensive contributions to the Angels have been one-dimensional. He’s been very good at that dimension, and I don’t mean to take away from that, but the other guys in Angel history who have been of similar quality at driving in runs have all been better at scoring runs.

Look at it this way: guys like Grich, Downing, Salmon, you’d be confident with them either leading off an inning or batting with men on base. With Garret, you’d only be confident in the latter situation. His contributions are not as complete as these other guys’.

And that counts for something. I hadn’t assembled the above chart when I made my list, but every one of the others on it out-ranks Garret on my ballot. And I’m sticking with it.

One More Thing
You may wonder why Leroy Stanton is ranked as high as he is.

I will tell you: I have no idea.

I mean, I guess I can kind of see how I had him ranked above Dave Winfield, as he basically had three pretty good years to Winfield’s one-and-a-half, but … I don’t know. I think I was just out to lunch on that one. Sorry. You should probably switch him and Albie Pearson, who for some I reason I underrated ridiculously.

You should also be aware that tried to err on the side of underrating current players.

Without further ado, my ballot:

1. Tim Salmon
2. Bobby Grich
3. Chuck Finley
4. Brian Downing
5. Nolan Ryan
6. Jim Fregosi
7. Wally Joyner
8. Troy Percival
9. Troy Glaus
10. Chili Davis
11. Jim Edmonds
12. Mike Scioscia
13. Frank Tanana
14. Bob Boone
15. Dean Chance
16. Vlad
17. Don Baylor
18. Rod Carew
19. Mike Witt
20. Doug DeCinces
21. Garret Anderson
22. Gene Mauch
23. Darin Erstad
24. Adam Kennedy
25. David Eckstein
26. Mark Langston
27. Bobby Knoop
28. Kirk McCaskill
29. Fred Lynn
30. Reggie Jackson
31. Bryan Harvey
32. Jim Abbott
33. Leon Wagner
34. Jack Howell
35. Andy Messersmith
36. Jarrod Washburn
37. Bengie Molina
38. Scott Spiezio
39. Dick Schofield
40. K-Rod
41. Buck Rodgers
42. Leroy Stanton
43. John Lackey
44. Rick Reichardt
45. Donnie Moore
46. Devon White
47. Frank Robinson
48. Dave Winfield
49. Johnnie Ray
50. Carney Lansford
51. Lance Parrish
52. Jim Spencer
53. Geoff Zahn
54. Ken Forsch
55. Mark Eichhorn
56. Bob Lee
57. Bobby Bonds
58. Jimmie Reese
59. Gary Pettis
60. Jerry Remy
61. Mo Vaughn
62. Brendan Donnelly
63. Scot Shields
64. Mike James
65. Luis Polonia
66. Joe Adcock
67. Doug Corbett
68. Greg Minton
69. Lee Thomas
70. Dave Chalk
71. Shigetoshi Hasegawa
72. Al Levine
73. Tony Phillips
74. Clyde Wright
75. George Brunet
76. Albie Pearson
77. Joe Rudi
79. Bill Rigney
80. Sandy Alomar
81. Marcel Lachemann
82. Gary DiSarcina
83. Art Fowler
84. Mark Clear
85. Tom Morgan
86. Willie Aikens
87. Ellie Rodriguez
88. Alex Johnson
89. Mickey Rivers
90. Chone Figgins
91. Dave LaRoche
92. Vada Pinson
93. Bud Black
94. Randy Velarde
95. Paul Hartzell
96. Doug Rader
97. Jason Thompson
98. Bill Stoneman
99. Juan Beniquez
100. Don Mincher