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Saturday, March 24, 2012
Russell Branyan might very well be the official mascot of the Baseball Prospectus era. I used to list Russell Branyan on my Friendster profile, under “Who You’d Like To Meet.” In the silly Us vs. Them paradigm that made 2002-2006 so much fun, Branyan was the perfect player for Us. He was always unwanted, his skills were underappreciated, he was stupid strong, and he most likely played for each of our favorite teams at some point.
The Yankees are Branyan’s 17th stop. That’s two more stops than Matt Stairs made, and one more than Terry Mulholland made. This is sort of staggering when you consider that Branyan is only 35; Stairs was famously nomadic (I once asked an agent whether he’d ever had a player tell him to just sign with whomever offered the most money, no matter where it was. His response: “Yeah, Matt Stairs.”) and played until he was 43 years old, and still Branyan already has him beat. Fifteen of Branyan’s stops have come just in the past eight years…
Branyan has played with a great many players—675 of them, one out of every six players who has appeared in the majors since his debut in 1998… in his 14-year career, Russell Branyan has earned about as much as, or slightly less than, Juan Pierre made in 2011… He led the 2011 Mariners in home runs, despite playing just 57 games. He also missed time when he was injured on a pizza parlor chair...
So what is the meaning of Russell Branyan? It’s probably something like this: We’ve all mellowed in the stats vs. scouts thing. There’s really no stats vs. scouts thing left, actually. Scouts are great and stats are great. It turns out that a lot of things that we were screaming about were right, and a lot of things we were screaming about weren’t quite as right as we were screaming that they were. Similarly, Russell Branyan was, clearly, a useful major leaguer who made some teams better and generally gave his teams no reason to regret carrying him… He was good. He wasn’t all that good. Russell Branyan’s career is the compromise we finally all agreed on.
The District Attorney
Posted: March 24, 2012 at 12:15 AM | 25 comment(s)
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1. Comic Strip Person Posted: March 24, 2012 at 11:07 AM (#4088188)This is what a Jim Caple article would look like if you wrote it in your mother's basement.
The Deer is kind of impressive in that right-handed power hitters are always going to be the prime DP candidates (even if they run pretty well). 38 in 4513.
And with the DP in order it's Daulton 4.0%, Branyan 4.6%, Deer 4.7%
All 3 were tougher to double up than Ichiro (5.1%)
Deer's is particularly impressive in that right-handed power hitters are prime DP candidates even if they run reasonably well. Aaron's at 10.7%, Mays is 9.3%.
Rice is at 15.2%
Don Buford, 34 in 5347 PA.
Branyan has stolen 16 bases in his career. Here is a list of fewest GIDP by a player with 3000 PA and with 20 SB or fewer:
1. RUSSELL BRANYAN: 31 in 3336 PA, 16 SB
2. PETE WARD: 39 in 3,3431 PA, 20 SB
3. CHARLIE MAXWELL: 45 in 3,588, 18 SB
4. KEVIN ELSTER: 45 in 3,079, 14 SB
5. EDDIE TAUBENSEE: 50 in 3,098, 10 SB
edit: Guess who holds the record for fewest GIDP with 2000 PA and fewer than 30 steals?
I was hoping to find an Edmonds like player, (had a nice stretch, but not as good as Branyans) a true starter, if not an all star level player who doesn't have significant speed, probably batted with a lot of men on base, and still hit few double plays, but even in his best stretch, Edmonds had 46 gidp in 3770 pa.
There are some pitchers up there too..Tom Glavine only hit into 14 double plays in a career that gave him 1,645 PA. Maddux hit into 15 in 1,812. I guess you kinda figure pitchers are easy to double up on, but they strike out so damn much that not really.
BTW the leader in fewest GDP and lowest GDP/PA for 2500+ PA is Kaz Matsui (14 in 2,555)
The worst is Ron Coomer (132 in 3,238)
Another random fact is that Butlers bookend this leaderboard. Brett Butler had 62 GIDP in a career of over 9,000 PA. Billy Butler already has 99 in 2,861 PA
Edit: or what Dan said.
Butler's DP rate looks somewhat less remarkable once you take that into consideration. It's spot on 5%. Obviously very good.
As with Ichiro he's got practically everything working in his favor (fast, left-handed, didn't hit the ball hard, often bunted with runners on) and Deer was still less likely to ground into a DP than either of them.
Branyan's TTO average is .505, which, so far as I can tell, is the record for anyone with that many PAs. (for comparison, Rob Deer's is .491). Jack Cust is currently sitting at .530 in far fewer PAs.
Where's Reynolds?
The downside to never grounding into double plays is those types of players often don't reach on errors either. Branyan's only got 12 ROE in his career, so his ratio is fairly consistent with other players, just at much lower levels of each.
Buford's 2:1 ratio of ROE:GDP is great. Ichiro was ahead of that ratio until last year, but now he's a little less than 2:1.
By the way, CFB, where are you getting Ichiro's totals for GDP?
Deer is almost 1:1 (not surprising, as is usually the case with GDPs, righties reach on errors far more frequently than southpaws).
He's at .501 in a tad less than 3000 PAs. His K% is 33.1 and Branyan's is 32.9--neither really walk that much, so their TTO is really based on only two of the three--same with Deer (as opposed to Jack Cust who actually really DOES do all three)
I was posting his first six years. I always dislike people posting rate stats when one player has twice or three times the playing time.
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