Intersting thought occured to me today. Who would make the PennyBall all-star team?
We will define The PennyBall All-Star Team as an all-star team composed of players working for the bare minimum, or at least real close to it. Players in that ever so low tax-bracket between $400,00 to $700,000 a year. At first I thought of naming them "The Pirates All-Star Team", but then I realized the Padres are almost just as cheap. Of course one of those teams churns out a decent product oh, maybe every 18 years or so.
I am going to have a STAT reference sheet here at the top. I hate reading through stat research articles and being clueless when they mention certain stats so here I will have my reference guide for this blog entry.
WHIP - Walks+Hits per Inning Pitched
K - Strikeouts
ERA - Earned Run Average (Average Runs given up over 9 innings)
K/9 - Strikeouts per 9 innings pitched
DIPS - ERA independent of defensive factors.
BIPA - Ball in play average. Average balls put in play over the season. A ball put in play is defined as a ball hit into the field of play.
BAA - Batting Average Allowed
SLG - Slugging Average Against
Today I will start with our Penny Penching Pitchers. I don't really have a limit of pitchers set, I just tried to snag a few and 4 is what I wound up with in no particular order, except the first one, the starter.
Mat Latos, San Diego Padres. $407,800 in 2010.
Mr. Latos is a 6'6" Right handed fireball throwing fantasy players dream from Alexandria, VA. He was drafted back in 2006 with the 333rd pick in the 11th round. 2010 was his first full year in the Majors and oh what a year it was.
He made our starter for the ridiculous stats he put over his first full season. You will notice he actually has the lowest Wins, at 14, in our group of pitchers but with these kind of stats I would feel confident putting him on the mound to start our imaginary all-star game. He put up a 2.92 ERA which put him at #13 overall. He was also #2 at lowest Hits allowed with at least 30 games and #17 in walks allowed with just 50. This puts that ever important WHIP statistic at 1.08 which was 8th lowest in the league. He was also 8th in K/9 with 9.21. The nerdiest of the stats for Mat I will use is his DIPS which came in 5th in the league. This means that even with or without a great defense he put up great stats. Needless to say he put up great numbers and if he keeps it up that huge contract will not be far behind.
Trevor Cahill, Oakland Athletics $410,000 in 2010.
Mr. Cahill is a 22 year old 6'4" Right hander from Oceanside, CA. He was drafted back in 2006 with the 66th pick in the 2nd round out of Vista HS. 2010 was his second year in the Majors and on a side note he wound up 9th in voting for the Cy Young award.
The first thing that pops out are his 18 wins. That means the A's paid $22,777.77 per win, which is very very low to shell out. Needless to say he fits right into to the notoriously tight-waded A's organization. The first thing that stood out stat-wise was his BIPA. He was numero uno in lowest BIPA. If hitters aren't putting the ball in play then the only other way they can get on is by walks and hit by pitch. Well he was 17th lowest in walks and therefor that put his WHIP at a solid 1.11 which was 11th lowest in the league. He was also #8 in BAA at .220, which makes sense if they didn't get hits off of him and another stat that was pretty interesting was that he was #3 in DPB (Double Plays Batted). This leads us to a few negatives I guess. The first is that his DIP% was pretty high, which tells us that he had a solid defense behind him. Of course this is good for his stats and the biggest negative was his average innings pitched was 5.9. This means on average he didn't even get to clock in a quality start, which says you must pitch at least 6 innings and give up less than 4 runs. There is mucho grande debate over what a true quality start is and I'm not going to touch that. I'm just going off the definition I found online. We all know if its online it must be true. The few stories I read online were saying that they expect next year to not be as fabulous for Mr. Cahill as this year, and to that I say, understandable. He had a great year in a young career. He has time to develop and with young pitchers good and bad years happen. For him I hope the next is even better.
Clay Bucholz, Boston Red Sox. $443,000 in 2010.
Mr. Bucholz is a 6'3" Right hander from Nederland, TX. He was drafted with the 42nd pick of the 1st round out of Angelina College in Lufkin,TX. He has seen action in the majors before this year, but 2010 was his first full year in the big leagues. He also finished 6th in the Cy Young award voting and represented the Red Sox in the actual All-Star game.
Again the big reason he made this list is because of his wins. With 17 wins and only getting paid $443K that is $26058.82 per win. That is great and all, but he really put up some great stats in some departments. The one stat the really stand out is his ERA at 2.33. Thats #3 in the bigs. He also has a pretty WHIP at just 1.20. Another one that stands out was that he was number #1 in fewest hits allowed this season at 142. That averaged out to just 5.07 hits per game. He had middle of the road stats on walks per 9 at 3.5 and also K/9 of 6.2. But his SGA came in 3rd lowest at .312. This means he wasn't giving up the big hits. He was putting people on base, but they just weren't getting around to home plate.
Phil Hughes, New York Yankees. $447,000 in 2010.
Mr. Hughes (coincidentally my 9th grade math teacher) is a 6'5" Right hander from Mission Viejo,CA. He was drafted back in 2004 in the first round with the 23rd pick overall out of Foothill HS in Santa Anna CA. He is the most seasoned of our penny penching pitching squad. He was a set up man with the Yankees before turning into a starting pitcher this past year. He represented the Yankees in the 2010 All-Star game.
Again just like the last two pitchers the amount of wins is real nice to get out of such a low salary. Phil had 18 Wins which put him at $24,833.33 per win for the Yankees payroll department. I know he is a great pitcher with great stuff, but I really think what got him to that level is the fact he is playing for a stacked Yankees line up. Of the top 25 Pitchers in the Win column he is one of two with an ERA greater than 4.00. This tells me he had some potent offense in the line up to make up for some games that should have gone to the other team. Notably 3 games that he gave up over 5 earned runs and still made out with the W. Now if he had a 15 Win season he still might have made this list due to his WHIP at 1.25, but what really hurt him was the amount of Walks he had. Of interesting note, he did not have one hit batter the entire season, which of course had him tied for first.
Honarable Mention. (Mainly because I'm tired and want to go to sleep)
Mike Pelfrey, New York Mets. $500,000 in 2010
15 Wins in 2010 for the half a mil is pretty good. He had a pretty low On Base Percentage and he only gave up 12 Home runs all year. Had a solid ERA of 3.66 as well. Didn't make the cut because the other players either had more wins or better stats. Still a great year for Mr. Pelfrey.
Jaimy Garcia, St. Louis Cardinals. $400,000 in 2010
Lowest win total out of the bunch at 13, but he was 3rd in voting for Rookie of the Year honors. Biggest stat was his extremely low 2.70 ERA. Man I hope he keeps this up for my Cardinals. He was 4th in fewest hits allowed and had a really low SLG. His walks were not so hot, which hopefully his command will develop over time, but that low SLG tells me he isn't going to give up many big hits. I feel the biggest negative is that the Cardinals only got an average of 5.82 innings out of him per game. Hopefully this is because of his youth. Good luck to him next year.
I will say this was the most time I have spent on research for one of these blogs so far. Tell me what you think in the comment section, maybe I left someone out, I'm sure I did.
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