The parallels between these two didn't become apparent to me until I read
this post on Mass Hysteria, which seemingly took just as much pleasure in Chien Ming Wang's demise
as we have in Papi's. They have more in common than just their names being euphemisms for one's penis.
In the first inning of last night's game, we saw a clash of fallen heroes: Papi, the populist champion of Red Sox Nation and Wang, the most revered athlete in the island nation of Taiwan. The Dominican native has long dominated the battle between the two. In 44 plate appearances against Wang, Ortiz was hitting .432/.523/.703 with 7 walks. He worked another base on balls and won the symbolic battle of two stars wrapped in momentarily coinciding downward spirals.
Both have been a terrible detriment to their teams this year, but in different ways. If these two were actual methods of torture, Wang would be more like waterboarding (brutal for short stretches) whereas Ortiz is the equivalent of Chinese water torture (a slow drip that eventually drives you insane). So which is worse?
According to FanGraphs, Papi is
far less valuable than Wang.
He clocks in with a value of -$4.7M and a WAR (
Wins Above Replacement) of -1.0. Surprisingly,
Wang is "only" costing the Yankees $600,000 and one tenth of a win. It would seem that the formula FG is using is letting Wang off the hook since he only pitched 21 1/3 innings so far this year. This should instead count against him, since his lack of length taxes the Yankees bullpen and has stranded them in every one of his starts. You can do a lot of damage in 21 1/3 innings. And Wang certainly has.
A starting pitcher has the ability to sabotage a game in a way no other player does. A starter giving up 6 runs in two innings is less valuable than anything a position player could do. Yes, even
going 0-7 with 3Ks and leaving a small army on base (while DH'ing).
Here are Wang's 5 starts this year:
There's no way those only cost the Yankees 1/10th of a win.
In order for the Yankees to win any of those games, they would have to score more than the number of runs he allowed, obviously. Based on the Yankees offense this year, here are the probabilities that they score X or more runs in any given game.
Of course, this assumes that the bullpen is going to be perfect throughout the rest of the game, which is extremely unlikely when Wang averages only 2 2/3 innings per start and the Yankees bullpen
has an ERA of 4.91. That number might even be a little favorable considering when you need to get 6 1/3 innings from the pen, you are using mop-up men or overtaxing your competent relievers.
So if you project how many runs the bullpen is likely to allow on top of Wang's performances and line those up with how probable it was for the Yankees to score more runs than that, you'd come away with a much better estimate of just how bad Wang has screwed the Yanks in his starts so far this year.
SPW% is the likelihood that the offense would score more runs than the pitching staff allowed in any given game. The most runs the Yanks have scored this year is 12 and that was only once, hence the 0% chance of winning the game against the Indians (which of course they lost 22-4) and the 1% chance against the Rays (2% chance they score 12 runs and 50% they win in extra innings).
Add those percentages up and you get a 54% win probability out of a total 500%. That's not costing the Yankees 1/10th of a win, friends, it looks a lot more like negative 4.5.
This obviously isn't overly scientific or definitive, so what do you think? Who would fetch the ham sandwich on the trade market and who would come with chips? Which one of these guys would you rather not have?
Here is Jonah Keri on "something called Dave Dameshek's" podcast. It's a a few minutes of circumcision talk, and about 40 more of breaking down what's left of the World Series. Dameshek is a little insufferable but Jonah is good enough to make you forget that.
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