Historical Graphs at Fangraphs
A great development
On this site, I’ve posted a lot of graphs about teams and how they performed season-to-season. I’ve been asked by folks to put together player graphs, but I never got around to it. I’m happy to report that David Appelman, the manager of Fangraphs, has. In fact, he has created player graphs for every player in major league history.
There’s enough here to read forever. I particularly like the pages that include all of a player’s graphs on one page. For instance, check out:
- How Ralph Garr’s heady years of 1971-1974 were driven by his BABIP (which is generally a function of speed and hitting line drives). He didn’t strikeout a lot and he put the ball in play, but as he lost his speed his performance declined.
- Stan Musial’s BB/K ratio is so remarkable that it’s off the graph in most years. Musial was one of the ultimate well-rounded batters, like DiMaggio and Williams. Take a particular look at his BABIP, which remained above average nearly his entire career. The guy was a line drive machine.
- One of my personal favorite ballplayers, Tommie Agee, was an average hitter overall. But he had three good years from 1969 to 1971 by keeping his strikeout rate in check, increasing his walks and just plain hitting the ball on the nose more often.
- Taking a look at pitchers, Ernie Shore was Babe Ruth’s partner, a fine pitcher for the Red Sox in the mid-teens. His best years were his first four years, including 1915, when he finished third in the AL in ERA. As you can see from his graphs, that year was particularly boosted by his high percentage of men left on base. Shore didn’t walk batters; he also didn’t allow many home runs, though that wasn’t as important back then. BABIP was, and you can see that Shore had a good BABIP in his glory years.
- To see something really remarkable, check out Whitey Ford’s graphs. Ford had a great ERA nearly every year of his career, but most of his other stats were around average. His strikeout rate, in particular, was mediocre. However, he sustained a remarkable ratio of men left on base—something we consider random today. Many of the great early pitchers had very good LOB% graphs (Christy Mathewson is another example) which tells you a lot about how pitchers pitched in the old days.