Ausmus, Matheny, and Other Cruddy Players

Chris pointed out that I disparaged his catchers in 2001, and I then went and had probably the worst group of offensive catchers in our history. It brings up a couple things I want to talk about, the first being that I wasn't picking on Chris's catchers for their performance, as much as I was pointing out that a big chunk of his roster was spent on this group, and they did very little offensively. In those Draft Notes, I said

His most interesting selections were his catchers, I think. ... Together, they made up nearly 1/4 of his position players.

      PA XB HR RBI  BB HP GIDP  AVE  OBA  SLG  PRO   RC
MM   308 17  3  25  13  2    2 .171 .212 .251 .463 15.9
CK   255 22  4  25  47  0    1 .235 .374 .382 .756 34.2
JP    87 10  1  10   7  1    0 .244 .310 .423 .733 11.2

TOT  650 49  8  60  67  3    3 .204 .286 .319 .605 61.3
	

... The defense they provided, considering Chris's pitching plight, was pretty important, but I just think Chris being forced to use 3 of his 13 position players on very, very weak hitters ended up hindering his team in the end.

Of course, Chris was right in his intimation that my catchers were terrible in 2003. Terrible is too nice a word, really. Here are their totals, and remember, while I was not disparaging Chris's catchers as a group, I fed into the impression that their offensive performance as a group was well below par with their paltry 61.3 runs created in 650 PAs.

	
      PA XB HR RBI  BB HP GIDP  AVE  OBA  SLG  PRO   RC
RH   419 17  4  23  34  4    6 .133 .213 .201 .414 17.5 
MM   103  4  1   7   9  0    1 .136 .193 .184 .377  5.5 

TOT  522 21  5  30  43  4    7 .134 .207 .197 .404 23.0

I didn't expect these guys to do too much. And I remember drafting Hernandez and then seeing that he had one more walk number on his card than what I had in my notes. 23.0 runs created in what was just below a full season ... those are just very scary numbers. But Matheny is no stranger to putting up scary offensive numbers, having been part of Chris's group in 2001. In fact, Ken's comparison of the similarities between Matheny and Ausmus in a 2002 email holds true throughout the past three Summer Leagues. Here is an expanded comparison of Ausmus and Matheny, who have combined for some of the worst offensive seasons of late:

Offensive
        G  PA  AB  H 2B 3 HR TB  RRBI SO BBIBHP SHSFDP  AVG  OBP  SLG  PRO  ISP SECA   TA RC  RC/G SBCS
MM 01 120 308 287 49 14 0 3  72 14 25 64 13 0 2  6 0 2 .171 .212 .251 .463 .080 .125 .363 15.9 1.7  0 0 
BA 01 150 510 449 83 18 2 4 117 59 37 75 56 0 0  4 1 7 .185 .275 .261 .535 .076 .227 .488 34.7 2.4 12 6
MM 02 121 357 318 52 11 0 6  81 27 34 70 15 0 3 18 3 8 .164 .206 .255 .461 .091 .138 .361 16.8 1.5  0 0
BA 02 128 407 367 62 14 2 2  86 26 27 76 20 0 0 18 2 2 .169 .211 .234 .445 .065 .134 .358 19.1 1.6  5 3
MM 03 103 146 125 17  3 0 1  23 10 7  27  9 0 0 11 1 1 .136 .193 .184 .377 .048 .128 .303 5.5  1.2  1 0 
BA 03  78 182 170 29  6 1 5  52 13 17 30  6 0 0  5 1 2 .171 .198 .306 .504 .135 .171 .406 10.3 1.9  0 0 0 

Defensively
                  G  INN   E  FLD SB CS SB%  SBA PB
MM 01 (9+6 PB1) 119  810.1 1 .999 34 23 59.6 .378 2
BA 01 (9+5 PB1) 150 1297.0 6 .995 63 29 68.5 .437 5
MM 02 (9+5 PB1) 121  934.1 3 .997 72 40 64.3 .694 1
BA 02 (9+4 PB1) 128 1052.0 2 .998 74 47 61.2 .633 2
MM 03 (9+2 PB1) 101  406.1 1 .997 38 19 66.7 .842 2
BA 03 (9+1 PB1)  75  482.0 2 .996 48 21 69.6 .896 2

Obviously, there's a context to their numbers, considering the fact that they have been defensive studs for the past three years. So where do Ausmus and Matheny rate compared to our other awful seasons? I went through the teams list in the SLPR2 and grabbed a list of players who compiled seasons of less than 2.0 runs created per game. Ausmus for Ken in 2002 was probably the worst regular ever, as he was the only player with 400 or more plate appearances who made my list, until I realized I had Ramon Hernandez in the wrong list. Here's the complete list:

As most the guys on the list are catchers or backup catchers, they again can be excused a little bit. Some guys with very few plate appearances who were caught stealing a bunch of times, I think, are on the list because of what I think is a glitch in the runs created formula ... which may or may not affect a guy like Andy Fox being so low on the list. The guys really worth a mention are the Phil Nevin's and Jason Giambi's and the Ellis Burks's ... guys who were offensive players expected to make offensive contributions before they imploded at the plate.