Alfredo Griffin’s name comes up

Former Dodger Alfredo Griffin’s (Number 4 above) name came up as I was trying to sort through some advanced stats. By Owen Main

In 1988, the Dodgers won the World Series with a team of similar makeup to the recent Giants championship teams — lots of pitching, lots of timely good fortune, and juuuuust enough hitting to get the job done. Their middle infield of Steve Sax at second base and Alfredo Griffin at shortstop were each suspect in their own way. But again, they were good enough and us Dodger fans loved them.

When I woke up this morning, I went to catch-up on my reading. I’m trying to make a point to understand metrics better in all sports and baseball is a good place to start. I talked a lot about WAR at the end of last year, and today, fangraphs and baseball-reference unified their calculation of WAR, or “Wins Above Replacement.”

As I read the article, I found out something else awesome. To figure out what “replacement level” was, they looked at numbers of players with above 6,000 plate appearances. According to the fangraphs article, the only player who comes out below break-even in terms of WAR is Alfredo Griffin, currently the Angels first-base coach who works alongside fellow ’88 Dodger Mike Scioscia. Griffin is one of only 628 players to rack-up 6,000 major league plate appearances.

The only player who falls below replacement level with this baseline is Alfredo Griffin, coming in at -1.0 WAR in 7,331 plate appearances, which works out to -0.08 WAR per full season. For all intents and purposes, that’s zero.

OK, so Griffin was about a break-even player according to modern metrics. But of all the players they looked at for having a long major league career, Griffin was the lowest in terms of WAR. In 1988, the Dodgers’ last World Series win/appearance, Griffin played in 95 games, stacking up one home run and 27 RBIs.

This is what baseball can be. For all the money spent, and predictions made, sometimes it comes down to the slimmest of margins — a great performance at just the right time. Guys like David Freese and Barry Zito come to mind over the past few yaers. That year, in 1988, Griffin’s WAR was .1 in the positive direction. Which brings up the following two questions

Who will be this year’s World Series champion?

Who will have that season that is .1 WAR in the right direction to put that team over the hump?