H2H Debater A

CLOSING STATEMENT: So, to conclude I look at my debate mate and see him agree that his numbers were not very good for the Twins, but if we bury them in a mix of Oriole over production and Twin normal production he looks okay he could be a mediocre RP. But is that what we traded for? Does Baltimore miss him? Did we enjoy our time with him? Please let’s try again and this time let’s really go after someone with at track record as well as that elusive “live arm”. Jorge it has been good to know you, but actually not too good. Time to move on.

ROUND 2 REBUTTAL: My fellow debater states that we are dealing with a short sample size in assessing Lopez performance. I am pleased that he chose to take the route because RP is all about short sample sizes. We have one inning appearances. In and out, no allowance for bad performance. We do not judge RP by the same standard as SP. They are given one try to max out their pitches, to put everything into their effort and then sit down. So SSS is the world they live in. Any RP would be happy to have an inning here and an inning there removed from their history and era. Who wouldn’t. But in this era (not earned run average) of the BP when we no longer have Spahn and Marichal going 14 innings or Burdette and Haddix going 12 or Cy Young with 749 complete games. Instead, we started the era of Jesse Orosco with 1252 appearances and Mariana Rivera with 1105. The relief pitchers have taken over the league and the strategies of teams, so a relief pitcher has to be ready and impactful in those short opportunities. That is why they used to call them firemen. Jorge has now pitched 421 innings – certainly more than a SSS. He has had one half of one season of good performance out of seven seasons. True he is recently put into the BP. And it is true that a lot of pitchers who do not have enough of an arsenal make the switch to the BP and some, like Nathan, do it exceptionally well. But many do not. I will not repeat all the statistic that I put in the opening and the last response; I will just ask that you read all of them together. Baseball reference has a projection https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/l/lopezjo02.shtml for each player and Jorge is projected to have a 4.28 ERA – 1.363 Whip I guess BR was not fooled by the half year aberration. That would put in line with Bundy, Archer, Megill, Pagan and Joe Smith. I am not as excited by K/W stats as I am K/W and H. In his 22.2 innings (that is 23 games which is a decent number to judge a RP) he gave up 23 hits and 14 walks. 18 Ks versus 37 baserunners is not a statistic I find encouraging. 66/89 is Duran’s total for comparison. There are those who have a bright flame and then a flame out – one hit wonders, whether music or sports. Bleacher report has the top 25 https://bleacherreport.com/articles/713369-baseballs-25-biggest-one-hit-wonders-of-all-time and many are pitchers. Or if you are looking at the fact that he made the All-start team, Just Baseball, https://bleacherreport.com/articles/713369-baseballs-25-biggest-one-hit-wonders-of-all-time, has a list of players who made the All-star game once and never made it back. Look at their RP list at the bottom where old friends Grant Balfour and Jesse Crain join Taylor Rogers, Alex Colome and old friend Matt Capps. We can always HOPE – it is baseballs endearing quality – the fans start each year with each team based on HOPE that this is the year. And sometimes it is. Look at the Orioles. Preseason they were picked last; a companion to the Detroit Tigers who were actually picked to finish higher. Then Manager Hyde and the team refused to go away. They ended up better than that team in Minnesota and yet they were willing to trade their ACE and ALL-STAR closer to us. That makes no sense unless they saw something our FO missed. I am not saying Lopez might not have some value, but I am saying he has a long way to go to proving the first half of last year was not a fluke.

ROUND 1 REBUTTAL: The term live arm has bounced around baseball for my entire life in fandom – what does it mean? I know it means they do not need Tommy John surgery, but that is all. Over the years I have read about prospects with live arms like Nick Burdi. He was able to throw the baseball 95.2 MPH as a high school student. By his sophomore year in college, he hit 100 MPH. Unfortunately for him his live arm keeps getting damaged and now he has a -0.6 WAR for 3 years in the majors and is currently hurt. I believe we thought Vance Worley had a live arm and his 2012 season did not count – we knew we could revive the 11 – 3 3.01 era Worley of 2011. What happened? He went 1 – 5 with a 7.21 era for Minnesota. Jim Hoey had a really live arm. He hits triple digits regularly. He was so good we gave up J J Hardy to get him. And we did improve him from a 10.24 ERA and 7.30 era’s the previous two years to a 7.02 with us. He could still throw 100 – all the way to the back stop. Ron Davis was going to be the arm that held the BP together after we stole him from the Yankees. I remember his last year when he accumulated a -2.1 WAR – 1985. We then traded him for another live arm – George Frazier who came in and gave us a 4.98 era. And a l.574 WHIP. Live arms are not rare – good arms are. Remember when we got Alex Meyer? We tried him in 2015 and got a 16.88 era then tried again when he was 26 and got a 12.27 era. So based on a lot of years of experience watching live arms come and go the recent group of live arms does not give me hope. Emilio Pagan had a – 0.4 WAR last year. Alex Colome had a -0.7 WAR the year before. Now we have Jorge who has had ½ of one year of good results. His second half a year was with the TWINS and he had a -0.1 WAR for that time. I would like to say that the last half was the exception, but it wasn’t. He had 3.0 WAR for the first half – that is the exception. WAR is cumulative so consider that first half WAR and realize that he has a WAR for his career of 0.5. Take out the one exceptional career half year and he is a negative. I expect a return to the norm, not to the exception. He gets garbage time if I had him in the BP.

OPENING STATEMENT: Watching the Twins BP for the last few years has been painful. After years of Nathan, Aquilera, Worthington, Reardon, Guardado, Rogers, and Perkins come in and deliver in the clutch we have shifted to picking up veterans who the opposing clubs were happy to see go. We went with Alex Colome who had just had the fewest inning pitched since his rookie year. Sure, we could turn things around we then give him more innings than he had pitched since 2015. It did not work, he cost us too many wins in the first half of the season to allow us to have a good year. Did we learn? No. We next go for Emilio Pagan because he has a live arm and we can fix him. Did we? No. Twins fans had to have a bottle of Ibuprofen on hand for the headaches he gave them, and a bottle of whisky to numb the psychic damage. Stats could not cover the frustration – walks, key runs, runners on base, HRs allowed. WAR of -0.4 which was rescued by late season low wattage innings. ERA+ 87. HRs per nine – 1.7 which was way down from the year before – I guess we did fix something. On BR they have a stat called RE24 which means given runners on base on many runs did the pitcher save – how good was he at stopping a potential rally? Zero is average and anything above 0 is better than average. The score for Pagan was -4.2. The FO saw the error of their ways and went for a trade to get Jorge Lopez because he actually had a great first half. Unfortunately, he did not have a great second half. Let’s look at the two halves of the season. Stat Orioles Twins FIP 2.99 4.35 WHIP 0.972 1.635 SO/W 3.18 1.29 HITS/9 5.6 9.1 ERA 1.68 4.37 Sometimes midnight comes early and turns the player back to a pumpkin. Was this just change of scenery or was this reality coming back to bite the Twins. Why did we think the first half was going to be the future? His first half stats were way better than anything he had shown in the past six years. His seven-year ERA is 5. 45. His WAR was 1.9 with the Orioles. After the second half with the Twins it was 1.8. and his WAR in those six years was positive only once 0.1. Why did we think he was the answer? Now the question is – do we count on him for meaningful appearances in 2023? My answer is no. History has shown us his true performance rate and we saw it for ourselves as he reverted to the norm. Let’s put the effort into Duran, Alcala, Thielbar, Jax and find another live arm. Sure we can still keep Lopez, but he fills non crucial innings in my BP (and don’t even ask about Pagan).

As we conclude this debate, I wanted to draw attention to what has clearly become a debate about outcomes and expectations. A lot of Sabermetrics is identifying how many runs certain characteristics are expected to generate (BB%, OPS%, wOBA%) where counting stats are used to show how many runs you did generate (R, RBI). Counting stats have no predictive value but they are highly effective in evaluating performance. My opponent has attempted to obfuscate the issue by starting out and only comparing Mauer to other catchers. The argument is Mauer vs Puckett, not Mauer vs His Peers and Puckett vs His Peers. My opponent wanted to discount the actual runs produced by Puckett and focus on OPS in specific situations. Again, Mauer won the process awards for OPS with RISP, Runners on, and High Leverage but Puckett won the outcome award of actual RBI in those 3 use cases. My opponent attempted to play up Mauer’s time at catcher and state how it was more valuable than Puckett’s time at CF. His is right that Catcher is more valuable, but we found he didn’t even spend 50% of career there. Below are charts showing number of games Puckett and Mauer played with the Fangraphs 162 game run value. You will see that accounting for their entire careers that Puckett had a slight advantage as he played so many more games at a premium position where Mauer played more than half of his games a low value positions of 1B and DH. Puckett Mauer Finally, my opponent somehow wanted to enter a world of make believe, a world of pure imagination, and pretend that the only thing we can compare about the post season is the first 10 games both played. Taking away the absurdity of the fact we are ignoring Game 6, I still showed that while both slumped in their first 10 games, even with a roughly equal OPS number Puckett was able to produce more value in number of RBI and XBH. It is almost impossible to compare one of the great playoff performers in MLB history to a guy who the New York papers referred to as an “EZ Pass” in the playoffs though. Ask any Twins fan who can remember both runs about if they would prefer to keep 1984-1996 of 2004-2018 and you will see as overwhelming of a vote total as you are likely to ever see. The choice is clear, Mauer was good but Puckett was better.

As my debate with the honorable “H2H Debater B” goes on I find myself wondering if I am remembering baseball correctly at all. Their first rebuttal point was to say that Mauer and Puckett had virtually identical numbers of plate appearances but Mauer was able to produce more WAR in that amount and I was wondering, is the point of baseball to be the most efficient in producing WAR or was it to have successful seasons that resulted in playoff runs and championships. If it is the former, then Mauer is a better player but I think the vast majority of the readers would agree with me that having the better total season is more important and is what contributes to playoff and championship success. The fact Puckett was able to stay on the field for 25 more games a season which allowed for him to get as much done in 12 seasons as it took Mauer 15 is why Puckett is more valuable. In addition to wanting look at PA instead of seasons my opponent also wants to disregard the outcome of having runners on and only look at the process by measuring OPS with RISP. If we look back at my opening statement you will see that Mauer clearly favored the Walking part of OPS while Puckett favored action. Taking the same stats from above I take away the predictive stat of OPS and use the outcome stat of RBI and we find a totally different leader: Runners in Scoring Position Mauer: 756 RBI in 2,107 opportunities Puckett: 842 RBI in 2,146 opportunities Men on Base Mauer: 829 RBI in 3,548 opportunities Puckett: 974 RBI in 3,567 opportunities Runners in Scoring Position, Two Outs Mauer: 278 RBI in 849 opportunities Puckett: 267 RBI in 814 opportunities I have always thought that RISP with 2 Outs is an odd stat as it could happen at any point in the game, even during a blowout. I think clutch is better defined by high leverage and the numbers for that are as follows: High Leverage Mauer: 338 RBI in 1506 opportunities Puckett: 397 RBI in 1400 opportunities Do we want to elevate the guy that had a better process in these situations or do we want to reward the guy with the better outcome. I say the point of baseball is to score runs and win games, not to demonstrate the best Sabermetric process and Puckett shows the best outcome. My fine opponents’ comments on the playoffs start out with an immediate misquote. I know classic Michael Scott from the Office when I see and have no idea who this “Great One” is you are referring to but he sure as hell didn’t make that quote: Putting that aside, if you want to willingly forget about some of the greatest playoff moments in the history of baseball and just concentrate on the first 10 games, Mauer had 1 XBH (2B) and 1 RBI in those games. Puckett, even when struggling a bit, had 3 XBH hits (2B, 3B, HR) and 4 RBI. Great players can still make a difference while slumping and Puckett showed that while struggling he could still impact the game while Mauer was pulling his best Moonlight Graham impression and trying to make you remember if he was actually ever there. I also would point out that Mauer had Cy Young winners and MVPs on his teams so its not like he was pulling an Ernie Banks here. I am happy to say that regardless of the outcome of this debate, my opponent and I agree on one thing, this guy deserves a statue.

As I read through my opponents opening statement, I found myself agreeing with much of it. “Joe Mauer was underappreciated and unfairly attacked by fans and media.” “Joe Mauer was an exceptional athlete, especially at the catcher position. Look at these 3 batting titles.” “Joe Mauer was exceptional before the concussion.” I was agreeing so much that I feared I was losing the debate, so I went back and looked at what the actual debate was and found that the points I agreed with had nothing to do with the debate we are engaging in of "Who was the better player: Kirby Puckett or Joe Mauer?" so let’s look at them in more depth. 1. “Joe Mauer was underappreciated and unfairly attacked by fans and media.” It is an undeniable fact that Mauer took a lot of abuse. Souhan would put an article out every 3 months about swinging more and harder or finding some other way to diminish Mauer. Fans seemed to pull back from him, especially after he failed to ever duplicate his 2009 breakout season. There is even a hilarious Boring Joe Mauer account that seems to capture his milk toast nature. This always seemed unfair considering how much Puckett was embraced by fans and media but beyond his difference in personality with Puckett there is that fact that Puckett won 2 world series with the Twins and had a top 10 impactful game in the history of baseball in game 6 while Mauer’s claim to fame in the postseason is almost getting a double against the Yankees. Regardless, fan and media appreciation don’t impact who the better player was. 2. “Joe Mauer was an exceptional athlete, especially at the catcher position. Look at these 3 batting titles.” Joe was a great catcher; I think all Twins fans remember him in his catchers gear with the old school mask. We all teared up a bit when he came out in his equipment for his last day to say goodbye to the fans. Despite all these strong memories, Joe didn’t play catcher as frequently as we think. He only played 897 of his career 1858 games (48%) at catcher while spreading the rest around 1B and DH with a few PH thrown in for good measure. For comparison, Puckett played more of his career in CF with 1432 of his career 1783 games (80%) played in his premium position. Not only did Puckett play more games per season as I described in my opening statement, he more frequently played his premium position as well. Also, as shown in my previous post, even though Puckett had nowhere near the average or number of batting titles, he certainly had more hits per season which assists in run creation. 3. “Joe Mauer was exceptional before the concussion.” There is no doubt that Joe had a career cut short by injury. Concussions negatively impacted his career and he was not the same after his injury. That said, injuries to the head and body are part of the game when you are a catcher. That is why the Astros moved Biggio out of the catcher position when they found he had some skill and started playing him at 2B to extend his career. I don’t know if the blame falls to Mauer or to the Twins but keeping his talent behind the plate decreased both the length and quality of his career. Another factor of comparison here is that Mauer lied to the Twins about his vision sensitivity issues after his concussion for 2 years before admitting to sensitivity on the Spring of 2016. “It could be a lot of things,” Mauer continued. “There are so many different symptoms. For me it was lighting, I couldn’t really pick up the ball. It was blurry at times. Where I am here versus last year at this time, I can tell my workouts are better.” When he was asked about keeping his coaches up to date with this info he stated “Mauer was asked whether he shared his pitch-tracking concerns with hitting coach Tom Brunansky, manager Paul Molitor or the front office as he tried playing through them. “You know, I probably haven’t done that great of a job of doing that,” he said. “There’s days where it’s been really difficult and those when it hasn’t been very difficult. It just hasn’t been very consistent.” According to reporting from the Pioneer Press “Both Twins general manager Terry Ryan and manager Paul Molitor said they were never informed last season about any vision issues for Mauer.” In comparison, when Puckett had a vision issue he immediately informed Twins doctors and management and went through a cooperative analysis of the situation. Undoubtedly, Puckett handled this situation better. Conclusion When we get away from the fans and media, the success at catcher, and the what-ifs about the concussion, Puckett brought more runs to the table every season while playing his premium position more frequently and brought 2 world series to Minnesota. Mauer was good, Puckett was better. Play it out Puck....

As we start this great Lincoln-Douglas style debate on the careers of Kirby Puckett and Joe Mauer I wanted to begin with an obvious forward. Kirby Puckett was a failed human being. He abused and threatened multiple women including his wife, a mistress, and random folks in restaurants. If this were a discussion on who the better person was then I would forfeit right now as Joe Mauer would unquestionably win that award. For those wanting to read more, SI wrote an excellent story on this topic in 2003. With this out of the way I would like to start the debate. 1. WAR In this day and age of advanced statistics almost all HOF or career comparison discussions start with WAR. Fangraphs has Joe Mauer having the advantage here with 52.5 to Puckett’s 44.9. This doesn’t tell the whole story though as Mauer took 15 seasons to get his number while Puckett was able to achieve his in 12. When looking at it as WAR per Season Puckett took the lead with 3.74 versus Mauer’s 3.5. WAR is a pretty dry and dusty way to look at this so let’s look at what actually wins games. 2. Runs The actual measurements of runs gets a bad rap these days. Blogs and podcasts are put out about how RBI are meaningless counting statistics that are just side effects of how your teammates are doing around you. I don’t think they deserve the importance that was placed on them until the early 2000’s but they are not meaningless. If you look at Puckett and Mauer you will see that Puckett averaged 90 RBI and 89 Runs a season to Mauer’s 62 RBI and 68 Runs a season. That is a big disparity but a person could still look at this and say this is just luck of the draw and a reflection of teammates but there are actual stats that back up why Puckett generated more runs. 3. Hits Throughout their careers Mauer and Puckett were known for the opposite things. Mauer gained a reputation as someone who never swung at the first pitch and was always happy to take a walk. Puckett was instead known as a guy who was never afraid to swing at anything, be it in the zone or out. This resulted in quite the disparity in hit count as Puckett averaged 192 hits a season while Mauer averaged only 142. These 50 hits are significant in run creation because they included 4-5 HR which are always impactful in RBI/Run production. They included a number of other XBH which are important because a runner on first can be in scoring position if you hit a double, so it offered non-optimal RBI opportunities. Finally, hits generate errors and confusion. Puckett likely took second on several singles in those 50 hits because of errors or throwing decisions. I have never seen Mauer take second after a patient AB turned into a walk. These hits are a huge reason that Puckett generated far more runs that Mauer per season but there is another reason that contributed. 4. Durability In these modern times it is popular to only look at the % stats. What is a person’s BB%, K%, OBP%, SLG%, etc… These are extremely helpful, but they don’t tell a complete story when looking at player who play dramatically different amounts of games. Mauer and Puckett have similar career stats in many of these major types of stats like OPS (Puckett .837 / Mauer .827) and wOBA (Puckett .366 / Mauer /358) but when looking at the counting stat of games played Puckett averaged 25 more games played per season (149) when compared to Mauer and his 124 games per season. Some of you might be thinking that obviously he played fewer games, he was a catcher. Fortunately, the smart folks at Fangraphs thought of this as well and gave positional adjustments allowing for some positions to be allocated more runs created just because creating runs from that position is harder than others. The current adjustments for CF are 2.5 runs a season and C is 12.5 runs a season. This means in a full season Mauer is spotted 10 runs. As we look back, Puckett averaged 28 more RBI and 21 more Runs a season which is still more than Mauer, even with positional ranking brought into play. I am a bit ashamed to say that I have buried the lead in the argument though. 5. Playoff Success If you aren’t having Jack Buck saying, "and we'll see you tomorrow night!" going through your head right now I’m not sure if you are on the right site ?. Puckett has unquestionably had the greater postseason success. Puckett has 2 World Series rings and Mauer never won a playoff game. Puckett is in almost all of the top 10 MLB playoff moment lists on the internet while the main think Joe is known for is being part of the longest playoff losing streak in MLB history. Puckett elevated his game in the postseason taking his career OPS of .837 and increasing it 60 points to .897. Mauer let the postseason pass him by with a massive drop of 186 points from a career OPS of .827 to a playoff OPS of .641. Puckett, when confronted with a potential series ending game 6, famously said "Jump on my back, I’m going to carry us tonight.”. After that, he has 3 hits, a sac fly, and one of those hits is a game winning home run. I attempted in vain to find similar quotes or examples of Mauer leading in the playoffs and I couldn’t. Conclusion In short, Puckett had more WAR per season, generated more runs in any given season due to more hits and games played, and was so much better in the playoffs that it is embarrassing to compare. Joe Mauer was very good at baseball; Kirby Puckett was better.