Dicking around with LAD bWAR

Phil Gurnee ♦ August 9, 2017 ♦ Leave a comment

With so many Dodgers having great seasons, while premature I thought it would be fun to check in on the all-time bWAR infield leaders for the Dodgers and see how the new brood is matching up.

I used > 5 bWAR as the criteria

Since bWAR is an accumulation stat the more you play the more you will add to your bWAR.  To add a little color to the table I created a column that divides the bWAR by the number of plate appearances.

HOF Mike Piazza clocked in with a WAR/PA of over .010. As did current Dodgers Cory Seager and Justin Turner.  The only other Dodgers to have a WAR/PA over .007 were Hanley Ramirez at .0085 and Ron Cey at .0077. To put that in perspective a WAR/PA of over .010 is a historical rate.  Only four NL HOF players have a .010 rate in baseball since 1958. Mike Piazza as a Dodger is .01057 but overall he drops to .07999. The longer you play the game the harder it is to keep that rate above .010.

The lowest WAR/PA Dodger infielder with at least 5 bWAR is Eric Karros at 0.001721 and it is not even close.

They consider catchers part of the infield so we will start with the catchers.

Piazza had the most accumulated bWAR and the highest WAR/PA by far.  This plays out as expected, with Grandal now on the list.  The Dodgers have had a long history of good catchers starting with John Roseboro and ending with Grandal. Rarely has the team had an ineffective catcher for any length of time.

At 1st base:

Garv leads in both categories with Wes and Adrian giving him a run for WAR/PA.  Yeah, James Loney was bad, but Eric Karros was worse.

At 2nd Base:

Davey Lopes takes both categories. Sax and Kent must have been punished for defense. 1969 ROY Ted Sizemore does surprisingly well. Mark Ellis had an excellent 944 plate appearances as a 2nd baseman.

At ShortStop:

Maury Wills barely nosed out Bill Russell in bWAR but with 1300 less PA he easily wins the bWAR/PA category.  At catcher, 1st, and 2nd base the top bWAR player was also the top bWAR/PA player but not at SS.  The two top bWAR earners are the two worst WAR/PA performers.  Seager is playing at a HOF rate but Hanley Ramirez did some great offensive work for the Dodgers at SS during his stay here. You could have made an argument that Rafael Furcal was the best LAD SS when he finished his LAD career but not anymore.

At 3rd base:

Kind of loaded. You have Ron Cey and future HOF Adrian Beltre both being crushed by Justin Turner on the WAR/PA category.  In only 1745 PA Justin Turner can make a real claim about being the best LAD 3rd baseman ever.