Dodger Goose Eggs
If you want to know just how dominant Kenley Jansen was last year, the best place to look might be the new-fangled relief stat created by Nate Silver called Goose Eggs. We looked at Goose Eggs last April when Nate first wrote about it on fivethirtyeight. I immediately fell in love with the stat, and if you missed the original post on Goose Eggs I suggest you follow the link for a primer on how this stat works.
With the season in the books, I finally decided to take a look at how the Dodgers bullpen did in 2017 and for some context added the top 20 relief pitchers as defined by gwar which is goose egg WAR.
It should not surprise anyone that Kenley Jansen owns this stat for the Dodgers. No Dodger had more than even 1/2 a gWAR in 2017. Basically, you could add up all the gWAR for the Dodger bullpen and it would not come close to what Kenley Jansen did. Kenley Jansen had 6.304 gWAR, the rest of the bullpen combined was -5.146. That is not a typo. Goose eggs were not as impressed with Brandon Morrow as the rest of us.
| name | gwar | year | goose_eggs | broken_eggs |
| Kenley Jansen | 6.304 | 2017 | 44 | 0 |
| Tony Cingrani | 0.430 | 2017 | 3 | 0 |
| Alex Wood | 0.430 | 2017 | 3 | 0 |
| Brock Stewart | 0.287 | 2017 | 2 | 0 |
| Brandon Morrow | 0.212 | 2017 | 12 | 4 |
| Grant Dayton | -0.233 | 2017 | 1 | 1 |
| Josh Ravin | -0.233 | 2017 | 1 | 1 |
| Tony Watson | -0.324 | 2017 | 3 | 2 |
| Chris Hatcher | -0.610 | 2017 | 1 | 2 |
| Pedro Baez | -0.631 | 2017 | 14 | 7 |
| Luis Avilan | -0.647 | 2017 | 6 | 4 |
| Sergio Romo | -0.844 | 2017 | 2 | 3 |
| Josh Fields | -1.024 | 2017 | 6 | 5 |
| Ross Stripling | -1.958 | 2017 | 10 | 9 |
OK, we need some context here. So here is every relief pitcher who had a gWAR over 2.0.
| name | gwar | year | team | goose_eggs | broken_eggs |
| Kenley Jansen | 6.304032 | 2017 | LAD | 44 | 0 |
| Corey Knebel | 3.920239 | 2017 | MIL | 47 | 8 |
| Felipe Rivero | 3.883754 | 2017 | PIT | 37 | 4 |
| Raisel Iglesias | 3.808143 | 2017 | CIN | 31 | 2 |
| Fernando Rodney | 3.598221 | 2017 | ARI | 33 | 4 |
| Edwin Diaz | 3.454704 | 2017 | SEA | 40 | 7 |
| Alex Colome | 3.425753 | 2017 | TB | 38 | 6 |
| Craig Kimbrel | 3.381649 | 2017 | BOS | 31 | 4 |
| Andrew Miller | 3.329791 | 2017 | CLE | 33 | 5 |
| Archie Bradley | 3.291291 | 2017 | ARI | 31 | 4 |
| Wade Davis | 3.26412 | 2017 | CHC | 30 | 3 |
| Brad Hand | 3.151999 | 2017 | SD | 38 | 6 |
| Ryan Tepera | 2.829704 | 2017 | TOR | 25 | 3 |
| Alex Claudio | 2.666934 | 2017 | TEX | 26 | 4 |
| Nick Vincent | 2.381388 | 2017 | SEA | 28 | 5 |
| Mike Dunn | 2.356582 | 2017 | COL | 15 | 0 |
| Tommy Hunter | 2.235616 | 2017 | TB | 30 | 6 |
| Pat Neshek | 2.216028 | 2017 | PHI | 18 | 1 |
| Joe Smith | 2.145178 | 2017 | TOR | 16 | 1 |
| Greg Holland | 2.06448 | 2017 | COL | 27 | 6 |
| Zach Britton | 2.008142 | 2017 | BAL | 18 | 2 |
Yeah, Kenley Jansen owns the gWAR. I also have to tip my hat to Fernando Rodney who shocked me all year.
Now you know why I wanted the Dodgers to add a hand last summer.
- Posted in: Goose-Eggs ♦ Uncategorized
- Tagged: Kenley Jansen
Dodgers, Yesterday and Today 
Better modify the entrance inning to the 6th inning instead of 7th with the way SP are gonna be deployed moving forward.
Notorious for having trouble making it into the 6th inning,
Chad Billingsley was ahead of his time.
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Or maybe even the fifth, eh?
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I love Goose Eggs, too. Sooooo much better than “Saves.” (I knew Saves was a lousy stat, but I didn’t realize just how bad until I read Keith Law’s “Smart Baseball.” Highly recommended, btw.)
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