Your Royals All-Time Win Shares Update
Retro's pre-2007 ranking of the 100 Greatest Royals in his terrific retrospective series is based on Win Shares and "slight adjustments" according to subjective analysis. A quick review: Retro's #100, Jay Bell, has 21 Win Shares in his single season as a Royal, 1997. The most recent article in the series highlighted the career of Tom Gordon as a Royal; he's ranked #28 on the list with 72 Win Shares accumulated from 1988 through 1995.
Although I believe Retro has already mentioned that when he gets around to updating his list he'll probably use other methods, perhaps making use of historical WAR, I wanted to check what the numbers look like today if they were compiled with current data using the same methods. So I dug out my Win Shares Digital Update for the data through 2001 and went to billjamesonline.net for data for 2002-2010, in an effort to find out who among the recent Royals would be added, who has already surpassed Tom Gordon's total at #28 or has a chance to do so within a year or two, and also approximately where David DeJesus would be ranked now that he has moved on to greener and golder pastures. And of course to answer the burning question, what about the Royal Beloved of $36 Million, Jose Guillen?
But before we get to all that, here are Win Shares totals accumulated as Royals for a number of well-known Royals of the past as well as a selection of Royals of the last decade, for illustrative purposes. I don't mean to give away the as-yet-unrevealed ranking of Retro's top 27; I'm simply listing a handful of Royals who are obviously in there somewhere together with some who obviously aren't, to provide a gauge for what follows.
| George Brett | 432 |
| Frank White | 211 |
| Mike Sweeney | 149 |
| Paul Splittorff | 140 |
| John Mayberry | 134 |
| Carlos Beltran | 113 |
| Johnny Damon | 87 |
| Mark Teahen | 62 |
| Jermaine Dye | 48 |
| Angel Berroa | 45 |
| John Buck | 43 |
| Mark Grudzielanek | 35 |
| Esteban German | 24 |
| Joey Gathright | 17 |
| Miguel Olivo | 16 |
| Tony Pena, Jr | 15 |
| Neifi Perez | 9 |
| Yasuhiko Yabuta | 1 |
| Sidney Ponson | 0 |
As above, the lowest Win Shares total on Retro's Greatest 100 is Jay Bell's 21, which is also Jim Sundberg's total at #93. (Four other Royals not on Retro's list achieved that total: Lockhart, Slaught, B. Martinez, and B. Boone.) How many Royals not on the 2007 list have surpassed that total? I count 11: David DeJesus (at a total of 103), Xaq Greinke (74), Joakim Soria (57), Billy Butler (53), Mark Grudzielanek (35), Gil Meche (32), Alex Gordon (32), Alberto Callaspo (31), Mike Aviles (29), Jose Guillen (24), and Esteban German (24).
So do they bump the lowest 11 guys off the list? Not quite, because there are only 7 players on Retro's list with fewer than Guillen's and German's 24: Bell, Meacham, Quinn, Grimsley, Orta, McReynolds, and Sundberg. Five players are tied with Guillen and German at 24: Affeldt, Burgmeier, Hedlund, Wohlford, and Tom Goodwin, who was missing from Retro's list but is here rightfully restored to the ranking. (John Buck was still below that line through 2006 but finished his Royals career with 43. Also, although Rey Sanchez was ranked at #99, I think Retro might have overlooked his 2001 contribution; his total is 31.) So in all there are now 104 Royals with at least 24 Win Shares, 97 of whom have more.
You can call it a seven-way tie at #98, or you can apply your own "subjective analysis" to pick three of them to round out the Greatest 100. Retro's highest-ranked among those guys was Wohlford, formerly at #86, with Hedlund at #88, Burgmeier at #90 and Affeldt at #92. Goodwin might deserve special consideration for being named Player of the Year in 1996, while Guillen might deserve special examination for any number of reasons. Your call.
DeJesus crossed the "Flash Gordon line" in 2008, Greinke this year. At established levels of performance, barring career interruptions and changes in uniform, both Soria and Butler might also reach that level in 2011, surely in 2012 otherwise. A-Gor would have to dominate for two whole years to reach that mark.
Table of career totals of Win Shares for 2010 Royals, minimum 1, with current all-time ranking:
| 18. DeJesus | 103 |
| 27. Greinke | 74 |
| 42. Soria | 57 |
| 47. Butler | 53 |
| 71. Meche | 32 |
| 71. Gordon | 32 |
| 73. Callaspo | 31 |
| 80. Aviles | 29 |
| 98. Guillen | 24 |
| 110. Maier | 21 |
| 117. Bannister | 20 |
| 133. Davies | 17 |
| 138. Betancourt | 16 |
| 169. Tejeda | 13 |
| 169. Podsednik | 13 |
| 174. Betemit | 12 |
| 188. Bloomquist | 10 |
| 188. Chen | 10 |
| 199. Hochevar | 9 |
| 233. Farnsworth | 7 |
| 233. Kendall | 7 |
| 251. B. Pena | 6 |
| 299. Getz | 4 |
| 299. Blanco | 4 |
| 334. Hughes | 3 |
| 334. Colon | 3 |
| Cruz | 2 |
| Ka'aihue | 2 |
| Ankiel | 2 |
| Dyson | 2 |
| Texeira | 2 |
| Wood | 2 |
| Humber | 2 |
| Fields | 1 |
| Parrish | 1 |
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Comments
Thoughts on using Win Shares vs. WAR for the Top 100 List?
Moustakas should be in the Top 10 by next July.
Relive Royals History at royalsretro.blogspot.com
The differences will be:
1.Pitchers valued more
2. Defense will be counted more.
3. The player’s position will be counted (not used in WS)
Sweeney will drop, Frank will go up. Several pitchers will also make a jump.
- .-. ..- … – / – …. . / .—. .-. - .. . … …
by Jeff Zimmerman on Nov 18, 2010 2:04 PM EST up reply actions
Using B-R WAR
Sweeney drops down the list by 7 spots, and White also drops, although only by 2. Appier, Saberhagen, and Greinke jump way up. Splittorff drops down by 7, Quisenberry by 3.
In the top 10, Spilttorff and Sweeney are out, Saberhagen and Beltran are in.
Players not anywhere on Retro’s list who make the Greatest 100 by B-R WAR: Tony Solaita, Blake Stein, Bill (not Billy) Butler, Keith Lockhart, Jon Nunnally.
There's not an obvious way to insert a table into a FanPost that I can see
I think in the past I managed to do it by putting the table into Word (if you’re working from Excel, that should be easy enough), then using the “Paste from Word” button. But it’s been a while since I tried it. Formatting it is a pain from there, but hopefully it works for you.
Making watching baseball as fun as doing your taxes.
My Twitter feed.
Oh, the easier way
is just to take a screenshot of the table you want, edit it down to size in MS Paint or something, then insert it as a picture into your post.
Making watching baseball as fun as doing your taxes.
My Twitter feed.
by Matt Klaassen on Nov 18, 2010 3:05 PM EST up reply actions
I was able to export to HTML from Excel,
copy the entire element from the HTML document, and drop it into the HTML view in the FanPost editor. SBNation didn’t like some of the table attributes, but when I took them all out, I got what you can now see above.
I usually just use Excel
It works fine. Usually I have to do a little HTML editing to make it look nice, but it works pretty well
It looks fine to me!
Nice work on this, by the way. Rec’d
Making watching baseball as fun as doing your taxes.
My Twitter feed.
by Matt Klaassen on Nov 19, 2010 11:20 AM EST up reply actions
Late-breaking news
I found another Royal with 24 accumulated Win Shares — the 1996 Player of the Year, Tom Goodwin. So now you have 6 to choose from, if you want to pick one, for #100. And one of them has a highly coveted award on his mantelpiece.
About DeJesus
and where he sits on this list now that he has been traded away: I have him at #18, just above Seitzer and Tartabull. Everybody above him is either still active (Beltran, Sweeney), already in the Royals Hall of Fame, or will surely be inducted in due course (Appier).
Whether DeJesus has played long enough or well enough to join them is, I suspect, a matter of how well things go for the franchise over the next 10 years or so. If a lot of good stuff happens when Moore’s wave of prospects finally hits, I wouldn’t expect the Royals of the future would find enough to celebrate in DeJesus’ 7-year career to bring him out of retirement and throw him a bash. Although he was a solid player for them, unlike Seitzer and Tartabull he was never named on anybody’s MVP ballot or was a member of an All-Star team, and they were losers every year he was a regular. “A big Royal welcome for one of the best guys of the bad years.” Nope, I don’t see it.
But he was a good Royal. Good luck in Oakland, David, where they’re probably smart enough not to send you on very many more suicide missions to second base.
They'll just have Daric Barton bunt him over!
Making watching baseball as fun as doing your taxes.
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by Matt Klaassen on Nov 19, 2010 11:21 AM EST up reply actions
If He Doesn't
Get picked off.
I used to be an A's fan until they left town and got good.
by philofthenorth on Nov 19, 2010 1:03 PM EST up reply actions
Ranking by B-R WAR
DeJesus is at #14 overall, ahead of Royals Hall of Famers Montgomery, Splittorff, Mayberry, Patek, Gura, and Busby.
Not where I’d put him, but there he is.
Some corrections today
Mostly I overlooked Hedlund’s 24 — he’s in the big tie at that mark also. I’ll edit the main post this time to make things right.
Hochevar moves up to #199
having unjustly been ranked behind the two-header monster “G. Perry”, now properly resolved into Gaylord and Gerald.
There are also two B. Johnsons, two R. Johnsons, two R. Jones, two J. Wrights, two E. Rodriquez, and two R. Hernandez. There is only 1 G. Garber, however, even though the second season in which he had any Win Shares with the Royals was 14 years after the first.
So, I’m closing in on something I can send to Retro and he can use next year if he wants to.


















