Mitchell Report players sorted by career WAR
In a game thread earlier this month, someone happened to mention former Oakland Athletic Adam Piatt. In the fascinating conversation that ensued, we saw not only two limericks but also the speculation that Piatt perhaps had the least successful career of any player mentioned in the Mitchell Report, or at least the fewest games played.
When I counter-speculated that there were probably several who played fewer games, Stormtown said she'd like to see a list by WAR. I didn't have time to compile it at the time. Now I do:
MLB Players Mentioned in the Mitchell Report, sorted by career WAR
PLAYER YEARS GAMES WAR Bonds, Barry 1986-2007 2,986 169.7 Clemens, Roger 1984-2007 709 145.5 P Brown, Kevin 1986-2005 486 77.2 P Pettitte, Andy 1995-2010 489 66.9 P Sheffield, Gary 1988-2009 2,576 65.8 Giambi, Jason 1995-2011 2,039 54.3 Williams, Matt 1987-2003 1,866 47.4 Canseco, Jose 1985-2001 1,887 45.9 Tejada, Miguel 1997-2011 2,027 44.0 Knoblauch, Chuck 1991-2002 1,632 42.6 Justice, David 1989-2002 1,610 42.4 Dykstra, Lenny 1985-1996 1,278 41.4 Joyner, Wally 1986-2001 2,033 40.4 Gonzalez, Juan 1989-2005 1,689 38.8 Glaus, Troy 1998-2010 1,537 36.0 Vaughn, Mo 1991-2003 1,512 33.7 Santiago, Benito 1986-2005 1,978 31.6 Roberts, Brian 2001-2011 1,194 28.7 Neagle, Denny 1991-2003 392 27.3 P White, Rondell 1993-2007 1,474 26.1 Velarde, Randy 1987-2002 1,273 24.2 Lo Duca, Paul 1998-2008 1,082 21.9 Valdez, Ismael 1994-2005 325 19.5 P Byrd, Paul 1995-2009 345 18.2 P Bell, David 1995-2006 1,403 16.1 Hundley, Todd 1990-2003 1,225 15.7 Morris, Hal 1988-2000 1,246 15.6 Viña, Fernando 1993-2004 1,148 14.9 Segui, David 1990-2004 1,456 13.8 Stanton, Mike 1989-2007 1,178 13.7 P Matthews Jr, Gary 1999-2010 1,281 13.4 Zaun, Gregg 1995-2010 1,232 13.2 Hairston Jr, Jerry 1998-2011 1,148 12.8 Gagne, Eric 1999-2008 402 12.4 P Hill, Glenallen 1989-2001 1,162 12.0 Lansing, Mike 1993-2001 1,110 11.6 Holmes, Darren 1990-2003 557 10.2 P Young, Kevin 1992-2003 1,205 9.8 Benard, Marvin 1995-2003 891 9.7 Woodard, Steve 1997-2003 162 9.3 P Santangelo, FP 1995-2001 665 8.6 Mercker, Kent 1989-2008 692 8.3 P Cust, Jack 2001-2011 603 8.2 Pratt, Todd 1992-2006 662 8.0 Grimsley, Jason 1989-2006 552 7.5 P Ankiel, Rick 1999-2011 418 7.2 P* Guillen, Jose 1997-2010 1,650 7.2 Bones, Ricky 1991-2001 375 7.1 P Schoeneweis, Scott 1999-2010 577 6.8 P Gibbons, Jay 2001-2010 816 6.1 Donnelly, Brendan 2002-2010 387 5.5 P Villone, Ron 1995-2009 717 5.0 P Parque, Jim 1998-2003 103 4.9 P Rios, Armando 1998-2003 419 4.9 Carreon, Mark 1987-1996 738 4.8 Franklin, Ryan 1999-2011 511 4.6 P Rocker, John 1998-2003 280 4.1 P Herges, Matt 1999-2009 567 3.6 P Christiansen, Jason 1995-2005 528 3.5 P Logan, Nook 2004-2007 321 3.0 Giambi, Jeremy 1998-2003 510 2.8 Estalella, Bobby 1996-2004 310 2.6 Franco, Matt 1995-2003 661 2.0 Crawford, Paxton 2000-2001 15 1.4 P Donnels, Chris 1991-2002 450 1.4 Bigbie, Larry 2001-2006 392 1.1 Manzanillo, Josias 1991-2004 267 0.9 P Piatt, Adam 2000-2003 212 0.6 Cabrera, Alex 2000-2000 31 0.5 Williams, Todd 1995-2007 227 0.4 P Clark, Howie 2002-2008 134 0.4 Naulty, Dan 1996-1999 130 0.3 P Bell, Mike 2000-2000 19 0.3 Miadich, Bart 2001-2003 12 0.0 P McKay, Cody 2002-2004 37 -0.1 Riggs, Adam 1997-2004 61 -0.1 Judd, Mike 1997-2001 28 -0.3 P Hiatt, Phil 1993-2001 170 -0.9 Williams, Jeff 1999-2002 37 -0.9 P Bennett, Gary 1995-2008 587 -1.0 Randolph, Stephen 2003-2007 109 -1.2 P Stone, Ricky 2001-2007 220 -1.3 P Allen, Chad 1999-2005 267 -1.8 Laker, Tim 1992-2006 282 -2.1 Alexander, Manny 1992-2007 594 -2.4
WAR and all other figures come from Fangraphs. They are only as accurate as my transcription, for which I make no promises.
The years are the first and last in which a player appeared in at least one major-league game. The next number is the number of major-league games the player appeared in.
Both career WAR and number of games are calculated through the end of the 2010 season only, so for the seven players still active in the big leagues in 2011 -- and any others who may find their way back, I suppose -- it is not the final answer. (Of those seven, only two have a positive WAR for 2011 so far....)
I noted which players are pitchers, since it is immediately relevant to any comparison of number of games player. Whether a player is a starter or reliever would also be relevant, but I didn't note that, partly since many of them did some of each.
I'm pretty sure that Rick Ankiel's WAR figure includes both his pitching and his hitting. [Edit: This was wrong in the original post; it is fixed now.] The number of games I think is only games in which he hit, in which case it is short by however many games he pitched in but didn't hit.
Although it doesn't show in the sort displayed, 14 players on the list played in fewer games than Adam Piatt did, six of whom are hitters. Seventeen players had a lower career WAR than Piatt, including 11 who had negative career WAR.
For the least significant player mentioned in the Mitchell Report, I nominate Bart Miadich, a reliever who pitched 10 innings in 11 appearances with the Angels in 2001 and two more innings in a single appearance in 2003, accumulating a career WAR of zero.
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Ankiel has 3.6 career WAR. It surprises me it's that low
I vibrated with joy that join A's. -- Kim Seong-min
Looking it up, it appears that he has 3.7 as a position player and 3.6 as a pitcher for 7.3 total
I vibrated with joy that join A's. -- Kim Seong-min
by WaddellCanseco on Apr 24, 2011 5:54 AM PDT up reply actions
I was having trouble making sense of Ankiel's FanGraphs pages.
I thought maybe it was the same 3.6 on each page. (Note that 0.1 as a position player is from 2011.)
If there is consensus here that it really is 7.2 total, I’ll edit.
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; / Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:— / We murder to dissect.
Yeah, OK.
Looking at the year-by-year I see they’re separate. I’ll edit some time this afternoon after the game.
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; / Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:— / We murder to dissect.
(or during) Fixed now.
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; / Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:— / We murder to dissect.
I admit I may be reading this incorrectly, but this seems to negate the claims that steriods have an unfair affect on the average player.
The average MLB career is about 5.6 years, so if we make the assumption that it takes a yearly WAR of 2 to make a player a starter, we end up with 36 players over the minimum “starter” WAR. But there is a whopping 49 who, even with the advantage of steriod use, failed to rank as starter quality.
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That must mean they were REALLY bad at baseball at the highest level
A lot are. Doesn’t mean steroids don’t give people unfair advantages over others in terms of strength, recovery time, etc.
What they never did was make someone significantly better at playing baseball. They’d never turn me into a home run hitter, able to throw in the high 90s or get 200 hits. I never had that ability in the first place.
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But that is what I'm saying,
It doesn’t seem to change the quality of player. Most seem to think that the taking of steriods changes a player into some sort of HOFer. This shows that this isn’t true. I would, however, like to see a contemporary list of non-users, to see if there are other influences.
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That's probably because the people who think steroids turn people into freaks destined for the HOF are dumb
It doesn’t excuse the steroid use in my eyes, though I’m sure there were effects that made good and great players somewhat better overall, whether it added a few feet or MPH to a ball hit or pitched, helped them recover faster from fatigue, etc.
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I. also, would in no way condone it's use.
I think that they have legitimate medical uses, but that is where it should end. The original reason they were prescribed for, say Mac, was to help in injury recovery. That was fine, but his later abuse is unconscionable. The way they affected the business was just as wrong. I agree with Dale Murphy and Wil Clark, in that those that used, lessened the market value of those that didn’t.
Life insurance s..cks. I'm now worth more dead than alive.
Is there evidence McGwire had a prescription?
I must have forgotten that.
I’ve never understood that Andy Pettite defense. Every player gets injured, but if not every player is taking steroids then the ones who are have an unfair advantage.
Mac didn't say it, but the Dr that prescribed it to him did.
She said that given the extent of his foot injury, she did so to allow him to heal as a human, not to improve his career. She said that she would do so again, under the same circumstances, and conditions.
Life insurance s..cks. I'm now worth more dead than alive.
And to be fair, she was refering to the "pre-steriod" type of HGH, which was used at the time.
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Tu-Tu Late
You need to remember though that there is a sampling error. These are the users that got caught. So presumably one of these guys lower down on the list, competed agianst many others who got an added benefit too. So instead of ebing in the MLB they may have been in AAA
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That's true, but if you believe some, such as Cust, they shouldn't even be on the list.
Their advantage didn’t make them better in the long run though. Use may have gotten them the chance, but so did the personal relationship of our manager. This doesn’t make him a good manager. We are also taking about a 58% failure rate, as opposed to 42% success. Wouldn’t that 16% indicate it is beyond statistical error? Within our data base, that is.
Life insurance s..cks. I'm now worth more dead than alive.
Those who used in the minors, and never made it to the show were failures as well.
If we include them, the failure rate is much higher. Plus, if the use is an advantage, the success rate should be closer to 75%, correct?
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More to the point,
if injury-prone players get chemical help to get back on the field, they have an unfair advantage over less injury-prone players (who may be less injury-prone because of genetic luck, but perhaps also because they conditioned themselves better) who do not need to resort to the stuff.
Saying “I only took it because I was injured” is non-responsive.
"We don't want our people to be preoccupied with seminude, crazy men jumping up and down who are chasing an inflated object," said Sheik Mohamed Osman Arus, head of operations for the Hizbul Islam insurgent group.
I was only stating my opinion as to its legitimate use
I am not saying it isn’t an advantage to heal quicker.
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every time i saw that i wanted to find andy and shake the sh!t out of him
how does he not comprehend that healing faster than others is an advantage? drives me nuts.
BK: This guy is on fire, he is really smokin'.
KenKo: Oh yeah, Bill? What's he smokin'?
There is a difference, however, between the Dr. injecting as part of a medical treatment, and Andy injecting himself witht he excuse of healing.
For example( and yes this is EXTREME), couldn’t the Dr putting Coco’s finger in a splint be considered an unfair advantage? Shouldn’t he have to heal on his own? As I said, the Dr’s use, and control, intended to keep Mac from becoming a cripple for life, is much different than Mac injecting himself. One is a legitimate medical procedure, while the other is blatant cheating. And, yes, if the Dr is crooked, that would be cheating as well.
Life insurance s..cks. I'm now worth more dead than alive.
a splint is way, way different than HGH injections
1) it actually prevents re-injury
2) putting splints on when healthy give no actual benefit.
3) There is not going to be a rash of high school kids splinting themselves to get gaudy numbers and a contract.
4) even Christian Scientists use splints
Probably there is an example that’s more illustrative, like correcting your vision to better than 20/20
But I wasn't talking about steriods in the context of advantages.
I was talking about its PROPER use as a medical treatment in healing injuries. There IS a legitimate use of it, and that involves the Dr/patient discussing it’s side-effects.
In this context, there is no difference between steriods and any other medical treatment.
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I would guess that the AAAA player
Had the most to gain from steroid use. Any marginal increase has hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential benefit.
Well, number of dollars-wise, the above average almost-star players had the most to gain from steroids.
The Superstar Effect ensures them millions of extra dollars if they can go from being simply good to one of the best at their position.
Perhaps, but not when you account for the diminishing marginal utility of money...
"We don't want our people to be preoccupied with seminude, crazy men jumping up and down who are chasing an inflated object," said Sheik Mohamed Osman Arus, head of operations for the Hizbul Islam insurgent group.
Seriously,
I can see that in a logical world, money should surely have a diminishing marginal utility. And yet, judging from the behavior of those people who make a lot of it, they sure do seem to get equal utility out of all of it.
I think money’s marginal utility curve varies from person to person. Those for whom it does not diminish as much are far more likely to be super-ambitious in a field with high money-earning potential.
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; / Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:— / We murder to dissect.
That's why I specified number of dollars
Although, I would be hard-pressed to claim one way or the other that the difference in utility between the rise from, say, $70,000 to $414,500 is greater than the rise from, say, $6 million to $20 million. Without knowing an individual’s marginal utility curve, or even just the average professional baseball player’s, it’s all just a guessing a game.
by UrgentMirth on Apr 28, 2011 10:06 AM PDT up reply actions
We can't say that the Mitchell report paints the full picture of PED use in baseball
Most of their info came from two investigations (BALCO and Radomski), there has to have been more. But yeah, one of my motives for bringing up the Mitchell Report when the scrubs who were in it are mentioned is that it makes me crazy that the media has pushed this story that the average steroid user is a superstar.
It's not that the average steroid user is a superstar. It's that the average superstar has a high
chance of being a steroid user.
I vibrated with joy that join A's. -- Kim Seong-min
by WaddellCanseco on Apr 24, 2011 9:59 AM PDT up reply actions
The most surprising thing to me
is that FP Santangelo had a career WAR of over 8 and is about even with Cust in a similar number of games. I don’t remember him ever even getting regular playing time, let alone being Custian.
by Henduland in Texas on Apr 24, 2011 9:02 AM PDT reply actions
He was apparently an excellent defensive OF and average hitter
I vibrated with joy that join A's. -- Kim Seong-min
by WaddellCanseco on Apr 24, 2011 9:35 AM PDT up reply actions
He also had some value as a talk-show host
I like Cindi. A. She never pretends to know more than she does. B. She has unbridled enthusiasm for her "Hotties," and isn't afraid to show it. -IM4Oakgal
Manny Alexander
I hope you got your money back
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Isn't it interesting not a single Red Sox was named?
And how some of the investigators had Red Sox connections? Maybe no Red Sox used, neither Manny nor Ortiz….
Note: I’m not accusing Ortiz, and I’m at the point where I barely care anymore.
"Loyal? I'm the most loyal player money can buy." - Don Sutton
and Clemens
Thirteen players on the list played for the Red Sox at some time: Manny Alexander, José Canseco, Paxton Crawford, Roger Clemens, Chris Donnels, Eric Gagné, Jeremy Giambi, Mike Lansing, Josias Manzanillo, Kent Mercker, Mike Stanton, Mo Vaughn, and Steve Woodard.
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; / Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:— / We murder to dissect.
Good point
When I glanced at the list Clemens should’ve stuck it out for me, but I was looking at guys whose primary time was with Boston. But I guess that’d apply to Paxton Crawford too. haha
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Clemens played more for Boston than for any other team,
and it’s not even close. We tend to forget that now because he had such a very long career and we focus on the later part of it.
Clemens’ starts:
Red Sox: 382
Yankees: 174
Astros: 84
Blue Jays: 67
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; / Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:— / We murder to dissect.
Wow, that is a lot
I count 11 players that played for the A’s at some point. Did Cody McKay play for the A’s?
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List of players by team can be found
here.
The A’s have 12, including Cody McKay.
All 30 teams are represented. The teams with the fewest are the White Sox and Twins, with four each.
(Note that this is just players mentioned in the Mitchell Report, which is not necessarily a representative sample of players actually using steroids.)
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; / Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:— / We murder to dissect.
Lenny Dykstra looks very out of place
Was he juicing the same time as Jose? It would definitely explain his absurd 1993 season and subsequent fall off via injuries.
Jeremy Giambi got 2.8?
I'm beginning to believe that Bud Selig wants to die of old age before he has to make a decision regarding Oakland vs San Jose.
Still...
I'm beginning to believe that Bud Selig wants to die of old age before he has to make a decision regarding Oakland vs San Jose.
He had a good year in 2002.
400 wOBA. That was the year we traded him.
2.3 WAR that year over two teams. 1.1 WAR in 2001. Other years were slight negatives.
Given his other extra-legal activities in those years, doesn’t seem like a huge leap to speculate he was doing PEDs as well.
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; / Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:— / We murder to dissect.
So...
Based on WAR per game played, Steve Woodard is as valuable as Barry Bonds?
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BLOOM. For men.
If the eggs actually hatch I made more than a mistake, I made some scientifically impossible crime.
You can't really compare pitchers to hitters, though.
A better measure would be how many games a guy was on the roster, not how many he appeared in. A good hitter probably plays in ~95-99% of the games while he’s on the roster. A starting pitchers plays in ~20%.
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; / Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:— / We murder to dissect.
I'm not saying over a full season they're the same.
I’m just saying, based on the way WAR gets valued, that in an individual game played, they’re the same value. Sure Bonds plays more games and therefore will build up a whole hell of lot more value for a team, but if this is your measure of valuing players, either the measure is flawed or this is just one of the fun little hiccups where you go, “Huh” and move on. It’s very likely the latter, but still… interesting nonetheless.
Choosy Feebas choose Leopold Bloom nipples
Daring. Sensual. Invigorating. Squirrel.
BLOOM. For men.
If the eggs actually hatch I made more than a mistake, I made some scientifically impossible crime.
Yes, a starting pitcher provides more value per game played,
but he can’t play games as often, so it evens out.
If Steve Woodard, or any other decent starting pitcher, were capable of starting every day then yeah, he would be as valuable as Barry Bonds.
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; / Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:— / We murder to dissect.
This is totally fun and a worthwhile exercise
but its worth noting the linking in the mitchell report does not tell us when ad for how long these people used substances that the league now considers illegal.
Put a bird on it
Do you think they even bother testing any of the A's hitters anymore?
Chris Carter is the next Hank Aaron right?
by streetisclosedin08 on Apr 28, 2011 4:16 PM PDT reply actions

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