Current players, turn-of-the-millenium stats

Over a year ago, we took a look at what players throughout history would look like if they played in 2000 Coors Field. A sample:

Barry Bonds, 2001

Stats with Giants: .328/.515/.863, 73 HR, 137 RBI
Projected stats with 2000 Rockies: .385/.576/1.012, 93 HR, 197 RBI

Every danged time I look at it, it’s like the moment in the dentist’s chair before I lose consciousness, caught between fear and giggle time.

You can find these under every player’s Baseball-Reference.com page, along with a link to an explanation of their methodology. Click on the “more stats” page in a player’s main page, and scroll to the bottom to play around.

The goal today, though, isn’t to examine how ridiculous Coors Field used to be before the humidor. Rather, the goal is to explore just what the run-scoring environment has been like over the last few years. Offense is down. You knew that, but the changes have been gradual. It’s not like the Mitchell Report came out and everyone was Buddy Biancalana the next day. It took years of steady biancalanization.

Now we’re here, in which “here” is defined as the lowest run-scoring environment since 1992. This new season might be a completely different environment, and scoring might be up again. So before that ruins our narrative, let’s explore what different players would have looked like in the run-scoring environment of a neutral 2000 ballpark.

All stats are by way of Baseball-Reference.com, again. At least one of us should take one for the team and name their baby after the site.

Let’s begin with the criminally underrated …

Based on that table, how much money do you think the combination of Petco Park and the low-scoring era has cost Venable? About $25 million? Over $50 million? A .300 hitter with 20+homers, speed, and above-average defense was still a rare creature in 2000, and he would have been highly valued.

Venable’s still that player, in an abstract way, yet he’s appreciated only by the wonks.

You might have been underwhelmed by the Rookie of the Year campaign, at least statistically. As in, you were pretty convinced that it was a weak crop of rookies. Don’t forget that, in addition to the low run-scoring environment, Myers plays half his game in Tropicana Field, which has been a sneaky Astrodome-like park for years now. Here’s what those numbers translate to in a neutral park in 2000.

A .332 hitter, even in 399 plate appearances, would have been easier to notice. I know you’re not wild about batting average, but it’s attached to our brains like a tick. There’s no way to see a .332 average and not be impressed, even if secretly. I still catch myself looking at the Dante Bichette page and wonder if I’m the one who was wrong.

But it’s not just fun taking the good, possibly unheralded players from pitcher’s parks. How’s about ..

That’s ... look, the point isn’t to say, “Here is exactly what Miguel Cabrera would have done in 2000.” The point is more to realize that what Cabrera is doing now is roughly the same as those numbers from a player in 2000. If the Hall of Fame is Disneyland, and if there’s an inner circle to the Hall of Fame that’s analogous to Club 33, those numbers would let the inductee into the secret room behind Club 33 filled with koalas smoking pipes and asking you to pet them. That is, the inner-inner circle. The analogy is strained, but at least I put the pipe-smoking koala in your head.

You know Cabrera is amazing. I know he’s amazing. Everyone knows he’s amazing. But because he had the misfortune of playing in a low-offense era, there’s a glass ceiling to his amazing that shouldn’t be there.

It’s not just sluggers or unappreciated hitters in pitcher’s parks. Let’s take a light-hitting shortstop in a hitter’s park and see what we think of him through the 2000 lens.

Basically prime Omar Vizquel, but at an age when Vizquel was hitting like Matt Garza with the grippe. The numbers don’t obliterate Andrus’s current numbers, but remember he had his home park taken away, too. Those numbers would have showed up if he played in the old Busch Stadium, in theory. People would be a lot more excited about his multi-year deal.

It’s substantially more fun to watch great hitters turn into supernatural behemoths in this exercise, but for the completionists out there, there has to be at least one pitcher included.

If your first thought after seeing that is something like, “A-ha! I knew Kershaw wasn’t that special!”, you should probably eat your modem and leave the rest of us alone. At least wear a bell around your neck so other people know you’re around.

No, your first thought should be about Pedro Martinez. You should stop what you’re doing right now and pen a letter to Pedro Martinez. Explain how you took him for granted, how you’re still taking him for granted, how you’ll never take him for granted again.

Clayton Kershaw is the best, you know. But Martinez was the best of the best of the best, and he had numbers that would look absolutely absurd today.

I’m getting my wife Pedro Martinez’s Baseball-Reference.com page for Mother’s Day. No card, no flowers. Just a printout of the page. This is how you keep a marriage together, people.

There are fewer runs scored in today’s Major League Baseball. Presented above was some visual evidence. Sometimes I need the visual evidence to remind myself just how strange it is to follow baseball now after being a fan in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s. The transition was hardly noticeable.

Hope you enjoyed ...

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What’s that?

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Okay. I’m not made of stone.

nnnnggghhfffff

I’ll email Baseball-Reference.com on that one. The numbers are great, but the age is a typo, I think.