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How Cal Ripken, Jr. Hurt the Orioles

by Bill Baer on October 26th, 2007
Posted in MLB, Sabermetrics | Print | 6 Comments »

Before I am bashed as a result of the title, let me clarify that Cal Ripken, Jr. is, without a doubt, an instant first-ballot Hall of Famer. He revolutionized his position, as shortstop then was a position filled by light-hitting, slick-fielding skinny guys. Ripken, with his 6′4″ 225-pound frame, did not match the body type, and with his 162-game averages of 33 doubles and 23 home runs, he did not match the light-hitting aspect, either. As we all know, he was certainly a slick fielder.

Oh, and there’s that whole 2,632 consecutive games played thing.

That out of the way, it is my contention that Ripken was a detriment to his team from 1992 until the end of his career in 2001 as a result of his “Iron Man” streak.

Using Microsoft Excel, I made a spreadsheet where I compared Ripken’s OBP, SLG, and OPS to the league average in each category (you can download this spreadsheet here).

Click to enlarge:

I excluded his 1981 season, as he had only 39 at-bats.

From 1982 to 1990, Ripken had never finished the season with an OPS or SLG lower than the league-average, and only twice finished with an OBP lower than the league average.

Things changed in 1992. From ‘92 until the end of his career — 10 seasons — Ripken finished 7 of them with an OPS lower than the league average; 5 of them with a lower SLG; and 8 of them with a lower OBP.

This data suggests a couple things:

1) If the Orioles, for some odd reason, had elected to use a league-average player at shortstop (from’ 92 until ‘96) and third base (from ‘97 until ‘01) instead of Ripken, they would have been slightly better off. How much, exactly, is unknown, though we can estimate using Wins Above Replacement Player from Baseball Prospectus (a replacement player is not equivalent to a league-average player, however).

From ‘82 to ‘91, Ripken averaged 11.3 WARP; from ‘92 to ‘01, Ripken averaged 5.7 WARP — about 50% worse overall.

Let’s say the Orioles had Jay Bell at shortstop from ‘92 to ‘96.

Year: Ripken/Bell WARP

1992: 7.0/7.4
1993: 6.0/11.1
1994: 7.7/7.9
1995: 7.6/6.1
1996: 7.1/5.4

TOTAL: 35.4/37.9

Bell was, hypothetically, worth two more wins to his teams in that five-year period than Ripken. Of course, in this scenario, we fail to account for the fact that Bell would be in a different league facing different pitchers, but this is the best we can do.

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Let’s move towards the rest of Ripken’s career, when he moved to third base, and assume that the Orioles had Todd Zeile instead.

Year: Ripken/Zeile WARP

1997: 5.0/6.1
1998: 4.7/4.9
1999: 4.1/5.6
2000: 3.8/4.6
2001: 3.5/5.1

TOTAL: 21.1/26.3

Zeile was worth about 5 more wins to his teams in that 5-year period than Ripken.

If the Orioles had Jay Bell at shortstop from ‘92 to ‘96, and Todd Zeile at third base from ‘97 to ‘01, the Orioles would have won about 7 more games in that ten-year period. Not much in the grand scheme of things (especially since I used players hovering around or just above the league average for comparison to make it realistic), but it could have changed the dynamic of the playoff races, especially in the mid-’90’s when Baltimore was still competitive.

2) If Ripken hadn’t played through so many injuries, if he had taken a day off here and there during the season as most players do, he might have been able to perform at a higher level on an everyday basis.

This is merely a hypothesis, though, and there’s no way to know, short of Ripken or his teammates, coaches, trainers et. al. telling us personally, what injuries Ripken played through and how many of these injuries he had to deal with. Ripken may not have even been hurt at all from ‘92 to ‘01.

But, hypothetically speaking, let’s say you had to fill a lineup spot with one of two players of equal production (assume this is logically possible): Player A rested, or Player B unrested. Who do you choose? Clearly, you choose the rested player.

In the context of winning as a team, Cal should have at least taken a breather every now and then.

While this article is harsh on the second-half of Ripken’s career, I am in no way trying to make a case that Ripken isn’t among the all-time greats, or anything like that. It is actually more of a case to give everyday players a rest every now and then and to ignore individual achievements like the consecutive games played streak that Ripken now owns. Baseball is, after all, a team sport.