Was Charlie Brown the worst player in baseball history? A Sabermetric view.

While player-manager Charlie Brown is widely considered to be the worst player in Baseball history, is this depiction fair?  With the advent of Sabermetrics and defense independent pitching statistics (DIPS), we know that pitchers often take the blame for poor luck or poor defense by their teammates. 

(Charlie Brown’s team employed one of its players as a Statistician.  Though their metrics would be seen as old-fashioned by modern standards, distrust of stat geeks was as strong as ever): 

via www.wezen-ball.com

By traditional standards, Brown’s worst season, 1960, with an 0-20 record in 20 starts and ERA of 137 rank as by far the worst in baseball history.  (Charlie gave up 2740 earned runs and 300 unearned runs).   Clearly part of the cause of his 0-20 record is due to the number of runs he allowed, but Brown also played on a terrible offensive ballclub, receiving an average of only .3 run per game in run support that year.  (6 runs in 20 games).  At that level of support, any pitcher’s win/loss record would look terrible, which just goes to show that wins and losses are a terrible measure of pitching ability.

Viewed in the lens of modern statistics however, the picture is significantly better.  In his worst season, Brown averaged 1K, 20BB, and 10HR per 9 innings.  Not a good showing, by any means.  However, owing to terrible outfield defense, roughly half of these HR were inside the park homers.  Counting only the homers that went outside the field of play yields a FIP of 16.87.

 FIP = (13*5(HR) + 3*20(BB) – 2*1(K)) / 9  + 3.2 = 16.87.

Clearly, Brown is a much better pitcher than his traditional metrics would indicate (though still terrible by any reasonable standards).

By far the greatest contributor to Brown’s bad reputation is his team’s horrendous defense behind him.  The team’s middle infield was solid, with Linus (2B) sporting a UZR/150 of +10 over his career, and Snoopy (the team’s best player and the only player on the team with a positive WAR), with a UZR/150 of +15. 

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Sadly, Snoopy was dogged for his entire career by allegations of cheating, the most common allegation being that he was not, in fact, human.  About the only thing his critics can agree on is that he definitely agree on was not a user of Human Growth Hormone.  He was once accused on betting on a game with a teammate ‘Rerun’, resulting in a huge scandal and the team forfeiture of a victory, though the amount of the bet was only 5 cents. 

Snoopy, a power hitter who also possessed great speed, was once one Home Run away from breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record, but in his final at bat of the season, Charlie Brown was picked off of first to end the game.  He was also famous for reaching base on a single, followed by stealing second, third, and home. 

Aside from the middle infield however, the team’s defense was by far the worst on record.  Yielding an average of 152 runs per game, the team faced almost 200 batters per game, over four times the league average.  As a result, over 1500 balls would be hit to right field per 150 games played.   The team’s right fielder, Lucy, featured the worst UZR in history, making one out and one error on those balls hit to her zone of play.   Her resulting UZR/150 is around -1000.  (For those worried about sample size, Lucy averaged almost -1000 UZR/150 over her entire career, consisting of more than three years worth of defensive data). 

Those looking at Lucy from a more traditional lens might note the one error she made throughout an entire season, (the ball bounced off her head), and believe that she was a good fielder.  However, Lucy showed absolutely no range, catching only one ball.  If you don’t have the range to reach a ball, you can’t make an error on it!

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As a whole, the team’s outfield defense totaled to a UZR/150 of more than -2000, and was by far the biggest cause of the team’s no-win season.  While Brown takes all the blame, we now can see through the use of modern fielding independent statistics, that he wasn’t nearly as bad as previously believed.  (In fact, all the outfielders on his team actually have a more negative WAR!)

While Charlie Brown is certainly the worst pitcher in baseball history, to say that he is the worst player overall is unfair.  Three regular position players on his own team were worse, ‘Lucy’ in right field, ‘Frieda’ in center, and ‘Patty’ in left.  Incredibly, the team’s fourth outfielder, ‘Violet’, also managed to accumulate a higher negative WAR than Brown, even without regular playing time! 

But a modern analysis still shows us that Brown was terrible in his own right.  With a decent offense behind him and more reasonable run support, he may have managed a couple wins instead of a 0-20 season.  Yet he was still far below replacement level.  The fact that he was managing the team and got to decide who to pencil into every game is the only reason that he managed to remain in the league at all!