Jeff Nelson At His Peak
Posted by Steve Lombardi on February 15, 2008
Playing around with Play Index today, I applied a bunch of filters in order to be able to look at Trevor Hoffman and Jeff Nelson, side by side, during the period where Nelson was at his peak. Granted, Hoffman did not pitch in 1992. But, if you just look at innings pitched and batters faced during this snapshot in time, these two were pretty equal in terms of opportunity to perform. And, check it out, in terms of relative pitching results, they were not too far from each other as well. Note the marks in OPS+ and ERA+. Yes, Hoffman was better – but, not by a ton. The stats:
Cnt Player **OPS+** G GS IP From To Ages CG SHO GF W L W-L% SV H R ER BB SO ERA ERA+ HR BF IBB HBP BK WP Teams BA OBP SLG OPS SH SF 2B 3B GDP SB CS Pk +----+-----------------+--------+----+---+------+----+----+-----+---+---+---+---+---+-----+---+----+----+----+----+----+------+----+---+-----+---+---+---+---+-----------+-----+-----+-----+-----+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+---+ 1 Trevor Hoffman 64 641 0 710 1993 2003 25-35 0 0 527 45 44 .506 352 533 243 219 217 808 2.78 146 66 2861 43 6 0 40 TOT-SDP .205 .266 .334 .600 20 22 97 20 38 37 10 2 2 Jeff Nelson 75 714 0 721.2 1992 2003 25-36 0 0 210 46 39 .541 31 581 295 266 382 771 3.32 136 48 3118 58 60 2 33 SEA-NYY-TOT .223 .333 .329 .662 44 27 109 12 57 85 19 2 Seasons/Careers found: 2.
February 15th, 2008 at 11:33 am
An odd pairing, what made you think of this?
I dunno, I think the difference is greater than you. I think 11 points of OPS+ against is fairly notable. Nelson's oppOBP is 70 points higher than Hoffman's -- that's huge. Nelson gave up a lot more SB too, which in late-and-close situations could be pretty meaningful. And of course ERA isn't necessarily that useful for relievers. Nelson's ERA is helped by all the partial innings he pitched. He had 281 appearances during this period of 2/3 IP or less. Hoffman had only 89. Nelson allowed about 28% of inherited runners to score; Hoffman only 20%. (Could there be a big difference in the types of inherited runner situations they faced? I'm not sure.)
But Nelson sonned Hoffman in Holds - 160 to 16!!!
February 15th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Actually, I was just looking at Nelson, and who was close to him, and Hoffman came up. Before playing with PI, I never thought of pairing the two.
February 15th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
I agree with Johnny that the OPS+ difference is pretty significant, especially because of how that scale works.
I found it surprising that Hoffman pitched more outs per appearance than Nelson...I definitely would have guessed the other way around.
February 15th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
If you subtract walks, that's pretty close... That's a pretty big difference in walks, though.
February 15th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
And the HBP too. That's what drove Yankee fans and Joe Torre nuts. Nelson could be nasty, but sometimes he just couldn't get the ball over the plate in big spots.
Since 1893, Nelson has the 5th most HBP of any pitcher with fewer than 1000 IP. #1 is Byung-Hyun Kim. 7th is Steve Reed. Something about those sidearmers, I guess.
February 17th, 2008 at 1:50 am
I don't think this is a fair comparison either. Nelson was a very good pitcher, and relievers who can get 2-3 clean outs are extremely valuable, but comparing the stats of a closer to a setup man doesn't really make much sense. The AL/NL difference is also weird. I know that OPS+ is corrected for the league, but I kinda figure Hoffman's career would have been something like John Wetteland's if he had stayed in the AL.