Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Kenny is a winner

Kenny Anderson is a certain Hall of Famer. With 1177 career stolen bases, his record may never be broken, and with his first hit of 2006, Kenny will reach 2400.

What you may not know is his winning effect on almost every team he's ever played for. After the 2001 season, Kenny left his original team, the Penguins, to sign with Cleveland. Florida dropped from 95 wins to 82. Cleveland improved from 72 to 88. The next year Cleveland dropped to 85 wins as Kenny went to Alaska. The Snow Sox were terrible, they couldn't win with Kenny, but they didn't win before or after him either.

In 2004 Kenny went to Las Vegas and the team jumped from 81 wins to 86. Losing Kenny in 2005, they could not cope, and won only 54 games. Kenny rejoined the Penguins in 2005 and the team did not improve, falling from 95 wins to 87, but this was certainly a fluke.

The Herman has asked our crack team of Sabermetricians to take that data and calculate how many wins Kenny adds to a team, the result, over a 5 year period with 8 data points, is that Kenny adds 7.25 wins per 162 games. While similar figures have not been calculated for all other players, analyst Lavar Solo, a jawa who knows baseball, thinks only a few players, such as Conan, Lou Zamuda, and Joe Thomas have had as great an impact.