June 24, 2014

BP Unfiltered

BP at Fox Sports: How Do These Players Still Have Roster Spots?

by Ben Lindbergh

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I just received an email from Effectively Wild listener Nick, who asked:

Could Wei-Chung Wang become the least utilized player to remain on an active roster? On pace for 27.5 innings and ~20 appearances.

I have no idea how to go about looking that up.

Sometimes, events on the internet are so serendipitous! As it happens, I just wrote about this topic today, as part of BP’s partnership with FOX Sports. Here’s an excerpt from the article, which is up now at the Fox Sports MLB Page:

…some players exhibit impressive staying power despite spending an unusually high percentage of the season observing the action from the bench or the bullpen. In some cases, they hang on despite offering little or no apparent marginal value over a freely available talent; these are the players who, some frustrated fans complain, must possess compromising pictures of their manager. Others manage to carve out a role that gives them nearly as much job security as a starter, albeit with a smaller salary and less name recognition. These extreme specialists earn their meal money in ways that wouldn’t have been possible in any earlier era.

With data provided by Major League Baseball Advanced Media, we’re able to retrospectively determine every player’s roster status on each day throughout the season. So let’s take some time to salute the roster-spot survivors — the players who’ve managed to accrue the most service time with the least playing time.

To find out whether any player has been used less often than Wang, check out the full article—and stay tuned for future exclusive weekly columns by Baseball Prospectus for Fox.

Ben Lindbergh is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @benlindbergh
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