@dallasactuary said:
Amos Otis was a great CF, so I'm not sure why he got mentioned as out of place. He won three Gold Gloves and Win Shares shows him deserving four. The only stat that points to a different conclusion is RField, a component of WAR, which is yet another piece of evidence that WAR doesn't work.
Please. Everything else notwithstanding, you must admit that gold gloves do a terrible job recognizing fielding excellence. If there was ever any doubt, it should have been removed by Palmeiro's win of the DH gold glove.
I see 1971 and possibly 1974 (I haven't examined the competition) but which other years was he very good to elite?
@daltex said:
Please. Everything else notwithstanding, you must admit that gold gloves do a terrible job recognizing fielding excellence. If there was ever any doubt, it should have been removed by Palmeiro's win of the DH gold glove.
Gold Gloves, as I have said on these forums many times, are the awards most likely to go to the wrong people, especially when given for many consecutive years. But, as I have also said many times, the first one is usually deserved, and very often the second one. It is only when a streak gets established that the subsequent awards become essentially meaningless.
I will also be the first to admit that Win Shares for defense are not always "right". But they are the best stat for fielding I have ever seen, and they are orders of magnitude better than WAR.
And when a player has won actual Gold Gloves (ignoring that he may have won many more than he deserved), AND he "won" Win Shares Gold Gloves, that IMO is the best available evidence that a player was, in fact, a great defender. Were the voters wrong to give Otis multiple Gold Gloves? Could be. Is Win Shares wrong that Otis deserved multiple Gold Gloves? Possibly. Are they both wrong, and Otis was in fact a run-of-the-mill fielder? Yes, and it's possible that OJ really will track down the real killer someday. But is either one at all likely? I don't think so.
This is for you @thisistheshow - Jim Rice was actually a pretty good player.
And your mention of Monday reminds of something I probably should have made clear earlier. The grades are assigned to outfielders, without regard to which spot in the OF they play. Which means that even a "bad" CF is going to get a decent grade, because he is, by definition, better than the two other guys playing OF with him. Now there's nothing inherent to WS that requires that outcome, but the CF is going to make a lot more plays than the others, and thus have a larger "claim" on the Win Shares for the OF. If there were a team dumb enough to put Greg Luzinski in CF and Garry Maddox in LF (for example), Maddox would no doubt claim more Win Shares, but in the real world, the CF always gets the most. Which is preface to saying that Nixon being graded A+ surprises me, too, but, being good enough to play CF for as long as he did means that he was a very good outfielder. Even a "bad" career CF is not going to get a bad grade.
I wanted to address this with a 'tain't necessarily so. There are many reasons why you would play a suboptimal fielder at CF (or SS or other key positions).
First, you didn't claim this, but it is certainly possible to misread and think you said that the regular CFs are the 30 best OF playing today. Of course when, for example, the Red Sox had Bradley in Center and Betts in Right, Betts was a better OF than Span or McCutchen in 2016 and 2017, I think everyone would agree.
Second, I think you're underestimating player comfort levels. It takes a lot of work to play a key defensive position (well) so elite outfielders like Barry Bonds and Roberto Clemente might simply have wanted to play easier positions while they worked on hitting. I haven't bothered to research who played CF next to them, but I'm sure they weren't as good defensively.
Third, the flip side of the second: if you have a player who can hit like Mickey Mantle (or, later, Ken Griffey, at least for a while), and not only hit but be the face of your franchise if not MLB entirely, how can you make them move to a position that they can actually field? Instead you just suck it up, deal with the poor defense, and try to get decent corner OFs. Bauer, Siebern, Hector Lopez, Tresh, and even Maris were better defenders than Mantle was.
Note that Griffey from ages 31-40 had exactly one special offensive season. Even in 2005 his defense brought him way, way down. The last ten years of his career he was considerably below average.
Fourth and final, managers and front office aren't necessarily good at judging defense. I really think that everyone who has spent even a few minutes examining the Gold Glove results can see that Gold Gloves are rarely awarded to the best defenders. The fact that Omar Vizquel was asked to play 145 innings at short in his age 44 and 45 seasons should be evidence of organizations not understanding defensive ability. The idea that Vizquel (or Rabbit Maranville) belongs in the HoF because of defense is more evidence (although it is difficult to explain Maranville's 1914 season; perhaps because it was the only year he got to play alongside Johnny Evers). I digress. The point is that history is littered with people who have no idea how to assess defense.
Second, I think you're underestimating player comfort levels. It takes a lot of work to play a key defensive position (well) so elite outfielders like Barry Bonds and Roberto Clemente might simply have wanted to play easier positions while they worked on hitting. I haven't bothered to research who played CF next to them, but I'm sure they weren't as good defensively.
I won't argue your point, which probably has merit to some unknowable and unmeasurable degree, but Bill Virdon played CF next to Clemente, and he was a much better outfielder than Clemente. Clemente had a great arm, and chicks and sportswriters love the long throw, but Virdon could do everything else outfielders need to do to play CF better (and threw well, too). And note that Clemente and Virdon came up at the same time and neither one was even on speaking terms with "elite" (Clemente positively sucked for his first several years). By the time Clemente did become elite, no manager in the world would have moved Virdon out of CF for any reason because he was too good to move.
Third, the flip side of the second: if you have a player who can hit like Mickey Mantle (or, later, Ken Griffey, at least for a while), and not only hit but be the face of your franchise if not MLB entirely, how can you make them move to a position that they can actually field? Instead you just suck it up, deal with the poor defense, and try to get decent corner OFs. Bauer, Siebern, Hector Lopez, Tresh, and even Maris were better defenders than Mantle was.
Again, I won't argue your general point. But this argument only applies, I think, to "face of the franchise" players and not to anyone else. Mantle was a genuinely great outfielder for a time, but was far less than great for a longer time. He also gets a B+ grade in Win Shares, which sounds about right to me.
Fourth and final, managers and front office aren't necessarily good at judging defense. I really think that everyone who has spent even a few minutes examining the Gold Glove results can see that Gold Gloves are rarely awarded to the best defenders. The fact that Omar Vizquel was asked to play 145 innings at short in his age 44 and 45 seasons should be evidence of organizations not understanding defensive ability. The idea that Vizquel (or Rabbit Maranville) belongs in the HoF because of defense is more evidence (although it is difficult to explain Maranville's 1914 season; perhaps because it was the only year he got to play alongside Johnny Evers). I digress. The point is that history is littered with people who have no idea how to assess defense.
I'm not sure if I've said anything that disagrees with your overall point here, but if so it was a subtle disagreement. I'll just restate my overall point with regard to Gold Gloves by saying that when Ozzie Smith won his first Gold Glove, the voters did in fact recognize defensive excellence. Ditto for Brooks Robinson, Mike Schmidt, and anyone else with a multitude of Gold Gloves. But when Ozzie, and the others, won their 10th Gold Glove, it was meaningless. In other words, I think they do a fairly decent job of "recognizing" defensive excellence, but they, like casual fans, mistake the possession of multiple Gold Gloves as evidence of continued defensive excellence, and that's where it breaks down.
I, like you, obviously have no first hand knowledge of Rabbit Maranville. But the people who did said he was the best of his time, and most said he was the best ever. Win Shares shows him deserving five Gold Gloves and gives him an A+. Are they all wrong? Will OJ find the real killer? All, and I do mean literally all, of the evidence that I consider credible says Maranville was a great shortstop. Greatest ever? No way to know that, but his being in the HOF doesn't bother me at all.
This is for you @thisistheshow - Jim Rice was actually a pretty good player.
@daltex said:
Please. Everything else notwithstanding, you must admit that gold gloves do a terrible job recognizing fielding excellence. If there was ever any doubt, it should have been removed by Palmeiro's win of the DH gold glove.
Gold Gloves, as I have said on these forums many times, are the awards most likely to go to the wrong people, especially when given for many consecutive years. But, as I have also said many times, the first one is usually deserved, and very often the second one. It is only when a streak gets established that the subsequent awards become essentially meaningless.
I will also be the first to admit that Win Shares for defense are not always "right". But they are the best stat for fielding I have ever seen, and they are orders of magnitude better than WAR.
And when a player has won actual Gold Gloves (ignoring that he may have won many more than he deserved), AND he "won" Win Shares Gold Gloves, that IMO is the best available evidence that a player was, in fact, a great defender. Were the voters wrong to give Otis multiple Gold Gloves? Could be. Is Win Shares wrong that Otis deserved multiple Gold Gloves? Possibly. Are they both wrong, and Otis was in fact a run-of-the-mill fielder? Yes, and it's possible that OJ really will track down the real killer someday. But is either one at all likely? I don't think so.
I always appreciate the little joke quips hidden within a conversation. Too often those go unnoticed. Yours made me chuckle a little. _
If I remember correctly, dallas and most (many) here feel that the advanced defensive metrics are not at all accurate.
Until I see a stat that makes sense, I'll do my own thinking and use numbers I know are correct and not the result of manipulation.
I would rather get the correct answer from an eight year old than a non answer from someone else.
2013,14 and 15 Certificate Award Winner Harmon Killebrew Master Set and Master Topps Set
The frequent unintentional irony and lack of self-awareness in these threads is where the comedy gold is buried. The biggest "experts" here clearly spend more time buried in numbers than they do actually watching games.
@JoeBanzai said:
If I remember correctly, dallas and most (many) here feel that the advanced defensive metrics are not at all accurate.
Until I see a stat that makes sense, I'll do my own thinking and use numbers I know are correct and not the result of manipulation.
I would rather get the correct answer from an eight year old than a non answer from someone else.
Advanced defensive metrics are not nearly as accurate as advanced offensive metrics, but I would not say that they are not "at all" accurate. But adding up assists, putouts, and errors is even less accurate, because there is no context in them at all.
There is a mix of relevant information and random noise in every defensive statistic. In my opinion, the random noise element is smallest in Win Shares, and largest in the raw totals of defensive chances. I recall an exchange regarding Puckett where the question was asked "what happened" between year X and year Y, with the implication that Puckett got worse from one year to the next. And the raw totals (and WAR) did show Puckett making far fewer plays in year Y than he had made in year X. The answer, at least in large part, was that the Twins pitchers threw a lot more strikeouts in year Y than in year X, leaving fewer plays for the fielders. A useful defensive stat will take that in to account.
This is for you @thisistheshow - Jim Rice was actually a pretty good player.
@JoeBanzai said:
If I remember correctly, dallas and most (many) here feel that the advanced defensive metrics are not at all accurate.
Until I see a stat that makes sense, I'll do my own thinking and use numbers I know are correct and not the result of manipulation.
I would rather get the correct answer from an eight year old than a non answer from someone else.
Advanced defensive metrics are not nearly as accurate as advanced offensive metrics, but I would not say that they are not "at all" accurate. But adding up assists, putouts, and errors is even less accurate, because there is no context in them at all.
There is a mix of relevant information and random noise in every defensive statistic. In my opinion, the random noise element is smallest in Win Shares, and largest in the raw totals of defensive chances. I recall an exchange regarding Puckett where the question was asked "what happened" between year X and year Y, with the implication that Puckett got worse from one year to the next. And the raw totals (and WAR) did show Puckett making far fewer plays in year Y than he had made in year X. The answer, at least in large part, was that the Twins pitchers threw a lot more strikeouts in year Y than in year X, leaving fewer plays for the fielders. A useful defensive stat will take that in to account.
I apologize for putting words in your mouth.
One of my problems with the "new math" being used is the dilution of data.
I don't care what 50% of the players did, they sucked.
In my defensive look at Kirby, I looked at the FINEST players in CF and looked at how he stacked up. He was top 3 to best pretty much in every year in every category. None of these guys made a lot of errors, I think Griffey had 10 one year. They all had 3-5 every year and pretty much fielded at a .990 or better %.
A lot of assumptions get made with the new numbers. In your example Puckett makes fewer plays and automatically he's a worse player, that's PREPOSTEROUS! He might have been better! Just as you pointed out, less balls hit in his direction doesn't mean he got worse, just like a drop in assists doesn't mean he wasn't as good throwing runners out. Just had less opportunities.
Puckett was right there with the best 5 every single year for his entire career. Was he as good as his first two years? No. That doesn't mean he was "terrible" or "awful" or whatever ridiculous adjective was used.
2013,14 and 15 Certificate Award Winner Harmon Killebrew Master Set and Master Topps Set
No offense lot Rick Reuchel who seems like a nice guy and a decent player. However, if he is being thought of for the HOF then so am I. He was not elite and even in this Harold Baines, Jim Kaat criteria he is weak. I don’t need stats. If someone is HOF worthy there is no argument.
@dan89 said:
No offense lot Rick Reuchel who seems like a nice guy and a decent player. However, if he is being thought of for the HOF then so am I. He was not elite and even in this Harold Baines, Jim Kaat criteria he is weak. I don’t need stats. If someone is HOF worthy there is no argument.
That's fine. And you're free to draw your HoF line wherever you like. Unfortunately there are a lot of players, like Reuschel, about whom you have to say "If 240 people have been elected/selected based on their MLB play, Reuschel must be one of them." If we had 10 people based on those criteria, Reuschel's seletion would be laughable; 2000 then Kaat is a good choice (still not sure about Baines; he was a really wretched selection).
I mean the way our HoF is constructed, and has been almost since its inception, the standard is not to be as good as, say, Justin Verlander or Curt Schilling, but to be as ood as Vic Willis, Amos Rusie, or Don Sutton, none of whom are in your "no argument" group by a long shot, but none is close to being the worst HoF starting pitcher or as good as Reuschel. (I take with a whole truckload of salt that Rusie's '94 season was as much better than Pedro Marinez in 2000 than, to just throw a dart, Sandy Koufax was than Joe Nuxhall in 1962.)
Comments
Please. Everything else notwithstanding, you must admit that gold gloves do a terrible job recognizing fielding excellence. If there was ever any doubt, it should have been removed by Palmeiro's win of the DH gold glove.
I see 1971 and possibly 1974 (I haven't examined the competition) but which other years was he very good to elite?
Gold Gloves, as I have said on these forums many times, are the awards most likely to go to the wrong people, especially when given for many consecutive years. But, as I have also said many times, the first one is usually deserved, and very often the second one. It is only when a streak gets established that the subsequent awards become essentially meaningless.
I will also be the first to admit that Win Shares for defense are not always "right". But they are the best stat for fielding I have ever seen, and they are orders of magnitude better than WAR.
And when a player has won actual Gold Gloves (ignoring that he may have won many more than he deserved), AND he "won" Win Shares Gold Gloves, that IMO is the best available evidence that a player was, in fact, a great defender. Were the voters wrong to give Otis multiple Gold Gloves? Could be. Is Win Shares wrong that Otis deserved multiple Gold Gloves? Possibly. Are they both wrong, and Otis was in fact a run-of-the-mill fielder? Yes, and it's possible that OJ really will track down the real killer someday. But is either one at all likely? I don't think so.
I wanted to address this with a 'tain't necessarily so. There are many reasons why you would play a suboptimal fielder at CF (or SS or other key positions).
First, you didn't claim this, but it is certainly possible to misread and think you said that the regular CFs are the 30 best OF playing today. Of course when, for example, the Red Sox had Bradley in Center and Betts in Right, Betts was a better OF than Span or McCutchen in 2016 and 2017, I think everyone would agree.
Second, I think you're underestimating player comfort levels. It takes a lot of work to play a key defensive position (well) so elite outfielders like Barry Bonds and Roberto Clemente might simply have wanted to play easier positions while they worked on hitting. I haven't bothered to research who played CF next to them, but I'm sure they weren't as good defensively.
Third, the flip side of the second: if you have a player who can hit like Mickey Mantle (or, later, Ken Griffey, at least for a while), and not only hit but be the face of your franchise if not MLB entirely, how can you make them move to a position that they can actually field? Instead you just suck it up, deal with the poor defense, and try to get decent corner OFs. Bauer, Siebern, Hector Lopez, Tresh, and even Maris were better defenders than Mantle was.
Note that Griffey from ages 31-40 had exactly one special offensive season. Even in 2005 his defense brought him way, way down. The last ten years of his career he was considerably below average.
Fourth and final, managers and front office aren't necessarily good at judging defense. I really think that everyone who has spent even a few minutes examining the Gold Glove results can see that Gold Gloves are rarely awarded to the best defenders. The fact that Omar Vizquel was asked to play 145 innings at short in his age 44 and 45 seasons should be evidence of organizations not understanding defensive ability. The idea that Vizquel (or Rabbit Maranville) belongs in the HoF because of defense is more evidence (although it is difficult to explain Maranville's 1914 season; perhaps because it was the only year he got to play alongside Johnny Evers). I digress. The point is that history is littered with people who have no idea how to assess defense.
I won't argue your point, which probably has merit to some unknowable and unmeasurable degree, but Bill Virdon played CF next to Clemente, and he was a much better outfielder than Clemente. Clemente had a great arm, and chicks and sportswriters love the long throw, but Virdon could do everything else outfielders need to do to play CF better (and threw well, too). And note that Clemente and Virdon came up at the same time and neither one was even on speaking terms with "elite" (Clemente positively sucked for his first several years). By the time Clemente did become elite, no manager in the world would have moved Virdon out of CF for any reason because he was too good to move.
Again, I won't argue your general point. But this argument only applies, I think, to "face of the franchise" players and not to anyone else. Mantle was a genuinely great outfielder for a time, but was far less than great for a longer time. He also gets a B+ grade in Win Shares, which sounds about right to me.
I'm not sure if I've said anything that disagrees with your overall point here, but if so it was a subtle disagreement. I'll just restate my overall point with regard to Gold Gloves by saying that when Ozzie Smith won his first Gold Glove, the voters did in fact recognize defensive excellence. Ditto for Brooks Robinson, Mike Schmidt, and anyone else with a multitude of Gold Gloves. But when Ozzie, and the others, won their 10th Gold Glove, it was meaningless. In other words, I think they do a fairly decent job of "recognizing" defensive excellence, but they, like casual fans, mistake the possession of multiple Gold Gloves as evidence of continued defensive excellence, and that's where it breaks down.
I, like you, obviously have no first hand knowledge of Rabbit Maranville. But the people who did said he was the best of his time, and most said he was the best ever. Win Shares shows him deserving five Gold Gloves and gives him an A+. Are they all wrong? Will OJ find the real killer? All, and I do mean literally all, of the evidence that I consider credible says Maranville was a great shortstop. Greatest ever? No way to know that, but his being in the HOF doesn't bother me at all.
I always appreciate the little joke quips hidden within a conversation. Too often those go unnoticed. Yours made me chuckle a little. _
If I remember correctly, dallas and most (many) here feel that the advanced defensive metrics are not at all accurate.
Until I see a stat that makes sense, I'll do my own thinking and use numbers I know are correct and not the result of manipulation.
I would rather get the correct answer from an eight year old than a non answer from someone else.
The frequent unintentional irony and lack of self-awareness in these threads is where the comedy gold is buried. The biggest "experts" here clearly spend more time buried in numbers than they do actually watching games.
Advanced defensive metrics are not nearly as accurate as advanced offensive metrics, but I would not say that they are not "at all" accurate. But adding up assists, putouts, and errors is even less accurate, because there is no context in them at all.
There is a mix of relevant information and random noise in every defensive statistic. In my opinion, the random noise element is smallest in Win Shares, and largest in the raw totals of defensive chances. I recall an exchange regarding Puckett where the question was asked "what happened" between year X and year Y, with the implication that Puckett got worse from one year to the next. And the raw totals (and WAR) did show Puckett making far fewer plays in year Y than he had made in year X. The answer, at least in large part, was that the Twins pitchers threw a lot more strikeouts in year Y than in year X, leaving fewer plays for the fielders. A useful defensive stat will take that in to account.
I apologize for putting words in your mouth.
One of my problems with the "new math" being used is the dilution of data.
I don't care what 50% of the players did, they sucked.
In my defensive look at Kirby, I looked at the FINEST players in CF and looked at how he stacked up. He was top 3 to best pretty much in every year in every category. None of these guys made a lot of errors, I think Griffey had 10 one year. They all had 3-5 every year and pretty much fielded at a .990 or better %.
A lot of assumptions get made with the new numbers. In your example Puckett makes fewer plays and automatically he's a worse player, that's PREPOSTEROUS! He might have been better! Just as you pointed out, less balls hit in his direction doesn't mean he got worse, just like a drop in assists doesn't mean he wasn't as good throwing runners out. Just had less opportunities.
Puckett was right there with the best 5 every single year for his entire career. Was he as good as his first two years? No. That doesn't mean he was "terrible" or "awful" or whatever ridiculous adjective was used.
Vintage is where its at....
This has to be a record for most posts revolving around a Rick Reuschel rookie card.
@gemint - a must rip Rookie Chase card now. What year and what brand I am on it.
Should be doable - it is a 4th series card, and that is by far the most common 1973 unopened wax.
Yes but after this thread and all the interest it's generated, the market price of the packs are set to double!
No offense lot Rick Reuchel who seems like a nice guy and a decent player. However, if he is being thought of for the HOF then so am I. He was not elite and even in this Harold Baines, Jim Kaat criteria he is weak. I don’t need stats. If someone is HOF worthy there is no argument.
That's fine. And you're free to draw your HoF line wherever you like. Unfortunately there are a lot of players, like Reuschel, about whom you have to say "If 240 people have been elected/selected based on their MLB play, Reuschel must be one of them." If we had 10 people based on those criteria, Reuschel's seletion would be laughable; 2000 then Kaat is a good choice (still not sure about Baines; he was a really wretched selection).
I mean the way our HoF is constructed, and has been almost since its inception, the standard is not to be as good as, say, Justin Verlander or Curt Schilling, but to be as ood as Vic Willis, Amos Rusie, or Don Sutton, none of whom are in your "no argument" group by a long shot, but none is close to being the worst HoF starting pitcher or as good as Reuschel. (I take with a whole truckload of salt that Rusie's '94 season was as much better than Pedro Marinez in 2000 than, to just throw a dart, Sandy Koufax was than Joe Nuxhall in 1962.)