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Baseball Player Evaluation

jaxxrjaxxr Posts: 1,258 ✭✭
The topic of who's a better hitter, or who's a better player is constantly brought up here. That's great, in my view, we get some new perspectives, information, and usually have fun to boot. Some may take it a bit too seriously and get upset, but that is probably good as well, If someone is critical of George Sisler and his .340 career average, I tend to drink more whiskey than usual.

I do wonder if we all can realize there is no perfect way to properly evalute some close player match-ups. I think most agree Bobby Grich was better than Ted Lepcio or Mike Andrews, however the hard thing is to compare him to Eddie Stanky or Charlie Gehringer.

Sometimes we lose sight of the things statistics can't fully measure. The ability to take an extra base while running, the defensive "fear factor" a good thrower has to prevent an attempt at an extra base, true "clutch" hitting in the late innings of close games, the player's "presence", how he make his teamates feel confidence-wise and the reverse to his opponents, there are other meaningful intangibles as well.

Sometimes a particular stat or two will lessen our awareness of the full complexity of baseball and how many facets do contibute to the worth or value of a player. No matter how good the numbers reflect a game and it's participants performances, there is no substitute for actually watching the full game and seeing the situations evolve. I often feel baseball beat writers may be able to evaluate players better than those using only record books.

An unhearalded feaure, of a hitters' worth is how he may wear-down a pitcher. Nellie Fox was quite good at this. He could foul off countless pitches, making it more tiresome for the hurler. If Nellie got one he liked and got a hit, or got one poor enough to ensure a walk, he was trouble on base. Not merely via stolen bases which are important, but by constantly taking a bigger than proper lead and forcing many extra throws to first. In addition Fox was known to be somewhat of a bench jockey, either on the bench or on base, and would verbally assualt the pitcher as well, possibly causing a decrease in his pitching ability.

How does one use this aspect, or others similar, to combine with numerical items in a player's evaluation ???





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Comments

  • TheVonTheVon Posts: 2,725
    I happen to agree with you whole-heartedly. Baseball is a great game, in part, because of the numbers and how that lets us compare players from all eras. There's a consistency that we can rely on and take comfort in.

    But it's not entirely a game of numbers. The game is not played on a spreadsheet, but between the white lines where all those things you mentioned become a very real part of the game. I disagree with some of the board members who keep stating that there are no mysteries in baseball and that all is known. I don't think you can use stats to prove what your mind senses when you're actually watching a game. One ball hit deep but caught at the wall has got to affect a pitcher's confidence more than a pop out to the catcher and a strikeout might very well boost the pitcher's confidence. There's a very real psychological aspect to this game that gets left out when we start using "the average player does this in that situation" terminology as our main source of evaluation. There's definitely a time and a place for those discussions, I just don't think we should base our evaluations solely on the numbers.

    I know I'm opening myself up to criticism by saying this, but nobody is going to be able to convince me that what I've seen on the field and what I've felt about players in certain situations can be completely disproven by stats.
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