Will Eddie Gaedel Get Elected to the Hall of Fame?
stevek
Posts: 29,033 ✭✭✭✭✭
in Sports Talk
<<< "We (Bob Swift) talked about how we're going to pitch to him (Eddie Gaedel), but there was no way we were going to get a strike over. The midget spread his feet like (Joe) DiMaggio and then he was in a crouch on top of that." - Bob Cain in This Was Craziest At-Bat in Major League History (Baseball Digest : February 1995) >>>
Look at the "fear" he swept into opposing teams with comparisons to DiMaggio.
Perfect career On Base Percentage of 1.000 and not in the Hall of Fame? I never understood this!
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Look at the "fear" he swept into opposing teams with comparisons to DiMaggio.
Perfect career On Base Percentage of 1.000 and not in the Hall of Fame? I never understood this!
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Comments
<< <i>But how many WinShares and runs saved did he have? >>
Steve
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
It kind of reminds me of the joke where two immigrants are in line to get off the ship...the first guy gets off the ship, turns to the next guy and says, "get off my land!"
RBI tells you how many runs a player brings across home plate with his bat. Many people look at this and make gross and inaccurate assumptions on that players value. Sometimes a player with a high RBI total is in line with how good he really was, but often times it is not! Only when you know exactly how many RBI opportunities a man had, does it begin to have some sort of meaning.
The funny thing is that these people value RBI so much, they totall neglect how many RBI opportunities the said player is creating for the next couple guys in the lineup!!! Surely if one views RBI as a mighty measurement...wouldn't they also thirst to know how many times he is creating juicy RBI for the next guy? I sure would want to know. Yet that aspect is often neglected.
Then you also have to see how many RBI he leaves out there. If you are going to credit him for his RBI total, then you have to see how many he failed to drive in as well. It is only fair if looking at raw totals like such. If one likes RBI so much, aren't they just as worried how many RBI they FAIL to drive in? After all, if driving one in is such a big deal, then shouldn't be failing to drive one in be just as big.
Take for example the 1984 RBI race. Jim Rice had 122, Eddie Murray 110. On the surface, one gets excited about Rice's 'victory'. Well, one should get excited, that is until they dig deeper and find out the reasons for those totals...
Batting with how many men on 2B:
Rice.....had 155 men on second and drove in 23% of them
Murray had 117 men on second and drove in 27 % of them
Rice...... had 76 men on third an drove in 59% of them.
Murray had 62 men on third and drove in 58% of them.
Rice.....had 49 on third w/ less than two out drove in76%
Murray had 37 on third w/ less than two out drove in 78%
Rice......had 281 men on first and drove in 7.5%
Murray had 228 men on first and drove in 8%
Total count:
Rice ....had 231 men on in scoring position, drove in 35%
Murray had 179 men on in scoring postiong, drove in 38%
Yet Rice had 12 more RBI, and in the minds of many fans they look at that, and think WOW, the best RBI man, most feared! It really isn't the case though. Rice had 52 more RBI opportunities, 12 of which in the easy RBI spot of man on third/less than two out! He also had 53 more men on 1B to drive in. Yet he only had 12 more RBI.
TIMES ON BASE. How many RBI opportunties did they leave their teammates??
Murray was on base 260 times. That is actually standing on base(meaning not double counting HR)
Rice.... was on base 200 times. So he gave his team 60 less chances to score runs than Murray.
Then please understand where Rice played in a park that in fact increased extra base hits, AND batting average, thus making it easier for him to drive in runs because of this advantage(making his % of runners drive in easier to attain).
Seems some guys are calling the best stats "boutique" stats. What the 'boutique' stats really are is an understanding off all this concrete factual data. You can go through every single play by play, and know EXACTLY how many times player A did this, how many outs there were...etc. But instead of going through all of that, all one had to do was look at the stat below and it would have told you the same thing...the thing that the misleading RBI total was COMPLETELY LYING ABOUT!
OPS+ Murray 156
OPS+ RIce 112
Actually, the OPS+ doesn't account for the men on hitting...just what the typical hitting event would bring. So it needs to go furhter, and that is adjusted batter runs. This is based on every event, and every base and out situation.
Murray had 60 runs created above what a league average player would...the best in MLB that season.
Rice..... had 6 runs created above what a league average player would. No, the "6" is NOT a misprint. It is "11" w/ no ballpark factor!
Rice's low total corrects the mistake that the RBI total is making...the fact that he had soo many more opportunites to drive runners in, and HE DID IT AT A LOWER PERCENTAGE. It also takes into account the dearth of RBI opportunites he gave his teammates. In essence, if he HAD NOT driven in 100 runs that season, I would be questioning if he had both arms working.
Then there is 1986 where Rice had the fourth most RBI opportunites in one season, 4th most of any in all the years from 1975 to 1992. Tony Perez had the most in 1975...go figure. In fact, Rice holds THREE of the top twenty five spots on that chart. George Foster is the only other player with more than one(he has two).
One can scour the play by play data that is available from 1958 to 2007...in fact it has been scoured by many smart men...and this type of examination can be done for every player and every season. Welll, actually it has been done, and the result is some very good measurments that capture what a player really did, how often, and how many runs he makes or fails to make.
If that is a boutique stat, then i guess Webster's should be adding a new definition to 'boutique'....MORE ACCURATE.
<< <i>no humor found here >>
I'd have better luck telling a joke to the Terminator!
What does your post have to do with Eddie Gaedel?
Steve
D's: 54S,53P,50P,49S,45D+S,44S,43D,41S,40D+S,39D+S,38D+S,37D+S,36S,35D+S,all 16-34's
Q's: 52S,47S,46S,40S,39S,38S,37D+S,36D+S,35D,34D,32D+S
74T: 37,38,47,151,193,241,435,570,610,654,655 97 Finest silver: 115,135,139,145,310
73T:31,55,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,80,152,165,189,213,235,237,257,341,344,377,379,390,422,433,453,480,497,545,554,563,580,606,613,630
95 Ultra GM Sets: Golden Prospects,HR Kings,On-Base Leaders,Power Plus,RBI Kings,Rising Stars
I'll be here all week.
Bosox1976
But before Cain could throw the first pitch, the P.A. announcer introduced a pinch-hitter, No. 1/8 -- Eddie Gaedel.
"When the announcer called Eddie, I was thinking this is both the greatest act of show business I've ever seen, plus it's the easiest money I've ever made," Saucier said.
Umpire Ed Hurley questioned Gaedel's ability to play, but Taylor came out with Gaedel's contract in hand.
Like the fans in the stands, Bob Cain found humor in pitching to Eddie Gaedel. He was 'laughing so hard that he's practically falling off the mound with each pitch,' one fan recalls.
Gaedel got in his crouch. Veeck, in his autobiography, said he had instructed Gaedel to make his strike zone as small as possible -- about 1½ inches -- but Gaedel was excited and stood up a bit.
Gaedel did follow the other important instruction, though. "Eddie, I'm going to be up on the roof with a high-powered rifle watching every move you make," Veeck wrote. "If you so much as look as if you're going to swing, I'm going to shoot you dead."
Ball. Ball.
"(Bob) Cain is laughing so hard that he's practically falling off the mound with each pitch," Bill Christine, a Browns fan in attendance during the game, told ESPN.
Ball. Ball.
All four pitches sailed over Gaedel's head.
"About a third of the way down he took his hat off and bowed," recalled Saucier, who estimated that Gaedel's trot from home plate to first base took about a minute. "Two-thirds of the way down he stopped and took his hat off again and bowed again.
"He touched first, was replaced by (Jim) Delsing, Gaedel patted him on the behind and shook the hand of Max Patkin, who was the first-base coach." Patkin, the legendary "Clown Prince of Baseball," was another of Veeck's stunts that day.
"When he sat down between Zack and me, I said, 'Eddie, you really hammed it up out there,' Saucier said. "And he said, 'Man, I felt like Babe Root" in a nasally southside Chicago accent.
"When (Eddie) came out of the ballgame, that was the last we ever saw of him," said Browns player Roy Sievers.
<< <i>With only one exception (forget who exactly), you must have played for at least ten major league (or as they call it "championship seasons") seasons to qualify for HOF eligiblity. I think Mr. Gaedel came up just a few games short of that.
addie joss
http://sportsfansnews.com/author/andy-fischer/