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2020 Hall of Fame - Miller, Simmons in, (+Jeter, Walker)
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Post by jimed14 on Jan 24, 2020 19:04:07 GMT -5
Right, you do not care about defense or baserunning whatsoever, other than Gold Gloves. You've made that abundantly clear.
Being one of the best defensive 3B in history is worth a lot more than you think it does.
Ellis Burks was overall a bad defensive player, gold glove or not.
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manfred
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Post by manfred on Jan 24, 2020 19:29:39 GMT -5
Right, you do not care about defense or baserunning whatsoever, other than Gold Gloves. You've made that abundantly clear. Being one of the best defensive 3B in history is worth a lot more than you think it does. Ellis Burks was overall a bad defensive player, gold glove or not. I care about defense, but I also don’t buy metrics. Is Omar Vizquel one of the 10 greatest defensive players of all time? I have no idea, since I did not see Joe Tinker, the fifth. Is Scott Rolen one of the greatest of all time? I accept the general statement. Was he more than 25% better than Gary Gaetti? I don’t know. dWAR says yes. Huh. Apparently some cat named Rabbit Maranville was a vacuum in the 1910s. It is pretty hard for me to say, “hey, Omar Vizquel is great, but he never quite caught Rabbit Maranville, whom no living person has seen play but somehow we know he had the range of a predatory beast.” I know Derek Jeter is 6th in hits. I know Adrien Beltre crushes every HOF barrier even if he’d been a butcher. Again... baserunning... I would have to watch every game to measure that... except in ways that I can see, like steals, runs, getting extra bases. It matters.... though unless you are on a real extreme, it does not move my needle.
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Post by redsoxfan2 on Jan 24, 2020 19:30:14 GMT -5
Rafael Palmero getting a gold glove when he didn't play the position kind of ruined the award. Sometimes hitting factors into the decision making (it shouldn't) or just nostalgia/reputation. A guy makes a great diving play on a ball that a truly great defender would already be well positioned for and the guy making the spectacular play gets glory he really shouldn't be getting.
Defensive metrics aren't perfect, but they tell a better story than the eye test. I'm a fan of collecting data than going off a gut instinct.
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manfred
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Post by manfred on Jan 24, 2020 19:39:35 GMT -5
Rafael Palmero getting a gold glove when he didn't play the position kind of ruined the award. Sometimes hitting factors into the decision making (it shouldn't) or just nostalgia/reputation. A guy makes a great diving play on a ball that a truly great defender would already be well positioned for and the guy making the spectacular play gets glory he really shouldn't be getting. Defensive metrics aren't perfect, but they tell a better story than the eye test. I'm a fan of collecting data than going off a gut instinct. Gold gloves are dumb. I agree. But it is partly because defense is so hard to measure. But dWAR is not helpful. And it undermines the larger WAR issues (which impacts the HOF stuff). Take Andrelton Simmons. Dude is a season away from being top-10 all-time in dWAR. In 9 years. That pace basically makes him the greatest shortstop who ever lived. Maybe? Still... guy is pushing HOF range for WAR for a shortstop largely on dWAR... but how do we get good data, as you would use, for older defensive measurements? If he is not, in fact, one of the top-10 best defensive players of all time, his HOF case is shoddy, indeed. Similarly if Rolen is merely a great defensive 3B, but not one of the greatest, it changes his case (which is heavily weighted to defense).
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jan 24, 2020 20:48:21 GMT -5
The third player is Robin Ventura ( 6 Gold Gloves and a top-10 MVP finish). He is obviously not as good as Rolen, but it is pretty close, considering that Ventura was immediately rejected, like Burks. The biggest gap is WAR again. So I would suggest that Rolen is a WAR candidate... if you didn’t know his WAR, his numbers would not make a strong case. Even if you believe this means something, read the room. Your audience is not receptive to this argument. Scott Rolen was Ellis Burks as a hitter and something close to Adrian Beltre at third... what part of that doesn't describe a HOF player to you?
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jan 24, 2020 20:59:08 GMT -5
Rafael Palmero getting a gold glove when he didn't play the position kind of ruined the award. Sometimes hitting factors into the decision making (it shouldn't) or just nostalgia/reputation. A guy makes a great diving play on a ball that a truly great defender would already be well positioned for and the guy making the spectacular play gets glory he really shouldn't be getting. Defensive metrics aren't perfect, but they tell a better story than the eye test. I'm a fan of collecting data than going off a gut instinct. I'm going to actually say that for guys like Scott Rolen and Andrelton Simmons the eye test is kind of all you need. Like it takes a great scout to sift a 55 defender from a 50, but spotting an 80 is not that hard. It's the guy who's making jaw dropping plays constantly. That dWAR confirms this to be the case... I mean, yeah. Story checks out. What are we navel gazing about here?
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Post by James Dunne on Jan 24, 2020 23:47:31 GMT -5
You question Andrelton Simmons already being one of the 20 best run-preventers of all time? And you think it's everyone else who is just reading the scorebooks and doing calculus with their heads down? Dude, if you're missing Andrelton Simmons I would encourage you to watch him while you have the chance.
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Post by ericmvan on Jan 25, 2020 5:36:59 GMT -5
Ah, good one. Well, I look forward to the day I can tell my grandkids about the day Bobby Grich came to town. Watching him accumulate WAR was the thrill of a lifetime. He walked majestically. Edit: Grich, of course, is where the WAR case goes to die. According to WAR, he was the best player in baseball in 1973. At the time, he was not an all-star and 19th in MVP. 17th in OPS+. etc etc. now, he got a good deal of his WAR from defense: 4! But I am suspicious of such precise defensive calculations. Can we calculate the outcomes so precisely of range, throws etc etc? At least with offense, there is a relatively straight up comp (especially with one’s own team, which plays in identical circumstances). I watched Bobby Grich play. My subjective impression was that he was better than Derek Jeter at their respective peaks. Which is precisely what WAR says.
Superb fielder, extremely tough out, serious pop for a middle infielder. That people in his day (apparently, including you) believed that drawing walks were a negative contribution, in large part because they lowered hit totals, is not exactly a sound reason to dismiss him as Hall-worthy.
To answer your question: we have the number of putouts, assists, and errors every fielder made, and we have play-by-play that tells us the groundball tendencies of the pitchers they pitched behind, park factors, and so on. There are several different methodologies for turning this data into fielding assessments, and they agree well with one another and with subjective reports.
I mean, seriously. According to TotalZone, the top 5 fielders (1920-2002), based on their best 5 seasons, runs saved per inning, were ...
Make Belanger, Andruw Jones, Roberto Clemente, Willie Wilson, and Brooks Robinson.
Others in the top 10 are Paul Blair, Rey Sanchez, Barry Bonds, and Jim Piersall. The one surprise is Brian Jordan in 6th, and one surprise out of 10 guys fits Bill James' prescription for a worthy metric on the nose.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jan 25, 2020 9:06:46 GMT -5
You question Andrelton Simmons already being one of the 20 best run-preventers of all time? And you think it's everyone else who is just reading the scorebooks and doing calculus with their heads down? Dude, if you're missing Andrelton Simmons I would encourage you to watch him while you have the chance. But what if Rabbit Maranville was a superior defender and dWAR just doesn't show it?!
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Post by manfred on Jan 25, 2020 9:42:03 GMT -5
Ah, good one. Well, I look forward to the day I can tell my grandkids about the day Bobby Grich came to town. Watching him accumulate WAR was the thrill of a lifetime. He walked majestically. Edit: Grich, of course, is where the WAR case goes to die. According to WAR, he was the best player in baseball in 1973. At the time, he was not an all-star and 19th in MVP. 17th in OPS+. etc etc. now, he got a good deal of his WAR from defense: 4! But I am suspicious of such precise defensive calculations. Can we calculate the outcomes so precisely of range, throws etc etc? At least with offense, there is a relatively straight up comp (especially with one’s own team, which plays in identical circumstances). I watched Bobby Grich play. My subjective impression was that he was better than Derek Jeter at their respective peaks. Which is precisely what WAR says.
Superb fielder, extremely tough out, serious pop for a middle infielder. That people in his day (apparently, including you) believed that drawing walks were a negative contribution, in large part because they lowered hit totals, is not exactly a sound reason to dismiss him as Hall-worthy.
To answer your question: we have the number of putouts, assists, and errors every fielder made, and we have play-by-play that tells us the groundball tendencies of the pitchers they pitched behind, park factors, and so on. There are several different methodologies for turning this data into fielding assessments, and they agree well with one another and with subjective reports.
I mean, seriously. According to TotalZone, the top 5 fielders (1920-2002), based on their best 5 seasons, runs saved per inning, were ...
Make Belanger, Andruw Jones, Roberto Clemente, Willie Wilson, and Brooks Robinson.
Others in the top 10 are Paul Blair, Rey Sanchez, Barry Bonds, and Jim Piersall. The one surprise is Brian Jordan in 6th, and one surprise out of 10 guys fits Bill James' prescription for a worthy metric on the nose.
I don’t think walking is negative, but it is not as good as hitting. There is a reason pitchers pitch around guys but don’t groove pitches. You are right that people didn’t appreciate walks as much back then. But that also makes it anachronistic to judge people on something they weren’t trying to do. Similarly, it used to be shameful to strikeout 100 times. Now, guys strikeout at ridiculous levels. A system set up to measure for a style of play that is contemporary seems unfair to earlier players. But I concede. Let them all in. It should be like the all-star game with players from each team. 10 a year. Welcome to the Hall Mark Buehrle!
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Post by voiceofreason on Jan 25, 2020 11:54:52 GMT -5
Perception vs reality is not always easy for people to reconcile.
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manfred
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Post by manfred on Jan 25, 2020 12:00:12 GMT -5
Perception vs reality is not always easy for people to reconcile. Human activity is usually too complicated to be reduced to formulae. Especially aesthetic ones.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jan 25, 2020 13:17:16 GMT -5
Perception vs reality is not always easy for people to reconcile. Human activity is usually too complicated to be reduced to formulae. Especially aesthetic ones. Counting hits and RBIs and even Gold Gloves are also "formulae", and you're the one who's ignoring visual and anecdotal evidence.
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manfred
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Post by manfred on Jan 25, 2020 14:04:37 GMT -5
I’m not ignoring anything, but I am arguing for a more holistic view that includes a wide range of factors, including, yes, subjective ones. I am also arguing that guys with a host of not-there stats should not be WAR candidates... say, any more than back in the day Dave Kingman should have been a homerun candidate. This because I don’t buy WAR the way others do. I return to Grich. He led the league in WAR in 1973.... with the same WAR Mike Trout had last year. This is a complicated formula that I think you’d agree doesn’t mean Grich ‘73 was as good as Trout ‘19. Grich was especially valuable vis-a-vis 2B. Trout to OFers. Etc.
But when people then compare career totals that curve gets eliminated (some have made comp between Rolen’s WAR and Jeter’s, though they played different positions). If you could draft any player in baseball for 1973, would it be Grich? Or would he just be top 2nd baseman? Yet if we just calculate WAR as a total, he seems to be #1.
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Post by James Dunne on Jan 25, 2020 14:25:11 GMT -5
No, you're not! You're arguing AGAINST a more holistic view, reducing strong candidacies like Walker's to "he didn't have enough hits." Arguments that consider defense, ability to get on base, and power along with number of hits are "holistic." WAR is a holistic stat. Is it occasionally flawed? Yeah, probably. But it's better than not considering anything and reducing a player to how many hits he got. I'm very willing to believe that an individual 60 WAR player was better than an individual 70 WAR player because you want to argue WAR is missing something specific. I'm perfectly willing to extend the enjoyment I got from a player as a tiebreaker for someone I see as a borderline candidate. Vlad Guerrero was statistically borderline, but everyone loves that dude, so he got in. Was he *that* much better than Bobby Abreu for his career? Probably not, but at the margins the arguments for Guerrero are stronger. You're the one making blanket statements about using WAR as a judge because of imperfections, but are unwilling to consider the underlying stats that make up WAR -WHY Rolen and Walker accumulated so much. WAR doesn't tell the whole story, but it tells a whole hell of a lot more than how many career hits someone finished with.
Bobby Grich played in 162 games in 1973. Mike Trout played in 134 games in 2019. So a) he had the same WAR in over 20% more games, meaning he wasn't as good on a per-game or per-AB basis, but accumulated that same value over more playing time, and b) you were the one who said Walker's value was limited because he so rarely appeared in 150 games. If I was going to pick one, I'd pick Trout, because I'm confident in my ability to fill those extra 28 games with above-replacement level play, but also THAT'S COMPARED TO MIKE TROUT. "I'd take Mike Trout over him" applies to everyone other than like two players in the history of this game.
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Post by manfred on Jan 25, 2020 14:28:44 GMT -5
No, you're not! You're arguing AGAINST a more holistic view, reducing strong candidacies like Walker's to "he didn't have enough hits. Arguments that consider defense, ability to get on base, and power along with number of hits are "holistic." WAR is a holistic stat. Is it occasionally flawed? Yeah, probably. But it's better than not considering anything and reducing a player to how many hits he got. I'm very willing to believe that an individual 60 WAR player was better than an individual 70 WAR player because WAR is missing something. You're the one making blanket statements about using WAR as a judge because of imperfections. WAR doesn't tell the whole story, but it tells a whole hell of a lot more than how many career hits someone finished with. Bobby Grich played in 162 games in 1973. Mike Trout played in 134 games in 2019. So a) he had the same WAR in over 20% more games, meaning he wasn't as good on a per-game or per-AB basis, but accumulated that same value over more playing time, and b) you were the one who said Walker's value was limited because he so rarely appeared in 150 games. If I was going to pick one, I'd pick Trout, because I'm confident in my ability to fill those extra 28 games with above-replacement level play, but also THAT'S COMPARED TO MIKE TROUT. "I'd take Mike Trout over him" applies to everyone other than like two players in the history of this game. Saying I am going only on hits mischaracterizes my position. Fine. Again, whatever. Whitney Houston is in the Rock’n’roll HOF. Scott Rolen is welcome to Cooperstown.
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Post by James Dunne on Jan 25, 2020 14:34:19 GMT -5
Saying I am going only on hits mischaracterizes my position. Fine. Again, whatever. Whitney Houston is in the Rock’n’roll HOF. Scott Rolen is welcome to Cooperstown. "I can't actually counter any of your points so I'm going to name drop Whitney Houston."
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manfred
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Post by manfred on Jan 25, 2020 14:37:37 GMT -5
Saying I am going only on hits mischaracterizes my position. Fine. Again, whatever. Whitney Houston is in the Rock’n’roll HOF. Scott Rolen is welcome to Cooperstown. "I can't actually counter any of your points so I'm going to name drop Whitney Houston."[/quote We don’t recognize your witnesses. No witnesses allowed. See? You have nothing.
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Post by James Dunne on Jan 25, 2020 14:45:25 GMT -5
You have three pages of: 1. He didn't have enough hits 2. I won't tell my grandkids about him 3. Here is a similar but provably worse player. Is HE a Hall of Famer now? Just because nobody is buying your arguments doesn't mean you haven't been allowed to make them. It's just that everyone thinks they're wrong. If you don't think the Hall of Fame should try to parse how good a player is after the fact, and instead should honor contemporary fame, that's fine. You do you. But also recognize that nobody else wants that and the Hall of Fame doesn't want that.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jan 25, 2020 14:47:45 GMT -5
I return to Grich. He led the league in WAR in 1973.... with the same WAR Mike Trout had last year. This is a complicated formula that I think you’d agree doesn’t mean Grich ‘73 was as good as Trout ‘19. What are you trying to prove? Grich played 162 that year, Trout missed over a month in 19. WAR is cumulative, Grich wasn't as good but made it up in bulk, mystery solved.
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Post by manfred on Jan 25, 2020 14:50:36 GMT -5
You have three pages of: 1. He didn't have enough hits 2. I won't tell my grandkids about him 3. Here is a similar but provably worse player. Is HE a Hall of Famer now? Just because nobody is buying your arguments doesn't mean you haven't been allowed to make them. It's just that everyone thinks they're wrong. If you don't think the Hall of Fame should try to parse how good a player is after the fact, and instead should honor contemporary fame, that's fine. You do you. But also recognize that nobody else wants that and the Hall of Fame doesn't want that. Well, in this case 65% of HOF voters appear to be on team Manfred. And in the Grich case it was almost 98%. So don’t say it isn’t what the Hall “wants.” Obviously they want asses in seats and foot traffic, so they would never dream of skipping a year. But they skipped these guys.
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Post by James Dunne on Jan 25, 2020 14:58:43 GMT -5
Larry Walker and Ted Simmons are going to the Hall of Fame this year, based very largely on the arguments "statheads" have made in the past several years. Tim Raines and Mike Mussina were recently elected similarly. Scott Rolen will get in someday fairly soon. Bobby Grich and Dwight Evans might never get in while Trevor Hoffman did and Omar Vizquel might, but there are always going to be disagreements over individual players. That doesn't change the fact that the Hall of Fame election process tries to consider how good a player was without considering how famous, and listens to advanced statistical analysis that goes beyond 1920's counting stats.
If you want to argue the merits of Rolen or Grich or Evans specifically, right, that's cool. But "stats don't tell the story" isn't an argument against them. "He wasn't famous enough" isn't an argument against them. "You're only considering WAR, have you considered hits and RBI instead" certainly isn't an argument against them.
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Post by jimed14 on Jan 25, 2020 15:01:33 GMT -5
Why even look at stats at all? Just vote players in by memory.
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manfred
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Post by manfred on Jan 25, 2020 15:06:19 GMT -5
Larry Walker and Ted Simmons are going to the Hall of Fame this year, based very largely on the arguments "statheads" have made in the past several years. Tim Raines and Mike Mussina were recently elected similarly. Scott Rolen will get in someday fairly soon. Bobby Grich and Dwight Evans might never get in while Trevor Hoffman did and Omar Vizquel might, but there are always going to be disagreements over individual players. That doesn't change the fact that the Hall of Fame election process tries to consider how good a player was without considering how famous, and listens to advanced statistical analysis that goes beyond 1920's counting stats. If you want to argue the merits of Rolen or Grich or Evans specifically, right, that's cool. But "stats don't tell the story" isn't an argument against them. "He wasn't famous enough" isn't an argument against them. "You're only considering WAR, have you considered hits and RBI instead" certainly isn't an argument against them. I think both sides would agree voters are, er, capricious. Rolen might back in next year if people continue to punish the best player and pitcher of my lifetime. It is a terrible class, and many of the 90% who voted “no” on Rolen might decide “why not.” I’m not a Mussina guy, but in fairness Raines and Mussina had legit old school cases. And... I think have you considered hits and RBIs is certainly the start of a compelling case. Not case closed, but if you are weak in those areas, you better crush some other things.
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Post by manfred on Jan 25, 2020 15:07:58 GMT -5
Why even look at stats at all? Just vote players in by memory. That is a fair summary. I’d forgotten when I accidentally mentioned how much I weigh astrological signs. Caught me.
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