For Serious Baseball Stat Geeks: Does Your Gut EVER Overrule Your Numbers?

[astorian]

This is not so much a question for casual fans as it is for serious number-crunchers and sabremetricians.

All of us are human, and we all have our favorite players, and we all have guys we just can't stand. That goes without saying. Sometimes, our feelings and perceptions lead us to seriously overrate or underrate players, even when we see statistical evidence that pretty well proves we're wrong.

Example I've used before? Mention "Horace Clarke" to any New Yorker who followed sports in the late Sixties and early Seventies, and he'll either laugh or groan, then tell you what a horrible second baseman Clarke was. EVERYBODY who watched the Yankees in those days remembers Clarke as a joke. Thing is, the numbers don't bear that out! Not only was Clarke's fielding percentage perfectly respectable, he actually led the A.L. in assists for 6 straight seasons.

But these numbers never change anyone's mind, of course. People remember or perceived Clarke as an inept fielder, and stats just can't change those perceptions and memories.

*

Stat geeks already understand how irrational most of us fans are. But I'm asking the geeks, what about YOU? Which players tempt you to disregard the stats you generally swear by?

Is there a hitter you really believe, in your gut, is a "clutch" performer, even though you don't believe "clutch" hitters exist?

Is there a manager you're convinced couldn't manage his own checkbnook, even though your favorite mathgematical formula seems to prove he's a winner?

Is there any player you'd put in the Hall of Fame, even though your pet numbers say he doesn't deserve it? Or anyone you secretly think "sucks," even though the numbers seem to prove he's a huge asset to his team?

In short, are you really as logical as you'd like to be? And if not, which players tempt you to toss out the stats?

[astorian]

This was a VERY old post of mine, one that nobody answered... but which I'd still sort of like to hear some answers for.

[Justin_Bailey]

Originally Posted by astorian

This was a VERY old post of mine, one that nobody answered... but which I'd still sort of like to hear some answers for.

Good luck with that. Stat geeks will never admit that their gut could ever overrule the numbers. Which I think is a damn shame.

[Jimmy Chitwood]

You know, Justin, that's a bunch of bullshit, and it's really tiresome. I had a post typed up responding to the actual question, then I previewed, and I see that lazy nonsense, and suddenly I just don't have the energy for the conversation.

Of course it happens. What, people who are interested in statistics aren't human beings? We're not actually aware of the game that's being played?

Sorry, astorian; I know that isn't what you were asking. And the answer for me is that it happens on a very regular basis. The only thing that makes me a stat geek, I think, is that I at least recognize the tension between my subjective impressions and the objective information available, rather than dismissing it. I recognize, unlike some fans (the "real" ones), that there actually is such a thing as objectivity.

[Yorikke]

Nm

[Justin_Bailey]

Originally Posted by Jimmy Chitwood

You know, Justin, that's a bunch of bullshit, and it's really tiresome. I had a post typed up responding to the actual question, then I previewed, and I see that lazy nonsense, and suddenly I just don't have the energy for the conversation.

I'm sorry, but after reading through some of the stat geek posts in The Game Room about Hall of Fame qualifications and then being told that the traditional stats are terrible indicators of who is and who isn't a good player, I'm mighty sick of stat geeks.

[Tom Scud]

Originally Posted by Justin_Bailey

I'm sorry, but after reading through some of the stat geek posts in The Game Room about Hall of Fame qualifications and then being told that the traditional stats are terrible indicators of who is and who isn't a good player, I'm mighty sick of stat geeks.

So you're upset that your favorite stat has been insulted?

[Justin_Bailey]

Originally Posted by Tom Scud

So you're upset that your favorite stat has been insulted?

I'm not upset at all. I was just making a crack about stat geeks because they get on my nerves at times.

[Tom Scud]

Anyway, to the OP: I think Roberto Alomar was a great defensive player, even though I know that the best defensive stats available at the time said he was average at best.

[Jimmy Chitwood]

Originally Posted by Justin_Bailey

I'm sorry, but after reading through some of the stat geek posts in The Game Room about Hall of Fame qualifications and then being told that the traditional stats are terrible indicators of who is and who isn't a good player, I'm mighty sick of stat geeks.

Is this the philosophy you apply to every other aspect of your life, too? People who disagree and attempt to back up their disagreement with fucking logic are geeks? Everybody who's thought of something you haven't is a geek, and worthy enough of dismissal that you seek out places where they're having a conversation to talk about how much they bother you?

I mean, if it's not true that some traditional stats are terrible indicators of value, well, you're a big boy. Use your words. If it is true -- and it is -- then what's your fucking problem?

Jesus. Now people named after Nintendo game phenomena are calling us geeks.

I have the same opinion of Alomar, actually. And I believe that some pitchers are in control of what happens even on batted balls, even though for the most part that isn't really demonstrated.

[Tom Scud]

My gut tells me that the Wii is a terrible console, because it only has games for kids and casual gamers. And none of your fancy stats can tell me otherwise.

[Procrustus]

Not sure the stats tell the whole story anyway. How do the characterize "incredible" defensive plays vs. "good" defensive plays?

[pseudotriton ruber ruber]

What I want to know is Do you statheads ever root for your team to win? Do you ever clap at a clutch hit, even if you don't believe that "clutch" exists? Do you remember great plays you saw or is it all a blur of numbers? Do you like the fresh air? Do you have favorite players? Do you eat popcorn and drink beer at games or do you just munch on your calculators and sliderules? Have you ever passed gas?

[John DiFool]

Originally Posted by Justin_Bailey

Good luck with that. Stat geeks will never admit that their gut could ever overrule the numbers. Which I think is a damn shame.

Horsehockey. I've been reading Bill James since the mid-80's, but one lonely October evening in 2004, after the Yankees blew out my Red Sox 19-8 to go up 3-0, I remember lying in bed, idly thinking to myself, "Okay, series is not over, they can win 4 straight against these bozos" followed almost immediately by the thought "they will win 4 straight against these bozos." And they did.

[markdash]

To answer the OP, rarely.

Going more in depth, even the most advanced defensive stats are notoriously unreliable. However, using such gems as fielding percentage and assists gets us nowhere. The first tells us virtually nothing about range (in fact, there is likely an inverse relationship); the second can be heavily influenced by the kind of pitching staff (i.e. groundball pitchers) on that player's team.

The current "posh" defensive statistic is UZR/150, which is determined by some stat monkeys watching every single play in every single game over a season. Unfortunately, because of the labor required, data is only available from 2002 on, which obviously excludes virtually all of Alomar's career.

So instead we are left to rely on flawed stats like range factor, which tell some of the story but not all of it.

When it comes to offensive stats, especially wRC+ and wOBA, those are virtually bulletproof and I would trust those over my own instinct every single time.

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

Moved from IMHO to Game Room.

[RickJay]

Oh, gosh, another blathering rant about "stat geeks," that imaginary boogeyman.

No, I don't believe "clutch" hitters exist. I do, however, actually go outside and play baseball on a regular basis, which, in my experience, is more than can be said of most people who rant about stat geeks and claim to be better fans. They seem to be much likelier to not actually play ball.

I'm into the stats because I love baseball. I want to know more about it, and sabermetrics are just one more thing I can learn about baseball.

In my opinion - and I stress that it is solely my opinion and people do enjoy things in different ways - I find it absolutely unfathomable that a dedicated baseball fan WOULDN'T want to know more about what sabermetrics tells us. Why would you want to know LESS about baseball? Why would you adopt an attitude that it's better to be ignorant? Isn't wanting to know more about baseball a sign you like baseball?

Saying that stat geeks don't like baseball as much as some fool like Richard Griffin is exactly like saying Carl Sagan didn't like astronomy as much as a guy who refuses to learn about gravity and insist that stars are pinholes in God's ceiling.

But for what it's worth, I think my favourite Blue Jay of all time was Devon White, even though he obviously was not the BEST Blue Jay of all time.

[Justin_Bailey]

I struck a fucking nerve!

Jesus, it was an offhand joke relating to the fact that no one responded to this thread for seven years. I don't have some deep-seated problem with "stat geeks" (which, for the record, was the phrase used in the OP). I think they go a bit overboard sometimes, but I don't have a problem with them. And I never said anything about stat geeks not liking baseball. That's just absurd.

It was a damn joke and one I apparently shouldn't have made.

[astorian]

Originally Posted by RickJay

Oh, gosh, another blathering rant about "stat geeks," that imaginary boogeyman.

No, I don't believe "clutch" hitters exist. I do, however, actually go outside and play baseball on a regular basis, which, in my experience, is more than can be said of most people who rant about stat geeks and claim to be better fans. They seem to be much likelier to not actually play ball.

I'm into the stats because I love baseball. I want to know more about it, and sabermetrics are just one more thing I can learn about baseball.

In my opinion - and I stress that it is solely my opinion and people do enjoy things in different ways - I find it absolutely unfathomable that a dedicated baseball fan WOULDN'T want to know more about what sabermetrics tells us. Why would you want to know LESS about baseball? Why would you adopt an attitude that it's better to be ignorant? Isn't wanting to know more about baseball a sign you like baseball?

Saying that stat geeks don't like baseball as much as some fool like Richard Griffin is exactly like saying Carl Sagan didn't like astronomy as much as a guy who refuses to learn about gravity and insist that stars are pinholes in God's ceiling.

But for what it's worth, I think my favourite Blue Jay of all time was Devon White, even though he obviously was not the BEST Blue Jay of all time.

You don't know what I look like, but trust me, I'm a geek. My use of the word in the OP was not intended to insult anyone anyone (I've spent as much time in my Mom's basement as anyone, in my day).

My question was sincere- even those of us who KNOW that superstitions are silly and unsupported by fact often HAVE superstitions. To steal a line from "Jaws," a plumber knows damn well that the pipe he's working on isn't alive, but he's still liable to curse at it and bang it with his wrench, when things go badly.

I wonder if even a Bill James finds himself believing, now and again, that his favorite player is better than the numbers indicate, or trying to convince himself a guy with great numbers ISN'T really all that.

As a Yankees fan, I KNEW there were countless more productive offensive first basemen than Chris Chambliss, but he still FELT like a clutch performer, and MANY Yankee fans felt (probably wrongly) confident when he came up in a crucial spot.

If you're a fan (and even the geekiest of statheads is a fan!), you probably can't help being at least a bit irrational. I honestly like hearing would-be Vulcans admit that they can't help thinking various players are a lot better or worse than the evidence indicates.

[markdash]

Well, as Giants fan, I really wanted to believe that Matt Cain was doing something to limit his home runs per fly ball, which before about a year ago was anathema to sabermetricians.

But now there's been some research that shows that there are actually "types" of pitchers who can limit their home runs, and Cain matches the ideal almost perfectly.

[RickJay]

Originally Posted by astorian

If you're a fan (and even the geekiest of statheads is a fan!), you probably can't help being at least a bit irrational. I honestly like hearing would-be Vulcans admit that they can't help thinking various players are a lot better or worse than the evidence indicates.

Well, it's hard to separate "thinking they're better" from just liking or disliking a player. I absolutely despise Lyle Overbay. Technically I guess he was an okay hitter last year; his numbers were not terrible, but I still dreaded his appearances because I just hate him and dread filled me whenever he stepped to the plate.

Of course, there's also the fact that the stats just aren't perfect, especially when it comes to fielding. The stats say that Jose Bautista is a terrible fielder but I have to admit I'm skeptical; he looks good to me. If there was some supporting evidence Bautista was a bad fielder maybe my mind would be changed, but it's just that UZR et al. say one thing and yet he looks fine. If anything the supporting eidence kind of backs me up (Bautista's team won more games than the analytical stats say they should have - a sign something is being missed somewhere, and the something could very well be fielding.)

That said, there's sch a long history of fielding stats being wrong, that might just be geekery. When the methods of the 1990s said Roberto Alomar was the Worst Second Baseman Evar!!!!111! I just didn't for an instant believe them. He was visibly NOT a bad second baseman, and the surrounding information just seemed really weird, most notable the fact that the methods of the time claimed Alomar was a fine fielder in 1988-1990 with the Padres, and a fine fielder 1996-on with the Orioles, but somehow, in the prime of his career and for no explained reason, sucked in between in Toronto. That screams "illusion of context," doesn't it? And yet a lot of stats geeks simply would not budge from the methods of the time, insisting they had to be right.

I'm not sure I believe the numbers now. While looking up various assessment of Robbie Alomar's defense, I looked up some of his teams. According to WARP, the 1993 Toronto Blue Jays was basically no better a fielding team than a Triple-A ballclub; collectively all their fielders were just 1.4 games better than a team of replacement level players with the glove. Amazingly, according to WARP, the best defensive player on the Blue Jays was Devon White. Okay, no surprise there, but the second best was... Rob Butler. Rob Butler, who played a grand total of 113 innings (about 13 games) in the outfield, making 32 catches, one error and no assists, was worth the better part of a game over a replacement player. In just 13 games. The rest of the team were mostly sub-major-league-quality fielders. This was, mind you, the World Series champion, a team that sure as hell LOOKED like they could field the ball.

Well, I don't believe those numbers for an instant. They're fucking insane. Rob Butler, in 113 innings and with no other evidence to suggest it, was equal in defensive skill to Willie Mays, and one of the only good fielders on the best team in the league? Ed Sprague was a better fielder than Roberto Alomar? I'm sorry, but I am absolutely convinced the metrics are wrong.

The problem is I still qualify for my geek hat because I can prove they're wrong. Here's another problem I see. According to the WARP method the Blue Jays (95-67) were 42.4 wins above replacement level - 27.8 from their hitters, 13.2 from their pitchers, 1.4 from the fielders, led by Devon White and Rob Butler. Okay.

Let us now examine the Baltimore Orioles (85-77.) It seems to me that, since the Orioles won 10 fewer games, they should be "worth" 10 fewer WARP. They played in the same league and in the same division, so that just makes sense, right? But no; according to WARP, the Orioles were 37.4 WARP.

That makes no sense to me. If the Blue Jays won 95 games and the Orioles won 85, the total value of Blue Jay players has to add up to 95 wins, and the total value of Orioles players has to add up to 85 (or however many WARP those win totals are above replacement level.) Value is winning. You cannot logically say a team that won ten fewer games was worth just five fewer games. They obviously were not.

I think some of that missing value was in Robbie Alomar's glove.

[Southern Yankee]

Originally Posted by John DiFool

Horsehockey. I've been reading Bill James since the mid-80's, but one lonely October evening in 2004, after the Yankees blew out my Red Sox 19-8 to go up 3-0, I remember lying in bed, idly thinking to myself, "Okay, series is not over, they can win 4 straight against these bozos" followed almost immediately by the thought "they will win 4 straight against these bozos." And they did.

<shakes fist in anger>You did that?????

[Southern Yankee]

I have a related question that I hope won't prevent anyone from answering the OP, but it's directed at the same crowd.

IMO (and I'm happy to be shown that I'm wrong,) most of the newer sabermetric-type stats seem to do a very good job at analyzing past performance, but are a little less accurate in predicting future performance. Would you say that's fair, or completely off-base? Maybe they aren't intended for that purpose, and maybe they work better at predicting long-term outcome, rather than next season outcome?

[John DiFool]

Originally Posted by Southern Yankee

<shakes fist in anger>You did that?????

Yep. You can blame me. I won't speculate as to the reason for the Yankees winning in '09 tho.

RickJay, that's one reason I prefer Win Shares, which does explicitly tie individual value to overall team value. WAR is like something a committee of 100 people who never talked to each other would design, and it shows. People assume that WAR has been balanced, checked for both reliability and validity, and such and so-forth, but there are always a few niggling irregularities like what you wrote about which makes me darkly suspicious. Yet WAR has won the day, and WS languishes forgotten in the closet, for good or bad.

[RickJay]

Originally Posted by Southern Yankee

I have a related question that I hope won't prevent anyone from answering the OP, but it's directed at the same crowd.

IMO (and I'm happy to be shown that I'm wrong,) most of the newer sabermetric-type stats seem to do a very good job at analyzing past performance, but are a little less accurate in predicting future performance. Would you say that's fair, or completely off-base?

I think that's absolutely true, but then, it's to be expected. Past performance is a set of established facts. Future performance is always going to be hard to predict, because there will always be a guy who just loses his curveball, or a Jose Bautista, or someone who gets hurt, or a guy who gains ten pounds and it makes him just a bit too slow at second base. Predicting future performance is always guesswork; there are general trends you can bet on but some people will buck the trend.

Originally Posted by John DiFool

RickJay, that's one reason I prefer Win Shares, which does explicitly tie individual value to overall team value. WAR is like something a committee of 100 people who never talked to each other would design, and it shows. People assume that WAR has been balanced, checked for both reliability and validity, and such and so-forth, but there are always a few niggling irregularities like what you wrote about which makes me darkly suspicious. Yet WAR has won the day, and WS languishes forgotten in the closet, for good or bad.

Which I think is a shame; Win Shares was a brilliant invention. I don't think any of the overall stats have it quite right, and prefer to examine them all. I think they all have glaring flaws, and WAR's disconnection from actual team performance is a pretty glaring one.

[pseudotriton ruber ruber]

RickJay:

What do Alomar's defensive stats show when measured in Win Shares? I haven't looked it up, but (you and I have disagreed on him before, based on which part of his career we watched more closely):

1) if it doesn't show that he stunk on D while playing in NY then I'll agree that it doesn't measure much--he was timid on the DP, and displayed a range the width of an index card

2) if it shows him phenomenally inept on D in NY but phenomenally ept earlier in his career, then I'll simply concede his performance was excellent the whole time I didn't have my eyes on him

3) if it shows him nothing special on D for his entire career, then I'll resume my assertion that you were blinded by his offense and attributed to him defensive skills he never had.

Based on his brief career in NYC, which is all I saw regularly, I'm opposed to all and any honors he may receive, but am willing to be persuaded otherwise if shown convincing stats demonstrating that his Mets career was an aberration.

[markdash]

Originally Posted by RickJay

Which I think is a shame; Win Shares was a brilliant invention. I don't think any of the overall stats have it quite right, and prefer to examine them all. I think they all have glaring flaws, and WAR's disconnection from actual team performance is a pretty glaring one.

That's funny, I don't like win shares at all! My big problem with win shares is that teams often win due to luck. We may not like to admit it, but teams can have anomalies like high strand rates for their pitchers, win a ton of 1-run games, lucky HR/FB rates, etc. In these cases, the team would win more games than would otherwise be expected based on their underlying stats. The problem is that a team could perform exactly the same two consecutive years, but due to changes in luck the team could win 5 fewer games one year than the other. This would then be reflected in the team's win shares, even though the players performed exactly the same

I like WAR because it's a luck-independent stat that just looks at the player's peripheral stats to derive their value.

[RickJay]

Originally Posted by markdash

That's funny, I don't like win shares at all! My big problem with win shares is that teams often win due to luck. We may not like to admit it, but teams can have anomalies like high strand rates for their pitchers, win a ton of 1-run games, lucky HR/FB rates, etc.

That's true, which is why it's important to distinguish between actual value and future expectations.

To use a non-analytical stat, last year Jose Bautista hit 54 home runs. I don't think there is a person on earth, including Bautista himself, who thinks Bautista will hit 54 home runs again. While he is a legitimately good hitter and will probably hit quite a few homers again if he stays healthy, he's not going to hit 54. 54 home runs was a fluke. He was lucky. So in terms of projecting how Bautista will do in 2011 and so on, it would be stupid to assume his 2010 performance will be repeated forever.

But in admitting that he was lucky in 2010, you don't discount the fact that he actually did it. Whatever Jose Bautista's hitting abilities really are and how they translate into his performance in 2011, 2012, etc., you cannot examine his 2010 performance and say that because it was flukey, he DIDN'T hit 54 home runs. The fact is that he did, in fact, hit 54 home runs, and an analysis of his value in 2010 must account for the fact that he hit 54 home runs, no matter if it was lucky. He hit 54 homers.

To my mind, that must logically extend to team performance. The 1993 Blue Jays, just to keep using the same example. won 95 games. They did not win 90 games, which is what their WAR suggests. They did not win 91 games, which is what their Pythagorean projection suggests. They won 95, and they lost 67. Any analysis of the Blue Jays' performance in 1993 must begin with the absolutely undeniable fact that they went 95-67; furthermore, that their winning 95 games is quite literally the single most important statistic there is. Winning games is the entire point. Just as you cannot examine Jose Bautista's 2010 denying that he hit 54 homers, you cannot examine Toronto's performance in 1993 and somehow conclude that they did not win 95 games.

Bill James's point, which I think has a lot of logic to it, is that in examining a player's past value, the value of a team's players must add up to the value of the team's performance. That strikes me as being eminently sensible. Yes, the 1993 Blue Jays might have been slightly lucky in some respects, but (a) the results are what they are, (b) it's sensible to distinguish between how the Jays did in 1993 and how you expected them to do in 1994, and (c) we can't be absolutely positive that we are acquainted with all the facts and so it's a lot smarter to start with the team's performance and go from there than it is to build up from nothing, hope you get there, and shrug off the discrepancies. As James points out in Win Shares, at least when it came to Linear Weights, disregarding team performance resulted in some numbers, especially regarding fielding ability, that were just insanely stupid.

Again, I don't trust any one number and I'm not saying Win Shares always gets it right, either.

Originally Posted by pseudotriton ruber ruber

RickJay:

What do Alomar's defensive stats show when measured in Win Shares? I haven't looked it up, but (you and I have disagreed on him before, based on which part of his career we watched more closely):

As I recall - I can't find my copy of the book - they showed that he was a very good defensive player, but not brilliant, for most of his career. How he fared in his short stint with New York I don't recall, he he was in his late 30s so I'd be shocked if he was good at that point.

I'm sorry he played poorly in New York, but old players do that. Willie Mays did not suck because he played badly for the Mets. I know you have a real hate on for Alomar, but come on, you don't REALLY think he played that way his whole career, do you?

[Jimmy Chitwood]

I think that's a mild case of begging the question, though, RickJay. I mean, to the extent that the question is "does winning equal actual value," that is. Because I would argue that actual value does correspond with future expectations very closely, and in fact that's the advantage of having stats that can figure out actual value.

I can't think of a good Blue Jays example, so I'll use the Phillies. Cole Hamels in 2009 was 10-11 with a 4.32. On the face of it, he had a terrible, aberrant season. He even admitted himself that he thought he had basically a wasted year because of all the post-World Series hoopla which had screwed up his mindset. If value is defined in terms of wins, which is defined by runs allowed, more or less, for a pitcher, since he can't really affect the other part of the equation, then Cole Hamels was way less valuable to his team in 2009 than any other season of his career.

Analytically, though, he was pretty much the same pitcher in 2009 as 2008 and 2010, as it turned out. He had about the same number of home runs, slightly fewer strikeouts and a bunch fewer walks, which meant slightly more balls put in play, a lower percentage of extra base hits/hits, and so on. But his batting average allowed on balls in play was absurdly higher -- up 60 points from '08 to '09. On the field, he actually had to be as good as he was in 2008 just to have a 10-11 record with a 4.32 ERA. If he had gotten tangibly worse the team would have been worse.

I'd argue that what this means is that Hamels' value was the same from year to year, and things external to his value were the only things that changed appreciably. At the end of 2009, I think you could have said (and many people did say) that Hamels was just unlucky, and would be much better in 2010. And he was. And I think that means that his value was the same the whole time, and the winning was a separate issue.

(Which isn't to say that I think WAR or anything else solves that problem by itself, either. Hamels had a pretty crap WAR in 2009, too.)

[pseudotriton ruber ruber]

Originally Posted by RickJay

come on, you don't REALLY think he played that way his whole career, do you?

No, I don't. He couldn't have made a MLB team if he had. But I have to relate how maddening it was to watch him sucking donkey dick in the field and have METS FANS explain to me how my eyes were faulty, he really was hustling, he actually displays great range, that botched DP wasn't his fault, etc. because he was, after all, a Gold Glove second-base man, and an all-around fabulous fielder by acclamation.

Then when I would point out how his defensive stats, particularly range factor, kinda sucked, they'd say to me "Well, you have a smalll sample size there, that will all even out when he's played a whole season."

After a whole season, though, everyone hated him and were glad to see him go for a bag of goat gonads. So I'm suspicious of his reputation for stellar fielding.

[markdash]

FWIW, unless you've looked at a HR tracker for Jose Bautista and found that an unusually large percentage of his homers barely made it over the wall, luck has little to no part to play. For the most part, there isn't a whole lot of luck in hitters hitting home runs.

Whether it was a fluke is another question entirely, of course.

[RickJay]

Originally Posted by Jimmy Chitwood

Analytically, though, he was pretty much the same pitcher in 2009 as 2008 and 2010, as it turned out. He had about the same number of home runs, slightly fewer strikeouts and a bunch fewer walks, which meant slightly more balls put in play, a lower percentage of extra base hits/hits, and so on. But his batting average allowed on balls in play was absurdly higher -- up 60 points from '08 to '09. On the field, he actually had to be as good as he was in 2008 just to have a 10-11 record with a 4.32 ERA. If he had gotten tangibly worse the team would have been worse.

It's entirely possible Hamels was in fact as valuable in 2009 as he was in 2008. But he might not have been.

I don't think we're disagreeing, really. Hamels's ERA in 2009 might in fact be deceiving. Perhaps a lesser pitcher would have posted an ERA of 5.60 in the same innings. ERA could be a stat where the issue is what marginal effect the pitcher has, just like W-L. It may simply be that Hamels pitched when Philadelphia's defense sucked; I don't have the numbers.

On the other hand, if Hamels just happened to be giving up hits into the gap more often than not - and that does happen - then in fact I'd argue he did not pitch with the same value in 2009.

I realize BABIP is, for the most part, not a repeatable skill. But, again, I argue that one must distinguish between past performance and expected future results. If Hamels gave up more hits into the gaps in 2009, then that's what he did, and that had an effect on Philadelphia's ability to win games. A similar case is clutch hitting. Clutch hitting isn't a repeatable skill, but if a player one season bats .420 in clutch situations, then that's what he did, and it helped his team win. Just because we do not expect him to do it next year does not mean he doesn't deserve credit for doing it this year.

If you want to take a really extreme example, Reggie Jackson hit 5 homers in the 1977 World Series. Obviously, that is a fluke. Reggie Jackson was a good hitter but he couldn't hit 5 homers every six games. But in those six games he DID hit 5 homers, and he deserves credit for it. A few years later Dave Winfield went 1-for-22 in the 1981 World Series. Obviously, that was a fluke; Dave Winfield wasn't really an .045 hitter. But he was in those six games, and he really did hurt his team. Maybe 15 of his outs were shrieking line drives right into someone's glove - but you can't pretend that helped the Yankees.

[pseudotriton ruber ruber]

BTW, it's a perfect example of the OP that I, probably the best-documented stat geek on the SD, HATE Roberto Alomar no matter what RickJay's stats will show.

[RickJay]

Originally Posted by pseudotriton ruber ruber

BTW, it's a perfect example of the OP that I, probably the best-documented stat geek on the SD, HATE Roberto Alomar no matter what RickJay's stats will show.

My stats? Dude, look up the regular stats.

[pseudotriton ruber ruber]

Well, I looked up his dWAR and, as you said, they showed him to be a poor fielder. You say you've got other stats that say otherwise? I probably won't buy them either but I'd be interested in seeing if they even exist, or if you're a believer in the face of ALL of the evidence.

[Justin_Bailey]

Originally Posted by pseudotriton ruber ruber

No, I don't. He couldn't have made a MLB team if he had. But I have to relate how maddening it was to watch him sucking donkey dick in the field and have METS FANS explain to me how my eyes were faulty, he really was hustling, he actually displays great range, that botched DP wasn't his fault, etc. because he was, after all, a Gold Glove second-base man, and an all-around fabulous fielder by acclamation.

Which Mets fans? Alomar was a scrub on the Mets and his tenure was so terrible that a lot of Mets fans (myself included) can't believe he was with the team for only a year and a half. It felt like give torturous years of suck.

[pseudotriton ruber ruber]

Originally Posted by Justin_Bailey

Which Mets fans? Alomar was a scrub on the Mets and his tenure was so terrible that a lot of Mets fans (myself included) can't believe he was with the team for only a year and a half. It felt like give torturous years of suck.

He was the starting secondbase man and batted in the 1-3 spots every day he was on the Mets--he just PLAYED like a clumsy, timid, clueless scrub, but every Met fan that I knew and every Met official for sure asserted that he was a skilled, gifted All-Star and that my eyes were deceiving me, exactly as RickJay maintains. I believe Rickjay that he deserved his ALL-Star status with the Blue Jays, but it IS the same argument. His offensive stats with Toronto convince me that he used to be an effective hitter, but I'm not seeng any evidence that he was a superior fielder, and I maintain that Gold Gloves are too frequently earned for offensive prowess (and the playing time that prowess earns for you.)

It amazes me that you assert he was a scrub--again, this is a Met fan minimizing his suckitude.

[Justin_Bailey]

Originally Posted by pseudotriton ruber ruber

It amazes me that you assert he was a scrub--again, this is a Met fan minimizing his suckitude.

I'm not minimizing anything. He played like a scrub for the Mets. You're right, he should have been better, but he played like a scrub.

[pseudotriton ruber ruber]

Originally Posted by Justin_Bailey

Which Mets fans? Alomar was a scrub on the Mets and his tenure was so terrible that a lot of Mets fans (myself included) can't believe he was with the team for only a year and a half. It felt like give torturous years of suck.

This post simply asserts that he WAS a scrub, not that he played LIKE one, which to me is minimizing his poor numbers.

[John DiFool]

Originally Posted by markdash

FWIW, unless you've looked at a HR tracker for Jose Bautista and found that an unusually large percentage of his homers barely made it over the wall, luck has little to no part to play. For the most part, there isn't a whole lot of luck in hitters hitting home runs.

Whether it was a fluke is another question entirely, of course.

Well, we can examine some of these "leading predictors", including how many "wall-squeakers" he hit:

Home runs per flyball: spiked to 21.7%, which is huge, and much higher than his career baseline (13.8%). Pujols by way of comparison was at 19.9% career, maxed at 22.5% in 2006. He also saw his overall flyball % jump too (to 54.5 from 45.8).

According to HitTracker, he had 13 "just enoughs" for home runs in 2010, leading the majors, tho in % terms that isn't big (13/54 < 25%).

So it is very likely that he will regress, but he also will probably hold on to enough of these abilities to get somewhere around 30-40 homers anyway.

[RickJay]

Originally Posted by pseudotriton ruber ruber

He was the starting secondbase man and batted in the 1-3 spots every day he was on the Mets--he just PLAYED like a clumsy, timid, clueless scrub, but every Met fan that I knew and every Met official for sure asserted that he was a skilled, gifted All-Star and that my eyes were deceiving me, exactly as RickJay maintains.

prr, I've always found this kind of amusing, but you're now deliberately misrepresenting what I've said and it really pisses me off, because I make a hell of an effort to be honest and open in these threads.

I am not saying your eyes were deceiving you. I have NEVER said that, ever, not across thread after thread after thread of this topic have I ever once even hinted that you were wrong in assessing Alomar's performance with New York as being poor. Alomar played poorly in New York. That is the fact; your observations are borne out by all the pertinent facts, and are consistent with the observations of pretty much everyone who watched him play in New York. I'm very sorry if other Met fans told you otherwise at the time, but that is not my fault.

What I have tried to point out is that Alomar played extraordinarily well for most of his career prior to joining the Mets. I have said this over and over and over in a manner that cannot possibly be misconstrued. Why you would now claim that I am doubting your assessment of his play when he was playing for the Mets, I cannot even begin to imagine. You can even see from my posts just a few posts before this one that I am not doubting he played poorly in New York, and am obviously constrasting his play there with his play in San Diego, Toronto, Baltimore and Cleveland.

So I'd like you to take that back, please.

I'm not seeng any evidence that he was a superior fielder, and I maintain that Gold Gloves are too frequently earned for offensive prowess (and the playing time that prowess earns for you.)

That is certainly beyond question.

Almost every fielder who's won a lot of Gold Gloves probably didn't deserve half of them. Even Ozzie Smith won a few that should have gone to Barry Larkin.

[pseudotriton ruber ruber]

Originally Posted by RickJay

So I'd like you to take that back, please.
.

I'm sorry. I should have put the phrase related to you here: "every Met official for sure asserted that he was a skilled, gifted All-Star, exactly as RickJay maintains, and that my eyes were deceiving me"

instead of where I did put it ("every Met official for sure asserted that he was a skilled, gifted All-Star and that my eyes were deceiving me, exactly as RickJay maintains")

Your interpretation of our past and current disagreement about his stardom is exactly as you relate it, and I apologize for misconstruing your meaning.

[Autolycus]

*comes in thread curious to learn about a topic he knows little about, then starts backing away slowly*

[RickJay]

And I probably shouldn't have snapped that hard, sorry.

To clarify, I really don't trust WAR. I don't trust many defensive stats, really, but I specifically don't buy WAR because, as I've said, it seems to be disconnected from team performance.

It also bears almost no relationship to defensive reputation. Now, of course, defensive reputations can be wrong (Derek Jeter) and they usually lag in time behind the facts, as you have pointed out; players will keep winning Gold Gloves long after they stopped deserving them. But it's kind of hard to believe that there's NO relationship between defensie reputation and the numbers.

Just for the fun of it I looked up some great defensive players... Johnny Bench, for instance, has a career defensive WAR of 6.1. Really? JOHNNY BENCH was just 60 runs better than a good Triple-A catcher?

His teammate, Joe Morgan, is rated is being below replacement level for his career. (Defensively, you understand.) Davey Conception is just 1.1 dWAR,though he was about +4 until the last five years of his career. And the 1976 Reds, who won 102 games and swept both the NLCS and WS, are rated as being below replacement value, as a team.

Like, do you believe ANY of that? I'm not a Reds fan but I think that's an absolute load of horsecrap. The Reds assembled one of the best teams in the history of baseball, and yet, defensively, they were no better than an assemblage of quadruple-A scrubs? I just don't buy it.

I wish I had my Win Shares book, but it seems to be lost.

[John DiFool]

To be fair to it, in general reps seem to match WAR's career rankings (even tho in Concepcion and Bench's cases they seem to fail-catcher defense in particular is quite hard to quantify even in our play-by-play era). Here for example are the top shortstops of all time by Baseball Ref's WAR rankings (which uses Total Zone):

• 1. Ozzie Smith+ 239 R
• 2. Mark Belanger 238 R
• 3. Cal Ripken+ 176 R
• 4. Luis Aparicio+ 149 R
• 5. Omar Vizquel 134 R
• 6. Rey Sanchez 112 R
• 7. Ozzie Guillen 99 R
• 8. Roy McMillan 88 R
• 9. Ron Hansen 87 R
• 10. Greg Gagne 81 R
• 11. Alan Trammell 81 R
• 12. Ed Brinkman 77 R
• 13. Jack Wilson 75 R
• 14. Adam Everett 72 R
• 15. B. Campaneris 71 R
• 16. Mike Bordick 69 R
• 17. Tony Kubek 66 R
• 18. Royce Clayton 65 R
• 19. Bucky Dent 65 R
• 20. Ernie Banks+ 62 R

Now, there are a few admitted oddities here-Ernie Banks at #20 after only half a career spent at SS? Royce Effin' Clayton? But if you asked 100 fans who the best 5 defensive SS of all time were, it would almost certainly be very similar to the top 5 here (Ripken might drop off tho). The vast majority of these guys had the reps. Examine the other lists and there aren't very many other surprises: Andruw Jones beating out Willie Mays in CF might be the oddest. Bench is 6th on the C list by the way (Pudge Rodriguez is #1). Keith Hernandez at 1B, Bill Mazeroski at 2nd, Brooks Robinson at 3rd, and Barry Bonds in LF and Roberto Clemente in RF round out the rest of the lineup, and each of these players are almost universally agreed to be the best ever defensively at their positions.

[markdash]

Originally Posted by RickJay

And I probably shouldn't have snapped that hard, sorry.

To clarify, I really don't trust WAR. I don't trust many defensive stats, really, but I specifically don't buy WAR because, as I've said, it seems to be disconnected from team performance.

It also bears almost no relationship to defensive reputation. Now, of course, defensive reputations can be wrong (Derek Jeter) and they usually lag in time behind the facts, as you have pointed out; players will keep winning Gold Gloves long after they stopped deserving them. But it's kind of hard to believe that there's NO relationship between defensie reputation and the numbers.

Just for the fun of it I looked up some great defensive players... Johnny Bench, for instance, has a career defensive WAR of 6.1. Really? JOHNNY BENCH was just 60 runs better than a good Triple-A catcher?

His teammate, Joe Morgan, is rated is being below replacement level for his career. (Defensively, you understand.) Davey Conception is just 1.1 dWAR,though he was about +4 until the last five years of his career. And the 1976 Reds, who won 102 games and swept both the NLCS and WS, are rated as being below replacement value, as a team.

Like, do you believe ANY of that? I'm not a Reds fan but I think that's an absolute load of horsecrap. The Reds assembled one of the best teams in the history of baseball, and yet, defensively, they were no better than an assemblage of quadruple-A scrubs? I just don't buy it.

I wish I had my Win Shares book, but it seems to be lost.

I wouldn't put much stock into historical defensive WAR numbers. It goes off total zone which is determined from play-by-play data, but not from human observation. It makes assumptions which may not actually be true.

Defensive WAR for current players uses UZR, which is a much more accurate method. (A guy sits in front of a monitor, watches each play, and depending on where the ball is hit gives credit/blame to fielders in a specific ratio.)

As a result I wouldn't pay attention to WAR numbers pre-2000 or so.