Not me. see 174.
Ozzie did not appear in the top 120 batters for many years of his career. Several shortstops were. Yount and Trammel beat him to a pulp in offense. Many less than inspiring SS were way ahead of him. Many of them were fine fielders too. His greatest that ever heard of the game defensive skills did not IN MY OPINION overcome his crappy bat. If you think it does vote for him. He will not get in my hall.
I think like everybody else, this is the post that officially kills this thread. A vast majority of our efforts have been spent under this board’s banner of “Fighting Ignorance”, but if your basis of judging baseball ability is by three stats that most teams now view as anachronistic then we can’t even begin to discuss the merits of Ozzie Smith as a viable candidate. So, here’s an idea.
Should we start a completely new thread (because this is a pretty big trainwreck at this point) in which we can start discussing and comparing the merits of your main stats vs. the merits of the stats a lot of the rest of us are building our opinions off of?
Your stats are stats of number junkies trying to prove a case they already believe and are trying to convince others of. My numbers have been followed for a century and are what baseball players success or failure is determined by. When someone digs up a new methodology .it requires some time to be evaluated and to be refined. The numbers I use are not concoctions of a stat junkie.
Then when we are done . It will come to whether I believe your evaluations qualify . Mine are time tested and universally accepted. Try to tell me I should have equal weight for a after the fact range evaluation system and should not think range is largely a component of opinion.
You also thru Pete Rose in earlier as a player who does not merit HoF consideration because of standards that let in “girly hitters” like Ozzie Smith. There names tell me all I need to know about your argument. You know very well the reasons why Jackson and Rose are not in the hall, and it has nothing to do with their statistics.
Why do you cite Bowie Kuhn and Morgan Bulkeley (first president of the NL)? There are good reasons to question thier credentials (especially in Kuhn’s case), but they have little bearing on whether or not Ozzie Smith gets in; you might as well cite Henry Chadwick and Cal Hubbard.
Your position is more relevant if you’re talking about players (and please, let’s stick with players here) included via the Veteran’s committee. For years Frankie Frisch sat on the committee–himself an obvious HoF’er–and used it to get his playing-day pals into the Hall, immortals like Dave Bancroft, George Kelly, Travis Jackson and Fred Lindstrom. Bill Mazeroski’s election smelled so much of cronyism, the comittee process was radically altered because of it.
Again though, Ozzie was elected by over 90% of writers (not the Vet. com.), I believe on the first ballot. Don’t you take their opinion seriously?
The position is relevant to their offensive stats. And what about the non top 5 defensive seasons for these players? How do their to 10 seasons match up?
But even with incomplete information, it sounds like there might be a case to be made for Player Two.
Because…?
And I’m still waiting to hear why offensive runs and defensive runs don’t have equal value. You do realize that an offensive run for one team is a defensive run for the opponent, right?
Defensive statistics are not like offensive stats. !40 rbis is 140 rbis and everybody knows what it means. Saying Ozzie had a great range and saved some made up number of games is not really measurable. Do you think shortstops for every team are not terrific fielders. Do you think they are revolving doors for ground ball. I have seen a lot of very good SSs. QI do not think Ozzie was so great that he was head and shoulders above them all and his lack of hitting still qualifies him. -
How does a range measurement compensate for ,artificial turf,how hard each ground ball was hit. How hard a catch a liner was. The wind or any number of variables . ? It can not. .It is so obviously an opinion measurement disguised as some new and great system. I do not accept it is possible to rate a players defense stastically on any given day let alone a season. Then to say the ground ball Yount caught was easier than the ground ball that Ozzie caught another day and another time. It is dumb. Show a little skepicism when someone says I can tell you numerically how many runs Ozzie was worth defensively and how it compares to Yount or some other SS.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to be all coy. It is indeed “I’m Keith Hernandez.” Given the statistics quoted, and now that his identity is clear, how many of those who support Ozzie Smith’s candidacy for the Hall would support a “Keith Hernandez for HoF” push as well? He’s my absolute favorite player of all time, so to say I am biased is to understate the case, but the numbers would appear to suggest that his contributions as a defensive player approach Ozzie’s (FRAA and similar statistics would appear to figure in the relative value of the two positions; if a 1B and a SS have equal FRAA, then they are providing equal defensive value in terms of runs saved, yes?). He was obviously a much better hitter, and a career OBP of .380+ is really not so bad. He clearly had a Hall-of-Fame caliber mustache.
Thoughts?
He suffers from what permeates the hall. Good press ,much love ,you get in. Bad press,you are out.Hernandez had a coke problem. He has been nailed for sexist remarks and his stupid Hair Club commercials all taint his image. Should they count. Maybe not but a backflip would have enshrined him. He had the hitting credentials and a pile of gold gloves.
Keith Hernandez isn’t in for some of the same reasons why Jim Rice isn’t in: his offensive productivity ended suddenly and at a relatively early age and he was out of baseball by the time he was 36. As for comparing defense with Ozzie Smith, it’s really a case of apples and oranges. Shortstop is regarded as a position where one’s defensive skills are important since you’re basically in the middle infield firing line. You can’t really say the same about first base. That’s why when you evaluate the worth of a player, defense doen’t play as big a role (and offensive stats are more significant) with a first basemen than it does with a shortstop.
Hernandez is an interesting case to say the least. I was always really surprised he polled so low in the voting; he was a huge star when he was active, won an MVP Award, was as good a defensive first baseman as I ever saw.
If I can say two things; first, the reason he’s not is is that nobody who has ever has similar batting numbers is in. Guys with similar stats include Wally Joyner, Mark Grace, and Chris Chambliss, none of whom you’d think of as being a Hall of Famer. John Olerud was exactly as good a hitter as Hernandez is a career about 10% longer, and was just as good a defensive player (according to most metrics; he never got the credit for it he deserved, but he’s got all the same FRAA numbers as Hernandez.)
So, let me put it this way; Keith Hernandez wouldn’t be a bad choice, but John Olerud would probably be better, and Will Clark’s probably right with those guys as well. Hernandez’s case is, I think, watered down a bit by the ease with which you can find essentially smiliar players of equal credentials.
Just for fun I looked up the Wn Shares for variosu first basemen, and interestingly enough it ranked Hernandez very high, but not above Grace, Garvey, and a few others. Now, I’m not sure how much credit to give to that, but it’s interesting.
Well, but that’s really the point of using FRAA as a way of evaluating fielding, isn’t it? Shortstop is a “more important” defensive position, and so likely the number of runs saved, total, will be higher at shortstop than at first. But if Ozzie Smith saved 25 runs more than the average shortstop in a given year, and Keith Hernandez saved 25 more than the average first baseman in the same year, their defensive contributions - assuming for the moment that FRAA is a good statistic, of course - are identical. The degree of difficulty involved in their respective positions is already figured into the stat.
What you guys are saying ,is you can understand why some people might think Hernandez qualifies ,but you don’t quite agree. About that we can respectfully agree. But I am in the same spot about Ozzie and see him outside. This disagreement can not be allowed, Strange.
Often the centerfielder is the guy who saves games. A great range and arm are a huge asset to a team. Yet who thinks a slap hitting CF der should get in.?
For me, it’s not even so much about Ozzie. Heck, I’m a lifelong Cubs fan so I’m genetically predisposed to despise Ozzie. It’s more about how you are making your determination. There’s a vast catalog of simple and complex measures out there to analyze a player’s worth. Avg/HR/RBI are way down at the bottom of that list. The goal of the game as a batter is to not make an out. Average simply overlooks a huge portion of a player’s ability to get on base. Not every batter is a homerun hitter, nor do they need to be. Not every park, era, or condition is set up to allow for homeruns to be a major part of a game. Slugging percentage, + comparisons, VORP (etc) all do a better job of measuring offensive prowess. RBI is absolutely dependent on playing with good players and where you are in the batting order that it doesn’t make sense to use it to determine a player’s ability to create runs. An awful player can hit behind guys that get on base and have 100 RBI while a great player can bat behind 2 Neifi Perezes and end up with 70 RBI but neither number gives you a true answer to who the better hitter is.
I fully believe Ozzie is an OK choice as a HOFer. Certainly, if there were levels of greatness in there, I’d have him on a lower tier away from true immortals of the game. But, since there’s not, I can only base my opinion as a pure yes/no. Based on his hitting ability as compared to other shortstops, his defensive prowess, and other aspects of his game I have to give a grudging yes vote.
Batting average is not an indicator of your ability to get on base? Wrong.,It is a huge indicator for OBP. Hit 300 and you are on base 300 times out of a thou. That means you move runners along at that rate too.
You can not dismiss batting average as an unimportant statistic.
RBIs are easier to achieve on a good team. Therefore the amount of RBIs is not important? Knock in a hundred and watch your pay check grow.You win by knocking in runs.
An awful player can only get RBIs by moving them across the plate. A good team will give you more opportunities ,but you still have to perform.
I am a skeptic. When a new system comes along I read what it is about and watch . I do not dismiss the old methodology just because a new statistical toy has come along.
From reading this:
[QUOTE=Mullinator]
Average simply overlooks a huge portion of a player’s ability to get on base.QUOTE]
How did you get this?
No kidding. The ability to get hits is usually the main driver of your ability to get on base. But, using batting average gives such an incomplete picture, it’s only a matter of time before OBP completely replaces it in the normal baseball fan’s lexicon. Who’s doing a better job of creating offense? A player that, in 680 at bats, gets 200 hits and 30 walks or a player that gets 190 hits and 80 walks? By taking the higher batting average, you’re essentially saying you are OK with taking the player that makes 40 more outs over the course of the season.
I’m really not. I’m giving it the relevance it deserves since there are much better statistics that give a fuller view. It’s nice to know how often a guy tends to get a hit. It’s nicer to know how often a guy ends up on base since doing that avoids bringing a game 1/27th closer to it’s end.
Having more opportunities masks the possibility that a player is really sucky at those opportunities. He just might rack up good counting stats based on opportunity. Who’s the better player. A guy with 100 RBI who came up with 300 runners on base or the guy with 70 RBI who came up with 140 runners on base?
I don’t know why it hasn’t yet. Why would anyone use batting average when OBP is just as available? That’s like being offered a Gamecube & Wii at the same price and picking the Gamecube. Same with HRs vs. SLG.
I wonder if gonzomax would prefer a singles percentage over BA since singles are a huge part of BA.
Babe Ruth lifetime batting average 342
Bonds 298
Ted Williams 344
Willie Mays 302 I want them both.
Isn’t the horse dead yet?
Its spring.; Baseball season is just starting.