Obviously you haven’t seen Jhonny Peralta lately. 
(I know, I’m just a bitter Cleveland fan. Leave me alone.)
Jhonny Peralta’s not that bad at all. Moves pretty good to his right.
He’s a little erratic, but you should see the stiffs my Jays have put out there. First we had Russ Adams, who fielded .928. Then they moved Aaron Hill to short, and he fielded .933. I’d like to say their amazing range made up for all the errors, but both were pretty much without any sort of range at all.
I just have to ask, as you were probably watching last night.
I was at the game in the bleachers and when Jeter went back on the one deep pop-up I thought of this thread. Are you still sticking by your guns that Jeter is not better than most other or all other current shortstops at going back to get the ball?
On the same note, I saw at least one grounder that a great defensive shortstop would have got that Jeter could not.
Jim
The problem for me, and most sabermetricians, is that the 'evidence" for Jeter is largely anecdotal.
To avoid crunching numbers, let’s just suppose that two players perform identically in the field. That is, there is no real difference as to their actual defensive play–they’re in effect (for the purposes of this discussion) identical.
But one of them:
- is a very good-looking fellow
while his counterpart
1a) is a scruffy-looking slob, with his shirttail out, his spikes unshined, etc. He also resembles The Thing facially, with maybe a soupcon of Manuel Noriega. Also the first guy:
2) is very well-spoken
while his counterpart
2a) is utterly inarticulate, left to cursing, blowing snot and monosyllables on reporters, etc . Also the first guy:
- is well-liked by teammates and his manager, who is himself a genius at playing the press
while his counterpart
3a) is held in contempt by his teammates, and by an endless series of your typical parade of cloddish managers over the years of his career. Also the first guy:
- plays in a media capital, with many more opportunities for his manager and teammates to deify him in the press, plus endorsements and other positive exposure
while his counterpart
4a) plays in a media desert. Also the first guy:
- plays for a very successful team, so he would tend to get press for his frequent post-season play
while his counterpart
5a) plays for a losing team, in constant disarray. Also the first guy:
6) arrived on the scene just when his team’s success began, so he gets credit, whether deserved or not, for causing the team’s success
while his counterpart
6a) arrived on his team just as a successful period of play for his team was ending, so he gets blamed, whether deservedly or not, for causing his teams’ failure. Also the first guy:
- has stayed on his team for his entire career, giving him a (deserved or not) reputation for steadiness and reliability
while his counterpart
7a) has frequently gotten traded from one bad, dissension-ridden team to another
I’ve got more hypothetical examples, without even getting into items 25-64, which are baseball-related (Oh, I’ll throw out item #43 just so you see what sort of thing I mean here:
- is an excellent offensive player
while his counterpart
43a) is just barely able to retain the #9 slot in the order over the years.)
remember, we’re stipulating for the purposes of this discussion, that the two players are identically-gifted (or not) fielders. Just knowing the above differences, none of which have anything to do with fielding ability, wouldn’t you agree that the first guy is likely to be regarded as a fielder much more highly than his counterpart? If you agree that this is entirely possible, then we’re ready to look at Jeter specifically. If you’re still stuck on denying that any of my differences are even possible, then we have a whole 'nother discussion.
Your point is completely valid and reasonable. In fact any knowledgeable baseball fan knows that Gold Gloves often go to a high profile, well liked player over better defensive players. **I fully acknowledge Jeter is not really a Gold Glove Shortstop. ** He won for being Jeter and all other High Profile shortstops either leaving the position (A-Rod & Garciapara) or being a worse fielder (Tejada). All of the slicker fielders with more range than Jeter are either minor offensive threats or not known nationally. Gold Gloves have always been a bit of a joke.
I keep saying I do not claim Jeter is a great defensive Shortstop, I do claim sabermetricians have always undervalued his defensive value as the stats do not account for his great ability to go back on a ball and deeper than any current shortstop.
Additionally if the two identical shortstops are identical defensively in every way but one does make incredibly memorable, clutch, abnormal defensive plays. That player is naturally going to considered the better defensive player, Stats be damned. This is the reality sabermetricians need to deal with and all too often try to ignore. I feel like it comes down to, “If we cannot measure it, it is not real”.
Bill James came close to saying this in the past but thankfully backed off.
Jim
By (I think) any conceivable metric, Tejada’s not a worse fielder than Jeter.
Since we’re both agreeing that we’re talking about two [hypothetically] identical defensive players, I take exception to the notion that it is the sabermetricians who err in claiming equality for the shortstop who makes “incredibly memorable, clutch, abnormal defensive plays.” They’re “incredibly memorable, clutch, abnormal defensive plays” to you because you WANT them to be so. The counterpart ss is getting a bad rap by being considered inferior to this shortstop because his fans contrive to bump up his reputation and diminish the reputation of equally skilled shortstops.
This is baseball’s equivalent of the big lie. If you repeat anecdotes about Jeter’s clutchness, which no one can prove and which people can plausibly disprove, and you make those claims often enough, your claims become your proof. In SDMB terms, your posts become your cite.
Even we Yankee fans have almost never claimed that Jeter is one of the elite defensive shortstops- merely that he’s a good, solid shortstop. Considering that good, solid shortstops are hard to come by (let alone ones who can put up good offensive numbers), he’s an extremely valuable guy. But not a stellar defensive player.
As for “clutch” play… I’ve always tended to agree with the skeptics. Over the long run, the guys who hit .350 in the bottom of the 9th of postseason games are the same guys who do it the rest of the time.
Everybody remembers Bill Mazeroski’s walkoff homer in the 1960 World Series, and labels him a “clutch” performer. Maybe he was- but if I were a manager in a similar situation, I’d rather have any number of players at the plate.
Then why isn’t ARod playing SS?
By most statistical measures and (at least by my observation) ARod is a better defensive shortstop than Jeter. Joe Torre leaves Jeter playing SS for a variety of reasons, including:
ARod, being a better glove man, was probably far more amenable to a position change than Jeter. Don’t know this, but probably agreeing to a position switch to get a chance to join the Yankees may have been a part of the bargain. Remember several stories right after ARod went to the Yankees about if he really was amenable to a position switch why was this not an option when the ARod for Manny swap (with the accompanying dealing Nomar to White Sox)…this is some indication that ARod preferred to join the Yankees rather than the Bosox.
The realities of managing in New York-- let’s say a position switch is percieved to have a negative effect of the players offensive output – ARod underperforms his contract (almost a certainty given his paycheck), he gets the blame…if Jeter’s position switch is perceived as partially to blame for a drop in hitting, the NY media (and perhaps George S.) make Torre the goat.
Torre may very well have believed a position switch would actually have a negative effect on Jeter’s offensive output…Given how Jeter has hit throughout his career, Torre may well be right.
A large part of the Reason why Jeter stayed put and A-Rod moved is the fact that Jeter is the Captain and the biggest star on the team. However, another very important fact is A-Rod has a terrific arm and on paper was more suited to a move to 3rd. Jeter would appear to be better suited to a move to 2nd.
Jim {Says the die-hard Jeter fan.}
But you know something? Jeter actually has a strong arm, too (you remember all those throws he makes from deep in the hole, don’t you, even when it doesn’t suit your argument?) and what he gets criticized for is mostly his limited range (“pastadiving”), which means he’d do very well at 3b where range is not such a big deal (Brooks Robinson couldn’t have won a race with Roy Campanella) . His great arm, meanwhile, would be pretty much wasted at 2b, where 75% of the throws are under 50 feet.
In the situation with the skill sets involved, Arod wouldn’t have been moved and Jeter would have, b-b-b-b-but he’s Derek Jeter! The Yankee Captain!! You don’t ask your captain to move, not for anyone! DE-REK!!! O, my Derek!!!
I have been following this thread, of course. Very funny to have evolved the way it has…
I don’t necessarily have a strong opinion about saber-types - I think deep analysis can definitely add insight, but, as with Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink, I think there is a lot to be said for deeply-ingrained insights gained from years of investment in learning a craft. Sometimes the numbers don’t say everything - but they should definitely be checked as part of thoughtful decision-making…my $.02.
Enjoying the Jeter back and forth. I am a big Yankees and a big Jeter fan, but ultimately think he should’ve been the guy at 3rd, no A-Rod…
Well, I’m not sure “Blink” and sabremetrics are necessarily at odds with each other. The point of “Blink” is that a qualified person’s superficial observations are as likely to produce a valid judgment as a lengthy study by a panel of experts. That is, one seasoned scout may well be able to say “This kid’s a phenom” or “This kid’s a waste of our time” after watching him make just a few throws. But that doesn’t mean stats are unimportant. Rather, a Bill James can use stats after the fact to determine whether that intuitive scout was right. IF that scout’s gut-level decision was correct, we should be able to see it in the player’s stats after he’s been in the majors for a while.
In other words, IF our gut-level reactions are correct, the numbers SHOULD bear that out. But sometimes (to paraphrase John Cusack) our guts have shit for brains! Sometimes we fans are SURE of things that objectively can’t be true.
To use an example I’ve used before, look at Horace Clarke. Horace was the Yankees’ second baseman during their down years of the laste Sixties and early Seventies. Horace has been retired for 30+ years, but even now, if you mention his name in New York, fans will laugh at memories of his utter ineptness. He’s long been a punchline in New York. Old-timers at Yankee Stadium will regale you with stories of how hopeless Horace was in the field. Heck, when I was a kid, I joined in the jokes, never pausing to wonder, “Wait a minute… I’ve never seen Horace make an embarrassing error, have I?”
Thing is, the statistics show that New York fans were completely WRONG about Horace. His fielding percentage was, in fact, very good. But wait, that stat alone doesn’t necessarily mean much- maybe he had a good fielding percentage because he didn’t get to many balls and didn’t handle many chances! Er, no. Turns out Horace led American League second basemen in assists for 6 years in a row. So, not only was Horace not a terrible second baseman, the stats prove pretty conclusively that he was a very GOOD second baseman.
But somehow, stats just don’t register with fans, who’ll say, “Don’t argue numbers. I know what I saw with my own eyes.”
Hence, there are otherwise sane fans who’ll tell you with a straight face that they’d rather have Bucky Dent at the plate than Barry Bonds in the bottom of the 9th of a World Series. After all, they’ve SEEN Bucky make a big homer in that playoff game against the Red Sox in 1978, and they’ve seen Barry bat .245 in the post-season. So, to them, it stands to reason that Bucky was a “clutch” player and Barry is a “choker.”
I think those people are crazy. Never mind that Barry Bonds was great in the one World Series he’s played in- just remember that most players don’t get enough post-season appearances to tell us anything statistically useful.
Look, every baseball fan knows that the stats at the end of April (when most starters have about 100 at bats) don’t mean much. At the end of April, it’s not unusual to see Dick Hertz batting .400, while a perennial batting champ is batting .265, is it? You can usually assume that, come October, the best of the best will rise to the top, and Dick Hertz will fade after his hot start.
Well, it’s the same in the post-season. Fifty or a hundred at-bats aren’t enough to tell us who’s a star and who’s a pretender. In general, a player who DOES make a lot of post-season appearances will put up exactly the numbers you’d expect to see.
Example: Reggie Jackson is called “Mr. October” because, supposedly, he elevated his game in the post-season. Well, Reggie had 281 at bats in the post season, which is about half a full season. So, that should give us a very fair idea of how “clutch” a performer he was.
Well now, this is interesting. In those 281 at-bats, Reggie batted .278. with 18 homers and 48 RBIs. If we extrapolate, we can say that in a full “season” of post-season play, Reggie would bat .278 with 36 homers and 96 RBIs. In other words, EXACTLY what we’d expect from Reggie in an ordinary season.
So, Reggie was NOT a “clutch” player. He was a very good player who put up the same kind of numbers in the regular season and in the postseason.
But people who rely on their gut observations are sure to argue with me!
THing is, I do NOT discount “intangibles.” I think “intangibles” can be extremely important. But I also think that, if those intangibles have real value, that value will show up in the stats.
I am just curious, I might well be wrong about the move to second for Jeter, but don’t you think A-Rod has a better arm than Jeter does. You could well be right about Jeter, A-Rod has not succeeded in learning how to charge the ball like a “Great” third baseman and perhaps Jeter could. We all know A-Rod is the better shortstop, so I agree there.
By the way, could you please ratchet back the sarcasm a little, I admitted that the Hero/Captain factor was a large part of the reason he did not move. It would have been nice if Jeter had volunteered to move, but the fans would have resented A-Rod for it. Many Yankee Fans did not and do not want A-Rod on the team. I think they are crazy; we got him cheap by Yankee standards.
Can you answer this question please? Do you acknowledge that current fielding stats are not perfect and fail to measure some aspects of the game?
BTW: The Mets just locked in their great young shortstop for a very good bargain price. That was a great job by your very good GM.
Jim
Great post, astorian.
Ratchet back the sarcasm a little? But how would I express myself without sarcasm? it’s like asking a jew or an Italian to talk without gesturing–which come to think of it is exactly what you’re asking here–so, okay. I’ll try.
i’ve never spoken to a Yankee fan without withering sarcasm, and sneering, and overt hostility before, so please forgive, sir, if I lapse (was that “sir” sarcastic? A little, I think), but in answer to your question: Yes, stats are not perfect. Nothing in this universe is. But stats strive for perfection, while anecdotes and observations don’t even remotely try to be vaguely accurate. They fail to measure some aspects of the game, sure, but they succeed better than any other means in everything other than the aesthetic and the visceral: it’s way more exciting to see a great fielding play than to read the statitics (“assists-- 1”) but if Nomar is in Fenway at the same moment that Jeter is in Yankee Stadium, and he’s making two great plays to Jeter’s one, you can sit there in Yankee stadium
oohing-and-ahhing that Jeter’s the greatest, but the stats will say otherwise. You can’t be in 15 stadia at the same time, and you probably aren’t watching the 14 other MLB games every day, and that’s the use of stats. They almost literally level the playing field, and give people who don’t play for the best team, or in front of the most fans, and give them a chance to make their case for greatness.
It’s no disgrace to say that Jeter is one of the best shortstops in the game’s history, nor that he is one of the most valuable active players, but if you want to make exaggerated claims about him that have a statistical component, then you may need to accept that he may be just the 7th best fielding shortstop in the AL, or that he’s the fourth-best hitting middle infielder, or such earth-bound claims.
Arguing this point with Yankee fans, as I’ve spent my life doing, it seems, is frustrating because when ever someone argues rationally Jeter’s limitations, the old “Captain Intangibles” argument comes out, which really amounts to not much more than “I like him, and I don’t care what your statistics say.” You’re far too polite to pull that nonsense, Jim, and I appreciate it, but I can’t even remember discussing this with Yankees fans for too long without getting a little sick to my stomach. It’s the most arrogant attempt to canonize their own stupid fucking subjective opinions into something like objective fact I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard it too often to think it’s just one or two obnoxious pricks that I’ve had the misfortune to discuss this with.
But that has nothing to do with you, Jim. Just venting there. BTW, I follow the Mets a bit, but I’m largely a Red Sox fan.
First, awesome rant, really that was worthy of the pit without sinking to the level of the pit.
Second, I am sorry about the Mets part, I got confused, but I did remember you were living in NYC.
Third, you are correct, it is impossible for Yankee fans to separate their adorations of certain players from cold hard statistical reality. Jeter, Mattingly and Munson all are held in very special regard beyond their statistical contribution. Telling many Yankee fans that they are overrated could lead to loud arguments or worst.
You want irrational, I am agreeing with 95% of what you said and I still would not have traded Jeter for A-Rod.
Jim
For what it’s worth, my view of sabrmetrics:
RealityChuck has the right idea: good at historical analysis, not so hot at predicting. This is especially true because, as everyone here seems to grasp, statistics are only meaningful over a course of time; i.e., only with a large enough sampling do you get meaningful stats. But baseball games–not the season; a game–are not played over a course of time; they are instants in time. Knowing that a guy hits .500 in “clutch” situations is nice, it may tell you what will happen over a given length of time, over a series of at bats, but it doesnt tell you what he’s going to do NOW, right now, in this at bat happening at this moment. That’s why statistics are fine as far as they go, but I tend to shrug my shoulders and just watch the game to see what happens–every baseball game, every at bat, every etc. happens “in the now,” and that result is not dependent upon what the stats say.
Case in point, mentioned above: my local Oakland Athletics have been as far on the cutting edge of sabrmetrics for years now, at least since the late '90s. Over the course of the full seasons, they’ve done pretty well for themselves: 3 division titles, a wild card appearance in the playoffs, lots of winning baseball. Good over the long haul. But when they’ve gotten to that crucial “in the now” moments…well, when they get there, Jeter tosses the ball to Posada, and Giambi doesn’t slide. Bet Bill James didn’t see that coming.
Sabrmetrics strikes me as the product of fallacious, deterministic thinking. “If we just get all the data, we can predict exactly what will happen in every game.” In which case, there won’t be much point in actually playing the game. Me, I’d rather just get a brat and nachos and watch the game.
Just my opinion. I could be wrong.
You’re suffering from some fundamental error in logic, my friend. “Because it fails to accomplish every conceivable goal, including bleaching my t-shirt where I spilled beer on it, sabermetrics is a complete failure, so you’re better off ignoring stats and just watching the damned game already.” I forget what this fallacy is called, but it’s a large one.
Did Bill James claim that he was able to predict minutia of future games? Not unless he went crazy and I didn’t hear about it, but you’re ready to crow in triumph over his rotting corpse because one play happened that he didn’t detail in advance for you. That’s not what he does, ever, but whatever.
James, and most sabermetricians, are strongly opposed to the idea of clutch hitting, claiming that what most people perceive as clutch hitting is simply the normal results broken into small sample sizes. It’s the other camp, the anecdotal watchers of baseball, who disregard statistics and claim that because THEY happened to see something, they have special insight into players’ strengths and weaknesses of character. Read James on Reggie Jackson sometime, and you’ll see that you’re attacking James and all sabermetricans for holding a position that they almost uniformly oppose.
You can go to games to appreciate the “now,” you can go to watch the pretty uniforms, you can go to marvel over the fresh-mown grass, but when you try to extrapolate any larger than the games you’re seeing, you’re going to be at a disadvantage to the people who also take statistical trends into account. Do I outvote you, because I’m into stats and you’re not? Of course not. You get one vote, the same as me. It’s just that I’m going to be right about a pattern much more than you are because I’m basing my analysis on the big picture and you’re focused on the “now.” If it wrecks your enjoyment of the game to look at at it as I do, then please enjoy the game your own way, but don’t try to claim some sort of special insight based on willful ignorance. If blinding yourself to careful analysis works for you, that’s cool with me. You enjoy rooting for your team, singlilng out your players and cheering, singling out the other team and booing, and you don’t much care (if you’re like most baseball fans) if you’re cheering and booing the right players or teams. May the good Lord bless you and watch over you–just far away from me, please.