# Baseball Player Ranking Surprise: The Game **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Tags:** baseball-mlb\ **Created:** [August 12, 2011, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baseball-player-ranking-surprise-the-game/592495 "2011-08-12T19:37:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baseball-player-ranking-surprise-the-game/592495/21 "2011-08-17T01:33:54Z")
> [@kevja](#): > > Of course baseball fans love stats more than probably any other game. But my point was some of the “new” stats sometimes don’t make sense to me. Stargell at 125 is good enough to get to the HOF, but Clark at 124 is off the ballot after one year. The Hall of Fame was screwed up a long time before anyone came up with the advanced stats. If you think HoF voting has ever made any sense, hoo boy, have I got some doozies for you. > [@](#): > > The HOF voters are taking other things into consideration when they cast their ballots. Sure. Like nepotism. And stupidity. I don’t know where George Kelly is on that list but he’s not one of the 500 best players in baseball history and he’s in the Hall of Fame, and the reason he’s in is his old friend ran the Veterans Committee and put all his teammates in. Not that George Kelly wasn’t a good player and all, but he wasn’t the player John Olerud was and nobody’s putting John Olerud in the Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame has made a LOT of stupid admissions and left a lot of deserving players out. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baseball-player-ranking-surprise-the-game/592495/22 "2011-08-17T01:34:20Z")
deleted, duplicate ---
**Author:** ![drm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a88e57/32.png) [@drm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drm)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baseball-player-ranking-surprise-the-game/592495/23 "2011-08-17T02:46:59Z")
Speaking as a Sox fan, the idea that J.D. “Called Third Strike when it matters” Drew is anywhere near the top 200 bothers me. I love stats as a math guy, but Sabermetrics seem to fail me here. They keep telling me the guy is good, but when I watch the games he just makes me angry. The thing I love about these lists is it DOES help me remember the players I forgot were great, like Frank Thomas. A career OBP of .419 is right up there with the all time greats (forget about stats you know). Even with the Jays he never lost that. ---
**Author:** ![Tanbarkie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a698b9/32.png) [@Tanbarkie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tanbarkie)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baseball-player-ranking-surprise-the-game/592495/24 "2011-08-17T19:34:23Z")
> [@drm](#): > > Speaking as a Sox fan, the idea that J.D. “Called Third Strike when it matters” Drew is anywhere near the top 200 bothers me. I love stats as a math guy, but Sabermetrics seem to fail me here. They keep telling me the guy is good, but when I watch the games he just makes me angry. J.D. Drew _is_ good (well, was good before the past season and a half). Very, very good. Over the course of his career, he has shown astonishing plate discipline, solid power, and stellar defense in right field. He’s been worth every penny of the contract the Red Sox gave him, even if you include his putrid performance in 2011. ---
**Author:** ![Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a183cd/32.png) [@Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barkis_is_Willin)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baseball-player-ranking-surprise-the-game/592495/25 "2011-08-17T20:46:08Z")
> [@Tanbarkie](#): > > J.D. Drew _is_ good (well, was good before the past season and a half). Very, very good. Over the course of his career, he has shown astonishing plate discipline, solid power, and stellar defense in right field. He’s been worth every penny of the contract the Red Sox gave him, even if you include his putrid performance in 2011. But he’s not cluuuuuuuuuuuuuuutch! Except for that big fly in the '07 ALCS. #14 Rickey Henderson. Wow. I know he was awesome and I expect he’d be top 50, but 14! #49 Reggie Jackson. Dude hit like .260. Yeah, I know, all those home runs, but Thome has more and he’s a few spots behind at 53. #558 Mo Vaughn. Won an MVP! Carried the Red Sox for a few years. I guess that time wasted away with the Mets and Angels killed him. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baseball-player-ranking-surprise-the-game/592495/26 "2011-08-17T21:06:53Z")
> [@Barkis\_is\_Willin](#): > > #49 Reggie Jackson. Dude hit like .260. Yeah, I know, all those home runs, but Thome has more and he’s a few spots behind at 53. Bear in mind that Reggie hit 500 homers during an era when very few other guys did (Mike Schmidt and who else?), while Jim Thome flew under the radar for ages because LOTS of guys were hitting loads of home runs. ---
**Author:** ![Ambihelical\_Hexnut](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4491bb/32.png) [@Ambihelical\_Hexnut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambihelical_Hexnut)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baseball-player-ranking-surprise-the-game/592495/27 "2011-08-17T21:26:36Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Here’s where I think WAR is badly wrong; defense. Baseball Reference’s WAR does not work for defense. > > Now, I think most people would agree Albert Pujols is a greater player than Bill Mazeroski was. > > But according to WAR, Albery Pujols is as good a defensive player as Bill Mazeroski. That’s… I mean, that’s just flippin’ crazy. Pujols is a very fine defensive first baseman, but Maz was a great defensive SECOND baseman, and there is absolutely no comparison in value between a second baseman and a first baseman in terms of their gloves. Not for one millisecond do I believe Albert Pujols has the same defensive value as Bill Mazeroski. > > WAR’s rating of defense has alwys puzzled the hell out of me. Usually it’s generally right; you don’t see it claiming that Dave Kingman was a glove wizard. But it seems to do two things wrong: > > 1. Contrary to the concept of Wins Above Replacement, WAR seems to rate players against an AVERAGE, not a replacement level, which tends to warp the numbers downwards for players who have had long careers. If you add up the defensive WAR for all the major league teams it adds up to about zero. That’s… um, inexplicable. It also means that according to WAR a player with 0 defensive WAR has no value, but in fact such a player DOES have value. Average is valuable. > > 2. WAR clearly makes no distinction between positions, and so rates a left fielder as being equal in value to a shortstop. I have great respect for Barry Bonds’s skills but WAR ranks him as a more valuable defensive player than any shortstop who ever lived except Ozzie Smith and Mark Belanger (and it’s a close call.) That is absolutely insane. Barry Bonds was a lot better than most left fielders but there have been thirty shortstops, at least, whose defensive abilities were more valuable than those of Barry Bonds. > > So in the case of Maz and Pujols I think that while their offensive ranking are accurate, the system underrates Mazeroski and overrates Pujols with the glove. Big time. > [@Gray\_Ghost](#): > > RickJay, I couldn’t agree more with you on your critique of BP’s dWAR stat. I’m not quite sure how they arrive at it, but they seem to be "doing it wrong’. I base this on the modern players I’ve watched a bit of, whose stats vary dramatically year to year for no discernible reason. I am not a BP or B-Reference subscriber, so I don’t know if your list changes all that dramatically if we just look at oWAR. I have doubts about oWAR’s ability to normalize across eras too. WAR is adjusted to take positional differences into account - the problem is that for some reason the positional adjustment shows up as a component of offensive WAR instead of defensive WAR. If you look in the Player Value tables on Baseball Reference, you will find the values of all the components that make up WAR listed. Defensive WAR is calculated from ‘Rfield’ (adjustment due to fielding ability) only, when it should really be calculated from ‘Rfield’ AND ‘Rpos’ (adjustment due to position). This has the effect of making defensive WAR useful only for comparing players who played the same position. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baseball-player-ranking-surprise-the-game/592495/28 "2011-08-17T22:09:42Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Bear in mind that Reggie hit 500 homers during an era when very few other guys did (Mike Schmidt and who else?), while Jim Thome flew under the radar for ages because LOTS of guys were hitting loads of home runs. Eddie Murray hit 500, but his career started in 1977, when Jackson and Schmidt were already established stars. A few 500-homers guys saw their careers end early in Schmidt’s career, like Aaron and McCovey. It says something about the difference in eras that Schmidt, who hit 548 home runs, won more home run titles than Jim Thome, Sammy Sosa, and Ken Griffey Jr. combined. Jackson was an awesome player. I’m actually mildly surprised Thome is that close to him. It goes to show you we’ve been spoiled by the inflated offensive numbers of the 1990s-2000s. Look at it this way; the most homers Reggie ever hit in a season was 47, in 1969. That year the average AL team hit 137 homers. So Reggie was like 34% of a whole team’s worth of homers. Thome’s career high was 52, in 2002, but the average AL team hit 176 homers - so Thome was 29.5% of a whole team of homers. Or for a more dramatic example, take Reggie’s 1968 season. He hit .250 with 29 homers and an OPS of .768. Thome in 2004 hit .274 with 44 homers and an OPS of .977 - but the two seasons are basically equal in offensive value. And Reggie could play some outfield and was a good baserunner. ---
**Author:** ![Bootis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e8c25b/32.png) [@Bootis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bootis)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baseball-player-ranking-surprise-the-game/592495/29 "2011-08-17T22:10:05Z")
It is absolutely unfathomable to be that **Jim Edmonds** , in _300 Fewer Games_ ranks higher than **Manny freakin Ramirez** ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2011, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baseball-player-ranking-surprise-the-game/592495/30 "2011-08-18T00:20:10Z")
> [@Bootis](#): > > It is absolutely unfathomable to be that **Jim Edmonds** , in _300 Fewer Games_ ranks higher than **Manny freakin Ramirez** The system ranks Edmonds as an outstanding defensive player and Ramirez as one of the worst defensive players who ever lived. That’s why Edmonds just barely edges out Ramirez. As hitters, Manny is way ahead; defense cancels them out. I’ve stated that I don’t buy WAR’s defensive ratings, and I don’t, but I think we can agree Edmonds was an outstanding center fielder and Ramirez was… um, not. I know later in his career people started claiming Manny was great at playing the Monster, but he could put on performances of defensive ineptitude that truly boggled the mind. I saw him single-handedly lose a game with his defense in a game in which he was not charged with a single error, yet on FOUR separate, immensely costly plays, he either bungled or loafed a catchable batted ball into extra bases. It was amazing to behold. So let me play devil’s advocate; it’s it **possible** that even with his magnificent hitting, Ramirez was effectively equal in value (they’re awfully close on that list) to a guy who wasn’t as good a hitter but was pretty damned good AND who had Gold Glove talent in center field? ---
**Author:** ![Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a183cd/32.png) [@Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barkis_is_Willin)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2011, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baseball-player-ranking-surprise-the-game/592495/31 "2011-08-18T14:50:29Z")
Thome’s OBP is 50 points higher than Jackson’s. That and the fact that Jackson struck out A LOT (so does Thome) are why I’m mildly surprised to see him ranked in the top 50. ---
**Author:** ![drm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a88e57/32.png) [@drm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drm)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2011, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baseball-player-ranking-surprise-the-game/592495/32 "2011-08-19T01:49:02Z")
> [@Tanbarkie](#): > > J.D. Drew _is_ good (well, was good before the past season and a half). Very, very good. Over the course of his career, he has shown astonishing plate discipline, solid power, and stellar defense in right field. He’s been worth every penny of the contract the Red Sox gave him, even if you include his putrid performance in 2011. Oh I know, the stats are good there isn’t any question about that, but the stats don’t translate to video for him (at least for me). Thats what I was trying to say. Honestly it’s probably just a blind spot for me. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baseball-player-ranking-surprise-the-game/592495.md?page=1)