I’ve only seen three votes for him and one mentioned regret for not including him (by me). His numbers were very good and he was obviously a team leader.
I think a vote for McGraw makes as much sense as several other choices. My vote for Ken Boyer was colored by my Dad talking about how he was nearly as good a glove as Clete who many feel was better than Brooks or Nettles. As I have been doing some more reading lately, I now think my father might have over-rated Ken’s glove.
If nothing else John McGraw had an OPS+ of 135 for his career and poster appear fond of that stat. I like the storied grit of the man, his leaderships skills and his .466 lifetime OBA with 436 stolen bases.
You do make a good point though, he really only had one full season over a long career.
There’s been plenty of guys in the Hall who did only 1-2 things well, and breezed right in. Tony Gwynn also has the average but walked about half as often (was faster tho, solid glove). Reggie Jackson had the power and a good batting eye but was hardly a glove man. Harmon Killebrew. Heck Traynor could single and play D but that was about it. The truly one-dimensional guys, like Kingman and Belanger, hardly ever get a sniff (yes I know Mazeroski got in a few years back). If the voters held candidates to this standard, the Hall would have like 50 people in it.
Actually Reggie is interesting, by the time he got to the Yanks he definitely was not a great glove guy anymore, but yet in his A’s years he had a rep as a good glove and good arm. For his career as a RF he had a 1.93 range factor vs. 1.76 league range factor. (Stats provided for those that love stats or hate heresay)
gonzomax, you can vote for anyone you want. I don’t know how much more clearly it can be stated; it is an open ballot. If you wish to vote for Paul Molitor, you can vote for Paul Molitor.
Fenway’s a great place to hit, but let’s not overstate the case. It’s not Coors Field or the Baker Bowl, and Boggs wasn’t putting those numbers up in today’s inflated offense. In 1988, when he put up a .476 on base percentage, the league average was only .324; adjusting for Fenway puts it at .331.
Boggs was probably the greatest on base percentage machine to ever play third.
I have to ask for a cite. C. Boyer had a better fielding record than The Human Vacuum Cleaner?
I’m willing to be argued with, but I find at MLB Records | Baseball Almanac that Brooks Robinson leads 3B in assists, chances, double plays, fielding percentage, and putouts. That’s all MLB 3B, EVAR.
Does any of that (besides fielding percentage) actually mean anything, in regards to his greatness? If he had the most chances, then it stands to reason that he’d have the most assists and putouts, even if he were just an average fielder.
But not that I’m arguing against Brooks being great; his rate stats are all first-class, and #1 all-time Fielding % is pretty sweet (although not as rock-solid an indicator as #1 OBP or WHIP would be, for instance).
You’re correct in that a lot of these statistics are just adding up to one another.
Of course, it’s inevitable Robinson would lead all third basemen in the simple counting stats anyway, because he played far more games at third base than anyone else.
Fielding is a very difficult thing to measure. Range factor is often totally erroneous and can give wrong impressions about a fielder’s ability, because it’s affected by opportunity and park effects. Fielding perecentage, especially in moderntimes and especially when comparing players good enough to last awhile at a position, usually describes differences too small to matter.
Fielding statistics are not like hitting or pitching statistics, which are cumulative; you can have a team that hits 230 homers and a team that hits 90, and it’s easy to tell who’s hitting a lot of homers and who isn’t. But all teams have basically the same fielding statistics, especially today, when there aren’t many errors. (This was not the case, say, 100 years ago, when there were many more errors and the differences could be large.) Because of the way fielding stats are counted - by outs - all teams get basically the same numbers, because they have to all make the same number of outs. And unfortunately, the other things conspire against you; good teams don’t generally make more double plays than bad ones (since bad teams let more men on base) don’t make so many more errors that it matters a lot, don’t tend to have different ratios of strikeouts to other outs. So you have to dig a lot deeper.
Fielding is one area where I think you really must look at the advanced fielding analytical stats, because there just aren’t any simple stats that tell an accurate story, at least not when we’re comparing legitimately great players.
I understand that B. Robinson played more games, but doesn’t the fielding percentage say quite a lot, especially when it’s widely known that he went for every ball near him? He was not at all the type who kind of waved the ball by and conceded a hit. This would increase his chances (for a good reason) and tend to bring down his fielding percentage.
Official scorers are loathe to charge errors on difficult plays. I’ve never in my life seen an error charged to an infielder on a play he had to dive for, or run a long way into a hole for. If anything, scorers don’t charge errors often enough.
Robinson was a legitimately great defensive third baseman, don’t get be wrong, but no, his fielding percentage doesn’t say a lot. Robinson’s fielding percentage is very high, but modern third basemen don’t make a lot of errors anyway; Robinson made about 15 errors a year when a third baseman would normally make 24 or so. What made Robinson much more valuable was just the sheer number of plays he would make that would be otherwise scored as hits.
The difficulty is in discerning just how many plays that is. Robinson made about 3.1 plays per full game when the average 3B made about 2.74. That’s an enormous difference - you’re talking about 70 plays a year. But that might not be all Brooksie. Or maybe it even UNDERSTATES his value. Maybe he had a lot of lefthanded pitchers playing with him (lefties tend to increase the number of grounders hit to short and third) or a lot of ground ball pitchers, or maybe there was something about Memorial Stadium conducive to ground ball outs.
For what it’s worth, Baseball Prospectus credits Robinson as being 647 runs better than a replacement player, 286 better than the average third baseman, which is an enormous total, even given the length of his career. In 1967 he was 32 runs better than average, basically meaning that his glove alone was worth three wins to the Orioles above what a decent third baseman would have done, and five or six wins better than a mediocre, off-the-shelf replacement like Ed Sprague. That’s a truly staggering number, one of the best defensive seasons anyone has ever had; I cannot find any modern third baseman with a season that good. (Jimmy Collins had a 40 above average in 1899.)
I don’t have Win Shares data in front of me but as I recall, its assessment of Robinson’s fielding skills was similar; he was way, way ahead of anyone else.
Range factor is better, but still highly flawed. Fielding percentage has a couple major problems. For starters it is the only stat that is based on the opinion of someone other then an umpire. Those opinions are inconsistent and subject to biases. If a player has a home town scorer that doesn’t like to give home players error, he may appear to be a better fielder then he actually is. An even bigger concern is that it doesn’t consider the balls you don’t get to. Let’s say player A and player B are both third basemen. Player A makes 10 more errors, but gets to 20 balls that Player B doesn’t have the range to get to. So for player A’s team those 20 plays are outs and for player B’s team those 10 plays are hits. Which fielder would you rather have?
Range factor is a step above fielding percentage. It takes the opinion out of it, and counts all balls players get to. It still has problems though. Why did player A get to 20 less balls? Is it because he is worse fielder, or maybe those balls went to a shortstop who has great range or a left fielder who plays shadow. Maybe his pitching staff allows less ground balls, or the stadium has less foul ground on the third base side. There is still are of variables that we haven’t accounted for.
I apologize for the delay, but I do have a life. The Right Fielder’s ballot will be up later tonight.
Ten third basemen have been elected, no ties this time:
Mike Schmidt (Unanimous)
George Brett (Unanimous)
Brooks Robinson (Unanimous)
Eddie Mathews
Chipper Jones
Wade Boggs
Ron Santo
Home Run Baker
Jimmy Collins
Pie Traynor
Close but no cigar yet included Paul Molitor, Stan Hack, George Kell, Ken Boyer, and Graig Nettles. Those folks will be coming back around in the Wild Cards!
A total of 27 players received at least one vote, including two active players (Chipper Jones and Scott Rolen.)
Thank you very much for participating, and look for that Right Fielder’s vote! I’ll be posting it later and will link to it here.
The Right Fielder’s ballot will be up later tonight.