Woudl Augie Galan count as a top of the line leadoff hitter outside of those eras? I guess his time at the top was pretty short. Stan Hack?

I live outside Washington DC and have become a bit of a fan of the Nationals (now that we finally have a local team). I traditionally follow my beloved Buccos and the close-by Orioles and have decided to add yet another struggling team to my fandom.
Its truly rare when I get a "trifecta" of these three teams all winning on same day!

That said, I have watched with great interest the struggle Frank Robinson has had trying to bat Soriano in any position other than lead off.
I do not have the actual game-by-game stats for Alfonso but I can tell you he stinks it up whenever he bats 2nd, 3rd or cleanup; he destroys opposition pitching if Frank moves him to the leadoff spot.
I'd guess 90% of his HRs and RBIs have come at leadoff and almost all his HRs are bases-empty types (duh).
His plate discipline is truly horrible; he's not anything you'd call a classic leadoff type hitter but he falls into a complete funk at bat when Frak tries batting him elsewhere.

About a dozen games ago Frank moved him to the third spot and he is in a complete hopeless slump. Frank put him there to increase his RBI opportunities and it has failed miserably.

Sorry, this was a bit off subject - great leadoff hitters- but an interesting first hand observation of a guy who seemingly only hits well when leading off.

ps I sure hope the nationals send Frank Robbie away with a nice farewell celebration as he deserves it for his past 5 years shepherding the Expo/Nats.

Robinson was my favorite player and I hope for the same. During the radiocast in Boston today, whether pregame or ballgame I don't recall, someone said that they want to get the franchise off to a good start (in its third Washington season) by hiring someone from the Braves organization. And someone said that some Braves players will be available, led by Andruw Jones.

One 1900-1901 article on the rule change named Thomas, Slagle (teammates) and Burkett as experts whose fouling of pitches would be curtailed. McGraw, Jennings (teammates) and someone I don't recall were to be hampered by the repeal of first base on hit by pitch, but the NL restored HBP at the last very minute.

In seasons I have known :-) Burkett and Clarke have been star batters in the leadoff spot, Burkett always and Clarke frequently.

Burkett and Childs played eight seasons together, 1891-1898? How often did Childs bat first? Not in 1897, but that is my earliest season.

Returning to the the matter of #154 and 157-158, spot on the Lou Brock topic (not).

Now based on 10% of the season --four series for each team, spaced about two months apart-- here is the distribution of batting and fielding positions in the starting lineups. Rows and columns sum to 150.



The pattern is not strong. Except 9-1 and 8-2, no batting and fielding position are paired even one-third of the time, nor is any field position matched with consecutive batting positions more than half the time (1B 4th or 5th; 2B 6th or 7th). Only the leadoff batting position (LF or CF, 63%) is matched with two field positions half the time.

Cap Anson's catcher bats ninth in three of the four series. The catcher is Kittridge or Anson himself in the opening series; Kittridge or Donahue in August and October.

Long-time lurker Dave Johnson (no, not that one :-) sent me this a few weeks ago. With my real estate studying, I forgot to post it for him:

Lou Brock creates an interesting dilemma. Some base stealers
(Aparicio, Wills) don't have enough to make HoM, so I never played
with their credentials at the time. Others (Mays, J.Robinson) had so
much that they didn't need any fussing over, either. Brock is a
tweener.

I'm sending this to you as you may know how to play with the concept
to make it valid. I don't. But here's the idea. I remember vividly
in 1962 how Wills would "turn a single into a double with a stolen
base." Now, counting a single as an added base in terms of SLG, and
counting a CS as 2*AB -- I figure the loss of one out plus the loss
of a baserunner is the equivalent of two unproductive ABs -- I've
created the following formula:

TB + SB
------------- = SLGsb (or whatever you want to call the damn thing)
AB + 2CS

My problem is that I've not been able to correctly refine this into
*OPS+. I'm obviously doing something wrong, as OPS/*lgOPS isnt't
getting me to *OPS. (I'm using the stats from BRef.)

In any case, here are the SLG and SLGsb comparisons for the batter
inductees of the last 11 years (plus top-10 from 1984 excepting Cupid
Childs with no CS info):

SLG SLGsb net gain
Willie Mays .557 .578 .021
Mickey Mantle .557 .570 .013
Henry Aaron .555 .567 .012
Ralph Kiner .548 .552 .004
Frank Robinson .537 .549 .012
Dick Allen .534 .546 .012
Eddie Mathews .509 .513 .004
Harmon Killebrew .509 .509 .000
Ernie Banks .500 .499 -.001
Billy Williams .492 .496 .004
Al Kaline .480 .487 .007
Roberto Clemente .475 .479 .004
George Sisler .468 .498 .030
Joe Gordon .466 .471 .005
Ron Santo .464 .464 .000
Minnie Minoso .459 .472 .013
Joe Torre .452 .452 .000
Joe Sewell .413 .415 .002
Bill Freehan .412 .413 .001
Lou Brock .410 .473 .060
Brooks Robinson .401 .402 .001

Luis Aparicio .343 .382 .049
Maury Wills .331 .387 .056

It may not be enough, but it puts Brock's stolen bases into a batting
context. It certainly enhances his standing, moving him from the
BRobby-Freehan-Sewell class to the Clemente-Gordon-Minoso group,
while leapfrogging Santo and Torre.

If you want to use this, be my guest. And if you know how to fix it
to *OPS+, I'd love to learn!

Interesting. However, I'm not sure I buy the rationale for doubling up the ABs for each CS so I'd love to see the numbers with 1 AB instead of 2.

(Rows 8 and 9 are distorted by TABs.)

Even in 11-14 games, the full distribution of batting and fielding positions for a player may be complicated.
Here I will simply focus on assignment of HOM-interesting players to batting positions.

1 Hamilton, Burkett, Clarke, Van Haltren, McGraw
and significantly jones, griffin
2 Keeler, Childs, Tiernan (Tenney, Hoy)
and significantly jones, griffin
3 Jennings, Delahanty, Long
and significantly davis, lajoie
4 Kelley, Anson, Lajoie, Duffy,
and significantly wallace, delahanty, beckley, werden
5
significantly ryan, werden
6
significantly collins, beckley (lowe)


Player lists of batting positions during four series played Apr, Jun, Aug, Oct

Beckley
6 (NY), 6 (Cin, 8th in one game), 4, 4

Childs, Cle
2, 2, 3, 2

Looks like I spent two hours here last night, poking my data for some text reports. Meanwhile Secy Murphy thought he could return to the subject of Lou Brock. OK,

On the simple adjustment of OPS for base stealing:
Consider the simple interpretation that on-base average concerns reaching base oneself and slugging average concerns advancing baserunners.

A stolen base does not improve upon reaching base once but the caught stealing does undo the gain from reaching base once, so the base-stealing adjustment of on-base average is
(Num-CS)/Den
where Num is numerator and Den is denominator.

A stolen base is advancement of oneself, akin to the difference between a double and a single or a double and a walk. But it does not advance other runners as the extra base on a hit commonly does. Therefore the base-stealing adjustment of slugging average should be smaller than
(Num+SB)/Den

Although this pair of adjustments is favorable to the base-stealers, Dave Johnson's is more favorable, working through slugging alone and accounting for caughtstealing by adding two at-bats to the denominator.

Unfortunately, the reaching and advancing interpretation of O and S is shaky, maybe too shaky to support any such effort as this.

Robinson was my favorite player and I hope for the same. During the radiocast in Boston today, whether pregame or ballgame I don't recall, someone said that they want to get the franchise off to a good start (in its third Washington season) by hiring someone from the Braves organization. And someone said that some Braves players will be available, led by Andruw Jones.

Speaking of Dave Johnsons, the Nats hired one as a special consultant a couple months ago, and I have an inkling his name will be prominently mentioned among the managers in consideration. To which I say, good news for Nats fans.

Looks like I spent two hours here last night, poking my data for some text reports. Meanwhile Secy Murphy thought he could return to the subject of Lou Brock. OK,

That wasn't my intent, Paul. I'm just trying to get things back in order since my studying is now over. Posting Dave's study was near the top of my list, that's all. I actually enjoyed your latest posts, BTW.

Question for lurkers in the crowd: do any lurkers keep a pHOM parrallel to this project?

TB + SB
------------- = SLGsb (or whatever you want to call the damn thing)
AB + 2CS

The 'break-even' SB% point for this is SLG/(SLG + 0.5).
That's:
Break-even-SB% of 50% for .500 SLG guys
Break-even-SB% of 44% for .400 SLG guys

That's a bit too generous. As Paul said, OBP would have to be adjusted down strongly due to the loss of a baserunner and the increased out (perhaps lessening your SLG adjustment).

The only metric I've seen that incorporates SB and batting slickly is Total Average:

[TB + HBP + BB + SB -­ CS]
-------------------------
[AB - H + CS + GIDP]

With a 'break-even' of 67% for inner circle (TA = 1.0) guys and a bit lower for everyone else.

Baseball Prospectus's EQA looks slick, but I believe its empirical (no logic behind it, it just 'fits' the data). Plus I'm seeing two contrasting definitions for it (scales as SB/(CS+0.333SB)) and scales as 1.5SB/(CS+SB). I don't know which one they actually use.

Anyhow, rather than trying to fudge a correction for OPS, I usually revert to the advanced metrics for the SB specialists. (RC, linear weights).

Question for lurkers in the crowd: do any lurkers keep a pHOM parrallel to this project?

I don't. If I had the time to do a pHOM, I'd have the time to participate in the voting.

-- MWE

I've been outed as a lurker!

I played with the SLGsb chart while on the road for much of the last three weeks, expanding it to include OPS and far more inductees and batters currently under consideration. But in expanding the chart to include OPS, I discarded it when it turned out that Brock's OBP was SO low that the steals didn't compensate for his not being on base sufficiently. I had feared that he might not be getting a fair shake, but indeed he seems to have shaken out perfectly.

The ultimate frustration in this little study was not being able to transform the numbers into career OPS+; without that the cross-generation comparison was lost. Still, what it did show me was relative standing among near contemporaries, and what non-sluggers like Brock, Rice, Minoso, Roush and Rizzuto added to their value, while ping hitters Fox and Maranville (whom one would hope would convert middle infield quickness into stealing ability) did so only marginally, if at all.

In any case, my thanks to David Foss for pointing me in a better direction with Total Average. I'd read it so long ago that it slipped past as a means of incorporating base stealing. I see that my own formula should have been (TB + SB - CS) / (AB + CS).

But the Total Average equation presents something I don't understand regarding GIDP. GIDP represents an extra out created (expressed in the denominator), but it also represents a base runner eliminated. Shouldn't the TA numerator also include a negative GIDP (as it does with the CS), thus expressed as (TB + HBP + BB + SB - CS - GIDP) / (AB - H + CS +GIDP)?

I'll go back to lurking, except to say thanks for the discussions - not just of players but also of the theory and debates as to how to go about putting a workable, transparent process in place to make the HOM work (the reason I came here in the first place). Visiting the site is a delightful diversion from work. And no, if there were time to maintain a pHOM, there'd be time to think and vote on all of this.

Question for lurkers in the crowd: do any lurkers keep a pHOM parrallel to this project?

I do, although I don't know if I qualify as a lurker. As some may remember, I was an active voter, back in the "1930s," and used to regularly record the lowest consensus score. I dropped out because I wasn't entirely comfortable that I knew enough about the Negro Leaguers to vote intelligently. I eventually went back, started from the earliest threads, and constructed my own pHOM from the first year.

Eventually (in the last couple of "years") I caught up with the project and I've been thinking about trying to submit a ballot again, but haven't gotten around to putting one together.