OK, here's the batting information I've been able to dig up thus far on Silvio Garcia. Thanks to Cristian for the Provincial League info. If anyone has anymore information to fill in, I'd be much obliged for the help!

MLEs coming in the not-too-distant future.

Garcia's games played in the CWL are all estimates based on 4 AB per game.


TM
TEAM POS AGE G G AB H TB 2B 3B HR BB K AVG SLG bb/h
-----------------------------------------------------------
MEXICO
1938 Aguila P 23 40 45 175 61 86 9 2 4 11 11 .349 .491 .180
1939 Aguila P 24 60 1
1941 Mexico 26 99 101 434 159 225 29 11 5 11 34 .366 .518 .069
1942 Mexico 27 87 85 349 127 187 19 4 18 44 25 .364 .536 .346
1943 Mexico 28 89 86 356 107 142 16 2 5 24 22 .301 .399 .224
1944 Mex/Ver 29 88 89 373 117 181 25 3 11 36 15 .314 .485 .308
1945 Veracruz 30 90 91 386 135 215 21 7 15 34 15 .350 .557 .252
1948 Mexico 33 88 66 271 80 98 13 1 1 22 9 .295 .361 .275

SANTO DOMINGO
1937 22 128 38 .297 .297

NEGRO LEAGUE
1940 CBS 25 37
1946 NYC SS 31 44 .350
1947 NYC SS 32 58 .324

NEGRO LEAGUE PLAYOFFS
1947 NYC SS 32 4 18 7 .389

PRWL
1939 Ponce P 24 .298

CANADIAN PROVINCIAL LEAGUE
1949 Shrbrk 3B 34 100 99 400 126 168 30 0 4 .315 .420
1950 Shrbrk 3B 35 108 106 424 155 218 21 .365 .514
1951 Shrbrk 3B 36 123 12 .346

FLORIDA INT'L LEAGUE
1952 Habana 37 154 114 428 121 152 22 0 3 .283 .355

CUBAN WINTER LEAGUE
1931 Hab 3B/OF 16 30 17 66 17 23 2 2 0 .258 .349
1934 Mar 3B/P 19 28 24 96 18 24 1 1 1 .188 .250
1935 Mar SS/P 20 48 33 131 36 45 7 1 0 .275 .343
1936 Mar P/OF 21 66 47 188 44 63 2 4 3 .234 .335
1937 Mar SS/P 22 63 39 156 46 50 2 1 0 .295 .321
1938 Alm O/I/P 23 54 35 140 41 50 3 3 0 .293 .357
1940 S C 2B 25 51 44 175 55 73 5 5 1 .314 .417
1941 CnF SS/P 26 44 43 171 60 77 5 0 4 .351 .450
1942 Cnf SS/P 27 48 44 175 53 65 7 1 1 .303 .371
1943 Cnf SS/P 28 48 43 170 56 67 6 1 1 .329 .394
1944 Cnf SS/P 29 48 43 173 44 61 7 2 2 .254 .353
1945 Cnf SS/P 30 60 54 215 62 89 13 4 2 .288 .414
1946 Mtz SS/P 31 38 38 160 55 55 0 .344 .344
1947 Cnf SS/P 32 72 54 216 63 88 10 6 1 .292 .407
1948 Cnf IF 33 72 33 132 33 44 4 2 1 .250 .333
1949 Cnf 3B 34 72 43 173 45 58 8 1 1 .260 .335
1950 Cnf 3B 35 72 60 239 83 113 13 1 5 .347 .473
1951 Cnf 3B 36 72 52 207 48 68 11 3 1 .232 .329
1952 Mar 3B 37 72 70 281 76 99 12 4 1 .270 .352
1953 Alm INF 38 72 16 64 11 11 0 0 0 .172 .172
</pre>

Whoops! TM should appear above the first G in the headrow. Notice that Garcia's G surpass his team's games. That's because I'm using Pernia for team games, and his totals are different. I'll reconcile Pernia with Cisneros when I complete the MLEs.

All things considered he looks like a SS, no? Not quite John Beckwith--e.g. significantly more SS than 3B. Maybe a Joe Sewell, but with a bit of P value?

I don't think he's a John Henry Lloyd or a Dobie Moore (peak) or a Willie Wells. Maybe the question will be, how does he compare to Dick Lundy? Probably not as good with the glove or why play 2B and 3B. Wait and see how they compare with the stick.

Excellent work, Doc.

I wouldn't get overly excited about Garcia until the MLEs are done (shouldn't be too much longer, I've just got a couple of small questions to resolve). I'm not sure how they will turn out quite yet beause Garcia didn't walk much compared to the Mexican league, and much of his projected walk rate will be based on that data.

Garcia's Mexican stats look good, but the batting averages in those leagues were higher than in the majors, so some air will come out of the numbers. His power was kind of intermittent.

The biggest question to my mind will be "How good of a shortstop was he?"

If he's an A or B+ shortstop, that'a nice boost, but I'm going to have my doubts. If you notice in the positions column above, he basically went to 3B starting around age 33 or 34. Presumably, his defensive skills at short had eroded to the point where he needed to move.

So for me, the question is whether moving to 3B from SS at age 34 itself suggests that a player's true/peak fielding ability was not superb. I say this because guys like Appling, Smith, Ripken, and others held their defensive value at shortstop deep into their 30s. So what's that say about Garcia? (Obviously, injury could be a factor, I just don't know right now.)

Then another question arises as well! Would Garcia have hit enough to stay on 3B full time after moving off of SS. The MLEs will help us figure that out I guess.

If he's an A or B+ shortstop, that'a nice boost, but I'm going to have my doubts. If you notice in the positions column above, he basically went to 3B starting around age 33 or 34. Presumably, his defensive skills at short had eroded to the point where he needed to move.

Riley doesn't gush over him in his encyclopedia, either. Unless other data is unearthed, I would take a conservative approach in regard to his fielding, Eric.

By the by, Garcia's 1950 may be his big monster season. He won the Provincial League's triple crown that year with a seemingly uncharacteristic HR outburst.

But...

One thing that makes Garcia a tough nut to crack is that his league environments ranged from deadball to rabbitball. For instance, the CWL in the 1930s was a bigtime pitcher's league, and the 1952 Florida International League was played in rainy, boggy, soggy conditions, and the third-best offense in the league hit about .235, while Garcia's squad hit about .225.

On the other hand, Garcia played in Mexico when league batting averages were 5 to 20 points higher than in the NL, and he played mostly for Mexico City whose ballpark tended to give hitters a little bit of help with their averages.

So the conversions should be interesting at least.

SILVIO GARCIA MLEs v 1.0

These MLEs only cover Garcia’s performance as a batter-fielder, no pitching here.

There’s a bunch of niggling questions with Garcia.

1) He played in some rather extreme deadball environments in Cuba, and I don’t know how that impacts his MLEs.

2) He has some years where he hits for good power (for instance the triple crown in 1952, leading league with 21 homers), then other seasons where he has very little power. This could be park effects at work, but I have no idea, nor do I know what implication this phenomenon has on how the MLEs see his “real” power.

3) Garcia was a base stealer, and led Mexico twice. These MLEs make no account for SBs.

4) Garcia’s 1940 season with the New York Cubans is completely data-less. I compensated for the lack of data by making his numbers up from whole cloth based on his career averages. I did so just in case his 1940 CWL line was not indicative of his play that year, that way there would be some regression toward his established performance level.

5) As always, I’ve used all available data and adjusted relative to league and for league quality. No home park information, no regression. WS are short-form Win Shares with an assumption of average-level fielding.

6) There are two big playing time questions.
A ) would Garcia have come up as a 19 year old SS and stayed around through OPS+s of 35, 82, 60, 88, 99, 78 before finally breaking out at age 25?
B) could Garcia have stayed in the league if he wasn’t playing SS after 1947? He went 67 and 64 in OPS+ in 1948 and 1949 before rebounding to 118 in 1950, then falling back again to those low levels for the remaining three years of his career.

I’d like feedback on the playing time issues, but I’m presenting his entire statistical translation for the purposes of a first-draft inspection by the group.


YEAR AGE POS G PA AB H TB BB AVG OBP SLG OPS+ SFWS
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1934 19 SS 132 523 502 100 138 21 .200 .232 .275 35 4.8
1935 20 SS 105 423 399 111 144 24 .278 .319 .360 82 11.5
1936 21 SS 110 437 417 95 139 20 .227 .263 .334 60 7.6
1937 22 SS 114 459 433 121 162 26 .280 .321 .374 88 13.2
1938 23 SS 127 516 482 143 184 33 .297 .343 .381 99 16.7
1939 24 SS 133 533 504 135 180 29 .268 .308 .357 78 13.5
1940 25 2B 130 527 494 155 210 33 .314 .357 .424 115 20.2
1941 26 2B 152 605 577 195 269 28 .339 .370 .467 134 28.0
1942 27 2B 145 593 553 156 208 40 .283 .332 .377 107 17.2
1943 28 SS 143 574 542 151 187 32 .279 .319 .344 92 14.7
1944 29 SS 146 590 556 146 216 33 .263 .305 .389 94 16.4
1945 30 3B 146 588 555 158 229 33 .284 .325 .413 104 17.6
1946 31 SS 145 590 552 178 210 38 .323 .367 .381 112 21.2
1947 32 SS 124 500 470 141 189 30 .300 .342 .402 97 17.4
1948 33 3B 93 375 354 90 113 22 .255 .299 .319 67 6.4
1949 34 3B 122 491 465 121 145 26 .260 .299 .312 64 8.2
1950 35 3B 139 567 530 171 250 37 .323 .367 .471 118 24.2
1951 36 3B 132 529 501 133 176 29 .266 .306 .351 76 11.2
1952 37 3B 132 529 502 126 158 27 .250 .288 .314 67 8.2
1953 38 3B 34 134 130 20 19 4 .153 .180 .149 -13 -0.1
=================================================================
2504 10083 9516 2648 3525 566 .278 .319 .370 89 277.0
</pre>

I'll post up some pitching figures a little later. He's only got about three or four seasons of full workload.

If you knock off his first year and last year, he's almost a dead ringer MLE batting-wise for Dick Lundy...

PITCHING INFORMATION FOR SILVIO GARCIA


MEXICO

YEAR TEAM W L ERA G GS SHO INN H ER BB K
-------------------------------------------------
1938*AGU 10 2 1.68 13 10 3 112.3 80 21 28 88
1939 AGU 0 0 0.00 1 0 0 0.3 0 0 0 1
1941 MEX 0 0 0.00 1 0 0 0.0 1 0 0 0
1944 MEX 0 0 0.00 1 0 0 1.7 0 0 0 0
1945 VER 0 0 0.00 1 0 0 0.7 0 0 0 0
=================================================
TOTAL 10 2 1.64 17 10 3 115.0 81 21 28 89
*I don't have lg ERA or individual pitching breakouts for 1938, however, a 10-2 record's not shabby. The lg ERA is almost certainly a run or two higher. Using the batting stats I've compiled, the league created roughly 1071 runs during the year (using basic RC form of [ {(BB+H)*TB } / PA ]. It made 6775 outs. Figuring 25.5 outs per game, that's about 266 total games. Dividing the est RC by the est games, we get 4.03 RC/G. This is a low-run environment, about half a run lower than the NL of the time. From 1937-1939, the NL averaged about 4.46 R/G and a 3.87 ERA, a ratio of .867 ERA to R/G. Using that benchmark (a big assumption), let's figure the MxL era in 1938 to be about 3.50. That means that Garcia's ERA+ (not adjusted for home park), would be about 148.

SANTO DOMINGO
YEAR W L
---------
1937 0 2

PUERTO RICAN SUMMER LEAGUE
(No league R/G data to help us here)
YEAR TEAM W L ERA
--------------------
1939 PONCE 10 6 1.32

CUBAN WINTER LEAGUE
YEAR TEAM G CG W L INN ERA H K BB LgERA ERA+
------------------------------------------------
1934 MAR 6 1 1 2 30.3 2.47 2.41 99
1935 MAR 5 3 1 3
1936* MAR 15 13 10 2
1937 MAR 1 1 0 1
1938 MAR 7 2 1 4
1944 MAR 2 0 0 0 2.3 3.86 3 1 0
=================================================
TOTAL 36 20 13 12
*Though no ERA data is available, Garcia was clearly the second best pitcher in the CWL in 1936. Here's the five candidates for best pitcher (basically the four teams' aces and Garcia)

NAME G CG W L
---------------------
Brown 26 23 21 4
Garcia 15 13 10 2
Dihigo 30 22 14 10
Bragana 16 11 9 5
Fernandez 27 11 9 10
</pre>

So to wrap up, he's got one very good season in Mexico (1938), one very good season in the CWL (1936), and one league-average season in the CWL (1934). In addition, there may be another good season in 1939, but without league data, it's impossible to know.

At a value-to-team level, these three seasons could be seen to help his case in that in 1934 and 1936, his not-great OPS+s are papered over a bit by being a league-average or better hurler. 1938 helps an average season at the plate look better. 1939's PRSL twirling may also help cover for his yucky 78 OPS+ that year.

I think on the whole it suggests to me that 1934 is the proper start date for his career because he was a league-average pitcher (if not hitter).

Now, someone tell me when I should end his career....

Happily, KJOK has just supplied some info on Garcia's 1939 PRSL pitching.

G-16
IP-150
W-10
L-6
ER-22
BB-48
SO-98
ERA-1.32 (Led League)

That's not bad. Gee, 150 Inn over 16 games...wonder why his shoulder gave out?

Oops. Looks like some bad data. Of course it might have been like slow pitch softball, nothing but 1-0 extra inning games...?

You know what I meant. Fast pitch softball.

There's an article in the current BRJ that says that the Dodgers' first effort to sign a black player was not Jackie Robinson but Silvio Garcia in 1944. Leo Durocher was familiar with him from the MxL (it says). Dodger representatives went to Havana to sign him and found that he had been conscripted into the Cuban army. So they left, never to return (to Cuba, nor to the idea of signing Garcia). Durocher is reported to have said that Joe DiMaggio couldn't carry Garcia's glove (whatever that means).

His MLE WS are weird in exactly the way all NgL and Latin League MLEs are weird. ML players don't get 277 WS with a peak of 28-24-21. pr at least very few do. But as you remember, that's an artifact of the MLE system. All in all an intriguing player. Still his rough contemporary Phil Rizzuto is a 305 WS SS (with WWII credit) with a peak of 31.

The article sunny references also mentions that the Dodgers' scout (Tom Greenwade) may not have been all that keen on Garcia because he hit everything to right field and didn't seem to pull much at all.

Well, he was a shortstop with a .278/.319/.370 and an 89 OPS+. If he could poof the ball over the 2B often enough, so be it. I guess he was Davey Concepcion.

Silvio Garcia, MLEs 2.0

I've been working on my MLE routine this week, and I just reran Silvio. Pretty much the same story.

A few little notes.

-Like the previous version, this includes 1934-1953, or ages 19-38.

-I made him an average defensive SS from 1934 to 1947, after which I put him at 3B, where I also made him average.

-This MLE includes all data above (with the additions of SF, HPB, GIDP, and SB for several years) except for the PRWL and DMSL stuff. Because I don't have a league context for those years, I have chosen not to include them. This means that for 1939 I have no usable data, which means it's a whole-cloth year. Fortunately my current MLE routine has a slightly more effective means for dealing with this than the old, though the seasons come out just about the same. Also for the CPL years I didn't have complete league data for 1950-1951, but since I had three nearby years, I just chose to average them and go with it. It seemed reasonable.

-Generally there's little if any career shaping other than a simple proration of PA over his pctg of team games played. Therefore he racks up a lot of PA. Feel free to shape him as you wish.

-This is in 154 seasons in the NL of 1934-1953.

Here's the career line, then the year-by-year OPS+ and WS.

10682 PA
9801 AB
2580 H
798 BB
462 K
40 SH
43 HPB
310 SB
133 CS
215 GIDP
3578 TB
1114 RC
.263 AVG
.320 OBP
.365 SLG
88 OPS+
173 BWS
90 FWS
263 WS

The average NL SS during 1934-1947, in his PA/AB would have put up the following numbers:

AVG .257
OBP .320
SLG .341
OPS+ 81

He was a 85PS+ during his SS years, so about 5 better than the positional average in the NL.

The average NL 3B during 1948-1953, in his PA/AB would have put up the following numbers:

AVG .265
OBP .343
SLG .412
OPS+ 101

He was a 78 OPS+ 3B during his 3B years, so about 23% worse than the positional average in the NL.

So he's an above average SS with some All-Star type years, but he's not a very good 3B.

Here's the year by years for OPS+ and WS


Here's something that will set Dan R to either somersaults or agony. I guess we'll see which. I thought I'd see if I could figure what Garcia's batting replacement value was like (theoretically of course). So I used Dan R's replacement levels (why reinvent that wheel?) and did a quickie, back-of-the-envelope calculation. The lgR/W column is calculated using pythagenpat. I just did it by hand (with a keyboard stroke, not with a quadratic), so it's close but not absolutely perfect to the umpteenth decimal. I think Dan R's replacement figures are denominated in wins, so if you're playing at home, you have to multiply the DRREP column by the lgR/W column to figure out how many runs below average a replacement player would be. Then Garcia's RARP are just

SG's RCAA - [ the DRREP * lgR/W ]

And the WARP is

RARP / lgR/W

Or at least I think that's how it works. I know one of youse guys will set me straight.



This looks OK to me. No I need to round it out by accounting for FRAA somehow. That I'm a little unsure of, so maybe Dan or someone else could offer some help there. Since I've got Garcia in there as an average fielder, this shouldn't be too hard, I wouldn't think.

As always, what good's a preview when....

Thanks to Dan R's post in the Puckett thread, I found an error in my calculations (aka a "DUUUUHHHH"). I hadn't scaled the DRREP to Garcia's total number of outs before subtracting them. Rather than rerun the whole derned chart, I'll just run the last two columns, RARP and WARP:



Not much of a hitter, of course.

Eric, thanks for making use of my data. I can't really evaluate whether they were used correctly, because I can't read the damn chart. The pre tag doesn't like consecutive whitespaces anymore; you have to jigger the columns so there's only one space between them. If you don't mind giving it another whirl, I'd appreciate it, since you know how much I like my shortstops. The only thing I would mention is that I definitely don't make any sort of distinction between batting and fielding replacement as BP does; in fact, I find the concept theoretically flawed. There is only an overall positonal replacement level, encompassing offense and defense, and measured in wins below average as a rate. So "BWARP" seems a little strange to me. But if you reformat the chart maybe I'll be able to see what you're doing.

One more time, but this time with slightly different columns. After figuring my error, I had to make some new columns to elaborate the thing a little more. Also, I realized that I was making a problem by using batters-only RC and total outs. So i had to fix that too. Here's hoping this stab at the formatting works. The pipes and underlines are there to avoid the consecutive space issue only. Dan, if this doesn't work, email me or better yet, dump it into a spreadsheet and use the space and pipe as delimiters. It'll work fine then since the yearly lines are all filled in columns with no gaps.

Good enough. The totals aren't very important. Here's the columns worth knowing:

-237.9 is RCAA
-26.5 is WAA
142.4 is RCAP
16.8 is WARP

Again his fielding is exactly average in the MLE, so it's not in this calculation at all.

Well, the reason why he came in so low? Because one of my formulas was pointed in the wrong place.... Another day another scrooup on an MLE.

So the upshot is this:

Version 2.1

Revised line
10670 PA
9919 AB
2655 H
666 BB
475 K
41 SH
44 HPB
221 GIDP
321 SB
138 CS
1146 RC
.268/.315/.372
88 OPS+
172 BWS
90 FWS
261 WS
136.8 RARP
16.2 WARP

OPS+ and WS and WARP year by year