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I did quickie counts of the other years you mentioned (could be off by 1 or 2 here and other, as I'm eyeballing it after midnight...):
1926/27: Cuban League, 3 non-Latin NeL position players (J. Wilson, L. Brown, W. Cannady) out of 38 listed.
1926/27: Triangular League, 7 non-Latin NeL position players (G. Carr, J. Johnson, D. Lundy, C. Thomas, O. Marcelle, O. Charleston, C. Smith) out of 49 listed.
1930: Cuban League, 5 known NeL position players out of 41 listed.
1930: Special Season--Unico, 12 known NeL position players out of 47 listed. Current major leaguer Charles Dressen also played, along with several minor leaguers, including Billy Herman.
1931/32: Cuban League, 0 NeL position players out of 46 listed.
1932/33: Cuban League, 0/34.
1934/35: Cuban League, 0/43.
1935/36: Cuban League, 5/58.
1936/37: Cuban League, 8/60.
1937/38: Cuban League, 12/52.
Also, the 1924 "Grand Premio" second season: 9 NeLers out of 41 players listed.
Also, here are the number of teams in the league each of these seasons:
1920/21: 3 (1 withdrew early)
1921: 2
1922/23: 4 (1 withdrew early)
1923/24: 4
1924 Gran Premio: 3
1924/25: 4
1925/26: 3 (1 withdrew early)
1926/27 CL: 4 (1 withdrew early)
1926/27 Triangular: 3
1927/28: 3 (1 withdrew early)
1928/29: 4 (2 withdrew early)
1929/30: 4
1930 CL: 4 (total of 5 games played)
1930 U: 4
1931/32: 3
1932/33: 3
1934/35: 3
1935/36: 4
1936/37: 4
1937/38: 4 (1 withdrew early)
With this data, I should be able to work out more exact seasonal conversion rates (and see how much variance there really is) for position players.
I'll try to post a full description of the study for review and the results on Friday or Saturday, with updated Oms MLEs to follow by Monday.
Well, the problem with applying the method I am currently using for the 1920s and 1930s to the CWL of Mendez's era is that I am benchmarking the level of CWL competition against the Negro Leagues. Since there were no Negro Leagues when Mendez was a CWL star, that's a problem . . .
For the 1920s, it's looking like the CWL without any American black stars was slightly lower in competition level than the NeL: with American blacks, equal or (usually) higher because of the concentration of talent in a small league.
This same rule of thumb might be applicable to the CWL of 1908-1914. When I revisit Mendez, I'll probably use this estimate as one starting point and see what I find. Direct play of Cuban teams vs. visiting major-league barnstorming teams actually provides a more viable benchmark in this era, I think. That's what I used when I first did estimates for Mendez, oh, a year ago now. I've learned a lot about studying pitcher records and competition levels since then, so I expect I'll see some things differently the second time around.
I honestly don't know when I'll get to doing fresh studies of early Cuban and Black players. That depends a lot on work. But we're getting close to finishing our first pass through the Negro Leagues, and once we've had a first look at everybody, then there'll be time for going back and improving old estimates and filling in gaps (Full MLEs for Oscar Charleston and Turkey Stearnes, for example) that weren't essential to the balloting process but will be very helpful for refining our view of competition levels, which will in turn help us to place the borderline candidates from the NeL with more confidence.
The cases of Bell and Mackey and maybe Lundy hinge, I think, on what was happening with competition levels from 1925-1940.
This season is useful because almost all of the positional regulars who played in the 3-team CWL that winter were also positional regulars in the NeL or were part-timers in the major leagues.
What I did to make the estimate was fairly simple.
1) I got the full NeL batting data for the all the players for whom it was available from Macmillan 8th and added it up to find the group average. This covered 15 of 24 players (for Pelayo Chacon I used his 1926 season data from Macmillan 10th, because that's what was available). Their average as a group was .346.
2) I figured the average number of at bats per player in this group (150).
3) For the five players who did not have data in Macmillan (it only includes stars) but who were starters in the NeL in 1927, I took their seasonal average from Holway and applied it to 150 at bats for the other players to weight it properly in relation to the rest of the sample. Their average was .252.
4) For the two players for whom no NeL data was available and who had not played in the major leagues, I assigned them a batting average that was equal to the collective average of the NeL starters who were not listed in Macmillan (that was .252).
5) I then found the batting average for this entire group of 22 players and calculated its major-league equivalent. Finally, I added in the major-league hits and at bats for the two part-timers from the majors to get a complete MLE league average for the position players in the 1927 CWL. This average, .282, I divided by the major-league pitchers-removed average of .292 to get a conversion factor of .966.
6) I then ran the study again normalizing every player to 150 at bats each, since I thought the first MLE could have been skewed by differences in the amount of data reported for different players. That produced a conversion factor of .982.
7) The two views average to .973, which is the factor I plan to use.
Having made an estimate for this season, it was fairly easy to model changes in league quality by substituting replacement level starters (.252 players) for average NeL stars (.346 hitters) and shifting from 3-team to 4-team conditions. I used Gary A.’s data on the number of NeL players present in the league in each season to set the number of each sort of player in the data set. On the basis of those models, it appears that batting average MLEs for the CWL varied from .86 to 1.02 during Oms’ career. Given that this estimate is based off of a single year of data only, I thought it best to draw in the extremes, so I have set competition levels for each CWL season in which Oms played as ranging from .88 to 1.00, as follows:
1922 .89
1923 .95
1924 1.00
1925 .93
1926 .93
1927 .973
1928 1.00
1929 1.00
1930 .95
1931 .88
1932 .88
1935 .92
1937 .96
The average adjustment, then, is .943, which is close to my original estimate of .94. However, the use of seasonal factors will show the shape of Oms’ career more accurately, and the interaction of the adjustments with Oms’ playing time will also influence his career OPS+. I’ll plug in these factors and post the revised MLEs for Oms tonight.
The sa estimate will vary as the square of the ba estimate, as usual.
These MLEs use the conversion rates listed in the previous post. As you can see, they end up being rather similar to the first set, except that Oms' prime is much more strongly defined, and his decline more pronounced. I have added an OPS+ column to this set of MLEs.
Year Team EqG PA BB Hits TB BA OBP SA OPS+ 1921 CSE 148 622 55 209 294 .369 .425 .520 144 1922 CSE/SC 154 647 52 225 309 .378 .427 .519 144 1923 CSE/SC* 151 634 62 203 282 .354 .418 .493 139 1924 CSE/SC 146 613 48 196 288 .346 .398 .510 137 1925 CSE/SJ 152 638 66 195 294 .340 .408 .514 133 1926 CSE/C/Mar 142 596 54 186 239 .342 .402 .441 123 1927 CSE/Hab 150 630 66 187 276 .331 .400 .489 133 1928 CSE/Hab 154 647 64 205 298 .352 .416 .512 141 1929 SC 150 630 66 201 317 .357 .425 .562 147 1930 CSE/SC/Hab 97 407 38 103 143 .279 .346 .388 77 1931 CSE/Hab 141 592 54 157 229 .292 .357 .426 109 1932 Hab 134 563 46 153 192 .297 .354 .372 95 1933 Vzl** 106 424 32 120 160 .305 .357 .409 118 1934 Vzl 112 448 34 131 170 .317 .369 .412 109 1935 NYC/SC 128 512 37 150 200 .315 .365 .420 110 1936 Vzl 71 284 21 82 109 .312 .364 .414 109 1937 SC 42 168 12 47 61 .302 .353 .392 102 2178 9056 808 2749 3862 .333 .393 .468 125Team column lists both U.S. and Cuban Teams
CSE = Cuban Stars East
SC = Santa Clara
SJ = San Jose
C = Cuba??
Mar = Marianao
Hab = Habana
NYC = New York Cubans
Vzl = Venezuela
*Special Season data not included
** There is no way to use the scanty available data from the Venezuelan league in the MLEs, so the totals for these seasons are averages of the surrounding seasons. Vzl is marked to confirm that Oms was playing professionally in those years.
Estimated by the usual method. Batting win shares estimated by identifying most similar players by OPS+, pro-rating for OPS+ differences and playing time differences. Oms estimated as an A- fielder, 3.36 ws/1000 innings for his career.
Year BWS FWS Total 1921 24.2 4.5 28.7 1922 25.4 5.1 30.5 1923 21.9 5.3 27.2 1924 20.9 5.2 26.1 1925 21.1 6.0 27.1 1926 17.9 4.9 22.8 1927 21.0 4.8 25.8 1928 23.4 4.6 28.0 1929 24.8 4.3 29.1 1930 4.7 1.9 6.6 1931 14.3 3.7 18.0 1932 11.1 3.4 14.5 1933 11.7 2.6 14.3 1934 10.8 2.6 13.4 1935 12.6 2.8 15.4 1936 6.9 1.3 8.2 1937 3.8 0.7 4.5 276.5 63.7 340.2Whoops... I've missed reading this thread almost entirely. Sorry about that. I'm sure your calculations are probably right, but I'll re-run my script on #62 and #108 when I get home this evening.
Oms hasn't been getting any votes, but its nice to handle all the candidates in an identical manner. Again sorry for falling asleep on this one.
ALEJANDRO OMS
-First you have Year, Team(s), PA.
-Second you have Chris's MLE's
-Third, in parentheses, you have pitchers-removed offense context. MLB for the 20s, then NL
-Fourth, you have AVG+/OBP+/SLG+
-Lastly, is the OPS+
Counting stats (+/- 2 for rounding)
9055 PA
8252 AB
2750 H
3861 TB
Percentages
Oms -- 0.333/0.393/0.468
Context --(0.292/0.352/0.412)
Plusses -- 114/112/114
OPS+ = 125
Sorry again for falling asleep there.
Was there anyone before these projections that would have placed Oms among the top 30 pre-integration black/latin stars? Riley, James, Holway, Knorr, previosu pols? I know, I know, Latin legaues got less press, but at least I and others knew about guys like Tiant Sr, Torriente, Mendez, Dihigo. Some portion of my take on Oms wil be the subjecitve record, and it would help if there were positive press clippings / analysis.
OTOH of course his numbers are not absolutely killer diller. 125 from an OF (any OF though if he really did play a lot of CF it helps) is not exactly Buck Leonard or Mule Suttles territory.
Still he is the #2 hitter in Cuban League history, and is now my #1 NeL cornerman (1B-LF-RF) (as it is my impression that in addition to CF he played a lot of RF) (that is to say, after Suttles).
In 1923-24, playing in the famous Santa Clara outfield with Charleston and Mesa, he seems to have played center field a little less than a third of the time--out of 14 games, Charleston was center field in 8, Oms in 4, and Mesa in 2.
In 1928 I have 29 games for him with the Cuban Stars (E); he played center field in 28, third base in 1.
So, going by this, you'd have to conclude that Oms might have been a little behind Charleston and Mesa as a defensive outfielder, but not by so much that he wasn't sometimes put in center in their place.
I'll probably pass on Oms. His MLE's don't start until he was 26 years old (any ideas what he was doing before 1921?) and his prime was over at 35.
McNeill (alias Koufax) had Oms as the #4 RF in
"Baseball's Other All-stars". However, he had Francisco Coimbre ahead of him at #2. Bill James had him as the #5 RF in the Historical Abstract.
Some of the "undistinguished peak" objection to Oms and the other NeL players is an effect of the MLE projection method. In the interest of removing the extreme peaks and valleys that would show up if one directly projected stats from 40-game seasons into 162-game seasons, the regressions tend to smooth the peaks down a little too far. Moreover, the method of estimating win shares introduces another "smoothing" factor. When I am estimating win shares, I am trying to find the most likely batting-win-share rate for a player with a given set of offensive characteristics, summed up in OPS+. Among the major-league comparables, there will be players with highly similar stats with notably dissimilar bws rates. To give the most likely projection, I take the average of the rates, so the players with MLEs do not have an opportunity to benefit from some of the factors that lead to peak win-share values for mlb players. Some of these are due to meaningful accomplishments, like a high-OBP OPS+ vs. a high SLG OPS+ (player uses fewer outs, so more win shares). But others are due to contextual factors, most notably how the team did against pythagorean projections, which can greatly affect the number of wins per run created a player is awarded in the win share system. As you can see, a player's best seasons by win shares tend to show up in those seasons where the player was good _and_ the team was lucky.
Luck tends to equalize over a career or even a five-year period, so it's not suprising that Oms looks better by his five-year consecutive peak than his 3-year, non-consecutive peak, which gives maximum play to luck factors that Oms can't benefit from.
To sum up, the MLEs become more directly comparable to mlb win shares the larger group of seasons you consider. I don't think a three-year, non-consecutive peak measure offers a fair comparison between players with MLE records and players with mlb records. Five-year consecutive, or ten-year consecutive will yield a truer comparison.
David, you can find out everything that we know about Oms' playing career before and after 1921 in posts 47, 50, and 52-54 on the first page of this thread.
Executive summary: except for a brief (and undistinguished) stint in the U.S. in 1917, he appears to have been playing baseball in Cuba, but not in the Winter League, which is the only well-documented Cuban League. The bio suggests some plausible reasons why he did not get involved in that league sooner. We don't have any stats and we have very little even in the way of anecdotes for those years, unfortunately.
As to taking a pass on him: I hope you don't mean that you're not going to bother to figure out where he ranks. His documented MLE prime was 9 years. It's not as long as some, but it's longer than others, and he was still a decent ballplayer during his decline.
I suppose you're not really singling out Oms for neglect since you have only a single outfielder on your ballot, and he's ranked 14th, but Oms has a serious case to be the best available outfielder right now, so just ignoring him would be rather unsporting.
(I agree, incidentally, that richly deserving outfielders are not thick on the ground right now. I have three on my ballot with Oms the highest at 9.)
Regarding his years prior to 1921, in The Pride of Havana Gonzalez devotes a long chapter to Cuban baseball played outside the organized Cuban League. There were a variety of independent professional, regional, semipro, amatuer, and sugarmill teams, many of which were quite good. For example, in the winter of 1935 an independent Rum Havana Club team featuring Bobby Estalella clobbered the three "major" Cuban League teams by scores of 16-2, 11-2, and 16-5. Great players including Charleston, Dihigo, Luque, and Oms would pick up extra money by playing games for the sugarmill teams. Unfortunately, that doesn't help us evaluate how well Oms played during 1917-20, but we can be relatively sure that he was playing highly competitive baseball.
I'll read this entire thread before the next ballot.
No idea if I'll be swayed or not, but he deserves at least the full read from all of us, of course.
EEP, I'm caught napping twice in the same thread. That's never good! :-)
I'm going to also do as Howie suggests and read this full thread from start to finish.
As for "passing", I just meant that he's not in my top fifteen. I'm tougher than most on OF-ers there are so many shoo-ins (though my bias is getting extreme with Cravath being the lone OF on my ballot at #14).
There are a lot of OF-ers from this era that I'm not voting for (in no order CPBell, EAverill, WBerger, CKlien, Roush, HWilson, BJohnson, and more). In Oms' defense, the 20s prime and 30s flameout had been done by a couple of his HOM contemporaries (Simmons, Goslin). I don't think he can match the peak of Simmons, but a case could possibly be made to compare him to Goslin.
Thanks for the wake-up call (again). A contentious election is only a month away so it will certainly help if I speed up my reevalation cycle to 1920s and early 1940s levels.
This is pretty much exactly analagous to Dobie Moore, who was more than ready to go in the NeLs when he finally arrived.
I'm giving him some credit for 1920 based on the info in post # 5 that he played for a team that won a regional championship. I suspect he deserves more, but I don't want to get too speculative.
The box scores are excellent, and even better, many (maybe most) of the games have play-by-play accounts--en español, of course. So--I'm not sure how long it will take, but I think I can have *complete* stats for the 1927/28 Cuban League in the relatively near future.
In 1921 I have 10 games for Oms with the Cuban Stars (E); he played left field in 8, center field in 2.
That's all I have for that year at the moment.
I've balanced hitting and pitching totals (with the exception of a one-strikeout discrepancy). Here are the league totals:
AVE-.292
OBA-.354
SLG-.403
ERA-4.14
R/9 inn.-5.62
G-48
AB-3409
H-997
D-137
T-60
HR-40
R-533
RBI-438
ER-394
BB-313
K-343 (or 344)
HP-27
SF-30
SH-95
SB-70
There were three teams--Habana, Almendares, and Cuba (nicknamed "Los Patriotas"). The entire season was played in Almendares Park.
Habana's Jud Wilson was clearly the hitting star, with a 432/540/739 season. He led the league in ave, oba, slg, runs (35), RBI (30), triples (7), and hit by pitch (8), and was second with 19 walks and 4 home runs. He started the season at first base, but moved to left about midway through.
Oscar Charleston of Cuba hit 351/472/570, with 5 homers and 28 walks in 32 games. He also led with 11 steals.
Martin Dihigo of Habana hit 378/448/567 and went 4-2 with a 3.10 ERA in 49 1/3 innings. Sportswriters voted him the MVP award.
Alejandro Oms had a strange season, only playing in 20 of 32 games for Habana, and spending a good part of the season coming off the bench as a pinch-hitter and late-inning replacement. He hit .333/.375/.515 in only 66 at bats. I don't know if he was injured, playing for non-league teams, or simply benched.
Willie Foster (5-8, 3.15) was the league's workhorse for the last-place Cuba team, tossing 111.3 innings, co-leading in strikeouts (45), walking the most batters (51), and allowing the most home runs (7).
The most effective pitchers were probably Dolf Luque of Almendares (6-4, league-leading 2.64 ERA) and Habana's Oscar Levis (7-2, 3.05, 45 strikeouts in 88.7 innings).
In addition to the Havana-based Cuban League, Santiago hosted a "Provincial Championship" starting in late January 1928, which included three teams: "Hatuey", a team sponsored by a beer company; "Central," the defending champs, a team featuring Oliver Marcelle along with many players who appeared with the western Cuban Stars in the 1928 NNL; and "Cuba," which I believe is "Los Patriotas" from the Havana league (featuring Charleston, Foster, etc.).
Unfortunately, box scores for the Santiago-based league didn't appear in *La lucha*, as far as I can tell. The last standings I've seen (and I haven't looked past January) show Hatuey in the lead at 3-1, Cuba at 2-2, and Central at 1-3.
If you don't mind me asking, where is La Lucha on file? I'd love to someday read through it.
Although the HoF has posted Oms's complete batting statistics with the U.S. Negro Leagues, the file does not indicate the number of games his teams played, so I wasn't able to use that information to look at his in-season durability.
For the Cuban League, Figueredo does not list players' games played, but he does provide comprehensive statistics on ABs for each team. I'll compare Oms to other players on his team, since team schedules sometimes differed quite a bit (often a team that wasn't doing well would withdraw early and forfeit their remaining games). Here is how Oms compared to his Cuban League teammates during his prime:
1922-23 – led team in AB with 94.
1923-24 – missed some playing time – 139 AB compared to 186 for teammate Pablo Mesa.
1924-25 – led team in AB with 145.
1925-26 – third on team in AB with 68 (Pablo Mesa led with 77).
1926-27 – played for two leagues (regular and "Triangular") – combining for 119 AB – leader in AB for his "Triangular" team was Pelayo Chacón with 131.
1927-28 – missed some playing time – 71 AB (team leader was Ramón Herrera with 149). (In post # 134 above, Gary A reports that he played in 20 of 32 games.)
1928-29 – led team in AB with 176.
1929-30 – second on team in AB with 166 (leader was Mule Suttles with 175).
So of 8 seasons, Oms missed playing time in two of them. Unfortunately, with Negro League players it can be difficult to know how to interpret gaps in playing time -- sometimes, it represents an injury, but in other cases it can mean that a player arrived late or left early because of a commitment with another team. I'm pretty sure that Oms didn't miss as much playing time during his prime as Roush did, but it is impossible to exactly quantify his playing time.
Do we know why Oms did not play in the 1934-35, '36-37, and '38-39 seasons, at age 40, 42, 44? That is odd given his fine record in '32-33, '35-36, '37-38. (The league was out of business in '33-34, thanks to economic depression I suppose). Missing four seasons in the 1930s hurts his case, so his supporters should address this.
Or does it hurt his case? Maybe it has been covered. I looked only at the first ~20 articles. Taking the "gadfly" role upon myself, and bumping this thread to the leader board, moving Brent's comment here (next item).y
--
sunnyday2:
Right now I am evolving, but:
1. Roush
2. Browning
3. Duffy
4. Bell
5. H. Wilson
6. Averill
marc evolved to the point of putting Averill rather than Wilson in his PHOM (whew).
Brent's reply to Howie Menckel, 17 May 2007
> While different positions, how do Moran backers feel about Oms - another enigma - and vice versa?
As the only acknowledged Morán backer to date, I guess I'll respond. :)
I have them ranked about the same--last election I had Morán ranked fifth and Oms seventh. The recorded data for Oms start relatively late (age 26, 1921) since he was mostly playing in unrecorded provincial leagues prior to that time. From 1921-29 (ages 26-34) his MLE OPS+ was 138. He had a couple of seasons where he was the best hitter in the Cuban League, which was at its pinnacle of quality during that decade. He had a reputation as a good center fielder--excellent range but a weak arm. I see him as comparable to (actually better than) recent electee Roush.
That may satisfy a peak or prime voter. The inquiring career voter wants to know why the intermittent play in mid-1930s, because those years would put him far above Roush (and most others) by longevity.
Gadfly fills in the gaps in #52 - #54. This thread is an "HoM Classic."
Thanks.
Yes, it is.
Newcomers should read it. Oldsters with short memories will briefly relearn by rereading.
Gadfly will shop for the Venezuelan baseball encyclopedia when Hugo Chavez dies down.
This puppy is bookmarked and hopefully I can get an off season column done on "The Gentleman" (with due credits to y'all here!)
Best Regards
John
Well, maybe if you got your head out of those damn steroid threads, you would have, John.
;-)
They do tend to muscle out other reading. (booooooooooooo)
Best Regards
John
emphasis mine
17. TomH Posted: September 11, 2007 at 10:43 AM (#2519685)
thots:
OMS is now a top 10 required disclosure. My opinion is that he falls short of Bob Johnson. Johnson has taken hits for playing in an easy-to-dominate league, and also it is argued that we've elected many OFers from his era. However, the same would apply to Oms; I think maybe some miss this because Oms' case is separated from MLB, and so we don't "see" his missing black ink. And we are NOT short of dark-skinned OFers from 1920-1040.
Johnson was probably a much better hitter. Shorter career, but that is because Johnson didn't play MLB until age 27, while we are projecting Oms having "MLEs" much earlier than that, without really knowing if he would have made the majors earlier than Indian Bob. Oms was a good CFer, Johnson a very good RFer. I have Oms around #30.
19. Eric Chalek (Dr. Chaleeko) Posted: September 11, 2007 at 11:27 AM (#2519734)
A case for Alejandro Oms
Let's consider Oms in light of the sudden OF glut. Here's every OF with 200+ points
Browning
Puckett
Johnson
Dawson
Oms
Duffy
Cravath
Smith
Leach
In what ways does Oms stand out?
1) He is an excellent prime/career candidate. This facet of him is somewhat buried in translation. Oms' pro career started at least as early as age 21, but there's little documentation of his abilities before age 26 and what's there is scant. The reality is that he hit the ground running at age 26 and kept going for a good, long time. Players who hit the ground running are not likely MiL at 25 and All-Stars at 26. It's far from unlikely that Alejandro Oms was a some bush leaguer before his age 26 season, meaning that career-oriented voters should take special note of him and consider whether he offers more than they might have considered.
2) He might be an excellent peak/prime candidate too. This is less clear. Oms was obviously an excellent offensive player, how excellent isn't quite known. I have not personally run him through my system, though I may do so before this election runs its course. However, Chris Cobb does admit that his system will tend to flatten out peaks a bit. It's possible that Oms' peak is actually higher than has been estimated, and that part of it could be buried in the pre-age-26 era.
3) Position: Based on his research, Chris Cobb sees him as an A- fielder in the Win Shares vein. There's been much confusion in the past, and Oms has been sometimes miscast as a corner OF. Strangely <u>the defensive discussion for Oms does not appear in his thread, but elsewhere (and I don't remember the source or thread)</u> it was established that Oms was really a CF who sometimes played RF when he was teammates with the equivalent of Willie Mays (Oscar Charleston). And IIRC it wasn't a clear decision to shift him. In this sense he's more like Puckett than anyone else in the glut, with Duffy, and maybe Leach, showing similarities. But this should obviously mark him as having a positional advantage over several of our OF backloggers, a positional advantage that should be beared in mind when you consider his offense.
4) There are no negatives. This is a matter of direct comparison. Most of the OF backlog is surrounded by questions that limit the appeal of the player in question.
-Browning: trouble with durability, booze, league quality, defense
-Puckett: peak is low, career is short
-Johnson: trouble with league quality, difference of uberstat opinion, career isn't long
-Dawson: didn't walk ever, lots of subprime seasons, peak isn't great, played a lot of RF
-Duffy: why does WS love him? didn't play much CF, career isn't long, offensive context
-Cravath: how much extra credit? home park issues, maybe defensive issues
-Smith: serious durability issues, japan?, defense wasn't great
-Leach: offensive production isn't as good as these guys, split career, little baserunning data to elaborate on his cause.
What's the matter with Oms, then?: his pre-age 26 years aren't clear, his stats are MLEs, not MLB data.
-Does this mean that 65% of us don't trust MLE data? That can't be since we've elected plenty of NgLers and some with MiL credits.
-Does this mean that 65% of us think that the lack of documentation of his age 23-25 seasons--- relative to the rest of his career---is that huge an obstacle? That can't be since we've HOMed many others, white or black, on sketchy data: Dobie Moore, HR Johnson, Frank Grant, Dickey Pearce, Lip Pike, and Joe Start.
-Does this mean 65% of us think he's not very good? Seems unlikely since his MLE batting stats aren't too different than the guys in the glut AND he was a superior fielder to most of them AND had a longer career. 125 OPS+, 330+ documented MLE WS---with a reasonable and precedented credit scenario in play---and an excellent defensive CF.
So there's nothing the matter with Oms, really. And his jump in this past year's election is well warranted. IMO a further jump is further warranted.
Quick chart:
NAME POS PA OPS+ FRAA1 FRAA3
----------------------------------------------------
Oms CF(CoRF) 9508 125 ??? ??? (3.36 WS/1000---don't have these handy for others)
Browning CF/CoOF 6929 166 - 42 - 82
Puckett CF(CoOF) 8117 124 48 46
Johnson CoOF 8047 138 47 29
Dawson CoOF/CF 11147 120 2 2
Duffy CoOF/CF 9092 122 93 55
Cravath CoOF 5037 150 - 32 - 45
Smith CoOF/CF 8097 137 0 - 17
Leach CF/3B 9717 109 130 78
All PA are in 162 notation, OPS+ has been reweighted to reflect adjusted PAs
So he looks like Duffy, but with more time in CF and 500 more PA without credit for his pre-26 years. He's more durable than Smith in-season and careerwise, probably a much better defender, and credit scenarios at worst for Oms wash out (Japan versus undocumented Cuban play). He's a better hitter than Dawson, a better defender than Dawson, and a credit scenario probably gets him very close on the PAs. He's got major pluses on an un-credited Cravath, and most interesting, he's got the same OPS+ as Puckett in 1500 more PA and that's sans consideration for pre-age 26, and his glove is very good.
On the whole, Oms compares very, very well to the glut, and he deserves a second, third, or fourth look.
23. DL from MN Posted: September 11, 2007 at 11:58 AM (#2519787)
Ditto TomH on Oms, lower ceiling than Bob Johnson and Indian Bob hasn't been considered a high ceiling player. I do like Oms better than Andre Dawson but neither is particularly close to my ballot.
[. . .]
34) Alejandro Oms - ranks behind Bonds, right next to Jose Cruz ahead of Kiki Cuyler. I think Jose Cruz is a good comparable player and Cruz' era isn't represented as well as Oms'.
51) Andre Dawson - I have Fred Lynn ahead of him.
25. DL from MN Posted: September 11, 2007 at 12:21 PM (#2519823)
"Players who hit the ground running are not likely MiL at 25 and All-Stars at 26."
How could this be true for Oms but not Bob Johnson?
27. Eric Chalek (Dr. Chaleeko) Posted: September 11, 2007 at 01:00 PM (#2519895)
> 34) Alejandro Oms - ranks behind Bonds, right next to Jose Cruz ahead of Kiki Cuyler. I think Jose Cruz is a good comparable player and Cruz' era isn't represented as well as Oms'.
OMS:
-Longer career than any of the three mentioned
-More important defensive player (CFer), and a good one
> How could this be true for Oms but not Bob Johnson?
Seconded.
> we are projecting Oms having "MLEs" much earlier than that, without really knowing if he would have made the majors earlier than Indian Bob. Oms was a good CFer, Johnson a very good RFer.
This statement is not considering the precedent set in cases such as Dobie Moore's where Moore's Wreckers time was an important aspect of his case. We could make the same argument about Moore. Or for that matter about virtually ANY black player until the end of the 1960s or so.
One more intersting question. Let's say for the sake of argument that we are going to compare Johnson to all LFs from 1933-1945 and Oms to CFs from 1921-1931 and RF from 1932-1937. How do they compare?
Johnson 1933-1945
AL LF = .292/.365/.439/.804
Johnson = .296/.393/.506/.899
Oms 1921-1931
MLB CF = .304/.365/.433/.797
Oms CF = .343/.404/.492/.897
Oms 1932-1937
MLB RF = .297/.365/.445/.810
Oms RF = .308/.361/.402/.763
So Oms is just as good a hitter relative to his position in what I'm guessing might be his CF prime, but he's a very good to excellent CF instead of a good LF. And remember, Chris in the Oms thread suggests that his method might be underselling Oms's offensive peak. His RF tail-end is below the positional average, indeed, but on the other hand, it's debateable whether Oms would be in the league until 42 (and many voters don't choose to hold late-career fades against players anyway). Still, when you add back in the missing years and you consider that speed ebbs from about age 24 onward, you can guess that <u>Oms was probably missing a good prime chunk and that his CF defense was probably creating more opportunities to save runs than Chris' defensive estimate may have suggested [above, I presume]</u>.
28. DL from MN Posted: September 11, 2007 at 01:17 PM (#2519919)
<u>Where are you getting the defensive reputation information?</u> A- in Win Shares is not excellent for a CF.
Cruz played in the majors from 1970 to 1988, ages 22-40. Is Oms career that much longer? I will grant you that Bonds and Cruz didn't play as much CF as Oms but they did play CF in the majors for some period of time. Would Oms have definitely played all CF in the majors or would he have played more corner OF also?
29. Shooty's rap name is Rhymenocerous Posted: September 11, 2007 at 01:28 PM (#2519938)
FWIW, <u>according to my sources</u>, Oms pushed Charleston to right field when the two played for Santa Clara (oboy, what a team). Tinti Molina ran that team and he was a pretty astute baseball man. Oms would have played CF in in MLB.
30. KJOK Posted: September 11, 2007 at 01:35 PM (#2519943)
I'm almost certain Oms played some corner OF, which probably means if he were in MLB he would have played more corner OF than CF.
Oms MLE's seemed to come out close to Eric Davis, and for me Eric Davis would not be in my top 15 on this ballot.
Kevin KJOK beat me the Oms thread. I repeat from above, to preserve flow.
148. KJOK Posted: September 11, 2007 at 01:56 PM (#2519984)
Bumping this thread up, it looks like Oms played primarily LF thru around 1921, but then CF (<u>Holway mistakenly had him in RF later</u>, which maybe what confused me). So, looks like he probably would have been a CF in MLB to me.
-Does this mean 65% of us think he's not very good? Seems unlikely since his MLE batting stats aren't too different than the guys in the glut AND he was a superior fielder to most of them AND had a longer career. 125 OPS+, 330+ documented MLE WS---with a reasonable and precedented credit scenario in play---and an excellent defensive CF.
I suppose there is disagreement or grave doubt about all of the bold.
OPS+ 125 is not excellent unless the rest follows. (I am one who doesn't get Enos Slaughter.)
Maybe MN should push for Tony Oliva rather than Kirby Puckett.
Last week I started out with Trammell as my 3rd PHoMer and I re-did all of my "gloves" and ended up with Pesky. This week I will be re-doing the hitters for the same reason this thread has gotten a big bump.
Johnson 1933-1945
AL LF = .292/.365/.439/.804
Johnson = .296/.393/.506/.899
Are the above ##s park-adjusted for Johnson or not?
MLB LF 1933-1945 .287/.354/.425/.779
Both slightly higher than AL LF. I used MLB CF for Oms because I think Chris used the alternating NL/AL method in his MLEs, which makes a one-league comparison less productive.
Here's AL RF/LF
RF .285/.359/.418/.776
LF .292/.365/.439/.804
Very interesting! The RF were clearly inferior in the AL.
Not park adjusted for Johnson, BTW. A simple average of 98 PF suggests the park-adjusted OPS for him would be around .917 if one could use a straight-line adjustment of this sort...though I doubt one can.
I think Chris used alternating NL/AL for 1920s seasons and NL-only for 1930s seasons. See, for example, post # 111.
sunnyday2: yeah, 125 is not killer diller nor is an A- CF.
KJOK: it looks like Oms played primarily LF thru around 1921, but then CF (Holway mistakenly had him in RF later, which maybe what confused me). So, looks like he probably would have been a CF in MLB to me.
Concerning the A-, there are--obviously--no recorded defensive numbers for Negro Leaguers. I'd guess that Chris Cobb's label for Oms' defense is simply based on the fact that he spent time in RF--which, it appears to be false. Also, if KJOK is correct, El Caballero's MLEs begin about the time he started playing CF.
Oms played LF in 1917, but I haven't seen any source for his position from 1918-21. After that, it's mostly CF through at least 1931 (see post # 37 and additional information in posts # 11 & 39). Post # 11 has fielding statistics for one season, 1928 (led league in RF and FPct).
Ale Oms' draft card, via Gary A and via Patrick Rock. It appears to me to be from 1917 (listed as 21, with 1896 birthdate). The HOF pdf shows him at 28 in 1923, so they appear to be using an 1895 birthdate.
Actually, there are. Gary A has quite a few, including for Oms.
For his Venezuela seasons, where the data is too scanty to be useful, I looked at all MLB players who had played at least half a season in their age 36, 37, and 40 seasons, and got the correlations between those years and their performance at ages 38 and 39. I did the same for all MLB players who played at least a quarter of the season in their age 40 and 42 seasons against their performance in their age 41 season. The missing 1933, 34, and 36 seasons were filled in using the resulting equations.
Here's the result:
Year SFrac BWAA BRWAA FWAA Replc WARP1916 0.20 0.2 0.0 0.0 -0.2 0.4
1917 0.65 1.1 0.0 0.1 -0.7 1.9
1918 0.75 2.1 0.0 0.2 -0.8 3.0
1919 0.85 2.8 0.0 0.3 -0.8 3.9
1920 0.95 3.6 0.0 0.4 -0.9 4.9
1921 0.95 3.8 0.1 0.3 -0.9 5.1
1922 1.00 4.5 0.1 0.4 -1.0 6.0
1923 0.98 4.0 0.1 0.7 -1.0 5.8
1924 0.96 4.0 0.1 0.7 -0.9 5.7
1925 0.97 3.2 0.1 0.7 -1.0 5.0
1926 0.94 1.2 0.0 0.8 -0.9 3.0
1927 0.98 3.1 0.1 0.4 -1.1 4.6
1928 1.00 0.6 0.1 0.1 -0.8 1.5
1929 0.98 4.9 0.1 -0.1 -1.0 5.9
1930 0.62 -0.9 0.0 -0.4 -0.6 -0.6
1931 0.91 1.4 0.1 -0.3 -0.9 2.0
1932 0.86 0.0 0.0 -0.2 -0.9 0.8
1933 0.79 0.4 0.0 0.0 -0.6 0.9
1934 0.79 0.4 0.0 0.0 -0.6 0.9
1935 0.79 1.3 0.0 -0.1 -0.6 1.8
1936 0.48 0.4 -0.1 0.0 -0.4 0.7
1937 0.26 0.2 0.0 -0.1 -0.2 0.3
TOTL 17.66 42.4 1.0 3.5 -16.7 63.6
TXBR 17.05 43.2 1.0 3.9 -16.0 64.2
AVRG 1.00 2.4 0.1 0.2 -0.9 3.6
3-year peak: 17.7
7-year prime: 38.4
Career: 64.2
Salary: $164,153,473, a lower-tier but clear HoM'er. Worse than Wheat and Magee, similar to Stargell, Killebrew, and Reggie Smith, superior to Goslin, Wynn, and Dawson. Assuming the MLE's aren't super-flattening his career shape, he should be at the very bottom of a peak voter's ballot, as a sizable chunk of his career total comes from "hanging-on" seasons.
How anyone could have him behind someone like Edd Roush, Pete Browning or Lip Pike is beyond me.
I certainly think it's reasonable to discount Dawson's '81--certainly if we were to fill in the missing 50 games with some sort of PECOTA projection, his OPS+ for the season would go down.
Hey, I will have Dawson below Browning. Even after deflating the AA stats and adjusting for poor fielding and high standard deviations, it's just a remarkable decade of offense.
So clearly, your placement of Browning is going to be TREMENDOUSLY sensitive to your assumptions about the downside factors. How big is your AA discount, particularly for its early years? Obviously, if you think the 1882 AA was, say, triple-A quality, then Browning's first season was one for the ages; conversely, if you think it was basically a rookie league, then it's not that much to write home about. If you think a 160 OPS+ in 1885 is equal to a 150 or 155 today, then Browning was a beast; if you think its more like a 135 today, he was good-not-great. If your take on the uncertainty inherent in 1880's defensive stats and reputation leads you to regress everyone heavily to the mean, a completely logical and justifiable stance, then you might not have him as more than a -5 to -10 fielder, which is a rounding error given his offense; conversely, if you really think he was a born DH and knock off 20-25 runs a year in the field, well, that's obviously eating up a ton of his hitting value.
There are no indisputable empirical answers to these questions, only equally valid interpretations of very spotty evidence. Mine tend to be more favorable to Browning, yours less so. So just as I can completely understand and respect how your adjustments completely gut Browning's record, you should be able to understand how mine leave it coming out largely intact. The guy was no Nellie Fox, where we all know exactly how good he wasn't and still somehow managed to elect him.
Now back to poor Alejandro Oms, who seems to have had his thread hijacked.
Note that I myself do NOT take anything off of Dawson's '81--but I can completely understand why one would choose to do so.
Alejandro Oms' Real Stats
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