Hot topics

My notes on Lyons, culled from BaseballLibrary.com:
Teammate Willie Powell noted that Lyons "didn't know what it was to get up to bat and take his full swing, 'cause Rube always had him put it here, lay it down there."
He was known as a swift outfielder, fearsome base-stealer, and expert drag-bunter. Led the NNL with 22 steals and a .394 batting average in 1920.

At the moment, I have Lyons ranked between Jimmy Ryan and Mike Tiernan.

KJOK, is there any chance that you've got a similar translation for Lyons as the ones you uploaded to the HOM Yahoo group? I found those extremely helpful this week as I delved more deeply in the NgL candidates.

For those of you interested in such things...

Using the I9 numbers with average rates of RBI (based on RBI per Hit) and Runs (based on Runs per PA) for hitters in the NL and AL between 1911 and 1923, here are the Bill James Sim Scores for Shively, with the positional adjustment:

MERTES, SAM (848)
MURRAY, RED (843)
MANN, LES (843)
WILMOT, WALT (836)
WOLF, CHICKEN (834)
STRUNK, AMOS (833)
STENGEL, CASEY (833)
KREEVICH, MIKE (833)
FINNEY, LOU (832)
HEATHCOTE, CLIFF (831)

In reality, the Sims for both Shively and Lyons will be each other, but I omitted them from the lists.

Here are Lyons’ batting WS using the old TangoTiger formula to convert Linear Weights to Win Shares for batting. The formula is:

Batting WS = ((LWTS Runs/10) + (Outs/100))*3

As David Foss pointed out, you may want to use something other than 10 as the divisor, but I've left it at 10 b/c that's what I used for Hill before David posted his comment -- you can apply your own discount, as I do. If you have another factor you'd like to use, let me know and I can plug that in pretty quickly. The Tango formula is a rough measure, of course, and it seems to come out mostly on the high side.

So here are Lyons’ batting WS using (1) TangoTiger's converter, (2) the Integrated 9s MLEs and (3) Pete Palmer's LWTS. They are raw (no adjustments for season-length, park factors, league quality, uncertainty of data, etc.):

1911.....2.6
1912.....12.9
1913.....16.6
1914.....10.4
1915.....14.9
1916.....8.6
1917.....21.1
1918.....2.4*
1919.....5.7
1920.....22.4
1921.....11.1
1922.....6.9
1923.....4.7

Total....140.2

*Riley says he was drafted into the army in 1918. I9s shows him with 176 ABs in 1918 and 206 in 1919.

For defense: based on the Integrated 9s MLEs, Lyons had 5,563 plate appearances. Assuming approximately 4.1 PAs per game, that gives Lyons about 1,357 games played. In two pages, Riley says nary a word about his defense, but lists him as a leftfielder. Since he was fast, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt. Among HoFers, leftfielders average about 2.35 WS/1000 innings. I put him at 2.75, which is similar to guys like Dusty Baker and Jose Cruz defensively. That’s lower than I gave Shively, not because I have any real sense of how good either player was on defense, but because it looks like Shively moved around the outfield and maybe played some center field, where the WS/1000 innings are higher.

At about 8.75 innings per game played, he would have approximately 11,874 innings in the outfield. So if you were to give Lyons 2.75 WS/1000, you'd get another 32.6 fielding WS to add to his hitting totals, which would put him at about 172.8 WS for career.

All caveats apply. Make adjustments as appropriate for your systems. Or ignore them altogether.

On the topic of being drafted into the army in 1918...

Isn't it incredible that we would draft African-Americans to fight and die in WW I (and later WW II), but we wouldn't even let them play a game with white people?

KJOK, is there any chance that you've got a similar translation for Lyons as the ones you uploaded to the HOM Yahoo group? I found those extremely helpful this week as I delved more deeply in the NgL candidates.
I can, but honestly I didn't because it seemed like he wasn't going to be a good enough hitter for an outfielder to consider, but maybe he's not too far below Spotwood - so I'll actually run the numbers and post them Wednesday night...

Lyons' MLE's have been posted to the HOM egroup...

1921 Jimmie Lyons
NNL Chicago American Giants

G-68 (team 70)
AB-232
H-69
D-3
T-3
HR-6
R-51
W-27
HP-1
SH-12
SB-28 (4th in league)
AVE-.297 (NeL .263)
OBA-.373 (NeL .324)
SLG-.414 (NeL .361)

Jimmie Lyons Real Stats

CORRECTED LINK:

Jimmie Lyons' Real Stats