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1. HGM Posted: December 02, 2009 at 03:32 AM (#3400783)OK, does anybody have a freaking clue what the hell this is even supposed to mean?
It seems implausible to me that Shapiro would have admitted this.
It's not implausible if you consider that maybe Shapiro added with a wink "but keep that under your hat until he's up for the HOF"
And of course Mr. Livingston was kind enough to oblige because clearly eight years later is when that quote makes the best story.
Either Robbie is or is not an HoFer; none of this BS "I just cant make him a first ballot guy".
Nothing worse than a narrow-minded sports writer with a grudge
33 years old. 4th in the MVP voting. Almost 2500 hits in his career.
And he drove off a cliff.
But in a bizarre way, the grudge is almost a better excuse for withholding his vote for one year than the usual stuff. OTOH, if Livingston is hoping that Alomar makes it in without having to stain his hands by checking the box next to the diva's name on his own ballot, then he should have just left out the "ultra-elite" crap.
Why does this writer (along with Hal Bodley, et al) believe that voting should be based on "first-ballot-worthiness"?
First-ballot inductees average 90% of the vote because those players are so deserving of election that it is obvious and evident to most voters. (Inductees on subsequent ballots average about 81% of the vote because their cases are not as compelling.)
This writer instead puts the cart before the horse. First-ballot induction is a reflection of the player's merit, not an honor to be bestowed.
After his tryout with the Devil Rays, he said in a couple different interviews that his vision had rapidly declined. For a baseball player, I'd guess that's about the quickest way to lose your skills.
It doesn't even seem like something anyone other than Alomar could admit. I mean, maybe Shapiro could have alleged this, but that's a different matter.
I don't know what is so shocking to people about a 34 year old baseball player losing his skills all of a sudden. Jim Rice lost it at 34. David Ortiz lost it at 33. Dale Murphy lost it at 32. Chuck Knoblauch lost it at 31. Ray Chapman lost it at 30. :-)
The norm, of course, is that players tend to be heading out of baseball as they get into their 30s. Some players, particularly great ones, learn to adjust and play well through their 30s -- but some don't. Alomar was one who didn't.
I have no problem with a writer saying 'I'd rather reserve first-ballot votes for inner-circle guys, but guys like Alomar that are clearly deserving will get my vote on the second ballot'. This is especially acceptable when Livingston knows full well more than enough other writers will give Alomar enough votes this year to keep him on the ballot and possibly even get him in. I just wish he'd be a little kinder and focus more on Alomar's positives than his negatives. Why not just say 'he wasn't as good as Joe Morgan or Rogers Hornsby, so I think he should wait a year'?
Here's a link from a story at the time:
Also, from RobertoAlomar.com:
Like Dennis Eckersley, Paul Molitor, Kirby Puckett, and Dave Winfield?
But I did give a reason: he turned 34.
I'm serious. I don't know why age wouldn't be a valid reason. If there is evidence for a more specific reason, such as injury or eyesight, that obviously may be be more on point.
In that game, Alomar didn't run out a bobbled grounder, the result being a double play. Owner Larry Dolan was irate. I don't know if Shapiro publically dogged Alomar, but he made a comment about not coddling divas after he traded Alomar.
A 130 OPS+ over 12000+ PA with 7 Gold Gloves sounds pretty damn elite to me.
I'm not going to bother with the others, as I'll agree (despite being a big Molitor fan) that they aren't really what I would consider to be first ballot elite (in the way that most writers like to use the term).
I find it appalling that a voter would be basing his vote in part on what he thinks other voters are doing with their ballots.
He is supposed to answer one question: "Do I think Alomar is worthy of enshrinement?" Not "Do I think others think that?"
You forgot Lou Brock, who is a pale imitation of Tim Raines, who isn't even in the Hall.
There are days where I think it would be quicker if you just listed the things you don't find appalling.
How can the imitation have come first?
You Canadians and your causality...
I'd rather read a completely anal-retentive, numbers-only, anti-Ichiro-in-the-HoF sabermetrician any day than the average sportswriter.
Why do they hate our national game so?
I'm shocked that it took this long or "He was traded to the Mets" to emerge as a valid theory.
I think the ex-girlfriend settled her lawsuit on undisclosed terms, so there isn't much to go on as to whether the story was credible. However, I would think that even with current drug treatments it would be difficult to perform as an elite professional with HIV. Not sure its fair to suggest that was the cause of Alomar's precipitous decline, but given the allegations it's a possibility.
Whatever happened, indeed. That story disappeared in a hurry, didn't it? Given today's media, I'm really surprised it got swept under the rug so quickly.
Swept under the rug? He's Roberto Alomar, not Magic Johnson. And this is 2009, not 1991.
Nobody sees their average drop 70 points from one season to another just because of mere "age." The vision problems make for a much more plausible & specific explanation.
Johnny Damon
I thought it turned out that he was a decent amount older than he claimed - up to 4 years older.
Or is my mind confusing him with someone else, or (more likely) making excuses for the cratering of his performance.
It's not even part of the actual HOF debate; it's a procedural error.
Again, I'm going with "He was traded to the Mets."
This is a ridiculous statement.
Do you find it to be appalling?
Out of curiosity, can you provide some other example of guys who saw their BA crater by 70 points overnight, never to recover, or guys who saw their OPS+ drop by 60 points in a season? In both cases, I'm looking for examples which took a player from above average to well below their career averages - not just one-shot freak years, with a player then returning to roughly their career norms.
Even famous cliff divers like Dale Murphy didn't see as extreme a drop-off as Alomar.
By the way, I'm not doubting that there are examples of similar meltdowns, but rather just pointing out the notable nature of the depth of Alomar's collapse.
Dale Murphy, serial roider.
I posted #52 before I saw your #51, but of course he did. He went from 157 OPS+ to 106 to 89 in consecutive years. he was never better than league average after that. Alomar went from 150 to 89, which is a slightly larger drop than Murphy, but he was never a consistent 150 guy, while Murph was. Alomar went 100, 139, 114, 150 to 89 an never to recover. Murph went 149, 152, 121, 157 to 106 never to recover.
Exactly. The 150 OPS+ for Alomar was a career high. The .336 batting average in that same year was a career high. The .415 on base percentage was his second best. The .541 slugging percentage was a career high. Obviously he had come close to those numbers before, but the point is that some regression was to be expected even had he not fallen off a cliff. So for one to be shocked at the 60 point drop in OPS+, or the 70 point drop in batting average -- for one to take those numbers completely out of context -- seriously misses the boat.
Even so, as Murphy and others show, it has happened before.
Right. And any argument that Alomar's 61 point drop is different in kind from Murphy's 51 point drop or Yount's 49 point drop is a non-starter.
David Ortiz: 171 OPS+ to 123 to 101, before rebounding with a triple crown .378/.494/.727 year in 2010.
Alan Trammell: 138 to 84 to 82 and out.
Andruw Jones: 126 to 87 to 35.
Red Rolfe: 130 to 78 to 80 and out.
Yount's been mentioned.
Lots of 30-ish middle-infield types having career years fueled by batting average. Regression plus age is not a good combo.
Back trouble.
they couldn't play it, first of all, and the players just don't play it right anymore!
Hit .329 with a with a 153OPS+ as a 37-year old in 1990.
In 1991 he hit .255 with a 101 OPS+; he followed that with a 102 and a 94, and then out.
In both cases, the "dropoff" looks a lot worse than it is, because it immediately followed an unusually and unexpectedly good season from an aging player. Alomar's OPS+ dropped from 150 in 2001 to 89 in 2002 (and then out). But it's pretty clear that the 150 is the outlier. If we throw 2001 out, Alomar's OPS+ goes from:
134...100...139...114...89...80 and out.
We can do the same with Brett: 131...149...123...101...102...94 and out.
He did have a 127 OPS+ at age 28, but then completely fell off the cliff. Perhaps all that time playing for the Mets took its toll.
That's always been my excuse for not making the majors.
Never saw the same thing with Alomar - he looked healthy, just horrible.
Could just be my faulty memory, but I recall Baerga getting pretty fat right around the same time he started showing a significant decline. That, combined with a questionable "true" age could have explained it.
Baerga was getting fat then --- plus he was supposedly on the Belushi/Farley diet (huge amounts of blow with even more food).
Of course, my real point was that I was hoping for more specific reason(s) than mere "age", which is far too general and vague a term to be helpful. Some decline because they lose that step (be it to 1st or to the gapper in right), because their bat slows just that fraction, or due to their vision going to crap, or what have you. Thankfully someone provided just those kinds of specifics, rather than chalking it all up to age and leaving it at that, as if "age" explains everything and no more digging is necessary.
Not at all. GMs base decisions on age every day, as you well know. Every player projection system takes into account age. Age is a perfectly valid reason for why someone declined, and can stand on its own. Age is quite specific and "helpful."
Yes, of course, sometimes age isn't the explanation, such as when a specific injury is. But absent something like a specific injury, age perfectly suffices as an explanation. Trying to "dig" more in the absence of an obvious alternative explanation (e.g., Albert Belle's hip injury) is like trying to figure out where you picked up a cold. If someone in your household is sick, that may be the answer; if someone isn't sick, who knows where you got it from?
Not really. Color me unconvinced about Alomar's "vision problems" being the reason for his swift decline. I know you guys have just blindly signed on, but most vision problems are, of course, correctable these days. Did Alomar ever try glasses as his career was being brought to a close by these "vision problems"? Contact lenses? Laser surgery? I could find nothing about any of that in a quick Google search.
I'm pretty sure you're confusing him with another player. At least I've never heard of such a thing. As Bads mentioned above, the most common explanation at the time involved skirt-chasing, portion control and blow.
No it's not. Getting older does not mean you are worse. Now, getting older may result in your vision declining or your reaction time decreasing or you run slower. What I think John was looking for was something descriptive of that nature.
IN an interview a few years ago, Steve Phillips said that one star player he acquired went off amphetamines when he joined the Mets, and his performance declined precipitously, he was pretty clearly referring to Alomar, but then again, who wants to believe Steve Phillips?
Take a group of 33 year old players and plot their performance against that same group of players at 34 years old, adjusting for players that couldn't hang on between age 33 and 34 to begin with. You will see that as a group they decline from one year to the next.
I really don't know why it's so difficult for people to understand the simple concept that hitters generally peak between ages 26-28 and generally decline thereafter. Does this happen for every hitter? Obviously not. But when a player declines or falls off a cliff as he approaches his mid-30s, it's the norm; it shouldn't be shocking. And it can be perfectly explained by age.
If Alomar had been 24 instead of 34 I wouldn't have cited age.
Yes, but absent a clear injury or such, we can't be more specific about why the player declined. In those cases age is as far as we can go, and perfectly suffices as an explanation. It's a catch-all for: "It could be any of these things; who in the hell knows?"
I don't see how speculating on more specific reasons for Alomar's decline is any better of an answer than age.
Speaking of, whatever happened to that lawsuit filed against Alomar claiming he had "full blown AIDS" (which IIRC the plaintiff's attorney said contributed to his decline)? I never heard that corroborated in any way, shape or form.
Well, if age causes those other defects which cause the decline, isn't it approproiate to say that age caused the decline? In logic, if A causes b and b causes C, isn't it logical to say A causes C?
Another mid 30's cliff diver, Ron Santo. 112 OPS+ and all star in 1973. 69 OPS+ and done in 1974. Yep, maybe the diabetes caught up with him, but it probably did so because of age.
I think of it this way: If/when fully effective anti-aging drugs are developed, and players start taking them, then age will cease to be correlated with decline. As Treder said, age is a proxy for the physical breakdowns that cause declining performance.
Looks like there was a settlement, retro.
Link
I don't remember hearing about that part. He spent the baseball season of that year in Charleston, SC. The lawsuit says he said he was raped after playing a game in New Mexico or a southwestern state.
In biology we are taught about proximate and ultimate explanations. You are discussing the ultimate cause (age), I want the proximate causes (reflexes, vision, blow, extra portions, whatever-yes I know the last two aren't involving age per se). Specifically I was hoping that someone who watched him during his decline years might offer some specific insight-how the eff is that unreasonable? And I think everyone here grasps the age/performance curve (Sabermetrics 101 stuff), so that's a red herring. I think a doctorate could be pursued in sportsmedicine along these lines, tho I am not entirely sure how it could be done (for baseball players or athletes in general). I do know tennis players peak early, golfers late, so something inherent in both sports is responsible for the difference (baseball is in the middle). You may find such questions to be a complete waste of time, but I don't-and I'm not you.
I can see why so many people get so pissed at you in the Ichiro threads.
His Ichiro comments are perfectly fine, it's his comments in the political threads that piss me off
I've never given a BBTF political thread more than a cursory look. It's hard to imagine actually agreeing with Andy in a thread!
I've agreed with Andy on very rare occasions. When it happens it's not a situation I'm entirely comfortable with.
John, I understand that you're interested in the proximate cause; I'm just not sure that we can know. (Perhaps a doctor who examined Alomar could narrow down the likely proximate causes.) I mean, we can tell with a case such as Albert Belle. Beyond that, it can be tough.
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