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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
As the Celerino Sanchez Fan Club in El Guayabal, Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave, Mexico rises as one (and one only) and quickly sends off a note…but it didn’t fit on the letterhead so he just sat back down and fumed.
Did you know, Evan Longoria’s season was the third best by a rookie third baseman who played at least 100 games in history? Well, it’s true. The filtering statistic of choice is OPS+ since raw numbers would leave us with the offensive eras rather than the players who truly stood out from their peers.
The Milwaukee Brewers’ Ryan Braun is the leader with an OPS+ of 153(!) and Cincinnati Red Grady Hatton (128 OPS) from 1946 are the top two. Braun is a contemporary, but now plays the outfield. Easily one of the better offensive players in the game, Braun saw quite the improvement moving to left field this season. Pretty close to average.
...Now I certainly was not around to see Hatton play - and I doubt many - if any - of you were, and while I don’t want to take away from the highlight of his career, well…we all know Braun was quite poor defensively. We all also know that Evan was pretty damn fine with the leather. FanGraphs’ UZR has Braun worth -25 runs(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! in exclamation marks) and Longoria worth 15 runs. Even if those numbers are not exact, Braun only had about an 18-run advantage in offensive production. Was Evan at least 18 runs better defensively? The numbers certainly suggest it.
That means there’s a realistic chance that Evan Longoria is the owner of the best rookie season by a third baseman in league history.
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1. Eric J can SABER all he wants to Posted: March 03, 2009 at 02:17 PM (#3091055)/Maybe he did.
Yes he did, which was 13 more than a league average 3B in his day. Meanwhile, he had 52 adjusted batting runs. Longoria had 16 batting runs. There's no way defense makes up for that and Allen's 40 games played advantage.
Allen was way ahead of Longoria.
That is quite likely why the author missed Dick Allen (and Al Rosen). We was probably looking only at guys in their first year.
Me also missed Gil McDougald, probably because he played at 3b only about 60% of the time.
similar could be said about Edgar Martinez also. Technically Albert Pujols played 3b more than any other position his rookie season so he could join the argument.
Furthering the theory that the author merely searched for the best first year thirdbasemen, not the best rookie years. Longoria, Hatton, and Braun were first year players. Allen, Rosen, and Seitzer were not*. They all played a few games in the season before their official rookie year.
edit. Add Hart and Baker
Eddie Mathews had 8.5 WAR.
Hopefully, RJ can update his blog post with something more comprehensive.
And was Rally's latest addition to the site not posted here yet? I know that Rally's site has too little mention of steroids, but his site deserves a bit more love...
Also it bears repeating, among active players, both Rolen and Wright had their first full seasons at the same age as Eva, outplayed him at that age, and yet technically didn't qualify as rookies...
Eh? What? He won the ROY.
He may well have, but that Mathews link you gave begins in 1955, which was his fourth full year in the Majors.
I don't think there's anything goofier than the Greg Mathews vote for ROY in 1987, a year after he won 11 games for the Cardinals in 1986.
he seems to be in denial. Someone pointed out his error in looking only at first year players, and instead of checking, he responded:
"I wish I would've seen that before. Doubt it affects too much though"
So using one of the better defensive metrics for discussion isn't reasoned discussion? Maybe they should use metrics like grit and hustle similar to the voters who gave Jason Bartlett the team MVP in 2008.
Pretty funny, IMHO.
Trachsel? Wow, I guess Rolen really is made of glass...
kinda like Harball Times and WPA? (at least UZR is a solid arguably accurate stat)
Wasn't Pujols a 3B his rookie year?
EDIT: Hmm...78 games in the outfield, 55 at third, 43 at first. I was thinking he was more or less a full-time 3B that year.
Is there anything more certain that a restatement starting with the word "so" is sure to be worthless? I'm glad you like draysbay, but its not big on reasoned discussion. The devotion to UZR is separate and consistent. You called it "one of the better." Given that there is nothing to support that claim, i'll take that as draysbay reasoning. I like the false comparison to grit and hustle - again, very draysbay.
What do you mean there is nothing to support that claim?
That brings up a question I have about defensive metrics.
With offensive metrics, you can take a measure like Extrapolated Runs or Estimated Runs produced or the like, and compare the results on a team level, and you can see how good a job it does at actually predicting the number of runs scored. And they come out pretty good.
Is there anything like that at the defensive level -- where you take something like UZR and add up all the plus-minus for every player, and use that as a comparison for team runs allowed? I don't know how you could, given that it does not cover things like walks and home runs, but I suppose you could take them out by estimating the number of runs allowed based on those causes. But has it ever been done?
A little research doesn't hurt from time to time.
I do not see where it answers my question, though.
not to support a position that I don't support, but how does this validate UZR? Intuitively it's a strong system, and I clearly disagree with Hobo Hal. I view UZR as one of the best fielding metrics out there even with it's flaws. but your link is the guy who invented the system defining the system, not sure that helps validate it as a good tool. I mean I can find articles by people touting the value of WPA, stolen base percentage, grit hustle, clutch, strikeouts, and productive outs, but that doesn't mean any of those are good stats either.
but on a scale of value and accuracy, UZR is clearly ahead of grit, hustle, rbi, defensive win shares, and of course WPA (which is about on par with RBI for quality as an analysis tool)
Essentially, it looks at every event in a game from the prospective of how it affects the likelihood of one team winning, from that point forward.
As an example -- Two teams win a game one-nothing.
In one case, the run scores on first inning home run. In the other, the run scores on a ninth inning home run.
Because a one run lead in the first inning is less likely to be decisive than a one run lead in the ninth, it has a lower WPA than the ninth inning home run.
Some people tout WPA as the best measure of value of a player and clutchitude.
The rest of us call it a junk stat.
Sure, it doesn't have a whole lot of predictive value, and it's very opportunity based, but it seems clear to me that it is the best value of how many wins above average a player actually contributed with his actions, whether or not those actions and situations he found himself in were luck or skill.
No it doesn't. A stat that awards a player fewer points for a first inning HR and a 9th inning HR than a first inning strikeout and a 9th inning HR is a junk stat.
By the way, that Jimmy Williams sure is a posterboy for the importance of league strength. A 161 OPS+ in the 12-team 1899 NL, a 95 in the contracted 1900 NL, and back to a 140 in the newly formed 1901 AL.
I would take UZRs numbers over WPA everyday and twice on Sunday as far as accuracy goes. I would also take OPS, OPS+, RC/27, RC, EQA, EQR, Warp, Vorp, AVG/OBP/SLG, Win Shares, Win shares above whatever you want, etc. The only thing I can imagine that WPA adds to the discussion is to eliminate RBI's as a stat, since WPA can be argued has a rate component, but heck I would prefer to see OPS in close and late over WPA.
it's too dependent on situations. Tango(I think) has fixed some of that, a batter that goes 1 for 3 with a homerun in a 1-0 game should get the same value no matter when he hits the homerun. Sucking earlier can be argued that it forces a team to keep a good starting pitcher in longer than necessary therefore a lead early is more valuable for the team over the course of the season than hitting a homerun in the 9th inning. (or any other theoretical arguments can exists)
people complain about how people the oppose that WPA is too focus on the random numbers and comparing it to WPA, which in my opinion concentrates too much on the current bat only and not the bigger pitcher of the game. Again a lead early on is stronger for the team over the course of the season for how it helps the relief staff and rotation, yet we are too now believe that scoring later in the game is better for the team? really?
It seems foolish to use it to predict anything...but I like following playoff series and using it to determine MVPs of a series, I guess mostly because I don't take LCS or WS MVPs all that seriously.
I guess I've never really talked with anyone who was trying to use it as a serious stat, so I don't really have the passionate reaction that some to have towards it.
WPA is pretty much a complete junk stat, for anyone but relief pitchers and pinch hitters.
Hitters cannot be leveraged (fine, lineup spot, but that's about it, and not very relevant for WPA). It's teammate dependent as well.
A-Rod's 4th inning HR does just as much to help you win a game as Ortiz's 9th inning HR. If Ortiz had hit his HR in the 4th, you wouldn't have needed the 9th inning HR, AND you can't give Ortiz all of his PA in the late innings of close games, like you can with a relief ace.
WPA is complete junk. It's a fun toy, but that's all. It's not only not predictive, but it doesn't give you any semblance of value either.
Take it to the extreme - what was Bucky Dent's "Pennant PA" in 1978? Was he more valuable than Jim Rice?
it's based upon the description of how the numbers are arrived. If someone were to come up with a way to describe a way to come up with defensive data, UZR would be a good model to arrive at.
This is all you need to know.
I blame Tripon for asking the question -- and of course, he ducked out.
Well, at least nobody ragged on me for my simplistic definition of WPA.
Not necessarily. A-Rod's 4th inning HR only does just as much to help you win a game as Ortiz's 9th inning HR IF the score differential does not change between the 4th and 9th, which it is very likely to do. If Ortiz had hit his HR in the 4th, and then the other team hit two HRs in the 6th, well then, you certainly would still need a 9th inning HR. Whereas if you get a walkoff bomb, that's it, game over.
I would not be surprised if Bucky Dent contributed more to Boston's likelihood of making the playoffs over the course of the 1978 season than Jim Rice did. Whether that constitutes "value" depends on your definition of value, of course. If you are asking, "who did more to get his team into the playoffs" or "who would have represented a greater loss for the club," it's Dent. If you are asking, "which season would you rather have in a neutral context/behind a Rawlsian veil of ignorance where you don't know ahead of time what the score/inning and base/out situation will be in any given PA or what a team's record will be on any given day," it's Rice. Ask a different question, get a different answer.
That said, I almost think the conclusions drawn seem a bit illogical - too cute by half, basically.
Should Jeffrey Maier have gotten a postseason MVP vote/playoff share?
No debate that he impacted WPA for the series and the entire postseason more than most actual Yankees can claim.......
True. The Yankees never would have caught the Red Sox if they had benched Roy White.
1899 probably happened because pitchers just didn't know how to pitch to him (I'd like to see how he hit during the second half of the season to confirm that), though I agree with you in regard to 1901.
I'm pretty sure that Reggie, Jim and Roy would have found a spot either in the outfield or as a DH.
Hang around here some more during award season- there are some who see WPA as the ultimate MVP discussion ender...
I tend to agree with Dimino...
It's a fun stat, and it could be a useful stat (kind of like RBI), but it's mis-use by its adherents tends to give it negative value as a stat IMHO.
I think I know what you mean, Dan, but that sentence reads as if Dent was so Godawful for New York that year that he kept the Red Sox in the race till the very last moment ...
I agree that different questions yield different answers. If you ask who made more of a difference to his team's success in the pennant race last year, Ryan Howard could be the MVP over Albert Pujols in many senses: he drove in lots more runs, many of which were crucial to his team actually winning the pennant. If you ask "in March 2008, should I have traded Pujols even-up for Howard – well, the correct answer is unknowable in a strict sense, but most people would say "are you nuts?"
Yes, this is true. This is why win expectancy is a useful tool for decision making during a game, because you do not know the outcome.
This is also why WPA is a useless stat. It is computed after a game is over, when we already know the outcome. WPA ignores data that we have. That is why it is useless and a junk stat.
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