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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
And Jorge Drexler Belongs in the Hall of Fame (Probably)
Jorge Posada, to me, looks like a clear choice as one of the dozen best catchers of all-time, and that’s the relevant context here. It’s incredibly difficult (ostensibly impossible) for a catcher to put up huge counting stats in his career, because catchers can’t play every day, and because they tend to wear down over time, and are usually only able to prolong their careers if they move to another position (Craig Biggio, an automatic Hall of Famer) or they’re an all-time great (Fisk, etc.). Posada is a rich man’s Ted Simmons, a terrific offensive player behind the dish for many years who had his defensive limitations but wasn’t nearly as bad as Simmons was defensively. Simmons is a borderline Hall candidate, though I think a case can be made for him. By that standard, as well as looking at the body of evidence, I absolutely think a case can be made for Posada, even if he retired tomorrow.
It’ll be very interesting to see how the Coop treats Hip Hip Jorge. You would think that one of the most skilled offensive catchers of all-time, playing for one of the great dynasties of all-time, would be a mortal lock. But Posada has been overshadowed by first-ballot locks like Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, even though in many ways he’s been nearly as integral to the team’s success. (The same could be said for Bernie Williams, a fantastic player who’ll never even sniff the Hall). It’s a shame that Posada can’t elicit more enthusiasm for his accomplishments. Here’s hoping, nine years from now, that the other voting members of the BBWAA are kinder to Posada than Rob will be.
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Only.
Did you read the post you're quoting from (post 26), or are you just looking to distort what I wrote by ripping it out of context? I was responding to the argument that Posada has spent "nearly a full season at catcher" in the postseason. The original poster cited Posada's 383 PA in the postseason.
I pointed out that Posada has played only 96 postseason games, which is not "nearly a full season" for a catcher.
Does it make a difference whether one cites PA or games played in this context? No.
Posada generally gets about 575 PA in a full season (575 is his average number of PA from 2000-2007). 383/575 = 67%.
Posada generally plays 143 games in a full season (143 is his average from 2000-2007). 96/143 = 67%.
I wouldn't call 67% of his usual PA or games "almost a full season." Would you?
My comment had nothing to do with whether 96 postseason games is a lot or a little as an abstract observation. The discussion was about whether Posada's postseason playing time amounts to nearly a full season.
But of course, you knew that already.
And so with Posada: if he gets bused tomorrow, he'll have played parts of 15 seasons with ~230 HR, ~900 RBI, which indicates that he probably wasn't Johnny Bench in his prime, which turns out to be correct.
Peak vs. career arguments make the most sense when the two don't track one another very closely, as with Ralph Kiner or Rafael Palmeiro. Otherwise, it seems to me that they are often two ways of getting at the same information (though I know that there are many different ways of looking at the issue, and good reasons to disagree with my opinion, too).
As to "what do a few sub-par last seasons matter," I guess there could be a lot of different answers. In the case of someone like Johnny Mize, the fact that he could be a useful player on World Championship teams in his late 30s is a kind of proxy for the greatness he might have achieved during the War, and an indication that his amazing mid-20s peak was no fluke – in addition to just being another baseball exploit to put on his plaque.
Just guessing at the answer -- lots of work, relatively little impact for almost everybody.
One clue that the impact can't be too great for Bench -- the Reds were +16 wins over their pythags in his prime (+11 in 1970, +5 the rest).
I have a sneaking suspicion that Bench will come out of this type of study about the same way Tim Raines did in Tom's. Excellent before taking context into account. Excellenter after taking context into account. No bggie to the overall value.
Without taking a position on Posada I endorse this 100%. There is no other sensible baseline position for this conversation or any other hall of fame conversation.
I also find it intereting that Voros is advocating the sensible non dogmatic stathead position here.
This is a wise comment. I also don't think it is inconsistent with what I've said. The problem is that the career length guys don't do anything resembling this. I think they are constitutionally forbiden from making this kind of qualitative judgement.
Since someone brought up his name, and since this is a Hall of Fame thread, does anyone know why Mize had to wait so long for entry into the Hall of Fame? It just seems like he had so much going for his candidacy (played on Cards, Giant, and Yankees, hit 50 HR in a season, served in the war and hit well both before and after, part of 5 WS winners, career .312 hitter), and yet he still had to wait for the VC to come to his rescue.
I don't think most starting catchers catch only 110-120 games, no (* see my edit below). Just looking at 2008, there were 19 catchers who caught at least 110 games. (20 if we include John Buck, who caught 109 games.)
8 of the 19 caught between 110-120 games.
1 of the 19 caught between 121-130 games.
3 of the 19 caught between 131-140 games.
5 of the 19 caught between 141-150 games.
2 of the 19 caught between 151-160 games.
* EDIT:
Well, maybe you're right. There are 30 teams. Let's call it 30 starting catchers (give or take because of injuries). Which means that, at least in 2008, about 1/3 of starting catchers caught more than 120 games, 1/3 caught between 110-120 games, and 1/3 caught less than 110 games.
So I guess we can say that the average starting caught between 110-120 games in 2008.
Of course, some teams go with a split-catcher type of arrangement.
Before making ignorant and insulting comments like this perhaps you should drop into a HOM thread to see the varying levels of opinion on giving war (killing people and blowing things up, not wins above replacement) credit.
It's only sensible if it has any basis in reality. A past prime hitter hanging on at DH is the definition of a replacement level player. And if you're replacement level, it doesn't matter if you play 2 years or 30 years, you still don't add any value. In Simmon's case 98% of his career value is from the years he was primarily a catcher.
Excellent point.
You make it seem like I was disagreeing or otherwise criticizing you or the HOM.
This doesn't address the spirit of what he said. The specific example is irrelevant.
He's the one who brought up Simmons. If Voros wants to bring up another player who actually added value past his prime, then maybe we can have a discussion.
At this point, Posada isn't "hanging around" at either level. He's still hitting at his peak level although there's always the question of how long that will last.
There's basic statistical reasons for it. Just as an example, let's look at batting average over samples of 50 (cup of coffee), 2500 (five years), 5000 (10 years) at bats. Let's assume we know a player's chances to get a hit in any at bat is exactly 29% (.290).
Looking at 2500 at bats, we'd expect the player to hit between .272 and .308 in those 500 at bats about 95% of the time.
When we look at only 50 at bats, we'd expect the player to hit between .180 and .400 about 95% of the time.
So how much narrower does tacking on 2500 MORE at bats get us? Not much actually. In 5000 at bats, we'd expect the player to hit between .278 and .302 about 95% of the time. The range has only narrowed by about 3 hits a season (around 2.6 per 500 at bats actually). The range narrowed by 46 hits a season going from 50 to 2500.
In other words, we've gained an absolute ton more reliability in the first extra 2450 at bats than we did over the next 2500 at bats. Indeed starting with 1 at bat, each extra at bat more of a sample tells you less than the previous at bat did. By five years you've gleaned most of what you can glean statistically without running up into the stupid high numbers.
Another example of this is that you'll find very few people who project players using more than five past seasons worth of data, because it (as far as I could tell) added absolutely nothing to the accuracy of your predictions. The slight accuracy gained by the extra sample size gets overwhelmed by the tendency for players' abilities to shift and change over time. Even three years is usually enough for most except the BABIP type stats.
So everything I've seen is that extra full years beyond five don't really tell us much of anything about a player during those five years (IE, whether they were fluky or not) for both theoretical reasons (the binomial example above) and from looking at the data (projections, etc.). Five years, believe it or not, wasn't just a number I picked out because it sounds good. It matches the data, at least the hitting and (starting) pitching data anyway.
It has been at times. Koufax and Dean as examples. Dazzy Vance, kind of. Ralph Kiner mostly. That's not even counting the questionable VC guys, but then they're in the Hall of Fame just the same (Hack Wilson, Chuck Klein, and so on). Jackie Robinson is probably another half-example, but certainly peak was a big part of his case. The HOF has in several instances shown itself willing to ignore a short career if they wanted to elect a guy. That voters seem to have _recently_ gotten away from that is a perfectly legitimate thing to argue against.
And I've not yet argued for a "peak performance alone" HOF anywhere here. I've argued for a peak heavy HOF, which is different, and argued strongly against a "peak indifferent" approach like ones that total up wins above replacement for a career. my point with Posada is that he'd actually have to do something meaningful to enhance his HOF case much, and that looks beyond him at the moment.
Rickey Henderson is, of course, a slam-dunk Hall of Famer and someone the BBWAA and the statheads can both agree on with enthusiasm.
But just suppose that you're some kind of over-the-top extreme small-hall advocate. Or suppose that you're arguing for a higher distinction than mere Hall of Fame membership, an "inner circle." Does Rickey Henderson belong in the inner circle? If you ask that question, you run up against the fact that Rickey at his peak (whenever that was - his peak is a bit hard to locate) was not truly comparable to Williams at his peak, or Mantle, or Bonds, or even Aaron. In fact, his peak was only a little better than that of Tim Raines. Of course the rest of Henderson's career blows the rest of Raines's career away.
Never mind value above replacement. Set a significantly higher baseline level and measure value above that (ignore anything that falls below it.) If you're very, very good for a very, very long time (as Henderson was), does that put you in the inner circle? Or does the inner circle require more of a Mantle-like peak?
But that's hardly an insult. Tris Speaker isn't either and he was a hell of a player. Same for Ernie Banks or Tom Seaver or Jeff Bagwell. Bagwell's a good example. Rickey's career as an All-Star caliber player and Bagwell's career as an All-Star caliber player are about the same length. And while Rickey was an outstanding player during that stretch, Bagwell was just as outstanding (with a run scoring ability very close to on par with Rickey). The difference of course, is that Bagwell's career as a non All-Star caliber player is extremely brief, whereas Rickey's is about four times as long (both were above average on the whole for those periods though)
And yet we see countless discussions about the possible merits of Jeff Bagwell (maybe not here, but elsewhere) and yet Henderson is such an easy call for everyone, the only dissenters are mostly kidding. To me they're both pretty easy calls. Rickey gets a little bit extra for the length of his career, which probably nudges him ahead in my mind, but then a good argument can be made that Bagwell's peaks was slightly better. You could also, obviously, credit Rickey for extra bonus points for being such a unique and iconic player. Bagwell was just the 1990s version of Jimmie Foxx (worse of a hitter, better all-around skills).
Close to this level, I believe I said. Like Fred McGriff and Eddie Murray added to their cases by being slightly inferior versions of themselves at their best. Whereas I don't think Ernie Banks added anything by adding Paul Konerko's career onto Alex Rodriguez's shortstop career. In either case, I don't consider those things nearly as important as their quality at their best (where I think Banks creams both Murray and McGriff).
Mike Piazza 11Johnny Bench 9
Yogi Berra 9
Ted Simmons 8
Gene Tenace 7
Carlton Fisk 6
Gary Carter 6
Ivan Rodriguez 6
Joe Torre 6
Jorge Posada 6
Roy Campanella 6
Bill Freehan 5
Thurman Munson 5
Darrell Porter 4
Elston Howard 4
Javy Lopez 4
Joe Ferguson 4
Johnny Romano 4
Mickey Tettleton 4
Victor Martinez 4
I can agree with all of this. On Rickey vs Bagwell I'm sure I'd give Rickey a lot more credit for what amounts to an extra decade of being a good player.
For Posada, I don't care about whatever counting stats he gets, or any partial seasons he can muster as a close to average catcher gaining 1-1.5 WAR per year. I think right now he would not get my vote, but 2 more Jorge Posada seasons (125 OPS+, below average but not deadly defense, 130+ games) and he's in for me. One more year like that and it would be a toss up. A big bonus if a year like that helped bring the long suffering Yankees back to the World Series.
You might want to define "catcher seasons" here. Tenace had two seasons in his entire career where he caught 100 games.
I may be missing something, but why are we discussing projections when trying to assess the value of past performance, which is what we do when we're deciding whether someone should be a Hall of Famer?
I get that Posada's career isn't over yet. Are you arguing that we already have a read on how good he was at his peak, and since he's no longer at his peak (let's ignore the fact that he's playing great right now), it doesn't matter what he does from here on out? If that's what you're arguing, it's not computing for me.
Why? What the hell. He had a 154 OPS+ in 2007, was playing hurt last year, and has a 166 OPS+ this year. He's still catching regularly when he plays -- his stint on the DL this year was not due to the shoulder injury of last year -- and even if he were a DH, he'd be providing plenty of value with that kind of hitting. Why would that not be relevant?
Because I really don't think he can catch 120 games a year at this point and stay healthy. I might be wrong.
And if he DHs, well then he ceases to be particularly close to the player he was at his peak. He becomes Chili Davis.
My general rule is essentially, if a player's peak is at Hall of Fame level, to add anything to that with career length, that length has to be close to that level. Or to put it another way, only play close to a Hall of Fame level should be seen as credentials for the Hall of Fame. If one guy does that longer than another, that definitely should count. But simply being an average or even a slightly above average player I don't think should really mean much to a player's HOF chances, even if he does it for 20 years.
BBREF PI's definition
50% of games that year.
Boost that to 70% and Tenace drops to 2....
Posada stays at 6
Torre drops to 3
Simmons loses 1 year and has 7
what if he can put up a 140 OPS+ season (500 or so PAs) or two, as a DH?
what effect would that have on his candidacy?
The point of quoting the projection is to point out that looking at more than five years of data in that environment tells you nothing extra about the current level of the player. It is a different question than examining a HOF peak, but not an entirely dissimilar one. The mechanics are identical: you're trying to account for the fact that sufficient sample sizes are needed to judge the real level of a player's ability while still taking into account the reality that a player's ability changes over time.
Yes projections add in things that aren't relevant like player's projected growth or decline, but that really doesn't seem to affect whether five years is a functional upper limit on how many years are needed to establish a performance level. Everything I've seen suggests that it is, and the statistical theory seems to bear that out.
That's wholly logical, and I'm certainly not hammering you for using that as a cutoff. But boy does it ever overrate Gene Tenace. That definition ends up including his 1974, 1976 and 1978 seasons as "catcher seasons," even though he caught 79, 65 and 71 games, respectively, and played more games at first base each year. But because of midgame position switches, he ekes by on the 50 percent of games played criterion in each of those season.
Where do you stand on, say, Strawberry with respect to the HOF? Not enough peak seasons?
As far as his candidacy I want to agree that by now Posada should have already made his case, but in theory he could have 2 more seasons like he is currently at catcher and maybe 2 more after that at DH. And I find it hard to believe that those seasons wouldn't help his cause.
What this demonstrates is measuring ability vs value. Put up a 20 year career with a 120 OPS+ playing everyday and you've added more wins than the guy with 5 years of a 175 OPS+ who got hurt, never was the same, and retired early. But the 2nd player had greater ability. The 1st guy's ability may fall just short of your definition of HOF ability, so in that case 20 years may not matter, and it may not matter to you if he did it for 60 years.
On the flipside, third basemen have been underrepresented, his peak was awfully good and appeared to be fully legit. No he wasn't a .336 hitter but he was at least a .280 hitter with big power, very good walks and a pretty good glove. And of course in 1953 he was one freakin' point of Batting Average away from winning the Triple Crown and needless to say won the MVP unanimously.
Al Rosen was at one time a Hall of Fame caliber player. But a late start and (back injury induced) quick end made it come and go quite quickly. And so it just doesn't look like it when you stare at it. It's hard to argue he's a Hall of Famer, but then he was a better player than a lot of guys who are.
How about Eric Davis? All-around he was a greater player than Straw, but had more trouble staying on the field during his best years.
I don't think his peak is quite good enough for starters. Obviously once his peak ended, he had some troubles.
With the good speed (somewhat flaky baserunning at times though) and better than reputation fielding he gets close, but even at his peak he was injury prone and he was never Bagwell good or even Albert Belle good with the stick.
That's the thing. By weighing peak much more heavily, you can then raise the bar of that peak. Just to follow up on the last post, he wasn't close to as good at his peak as Al Rosen, for example.
Kevin Mitchell may be the more interesting one to discuss, but even then at his best he had serious injury problems, was a non-baserunner and legitimately lousy outfielder. Mitchell at his peak was a legitimate HOF Caliber hitter, it's just nothing else about his game was. You can add or subtract whatever you'd like for the fact that he was nuts.
There's nothing wrong with that; the problem I have with it is that I don't think the HOF is only, or primarily, about peak TTL. It certainly never has been in the past, Koufax notwithstanding.
Davis, even at his best, was never a great hitter (a very good one though) so you'd have to build whatever case you could around huge bonuses for baserunning and especially defense. Of the Lynn, Davis, Reiser triumvirate of Center Fielders who wrecked their careers on the center field wall, Lynn probably has the best case of the three (and also the best career heavy case too). None of them are great, but a moderately large Hall I think might big enough for Lynn. He's pretty much a prototypical borderliner.
I'm not entirely sure he wouldn't be. Or at least I'm not sure he wouldn't be voted in (maybe not if it was seen as him being dragged over the finish line rather than in the course of normal play). I think we'd both agree he shouldn't be.
It's treated as an awfully big number. I come back to Molitor. Not really ever a great player save for maybe 3/4 of a season in 1987. Never won an MVP, never really came close to deserving to win one. A pretty good player for a long time, a very good player for a little while I suppose.
But he was a regular from age 21 to age 41 (and batted near the top of the order getting extra PAs) and the sheer quantity seemed to just overwhelm everybody to the tune of 85% on his first try. He got a higher percentage (easily) than Yount did.
It's that mentality that I'm arguing against. That merely racking up 3300 hits makes such an easy choice of things, while people struggle over voting for Bagwell. Does Moltior get credit for that career length? Sure, particularly because he approached fairly close to HOF level with his play for a good 10 years straight. But it seems excessive to me to go overboard on a career whose most outstanding quality above all else was that it was extremely long. Molitor strikes me as about as difficult a choice as there is, and quite clearly that ain't what happened.
Considering the entire package, I'd also be willing to argue that he was a great player from 1991 to 1994. That entire run from 1987 to 1994 definitely falls at least in the category of very good.
To be fair, a lot of the difference between their relative vote totals has to do with who was on the ballot with them. Molitor shared the ballot with Eckersley, Sandberg and Sutter, whereas Yount had to share it with Brett, Ryan, and Fisk (and Perez and Carter and Sutter and Rice and so on). In a different year, Yount could have easily jumped past the 85% mark.
Cnt Player RC BA OBP SLG From To Ages+----+-----------------+----+-----+-----+-----+----+----+-----+
1 Barry Bonds 966 .291 .400 .549 1987 1994 22-29
2 Paul Molitor 896 .323 .393 .485 1987 1994 30-37
3 Fred McGriff 860 .285 .389 .542 1987 1994 23-30
4 Wade Boggs 855 .324 .418 .451 1987 1994 29-36
5 Will Clark 846 .303 .382 .504 1987 1994 23-30
6 Kirby Puckett 826 .324 .366 .494 1987 1994 27-34
7 Rickey Henderson 794 .288 .416 .450 1987 1994 28-35
8 Tony Gwynn 761 .338 .392 .456 1987 1994 27-34
9 Brett Butler 756 .298 .393 .386 1987 1994 30-37
10 Rafael Palmeiro 745 .299 .365 .481 1987 1994 22-29
11 Bobby Bonilla 744 .280 .358 .491 1987 1994 24-31
12 Ryne Sandberg 729 .290 .356 .473 1987 1994 27-34
13 Cal Ripken 723 .270 .343 .436 1987 1994 26-33
14 Danny Tartabull 721 .278 .377 .507 1987 1994 24-31
15 Joe Carter 714 .258 .308 .477 1987 1994 27-34
16 Tim Raines 702 .289 .383 .423 1987 1994 27-34
17 Eddie Murray 698 .275 .346 .450 1987 1994 31-38
18 Ruben Sierra 698 .274 .319 .460 1987 1994 21-28
19 Julio Franco 669 .310 .383 .441 1987 1994 28-35
20 Jose Canseco 665 .271 .355 .521 1987 1994 22-29
Molitor had a lot of value in that stretch
I agree with all that, except that I don't think it's worth trying to infer anything about perceived relative merits of two different candidates based on BBWAA percentages. That Molitor received 85.2% in 2004 and Yount 77.5% in 1999 isn't all that informative, which works out to be less than 50 votes.
It should be the case that every ballot should represent a simple poll asking "Is this player a HOFer?" But various factors (other players on the ballot, some feeling that non-inner circle should sweat it out for a few years, changes in the electorate, etc.) confound trying to make any sort of systematic analysis, IMHO.
I agree that it's a problem that some BBWAA seemed to say "3300 hits equals automatic HOF vote."
What about Jake Beckley?
I'd prefer to see a list based on VORP or made some adjustment for offensive position. Molitor spent his productive years in that time period (1991-94) as a near full-time DH and a good chunk of 1987 as a DH as well. The years where he was primarily a 2B or 3B were his least productive years (although still very good) in that time period is worth noting.
FWIW, my two cents: I have a hard time supporting a 1B who spent a good chunk of his career in a 8 team league and only has a Black Ink score of 1 (for triples in 1890).
Of course, Lou Whitaker also finished his career as productive player and a fat lot of good that did him...
Molitor was clearly outhit by Bonds and McGriff. Was probably outhit by Clark and certainly outfielded by him. Rickey and Boggs are a tough call but both had likely more defensive value than Molitor. Clark is not going into the HOF, McGriff may have some troubles. And that's Molitor's best stretch. Obviously a lot of guys on the above list, if you took their best stretch, they'd pass Molitor pretty easily.
That's an OPS+ stretch of 161,133,132,125,147,139,143,138
Compare with:
185, 166, 165, 158, 152, 157, 160, 139
126, 186, 124, 111, 116, 135, 163, 128
109, 149, 133, 145, 166, 141, 110
133, 144, 119, 164, 160, 161, 125, 119
156, 156, 161, 146, 128, 133, 81, 103
That's Edgar Martinez, John Olerud, Dave Parker, Jack Fournier and Don Mattingly. All very good players of course and when really rolling were great players, but none are int he Hall of Fame, and unless I'm reading Edgar's tea leaves wrong, none are going to be.
Reducing it to a five year peak obviously helps them more than Paul and Molitor's eight years are no better than theirs for the most part.
But I think it does have bearing on his value. Because Molitor was still a productive .300 hitter up until the end of his career his 3,300 hits are more "legitimate" than a guy who had 2,800 hits when he fell off a cliff and managed to hang around for a few years hitting .214 to limp over the 3,000-hit barrier - that is, they're a fairer representation of Molitor's true value (or true talent, I suppose). Nobody here disagrees with the notion that "hang-around" time at the end (or beginning) of one's career shouldn't add to one's HOF resume. I think the only dispute is what constitutes "hang-around time".
Lou Whitaker finished his career as a platoon player, which made his rate stats look better than if he was playing every day, and which also I think negatively affected his vote totals (the Hall of Fame isn't for platoon players).
I'm not sure I agree with this. Assuming the final numbers are the same, a guy who limps across the finish line with a couple truly lousy years would have to have a correspondingly better peak than a guy who finishes relatively strong. Not even sure this applies in Molitor's case though... his last year was actually pretty bad for a DH. That .281 average masked an 86 OPS+. His penultimate year was nothing special either... a .305 BA but only a 104 OPS+.
True, but I still think Whitaker got screwed.
Which sort of ignores his baserunning, which was clearly a plus.
Molitor was mostly a lead-off or top of the order hitter. His role was to get on base, get in scoring position -- 600 2bs, 500 SBs -- and score runs -- 1782 of them.
He is clearly not one of the "inner circle". But he is well past the in/out line, except for the imaginary Hall of VORP that some people carry around with them.
Perhaps, but it seems to me that Posada's case would be based on a few more good hitting seasons and comparing his rate stats to catchers already elected. More of a looking back exercise than a comparison to those still playing. And not to be blasphemous, but Mauer may be the only catcher among those listed above who will have the stats to "diminish" those that played before him. It's still iffy, but I'd think that 2 or 3 more seasons equal or above his career OPS+ might cause some re-thinking of Posada's worth.
Pretty much this. 12000+ PA of 122 OPS+ batting, with excellent baserunning and stealing (500+ bases at about 80%), and 1200 games of good fielding (the same number he played at DH) split between 2B and 3B makes for a hell of a good Hall resume.
You're probably right and I'm probably wrong, but I wouldn't put it passed voters to look at current catchers(at the time of voting) and be influenced.
Think some voters would rank Varitek over Posada? Not that they'd vote Varitek to the hall, but that they think of them both on the same level. If so, that would have to hurt Posada, no?
Outside of guys in Boston? The thought is horrifying... the apparent belief among Redsox fans a few years ago that Varitek was as good as if not better than Posada was amusing, a similar belief among BBWAA members would be cause to revoke their voting privileges.
What I think is that in ten years+ when people's memories fade, and they look at the "encyclopedia" to refresh their memories, those who thought Varitek => Posada with forget that they ever thought that way...
Oh very nice point. I assumed some guys would fall into that trap of the C on the chest, but batting .220 has an adverse affect on your career. Also after the time has passed it won't seem as far away where Posada won his rings.
Ah. Nice to have some relief on that, thanks. I was getting a little worried, even if all of it was made up in my head.
??? Molitor isn't well past a VORP line?
Or are you saying the opposite, that VORP makes Molitor an inner circle guy?
Neither is true, if voters voted on VORP or WAR Molitor is easily in but nowhere near the inner circle. So I don't have a clue what you're talking about.
Jorge, meanwhile, has 100 AB of MVP level production going. Let's see what happens if he can stay moderately healthy the rest of the year.
Apparently not for some people.
Once again you've completely confused me. The only person here suggesting that Molitor is borderline is Voros. Despite the first 3 letters of his name, Voros is about as anti-VORP as a tool for looking at whether someone should be in the hall as you can get.
I am reluctant to bring this up because of the likely response, but I wanted to point out these facts:
1. Molitor is probably one of the five best leadoff hitters of all time, yet he was also good enough to bat third on a great offensive team in Toronto.
2. He stole 504 bases with a 79.3%, and was generally regarded as a very smart player. We mentioned leverage and steals; more than 70% of Molitor's steals came when the game was tied or within 1 run.
For comparison, Barry Bonds, who has a similar number of steals (514), stole only 57% of his bags in those situations.
Roberto Alomar is another guy with a similar steal total (474). Only 53% of his steals came in tied/1-run situations.
Molitor stole when his team needed it.
3. He is one of the few guys that I think you have to give a significant boost as a "clutch" player.
He's a lifetime .306 hitter who hit .326 with RISP.
4. He was a great postseason hitter, batting .368/.435/.615 in 132 PA, which does nothing to diminish his reputation as a clutch player.
When you take it all together, I have a feeling that Molitor has roughly the same peak and career value as Eddie Murray, though he was less durable. Going strictly by OPS+, Murray leads 129-122, close enough that it seems Molitor can tip the balance with his non-OPS+ advantages. (I'm not sure if there is a real defensive advantage, as Murray was a good first baseman for most of his career).
Depends on whether or not Varitek's stat page is illustrated by this picture. That's good for at least a ten year memory extension up in Beantown. Am I wrong, Sawxsies?
I am reluctant to bring this up because of the likely response, but I wanted to point out these facts:
1. Molitor is probably one of the five best leadoff hitters of all time.
2. He stole 504 bases with a 79.3%, and was generally regarded as a very smart player. We mentioned leverage and steals; more than 70% of Molitor's steals came when the game was tied or within 1 run.
For comparison, Barry Bonds, who has a similar number of steals (514), stole only 57% of his bags in those situations.
3. He is one of the few guys that I think you have to give a significant boost as a "clutch" player.
He's a lifetime .306 hitter who hit .326 with RISP.
4. He was a great postseason hitter, batting .368/.435/.615 in 132 PA, which does nothing to diminish his reputation as a clutch player.
baudib, you've got a much better line on Paul Molitor than you do on Hal Greer. Is this because Molitor's and Andrew Toney's careers had such a big overlap? (smile)
If those numbers are right, both players had equal career value through 2008.
It's one thing to say there's no convincing evidence for a pitch-calling skill. It's another thing to reject out-of-hand the possibility of an 0.10 ERA effect.
Let me draw the comparison to something else that's not accounted for in ordinary stats, namely the scooping ability of first basemen. Someone did the research (in a THT article maybe?) and found that the best "scoopers" might be +5 runs per season. A catcher who lowers ERA by 0.10 would be +12 runs per season.
AROM, you wrote:
The odds of a DP is already included in the run values of the SB/CS that go into the break even calculation. Team A will hit into fewer DP's, but that has been accounted for, and they will still score the same number of runs.
Only thing the break even calculation does not account for is game situations where the Break even might be less than normal. Taking away the option of the SB will hurt the win value of such a team. But I have no idea how big an impact this is.
I see what you mean here, but wouldn't you expect GIDP's to correlate negatively with SB attempts, since presumably if you have more SB attempts you also have the runners moving more frequently on BIP, which would reduce GIDP's? Is it just that this effect is not significant?
If those numbers are right, both players had equal career value through 2008.
Why don't we just pretend that magical twonicorns blessed Varitek with additional career value while energy draining vampires sucked experience points out of Posada. If that were right, both players had equal career value through 2009!
I see, those don't count as SB attempts since there is a ball in play. I don't want to say it's insignificant since it's something I have not studied, and don't have data for.
They would decrease GB double plays, though they would also lead to a few line drive DP's. I don't know how it balances out.
But it also ignores defense which for those eight years were not very strong for Molitor (except for Edgar, but then his hitting was pretty significantly superior). Also if you look at them closely, most of those guys were a little better hitters over that eight year stretch than Molitor. Those two things should at the very least negate Molitor's baserunning.
Molitor is just not anything but a very borderline Hall of Famer on peak by itself, and he needs the career length bonuses to get in. How you factor those in determines where you stand on his candidacy. Molitor's non-peak arguments (long career, postseason, etc.) are all strong, so he's got an argument. But my point was simply that he was voted as if were pretty much a lock (first year easily clearing the 75% mark). I think excessive consideration of career length while ignoring his abilities at his best is the main culprit.
Argument over whether he should have sailed in or faced tougher, longer scrutiny sort of lends credence to the first-ballot distinction many voters make.
If people like Will Clark or Dewey Evans could have hung around the ballot for 10 years, they might have had a shot, but they were no one's idea of a first-ballot guy, and that's a little unfair.
Twonicorns? Is that like a unicorn, but with two horns, so twice as awesome?
Anyway, this isn't really about Posada vs. Varitek. Basically the argument goes like this.
Old-school guy: Working with pitchers is the most important part of a catcher's job. You statnerds can't measure it so you pretend it isn't important.
Statnerd: Look, people have tried to find evidence that some catchers are better than others at calling pitches. People have failed. If it were that big a deal, it would be obvious in the data.
My response: No, even if it's not obvious in the data it could still be a big deal. We should admit that we can't measure a catcher's value nearly as well as we can with the other positions.
Because you're being too literal minded. VORP is just literary shorthand for excessive saber-rattling.
This is what does not make sense. By peak alone, he is already borderline. You add in the career achievements -- hits, runs, doubles, stolen bases -- and the post-season stuff, and he is easily pushed over the border. Yet you don't understand why he got in so easily.
This is a common problem with interpreting HOF votes. HOF voting is binary - you think he's either in or he's out. If you think Molitor's in, then it doesn't make sense to criticize HOF voters for agreeing with you. I've seen the same argument at the other end, too. I remember somebody making an argument about Tony Fernandez, for example (he's not the only one), "I don't think Tony Fernandez belongs in the Hall of Fame but he should have gotten more votes," which basically amounts to criticizing HOF voters for failing to vote for a guy who doesn't belong in the Hall of Fame. Total HOF votes is a very crude way of ranking the relative value of major-league baseball players.
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