I like trout that are dizzy. Much easier to keep them on the hook. :-)

Dizzy was a surprisingly common nickname.

Dizzy was a surprisingly common nickname.

This is true. I wonder who was the first famous name from any field of endeavor to take it on?

Could anyone with Trout's year by year Win Shares please post them?

Dizzy Trout, Steve Trout, Tim Salmon, John Wetteland, Newt Fisher, Allyn "Fish Hook" Stout, Jesse "Crab" Burkett, Johnny "Crab" Evers, Estel "Crabby" Crabtree, Lip Pike, Fred "Whale" Walters, Kevin Bass, ...

"Crabby" Crabtree,

...while Miss Crabtree was sure prettier than Miss McGillicuddy!

Trout's ws, 1939-52, 57:

13, 5, 13, 16, 23, 42, 18, 27, 13, 15, 3, 17, 15, 8, 0

Which one of these years is not like the others?

The year where he had zero?

Is anyone else going to have Trout on their ballot? Even when I double the WWII discount for '43-'45 he still comes out in my top 10. With the regular discount I've got him somewhere between Walters and Ferrell. He's not even in Bill James' top 100.

I really don't see how you can have Trout ahead of Ferrell, though with pitchers, the metric you choose will have a tremendous effect. Since you mention Bill James, let's look at win shares.

Here's Ferrell's and Trout's seasonal win shares, arranged from best to worst, with Trout docked 7 win shares for 1943-45 seasons.

35, 32, 28, 27, 26, 25, 18, 18, 14, 6, 2, 1, 1 = 233
38, 27, 22, 17, 16, 16, 15, 15, 13, 13, 13, 8, 5, 3 = 221

Ferrell has more career win shares than Trout, even if Trout gets full WWII credit.

Except for the 1944 outlier, every one of Ferrell's top 8 seasons is better than the corresponding one of Trout's.

The difference between their impacts is highlighted if you look at career win shares above average.

If 14 ws/season is average for pitchers, Ferrell is 97 wsaa.
By this measure, Trout is 54 wsaa. If you give him back the war credit, he's still only 61 wsaa.

It looks to me like win shares shows Ferrell as better than Trout on both peak and career. It's close on career, but not on peak.

That said, I _will_ be giving Trout a close look this year, but I don't see how he'll place ahead of Ferrell or Walters in my rankings.

This is one of those cases where I definately feel comfortable lopping a little more off the war years. When there is an extreme peak season in 44-45, unmatched at any other point in the player's career, I lop more off than if there's some evidence the player could be at that level. For example, Boudreau loses a little less credit for his 44 than Trout does because of his '48. Newhouser will lose very little credit in my system for his '44-'45, because his '46-'49 pretty well followed along the same path.

Trout on the other hand will be getting a hacksaw taken to his '44.

I'm trying to weigh WS and WARP evenly, but, in all honesty, it's probably a 60/40 split in favor of the BPro numbers. WARP2 and WARP3 by association are supposed to have a war-discount built in.

It really seems to come down to a peak/prime vs. career argument. That is, IF you accept the WARP1 to WARP2 adjustments which actually suggest Trout had a higher level of competition overall in his career, even including the war years, than Ferrell. If you use a higher discount (or say, a hacksaw) for the war years, the scales tend to tip in Ferrell’s favor.


By WARP3, Ferrell gets a decided edge in his best 4-7 seasons, but Trout regains the difference in career value for it on the tail end. Trout also has more Translated IP (2748 vs. 2569) and better season and all-time DERAs (3.80/3.95 vs. 3.90/4.11).

I think they’re very close, but I give Trout a slight edge.

Well, I don't trust the WARP1 to WARP2 adjustments at all. Without strong documentation, I will not accept that the AL in 1931 should be discounted in an all-time context about the same as the AL in 1944.

Even if you trust this competition adjustment, your measures are still not giving Ferrell's peak sufficient credit. Taking 4.7 WARP as about average, Ferrell is 36.3 wins above average, to Trout's 30. This is larger than Trout's advantage in career WARP.

If Trout and Ferrell are just about even in WARP, and Ferrell is clearly ahead in WS, and you give some weight to both, how does Trout have a slight edge?

Trout also has more Translated IP (2748 vs. 2569) and better season and all-time DERAs (3.80/3.95 vs. 3.90/4.11).

But (1) I am highly doubtful that the Translated IP adequately factors in the effets of Ferrell's much higher run environment on his pitching, (2) Ferrell is ahead in EQA, .267/.261 vs. .211/.207 and (3) Ferrell's career DERA is significantly hurt by his small number of terrible innings late in his career. I'm nearly certain that if you compare the first 2500 innings of Ferrell's career to Trout's best 2500 innings, you'll find that the difference in their WARP1 DERAs disappears almost entirely.

I will not accept that the AL in 1931 should be discounted in an all-time context about the same as the AL in 1944.

That's just flat out ridiculous. How can anyone defend that?

Posted this in the ballot thread, missed the discussion here when it dropped out of the top 10:

Dizzy Trout has a better resume than I thought. Seeing that 80+ WARP made me take a second look.

His 1944 is freaking amazing, even in a war year. 14.4 WARP3 is a pretty damn good season in modern times for a pitcher, and that takes into account the quality of competition issues. His 1946 is nothing to sneeze at either. Throw in 7 other years of at least 5 WARP3 and you've got someone that should be somewhat intriguing to peak voters.

ChrisJ - think you could RSI him??? A 124 ERA+ does not compute to a 170-161 record. Prospectus has his translated record at 196-123.

**********

After reading the comments here, I'd say that I don't discount 1944 any more than I would for any other war year type of thing. Just because it stands out more doesn't mean anything to me, he was 29, it's not uncommon for a pitcher to have his best year at that age, is it? And the real value in the season is that he threw 352 innings, which doesn't have nearly as much to do with the competition level as his 2.12 ERA in those innings does.

It was a remarkable season, even in a war year. How did Newhouser edge him for the MVP? Ah yeah, he lucked into a better record despite throwing 40 fewer innings at basically the same quality (Trout has 40 more IP, 10 more R, 6 more ER).

I agree it needs to be discounted, but no more or less than say Stan Musial would need to be discounted for that season.

I agree that Ferrell should probably be ahead, but it's much closer than I ever would have thought.

"Without strong documentation, I will not accept that the AL in 1931 should be discounted in an all-time context about the same as the AL in 1944"

Who has said that (I easily could have missed it)?

Trout's 1944 easily beats Ferrell's 1935 on the raw stats (Trout actually hit 107 OPS+, which negates most of the big advantage Ferrell's 140 has over typical pitchers), 15.7-14.1. WS sees it similarly, 42-38.

I can see the war adjustment as being a little low, but not outrageous. It docks Trout 1.3 WARP1 to WARP3, while only knocking Ferrell .6, despite it being 9 years later. Hasn't it been said that most of the adjustment is on the players at the low end of the production scale (the players that wouldn't have been in a stronger league) - it's not a straight percentage thing.

Either way, I see that season as extremely comparable to Ferrell's 1935, especially when you take Trout's hitting into account.

"Without strong documentation, I will not accept that the AL in 1931 should be discounted in an all-time context about the same as the AL in 1944"

Who has said that (I easily could have missed it)?

That's what I wrote: that's what the WARP2-3 adjustment shows.

Dizzy Trout, 1944: 15.7 W1 - 14.4 W3 = 1.3 discount
Wes Ferrell, 1931: 11.4 W1 - 10.1 W3 = 1.3 discount

Tom H's broader study of WARP1-3 changes is consistent with this claim that the 1931 AL is discounted as heavily as the 1944 AL.

I find this claim unlikely, and was presenting as evidence against placing too much weight on WARP3 comparisons of Trout and Ferrell.

>I find this claim unlikely, and was presenting as evidence against placing too much weight on WARP3 comparisons of Trout and Ferrell.

Well, or placing too much weight on WRP3 comparisons of anybody.

I finally ran Trout through the RA+ PythPat machine.

His raw stats come out as 179-125, headlined by years of 27-12 (1944) and 21-10 (1946).

There are two obvious adjustments to that. One is the reduced level of competition during WWII, which I would deal with by knocking 8-10 points off his park factors in some years. Do that, and 1944 scales back to 26-14 (still outstanding) and his overall record to 175-129. The other adjustment (which I haven't done) is that Trout was a pretty good hitter.

He has a low number of IP per decision: 8.26. Another way to put that is that, for the innings he pitched, he has too many decisions. Like Walter Johnson, his "extra" decisions all seem to be losses, for his actual record of 170-161.

This adds up to a fine, fine pitcher - but his neighborhood (in equivalent FWP) on my chart is a little too crowded: Pennock, Mays, Harder, Root. I would put him slightly behind Bucky Walters, so he won't make my top 15 and probably not my top 30.

In answer to a question on my site from Jeff M, I don't have year-by-year adjusted wins for Dizzy Trout.

In answer to a question on my site from Jeff M, I don't have year-by-year adjusted wins for Dizzy Trout.

I do now. Dizzy Trout's RSIs & adjusted W/L record year by year (I only adjust starter W/L, his 25-17 record as a reliever is left intact):



Total - 96.59 RSI and 174-157 W/L record.

He comes off as the biggest underachiever ever as he should've won 22 more games based on his real life run support and RA/9IP than he did. Next worse is -18, so he's really breaking from the pack.

He was consistent his entire career with it, too. 1950 is the only year he won more games than he should've with his RA & run support, and 1941 was the only year he won exactly as many as he should (not counting 1949 where he had no starts and no adjustment, and 1957 when he had no decisions). The other 11 years he worked as a starter he won fewer games than one would expect.

I don't see any disproportionate number of blow outs for him either. Only twice at 15 or more runs in 322 starts - once at 15, and the other at 18 runs scored. As many 10+ run games as shutouts (19 each). 111 games with 0-2 runs, 61 games at 3-4 and 150 at 5+ runs. OK, that 61 games at 3-4 does sound low. Not sure what impact that would have, but from what I know games with 3, 4, and 5 runs scored have the most leverage in determining the victor. (In other words the difference in a teams odds of winning if they score X or X+1 runs are the greatest at those levels.

Maybe he just did really bad in 1-run games. Probably mutliple reasons given that he ended up -22 in only 289 decisions as a starter.

Thanks, Chris J.!

Side-by-side records, Chris J's RSI-adjusted W-L and my RA+ PythPat records. As for number of decisions - Chris uses actual decisions and I use IP/9.0. I've decided to put it for mine the completely unadjusted version, with no allowance for weaker wartime competition. (The two biggest adjustments - wartime competition and Trout's own hitting - may nearly balance over his whole career, although not for any particular year.)

Year   C.J.    OCF
1939   10- 9   11- 7
1940    3- 7    6- 5
1941   10- 8   10- 7
1942   14-16   15-10
1943   20-12   17-10
1944   28-13   27-12
1945   14-19   14-13
1946   18-12   21-10
1947    9-12   11-10
1948   10-14   11- 9
1949    3- 6    3- 4
1950   13- 5   12- 8
1951   11-12   11-10
1952   11-12    9- 9  (and 0-0 in 1953)

total 174-157 179-125

In number three, John asked

I wonder who was the first famous name from any field of endeavor to take it on?

Dizzy Gillespie wasn't the first, but I'd nominate him as the most famous.

Serendipity and the encyclopedia - while looking for someone else, I found a player who would definitely have been in post #5 had I spotted him earlier:

Sea Lion Hall.

Deadball pitcher, mostly for the Red Sox, managed a winning career record (54-47). Actual name Carlos Ciolo, born 1885 in Ventura, CA. Sounds like some interesting sociology there.