OK, here's the batting information I've been able to dig up thus far on Silvio Garcia. Thanks to Cristian for the Provincial League info. If anyone has anymore information to fill in, I'd be much obliged for the help!

MLEs coming in the not-too-distant future.

Garcia's games played in the CWL are all estimates based on 4 AB per game.

                                       TM
     TEAM  POS AGE  G    G  AB   H  TB 2B 3B HR BB  K  AVG  SLG  bb/h
-----------------------------------------------------------
MEXICO                 
1938 Aguila P   23  40  45 175  61  86  9  2  4 11 11 .349 .491 .180
1939 Aguila P   24  60   1           
1941 Mexico     26  99 101 434 159 225 29 11  5 11 34 .366 .518 .069
1942 Mexico     27  87  85 349 127 187 19  4 18 44 25 .364 .536 .346
1943 Mexico     28  89  86 356 107 142 16  2  5 24 22 .301 .399 .224
1944 Mex/Ver    29  88  89 373 117 181 25  3 11 36 15 .314 .485 .308
1945 Veracruz   30  90  91 386 135 215 21  7 15 34 15 .350 .557 .252
1948 Mexico     33  88  66 271  80  98 13  1  1 22  9 .295 .361 .275
                 
SANTO DOMINGO               
1937            22         128  38                    .297 .297 
                 
NEGRO LEAGUE               
1940 CBS        25  37          
1946 NYC    SS  31  44                                .350 
1947 NYC    SS  32  58                                .324 

NEGRO LEAGUE PLAYOFFS
1947 NYC    SS  32   4      18   7                    .389  
                 
PRWL                 
1939 Ponce   P 24                                     .298 
                 
CANADIAN PROVINCIAL LEAGUE            
1949 Shrbrk 3B 34  100  99 400 126 168 30  0  4       .315 .420
1950 Shrbrk 3B 35  108 106 424 155 218       21       .365 .514
1951 Shrbrk 3B 36  123                       12       .346 
                 
FLORIDA INT'L LEAGUE              
1952 Habana    37  154 114 428 121 152 22  0  3       .283 .355 
                 
CUBAN WINTER LEAGUE             
1931 Hab 3B/OF 16   30  17  66  17  23  2  2  0       .258 .349  
1934 Mar 3B/P  19   28  24  96  18  24  1  1  1       .188 .250     
1935 Mar SS/P  20   48  33 131  36  45  7  1  0       .275 .343 
1936 Mar  P/OF 21   66  47 188  44  63  2  4  3       .234 .335 
1937 Mar SS/P  22   63  39 156  46  50  2  1  0       .295 .321 
1938 Alm O/I/P 23   54  35 140  41  50  3  3  0       .293 .357 
1940 S C 2B    25   51  44 175  55  73  5  5  1       .314 .417 
1941 CnF SS/P  26   44  43 171  60  77  5  0  4       .351 .450 
1942 Cnf SS/P  27   48  44 175  53  65  7  1  1       .303 .371 
1943 Cnf SS/P  28   48  43 170  56  67  6  1  1       .329 .394 
1944 Cnf SS/P  29   48  43 173  44  61  7  2  2       .254 .353 
1945 Cnf SS/P  30   60  54 215  62  89 13  4  2       .288 .414 
1946 Mtz SS/P  31   38  38 160  55  55        0       .344 .344 
1947 Cnf SS/P  32   72  54 216  63  88 10  6  1       .292 .407 
1948 Cnf IF    33   72  33 132  33  44  4  2  1       .250 .333 
1949 Cnf 3B    34   72  43 173  45  58  8  1  1       .260 .335 
1950 Cnf 3B    35   72  60 239  83 113 13  1  5       .347 .473 
1951 Cnf 3B    36   72  52 207  48  68 11  3  1       .232 .329 
1952 Mar 3B    37   72  70 281  76  99 12  4  1       .270 .352 
1953 Alm INF   38   72  16  64  11  11  0  0  0       .172 .172

Whoops! TM should appear above the first G in the headrow. Notice that Garcia's G surpass his team's games. That's because I'm using Pernia for team games, and his totals are different. I'll reconcile Pernia with Cisneros when I complete the MLEs.

All things considered he looks like a SS, no? Not quite John Beckwith--e.g. significantly more SS than 3B. Maybe a Joe Sewell, but with a bit of P value?

I don't think he's a John Henry Lloyd or a Dobie Moore (peak) or a Willie Wells. Maybe the question will be, how does he compare to Dick Lundy? Probably not as good with the glove or why play 2B and 3B. Wait and see how they compare with the stick.

Excellent work, Doc.

I wouldn't get overly excited about Garcia until the MLEs are done (shouldn't be too much longer, I've just got a couple of small questions to resolve). I'm not sure how they will turn out quite yet beause Garcia didn't walk much compared to the Mexican league, and much of his projected walk rate will be based on that data.

Garcia's Mexican stats look good, but the batting averages in those leagues were higher than in the majors, so some air will come out of the numbers. His power was kind of intermittent.

The biggest question to my mind will be "How good of a shortstop was he?"

If he's an A or B+ shortstop, that'a nice boost, but I'm going to have my doubts. If you notice in the positions column above, he basically went to 3B starting around age 33 or 34. Presumably, his defensive skills at short had eroded to the point where he needed to move.

So for me, the question is whether moving to 3B from SS at age 34 itself suggests that a player's true/peak fielding ability was not superb. I say this because guys like Appling, Smith, Ripken, and others held their defensive value at shortstop deep into their 30s. So what's that say about Garcia? (Obviously, injury could be a factor, I just don't know right now.)

Then another question arises as well! Would Garcia have hit enough to stay on 3B full time after moving off of SS. The MLEs will help us figure that out I guess.

If he's an A or B+ shortstop, that'a nice boost, but I'm going to have my doubts. If you notice in the positions column above, he basically went to 3B starting around age 33 or 34. Presumably, his defensive skills at short had eroded to the point where he needed to move.

Riley doesn't gush over him in his encyclopedia, either. Unless other data is unearthed, I would take a conservative approach in regard to his fielding, Eric.

By the by, Garcia's 1950 may be his big monster season. He won the Provincial League's triple crown that year with a seemingly uncharacteristic HR outburst.

But...

One thing that makes Garcia a tough nut to crack is that his league environments ranged from deadball to rabbitball. For instance, the CWL in the 1930s was a bigtime pitcher's league, and the 1952 Florida International League was played in rainy, boggy, soggy conditions, and the third-best offense in the league hit about .235, while Garcia's squad hit about .225.

On the other hand, Garcia played in Mexico when league batting averages were 5 to 20 points higher than in the NL, and he played mostly for Mexico City whose ballpark tended to give hitters a little bit of help with their averages.

So the conversions should be interesting at least.

SILVIO GARCIA MLEs v 1.0

These MLEs only cover Garcia’s performance as a batter-fielder, no pitching here.

There’s a bunch of niggling questions with Garcia.

1) He played in some rather extreme deadball environments in Cuba, and I don’t know how that impacts his MLEs.

2) He has some years where he hits for good power (for instance the triple crown in 1952, leading league with 21 homers), then other seasons where he has very little power. This could be park effects at work, but I have no idea, nor do I know what implication this phenomenon has on how the MLEs see his “real” power.

3) Garcia was a base stealer, and led Mexico twice. These MLEs make no account for SBs.

4) Garcia’s 1940 season with the New York Cubans is completely data-less. I compensated for the lack of data by making his numbers up from whole cloth based on his career averages. I did so just in case his 1940 CWL line was not indicative of his play that year, that way there would be some regression toward his established performance level.

5) As always, I’ve used all available data and adjusted relative to league and for league quality. No home park information, no regression. WS are short-form Win Shares with an assumption of average-level fielding.

6) There are two big playing time questions.
A ) would Garcia have come up as a 19 year old SS and stayed around through OPS+s of 35, 82, 60, 88, 99, 78 before finally breaking out at age 25?
B) could Garcia have stayed in the league if he wasn’t playing SS after 1947? He went 67 and 64 in OPS+ in 1948 and 1949 before rebounding to 118 in 1950, then falling back again to those low levels for the remaining three years of his career.

I’d like feedback on the playing time issues, but I’m presenting his entire statistical translation for the purposes of a first-draft inspection by the group.

YEAR AGE POS  G    PA   AB    H   TB  BB  AVG  OBP  SLG OPS+ SFWS
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1934  19 SS 132   523  502  100  138  21 .200 .232 .275  35   4.8
1935  20 SS 105   423  399  111  144  24 .278 .319 .360  82  11.5
1936  21 SS 110   437  417   95  139  20 .227 .263 .334  60   7.6
1937  22 SS 114   459  433  121  162  26 .280 .321 .374  88  13.2
1938  23 SS 127   516  482  143  184  33 .297 .343 .381  99  16.7
1939  24 SS 133   533  504  135  180  29 .268 .308 .357  78  13.5
1940  25 2B 130   527  494  155  210  33 .314 .357 .424 115  20.2
1941  26 2B 152   605  577  195  269  28 .339 .370 .467 134  28.0
1942  27 2B 145   593  553  156  208  40 .283 .332 .377 107  17.2
1943  28 SS 143   574  542  151  187  32 .279 .319 .344  92  14.7
1944  29 SS 146   590  556  146  216  33 .263 .305 .389  94  16.4
1945  30 3B 146   588  555  158  229  33 .284 .325 .413 104  17.6
1946  31 SS 145   590  552  178  210  38 .323 .367 .381 112  21.2
1947  32 SS 124   500  470  141  189  30 .300 .342 .402  97  17.4
1948  33 3B  93   375  354   90  113  22 .255 .299 .319  67   6.4
1949  34 3B 122   491  465  121  145  26 .260 .299 .312  64   8.2
1950  35 3B 139   567  530  171  250  37 .323 .367 .471 118  24.2
1951  36 3B 132   529  501  133  176  29 .266 .306 .351  76  11.2
1952  37 3B 132   529  502  126  158  27 .250 .288 .314  67   8.2
1953  38 3B  34   134  130   20   19   4 .153 .180 .149 -13  -0.1
=================================================================
           2504 10083 9516 2648 3525 566 .278 .319 .370  89 277.0

I'll post up some pitching figures a little later. He's only got about three or four seasons of full workload.

If you knock off his first year and last year, he's almost a dead ringer MLE batting-wise for Dick Lundy...

PITCHING INFORMATION FOR SILVIO GARCIA

MEXICO

YEAR TEAM  W L  ERA  G GS SHO INN    H  ER  BB  K
-------------------------------------------------
1938*AGU  10 2 1.68 13 10  3  112.3 80  21  28 88
1939 AGU   0 0 0.00  1  0  0    0.3  0   0   0  1
1941 MEX   0 0 0.00  1  0  0    0.0  1   0   0  0
1944 MEX   0 0 0.00  1  0  0    1.7  0   0   0  0
1945 VER   0 0 0.00  1  0  0    0.7  0   0   0  0
=================================================
TOTAL     10 2 1.64 17 10  3  115.0 81  21  28 89
*I don't have lg ERA or individual pitching breakouts for 1938, however, a 10-2 record's not shabby. The lg ERA is almost certainly a run or two higher.  Using the batting stats I've compiled, the league created roughly 1071 runs during the year (using basic RC form of [ {(BB+H)*TB } / PA ]. It made 6775 outs. Figuring 25.5 outs per game, that's about 266 total games. Dividing the est RC by the est games, we get 4.03 RC/G. This is a low-run environment, about half a run lower than the NL of the time.  From 1937-1939, the NL averaged about 4.46 R/G and a 3.87 ERA, a ratio of .867 ERA to R/G. Using that benchmark (a big assumption), let's figure the MxL era in 1938 to be about 3.50. That means that Garcia's ERA+ (not adjusted for home park), would be about 148.

SANTO DOMINGO
YEAR  W L
---------
1937  0 2

PUERTO RICAN SUMMER LEAGUE
(No league R/G data to help us here)
YEAR  TEAM  W L  ERA
--------------------
1939 PONCE 10 6 1.32

CUBAN WINTER LEAGUE
YEAR TEAM  G CG  W  L  INN  ERA H K BB LgERA ERA+
------------------------------------------------
1934  MAR  6  1  1  2 30.3 2.47         2.41  99
1935  MAR  5  3  1  3
1936* MAR 15 13 10  2
1937  MAR  1  1  0  1
1938  MAR  7  2  1  4 
1944  MAR  2  0  0  0  2.3 3.86 3 1  0
=================================================
TOTAL     36 20 13 12 
*Though no ERA data is available, Garcia was clearly the second best pitcher in the CWL in 1936. Here's the five candidates for best pitcher (basically the four teams' aces and Garcia)

NAME      G  CG  W  L
---------------------
Brown     26 23 21  4
Garcia    15 13 10  2
Dihigo    30 22 14 10
Bragana   16 11  9  5
Fernandez 27 11  9 10

So to wrap up, he's got one very good season in Mexico (1938), one very good season in the CWL (1936), and one league-average season in the CWL (1934). In addition, there may be another good season in 1939, but without league data, it's impossible to know.

At a value-to-team level, these three seasons could be seen to help his case in that in 1934 and 1936, his not-great OPS+s are papered over a bit by being a league-average or better hurler. 1938 helps an average season at the plate look better. 1939's PRSL twirling may also help cover for his yucky 78 OPS+ that year.

I think on the whole it suggests to me that 1934 is the proper start date for his career because he was a league-average pitcher (if not hitter).

Now, someone tell me when I should end his career....

Happily, KJOK has just supplied some info on Garcia's 1939 PRSL pitching.

G-16
IP-150
W-10
L-6
ER-22
BB-48
SO-98
ERA-1.32 (Led League)

That's not bad. Gee, 150 Inn over 16 games...wonder why his shoulder gave out?

Oops. Looks like some bad data. Of course it might have been like slow pitch softball, nothing but 1-0 extra inning games...?

You know what I meant. Fast pitch softball.

There's an article in the current BRJ that says that the Dodgers' first effort to sign a black player was not Jackie Robinson but Silvio Garcia in 1944. Leo Durocher was familiar with him from the MxL (it says). Dodger representatives went to Havana to sign him and found that he had been conscripted into the Cuban army. So they left, never to return (to Cuba, nor to the idea of signing Garcia). Durocher is reported to have said that Joe DiMaggio couldn't carry Garcia's glove (whatever that means).

His MLE WS are weird in exactly the way all NgL and Latin League MLEs are weird. ML players don't get 277 WS with a peak of 28-24-21. pr at least very few do. But as you remember, that's an artifact of the MLE system. All in all an intriguing player. Still his rough contemporary Phil Rizzuto is a 305 WS SS (with WWII credit) with a peak of 31.

The article sunny references also mentions that the Dodgers' scout (Tom Greenwade) may not have been all that keen on Garcia because he hit everything to right field and didn't seem to pull much at all.

Well, he was a shortstop with a .278/.319/.370 and an 89 OPS+. If he could poof the ball over the 2B often enough, so be it. I guess he was Davey Concepcion.

Silvio Garcia, MLEs 2.0

I've been working on my MLE routine this week, and I just reran Silvio. Pretty much the same story.

A few little notes.

-Like the previous version, this includes 1934-1953, or ages 19-38.

-I made him an average defensive SS from 1934 to 1947, after which I put him at 3B, where I also made him average.

-This MLE includes all data above (with the additions of SF, HPB, GIDP, and SB for several years) except for the PRWL and DMSL stuff. Because I don't have a league context for those years, I have chosen not to include them. This means that for 1939 I have no usable data, which means it's a whole-cloth year. Fortunately my current MLE routine has a slightly more effective means for dealing with this than the old, though the seasons come out just about the same. Also for the CPL years I didn't have complete league data for 1950-1951, but since I had three nearby years, I just chose to average them and go with it. It seemed reasonable.

-Generally there's little if any career shaping other than a simple proration of PA over his pctg of team games played. Therefore he racks up a lot of PA. Feel free to shape him as you wish.

-This is in 154 seasons in the NL of 1934-1953.

Here's the career line, then the year-by-year OPS+ and WS.

10682 PA
9801 AB
2580 H
798 BB
462 K
40 SH
43 HPB
310 SB
133 CS
215 GIDP
3578 TB
1114 RC
.263 AVG
.320 OBP
.365 SLG
88 OPS+
173 BWS
90 FWS
263 WS

The average NL SS during 1934-1947, in his PA/AB would have put up the following numbers:

AVG .257
OBP .320
SLG .341
OPS+ 81

He was a 85PS+ during his SS years, so about 5 better than the positional average in the NL.

The average NL 3B during 1948-1953, in his PA/AB would have put up the following numbers:

AVG .265
OBP .343
SLG .412
OPS+ 101

He was a 78 OPS+ 3B during his 3B years, so about 23% worse than the positional average in the NL.

So he's an above average SS with some All-Star type years, but he's not a very good 3B.

Here's the year by years for OPS+ and WS


Here's something that will set Dan R to either somersaults or agony. I guess we'll see which. I thought I'd see if I could figure what Garcia's batting replacement value was like (theoretically of course). So I used Dan R's replacement levels (why reinvent that wheel?) and did a quickie, back-of-the-envelope calculation. The lgR/W column is calculated using pythagenpat. I just did it by hand (with a keyboard stroke, not with a quadratic), so it's close but not absolutely perfect to the umpteenth decimal. I think Dan R's replacement figures are denominated in wins, so if you're playing at home, you have to multiply the DRREP column by the lgR/W column to figure out how many runs below average a replacement player would be. Then Garcia's RARP are just

SG's RCAA - [ the DRREP * lgR/W ]

And the WARP is

RARP / lgR/W

Or at least I think that's how it works. I know one of youse guys will set me straight.



This looks OK to me. No I need to round it out by accounting for FRAA somehow. That I'm a little unsure of, so maybe Dan or someone else could offer some help there. Since I've got Garcia in there as an average fielder, this shouldn't be too hard, I wouldn't think.

As always, what good's a preview when....

Thanks to Dan R's post in the Puckett thread, I found an error in my calculations (aka a "DUUUUHHHH"). I hadn't scaled the DRREP to Garcia's total number of outs before subtracting them. Rather than rerun the whole derned chart, I'll just run the last two columns, RARP and WARP:



Not much of a hitter, of course.

Eric, thanks for making use of my data. I can't really evaluate whether they were used correctly, because I can't read the damn chart. The pre tag doesn't like consecutive whitespaces anymore; you have to jigger the columns so there's only one space between them. If you don't mind giving it another whirl, I'd appreciate it, since you know how much I like my shortstops. The only thing I would mention is that I definitely don't make any sort of distinction between batting and fielding replacement as BP does; in fact, I find the concept theoretically flawed. There is only an overall positonal replacement level, encompassing offense and defense, and measured in wins below average as a rate. So "BWARP" seems a little strange to me. But if you reformat the chart maybe I'll be able to see what you're doing.

One more time, but this time with slightly different columns. After figuring my error, I had to make some new columns to elaborate the thing a little more. Also, I realized that I was making a problem by using batters-only RC and total outs. So i had to fix that too. Here's hoping this stab at the formatting works. The pipes and underlines are there to avoid the consecutive space issue only. Dan, if this doesn't work, email me or better yet, dump it into a spreadsheet and use the space and pipe as delimiters. It'll work fine then since the yearly lines are all filled in columns with no gaps.

Good enough. The totals aren't very important. Here's the columns worth knowing:

-237.9 is RCAA
-26.5 is WAA
142.4 is RCAP
16.8 is WARP

Again his fielding is exactly average in the MLE, so it's not in this calculation at all.

Well, the reason why he came in so low? Because one of my formulas was pointed in the wrong place.... Another day another scrooup on an MLE.

So the upshot is this:

Version 2.1

Revised line
10670 PA
9919 AB
2655 H
666 BB
475 K
41 SH
44 HPB
221 GIDP
321 SB
138 CS
1146 RC
.268/.315/.372
88 OPS+
172 BWS
90 FWS
261 WS
136.8 RARP
16.2 WARP

OPS+ and WS and WARP year by year

Please click through to find my latest MLEs for Silvio Garcia. As noted in the Clarkson thread, an adjustment to Garcia's baserunning is forthcoming, though it's not a big one.

Generally, this MLE suggests that we ought to pay more attention to him.

Next onto Silvio García.

SILVIO GARCÍA: SS
Year Age  Lg  Pos   G    PA  Bat  Bsr  DP  Fld  Pos  RAA   WAA  Rep  RAR   WAR  WAR162
======================================================================================  
1936  22  NL   SS  138  600    3    2   0   0     8   13   1.3   19   32   3.2   3.4
1937  23  NL   SS  143  610    5    2   0   0     8   16   1.6   19   35   3.6   3.8
1938  24  NL   SS  145  620    7    2   0   0     9   18   1.9   19   37   3.9   4.1
1939  25  NL   SS  145  620    9    2   0   0     9   20   2.0   19   39   4.1   4.3
1940  26  NL   SS  145  620    7    2   0   0     9   18   1.9   19   37   3.9   4.1
1941  27  NL   SS  150  640    8    2   0   0     9   18   2.0   20   38   4.2   4.4
1942  28  NL   SS  148  630   23    2   0   0     9   34   3.8   20   53   6.1   6.4
1943  29  NL   SS  127  540    7    2   0   0     8   16   1.8   17   33   3.8   4.0
1944  30  NL   SS  150  640    9    2   0   0     9   20   2.1   20   40   4.3   4.6
1945  31  NL   SS  151  650   11    2   0   0     9   22   2.2   20   42   4.4   4.6
1946  32  NL   SS  143  610   11    2   0   0     8   22   2.4   19   41   4.6   4.9
1947  33  NL   SS  145  620    8    2   0   0     9   18   1.9   19   38   3.9   4.1
1948  34  NL   SS  136  580    1    2   0   0     8   12   1.2   18   30   3.2   3.3
1949  35  NL   3B  124  530    1    2   0   0     0    3   0.3   17   20   2.1   2.2
1950  36  NL   3B  121  520    1    2   0   0     0    3   0.3   16   20   2.0   2.1
1951  37  NL   3B  112  480    8    2   0   0     0    9   1.0   15   24   2.6   2.7
1952  38  NL   3B   36  150    2    0   0   0     0    3   0.3    5    8   0.8   0.9
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                  2259 9660  122   31   1   0   111  265  28.1  301  566  60.7  63.9

Although we have more than 3,000 PA of batting data for García, we nonetheless have no data (or virtually none) for seven of his 17 seasons. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. We have some data for his time in the Canadian Provincial League and the Florida International League, but the data is incomplete and we have no complete leaguewide data to use. That affects his final four seasons. In addition, fielding data is sorely lacking. We have just 43 games worth. For that reason, we give him a perfectly average glove throughout his career.

What we do know is that he appears to be an a fairly durable shortstop with an above-average bat and above-average speed. More than that, however, we cannot say. I would describe the MLE, therefore, as provisional. It is not, in my opinion, enough to elect him with. Why not? Well, compare to Dobie Moore. We have just six seasons of data on Moore, and 2,200 plate appearances. However, Moore has some things going for him:
A) Those seasons are virtually everything in his career, so we know quite a lot about him, there’s little uncertainty, for example about his hitting.
B) His hitting is outstanding, which matches his reputation, and it’s strong enough to be electable.
C) We have 350 fielding games at this time, which are excellent as well, matching his reputation. They strongly support election.
Everything about Moore says “elect me.” With Garcia, however, the offense is about half as strong as Moore’s, the defense is unsupportable, and the lore/reputation is a combination of sketchy on details or unsupportive (the Dodgers considered him to break the color line, but one of the reasons they declined on him is that he hit everything to the opposite field, and they felt he wouldn’t be able to succeed in the big leagues as a result).

Given the provisional nature of the MLE alone, I’d say he’s not a supportable candidate. If/when additional information becomes available that bolsters his offense and defense, however, he could emerge as a reasonable yes vote.