Great quote from the article:

No less the authority than Keith Hernandez himself wrote in 1994 that Mattingly was “the best-fielding first baseman in baseball today, in my opinion, and as good a fielder as any who ever played the position.”

Lots of interesting examples here where defensive stats don't agree with reputation. I think it makes sense in these cases to go back and re-examine the player. If Mattingly was really a great fielder in his prime, then he's got a pretty average peak for a HOF 1B.

One thing I wish this article did was use Rfield instead of dWAR. Taking the positional adjustment out of it would have made it a bit more clear about how the stats see these players at their position.

Tris Speaker (2.5 dWAR)....By reputation, Speaker is the equal of Willie Mays and Andruw Jones. By dWAR, he’s the equal of Mark Kotsay and Nook Logan.[iv]

This is weird. Speaker had good to very good Rfield numbers--+92 for his career. But his positional adjustment as a CF was -3 to -4 per year, adding up to -71 for his career. Mays's positional adjustment was about -1/year, totalling -19 for his career. Meanwhile, Andruw Jones was getting +3 to +4 per year for playing CF. Is there an explanation that I missed on this?

@1: Yep, you have to go all the way to the notes at the end for a dive into rfield/dWar. It could have been clearer at the outset.

@2: Agreed. The positional adjustments for CF are all over the place. I don't really get it it. Mike Trout gets annual Rpos 0f +2, +3, while Paul Blair (as one example) gets a series of zeros and -1. Could it be park effects?

I suspect that the simple reason for not using rField is that BBREF provides career leaders lists for dWAR but not rField.

One thing I wish this article did was use Rfield instead of dWAR

Almost everyone uses dWAR incorrectly.

#2 Could just be that in the dead ball era CF wasn't really a fielder's position. Not many hard hit balls to CF back then. Wouldn't be the first time baseball went through a phase of stuffing an extra bat at a position (like 3B in the 60s) you might not expect. Plus there were some mighty odd parks that probably required more skill to play in the corners.

The positional adjustments are derived by seeing how players did defensively when shifting positions.

#2 Could just be that in the dead ball era CF wasn't really a fielder's position.

A 'tallest midget' thing - like hearing Babe Ruth was some abnormally large guy and then realizing he was the same size as Trevor Story (at least prior to Ruth just getting fat).

Would it also be safe to say, given the variance that is seen between different measures of defensive value, and given the relative scarcity and unreliability of the raw data, especially before, say, the last 20 years, that some of the conclusions drawn from the various versions of WAR for defensive value should be taken with a grain of salt?

Just thinking about Steve Garvey for a second (I apologize in advance), his arm had (by reputation) negative value, his fielding was supposed to be pretty good, but he was largely considered to be an excellent "scooper". But that latter skill might be hard to measure, since he played every day, every inning, so it would be hard to measure this latter skill using any comparative measures, as the folks throwing to first (Bill Russell being notably inaccurate, for example) weren't throwing to anyone else - so how does one measure the skill?

#9 Oh sure. In the end it's all just adjusted range factor. To be clear, a lot of really good work has gone into this, but there are limits to the precision you can get from the available data.

And any notion that it's accurate to 10ths of runs is absurd. I feel comfortable with letter grades and understand there's at least a 5% chance that the letter grade is wrong.

At the same time, "might be wrong so ignore" is the wrong take. Try looking at things like wowy (How good the team was at turning balls into play when the player is in the lineup and not playing) if you want to argue the defensive evaluation is wrong. Or any other supporting evidence for your position.

Would it also be safe to say, given the variance that is seen between different measures of defensive value, and given the relative scarcity and unreliability of the raw data, especially before, say, the last 20 years, that some of the conclusions drawn from the various versions of WAR for defensive value should be taken with a grain of salt?

Yes!

This is something I hate about the current generation of "hero statistics" that try to sum everything up into one number. It sweeps all the problems under the rug.

If Hernandez really is the best modern day defensive first baseman (which I think he is ), I wish he would at least make it onto a vets ballot so we could see if they feel the same way.

First base is a much different position now. Hernandez (and Pujols) got a lot of their value from charging bunts and making force plays on sacrifice attempts - that kind of offensive tactic has gone the way of the do do bird. There is less stealing and the shifts have allowed the 2B to cover territory that was once covered by 1B

B-R doesn't offer positional batting splits until 1915 so I will let experts discuss what was going on and what a CF Rpos might have meant in those days. From then:

CF tOPS+

1915 106
1925 119 (better than LF/RF, nearly 1B)
1935 107
1950 113
1955 119 (better than LF, tied RF)
1960 118 (better than RF)
1965 114
1970 113
1975 108
1980 103
1985 105
1990 109
1995 97
2000 101
2005 102
2010 101
2015 105
2021 99

So CF has gone from a position that averaged maybe around a 115 OPS+ to one maybe around 108 to around 103. Some of that transition in the 70s-80s might be related to the introduction of the DH. Offense and defense skill aren't that highly correlated of course but, in the aggregate, bat and speed tend to move in opposite directions, not to mention younger players being in CF then, the ones who can still hit, moving to LF/RF. So obviously this doesn't prove that smaller, faster players are more common in CF these days leading to an offensive decline but a defensive improvement (relative to LF/RF at least) but it's consistent with that. Whether those smaller, faster players didn't play at all in the old days or were just spread more evenly across the OF would be an interesting question to tackle.

Anyway, it's one likely explanation for the shift in Rpos for CF. The other stat that might be available for most of the history would be lgRF/9 but you'd probably want to look at that relative to LF/RF and maybe even IF (as flyballs increased). For Speaker's career, CF lgRF/9 is reported as 2.51; for Mays 2.55; for Devon White 2.71; for Trout 2.58 so there doesn't seem to be a lot there on the surface.

Note, the 0.13 difference between White and Trout is quite significant (>20 plays per season) and those crude numbers suggest a modern CF would make about 11 plays more per season than in Speaker's era. But other than White's, those numbers don't strike me as dramatically different given ways the game has changed. On the other hand, in RF9 terms, the difference between White and the average CF of his day was just 0.07, same as between the average CF of Trout's era compared with Speaker's.

This is something I hate about the current generation of "hero statistics" that try to sum everything up into one number. It sweeps all the problems under the rug.

I mean the components are typically out there if you look.

I think more often the discrepency between reputation and the stats is that instincts/positioning outweighs just about everything else, and those skills also don't fade with age. The article talks about Dave Winfield, who reputation was built on being fast and having a cannon of an arm. If you look at the underlying stats, our eyes weren't wrong - his arm was effective at limiting base runners. And when he was young and fast, he was good at getting to the ball. But as soon as the speed went, his OF numbers plummet. He still had a good arm, but the runs he saved with that arm pale in comparison to his below average instincts/positioning. On the other end of the spectrum, Barry Bonds had incredible instincts/positioning. So good that he was still a scratch fielder into his late thirties when he got massive and slow.

Now it is possible we just aren't good at measuring OF arms or 1B scoops. But it makes a lot more sense to me that the eye test misses the unsexy pieces of being a good fielder and overestimates the flashy parts.

I mean the components are typically out there if you look.

They are, but here's a guy writing an entire article on historical players who don't have very many WARries ... and he didn't look at any components. No WARries = bad defender, end of analysis.

and he didn't look at any components.

In the post-article notes.

This article is like 5 years old

Almost everyone uses dWAR incorrectly.

This; even TFA says "it’s extraordinarily difficult for a first baseman — even the best of the best — to provide net positive defensive value over the course of his career" and in the notes, "a first baseman, who starts with an 8–10 run deficit. For a first baseman to earn any credit for his defense, he has to save his team at least eight or nine runs as compared to an average first baseman."

But that's not the case at all, conceptually; it is a misunderstanding of negative dWAR as somehow hurting your team. But you have to have a first baseman. If an average first baseman is pretty bad at fielding baseballs compared to shortstops and center fielders … he's still a perfectly average first baseman.

My guess is that flyballs in the dead ball era weren't very valuable at all, so more grounders and yes bunts.

13. I wonder if the up and the down in CF is the introduction of black ball players and then subsequent decline of black ballplayers. There's been a ton of great black CF in the 50s to 80s. Mays, doby, pinson, flood, Griffey, Otis, Oliver, lofton, Puckett, Mcgee, Davis, Jimmy Wynn, Maddox, lemon. I'm sure there are many more

I checked very quickly and the 1908 AL made 6429 OF PO's, while the 1927 AL made 8349. So it looks like batters were hitting lots more FB's by the 1920s, but I don't have time right now to check that against, say, K totals. 1908 saw proportionately more errors by OF'ers, but it's hard to know the impact of that without a more detailed analysis.

I have no idea if it was true but I always imagined that dead ball RF played about where the 2B has been playing in the shift and that the CF played about where Andruw Jones used to line up. I don't know if we have the data but I assume there were 9-3 putouts and 8-4 forceouts (and not just on blooper flyballs).

Speaker was famous for playing shallow, which I interpret to mean that others played deeper. But I have no idea what "deep" means (or "shallow" either). Play too shallow and you risk extra base hits, but then again the ball was pretty dead.

has anyone ever estimated the number of lazy fly balls that can easily be caught by either of two OFs?
did the CF traditionally get the "honor" vs. a corner OF - and thus boost his defensive stats (not that anyone cared at the time)?

take the NFL, where seasonal points for/points against can be a useful indicator of a team's true strength.

but that's only because the teams don't care about it. if it mattered, then you'd see teams run up the score against awful teams, for instance - somewhat diminishing the value of the stat.

has anyone ever estimated the number of lazy fly balls that can easily be caught by either of two OFs? did the CF traditionally get the "honor" vs. a corner OF - and thus boost his defensive stats (not that anyone cared at the time)?

IIRC, it was recently suggested that Andruw Jones defensive stats are inflated by his gobbling up an unusual number of high fly balls that normally would have been caught by corner outfielders. Not sure what methodology was used to determine that - I only came across a passing mention of the issue in the context of this year’s HoF debate.

IIRC, it was recently suggested that Andruw Jones defensive stats are inflated by his gobbling up an unusual number of high fly balls that normally would have been caught by corner outfielders. Not sure what methodology was used to determine that - I only came across a passing mention of the issue in the context of this year’s HoF debate.

Chris Dial - Foghorn Leghorn - definitely looked into this and found it to be true.

#2 Could just be that in the dead ball era CF wasn't really a fielder's position. Not many hard hit balls to CF back then.

Perhaps, but Speaker played nearly a decade of live ball and the positional rating didn't change, -4 still in 1927, his last full season

About 90% of all FBs in-play to CF are either super-easy plays (made 99% of the time ... about 73% of all FBs) or uncatchable (about 17%). (Source Inside Edge provided by fangraphs for 2019.) For 2019, it was a total of only 1525 FBs that were in any doubt. That's across about 4860 team-games so less than one every 3 games. Across all 3 OF positions across all of MLB in 2019 there were only about 50 "great" plays a year -- where an out is recorded 10% of the time or less -- with probably most of those plays being ones that are made about 10% of the time so not exactly astounding. The great CFs really are Devon White types who make the 50% plays look easy because they got there with time to spare.

2019 CF Inside Edge numbers, approx per team, # and average plays made

1-10% .... 30 1.5
11-40% ... 22 7
41-60% ... 9 5.5 (see below)
60-90% ... 15 13

The Inside Edge numbers are always a bit weird ... 59.4% of FBs rated as "40-60%" are caught. A "skewed" distribution is probably what you'd expect but clearly they shouldn't be catching 60% of FBs that are caught 40-60% of the time. 60-90% balls are caught nearly 90% of the time. But it doesn't particularly matter for our purposes -- if anything that's telling us even more FBs are pretty easy than we think.

2019 AL GG CF Kevin Kiermaier made about 1.6 more "remote" catches than expected, 0.5 more "unlikely", 1.4 more "even" and 1 more "likely" for about 4.5 more catches than an average CF. On the other hand, statcast put him at 19 outs above average (which might be more like 14 vs average CF but still much higher). I have no idea how to reconcile those numbers.

Sorry, that's all really an aside, it doesn't address changing positional adjjustments for CF.

About 90% of all FBs in-play to CF are either super-easy plays (made 99% of the time ... about 73% of all FBs) or uncatchable (about 17%). (Source Inside Edge provided by fangraphs for 2019.) For 2019, it was a total of only 1525 FBs that were in any doubt. That's across about 4860 team-games so less than one every 3 games. Across all 3 OF positions across all of MLB in 2019 there were only about 50 "great" plays a year -- where an out is recorded 10% of the time or less -- with probably most of those plays being ones that are made about 10% of the time so not exactly astounding. The great CFs really are Devon White types who make the 50% plays look easy because they got there with time to spare.

The thing that soured me on defensive WAR was Alex Gordon for KC He was playing LF for chrissakes, with CF being maned by first Jarred Dyson and then Lorenzo Cain. He was getting so much credit for defensive value, and it just seems inconceivable to me that he really could be contributing that much, given the # of chances he had. Probably as well he was allowed to shade the corners, both because he was pretty slow and because Dyson/Cain could cover so much ground. It just has never added up for me. How could a slow LF (apparently not good enough defensively for RF) accrue that much value?

The thing that soured me on defensive WAR was Alex Gordon for KC He was playing LF for chrissakes, with CF being maned by first Jarred Dyson and then Lorenzo Cain. He was getting so much credit for defensive value, and it just seems inconceivable to me that he really could be contributing that much, given the # of chances he had. Probably as well he was allowed to shade the corners, both because he was pretty slow and because Dyson/Cain could cover so much ground. It just has never added up for me. How could a slow LF (apparently not good enough defensively for RF) accrue that much value?

Well, maybe partly because, as the article says, WAR doesn't care about your reputation. You say he was slow, but if he positioned well, got good breaks, and took good routes, he still could generate positive results. Perhaps as you mention shading to the line allowed him to get to more balls than other LF. Although it would not be due to greater range but to positioning, net result, I think, would be the same for WAR/Rfield. Sort of like some people theorize Andruw Jones may be overrated by fielding metrics because he more frequently took easy flyballs for his corner OF and made the catch himself, inflating his putouts/range. If Gordon was in fact slow, his Rbase tends to support the idea he had great baseball instincts as it shows him an above average baserunner, and during his 4 big seasons in the field it has him at 7 runs above average on the bases despite a 72% success rate on a relatively low number of SB attempts. I think this shows a likely high baseball IQ.

Raw defensive stats seem to support he was quite good defensively as well. He ranks 32nd in assists for LF. Now he is between two players with considerably fewer innings played, but he's also only 8 assists behind Luis Gonzalez who played almost 9000 more innings and 14 behind Billy Williams who played 3000 more innings. Assists may offer some indication of good instincts as well. Taking a good route while at the same time getting in a good position to field and come up quickly with the body behind the throw, making accurate throws, and being sure you know where you're going to be throwing before the ball is even put in play, or adjusting on the fly given the situation.

Putouts seem to be the key though for the Rfield stats (RTot or DRS), and he looks pretty good there even if he was cheating towards the line. On a per inning basis he's as good as Bonds, Joe Rudi, or Rose as a LF. Now that may not seem fair to compare him to Bonds given the number of innings Barry played, but DRS still has Bonds as an average LF from 34 to 38, and he was still 3rd, 3rd, 5th, and 5th in putouts from 35 to 38 so maybe it's not entirely unfair. During Gordon's 4 big seasons by Rfield he averaged 323 putouts, Bonds best seasons 4 seasons averaged 330. It looks like Gordon was really good, probably elite, in those 4 seasons at least. Also, worth noting that in the first big one it was Melky Cabrera in CF, not Dyson, nor Cain, and in 2018 when he was 34 he still had a very good season by DRS while playing next to Abraham Almonte, Whit Merrifield, Brett Phillips, Brian Goodwin, and Paulo Orlando. But really it's only the 4 years from 2011-2014, ages 27-30, where he's exceptional by DRS. Those are prime/peak seasons by age, typically, and there does seem to be some indication he really was quite good.

You make some good points, thank you.

interesting post 30.

I have tended to view OF assists - eventually - at least to some extent as indicative of the difference between the opposing team's perception of an OF's arm and skillset, versus reality.

the best OFs don't get run on because they obviously can take you down, and the worst ones do get run on because you can get away with it.

a little bit like Revis making the Football HOF this week without a ton of INTs.

Revis never placed in the top 4 in the category, and never in the top 10 after his 3rd season.

but no competent NFL observer was foolish enough to think that his "modest" 29 INTs meant that he wasn't a stud at his position. they called it "Revis Island" for a reason - WRs who came his way fell into the "abandon hope, all ye who enter here" category.

the cross-sport analogy is not nearly perfect for several reasons, including that I don't recall an OF who was SO deadly in nailing runners that teams just gave up on it entirely.

but I think there's a little something there, at least.

32: I think the Revis comp is a nice analogy. While we're on the subject, I once had a family member argue that Manny Ramirez was actually a pretty decent outfielder, undeserving of his horrible rep. The evidence? Manny Leading the league in OF assists one year.

You make some good points, thank you.

You're welcome, and thank you

I have tended to view OF assists - eventually - at least to some extent as indicative of the difference between the opposing team's perception of an OF's arm and skillset, versus reality.

In a world with perfectly functioning baserunning/base coaching, strong-armed and weak-armed outfielders would have almost* the same number of assists.

* Strong-armed ones would have a tiny edge on the rare foreceout play.

I have tended to view OF assists - eventually - at least to some extent as indicative of the difference between the opposing team's perception of an OF's arm and skillset, versus reality.

the best OFs don't get run on because they obviously can take you down, and the worst ones do get run on because you can get away with it.

Yes, this is something I've definitely heard mentioned and makes a lot of sense. Reputation for great throwing does get around, presumably, and it makes sense that the best throwing arms would see their assists decrease since they have fewer opportunities once that word does get around. But opportunities are also, at least somewhat, the product of playing time. I think Jesse Barfield is often cited as being one of the great throwing RF, and one would then assume this was well known around the league, yet in his first two seasons he leads the league in assists for a RF (reputation established?), and then goes 3rd, 1st, 1st, 2nd, 5th, 1st, 1st in his next 7 seasons before becoming a part time player for his last 2. Clemente regularly was in the top 3 despite clearly being known as a great throwing RF. So maybe assists are a bit more residual of playing time than baseball acumen? Probably some indication of quality of play/skill though as applying the fundamentals well that I mentioned would still be necessary to finish at the very top of the assists leader board. Shoddy or careless play wouldn't lend itself to accumulating the borderline assists necessary to accomplish that I wouldn't think.

Would be great as data is becoming more readily available to see opportunities for assists calculated and then conversion rates also calculated so they could be incorporated into defensive metrics.

I'd be curious to learn which long-career outfielders had the fewest career assists. We need a Fielding Finder in Stathead :)

I'd be curious to learn which long-career outfielders had the fewest career assists. We need a Fielding Finder in Stathead :)

Definitely! It's frustrating trying to find fielding information for careers, and would be so great to be able to go to Stathead and do the sorts of searches you can do for hitting and pitching, even baserunning! The aforementioned Gonzalez is a candidate on rate basis, over 20000 innings but "only" 110 assists, Brock, as one would expect, is over 18000 innings with 106. Sticking with the career LF assists list, Crawford is probably the worst with 13293 innings and 55 assists. Of the 4 other players with 55 assists, Rudi has the next highest innings at 9689, all the way down to Cespedes with only 4858.

In CF it looks like Pierre, 33 in 10176, and Willie Wilson 32 in 10721 are near the bottom of the barrel. RF would be JD Drew as the lowest with at least 10K innings at 53 assists in 10251. Barfield, by comparison, has 154 in 10880, wow!

Just searching names that come to mind, Kiner had only 80 assists in almost 12000 innings. That's pretty bad. Luzinski was similar, with 66 in 10100 innings. Musial had only 130 in 15800 innings and Brock had 142 in 21500 innings, putting them in roughly the same category proportional to innings played.

ETA: alilisd beat me to it. Note that I combined playing time at all OF positions rather than just using LF.

A very interesting start, allisd, thanks! It's interesting to try to figure out what was going on with some of those outfielders. Willie Wilson kept his speed (both in terms of baserunning stats, and you could just visually see him move well in the outfield) well into his 30s, but he just wasn't throwing anyone out on the balls he got to. Yet Wilson had once led the league in OF assists (14 in 1981, a lot for a shortened season). One wonders what happened. As you say WRT Barfield, it's unlikely guys stopped running on him once he'd thrown a few of them out.

Thanks too to Mefisto for some other examples. It's interesting how all over the map these low-assist OFs were in terms of foot speed.

Bill James once commented that a LF could pick up quite a few assists, even with a weak arm, just by getting to the ball faster than expected. Assuming that's true, Brock looks even worse.

#41 Probably applies in all fields. Kiki Cuyler had a notoriously bad arm and got a lot of assists. The rep for the arm plus the fact that he was the fastest guy in the game probably gave him more opportunities than most.

I wonder how much arm accuracy is undervalued in outfielders. We all have a pretty good sense of arm strength - we can see that. But there's a huge difference between the strong accurate arms of Barfield/Evans/Ichiro and the powerful but scattershot wings of Parker/Vlad, and it's undoubtedly true of the weaker armed guys as well. I wouldn't be surprised if baserunners/coaches never take into account the likelihood of the throw being on target, even if the guy doesn't have a strong arm.

I wouldn't be surprised if baserunners/coaches never take into account the likelihood of the throw being on target, even if the guy doesn't have a strong arm.

I bet coaches take it into account, just not in the way you're suggesting. I'm sure the coach does not want to stake his reputation/job on something like, "Well, Vlad has a great arm, but he's pretty likely to throw one wide of the base so I sent him home with only one out thinking he'd probably make it because Vladdy would throw it to the backstop. Unfortunately he got nailed at the plate."

It would be useful to be able put some numbers on "accuracy" (percentage "on target" or whatever). I'm not sure that data exists.

I bet coaches take it into account, just not in the way you're suggesting. I

I wonder about it in all cases, not just the strong-armed outfielders we know are frequently off the mark.

I wouldn't be surprised if one big difference between a low-assist guy like Lou Brock and the high-assist Kiki Cuyler is if the latter was simply more likely to throw the ball on target.

As I think about it, it should be possible to use data for each OF showing extra bases attempted and percentage of runners thrown out. You could then compare that probability to the WPA of sending the runner.

As I think about it, it should be possible to use data for each OF showing extra bases attempted and percentage of runners thrown out. You could then compare that probability to the WPA of sending the runner.

That would be good. Obviously there are some outfielders with "sneaky good" arms who get assists because the runner challenges them, and there are some outfielders who never get challenged at all.

I thought Joe Rudi was supposed to be a good defensive outfielder? Maybe he had low assists because few runners took an extra base on him?

Looking at assists/1000 innings, it seems like you need a sneaky arm, a great but erratic arm, and sometimes just a great arm to maintain a high level of assists. Here's the top 30 (min 8000 innings, as available on fangraphs):

1. Richie Ashburn 22.0
2. Minnie Minoso 16.0
3. Roberto Clemente 14.5
4. Jesse Barfield 14.2
5. Bernard Gilkey 12.2
6. Rusty Staub 11.5
7. Jeff Francoeur 11.5
8. Joe Orsulak 11.5
9. Johnny Callison 11.4
10. Bobby Higginson 11.4
11. Glenn Wilson 11.3
12. Bill Bruton 11.3
13. Sixto Lezcano 10.8
14. Carl Yastrzemski 10.7
15. Alfonso Soriano 10.6
16. Jack Clark 10.6
17. Mike Hershberger 10.5
18. Jim Piersall 10.3
19. Jay Johnstone 10.3
20. Larry Walker 10.3
21. Jose Bautista 10.2
22. Gerardo Parra 10.1
23. Richard Hidalgo 10.1
24. Mark Kotsay 10.1
25. Hank Aaron 10.0
26. Dante Bichette 10.0
27. Mickey Mantle 10.0
28. Jim Rice 9.9
29. Del Unser 9.7
30. Kirby Puckett 9.5


And here's the bottom 30 - no real surprises, lots of noodle arms:

1. Grady Sizemore 2.8
2. Juan Pierre 2.9
3. Jacoby Ellsbury 3.3
4. Brian McRae 3.4
5. Cameron Maybin 3.4
6. Coco Crisp 3.4
7. Mike Trout 3.5
8. Christian Yelich 3.7
9. Scott Podsednik 3.8
10. Bernie Williams 3.9
11. Brady Anderson 4.0
12. Denard Span 4.0
13. Jon Jay 4.1
14. Carl Crawford 4.1
15. Justin Upton 4.2
16. Tom Goodwin 4.2
17. Kirk Gibson 4.4
18. Chris Young 4.5
19. Dexter Fowler 4.5
20. Darren Lewis 4.5
21. Johnny Damon 4.5
22. Stan Javier 4.6
23. Austin Jackson 4.6
24. Matt Holliday 4.7
25. Darryl Hamilton 4.7
26. Willie Wilson 4.7
27. Shannon Stewart 4.7
28. Mike Cameron 4.8
29. Otis Nixon 4.8
30. Rondell White 4.9


Interestingly, Ichiro is closer to the bottom than the top - that could be his reputation playing out. He's 218th out of 306 with 6.1 A/1000

7. Mike Trout 3.5

Another reputation instance (?)

Outfield assists have to correlate with opposing OBP, right? Specifically your own pitchers' OBP allowed. More guys on base is more opportunities for a counting stat. If you're not normalizing for that or looking at it as a rate stat as a function of opportunities, you're not getting anywhere analytically.

For games with PBP data, you should be able to deal with actual game states.

49. Good stuff. And it really underscores the point that arm strength and assists don't always correlate (or if they do, it can sometimes be an inverse correlation). Some interesting names in the top-30--surprised to see Mantle in there. From what I understand, he had a decent-if-not-notable arm in CF. I'm guessing the comps to his immediate predecessor didn't do much for Mantle's reputation in this regard.

The point I think is that you could have excellent arm strength and accuracy, and because of that NEVER have any assists, because people would never run on you. Conversely, you could have a noodle-arm and get a few assists accidentally just because, say, the runner falls down halfway between first and second. Which one is more valuable? In the first case you never get any outs, in the second case you do, but you also let a lot of runners advance. People rarely ran on Ichiro, for good reasons. It MIGHT be that Ichiro would be less valuable than, say, Jay Johnstone, because Jay Johnstone was not considered to have a top-notch arm, but looks like he did throw out his fair share of runners, simply because he didn't have the reputation. What is the value of Ichiro versus Johnstone, for example?

54. I guess you'd need more data: What percentage of runners did Johnstone throw out? How many extra bases did Johnstone "allow?" How many *likley* extra bases did Ichiro mitigate because the runner decided it wasn't worth the risk? I'm sure StatCast will have a definitive answer for this sort of thing in a few years, but I'm kinda hoping it doesn't: This works better for me as a "players know who they can run on, and who they can't" scenario.

A very interesting start, allisd, thanks!

Cheers!

I thought Joe Rudi was supposed to be a good defensive outfielder? Maybe he had low assists because few runners took an extra base on him?

My recollection of Rudi was he did have a good reputation, and it was based on some spectacular post season catches, at least in the public view. Being a part of those great A's teams allowed him to be seen making those catches by a much broader audience back then than most other OF. Total Zone concurs with him being very good as well giving him 2 firsts, 2 seconds, and 1 fifth place ranking for LF during his career, 50 TZ overall good for 16th amongst LF. I think on a counting stat basis his assists appear a bit low due to a somewhat short career, and as I mentioned up thread on a per inning basis he's right there with Gordon, Bonds, and Rose, but he doesn't have as many as I'd expect relative to games played and putouts. Perhaps he had the range but not a great arm.

#57 Like everything about Rudi as a player I think his D was so underrated that it was overrated (and vice versa) if you know what I mean. Below average in speed for the position (though many LF were much slower) he played the position intelligently and was known to be fundamentally very sound. He had a strong arm (started out in the low minors as a 3B but couldn't handle the position) and OF with a good arm are often overrated.

He was actually known as a pretty good defensive 1B who could never play there because there was always somebody else who had to play there.

Richie Ashburn's defensive numbers continue to be so excessive that they are nearly incredible. Ashburn was a little before my time, so I do not remember his contemporary reputation, but I have a sense that it was nowhere near Willie Mays' and perhaps not quite on a par with Duke Snider & Bill Bruton, or later on, Bill Virdon & Curt Flood. Ashburn, I think, was seen as good but not superhuman.

Also on 49, I think it's interesting to see both Yaz and Rice there. I would imagine there's probably a park factor working for both of them to some extent. Runner misreads a wall ball and there's an easy assist if they play it well. And thanks cookie, that's really good stuff!

Looking at assists/1000 innings, it seems like you need a sneaky arm, a great but erratic arm, and sometimes just a great arm to maintain a high level of assists. Here's the top 30 (min 8000 innings, as available on fangraphs):

I just tried to reproduce these numbers, and I found them to be way off from what I calculated. Then I noticed you said fangraphs in the parenthetical and I was using B-R. When I looked at fangraphs I noticed there's something off with the innings, I think. I just looked at Ashburn and it has him with 177 assists, which checks with B-R, but fangraphs only shows 8057 innings, whereas Ashburn had 18401 innings in the OF per B-R. His assists per 1000 innings, I think, should only be 9.67, not 22. Anyone know what's going on here? Looks like fangraphs doesn't list innings for Ashburn prior to 1956.

Using the B-R data for OF assists per 1000 innings, and a minimum of 10000 innings, I may have found an argument for Tommy McCarthy to actually be a HOF. He actually tops the list with 25.37 per 1000 innings. :-)

Ken Williams, St Louis Browns OF, is really good at 14.89. Barfield is the top, I believe, post integration player at 14.16, ahead of Clemente who is at 12.97. Casey Stengel shows up at 14.51! Lloyd Waner and Puckett are right next to one another at 9.75 and 9.72 respectively, interesting for two HOF CF who are probably not the greatest selections ever. Fun stuff! Really need to use actual opportunities as opposed to innings though. Would using Chances instead of innings be any more revealing? I know someone mentioned using pitching staff OBP up thread, but that's way too much work for me!

#61 Interestingly Ashburn comes out slightly below average against the running game on BBRef. And it breaks down in a way that makes sense to me. -11 overall. -16 after his age 31 season.

And while it's been theorized that park effect played a big part in his fielding numbers, TotalZone actually has him slightly better on the road defensively (though comfortably within method error)

Minoso shows up as +5 against baserunning in LF so I suspect it's another defensive innings issue.

Rudi shows up as good against the running game ( +27 in LF )

Clemente is +84 in RF. Mays +49 in CF. Barfield was +58 in RF and another +9 in CF. Walker is +57 in RF (and -2 in CF). Francouer's numbers are pretty good too ( +46 in less time than others on the list)

Doesn't really like Staub against the running game. There's a Jarry Parc park effect in there -- a very shallow RF.

And Bonds' numbers make sense +52 against the running game through the end of 1996. -16 after that. I know that according to Stats there was a 5 year stretch in the mid 90s where he was the least run on LF in the game.

Go into Advanced Fielding and look for Rof. I think Rally came up with the basic methodolgy though I'm sure that Sean and friends have made adjustments.

So as best I can tell BBRef has it Clemente, (huge gap), Barfield Walker, Mays, Francouer (adjust as you see fit for career length. Prime Mays is probably just under prime Barfield)

Yes, thanks to Cookie … well, maybe Ashburn really is incredible after all :)

@61 - yeah, I go straight to fangraphs for fast things, but noticed that the innings only went back so far, so I knew it was a weakness of what I posted, at least in regards to players before 1960 I think

I only just realized that BBREF's Advanced Fielding Stats does most of the work discussed here.

I think a long-ago HOM thread noted Ashburn's assist totals as evidence of his basically catching every single discretionary fly ball.

He is 3rd all-time in putouts, and his NL ranks from 1948-59 were:
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
1
1
1
3

now, Richie was extraordinarily durable - his ranks in games played in OF are about 95 percent as dominant as he is in putouts.

but he is 1st, 4th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 14th, and 16th in all-time single-season putout marks by a CF. (Andruw Jones' best finish is T-9th.).
The incomparable Willie Mays had to settle for the CF putouts silver medal six times during Richie's reign of terror.

P.S. Richie's SABR bio has lot of fun anecdotes, including:

"Once, after a lengthy discourse during a game by broadcaster Tim McCarver on the qualities of Mount St. Helen’s volcanic ash, Ashburn opined that “If you’ve seen one piece of ash, you’ve seen them all.”

The thing is, if you acctually go watch videos of Barfield or whoever, it is clear that NONE of the guys trying to stretch things EVER thought they could ever get thrown out. It often took an absolutely perfect throw to do the trick, but that's how good the top guys were.

#68 Clemente's stats show that he genuinely cut down advancement attempts. IE Not that many tried for a discretionary base. Those who did were often unpleasantly surprised.

Ollie Brown supposedly had a stronger arm than Clemente but didn't have much impact on opposition running game. I want to say the issue was poor technique. It just took him too long to make the throw in game conditions.

Similarly Jay Buhner had an exceptional arm but was slow and his arm had very little impact in game.

Go into Advanced Fielding and look for Rof. I think Rally came up with the basic methodolgy though I'm sure that Sean and friends have made adjustments.

Fantastic thank you!

The point I think is that you could have excellent arm strength and accuracy, and because of that NEVER have any assists, because people would never run on you....

No this is fundamentally wrong. You are acting like OF defenders can throw out people at a huge rate like 50% or 30%. They dont. For Clemente's career he had a hold rate of 48% and a kill rate (on runners advancing on hits) of 4.4%. That means a runner advancing on any hit to RF has only a 9% chance of being thrown out by Clemente. So obviously there are many, a great many, situations where you simply have to run to third or home and take your chances.

For example the break even rate on SBs is somewhere around 70-72%. And even against one of the greatest defensive OFers of all time, runners are far more likely to get to third or home than the break even rate for stealing bases. so you simply have to run in the great majority of cases.

Obviously, ever single base runner advancing event is unique. Theres the location of the ball, the orientation of the OFer, the speed of the runner etc. So I'm sure there were times when John Boccabella advancing to third on Clemente was likely going to be an out and times when Willie Davis advancing to home was pretty much a certainty.

And of course an Ofer with a great arm will have less oppurtunities to throw out runners. How much less? From Clemente's numbers it looks like maybe 15 more runners per year would have advanced if the RFer was merely average. And maybe 30 more if the RF was really horrible but I think they put those guys in LF anyhow so maybe not realistic.

So if say 15 or perhaps 20 more runners were to attempt to go third on Clemente he would probably throw out more than 4.4% of them since presumably these are plays where the real life runner/coach thought it best not to go. So maybe he throws out 15% of those...

So what maybe he gets 3 more assists per year?

So you're wrong. Even if you have excellent arm strength you're going to still have pretty good assist numbers. It just doesnt work the way you think it does. Runners not running on you would only change the assist numbers a little.

Several of the comments above don't seem to get this so...

How could a slow LF (apparently not good enough defensively for RF) accrue that much value?

Gordon played LF because he had a mid career transition from third base.

He was actually a spectacular left fielder. Completely unafraid of the wall, sliding catches all over the place, plus a huge and accurate arm that routinely led the league in baserunner kills.

He shared an outfield with Lorenzo Cain and Jarrod Dyson and looked quite good, even by comparison.

The 2014 outfield was extremely good.

Like everything about Rudi as a player I think his D was so underrated that it was overrated (and vice versa) if you know what I mean. Below average in speed for the position (though many LF were much slower) he played the position intelligently and was known to be fundamentally very sound. He had a strong arm (started out in the low minors as a 3B but couldn't handle the position) and OF with a good arm are often overrated

what makes you think he was below average in speed? From watching him during the As dynasty he seemed to be excellent at getting back on balls. His defensive range numbers were excellent in '71 and '73 but mostly below average after that (age 27 in '74). I dont know if he had injuries. Im not sure what sort of park effects there were in OAK as well.

He was still hugely effective at holding advancing runners even up to '80.

Looking at Rfield from 71-73 (presumably his best years) he totals 26 runs playing about 80% of the games. If I had to guess (for a full season) I'd give 5+ runs for range, 0 for arm, 2.5 for base runner holds and similar for turning doubles into singles (I think primate Kiko had some ideas that the latter number corresponds to holds).

So I could see him being worth 10 runs on def. full season for those years and Rfield is pretty similar.

How do you see it?

For a while, the Royals had Gordon in left and Frenchy in right.

Not as amazing as the 2014 outfield, but extremely difficult to run against.

has anyone ever estimated the number of lazy fly balls that can easily be caught by either of two OFs?
did the CF traditionally get the "honor" vs. a corner OF - and thus boost his defensive stats (not that anyone cared at the time)?

we've had a bit of this discussion before although its not really been fleshed out. To my understanding the CF making the catch is the default assumption. I think that's well known but I dont know for sure.

There's several ways to make an estimate of discretionary fly balls. One would be to simply watch video footage of a given set of games. My preference would be to study as many post season games that we have footage for.

Another way would be to take a superior corner OF say Mookie Betts and figure out what maximum number of runs saved per stat cast would be. its something near 18-20 runs, and perhaps 22+ OAAs. But guys like Richie Ashburn and Andruh Jones were making a lot more catches (per range factor) than the average CFer. From memory they maybe made 40 more putouts than average.

Anecodtally, I dont think its that high. How often do you see two outfielders converge on a fly ball at close enuf time that either one could catch it. I'm gonna say once every two weeks, or perhaps a dozen times a season.

Just some off the wall thoughts on this.

I have tended to view OF assists - eventually - at least to some extent as indicative of the difference between the opposing team's perception of an OF's arm and skillset, versus reality.

the best OFs don't get run on because they obviously can take you down, and the worst ones do get run on because you can get away with it.

Didn't Bill James expressly debunk this one a very long time ago?

The advanced fielding stats on BBREF probably answer some of the issues raised above. I'll use 3 examples: Aaron was barely above average for runners "held" (42.6% to 41.2%), but did pretty well on "kills" (their terminology): 4% v an average of 3.2%. He also had an additional 90 "kills" in situations not measured directly. Johnstone was a bit better on "held" (43.8% to 41.4%) while being slightly worse on "kills" (3.8% to 3.2%). For whatever reason, he had just 26 other "kills". By comparison, runners were afraid to run on Clemente (47.9% held v 40.9 average) and he caught more even so: 4.4% "kills" v 3.2 average. He also had an astonishing 142 "kills" in other situations.

Ashburn was below average in runners "held", 42.3% to 44.1% average. He had a decent ratio of "kills", 3.2% to 2.5, but only 68 other "kills". By comparison, Mays "held" 46.6% v 43.2% average, but was only ok on "kills": 2.8% v 2.4. He did have an additional 90 kills in other situations. I should note that Mays would look very dramatically better if I cut off his career after 1964 (age 33); I'm not sure why that would be the case because his other numbers for 1965-6 continued to be extraordinary. I assume other long career players would show a drop off as well.

For a while, the Royals had Gordon in left and Frenchy in right.

Not as amazing as the 2014 outfield, but extremely difficult to run against.

The Royals' starting OF in 2011 (Gordon, Melky, Frenchy) had 51 assists, by far the most in MLB this century and the most by any OF since the remarkable 64 totaled by the Expos in 1978 (Cromartie, Dawson and Valentine).

#73 Rudi is in the "fast for a first baseman" tier. Now when I look at the AL in his prime I see a bunch of guys in a similar speed range. With a number of guys clearly faster.

In 1974 I'd say Baylor (he had very good speed as a young player), White, Harper, Lowenstein, Johnson and Wohlford just in the AL were a fair bit faster. And Rudi wasn't noticeably faster than most of the other regular OF.

But he was fast enough, and had a rep for reading the ball well. Made him a better outfielder than (say) Pat Kelly -- who was quite a bit faster. In fact he was probably better than most of the guys I listed as faster. Alex Johnson was a notoriously bad OF -- rarely bothering to use his above average speed. Being technically sound is important.

As for range factor, there was a big park illusion in Oakland but it primarily affected the third baseman (very large foul area) --- Oakland 3B got a lot of extra foulouts back then.

#71 The break even point for stealing third is quite a bit higher than 72%. But then the break even point for going home can be quite low (of course game situation matters) so your overall point is still valid. There are times you kind of have to go and they don't give the 3B coach time enough to do a detailed analysis.

#71 The break even point for stealing third is quite a bit higher than 72%.

A good pt. I know tried to calculate that last fall. Its about 80% isn't it? Going from memory.

That was a nice summary of Rudi, Ron. Thanks.

what do you mean "big park illusion?" I recall the park factor favored pitching, is there something else?

It should also be mentioned that the above discussion underscores at least four areas where OFers perform valuable defensive work. A lot of people don't seem to take that into account when they evaluate defense:

1. Range, the biggest factor of course. Some of the extreme outliers like Betts and Robles are saving close to 20 runs this way.

2. Baserunner kills, maxing out at half of range or a bit less. As you try to put a value on these bear in mind that nearly all of these are coming when the score is close, almost no one takes a risky base or throws home when the game is lopsided. It would be interesting to look at delta WE for baserunner kills in a given data set.

3. Base runners advancing/not advancing. A handful of runs.

4. Turning doubles into singles. Again a handful.

In 1974 I'd say Baylor (he had very good speed as a young player), White, Harper, Lowenstein, Johnson and Wohlford just in the AL were a fair bit faster.

It seems Rudi's range had already tailed off by that pt. though. His real prime as an OF seems to be 71-'73, up through age 26. Not sure what happened after that.

Also he led the league in triples, batting RH, at age 25 (9). Surely he must have had good speed at that pt. But his base stealing is barely above 50% throughout his career and no more than an occasional base stealer. That hard to do as a RH I think. (and before you say OAK's large foul ground, he hit 6 of them on the road)

I feel there must be something more there. Either there was an injury or had good speed but not a great jump or something.

Rudi bounced around from 1B to 3B to OF in the minors, and spent most of 1967 at 1B in AAA before getting a couple of cups of coffee (46 PA) with the last Kansas City A's team trying to play LF.

he hit under .200 in 1967-68-69 in 372 PA at age 20-22, but he got some help in hitting from a fella named Charlie Lau and in fielding from one Joltin' Joe DiMaggio (A's coach in 1968-69).

boom, he hit .309 in 1970 and a career was launched.

Rudi got moved to 1B in 1975 for teenage phenom Claudell Washington but got his LF slot back a year later as CW moved to RF. then came the Finley Salary Wars yada yada yada.

from 1973 on (the year after he led the AL in 3B), he'd find one injury after another most years.

(proud that I remembered much of this general career arc, but a visit to his SABR bio was a must to confirm and expand.)

I also recall he had military commitments at some pt. I want to say up to about 1969 so that may have interfered with his development. A lot of guys in the majors back then had to do like what one or two weeks a year in Nat'l Guard?

Rudi said he missed about 30 games (through 1971) doing weekend stints with the Marines. Gee, times were different.

yes, I have a scrapbook with Mets in National Guard reserves pics in that era. Nolan Ryan and also I think Tug McGraw among them.

NY Daily News - "America's Picture Newspaper TM" - in particular would have the players in black and white photos in t-shorts doing pushups and such.

Anybody who saw Winfield play on a regular basis can't be surprised by his inclusion in the piece -- but Roberto Alomar? To my recollection, he was universally regarded as the best defensive 2B in the game, and among the very best glove men ever.

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#88 Alomar's defense was a contentious discussion point on rec.sport.baseball

Stats' methodology (ZR) didn't think much of his D. In sharp contrast to his general rep (yeah you recall correctly. His 10 Gold Gloves reflect his rep)

It seems Rudi's range had already tailed off by that pt. though. His real prime as an OF seems to be 71-'73, up through age 26. Not sure what happened after that.

Also he led the league in triples, batting RH, at age 25 (9). Surely he must have had good speed at that pt. But his base stealing is barely above 50% throughout his career and no more than an occasional base stealer. That hard to do as a RH I think. (and before you say OAK's large foul ground, he hit 6 of them on the road)

I feel there must be something more there. Either there was an injury or had good speed but not a great jump or something.

By the numbers he does have some oddities it seems. The base stealing is interesting, but in looking at those A's teams in his prime, 71-73 or even 70-75, there's Campeneris who is really good, and everyone else is not so great, until Billy North comes on. They steal some bases, but get thrown out a ton. 70-75 Rudi is just 13 of 24. 1970 Mincher 5 of 9, Bando 6 of 16!, Monday 17 of 28, and Jackson, who we know could blaze back then, 26 of 43. 1971 Epstein 0 for 3, Bando 3 of 10, Monday 6 of 15, Jackson 16 of 26. 1972 of the 8 leading position players per B-R 4 of them combined to go 0 for 5, while Rudi was 3 of 7 and Jackson 9 of 17, so less running but still poor results outside of Campy. 1973 B-R now lists 9 with the DH and 5 combine to go 4 for 11, but North arrives and Jackson is 22 for 30 (no evidence, but I'm thinking North may have helped Jackson improve). 1974 Fosse 1 of 2, Tenace 2 of 11!, Green, Bando and Rudi were all 2 of 5, but North is great and Jackson is 25 for 30. 1975 they were better overall, added Claudell Washington, but still had Garner go 4 of 10 and Jackson slipped to 17 of 25. Not sure how much we can read into speed of Rudi by the base stealing results, it seems like the A's, for whatever reason, were generally poor base stealers.

In terms of his OF range, it's also an odd career by the numbers in some ways. Looking at his minor league career I was amazed to see him playing at 17 in A ball! At 18, 19 and 20 he plays over 100 games in the minors with a brief stint in KC at 20. But in 1968 he only plays 16 games in AAA with 68 for the A's. Was he sitting on the bench in Oakland, injured? That is a lot more than 2 weeks missed for reserve duty. Same in 1969 with only 57 games in AAA and 35 in Oakland, although there are also 30 games listed in the AZ Instructional League (not sure if that was a Fall league, or was it some sort of rehab situation?). At any rate he does have a good zone/range rating in 1970 7/4 (Rtot/Rtz), great in 1971 15/12, but down in 1972 to 3/-2, 1973 9/5, then in 1974 down again 1/-2, in 1975 he's really at 1B, then 1976 is -1/-3 but he's now 29 so some drop is probably to be expected, 1977 he's only in the field for 61 games but still puts up 8/5, and the following year in 111 games 3/-2.

So, yes, from 1970 to 1973 he was quite good on range, but 1972 is not that different from 1974, or even 1976. And given the sample sizes with defensive metrics I've often seen it recommended to look at more than one season to get a feel for the actual level of play. If we smooth out the biggest outlier, which is 1971, his drop off is perhaps not quite as large. And the positive play in 1977-78 with the Angels indicates he was still pretty good, again, perhaps, reinforcing that his decline was not that significant.

from 1973 on (the year after he led the AL in 3B), he'd find one injury after another most years.

Seems a little early to say this started in 1973. In 74 he played his most games ever and had 2nd highest PA total. In 75-76 he was over 500 PA's in both seasons, it wasn't until 77 that he missed significant playing time, and in 78 he was back over 500 PA's. He does look like he was injured during August of 73, 75 and nicked up a bit in May/June of 76, but he wasn't missing huge amounts of time if he was still pulling in over 500 PA's.

#88 Alomar's defense was a contentious discussion point on rec.sport.baseball

Stats' methodology (ZR) didn't think much of his D. In sharp contrast to his general rep (yeah you recall correctly. His 10 Gold Gloves reflect his rep)

Yes, he made the flashy plays, but perhaps they were diving stops because his range was not as good as some others. He did debut just two years before Baseball Tonight, and so his rep may have received a boost by making those "highlight reel" plays

Alomar was also pretty sure-handed, and did not make a lot of errors. After his first couple of seasons he was routinely in the top 3 in fielding percentage among 2B, leading the league four times.

94. Right, but fielding % doesn't tell us much of anything (other than he was relatively sure-handed once he got there).

FTA: "While Alomar may have been capable of the spectacular... he actually cost his teams 38 runs with his glove. According to dWAR, his vaunted range was actually below league average, and despite playing alongside Omar Vizquel for three years, Alomar never led the league in double plays turned by a second baseman (Alomar, in fact, usually finished in the top half of league second baseman in most defensive metrics, but rarely led his league in any of the major fielding categories). It strains credulity to think of Roberto Alomar as an average second baseman, but dWAR says just that."

#91, that is usually a symptom of failed hit-and-runs.

82. sunday silence (again) Posted: February 15, 2023 at 09:20 PM (#6117312)
It should also be mentioned that the above discussion underscores at least four areas where OFers perform valuable defensive work. A lot of people don't seem to take that into account when they evaluate defense:

1. Range, the biggest factor of course. Some of the extreme outliers like Betts and Robles are saving close to 20 runs this way.

2. Baserunner kills, maxing out at half of range or a bit less. As you try to put a value on these bear in mind that nearly all of these are coming when the score is close, almost no one takes a risky base or throws home when the game is lopsided. It would be interesting to look at delta WE for baserunner kills in a given data set.

3. Base runners advancing/not advancing. A handful of runs.

4. Turning doubles into singles. Again a handful.

Great comment, I'll plug the awesome work from Kiko Sakata on rating defense.

Richie Ashburn was woeful in component 6, basically your #4 point:
https://baseball.tomthress.com/StatTables/Field_8.php?id=ashbr101&ex=1

A terrific primer can be found here:
https://baseball.tomthress.com/OldArticles/Fielding.php

#91, that is usually a symptom of failed hit-and-runs.

Ah, that would make sense. Thanks!

#97 Tom Ruanne took a look at the difference between baserunning by linear weights and WPA.

Almost no big differences, but Pete Rose was one of the exceptions. He did a fair amount better by WPA than linear weights.

Hello Ron: Primate Kiko said pretty much the same thing about Rose. I wonder if there is anybody else who did that?