Hey Bill

15 Most Recent Questions

So Mike Trout stole home today. The Yahoo box score lists the theft as "4th base, off D Floro / H Conger." "4th base" -- first time I've ever seen it as anything other than "home."

Asked by: matt_okeefe

Answered: 7/8/2016

Conger was confused by the guys from dugout yelling "Throw to 4th! Throw to 4th!" By the time he figured it out it was too late. 

Re: evolution—lots of people tinkered with the idea before Darwin took his trip. The first fully formed (but ultimately wrong) theory of evolution was proposed by Lamarck, who believed animals evolved but through transmutation rather than natural selection.

Asked by: rpmcsweeney

Answered: 7/8/2016

 Well. . .finding the right question is more important than finding the correct answer. When you reach the point of asking the question "How does a new species of animals form from an old one?", it is by then inevitable that someone will figure it out. What really matters is posing the question. 

You once wrote about "families" of managers, the idea being that managerial philosophies are handed down to coaches and players by certain managers. The granddaddy of the largest "branch" wasn't known for his managing, but Branch Rickey is the guy, right? I'm not even looking here, but I am guessing that Rickey might have been the root cause of the National League issuing more IBB right down to the present day. What do you think?

Asked by: Gfletch

Answered: 7/8/2016

 John McGraw would be a better guess than Rickey. 

A fellow named Sam Wang has done a lot of work studying gerrymandering and I'll link his NYT article about its effects in 2012. In total, the Democrats received 1.4 million more votes in House elections but lost that chamber 234-201. But he also looks at a more granular level at the effects in recently redrawn districts, etc. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/opinion/sunday/the-great-gerrymander-of-2012.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Asked by: PB

Answered: 7/8/2016

 That's just completely Wang. Sorry. 

Hey, Bill, there were a lot of antecedents to Darwin, going way back, but they mostly weren't thought through. There were a couple brief descriptions of the idea shortly before Darwin's main publication (they were in the early 1800s) but they were mostly published in obscure places, for example one in a treatise on naval timber and arboriculture. It's hard to take them very seriously. Alfred Russel Wallace did have a well-developed theory of evolution, which he sent to Darwin, and they ended up publishing together in 1858. Wallace name survives in geography and in evolutionary theory. But even his work pales in comparison to what Darwin did, and anyway, they were contemporaries, so the same historical context applied to both. 

Asked by: flyingfish

Answered: 7/8/2016

 Thanks. 

Does Hoyt Wilhelm's terrific age 29 rookie season disqualify him from your late-bloomers list? He went on to have about 20 more.

Asked by: DavidHNix

Answered: 7/8/2016

 Well. . .all the knuckleballers can be on the list, basically. I thought it was too obvious. 

So you've completely given up on the security guard gig?

Asked by: Rcrout

Answered: 7/8/2016

 They won't hire me anymore. 

The Russian guy was Trofim Lysenko. A lab technician in a genetics lad where I worked as a graduate student said she'd throw me out of the lab if I mentioned his name again.

Asked by: flyingfish

Answered: 7/8/2016

 I think it would have worked; you just have to stay with it for about 2,000 years. . . .

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck may be the evolutionary biologist you were thinking of. He died about 30 years before Origin of the Species. As best I can figure, Lamarck was of the opinion that evolution occurred because the animals had desires that were just out of their reach, so the species would evolve. Like, say, giraffes wanting to get to that next higher branch on the tree, and evolving long necks. The guys who did things like with bells, and another one who cut off the tails of generations of mice, expecting to find that the mice would evolve shorter tails, were the guys who Lamarck, and then Huxley and Darwin, discredited. Eventually, Darwin's supporters were able to demonstrate that Lamarck, while not an idiot, had just taken a wrong path.

Asked by: Brock Hanke

Answered: 7/8/2016

 Thanks. 

"shthar" is basically right; Young's given up 26 home runs in 60 innings thus far and unless I botched Baseball-Reference's Play Index search, he's by far the record holder for most home runs allowed per nine innings (3.9) with a minimum of 50 innings pitched. No one else has allowed even 3/9.

Asked by: kingferris

Answered: 7/7/2016

 OK. 

Re: Chris Young. It all depends on where you draw the innings cutoff. At 30 the record is 4.02 HR/9 by Erik Johnson (this year, so far, in 31.1 IP). At 32+ it's Young, at 3.9. At 100 IP the it's 1987 Ken Dixon at 2.66 (31 homers in 105 innings), which I remember well as an Orioles fan. Dixon must have been hurt, as he was traded to the Mariners, never pitched again, and I remember some kind of grievance being filed by Seattle afterwards. 

Jose Lima in 2000 holds the record for an ERA qualifier, with 2.2, or 48 in 196.1 innings.

Asked by: jwilt

Answered: 7/7/2016

 Thanks. 

Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus, put forth some ideas that we would consider proto-evolutionary. I think it's similar to Voros McCraken introduction of Defense Independent Pitching stats and the idea that pitchers have no repeatable effects on non home run balls in play. Other people, most notably you, came close to that position-McCracken was the one that fully demonstrated and articulated the idea. Further research has indicated that pitchers have some effect on batted balls but it is not the determinate factor in their success.

Asked by: tate

Answered: 7/7/2016

 Thanks. Leaving me out of it, I think the Voros example is relevant and instructive. Many of us had come CLOSE to the point of that realization, but we just didn't step over the line. Voros stepped forcefully over the line, and made an argument that the line had been drawn in the wrong place. When the rest of us looked at the issue we had to basically agree that he was right. 

Bill: I understand you don't do WAR ("What is it good for? Absolutely nothing."). But the question on RA Dickey and Jamie Moyer did get me to thinking about players who had done absolutely nothing until their 30s, and then went on to have really good careers. The two prime example I think of are Dazzy Vance, who won his first game at age 30, went on to win 197 games and lead the NL in strikeouts 6 years in a row; and Hank Sauer, who hit 288 home runs, 281 of which came after he turned 31. Is there anyone, other than maybe some black players who were kept out of the majors by segregation (and I assume were playing great baseball in the Negro leagues) who can match them as late bloomers who played quality ball almost all after their 30th birthday? 

Asked by: TigerTim

Answered: 7/7/2016

 An all-star team of late bloomers, played most of their good ball after the age of 30. Catchers, Ernie Whitt, Al Todd (1930s National Leaguer), Aaron Robinson (1940s/1950s American League.) First base, Raul Ibanez and George McQuinn (St. Louis Browns of the 1930s, 1940s. . .was buried in the Yankee system behind Lou Gehrig until he was almost 30.) Second Base, Davey Lopes. Third Base, Jimmy Austin. Shortstop, Gene Michael (Stick). Left Field, Matt Stairs. Center Field, Minnie Minoso; if you don't count Minoso because of the color line and disputes about his actual date of birth, then Otis Nixon, Jim Eisenreich or Ken Williams, 1920s superstar. Right Field, Jose Bautista or Socks Seybold, a hundred years ago; almost all of his career is after his 30th birthday. DH, Edgar Martinez. Utility, Rich Amaral. Pitchers. . . Randy Johnson, like Bautista, didn't put his game together until he was 29. Pitchers, Charlie Hough, Curt Davis (1930s/1940s), Mike Cuellar, Geoff Zahn (barely pitched before he was 30), Woody Williams, Murry Dickson, Jeff Fassero, Kenny Rogers, Rick Reed, Cal McLish. 

Not sure what you mean by saying gerrymandering doesn't work. Do you mean it doesn't help a particular party win seats? I'd like to see some documentation for that. 

Asked by: Marc Schneider

Answered: 7/7/2016

 One doesn't need documentation for skepticism. You asserted that it DOES work. What evidence have you given me for that?  The burden of proof is on you. All you have said is that a lot of people THINK that it works. I think that it doesn't. 

About the question regarding Darwin Barney and natural selection, the work of Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian Friar, proved that certain characteristics were dominant and others recessive. At the time it was seen as an essay on hybridization rather than genetics. Farmers had long used crossbreeding to bring out the characteristics they most wanted. 

Asked by: DavidTodd

Answered: 7/7/2016

 Yeah. . who was that Russian guy who spent 30 years tying little bells to plants to prove that eventually the plants would start to grow with little bells on them all on their own? But Mendel was YOUNGER than Darwin, a little bit after him. . . I was trying to think of the guy who was before him.  

Hey Bill

15 Most Recent Questions

HeyBill: I like the filtered, reasoned discussion of Brexit/politics/etc. Thank you for filtering and by all means, filter me if I get irrational. You are a little older than me and remember the Viet Nam era better ( I graduated HS in '74). In your opinion is the country more divided and people more angry now than in the '60s? We don't have huge riots nor National Guard shooting students nor campus radicals bombing stuff. But I have never heard so many people I know that are so angry/frustrated as now ....... I don't want to start a thread about the '60s ...... just a thoughtful comparison. Note the Europe was way wilder in the '60s than now, look at France and the riots, etc. Another question: is the prevalence of media everywhere: instant news, everybody can communicate with everybody; a cause of our current edginess????

Asked by: FrankD

Answered: 6/30/2016

 The disaffected people of the 1960s--the Kids and black people, basically--were clearly a minority of the population, a fairly small slice.  We were no more than 20% of the population, since we did not have unanimous support even among young people or even among black people.  The violence (rioting and extreme protests) were a reaction to the fact that we were, in the end, powerless to effect real change.  

What we have now is a much deeper and more significant split in the population, in which it is unclear WHERE the majority stands.  

Well. . .back to the sixties. In the sixties we had a cleavage of values and life style. One side felt you would go to hell for wearing your hair long, using drugs and having sex outside of marriage; the other was doing a lot of that stuff. I don't believe that the separation in values now is as wide as the separation of values that we had then; rather, we have very profound differences in political philosophy, often among people who base their life decisions on values that seem almost indistinguishable.  

"On many, many issues, I agree that the policy favored by what we might call the elites is the wiser policy—but nonetheless I would prefer to see us adopt the policy favored by the people. Why? Because the issues of power are much, much more central to a well-functioning democracy than the issues of policy.  Policy comes and policy goes. " 

In general, I agree, but there are policies that do not just come and go. For example, climate change. If the climate change advocates are correct (and I acknowledge there may be some exaggeration), letting "the people" decide-who generally don't want to bear the costs of stopping climate change if they even acknowledge it-could be disastrous for the planet. The fact is, as elitist as this may sound, there are many issues so fundamental that the people should not be allowed to decide. In fact, that is the premise behind the Bill of Rights, which effectively limits the power of the majority in many areas. 

Asked by: Marc Schneider

Answered: 6/29/2016

If we start talking about Climate Change, we'll be at the intersection of Capital Punishment and Red Light cameras in two hours. 

Hey, Bill, you wrote about the decision in Britain to leave the UK "but you might note that this decision was not made by bureaucrats, but by the people." I don't think anyone has suggested that bureaucrats did or should make such a decision, but to me the interesting question is whether elected representatives rather than the people should make such a decision. To me, the idea of electing a representative is to find someone whose worldview I like and whose integrity I trust and say please, go figure this out and leave me to teach or repair plumbing or cure patients or deliver bread or whatever it is I do. For me to take the time to learn what I need to know to make all those decisions wouldn't leave me enough time to do my day job, so I elect someone. My questions to you are whether you agree in principle with this idea of electing representatives, and whether you feel that it would have (or would still) make more sense for UK reps rather than the people to decide on Brexit.

Asked by: flyingfish

Answered: 6/29/2016

 No, I don't. Representative Democracy, over time, becomes less and less Representative. And representatives should never be tasked with dealing with basic issues of liberty and sovereignty. 

        This issue is fairly critical to my political philosophy, for the following reasons.  Over time, all societies tend to divide into privileged and underprivileged camps.  I grew up deep in poverty, living among people who were somewhat better off than us, but still far, far removed from the centers of wealth and privilege—but I have lived almost all of my adult life in comfort and relative privilege, and among others of comfort and privilege.  I got to ring the closing bell at the New York stock exchange, but most of my relatives still live at or below the poverty line, and I am still close to those people. This shapes my view of the world. 

              So over time, all societies tend to divide into privileged and underprivileged camps, and these two camps see the world differently. In a representative democracy, representatives inevitably come to represent the worldview of those who have power and privilege—and, more significantly, to represent the interests of those who have power and privilege.   

              On many, many issues, I agree that the policy favored by what we might call the elites is the wiser policy—but nonetheless I would prefer to see us adopt the policy favored by the people.  Why?  Because the issues of power are much, much more central to a well-functioning democracy than the issues of policy.   Policy comes and policy goes.  In a well-functioning democracy—which unfortunately we no longer have, because the gap between the privileged and underprivileged has grown so large—but in a well-functioning democracy, you can change policy easily enough.  You can’t easily change the power structure.  An unwise policy will soon enough show itself to be unwise, but when the system stops working there is never an easy repair.

              Well, let us suppose that rapid immigration from poorer countries imposes some costs on the society in terms of crime, the school system, and the degradation of social programs by overloading; not saying whether this is true or not true, but let us suppose.  Who do you suppose bears the weight of those social costs: the privileged, or the underprivileged?  But who is it who gets the benefit of this immigration, by some indirect pathway rooted in cheap labor? Is that the privileged or the underprivileged? 

              I am not in any way suggesting that the elites are selfish or driven by self-interest.   They are almost universally driven by what they see as the best interests of society, with a heavy weight given to the best interests of the poor.  They simply do not SEE clearly or accurately what is in the interests of the poor.  They never do, they never can, and they never will.  In a representative democracy, elected representatives will always vote for the policies favored by the rich and powerful.   

              Of course there are complicated, technical issues which have to be dealt with elected professionals; of course there are many, many such issues.  This is not such an issue.  

Hey, Bill, you recently wrote that a fairly long list of pitchers were "examples of Hall of Fame or near-Hall of Fame pitchers who struggled for several years before they flipped a switch somehow and became among the best pitchers in the major leagues." That "somehow" really caught my attention and leads me to ask if there might be any reasonable way to do research into what it represents. Am I right to assume that they showed it least some signs that they could become dominant, because if they hadn't, they wouldn't have been allowed to "struggle for several years"?  

Asked by: flyingfish

Answered: 6/29/2016

 Nahh. . .lots of bad pitchers struggle for years without any signs of talent, because teams are always desperate for starting pitching.  One time I wrote an article in which I used Chris Reitsma as an example of a borderline pitcher. About five years later I was re-editing the article for publication, and I thought I'd have to update the Chris Reitsma reference with some other slogger, but when I checked I discovered that Chris Reitsma was still pitching.  And still getting the hell beat out of him. 

There is nothing wrong with the economy here. They just raise the minimum wage and it will rise every year until 2020. After that, it will most likely continue to rise. 

I'm an immigrant, and while I'm not banking a lot of money, I'm not struggling. Many of my money issues are self-inflicted. I also live in a a tourist town and there are no shortage of visitors year-round. To add to that, none of the EU countries are going to willingly stop selling a large portion of their goods to the UK and risk their own economic downturn. 

When you add the several million Brits living in France, Spain, Italy, etc, pumping billions of pounds into their economies, free travel isn't go to stop either. A lot of people keep screaming about all of this, but none of them are looking at it from any kind of common sense approach, or even attempting to see an alternative to their fear. 

Also, the people of the UK are British. Calling all of them English is not the way to be their friend.

Asked by: 77royals

Answered: 6/29/2016

 Why?

Sorry, it wasn't you calling them English. Ran out of space.  My last word, if your interested. All of the flak is from the Remain crowed. They all say the vote shouldn't count, because they only voted as a protest (what?) and didn't really want to leave, so the vote shouldn't count. And it wasn't ENOUGH of a majority. And it shouldn't have been a referendum, because parliament should have voted on it. Even though they were perfectly happy when a referendum put them in. All the negativity is from the side that lost, making them look like sore losers and hypocrites. There has been very little crowing about a Leave vote, as most people didn't think it wouldn't happen. The only legitimate claim that might have is that the pound tanked. Making my dollars worth a lot more.However, since absolutely nothing has changed (at all) since last week, there was no reason for it to move, except for the currency speculators who made a fortune on it. That's not political, its financial.

Asked by: 77royals

Answered: 6/29/2016

 OK, Thanks. 

"the poorer countries of eastern Europe were, in effect, dumping their unemployable youth in the UK" 

Just my opinion, but I disagree with this quite strongly. How would such a thing even work? The UK - and London in particular - benefits from lots of highly educated young people from Europe who often (again, just my opinion) have a very strong work ethic. There are manual workers around the country and I'm led to believe that they might undercut local tradesmen owing to having much lower... personal cost bases (?)... but even then this wouldn't work for long if they didn't do a good job.  

I would guess that any ambitious young Turks might head for Germany where there is a larger Turkish community (over 1.5 million compared to 500,000 in the UK).  

This said, by the time this is over with I'm not sure how attractive we'll be as a destination anyway.

Asked by: Richallen7

Answered: 6/29/2016

        Quite a few people seem to be interested in this and to have something they want to say, so I’ll let people say what they have to say here, and then I’ll add my comment to the last one.  Several other people also made insulting or negative comments about previous posters, and I won’t publish those.  We’re a group of friends; we don’t insult one another on a personal level because we disagree about issues. 

Hey Bill - I didn't mean to argue that the the appeal of the Brexit (or Trump) was due wholly (or even mainly) to xenophobia - just that it was an element in the mix that's been getting a lot of attention. For example, from what I've read, Nigel Farage and his far-right UK Independence Party were prominent Brexit campaigners and made some fairly xenophobic appeals that resonated with some voters. 

Asked by: marbus1

Answered: 6/29/2016

 But the "Remain" side of the argument, in my view, was far, far more guilty of using fear tactics to try to control the voters than was the "Leave" side. The "Leave" campaign basically asked the voters to be bold, and take control of their lives and their future. The "Remain" campaign was almost entirely based on selling fear.  

wdr1946's thoughts are good up to a point, but he's using a straw man argument, suggesting a scenario where the USA would be one member of a trade group involving 20 other latin american countries. The UK is not a dominant power within the EU, not like the USA would be in a USA/SA group. Also, the idea that 80 million turkish citizens might descend upon the UK is fairly extreme, to say the least. People don't like to leave their cultural homes unless there are very tough circumstances forcing them to. The recent and ongoing refugee crisis is being responded to worldwide and not really comparable, in my opinion. Thanks.

Asked by: Gfletch

Answered: 6/29/2016

        Quite a few people seem to be interested in this and to have something they want to say, so I’ll let people say what they have to say here, and then I’ll add my comment to the last one.  Several other people also made insulting or negative comments about previous posters, and I won’t publish those.  We’re a group of friends; we don’t insult one another on a personal level because we disagree about issues. 

But Britain was by no means fully integrated into the EU. It never adopted the euro, for example. As for saying it "morphed" into a super state, I don't think it was ever the intention that the Common Market would never become more than that a free trade area. 

No doubt the EU made serious mistakes and the lack of democratic accountability was a major one. But the big problem, I think, was that the EU expanded to include poorer countries with less desirable populations. I doubt that the English would have been that upset about free movement/migration if this involved only the more developed western European populations. It was the inclusion of the Balkan, eastern European, and Baltic states that caused problems. 

The broader problem was the rise of neo-liberal economics and globalization. This would have been problematic even without the EU. It wasn't the EU that caused Britain to lose manufacturing; it was globalization. 

Asked by: Marc Schneider

Answered: 6/29/2016

        Quite a few people seem to be interested in this and to have something they want to say, so I’ll let people say what they have to say here, and then I’ll add my comment to the last one.  Several other people also made insulting or negative comments about previous posters, and I won’t publish those.  We’re a group of friends; we don’t insult one another on a personal level because we disagree about issues. 

"It wasn't about Xenophobia nor White Racism. It was all about control and whether voters felt that they had been treated fairly by the powers that be. " 

I agree that's true in part but it would be naïve to think that part of the motivation was not concern about how the country is changing, just as some of the Trump appeal here is about a this is not my country anymore. And, let's face it, no one would care what the elite in Brussels was doing if the economy was cranking along. It's not about control and power per se, IMO, but about what a lot of people saw as they being left behind. I suspect that this meme about an all-powerful Belgium elite is exaggerated just as conservatives in the US exaggerate how "oppressive" the federal government is.  

Much of the problem stems from the affects of globalization/neoliberal economic neoliberalism that has helped to hollow out the industrial base of England. In addition, ISIS has created a lot of insecurity reflected in a fear of migrants.

Asked by: Marc Schneider

Answered: 6/29/2016

 Well, just my opinion, but I think that ALL of that is just total and complete nonsense. I don't think you have ANY actual understanding of the issue, or at least have shown any in this post. And I don't think the vote had anything to do with how well the economy is moving.  

Biff: "If David Ortiz finishes the season at his current pace where would it rank among final seasons of Hall-of Famers?" 

His Baseball Reference WAR would be an even 7 wins pro-rated to the end of a full season. Ortiz is leading the league in both On-Base Average and Slugging. No player comes to mind in my lifetime comes close to that except one - who towers above it: Sandy Koufax. He retired with a 10.3 br-WAR in his last season, the Cy Young Award (when there was just one for both leagues), the runner-up MVP, 27 wins, a 1.73 ERA, 323 innings, and 313 strikeouts - all league leading figures.

Asked by: hotstatrat

Answered: 6/29/2016

 Yeah. . .well, I've thought about banning WAR comments from the site, although of course I won't. People use WAR as an end-point to the discussion; I have checked his WAR and this is the answer. Used in that way, WAR or Win Shares or any other measurement becomes a barrier to the development of better understanding. Once we know what the answer is, the discussion is over. The very essence of what we do is to keep reaching, keep developing, keep looking for BETTER answers.  

Can you comment on how much a team can do to correct problems (putting aside injury-related problems) with a starting pitcher during the season? Thought pops into my head as Jeff Samardzija's early season "breakthrough" seems to have skidded pretty rapidly to a halt. For a pitcher in the rotation, I suspect there are relatively few opportunities to correct problems other than on their side day. But is that right? Did the advent of video change/increase the ability to affect their performance and correct errors? Or is it pretty much limited to pitching coach conversations and then send them back out on the fifth day?

Asked by: tkoegel

Answered: 6/29/2016

 Starting pitchers go through sinking spells and periods of high effectiveness all the time; it seems to me too common to require comment. This is why I prefer to rank starting pitchers by the method I do, in which each start is about 3% of what we know about the ability level of the starting pitcher, rather than that other method that has started up, in which each start is more like 10% of the pitcher's established level of ability. 

Not sure that answers your question. There are many, many, many things that a pitcher can try to make an adjustment, thousands of things, and SOMETIMES, one time in 100, one of those small, tiny adjustments will make a tremendous difference. A pitcher can move from the first-base side of the mound to the third-base, or vice versa. A pitcher can lengthen his stride by a couple of inches, or shorten it, or rock backward a little bit more in the early part of his delivery. A pitcher can decide to slow down his pace or speed it up, or to speed it up except when there are men on base. A pitcher can decide to start using his changeup more to same-side hitters, or to stop using it except to opposite-side hitters. He can move the target on his slider from the knees to a few inches above the knees. He can go more over the top or more sidearm. He can change his warm-up routine before the game. 

Most pitchers, over the course of a career, have tried all of these things as an experiment. They find a combination that they are happy with and that works for them, and then, for some reason, it stops working for them and they lose confidence, so they go back to the workshed and tinker with the mix. SOMETIMES it helps. Sometimes you try four, five fixes that don't help, and then you find one that does.  

What is done on the side day is a product of what is discussed or thought about before the side day; what is discussed or thought about before the side day is a product of what happens on the mound. I woudn't say that the side day is the "only" opportunity to change things; every pitch is an opportunity to make a change. There is a continuous cycle of adjustments.  

Apologies if you've answered this before, but: Has it become more common over time for players with established track records of mediocrity to transform, mid-career, into superstars, and maintain that superstar level for several years? Obvious examples include Jake Arrieta, Jose Bautista, and Justin Turner. With at least Arrieta and Turner, I know they made specific adjustments that triggered the change. I seem to recall a similar story with Bautista. Intuitively, I would think that, with more people analyzing everything (both qualitatively and quantitatively), there might be more occasions where someone says, "Hey, you should make this adjustment," and it works.

Asked by: Matthew Namee

Answered: 6/29/2016

 Well. . .Justin Turner is hitting .250 with a .767 OPS and has never been a regular before, so I'm not sure why he is in the discussion with Jose Bautista and Jake Arrieta. Arrieta's transition is, I think, historically normal among pitchers, not to say common, but Red Ruffing, Whitlow Wyatt, Preacher Roe, Early Wynn, Hal Newhouser, Vern Law, Camilo Pascual, Sandy Koufax, Jamie Moyer, Curt Schilling, Randy Johnson and Chris Carpenter would all be examples of Hall of Fame or near-Hall of Fame pitchers who struggled for several years before they flipped a switch somehow and became among the best pitchers in the major leagues.  Jose Bautista's career is historically very unusual, but whether this type of unusual mid-career transformation is more common now than it has been over time would appear to be a research question to which I do not know the answer. 

The idea that all of Eastern Europe was dumping its unemployable youth on the UK is laughable. It is the kind of misinformation that has been so common. The UK, a country of 64 million people, had 270,000 non-British EU citizens enter the country in 2015, while 85,000 left, for a net in-migration of 185,000 people from the EU, representing about 0.3 percent of the population. Hardly an overwhelming trend.

Asked by: mrbryan

Answered: 6/28/2016

 OK with me.  We're not following that thread any further, whoever is right or wrong.  

Hey Bill

15 Most Recent Questions

Hey Bill, 

Not a question but a memory about Bob Hamelin, who you mentioned is a good friend of yours. The closest I ever came to seeing a no-hitter in pro ball was a game Octavio Dotel pitched for Norfolk about fifteen (20?) years ago. Hamelin broke up the no-hitter and the shutout with a home run to left center in the bottom of the ninth. 

Asked by: evanecurb

Answered: 6/16/2016

 Must have been 20. But I'll ask him if he remembers it. ..I'm sure he will. 

Hi Bill, "I think there was a random element there, but also that the Post Office management contributed to the problem by designing productivity systems that incidentally put tremendous pressure on some employees. So I don't think it was ENTIRELY random, either."..............As a retired postal clerk of 38 years I can say you pretty well nailed it.

Asked by: Sinark

Answered: 6/16/2016

Thanks.

Hey Bill As you point out, the Kansas City A's of the early 1960s are a great contrast to the Kansas City Royals of the early 1970s in their approach to player development. It seems to me that there is also a stark contrast in this area between the early 1960s A's and the late 1960s / early 1970s Oakland A's. Do you have any insight into what or who was behind the change in the A's approach to player development?

Asked by: evanecurb

Answered: 6/16/2016

I would say there are two things. One is that Charlie Finley, while he had many personal failings that he could never overcome, did learn from his mistakes of the early 1960s, and was able to make much better decisions later on because he had learned. Second, Hank Peters, who had been key to the development of the Baltimore franchise in the 1950s, came to Kansas City about 1963, and brought in with him professional scouts who laid the groundwork for the Oakland teams.

I was under the impression the expression "Going Postal" was originated to describe the year-long spree (7/'76-8/'77) of serial killer David Berkowitz, the New York City postal worker known as "Son of Sam. Your opinion, please.

Asked by: villageelliott

Answered: 6/15/2016

Essentially not correct. There were a long, long series of incidents of postal workers going on shooting sprees, and the nightly news anchors would begin their stories with a phrase like "a disgruntled postal worker from Chesterborough, Pennsylvania today burst into. . .."; the phrase "disgruntled postal worker" was in the headlines so often that it became almost routine. Berkowitz is not UN-connected, not un-related, but the Son of Sam was a huge story long before anyway realized that he was a postal worker. When he was caught, the headline was "New York police have arrested a suspect in the Son of Sam shootings."

There were 103 winners of the Rookie of the Year award from 1947 through 1997. Of these, 15 are in the Hall of Fame, four more (Rose, McGwire, Jeter, Bagwell) would be or will be; and five more could possibly be added one day (Allen, Kuenn, Oliva, Munsen; Rolen)- not that they will. On the other extreme, in my view 19 winners had poor or very mediocre careers. The rest were somewhere in between, with okay or reasonably good careers but not super-stars. Many of these were pitchers, not included in your articles, but how does this stack up against your conclusions? Thanks.

Asked by: wdr1946

Answered: 6/15/2016

Thurman Munson has absolutely no credentials to be considered a potential Hall of Famer, but let's set that aside. There are 75 Rookies of the Year in your 1947 to 1997 time frame who are in my study. (Of the other 28, I think that 26 were probably pitchers, and the other two were Willie McCovey and Bob Horner, who did not qualify for my study because they had not yet reached the 100-game threshold by the end of their rookie of the year seasons. Anyway, of those 75 rookies of the year in that time frame, the HIGHEST growth and Sustainability score, interestingly enough, was for Ken Hubbs, 1962. Obviously, I forgot to adjust my system for piloting skills. Anyway, the ten rookies of the year with the HIGHEST Player Growth and Sustainability Indexes were 1. Ken Hubbs, 2. Tony Kubek, 3. Ozzie Guillen, 4. Johnny Bench, 5. Lou Whitaker, 6. Rod Carew, 7. Pete Rose, 8. Willie Mays, 9. Luis Aparicio, and 10. Steve Sax. The rookies of the year with the LOWEST PGSI scores were 1. Sam Jethroe, 2. Walt Dropo, 3. Jackie Robinson, 4. Bob Hamelin, 5. Al Bumbry, 6. Joe Charboneau, 7. Al Dark, 8. Marty Cordova, 9. Ron Kittle, 10. Chris Sabo. Obviously the indicator is mis-directed with regard to Jackie. . .in a sense; Jackie did not have a LONG career, and did not develop tremendously from the point of his rookie season, but is a Hall of Famer. It's a special case; it is the very definition of a special case. Anyway, otherwise the system does well in distinguishing between Rookies of the Year of high potential and those of limited potential. Four of the top 10 are Hall of Famers (Bench, Carew, Mays and Aparicio) plus Pete Rose and Lou Whitaker, whereas the lowest ten PGSI contain only two careers of quality, those being Jackie and Alvin Dark; otherwise it accurately identifies the wash-outs. (Bob Hamelin is a good friend, by the way ...it hurts to list him as a washout, but he'll understand what I mean. He had a back injury that stopped him after a year or two.) Anyway, there are 13 Hall of Famers among the 75 Rookies of the year in the study from 1947, and of those 13, 9 are in the top 25 of the PGSI list, the other five being Cepeda, Ripken, Eddie Murray, Andre Dawson and Frank Robinson.

In the Washington Post this morning, Tom Boswell was talking about the importance of a closer and how some pitchers were not psychologically capable of handling the 9th inning. He also said that "studies have been done" that show that losing a lead in the 9th inning is psychologically devastating to a team and has carryover effects. 

This seems silly to me but are you aware of any such studies?

Asked by: Marc Schneider

Answered: 6/15/2016

 I am not aware of the studies to which he refers, no. 

The other day I was thinking about the phrase, 'Going Postal' and that I hadn't heard it for awhile. I looked it up. The last time someone went Postal was 2006. Do you think it was just a fluke, one way or another, or has the Post Office figured something out?

Asked by: mauimike

Answered: 6/15/2016

 Well, back at STATS, Inc, back in the 1990s, one of our key workers had had a career in the post office before he came to STATS. As a ex-postal worker he was slightly annoyed and somewhat bemused at the expression "going postal", but he did admit that one of his former co-workers had once shown up at the office with a pistol, intent on taking out the supervisors, but had been calmed down and talked out of it before anything terrible happened, and actually just put the pistol away and continued to work at the post office; it never made the news or anything. But here was the part of the story I liked; he said in passing that this had happened "before it became popular." Loved that phrase.

I think there was a random element there, but also that the Post Office management contributed to the problem by designing productivity systems that incidentally put tremendous pressure on some employees. So I don't think it was ENTIRELY random, either.  

On that doubles record...If we're looking at how long it would take the league leader to reach the career record, the next question is "are the same players around the top each year?" In the 1980s, there were 30 cases of a player stealing 65+ bases. But just three players accounted for 19 of those 30 cases (Rickey 8, Raines 6, Coleman 5). Compare that with doubles in 2006-15: there were 31 cases of a player hitting 48+ doubles, but the top three players accounted for only seven cases out of 31. (Miguel Cabrera 3, then Cano/Pedroia/Roberts 2). Maybe doubles just isn't such a repeatable skill? By the way, when Cabrera's slugging percentage was at its highest, his doubles total wasn't....

Asked by: PeteRidges

Answered: 6/15/2016

 Right. . .that's a good question. I should look at the frequency with which the same players lead the league (or make the league leaders) in doubles, and also we should look at the issue of whether there is a difference in repeatability in a "central" as opposed to a "peripheral" skill.

But in a sense, you may be assuming that there has to be something different about doubles, or the doubles record would be broken IMMEDIATELY when it becomes vulnerable. But that's not a valid assumption. The fact that the record hasn't been broken YET probably means, most probably, that it simply hasn't happened YET. In which case, making up reasons WHY it hasn't happened yet is a counter-productive exercise, because it deludes you into thinking that it won't happen when it very probably will. 

Late last night on MLB Tonight, Pedro Martinez movingly told the fascinating back-story of how he facilitated David Ortiz's signing and then regular use by the Red Sox after the Twins stunned him by releasing him. You're probably familiar with it already, but it's undoubtedly new to most of your readers, as it was for me. It's one of the nicest and most inspiring sports stories I've seen. Is Pedro being self-serving in telling it? He doesn't need to be, and given Ortiz's persistent adulation of him it's hard not to imagine that most of it's true. 9 minutes here: http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/7417714/v816331283/pedro-martinez-pays-tribute-to-big-papi

Asked by: DanDanDodgerFan

Answered: 6/15/2016

 Well, I'm not going to watch no 9-minute video, but (a) Pedro and other Dominican players were certainly involved in the Red Sox signing David Ortiz, and (b) his release by the Twins was no doubt a shock to David, but somebody on the Red Sox had definitely figured out that it was going to happen before it happened. I THINK it was Jed Hoyer who had figured out that the Twins were going to release David. We had a list of players that we thought would be available in the winter, and David was on the list.  

One thing that was key was that the Red Sox and the Twins both train in Ft. Myers, Florida. Because we train in the same city, the Twins and Red Sox Dominican players all hang around together in the spring, and all know one another as well as they know their teammates. That was a key factor in the Red Sox signing Ortiz. David had not been able to dominate American League pitching at that time, but they play really serious baseball in the Dominican, and, in the Dominican, David was regarded as Babe Ruth. We were very aware of that, and that was a good part of why we rushed in to sign him as soon as he was released by the Twins.  

Hey Bill, do you have any thoughts on Ichiro closing in on the all time hits record? Pete Rose is on record as saying he doesn't think hits in Japan should count, but it seems like if we don't let numbers from other professional leagues count than players from those leagues (Cuba, Korea, Japan) will never be able to break any career records.

Asked by: colinb

Answered: 6/15/2016

 I don't see any reason why someone from Cuba or Columbia needs to be credited with breaking a major league record. We can recognize what Ichiro has done without saying it is EXACTLY the same as getting 4500 hits in the American leagues. 

It would seem to *me* that Speaker's record should be one of the most targetable, based on an idea you gave years back -- if a career record can be reached by 18-21 seasons of league-leading performance (as the game is played right now), then it is somewhat vulnerable. (17 seasons' worth = very vulnerable; 22 seasons' worth = relatively safe). 

The doubles leader each year has what, 45-53 doubles? That would seem to make a career total of 900-1,050 doubles the gray area and 1,100 a safe career total. Speaker's total of 792 is only 15, 16 seasons of league-leading performance. Perhaps you pointed this anomaly out in one of your Abstracts. 

Of course the more general the rule, the more open we have to be to exceptions. What I find intriguing is ... Is there something in the nature of [inside-the-park Extra-Base Hits] that makes it tough to generate tons of them consistently? If so, why? 

Fun stuff.

Asked by: jemanji

Answered: 6/14/2016

 Well, I think your analysis/application of things I have written in the past is essentially correct. What I have written (and what I think is generally true) is that if a record represents less than 18 seasons worth of league-leading productivity, that history shows that that is a vulnerable record, whereas if a record represents more than 21 seasons worth of league-leading production, that record is not vulnerable.  Most records tend to settle in the area in which they represent 18 to 21 seasons worth of league-leading type production, so if the game changes so that totals drop in an area--for example, stolen bases dropping from 1985 to the present--then the record in that area will represent like 30 years worth of league-leading performance, and then nobody has a real shot to break that record.  

Regarding doubles in particular, your application of this seems to be valid. In the 1960s the normal league-leading doubles total was 41; in the 1970s it was 42, so then the doubles record was neither particularly vulnerable nor particularly safe. In the 1980s the typical league-leading doubles total increased to 44 (not counting 1981), so. . .that's still 19 years worth of production.  

In the 1990s, however, the typical league-leading doubles number (not including 1994) increased to 48; in the 2000s, to 52, and in the current decade 49. . .consistent with your statement. This SHOULD make the career doubles record vulnerable, but there is no real evidence that it HAS. No one is closing in on the doubles record, and we can't really foresee that happening in the next five-ten years.  

I looked at the issue of "something in the nature of" the category, specifically whether it changes with age. I looked at doubles hit by age by players who had long careers (2000 or more games.) Players with long careers hit 44 doubles, 11 triples and 24 home runs per 1000 career plate appearances up to age 25. Between ages 26 and 30 they hit 46 doubles, 9 triples, 29 homers. Between 31 and 35 they hit 45 doubles, 9 triples and 26 homers, and after age 36 they hit 43 doubles, 6 triples, 25 homers.  

SO then I can't see anything there that obstructs doubles from having a normal ratio in this regard. . .the ratio between a normal league-leading figure and the career record. So I go back to my original research, and I'll stand by it. I believe that the record for doubles in a career--which is an ancient record, having not changed in more than 80 years--I believe that it has become vulnerable record, and I believe that it will be broken within the next 15 to 20 years.  I may have said the same thing ten years ago and I may have been wrong then; I may have said that the record would fall before 2020, and I was wrong when I said that. But I don't see yet that my analysis was fundamentally wrong. All the evidence that I can find still stays that it is a vulnerable record, and that somebody will come along and make a run at Speaker's number.  

The announcer Josh Chetwynd was a former catcher at Northwestern. He used to quote his college coach: "A passed ball is the catcher's fault. But a wild pitch is the catcher's fault." (sic)

Asked by: PeteRidges

Answered: 6/14/2016

Perhaps that was what was meant by Catcher 22. . ..

Technical/site thing for Tkoegel and any others who might have the problem of articles seeming to disappear: Many of us (maybe all) have had it occasionally; I'm having it right now too but I know the remedy and so it's no big deal. I'm always able to make the articles 'reappear' by trying a different route to the listing of articles. Like, once you're logged-in (making sure you're logged in!), click on "Articles" at the top-left. Usually if not always, that works. (P) If not, get to the home page and see if the article is now listed there. Or vice versa, or vice-vice-versa. Hopefully the glitch will eventually be fixed, but meanwhile it still always seems possible to get everything back by doing these things.

Asked by: MarisFan61

Answered: 6/14/2016

OK.

Hey Bill, I don't know if I have a point here, but I'll try anyway. When a knuckleballer is pitching, there's a lot of passed balls charged to the catcher and thus some unearned runs. That means that the ERA of the pitcher doesn't suffer, but the catcher gets a negative stat in his resumé. Which means like we blame the catcher because of his inability to catch a rather catchable pitch... And the ERA of the one who throw the "catchable" pitch is unaffected. Isn't that unfair? Do the official scorers have enough leverage to charge a wild pitch to the pitcher when in their judgements the pitch, even if it didn't went to the dirt, was very difficult to handle? Knuckle ball is a "wild pitch" by nature, isn't it?

Asked by: jbdominicano

Answered: 6/14/2016

I dunno. Your objection is noted. . ..

Could Dick Schofield be any more different a player than his nephew Jayson Werth?

Asked by: Ben from New York

Answered: 6/14/2016

He could be if his sister had married Bobby Bonds. . ..

Hey Bill

15 Most Recent Questions

Your comment about Ruth and Meusel in the outfield reminds me of a discussion of yours a long time ago in which you explained why a right fielder will never be as fast as the fastest left fielders, nor as slow as the slowest left fielders. It remains my all time favorite of your analyses. Lou Brock: too fast to be a right fielder. 

Asked by: pbspelly

Answered: 6/7/2016

Has there ever been a right fielder who had Lou Brock type speed? I don't think so; Mookie might be as close as we have come. An outfielder who throws well enough to play right field and has world class speed is almost always going to play center. 

re "apparently the Babe played more home games in left than right after the Yanks moved to the Bronx in 1923" -- has it backwards in every respect. The comment wasn't explicit about whether it meant just at home or overall, but either way, it was more games in [i]right[/i], and if indeed he meant at home (as it seemed he did), it was [i]extremely[/i] more games in right. Before the Yanks moved to the Bronx, Babe did play more in left, both at home and on the road. This is all very easy to check, on baseball-reference.com: all one needs to do is look on any year's "Game Log" page at the "Position" column, look for the strings of "LF" games -- and invariably (without any exception at all, I think), those are road games. BTW I think where I first learned of this pattern with Ruth was one of your books.

Asked by: MarisFan61

Answered: 6/6/2016

 Right. . .Ruth played RIGHT FIELD in Yankee Stadium, I think, because Bob Meusel had the greatest outfield arm of his generation. In Yankee Stadium the super arm was of the most use in LEFT field, because the left field wall was so far from home plate, whereas in almost all other parks the super arm was of most use in RIGHT field. So Meusel played left field in Yankee Stadium, right field on the road, so Ruth did the opposite. I think. 

Courtesy of BB-ref Play Index... Hitters with 90+ RBIs at lead-off since 1940: 

http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/IMdWU 

Darrin Erstad: 100 in 2000 (100 total) 

Alphonso Soriano: 99 in 2002 (102 total) 

Nomar: 98 in 1997 (98 total) 

Ellsbury: 97 in 2011 (105 total) 

Johnny Damon: 91 in 2004 (94 total) 

Grady Sizemore: 90 in 2008 (90 total) 

Asked by: jgf704

Answered: 6/6/2016

 Lot of Red Sox there. . . .

In response to manhattanhi - Darin Erstad had exactly 100 RBI as a leadoff hitter in 2000. Soriano had 99 as a leadoff hitter in 2002.

Asked by: Brian G.

Answered: 6/6/2016

 Thanks. 

Hey Bill, Mookie Betts now has 42 rbis. Do you know if a lead-off hitter has ever had 100 rbis?

Asked by: manhattanhi

Answered: 6/6/2016

 Jacoby Ellsbury had 105 RBI as the leadoff man for the 2011 Red Sox.. ..actually 97 as a leadoff man, 8 when he was batting in other spots. I would assume that other hitters have done it as well.  Possibly Alfonso Soriano in 2002 and/or 2005.  

There has been recent discussion here about the historically bad Phillies and As teams of the 20-50s, or later. (The pain eased a tad when the As left town.) 

I remember By Saam announcing for the Phils rom when I first started listening, the mid 50s. 

Well from the late 30s until the As left town, he announced the home games of both teams on the radio. Later all of the Phils games. And the Phils didn't get good until '63 or so. Okay, there was that freaky, anomalous period from 48-52 or so but he saw some really bad teams. 

How he survived, I don't know. I figure he might have seen more favorite team losses than anyone outside of Connie Mack. Oh, gee, another Philadelphia name.

Asked by: SteveN

Answered: 6/6/2016

 Thanks. 

 Looking at a 1940 census, baseball did do a pretty good job in having teams in large cities. Philadelphia was the 3rd largest city with 1.9 million. St Louis was 8th and Boston 9th. Author Theodore White ("Making of a President" books) said growing up in Boston it was a matter of faith they would reach 1 million people one day. Lack of airplane travel probably made Los Angeles and San Francisco impracticable. NFL teams in the 1950s took 3 day train trips to the West Coast. 

 A couple of things: 1) Ban Johnson put teams in NL teams when he formed the AL because that's where the fans were. 2) A number of owners were "sportsmen and civic leaders" in the 1950s, feeling it was more an obligation to own the local team. In the late 1950s New York City tried to get teams like the Phillies, Pirates and Reds to move there but the owners were happy where they were, bad stadiums and all. So they went the threatened "third league" and then settled for an expansion team. 

https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab17.txt

Asked by: ZachSmith

Answered: 6/6/2016

 Well, I would argue with you about one little point. The 1950s was when the "sportsmen and civic leaders" feeling about ownership of a team ENDED. That was the dominant thinking in the 20s, 30s and 40s. In the 1950s people began to think about baseball teams in terms of their present and potential economic value, rather than as civic responsibilities. And, in all likelihood, many owners of teams in the 1920s and 1930s WERE losing money on the teams every year or making very little money, because attendance at the games was minimal, broadcast revenue was minimal or non-existant, and travel expenses were substantial. 

A couple of days behind the Harrison Richard comment, but I played college ball against R. A. Dickey's father, Harry, a very fine catcher. Real name. Passed last year at 63. Good guy.

Asked by: r44fletch

Answered: 6/6/2016

 Thanks.  (Confirmed on line that Dickey's father, Harry Lee Dickey, passed away on June 16 of last year.) 

RE: "Out of left field" -- supposedly it was West Side Grounds in Chicago (where the Cubs played the last time they won the World Series) which had the Neuropsychiatric Institute beyond the left field section. However, that asylum wasn't built until the 1930s when a) the Cubs had long since moved to the friendly confines and b) the idiom "out of left field" had already been repeatedly used in print. It's also been alleged that the phrase was used to describe Yankee fans who bought seats in left field when Babe Ruth was playing right field -- but apparently the Babe played more home games in left than right after the Yanks moved to the Bronx in 1923.

Asked by: ajmilner

Answered: 6/6/2016

Thanks. 

Here's a quick-and-dirty way to determine the best #5 starter of all time. Only two teams have ever had 5 pitchers with 16+ wins: the 1923 Yankees and the 1998 Braves. So the best #5 starter of all time is either Bob Shawkey or Donna Meagle.

Asked by: PeteRidges

Answered: 6/6/2016

 I'm afraid I'll have to take your word for it. 

Regarding the best holder ever, the answer is Caleb Hurd. Holder for Virginia Tech the late 90s. In the nascent years of the internet some friends and I started a web page touting his candidacy for the 1999 Heisman Trophy, and giving him most of the credit for Tech's successes, as well as Shayne Graham's field goals and PATs, and possibly the eradication of polio and the victory in the first gulf war. This coincided with Tech's undefeated regular season and got Hurd mentioned in Sports Illustrated's end-of-year all-NCAA team. 

Hurd then went on to a distinguished career as Jeff Gordon's catch can man (apparently something to do with fueling a NASCAR car).

Asked by: jwilt

Answered: 6/6/2016

Caleb was a glory hog. We need more of a team player here. 

Hey Bill - is there any overriding reason why major league baseball kept 2 teams in St. Louis, Boston, and Philadelphia for decades even though it appeared obvious that those cities could not support 2 teams? Why did it take until the 1950s for teams to start moving? Was it simply inertia?

Asked by: DFleitz

Answered: 6/6/2016

 The form of the question assumes that MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL made this decision, which is entirely untrue, and reflects one of two fatal flaws in your understanding of the problem.  The decisions to stay in St. Louis were made by the owners of the St. Louis Browns and the Cardinals. The decisions to stay in Boston were made by the owners of the Red Sox and the Braves. "Major League Baseball" was not an entity which had any impact on these decisions.  

Also, from the standpoint of these teams, there wasn't really any decision, since they mostly did not perceive moving a franchise to be an option.  

Who is the best mop up reliever ever? The best 11th man in the NBA? Here's a good one: Who is the best extra point/field goal holder?

Asked by: 3for3

Answered: 6/5/2016

 I confess; it was me. Those lousy kickers get all the glory . . .

Ellsbury had a straight steal of home on April 22nd of this year. Other recent straight steals of home from what I've seen on youtube: 

Jonathan Villar 7/30/13 

Everth Cabrera 7/15/12 (to tie a game with 2 out in the 9th) 

Ellsbury 4/26/09 

Also, Jayson Werth and David Peralta have stolen home on throws back to the pitcher.

Asked by: RipCity

Answered: 6/5/2016

 Thank you. 

Paul Ryan called the latest Trump verbal grenade "out of left field." Does this phrase conjure a particular baseball image in your mind? Somebody told me it originates from the extreme unexpectedness of a put-out throw from left to first. I kind of doubt that's the origin -- does this even happen? -- but I like the image of Ryan loafing to first on a single only to... Wait, what?

Asked by: PB

Answered: 6/5/2016

 I believe that the expression "out in left field" or "out of left field" actually has a more memorable origin than that. I remember reading in a SABR publication 20-some years ago that there was actually a baseball field somewhere that had what was then called an insane asylum just outside the left field wall, and the patients (then called inmates) would hang out the windows and watch the game. . . .hence, out in left field meant in the insane asylum. Don't know if that's been debunked or not; it sounds too good to be true, but I kind of think that it is. 

Hey Bill

15 Most Recent Questions

Bill, I'm not saying you're WRONG about a Sophomore of the Year Award in the 1980s, but according to this page the "official" (BBWAA) award started in 1953 and ended in 1962. Might have been the only awards ever won by Dick Hyde and Harry Anderson... 

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/awards/sophomore_of_the_year.shtml

Asked by: robneyer

Answered: 5/29/2016

 No doubt somebody else picked up the award and gave it to somebody. Chris Sabo, probably. No more Harry Dick jokes, Neyer. 

Dear Bill, We have Rookie of the Year for players transitioning from the minor to the majors and the MVP & Cy Young for players at the pinaicle of the game. There is a huge untapped area in-between. How about an award for the most improved player - or the most improved player at each position? (Just throwing that idea out there for whoever may be inspired by it.) 

This award would have the added benefit of having voters lean towards giving the MVP award to a more established outstanding player as a less established player would be a stronger candidate for a most improved award.

Asked by: hotstatrat / Jhonny Carter

Answered: 5/28/2016

 I think baseball has had a Sophomore of the Year and a Most Improved Player for as long as I have been a fan.  They're just minor awards. . .not sure who gives them or where it is recorded. But I think they are given.  I remember Ron Santo winning the Sophomore of the Year award in 1961, and then somebody else winning it in the 1980s, and I thought "Oh, do they still give that award?"   

Yesterday, my hometown Diamondbacks and their unique manager, Chip Hale - he of the 'let's put a catcher in center field' school of thinking - decided our best option for leadoff hitter was Nick Ahmed. Can you remember a worse leadoff hitter choice? Who would do this? Are we secretly on some kind of reality show? Perhaps this is a test to see if that whole 'your lineup order doesn't matter' is really true. Arghhh

Asked by: rtayatay

Answered: 5/28/2016

 Well. .. tone down the rhetoric a little; this isn't a call in show, and I don't want to start a pissing contest with Mr. Hale. But I looked up the lineup for the game, and it does LOOK odd. I don't really understand what the logic of it would be. Also, a lineup like that might cost you. . .or, I don't know, possibly .02 runs a game or something.  

Re: Starting pitching rankings. As of May 26, Clayton Kershaw is at 632.1. Going back, no #1 ranked pitcher on that date is as high since Pedro Martinez in 2001. Pedro's score on 5/26/2001 was 671.19. Yikes. Actually, no pitcher has been over 595 on May 26 since Randy Johnson in 2002. 

Clayton Kershaw is good at pitching.

Asked by: DavidHeflin

Answered: 5/28/2016

 Thanks. 

I have two problems with the pitch/FX, replay boxes, whatever you call them. 

1) I am an old fart and I hate change, especially in baseball. And I spent several years umpiring. I suspect this is (these are?) the larger of my two problems. 

2) The box shown on TV is two-dimensional, and the strike zone is three-dimensional. Umpires have been trained for years to call the whole zone, over the plate, not where the catcher catches the ball, and along comes this system that displays ball or strike based on where the catcher catches the ball. I may be wrong about how that works, but that's what it looks like on TV. That's a substantial change in the zone, much larger than the proposed raising of the bottom for next year, and nothing is said about it.

Asked by: pob14

Answered: 5/28/2016

 Well, not to be argumentative, but that's just making excuses. We all know this; everybody in the audience already knows what you just told them. It doesn't change anything. Umpires sometimes miss calls. Some of those calls are critical.  We shouldn't ABUSE them for that, but we also shouldn't alibi for them and pretend it doesn't happen. 

Steve9753 repeats a fallacy about why the Canadiens dominated for decades. Although there were two periods where teams had territorial rights (1936-1943 and 1963-1969) they key factor was the players chosen were those that had not signed a C Form , which was almost all the good ones. No players in the 1936-43 territorial era ever played a game for Montreal. When the amateur draft was instituted in 1963, the C form system still existed (and sometimes 11 year olds like Bobby Orr signed them). No players 1963-67 played for Montreal. Finally in 1968 a goalie named Michel Plasse did play, and was sold for cash. In 1969 the NHL did away with the C form, drafted 20 year olds. Two Montreal territorials, Rejean Houle and Marc Tardif, played and were good players. 

  Montreal was smarter than other teams. They traded veteran talent to get top draft picks from expansion teams (Guy LaFleur). They got GMs like Frank Selke and Sam Pollack to run things. 

http://www.habseyesontheprize.com/2008/12/2/678036/debunking-the-canadiens-fr

Asked by: ZachSmith

Answered: 5/28/2016

 OK. 

Referring to steve9753's assertion that the Montreal Canadiens had territorial rights to the top two players from Quebec every year, this is definitely untrue. 

Territorial rights only applied to unsigned 20 year olds. Any teenager anywhere could be signed by any team, at any time. For example, the Boston Bruins signed a 13 year old Bobby Orr even though he lived 300 miles from Toronto. Many Quebec boys were signed by other NHL teams, Jean Ratelle, Marcel and Jean Pronovost, Leo Boivin, Real Chevrefils, and others.

Asked by: DavidTodd

Answered: 5/28/2016

 Yes, apparently several other people are going to tell us that in just a moment. I dunno. . ..you can tell me anything about hockey, I can't argue. 

Reading "The Only Rule is it has to Work" by Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller. I highly recommend it. When reading the book i began to feel sorry for the writer's -they had to not only try new strategies, but also learn a new culture. Do teams teach or explain what the culture is like when new hires come on board? What was it like in the early years of you doing consulting for teams?

Asked by: Cooper

Answered: 5/28/2016

 I don't know that you can explain a culture; you just have to pick it up.  How good you are at picking it up probably depends a lot on how good you are at picking up cultural signals in general. In my case, not all that good. It was not easy for me.  

Bill, 

I believe in the past you've indicated that minor league stats are an accurate predictor of major league success if you know how to interpret them. How big a factor is sample size in the accuracy of such predictions. I'm thinking particularly of Julio Urias, who has crushed the PCL but with limited innings. 

Thanks.

Asked by: JFK

Answered: 5/28/2016

 Urias is a pitcher. I don't think I have ever argued that minor league PITCHING stats will project major league performance.  

Bill, 

You and your readers here may already know this video - a wonderful promotional video by the Pacific Coast League from 1946. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPv41VZ68yE 

Could the better PCL teams, like the Oaks in 1948 or some of the better Seals teams have been at least as good as some of the weaker Major League teams like the Browns or Senators or Phillies ?

Asked by: MidnighttheCat

Answered: 5/28/2016

 As late as 1946, I would not think so. In the 1930s, maybe 1933, 1935, there were probably Pacific Coast League teams which were comparable to the Phillies of that era.  By 1946 the PCL was probably not at the same strength it had been in the thirties. 

Bill, the Montreal Canadians were given territorial rights to the best 2 Quebec players for decades. This allowed them to dominate the NHL.

Asked by: Steve9753

Answered: 5/26/2016

 Thanks. 

I remember my grandparents going to Dayton games when Austin Kearns and Adam Dunn were playing there. They had season tickets for several years. The inevitable call-ups for quality players ruin the experience over the long haul. 

It certainly did help increase the fan base by having the minor league team located in what is essentially the greater Cincinnati area. The Reds decline eventually washed that out. 

Do major league teams care at all about minor league attendance? I would think that was way down the list.

Asked by: Christopher

Answered: 5/26/2016

 It's well down the list. Minor league attendance is the local operator's responsibility, his package. If the operation is well enough run, the minor league operator CAN and will make money.  But it's his job.  It's not a focus for the major league team. 

Watching the Cubs try to rally in the 9th the other day, it occurred to me that the graphics they use to show where the pitch crossed the plate (or in this case didn't) may not be helpful for the popularity of the game. 

The closer was able to get a pitch a good 2-3 inches off the plate called a strike. highlighting that fact the TV broadcast isn't really doing us any favors. The batter had to start swinging at pitches that were outside... And the result was predictable. 

If they're never going to use systems like this to call balls and strikes is there really a benefit? We ask the home plate umpire to make these determinations from an awkward angle.

Asked by: Christopher

Answered: 5/26/2016

 Well. . .it is easier to crawl out of a canyon than it is to leap. People like to say that the camera box isn't perfect--failing to mention that the umpires aren't perfect, either, and that of the two, the camera box makes fewer mistakes. The cameras are making the umpires better, but it's a slow process. I don't see ANY argument for turning back. 

Speaking of max effort pitches (and "smoking guns"), there was a fascinating story in this morning's New York Times. Researchers looked at 83 pitchers who had Tommy John surgery and compared them to 83 who had not. Age, weight, height, experience, innings, handedness, starter/reliever, fastball/curve/change-up speeds were all very close for the two groups, but the TJ group threw 47% fastballs and the non-injured group threw just under 40% fastballs. They estimated a 2% increase in risk for each 1% increase in number of fastballs, the only significant effect they found. Does this seem believable to you and, if so, do you think that teams should encourage pitchers to increase their use of off-speed pitches? 

Asked by: Robinsong

Answered: 5/22/2016

 It sounds like an interesting article, and I will look it up. 

Hey Bill, 

In re: hometown draft picks. Didn't some of the other sports have "territorial rights" to local stars at one time? I think that's how the Philly teams wound up with Wilt Chamberlain and Chuck Bednarik. Did baseball ever have such a rule? 

Thanks

Asked by: AJD600

Answered: 5/22/2016

 Sort of. From about 1920 until about 1940 MINOR LEAGUE teams had territorial rights to players from their region.  When the Cleveland Indians signed Bob Feller in 1936, the Des Moines team protested to the commissioner that, since Feller was from their area, they had the sole rights to sign him.  The commissioner ruled that the Des Moines team was correct (I think. . .this is from memory). . .the commish said that the Des Moines team was correct, but nonetheless allowed Feller to stay with Cleveland, although I think he did fine the Indians for violating the territorial rights of the minor league team.  

I think we should divvy up rights to players based on height, eye color and religion. For example, the Dodgers would have the rights to draft blue-eyed Methodists more than 6-foot-4, and also Jewish players from 5-7 to 5-9. There'd be lawsuits over a guy's exact height, and we'd have to hire specialists to determine whether a guy's eyes were blue or green. It would be a lot of fun.  

Hey Bill

15 Most Recent Questions

" I think you could find many times when a team drafted a hometown player first and it worked out great. " 

Joe Mauer leaps to mind, actually.

Asked by: doncoffin

Answered: 5/21/2016

 Everybody's mind, apparently. I've had like 30 of these. . .

Thanks for illustrating the "straw" shape of the minor league system. Could one Major League team, on its own, shuffle its system into a different shape, or would it have to be done by all the teams simultaneously?

Asked by: rtallia

Answered: 5/21/2016

 It would have to be done in a co-ordinated way by many or most of the teams. 

A few years ago you wrote something about how many people, even "experts," are always trying to find the one BIG cause of a particular problem, change, event, etc...the "smoking gun," if you will. And I think you said at that time that people are just unable, many of them, to admit to the fact that there could easily be six or seven reasons why something occurs, each one of which has SOME impact. I keep coming across, both in baseball and not in baseball, instances of reporters saying, in effect, "well, because none of these possible causes I've come up with is the "smoking gun," then essentially why this certain event happened is a total mystery to me." It's really starting to drive me nuts....do you remember writing about this or am I just dreaming? (btw, Posnanski had a great piece on Leicester City winning the Premier League that is a perfect example of the opposite of this "smoking gun" type of thinking..)

Asked by: rtallia

Answered: 5/21/2016

 No, I don't remember writing anything like that, but it seems consistent with my general approach. Our minds search for linear patterns; THIS causes THAT. It's not really a choice; it's just the way our minds work. Unless we fight against it, we WILL search for a single cause for an event which may have many contributing factors. I'm sure I have made the same mistake myself many times. Thanks. 

Sure, I can explain it—you could have been even more inclusive than you were, since "Houdini" not only refers to baseball but non-baseball situations: a kid who gets his big toe stuck in the bathtub faucet "pulls a Houdini" in extracting himself, but you were (I still think) the first to apply the term to a very specific pitching situation. If successful, your usage will drive out other baseball usages, as you have tried to do, in criticizing people for misusing it (applying it to non-bases-loaded situations, or more than no outs, etc.) 

Asked by: 337

Answered: 5/21/2016

 Oh no. . .I wasn't criticizing anybody for misusing the term. I don't own the language; other people can use terms however they see fit. It is true that a specific usage will drive out a general, loosely defined usage in some situations, but we haven't reached that point yet, not is it clear that we will.  

On the subject of AAA baseball these days, John Feinstein wrote a book a few years ago (covering the 2012 season) mainly about life in the International League. The title was Where Nobody Knows Your Name, or something close to that. Have you read it? If not, I think you'd like it. It's a good book, but as somebody who has read a lot about the minors in their glory days, I found it discouraging, for the reasons you mentioned. The story was NOT about who might win the Triple Crown in the International, or who was in first place, or who might win 20 games; it seemed to be all about watching the waiver wires and the injury lists, wondering who might get an emergency call-up and a chance to spend two weeks in a major league dugout. (At a major league salary, too, of course.) I guess fans in those cities might go to games to see guys who might be real major leaguers in the near future, but I can't imagine that they actually care about the teams any more. 

Asked by: BobGill

Answered: 5/21/2016

 There is more loyalty to the teams at some lower levels in the minors. But. . .yes. Go to a Florida State League game some time. Total attendance: Wives, girlfriends and scouts. That's all.  

If I understand this right, a major change in the last few decades has been an increase in the percentage of max-effort pitches, to where it now approaches 100. My question is, back when starters tended to coast a bit with, say, the bases empty, then bear down with runners in scoring position, does this show up in the numbers as a sort of anti-clutch effect for the hitters in those big spots? To put it another way, were pitchers once comparatively more effective in big spots, and has that since evened out?

Asked by: PB

Answered: 5/21/2016

 Well, those are big questions and serious questions, but they may be too big for me to try to take on in this space. For one thing, the coasting vs. Max effort effect does not end suddenly, but rather deteriorates gradually over a period of 100 years, thus making it more difficult to study, and also, this process is not finished yet; we are not yet at the point where all the pitches are max effort.  

Bryce Harper is having a weird year. His batting average is just .254. But his on base percentage is .455. If he keeps this up (which I doubt he will), he'd have to be one of a very select group of people to play a full season with an on base percentage 200 points higher than their batting average. Even noted walkers Ted Williams and Rickey Henderson never did that, nor did low average Adam Dunn. Besides Barry Bonds (who I assume holds the record with a 247 point difference in 2004), do you know of any others who had a 200 point difference between batting average and on base percentage?

Asked by: pablo

Answered: 5/21/2016

 Bonds' .247 gap is the widest. Of the six widest gaps ever, five are by Bonds--.247 in 2004, .212 in 2002, .204 in 2007, etc. . .doesn't matter. The only one of the six which is NOT Bonds is .205, by Yank Robinson in 1890; he hit .229 with a .434 on base percentage in 98 games, but 400+ plate appearances, which was the cutoff I used. Outside the top 6, we have Jack Crooks, 1892 (.213 and .400, 187-point gap), then Bonds again, then Wes Westrum, 1951, Gene Tenace, 1977, Eddie Yost, 1956, Gene Tenace anyone, 1980, Roy Cullenbine, 1947, and Jack Clark, 1990.  

Hey Bill 

We all know you were a Kansas City fan growing up, even if we can only imagine your pain - do you actually remember the 1959 game when the A's walked 8 guys with the bases loaded in the same inning? And if you do - well, gosh. Were there nightmares afterwards? 

As far as I can tell, while the four consecutive bases loaded walks in a row has happened at least half a dozen times, Delabar was the first pitcher to perform this feat all by himself.

Asked by: Magpie

Answered: 5/21/2016

 No, I don't remember the game at the time. I've read about it. . ..

(This might be a better question for Dewan or for someone who follows the Astros closely.) Jose Altuve is tearing it up this season--but he's listed as being worth -5 runs for baserunning in the Total Runs section here. He's stolen 15 bases and only been caught once; so that's not where the problem is. What's he doing? Is he repeatedly not taking the extra base? I tried to find a tally of this year's TOOTBLANs, but I haven't succeeded yet... It's got to be something pretty rough to be that far below 0 baserunning runs when you're such a prolific and efficient thief. Any clarity y'all?

Asked by: Edward

Answered: 5/21/2016

 I am very clear that there are no such things as TOOTBLANs. 

Have you actually researched whether more players are promoted directly from Double A to the majors now than in 1980? I haven't noticed that that's true.

Asked by: manhattanhi

Answered: 5/21/2016

 I'm confident that it is true, but no, I haven't researched it. 

Different sport, but hard to argue with the Cavaliers taking LeBron #1

Asked by: 3for3

Answered: 5/21/2016

 True. 

In re: drafting local players with the first pick, the Minnesota Twins drafted St. Paul native Joe Mauer with the top pick in 2001 (instead of Mark Prior, a consensus sure thing at the time.) That pick turned out to be not-so-bad.

Asked by: JohnPontoon

Answered: 5/21/2016

 Had some good years. 

JBJ? outfield throws. 

I'm stumped.

Asked by: DavidTodd

Answered: 5/21/2016

 Me, too. No idea what you are referring to. 

Bill, according to ESPN's Jayson Stark, MLB is on the verge of making two rules changes. In a report filed on Friday, Stark says that the league's competition committee reportedly agreed to alter the strike zone and eliminate the four-pitch intentional walk during their meetings with owners this week. Those two changes could be implemented as early as the 2017 season.  

According to Stark, inconsistency in calling the strike zone is why the league is looking to make changes. He says the strike zone will be raised to the top of the knee, because umpires have taken a liking to calling pitches that were below the knees entirely. 

The change in the intentional-walk rule would end the traditional practice of requiring the pitcher to lob four balls outside the strike zone. Instead, a team could signify it wants to issue an intentional walk, and the hitter would be immediately sent to first base, sources said. 

Your thoughts? Thanks. 

Asked by: garywmaloney

Answered: 5/21/2016

 I don't answer open-ended questions. 

Hey Bill, re the Matt Bush incident yesterday: when a team drafts a local player first overall--as the Padres did with him all those years ago--isn't that almost always a mistake? Didn't the Rangers do that with David Clyde too?

Asked by: manhattanhi

Answered: 5/17/2016

 Oh, God; what did Matt Bush do now?  I don't think there is such a rule, no. I think you could find many times when a team drafted a hometown player first and it worked out great. 

Hey Bill

15 Most Recent Questions

Do the minors employ the shift to the same extent as the majors do? And does that factor into a team's decision to bring up a player from the minors? I could imagine someone saying that he doesn't face the shift in the minors but he will in the show. Or is that really not that important? Thanks.

Asked by: RanBricker

Answered: 5/14/2016

 No, they don't. It's just starting to happen. ..they're like three years behind the majors in this area, maybe five years.  It's not really a factor. The player just has to make adjustments as he advances, but I don't think you can deny him the opportunity to advance based on something like this. 

I agree about the "not happening now". The top 5 high pitch counts since 2009 are all those with pitchers chasing no-hitters (Jax 149, Freak 148, Morrow 137, Fiers 134, Johan 134... doesn't seem the kind of list you really want to join, after the fact). Otherwise the "ceiling" is 133 pitches in a game, which makes it pretty hard for a manager to let a pitcher do that while also allowing a high number of walks. Sonny Gray got 7 walks, 10 K, on 119 pitches. So, I agree that we're not going to see those Nuke Laloosh games any more.

Asked by: tangotiger

Answered: 5/14/2016

 Not sure who Jax was. . .Edwin Jackson? Luke Jackson? Thanks.  

First of all, we're talking about a 5 game sample (9 innings, 20 Ks), so it's quite possible after another 10 of these will yield different data over time. 

But perhaps 20 strikeouts not only requires lively action on pitches, but also pinpoint location? The zero walks may just be a second indicator that for 9 innings these guys managed to put the ball wherever they wanted, whenever they wanted. 

Doesn't that seem to be related? 

Asked by: Christopher

Answered: 5/14/2016

 One could equally well make an argument that it is related or that it is not.  It's not unreasonable, but there's just not a lot you can do with a sample of five. 

Nolan Ryan struck out 19 and walked 10 (1974, 58 batters!). Two years later: 18 and 9, 41 batters. Bob Feller had 17-9 and 18-7 SO-BB games. And don't forget Nuke Laloosh in the minors, setting league records.

Asked by: tangotiger

Answered: 5/13/2016

 Right, but that's not happening NOW. Ryan would throw 170 pitches in a game, and then throw 180 pitches three days later. That's not happening now. In the era of the 20-strikeout performances, that cannot happen.  

Dear baseball stat industry - 

I love what you have provided us, but I have a small request. When we are searching for a player with a name common with other players, you generally provide the LAST team that player played for. Unless that player is still active, the last team a player played for is often the team we are least likely to remember he played for. Players with long careers frequently end up playing for about four different teams the last three years of their career (more or less). Those aren't the teams we associate with that player. Could you please indicate the team the player played with the LONGEST?

Asked by: hotstatrat / John Carter

Answered: 5/13/2016

 I think you're in the wrong room.  

Hey Bill, 

Baseball historian Bruce Allardice wrote an item in the latest SABR Research Journal alleging that the White Sox threw the 1920 AL pennant. He makes a pretty compelling case, pointing to a very suspicious seven-game losing streak that began after August 26, among other games. And apparently Eddie Collins said the Sox won when the Indians won, and lost when the Indians lost, to maintain Cleveland's lead in the standings. Do you buy this? 

As an Indians fan, I'm not sure why any of this should bother me in 2016, but after all, the franchise only has two World Championships. If 1920 is tainted, and Veeck was moving the fences in and out in 1948...

Asked by: SamJethroe5

Answered: 5/13/2016

 Regarding 1948, Veeck's moving of the fences, if it actually happened, did not HELP the Indians; it hurt them.  The Indians were just 48-30 at home (seven games worse than the Red Sox, and also worse than the Yankees), but were 49-28 on the road (eight games BETTER than the Red Sox.) They won the pennant on the road, not in Cleveland. 

Regarding Allardice' research, which I have not seen. . .I would keep an open mind until I read the article, but it doesn't sound like anything based on your summary. A seven-game losing streak is never inherently suspicious; it's a common event. The time frame that you mention (beginning late August) is the time frame when the news of the fix the previous year was breaking, which had to be a major distraction for the team. And as to Eddie Collins' comment. . .that's just the kind of thing that people say. It doesn't mean shit to tree.  

Reading about old crime cases, people put 2 and 2 together and get 7 all the time. When a person is SUSPECTED of an event, other people who know him start finding all kinds of things suspicious. Just read a book about a murder in Kansas in 1925; the husband was (of course) suspected of the crime, and neighbors stepped forward to say all kinds of stupid things. People in the area remained CERTAIN he was guilty, although there was basically zero evidence against him. In my view it is important to learn to filter out these "look at that! look at this!" type of comments, and remain focused on the facts.  

When Curt Schilling suddenly experienced a dramatic velocity drop in his last season, the culprit was (he believed, after the surgeon discovered it) a torn labrum. My experience on injuring mine in Little League was similar: a sudden, permanent velocity drop. A significant tear to the labrum renders the shoulder structure unsound in a way that isn't necessarily true of many other shoulder injuries, and doesn't really heal. My belief is that a lot of pitchers who experience something like this are dealing with a major labral issue. (My memory of Ball Four is that Bouton's case was an elbow injury, though it's been a while since I read it.)

Asked by: RipCity

Answered: 5/13/2016

 Thanks. 

Is Jackie Bradley Jr. a streakier hitter than most?

First 24 games of 2015 (78 PA): .121/.254/.172/.426

Next 25 games of 2015 (90 PA): .446/.489/.952/1.441

Next 25 games of 2015 (94 PA): .138/.247/.263/.510

First 16 games of 2016 (50 PA): .222/.271/.315/.586

Next 17 games of 2016 (69 PA): .406/.449/.859/1.309

Asked by: jgf704

Answered: 5/13/2016

There is something unusual going on there. Jackie's career batting average is just .229 with a .687 OPS, but he has had two absolutely phenomenal hot streaks. He has a 17-game hitting streak, and he just drove in 13 runs in a three-game series, which is kind of an unusual thing. And he was red hot before the series. This could be the optimist in me speaking, but it seems to me, intuitively, that these phenomenal hot streaks must be a kind of proof that Bradley's actual hitting ability is much better than his career to this point demonstrates. It seems to me that if you took a hitter whose batting average, on base percentage and slugging percentage were close to Bradley's career norms (that would be Brandon Inge, John Buck, Kevin Elster or Bob Tillman), it seems to me that there would be zero random clusters in there (zero hot streaks) which matched what Bradley has done, not once but twice. It would seem to me that only a much better hitter than this would ever get THIS hot due to the natural clustering of events. Thus, I take it as proof that he is actually a much better hitter than he has demonstrated over a sustained period of time, but just has been held back by some sort of unusual hickeys.

Hey, Bill! When a young pitcher comes along who throws real hard, and then "throws his arm out" in a couple of years, what exactly is the injury that takes so much off his fast ball? Jim Bouton threw hard when he came up, and wrote about feeling a "pop" in his arm once...which sounds like a tendon or a ligament injury. Steve Avery threw hard for the Braves when he first came up, and lost his speed. When a player like that...Jim Maloney, Kerry Wood, etc....loses that great fast ball, is it usually the same kind of injury? Or is a strong arm one of those rarely understood things that just "come along" now and again, and any number of different kinds of injuries can take it away?

Asked by: Davidg32

Answered: 5/12/2016

My guess would be that any number of injuries COULD eliminate a pitcher's ability to throw hard, but that there are probably a small number of specific injuries that would account for most of the cases. You have a lot of different muscles in your shoulder. Probably a tear to any one of those muscles would take 10 miles off your fastball. A rib cage injury or an elbow injury could probably also stop you. I'm not knowledgeable in the area.

Max Scherzer walked none in his 20-strikeout game last night, and if I'm not mistaken, the same was true in Kerry Wood's game and both of Roger Clemens' games. And if, as I seem to recall, Randy Johnson also struck out 20 in one game, I think the same was true for him as well. Intuitively that combination -- 20 strikeouts, no walks -- seems very unlikely. Do you think it's just a fluke resulting from such a small sample size, or could there be some actual connections between those two extremes? 

Asked by: BobGill

Answered: 5/12/2016

Well, I'd put it this way. You can't strike out 20 people and walk 10, because that's just too many pitches. It's hard to imagine that you could strike out 20 and walk 6. There is THAT connection between them, at least. There could be another, more subtle connection in there somewhere. . . .

Hey Bill, When everything is taken into account, how do you see Bud Selig's legacy as commissioner?

Asked by: mtrof87

Answered: 5/11/2016

I think he's the greatest commissioner any league has ever had.

HeyBill, re: baseball fandom. My twins are college seniors, and Bartolo "Big Sexy" Colon is a worshipped cult anti-hero at their school. Oldest guy in the majors, fattest guy in the majors, the most awkward batter in the majors, and 50 Ws since he turned 40. Every start is Bartolo Day, banners out, "Big Sexy" t-shirts and a packed party in the rec center, hanging on every pitch. The phone call I got right after the home run (watch the Mets announcer's call if you haven't) was...one of the baseball moments of my life. My daughters weren't even happy, they were blubbering, overcome -- and baseball fans for life. Any anecdotes from his 2008 year in Boston? An example might be that he has identical twins, or that he would steal your dessert in the cafeteria every day.

Asked by: OldBackstop

Answered: 5/9/2016

Perhaps I should just say that our experience with him in Boston was not a happy one, and leave it at that.

"Some other channel was showing a long documentary about the OJ trial...Was that the same thing?" I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been--O.J.: Made in America is playing festivals before it plays ESPN. The thing this film does is take what became a big cultural joke at a certain point--Kato Kaelin, Jay Leno's "Ito Dancers," Top Ten Lists, etc.--and revisits how really grim and stunning and tragic the story was initially. And it unpacks so much history. Early on, you see a photo of O.J. and Nixon; late in the film, O.J. and Trump.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 5/5/2016

 Sounds like something I would hate, honestly. I KNOW how grim it was; I don't need to be educated about that.  

I know you probably aren't a Premiere Leagues fan (nor am I), but I thought of what you said years ago about long shots winning the pennant. If someone offers you 200-1 on any time, it is probably a good bet. Well, the knucklehead bookmakers offered 5000-1 on a team that won the championship. How stupid are they?

Asked by: 3for3

Answered: 5/5/2016

 They probably know their own business, I'm guessing, but. . .in baseball, basketball, there IS no 100-1 shot to win the pennant. Anybody offers you 100-1 (at the start of a season) on any team, you should take it. 

So according to my calendar we are right on schedule for Arnold in 2016. 

Scenario: 

Clinton has some kind of major issue (health, indictment, etc) and Trump is looking strong in the polls. The establishment panics. A solution that everyone can get behind: an emergency law change to make Arnold eligible for President. (He can't now run because he was not born a U.S. citizen. Orrin Hatch tried to pass this law in 2003 and it didn't get traction). He is the one person who can win over Trump supporters and basically out-Trump Trump in debates and such. 

Do you think there is any chance this happens?

Asked by: Ben from New York

Answered: 5/5/2016

 Roughly the same as the chance that a peach tree will start growing bowling balls. 

Hey Bill

15 Most Recent Questions

"Some other channel was showing a long documentary about the OJ trial...Was that the same thing?" I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been--O.J.: Made in America is playing festivals before it plays ESPN. The thing this film does is take what became a big cultural joke at a certain point--Kato Kaelin, Jay Leno's "Ito Dancers," Top Ten Lists, etc.--and revisits how really grim and stunning and tragic the story was initially. And it unpacks so much history. Early on, you see a photo of O.J. and Nixon; late in the film, O.J. and Trump.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 5/5/2016

 Sounds like something I would hate, honestly. I KNOW how grim it was; I don't need to be educated about that.  

I know you probably aren't a Premiere Leagues fan (nor am I), but I thought of what you said years ago about long shots winning the pennant. If someone offers you 200-1 on any time, it is probably a good bet. Well, the knucklehead bookmakers offered 5000-1 on a team that won the championship. How stupid are they?

Asked by: 3for3

Answered: 5/5/2016

 They probably know their own business, I'm guessing, but. . .in baseball, basketball, there IS no 100-1 shot to win the pennant. Anybody offers you 100-1 (at the start of a season) on any team, you should take it. 

So according to my calendar we are right on schedule for Arnold in 2016. 

Scenario: 

Clinton has some kind of major issue (health, indictment, etc) and Trump is looking strong in the polls. The establishment panics. A solution that everyone can get behind: an emergency law change to make Arnold eligible for President. (He can't now run because he was not born a U.S. citizen. Orrin Hatch tried to pass this law in 2003 and it didn't get traction). He is the one person who can win over Trump supporters and basically out-Trump Trump in debates and such. 

Do you think there is any chance this happens?

Asked by: Ben from New York

Answered: 5/5/2016

 Roughly the same as the chance that a peach tree will start growing bowling balls. 

I'm writing an article about Runs Created, and I have calculated the Runs Created for game of some actual players -with the data of all their careers, until 5 May 2016-: 

Miguel Cabrera  8,488997133 

Joey Votto   8,453100412 

Mike Trout   8,400230274 

Alex Rodríguez  7,808243317 

David Ortíz   7,593508115 

Bryce Harper   7,336335382 

Anthony Rizzo   6,013232153 

Nolan Arenado   5,964223211 

José Altuve   5,313849779 

Mike Moustakas  4,307030703 

And the number two is Votto, do you think Joey Votto is one of the most underrated players for the fans and Media? 

Asked by: Tarrako

Answered: 5/5/2016

 Certainly. 

hey, bill: 

what are the odds we'll see andrew benintendi in fenway this year? 

Asked by: jamesmcljordan@gmail.com

Answered: 5/5/2016

 Well, he couldn't be playing any better than he is. . him, or Moncada, either. I'd say it is 20-1 against his moving up that far in one season. We don't need help in center field; we have three center fielders on the roster, plus Rusney Castillo who is in Triple A.  

Me: From 1960-2015, home teams have a .522 winning percentage in extra inning games (5591-5129).   

You: Which would be about the same as their winning percentage in one-run games, right? 

Me: Actually, no. Over the same period, home teams have a .608 winning percentage in 1-run games (21349-13781). http://tinyurl.com/gpp6mla

Asked by: jgf704

Answered: 5/5/2016

 Oh, right. I forgot this fact: that when a home team scores in the terminal innings of a tie game, that ends the game, so a lot of what would be two-, three-and four-run wins become one-run wins by default. Bases loaded,nobody out, and you hit the ball off the wall, it's a one-run single because when the run scores the game is over. . . 

SF/subdivision: Right, well put. More precisely, the more I subdivide, the more it exposes the original flaw in the definition. The SF for example is included in the denominator of OBP but not SLG, BA. These official definitions aren't of any help to me, analytically. An IBB increasing the OBP, but reaching on error (ROE) decreasing it would be an odd choice. ROE and HBP really should have the same logic. Basically, if you go with your preferred method of operation: ask a question, then organize your data to find the answer, then in no way would any question I have require that I use "SF". And I don't see why we want to worry about SF for "safes per contacted ball in play" (SCBIP !).

Asked by: tangotiger

Answered: 5/3/2016

 Scabip-dee-boop.  Thanks. . .that does make perfect sense. 

Bill: I think you looked at the one-inning game, and you had a simple formula: Runs Scored / (Runs Scored + Runs Allowed). So, a team that scores 5 and allows 4 would win 55.5% of one-inning games (i.e., tied going into the top of the 9th or later innings). I think you wrote the article for Tippett's site, probably 15 years ago.

Asked by: tangotiger

Answered: 5/3/2016

 That sounds right.  In a one-inning game, a team's winning percentage is just the run ratio. 

Bill do you watch the NFL draft and do you have any thoughts?

Asked by: Steve9753

Answered: 5/3/2016

 Yes, my thought is that it makes very poor television. . .

Bill: Just a comment...I had no interest in the TV O.J. reenactment, but I highly recommend the almost-eight-hour documentary O.J.: Made in America. I think it'll be on ESPN at some point in the next few months--I just saw it at the Toronto Hot Docs festival. It deals with the minutiae of the case for about three-four hours, but it also steps back and looks at the 30-year backdrop that led up to the verdict (Watts, John Carlos, etc.). Gil Garcetti was there for a Q&A after the screening I was at, also Robert Lipsyte.

Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 5/3/2016

While one channel was doing the OJ re-enactment, some other channel was showing a long documentary about the OJ trial. ..several episodes, but I didn't really focus.  Was that the same thing?  

Addressing Marc S.'s question... From 1960-2015, home teams have a .522 winning percentage in extra inning games (5591-5129). http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/97LKS  

Asked by: jgf704

Answered: 5/3/2016

 Which would be about the same as their winning percentage in one-run games, right? 

Sacrifice Fly: So, here are a few places where I come from (1) When I look at batted balls from Trackman or HITf/x, I never try to remove events where there was a runner on third that scored with less than 2 outs on a ball caught by the OF. I'm looking at exit speed, launch angles, spray angles. If the batter makes contact, and he makes an out, I don't remove that from my contact group. (2) When I look at performance by men on base, and I see batting average at .260 in all situations but .330 with a runner on 3B and less than 2 outs, I know that's because I threw away the SF. (3) DER should be 1-BABIP. ... In other words, the SF being removed from the denominator adds nothing to my analysis. I don't believe the official definition has value.

Asked by: tangotiger

Answered: 5/3/2016

 Well. . .(1) is irrelevant to me, because I don't do or understand that analysis or see the relevance of it to any question I am interested in, and (3) seems obviously wrong.  (2) has to do with the order in which things are sub-divided. Sacrifice Flies are a subdivision of outs in play, removed from the whole by batting average. . .which I agree was not an optimal choice, but then there are lots of non-optimal choices in the statistical definitions. .. .anyway, Sacrifice flies are a subdivision of outs in play, and plate appearances with a runner on third and less than two out are a small sub-division of plate appearances. You seem to be saying that because I choose to sub-divide the events in a certain order, it is therefore necessary to define BABIP (or whatever we call it) in a certain way. But you will run into conflicts in sub-divided categories NO MATTER in what order you sub-divide them, and it seems odd (and inappropriate) to me to allow THAT to be the determining factor in how you define what it is you are measuring.  

Got a bit long-winded but was trying to point out that Altuve has started multiple seasons with a higher walk rate and bailed on it part way in. 

A 26 year old suddenly learning to be much more patient seems unusual, but at 26 an uptick in power is actually common. This may lead to a different approach from opposing pitchers. 

What I couldn't find was RISC numbers. Was curious if the bulk of his walks came leading off or perhaps when a base is open and someone in scoring position. That might indicate situational bias, which is likely to wash out over time.

Asked by: Christopher

Answered: 5/3/2016

 I don't know what "RISC" is supposed to be (or why people insist on using expressions like that) but assuming that you might be referring to runners in scoring position, Altuve walked 14 times in 136 plate appearances with Runners in Scoring Position in 2014, whereas he walked only 20 times in 438 plate appearances otherwise, and he walked 13 times in 137 plate appearances with runners in scoring position in 2015, whereas he walked only 18 times in 444 plate appearances otherwise. So far this year he has 3 walks in 24 plate appearances with runners in scoring position, comparable to his career rates, but 7 in 77 plate appearances otherwise, which is up. Data courtesy of Baseball Reference. .. .

Sorry for writing unclearly. Pirates Loser Score is 260, highest in MLB. Pirates were highest a year ago too. Score was 420. It's abnormal for the team with the biggest Loser Score (LS) in MLB to score as low as 260. Every year beginning 2002, highest in MLB was higher than 260. 2001 Tigers were at LS 258 and were highest at that time. Many clubs much higher in the meantime, but have started winning. You made a rule that LS=0 for the last Series winner (KC). Royals score was 333 a year ago. With a winning 2015 Astros' LS was 233; is now 200. Rockies currently are 2nd highest, were 4th highest a year ago. When you posted in 2010, Pitt, KC & Balt were carrying the highest scores, Pitt at 505. None are as bad now. O's have declined 2/3 since LS=310 when you published. Does it make sense, I hope?

Asked by: articmike

Answered: 5/3/2016

 No, not at all. Missing the premise. . .

Let Me Rephrase: 

So far in 2016 the AL ERA of 3.99 is 0.54 runs lower than the NL's 4.52 ERA. The season is barely a month old, so the sample size is probably not yet significant, but I doubt it has happened in the DH era. Do you (a) agree that this is a small sample, and will revert if not reverse, and (b) do you think that a sizeable run environment difference could (or would be allowed to) exist in modern baseball?

Asked by: Henry F.

Answered: 5/3/2016

 Well. ..no, I don't really see that any of that is true. The DH doesn't guarantee that more runs will be scored in the AL than the NL in every year. I haven't compared the number of runs added to the league by the DH rule to the number added by Coors Field, but I would guess it is on the same scale, rather than being listed with a different decimal point.  And. . ."Would be allowed to exist in modern baseball".. .what are you talking about?  

Hey Bill

15 Most Recent Questions

I always wondered what the hell happened to Carl Yastrzemski in 1969: 40 home runs, walk and strikeout rates basically in line with what he was doing in his surrounding years but a .255 batting average. Lo and behold, he had a .241 batting average on balls in play. Is that just a vicious run of bad luck or was something else going on that year?

Asked by: kingferris

Answered: 4/29/2016

 It's just a vicious run of bad luck; that's all it is. But it presents an interesting problem for a Game Maker or model maker: Do you model the underlying skills, or do you model the results? And, in the end, you will find that you HAVE to have respect for the actual results, or the entire process degenerates in your hands. 

Very enlightening studies on BABIP. I apologize for my obtuseness.

Asked by: manhattanhi

Answered: 4/29/2016

 And I apologize for being so hard on you.  I hope you know it was meant in the spirit of friendship. 

You raise a good point about positions in basketball. When I played pickup basketball (basically all day and all night, with meal breaks, in my youth) no one said, "I'm playing forward" or "let me switch to point guard"--you just played basketball. But obviously when we played baseball or football on that level, someone had to pitch, someone had to play QB, etc. Would you say that positions in basketball are inherently more mutable, more fluid, less distinct, more overlapping, more artificial than they are in other sports?

Asked by: 337

Answered: 4/29/2016

 I suppose. What about stock car racing? Is that a sport? Are their positions there? Pole position, I guess. Being a goalie in hockey or soccer must be the LEAST mutable position. . ..

Hey Bill, 

Thanks for the BIP article-- things are becoming clearer for me. 

Just some random thoughts if you don't mind. 

Concerning clutch vs. non-clutch ability which you have thankfully disproven: 

Some hitters hit better when the pitcher works from a wind-up, some when he works from the stretch. Something about a timing mechanism. Anything to it? 

Some hitters' vision changes when the pressure's on. Can't imagine how to measure that one. 

Hornsby apparently told someone not to chew gum(or tobacco, I guess) because it makes your eyeballs bounce up and down. 

One or more of these may have come from your old stuff. Sorry. 

Your answerto one of today's questions seems to echo a Musial type approach from a month or two ago which you agreed that the Royals are emulating. 

Thanks 

Asked by: AJD600

Answered: 4/29/2016

 I can definitely confirm that chewing tobacco makes your eyeballs bounce up and down. . ..

I’d like to take a shot at understanding the luck part of BABIP (or anything else) and see if you agree. 

If a player is a .300 hitter (we can’t absolutely know what he is, but it’s a safe assumption that he is something; let’s use .300). He might hit .275 some seasons, he might hit .325. He might hit all kinds of stuff. The variability from his real skill level is luck (mostly; there’s injuries and aging and ballparks, but whatever). 

BABIP is focusing on certain outcomes and ignoring others and the results are much more volatile, therefore the luck factor must be much higher. BA is much more stable than BABIP, therefore the luck factor must be much lower (than BABIP). 

Asked by: Gfletch

Answered: 4/29/2016

 Well. . .I don't know that I either (a) understand what you are saying, or (b) agree with it. In hitting statistics there is a certain degree of randomness. SOME of that randomness may be anywhere, but there is more of it some places than others.  

A player has strikeouts, he has walks, he has homers. There is random luck in that, too; you face Randy Johnson a few extra times, you get extra strikeouts. There is randomness in it. 

But strikeouts, walks and home runs are High Skill/Low Randomness areas of the game. Mike Zunino is NOT going to draw more walks (per plate appearance) than Joey Votto, because of luck; that just absolutely can't happen. Buster Posey is NOT going to strike out more often than Chris Davis, because of random factors; that just absolutely cannot happen. These things cannot happen because, in those areas, the elements of skill are many times larger than the elements of luck. 

But with regard to batting averages on balls in play, the opposite is true; anybody CAN have a higher in-play average than anybody else. It is not at all unlikely that Mike Zunino will have a higher in-play average than Miguel Cabrera--because the element of luck here is much, much larger than the element of skill.  

So what we are doing is focusing on that part of the record where the luck to skill ratio is the highest, in order to get a clearer understanding of the luck involved. 

Always been curious about BABIP and don't really understand why somebody like Tony Gwynn had a career BABIP of .341. Over the course of 9000+ ABs that's not luck; that's a demonstrable skill. Cal Ripken had a BABIP of .277 over 11000+ ABs. Again, that's not luck. Or is it? How do we account for this difference if BABIP is mostly attributable to luck? Thanks.

Asked by: RanBricker

Answered: 4/28/2016

 No, those differences are not luck. If you have an uppercut, your batting average on balls in play will be lower. Being left-handed probably drives your average on balls in play up a point or two; being able to run helps a little. (Gwynn could run when he was young. Ripken never could run.) But Gwynn, like Suzuki and Jeter, was a bat control hitter; he was just slapping at the ball, as opposed to driving it. He didn't hit the ball hard (very often), but he was great at finding holes. Baseball needs to get back to that; we have too many guys now who are just winding up and swinging, with no bat control.  

But 80 or 90% of the spread in batting average on balls in play ISN'T from playing characteristics like these. 80 or 90% of it is luck. Focusing on the EXCEPTIONS, like Gwynn and Boggs, blinds some people to seeing the normal patterns.  

The batting average on balls in play (BABIP, or BIPA) for pitchers is narrower than for hitters. As an example, if you look at all hitters born since 1971, with at least 3000 PA age 23-29, in that time frame, the range is .365 (Jeter) down to .256 Tony Batista. One standard deviation is .020. Repeating for pitchers, (and almost virtually the same number of players), range is .330 (Zack Duke) to .266 Zito, with one SD as .012.

Asked by: tangotiger

Answered: 4/28/2016

 Meaning, presumably, that the batter has more direct control over this than the pitcher does. Thanks.  

BABP vs. Luck - In the case of a player who has several seasons in the majors and has established a baseline, it seems to me that if his results in a subset differ radically from the rest of his results that would be an indication that there is a good deal of random chance involved. 

BABP *could* indicate a trend, but the smaller the dataset, the more likely it's just a statistical blip and we should expect things to regress towards the mean. Bryce Harper is an interesting case: 

His BABP has gone .310, .306, .352, .369, and this year so far it's .239... which almost seemed like a typo or something, but it's because 9 of his 20 hits are home runs (not a ball in play). That .239 is an outlier, and in some sense a limitation of the statistic (because he's got such a ridiculously high rate of HR/hits). Attaching significance to it would be a mistake. 

Has anyone studied BABP in aging players? 

Asked by: Christopher

Answered: 4/28/2016

 See article posted today. Thanks for the suggestion. 

Hey, Bill, 

You probably know this, but, tomorrow, April 28, will be the 86 anniversary of the first night game in organized baseball. I bring it up because it was the Independence Producers in, believe it or not, Independence, Kansas. 

This is according to Wikipedia so it has to be right.

Asked by: SteveN

Answered: 4/28/2016

 My understanding is that there are like 600 cities that claim to have been the site of the first night game. I'm glad to learn that we've made it onto the list. 

Let me re-phrase it: 

Major premise: hitters who hit the ball hard are more likely to get base hits. 

Minor premise: hitters who get more hits will have higher batting averages. 

Conclusion: BABP is mis-leading and overrated.

Asked by: manhattanhi

Answered: 4/28/2016

 Well, you can be an ignorant jackass if you want to. There's no rule against it, and a lot of people seem to enjoy that sort of thing. . . .

I'm confused about BABP,,,if Player A has a .350 BABP and Player B has a .250 BABP,,,and all other things are equal,,,BB, SO, and HR.,,,then Player A's BABP will drop the next year and Player B's BABP will rise. 

Is that what you are saying.?? 

So players like Boggs or Carew have higher BA's than other players ( on a consistent basis ) because ????????? It can't be luck if it happens year in and year out??

Asked by: Allen Schade

Answered: 4/28/2016

 The great abundance of question marks fails to disguise the fact that you don't actually have a question in there. . . 

So... if a big leads the NBA in field goal percentage, basically because he never shoots from further than eight feet from the rim, is he an epicenter?

Asked by: ventboys

Answered: 4/28/2016

 No, because nobody plays centers anymore. They're all just forwards.  

Curious about your response to manhattanhi and the regression of babip. I thought about a possible comparable to Wade Boggs, but Tony Gwynn failed (didn't walk enough). Is there a hitter who was comparable to Boggs in ABs, walks and Ks? Boggs' babip appears to have been quite steady (and how did he hit 24 HRs one year?)

Asked by: Cypher

Answered: 4/28/2016

 Boggs is one of a kind, in the sense that every player is one of a kind. But he's similar to Gwynn, Carew, Ichiro. Richie Ashburn, maybe.  

The record for least home runs by a team in a full season since 1950 is 49 by the Astros in 1979. What are the odds that the Braves hit fewer than 49 home runs? They have 3 through 20 games.

Asked by: Ben from New York

Answered: 4/28/2016

 Whatever the odds are, I'd still bet against it. They get hot, they'll hit 49 homers in a month. 

epiphenomenal - "a secondary phenomenon accompanying another and caused by it; specifically : a secondary mental phenomenon that is caused by and accompanies a physical phenomenon but has no causal influence itself" 

So in this case it might best refer to the psychological effect on a pitcher facing someone who he perceives as being "hot" at the time. Better yet, anyone pitching to Bonds for the last few years of his career. The intentional walks were caused by his results when they didn't walk him, in essence.

Asked by: Christopher

Answered: 4/27/2016

 They would walk him an epiphenomenal number of times. ..

Hey Bill

15 Most Recent Questions

I remember the Sunday afternoon Pappas near-perfecto. WGN TV almost exclusively went with the centerfield camera shot on every pitch. For some reason, on the pitch in question the director went to the an overhead press box view. You couldn't see it well, but the pitch looked clearly outside.  

Pappas went ballistic, yelling at the umpire to the point that if he hadn't remained one out from a no-hitter, I'm sure the ump (Bruce Froehming) would've ejected him. But if you're not going to challenge Larry Stahl in that situation, you've got no business complaining. 

Pappas was definitely a clubhouse lawyer, and suffered in the public eye from being traded for Frank Robinson. May he RIP.

Asked by: wilbur

Answered: 4/21/2016

 Thanks. 

Based on what I've been hearing, the Nationals' Lucas Giolito is nearly major league ready, I would guess that if he were to be called up then Tanner Roark would be moved to the bullpen, but i do not think this is the best idea. This is what was done to Roark last season when he had a lot of difficulty switching between the rotation and the bullpen causing a disappointing season after his impressive 2014. Last season Gio Gonzalez's ERA the first time through the opponent's lineup was 1.67, but after in the second time on it fell to 5.20! Considering this it seems that he would thrive out of the bullpen wouldn't it make sense to at least try moving Gonzalez to a relief role before jumping to Roark?

Asked by: WorkingTheCount

Answered: 4/21/2016

 It's too much in the weeds for me; I don't know. I wouldn't know Lucas Giolito from Google Risotto. You'd have to know much more than this about all of the pitchers involved to offer an intelligent opinion. 

Great questions and comments today guys. . .thanks.  

Bill, Milt Pappas wrote a memoir called "Out at Home" that is well worth tracking down. He is pretty open in it about things like the death of his wife (he makes it clear that by the time of her death, he pretty much hated her, which couldn't have helped his reputation with the investigators any) and the massive amounts of amphetamines players took in the 1960s and 70s. It's the best kind of baseball memoir in that he'd much rather be honest than make any effort to be liked.

Asked by: TJNawrocki

Answered: 4/21/2016

 Thanks.    

     Just for the halibut, I checked how Milt Pappas had performed against Hall of Fame pitchers.   Pappas started against a Hall of Fame pitcher 52 times in his career—7 times against Steve Carlton, 7 times against Whitey Ford, 6 times against Jim Bunning, 5 times against Juan Marichal, 5 times against Gaylord Perry, 5 times against Don Sutton, 4 times against Don Drysdale, 3 times against Bob Gibson, 3 times against Nolan Ryan, 3 times against Tom Seaver, two times against Phil Niekro, once against Ferguson Jenkins, and once against Early Wynn. 

              In these 52 starts, Pappas won 19, lost 26.  His ERA in these starts was 3.46, close to his career ERA of 3.40, and his strikeout and walk data was almost a perfect match for his career data.  He won his start against Wynn (1-0), and had winning records against Don Sutton (3-1) and Whitey Ford (4-2); otherwise he had losing records against all of the Hall of Fame opponents.   

              Pappas’ teams were outscored in these games by only one run, 176 to 175, but had a won-lost record of 24-28.   32 of the 52 starts were on the road, lowering the expected won-lost percentage of his teams, if Pappas was the equal of his opposition pitcher, from .500 to .488.  

Bill, I recall reading in the newspaper that Jim Leyritz failed a breathalyzer at the scene and was drunk. Am I not misremembering.

Asked by: Steve9753

Answered: 4/21/2016

 Partially. He refused to take a breathalyzer at the scene of the accident--which probably pissed off the police--but later was shown by a blood test to have a Blood Alcohol level above the legal limit, AS I STATED IN MY ARTICLE ABOUT THE CASE. Drunk? Not really. There was video shot at the scene of the crime, which is or was on YouTube, and in that video he appears to be absolutely sober. You can't see that he is impaired at all; his speech is not slurred, and he is able to walk the line without any problem. He looks fine.  

But the relevant point is that he did nothing which contributed to the accident--nothing at all. Even if he had been drunk, he would not have been guilty of vehicular homicide, because he did not do anything that contributed to the fatal event. As the jury correctly found. 

I read that Chuck Waseleski died earlier this month. I remember that he provided you with some data in the early years of the Abstracts. Up here in Boston, we got a lot of statistical info from Chuck, via the local sportswriters he fed, before the big data explosion. Just thought it should be noted.

Asked by: Fireball Wenz

Answered: 4/21/2016

 Yes, I was sad to read of his passing. Did not know him well, but visited him at his house somewhere in central Massachusetts once, about 1983 or 1984 or something. Lost touch with him after that.  Once you have children, you just don't have time to keep some of those things up. Thanks for remembering him. 

Sadly, it is true that prosecutors enjoy "absolute immunity" (SCOTUS language, not mine) during conduct of a trial. The most interesting test of this was in 2009, as one of a cluster of cases brought to the high court involved a prosecutor who literally invented testimony for a witness to accuse two people of murder. Additionally he kept information about a possible other perpetrator from the defense. 

That one was Pottawattamie County v. McGhee, but we never found out how the court would rule (it was an appeal of a lower court ruling that the prosecutor did not enjoy absolute immunity outside of an actual trial, as the alleged behavior was during the investigation of the crime). The two gentleman who had been wrongfully imprisoned for 25 years accepted a settlement before the court decided. 

The intent of this is probably to protect prosecutors from being bullied by the wealthy. 

Asked by: Christopher

Answered: 4/21/2016

 Thanks. To you, not SCOTUS. Those guys is clowns. . . .

Pappas . . . As Bruce Froemming told the story, Pappas came up to him after the near-miss perfect game and said, "Bruce, you missed your chance to be the tenth umpire [at that time] in the major leagues to call a perfect game. 

And Froemming replied, "Name the other nine."

Asked by: pob14

Answered: 4/21/2016

 Nice one. I can name one of them. . . I think Babe Pinelli called Larsen's.  

Pappas (and his being traded for Frank Robinson) may be remembered longer than it might due to Annie Savoy's memorable soliloquy at the beginning of Bull Durham, when she talks about her practice of "educating" youngsters passing through the minors on the Durham Bulls by having one young boyfriend every season: 

"'Course, what I give them lasts a lifetime; what they give me lasts 142 games. Sometimes it seems like a bad trade. But bad trades are part of baseball - now who can forget Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas, for God's sake?" 

RIP, Mr. Pappas. You led an interesting life.

Asked by: tkoegel

Answered: 4/21/2016

 Who am I to argue with Susan Sarandon?  

Many Greek immigrants shortened their names when they came to America in the hopes that it would be easier to assimilate. I don't know Pappas's ancestral name, but it certainly wasn't "Papadiego" which would be a conflation of Greek and Latin. More likely it was something like "Pappadakis". 

There was a silly book called _Baseball's Golden Greeks_ which was an embarrassing paean to Hellenic pride that argued an HOF case for Pappas, but I wouldn't take it seriously. No knowledgeable baseball analyst I've ever read made an HOF case for him. 

My favorite Pappas story is probably apocryphal, but I'll tell it anyway. Apparently he was pitching one day when Chris Pelekoudas was umpiring and started arguing in Greek about balls and strikes. Pelekoudas was ready to run him but then realized that none of the other umpires understood Greek and couldn't confirm what Pappas had said. I consider it apocryphal because I don't think that alone would have stopped Pelakoudas.

Asked by: Michael Skarpelos

Answered: 4/21/2016

 Well. . .being technical, "apocryphal" doesn't mean that it is false. Apocryphal, I THINK, actually means that it is unreliable.  But thanks. . .appreciate the story.  

HeyBill: re "Seasonal Variations": given these variations in hitting/pitching performance, is their any strategy to exploit these variations? I.e., play for one-run if pitching dominant, play as if expecting huge run environment (hot weather turns all stadiums into Wrigley)?

Asked by: FrankD

Answered: 4/21/2016

 I don't believe in that kind of stuff, honestly. Never did.  

As a baseball fan born in the 1980s, my immediate thought on Milt Pappas is he's the guy the Reds got back for Frank Robinson in 1966. That's usually considered one of the worst trades ever. My dad always said it didn't hold a candle to trading Lou Brock for Ernie Broglio, because Milt Pappas was actually good and had a few years left. Broglio was done. So Bill, was the Robinson-Pappas trade really one of the worst ever, or just on the bad end of trades overall?

Asked by: williamhfloyd

Answered: 4/21/2016

 It was just a poor trade. It was not one of the worst ever. What really made it a poor trade was not Pappas; it was that the outfielder the Reds got back, Dick Simpson, was an absolute bust. Simpson, 22 years old at the time of the trade, was supposed to develop into something, but never did.  

As a Jays fan I prefer to think of R A Dickey as Jimmy Key's little brother Radic.

Asked by: DavidTodd

Answered: 4/21/2016

 Ouch. 

I think Pappas' third was Catfish Hunter. I have been unable, however, to locate the interview I read on the subject.

Asked by: DaveNJnews

Answered: 4/20/2016

 No need. This is casual conversation; we can accept undocumented observations. Thanks. 

About once a year Pappas would do the stretch at Wrigley, and during the TV interview would inevitably bring up his near-perfect game, suggesting that the ball four was close enough that Bruce Froemming should have given it to him. It was a) very tedious and b) 100% how I would feel if I was him.

Asked by: dburba

Answered: 4/20/2016

 Thanks. 

"Pappas was 209-164 (won-lost), and Drysdale was 209-166.  I think there was a third pitcher in there, too. . .somebody else in his generation who had a similar record."  

I think you are referring to Vida Blue, who was 209-161.

Asked by: villageelliott

Answered: 4/20/2016

 No, because Blue wasn't in the Hall of Fame. . .Blue, or Billy Pierce, who also had a similar record. There was somebody else that Pappas would point to who WAS in the Hall of Fame. Don't think it was Bunning. . .

Hey Bill

15 Most Recent Questions

So far it appears to me that one of the most improved players this year is Jose Altuve. Last season I felt very strongly that Jose Altuve's aggression both at the plate and on base was a huge point against him. He got on base regularly but after getting on base often got out. His outs on base (19) plus caught stealings (13) made 32 total pointless outs. Also his 3.23 pitches per plate appearance was incredibly low, but so far this year he's made huge improvements in these categories. Only 1 CS and no other outs on base as well as a better though still not great 3.78 pitches per PA. I was thinking that because Altuve's changes are more in his approach than in performance that it would mean a lot more for how he will play in the future than say 8 home runs by Trevor Story. Would you agree that this change shows an meaningful improvement by Altuve.

Asked by: WorkingTheCount

Answered: 4/19/2016

 No. I like Altuve; hell, I thought he was terrific last year and the year before. But I don't see any evidence of meaningful change in the stuff you are focused on. 

HeyBill : Ted Williams supposedly said that pitchers have an advantage in cool April/May but hitters have the advantage in hot summer months. Is there any evidence for seasonal variations of this type in MLB stats? Maybe in the past when everybody played day games outside and double headers were common?

Asked by: FrankD

Answered: 4/18/2016

 No, there are strong seasonal patterns in hitting levels.  Hitters hit much better in warm weather. I think the "seasonal" patterns are less obvious now because we have a dozen or so warm-weather teams; the patterns are less obvious. In Teddy's day there were no teams in Houston or Dallas or Florida or Atlanta or San Diego or California.   It's offset a little because pitcher's control isn't as sharp early in the season as it is later, but that too is mitigated some over time by changes in off-season workout routines and increased use of multiple relievers, but still, the old seasonal patterns are still there.  

Speaking of the strike zone: watching a game or two a day on mlb.tv and turning on PitchF/X whenever a pitch is close, it seems to me that the hitters are getting more than their share of borderline calls. It's early and this is purely impressionistic, but I wonder: selection effect? small sample size? trend?

Asked by: steve161

Answered: 4/18/2016

 Overanalysis? Paranoia? Viewer Bias? Selective Memory? Got a lot of options here.  

Hey, Bill--to the extent you sense (even unconsciously) that this might be a problem, how do you de-bias yourself in performing your duties for the Red Sox? Meaning, for example, the Sox are my hometown team and I am a big personal fan of many of the players, and hope for them to succeed wildly. In your position, I'd be slightly concerned that I could not fairly evaluate, say, Dustin Pedroia to the same extent I could do so for Brian Dozier or Adam Rosales. And this concern would be compounded by actually knowing the players as people, at least to some degree. Is this something you account for at all? Thanks.

Asked by: Jaunty Rockefeller

Answered: 4/18/2016

 Yes, that is something that one has to worry about every working day, and there are layers to the problem you haven't touched upon. We in the office root for the Red Sox as hard as the most enthusiastic fan. We live and die with each game. Also, we have many situations in which we CAN'T discuss the players frankly. I'm in a social situation and somebody asks me about a Red Sox player who is struggling, my obligation is to defend the player, because he is part of my team; I succeed when he succeeds, we are in this together. It's my obligation to be faithful to that, even if I have private reservations about the player. It is something that we struggle with--and on both ends. Sometimes we underestimate our own players because we have too clear a view of their failings.  

Just watched the Duke lacrosse team/rape allegation documentary last night. 

I can understand people " making up their minds " early on in that incident,,,especially if you are predisposed to think that rich, white, well educated males just might take advantage of a poor, black single mom. And this includes the DA who is only human. Who among us has NOT jumped to conclusions based mostly upon our own prejudices??? I know I have. 

But,,,when the EVIDENCE shows that you're wrong,,,and you squash that exculpatory evidence merely to notch another conviction,,,that's hard to believe. For Mike Nifong to try and put those boys in prison for decades when he KNOWS they could not have committed the crime is despicable. 

And to think that he would likely have succeeded had not the players had the financial resources to uncover the tainted DNA report,,,,makes you think about how many other Nifongs there are out there.

Asked by: Allen Schade

Answered: 4/18/2016

 I'm afraid it is more common than we think. Like you, I suspect, I tend to be charitable in my interpretation of District Attorneys' judgments. Most people are good; most public officials are responsible. But it isn't really a RARE thing to have one who isn't--and that what happens then.  

The great principle of my career: We all think that we know more than we really do. Any area you look into, you find people who are CONVINCED that baseless nonsense just HAS to be true. 

Found a perfect example of what you were saying.... Tommy Holmes of the NY Herald Tribune Service wrote a column entitled "Pitchers Are Taking Over the Baseball Game," spends the article discussing individual achievements, in particular the glut of 20-game winners that year... no mention of runs per game (ERA for top pitchers, of course, is discussed). In a different article, however, Paul Waner is quoted: "Today, you’ve got 30% more foul balls than you did 20 years ago." There is a percentage symbol in that sentence!

Asked by: wovenstrap

Answered: 4/18/2016

 Thanks. 

HeyBill, at the OJ verdict I was at a meeting at a fashion forward advertising firm, maybe 50 employees, perhaps 20 of them black. When the verdict was to be announced, everyone pushed into a conference room, and 40 percent of that room exploded and I mean [i]exploded[/i] like a 3 point shot at the buzzer, and 60 percent of the room looked like they (we) had been punched in the gut. From coverage I saw that scene was played out in groups everywhere...I wonder how that played out on sports teams?

Asked by: OldBackstop

Answered: 4/18/2016

 I don't know. But Ken Griffey Jr. hit two home runs in a playoff game that night against David Cone. . . 

Speaking of the changes in the strike zone in 1963, the 1964 Street & Smith yearbook has an article looking at possible effects after that first season. Whoever wrote it took the trouble of looking at strikeouts and walks, comparing the totals from 1962 and ’63, and finding that walks went down significantly while strikeouts went up. He didn’t compare runs scored, though. 

The article also includes the usual stuff where they ask players whether the strike zone had any effect. Ralph Terry said there was no difference at all, and "the umpires still called the strike zone as they always did." Several others said the effect of the new strike zone was mainly "psychological" – which reminds me of the study years ago where the researcher decided that there were a lot of home runs hit in Atlanta’s park because the hitters came in trying to hit homers there. 

Asked by: BobGill

Answered: 4/17/2016

 The after-effects of this continue to reverberate. In the heart of the steroid era, when the numbers were ridiculous, one of our scouts was trying to tell me that we needed to mess with strike zone. THere are a million things that can alter the level of runs scored.  Tinkering with the strike zone is major heart surgery for baseball. You don't do it unless you HAVE to.  

When I asked about the color of the man you talked to about the OJ verdict, I assumed you knew what I was talking about. We all saw the video of the Black folks cheering the verdict and the white folks staring at the TV in shock and disbelief. The racial divide.  

Would you argue that, the verdict, had something to do with race, or nothing to do with race. 

Asked by: mauimike

Answered: 4/17/2016

 Well, everything has SOMETHING to do with race, just as everything has something to do with theology or education.  My new book (out next year) is about a terrible murderer who travelled the country from 1898 to 1912, murdering families at random. When one of his crimes occurred, the first response of authorities was usually to blame black people. In three separate cases, black people were lynched (murdered) for crimes actually committed by The Man from the Train. (One of those three crimes may not have been committed by the same criminal, but the other two clearly were.) Nine black people were murdered by lynch mobs to attone for crimes actually committed The Man From the Train.  That is terrible, but even setting that aside and even getting out of the south, when the Man from the Train blew into town and murdered a family and then disappeared before dawn, the police and the newspapers would immediately say, in most cases, that blacks must have done it. They would say this without any evidence whatsoever. In many, many other cases, black people were arrested for crimes actually committed by the Man from the Train (although some white people were also arrested and prosecuted for crimes that he had committed.)  

Injustice is injustice; if justice is colorblind, than injustice must also be.  All injustice is terrible, and if you excuse it because of race, this simply passes along the hatred from generation to generation. People are still being killed today because of injustices that went unresolved hundreds of years ago. I make no excuses for that. But on the other hand, one can't expect black Americans to simply forget all of those thousands and thousands of times that they had been unfairly blamed for crimes committed by unknown persons.  

Bill: I remember the change in the strike zone well, and the perception that hitting suddenly exploded in 1961 and had to be curtailed. Not just Maris hitting 61 HRs, but six Yankees hitting 20+ and the Yankess as a team hitting 240. But looking at the evidence, the perception was wrong. According to baseballreference.com, AL teams scored 4.39 runs per game; in 1961, it was 4.53, hardly a meteoric rise. Home runs in 1960 were 0.80/team/game; in 1961 it went to 0.95, a nearly 20% rise, but I wonder how much of that was the Angels playing in the bandbox of Wrigley Field. The Lords of baseball grossly overreacted, eventually resulting in the year of the pitcher, 1968. Question: could baseball unilaterally adjust the strike zone today? Would the players union have a say? 

FWIW: the Yankees hit 240 home runs that year. But they didn't lead the league in runs scored. The Tigers did.

Asked by: TigerTim

Answered: 4/17/2016

 The '61 Yankees didn''t lead the league in runs scored OR fewest runs allowed.  The increase in runs scoring in 1961 was ENTIRELY do to the two new parks, Minnesota (also a very good hitter's park) and Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, a true bandbox (and I plan to execute the first person who writes in to tell us that that was where Home Run Derby was filmed; we know.) Anyway, in the AL in 1961 there were 8 parks which had been used the year before, and two new parks. In the eight parks which were in the league in both years, runs scored per game did not increase AT ALL; it was exactly the same in 1961 as in 1960, 4.39 runs per game (and actually down a fraction if you check enough decimals.)  But it is instructive as to how astonishingly primitive baseball research was at that time, that the men who ran baseball could believe that hitting was out of control when in reality there was no meaningful change EVEN IF you don't adjust for the parks.  Even the basic Step One of checking the league average of runs per game. . . I'll bet that nobody did it. I'll bet that you could not find a reporter or a league official at that time commenting on what the league average of runs per game was.  

The Rangers had a 5-run inning Thursday, a 5-run inning Friday, and a 6-run inning Saturday, but won only two of those games, because the Orioles topped them with a 9-run inning on Friday. How rare is it for a team to score 5 or more in one inning but still lose the game? Or maybe a better way to put it, what's the overall winning percentage for teams that score at least 5 runs in an inning? 

Asked by: BobGill

Answered: 4/17/2016

 Well, let's see. If you score 5 runs in an inning and perform normally the rest of the game, you should average about 9 runs in games in which you score five in an inning.  The winning percentage of teams which score 9 or more runs in a game is .933. . .I guess I should have checked "exactly 9" there, rather than 9 or more. I would guess that the winning percentage of teams that have a 5-run inning should be very close to .900.  

How did your speech on baseball fiction go over?

Asked by: manhattanhi

Answered: 4/16/2016

 Oh, I thought it was well enough received. It was a small crowd (maybe 60 people) and 8:00 in the morning, so some of them were asleep, but I thought it was well enough received. 

Hey Bill, I'm wondering how you know that the strike zone was tampered with in 1962. Are you basing it on the fact that a lot of players had much lower batting averages than the previous year. Or did mlb officials or umpires admit it? Thanks

Asked by: manhattanhi

Answered: 4/15/2016

 It was more like they bragged about it. The rulebook was actually changed. It was in all of the newspapers at the time; it wasn't done in secret or anything. After Maris hit 61 homers, there was a feeling in the Establishment that hitting was becoming too cheap, and that screwing around with the strike zone would prevent these yahoos like Roger Maris from breaking records that rightfully belonged to Babe Ruth.  

In our world Michael Jack led the league in homers in 1974 while playing third for the Phillies. In your fictional baseball encyclopedia, the great Mash Burgess was still on the hot corner. That puts Mike Schmidt at short stop, and probably batting 6th behind Mash and the Bull. (I was making a little joke about one of the stories you can make from your encyclopedia, and its changes to our real world. For Mash Burgess to have his career, it impacts Mike Schmidt, the actual HOF 3rd bagger for the Phillies!)

Asked by: MikeChary

Answered: 4/14/2016

 OK, gotcha. Thanks. 

My own personal version of the nightly Fictional Encyclopedia is to begin with a premise. Last night, for example, I started with the premise "Switch-hitter, power from the right side, not so much from the left, shortstop who finds an All-star on the team when he's ready for MLB so moves to third, and then has issues moving back to short in his late twenties. Go." Like that. If I couldn't do this for some reason, there are nights I'd never get to sleep. Sometimes, I only get as far as mid-career, and I pick it up right there the next day.

Asked by: Steven Goldleaf

Answered: 4/14/2016

 Mickey Kelleher?

Hey Bill

15 Most Recent Questions

HeyBill: when, if ever, was the third base coach required to stay in coaching box? Now days, the coach is 3/4 way to home giving signs if runner is rounding third. And if there is a play on runner going to third, coach is right by the bag, outta the box again..... 

and, a personal peeve, when did palming and/or traveling become legal in basketball????

Asked by: FrankD

Answered: 4/7/2016

 When did they start making hub caps out of plastic?  When did the NCAA start putting 68 teams in a 64-man field?  When did dog food companies stop putting free gifts in every sack?  When did Banks stop paying interest on your deposits?   When did sitcom writers decide that any and all references to masturbation were funny?   When did they start building churches out of used sheet metal?  When did we stop giving outfielders nicknames like The Reading Rifle and The Earl of Snohomish? When did they decide it was OK to make you go to the airport two hours early in case they decided to create a totally unnecessary 400-man line at the security checkpoint?  When did they start brushing the grass in the stadiums into a zebra pattern?  When did they stop publishing sheet music so you could play the current hits on your piano?  When did they stop putting ketchup in glass bottles?  For that matter, when did they stop spelling it catsup?   When did baserunners stop wearing metal spikes?  When did they stop throwing screwballs?  When did they stop using the straight change?  When did college professors stop wearing a suit and tie to teach every class?  I think we could go here quite a while. . . .

HeyBill, I came across the fact that Jim Palmer (268-152) never gave up a grand slam, in fact, only gave up one triple and five doubles with the bases loaded in his career (213 plate appearances). Is that extraordinary in a career of, say, 400 decisions in the live ball era?

Asked by: OldBackstop

Answered: 4/7/2016

 Doesn't seem like it. I think Palmer did give up a grand slam to Freddie Patek--in a spring training game.  Anyway. . .213 plate appearances without a homer, doesn't seem like an impossible fluke.  

HeyBill: given the randomness in baseball performance, which team had the largest 'super wave' in which team mates all had a peak or near peak performance in the same year? Or even more extreme, has it ever happened that a team of average players (based on career performance) luckily synchronized their top performance and surprised everybody? The 1960 Pirates?

Asked by: FrankD

Answered: 4/7/2016

 Definitely not the 1960 Pirates; in fact, part of what is interesting about them is that NOBODY had a career year. Smokey Burgess (catcher)probably had ten seasons better than 1960. Dick Stuart didn't have the year in 1960 that he did in '61, '63 or '64; Mazeroski was the same player every year, but certainly didn't have a career year. Don Hoak (third) didn't have his best season. Dick Groat had other seasons just like 1960. Clemente had an ordinary Clemente season. . .not one of his five best seasons, certainly. Bob Skinner (left) hit .320 in his good years; that year he hit like .270.  Bill Virdon (center) did not have an especially good year. Even Vern Law, the Cy Young Award winner, was really the same pitcher in 1960 that he was in 1959. 

I don't really know the answer to your question. . .maybe the 1950 Phillies. I guess it wouldn't be a massive undertaking to count the number of "career seasons" on a team. You'd have to start by defining what is a career season, and you'd have to have some standard so that you don't count some reliever who went 4-3 with a 3.80 ERA (but never did as well again) as having a "career" season.  Once you had identified everybody's "career" season, you could work on the problem. Maybe I'll start working on it. . .

Using 538 and Hardball Talk as the example I'm most familiar with, it seems pre-season baseball articles rely more and more on statistical projections such as PECOTA, FanGraphs, etc. How reliable are these when applied to teams? An article I read this morning said one system had a 90% likelihood of being within 10 either high or low. That's a 20-win range. Is that any more accurate than the old way of educated guesses? I suspect many folks with a clue could say 90 wins and have the team come out between 80 and 100 90% of the time.

Asked by: DanaKing

Answered: 4/7/2016

 Well, if I understand what you're saying, I think you're asking a nonsense question, akin to asking how effective a screw driver is as a tool to open a bottle of wine. The screw driver isn't designed to open a bottle of wine. And INDIVIDUAL projections are not designed, I don't think, to project how a TEAM will do. 

After Lou Gehrig became ill, the 1939-42 Yankees had difficulty finding a first baseman who could hit. Dahlgren and Sturm were awful, and Hassett was below average. In the meantime, they had three corner outfielders who could hit: Henrich, Keller, and Selkirk. It seems like the obvious solution would have been to move one of these thre to first base. Do you have any insight as to why that didn't happen? 

Asked by: evanecurb

Answered: 4/7/2016

 Well, but in the years 1939 to 1942 the Yankees won three pennants by 17 1/2, 17 and 9 games. THey destroyed the league.  In the ten years that Ruth and Gehrig were in the Yankee lineup together the Yankees won "only" four pennants, and two of those by thin margins--not that four pennants in ten years is nothing, but in their first four years WITHOUT Ruth or Gehrig they won almost as many pennants as they had won in ten years WITH them, and won those pennants more impressively.  

My point is that you are assuming that the Yankees would have been better off with a slugging first baseman who was not a defensive asset, but this assumption is not necessarily true.  The first baseman is involved in more fielding plays than anyone on the field except the catcher, and a good defensive first baseman makes an important contribution to the team. Joe McCarthy, I think, LIKED a good defensive first baseman, rather than necessarily a power hitter. 

And. . .speaking of Yankee first baseman and defense. . .Mark Teixeira has never, to my mind, gotten the credit he deserves for his defense. I think he has been the best defensive first baseman in the majors since Keith. His ability to make a line drive find his glove is just uncanny.  

Bill, 

Last November I was in Toronto and Buffalo for a couple of hockey games, and they had the tribute to a local service person. I have seen this at pretty much every major league sporting event I have attended in North America for a while now. 

I find myself getting an uncomfortable feeling when teams do this. I don't consider myself anti-military and I would like to think I appreciate the danger and sacrifice people in the service make, but still. I don't know, it kind of feels like government propaganda - the service person kind of a surrogate for government policy. I don't suggest anyone else should feel this way. its just that this is the feeling I get.  

I have asked a couple of friends (in Canada) about this, and they felt the same way. I have not asked anyone here (Netherlands) because I know the would find this practice very strange. 

I am curious what you, as a veteran think of it. Does this kind of recognition give you a better feeling about your own service? 

Asked by: markrice

Answered: 4/7/2016

 Well. . .we're not TOO impressed by what the Netheregionalists think.  I could do without the forced displays of patriotic passion.  

RE: Dave Winfield's nickname. 

When he signed with the Twins towards the end of his career, somebody in Operations ordered the removal of the plexy glass in the outfield so "his line drives would leave the park" (I'm not kidding); well, the line drives didn't come and instead he appeared to hit a rather high number of infield flies; then the same Ops person started calling him infield Winfield, which I think it's pretty catchy.

Asked by: llozada

Answered: 4/7/2016

 Who would ever guess Winfield would grow suddenly old at just 41 years of age?  

In 2012, the top 6 in HR had 41 (Dunn) to 44 HR (Cabrera), all with 600 to 700 PA. After them, it was Beltre at 36. In a board game, if you used their seasonal rates, (a) probably 95%+ of the time, the HR leader would be from the top 6, and (b) the HR-leading number would likely average 50 HR. So, (a) is desirable, while (b) is... well, what's your view of that?  

We could "compress" the HR rates so that Dunn is set to 38 HR and Cabrera is set to 40 and Beltre is set to 34. If we did that, (a) now Beltre's chance of leading in HR goes up which may not be desirable (or is it?), but (b) the HR-leading number would likely average say 46, which is more realistic. 

Asked by: tangotiger

Answered: 4/7/2016

 Right . ..that gets back to what I was talking about with another reader, that you CAN follow the logic of the simulation so far that you destroy the whole enterprise. As you suggest, at the start of the season there are probably 15 players who have the ability to hit 35-40 homers. In some season, 5 of them will over-perform and hit 40 to 45.  If you then assume that THAT is the real level of ability of those players and base a simulation on that, then one of them will probably get to 50 homers.  It's an inevitable problem with simulations: that we have to assume that SOMETHING is "real", but it is impossible to determine with great precision what is real.  Except that, no matter what you do, Adam Dunn will hit 38 to 41 homers. . . .

I always think of this as the Warren Spahn problem, which has to do with my age. Warren Spahn would go 21-10 every year; sometimes 21-11, sometimes 20-10, 20-11, 21-12, but he was always there somewhere. The REAL Warren Spahn, like the real Adam Dunn, was MORE consistent than an avatar of Warren Spahn should be, based on random chance.  The interaction of chance, opportunity and expectation makes it impossible to know what is real.   

Here in Toronto, we actually did call Winfield "The Gullslayer." 

Gosh. I'm so old I was actually at that game (and I thought it was accidental.)

Asked by: Magpie

Answered: 4/7/2016

 Oh, I'm sure it was. Be damned hard to do that on purpose. 

So, we have the incident with Bautista, which is being argued about incessantly since it's the first application of the new slide rule. Certainly there wasn't a likelihood of injury, but Bautista did obviously reach out and try to grab the fielder. 

My confusion is on the rule being applied. It seems to me that 7.09 (d) would be sufficient to call the runner out at first: 

(d) Any batter or runner who has just been put out hinders or impedes any following play being made on a runner. Such runner shall be declared out for the interference of his teammate; 

Do we even need a separate rule for a runner at 2nd base who tries to grab the fielder after he's been put out? It just seems like this shouldn't have been an application of the new rule. It's never been legal to just grab the fielder has it? 

Does this maybe have to do with the fact that the new rule is considered a grounds for appeal but 7.09 (d) isn't somehow?

Asked by: Christopher

Answered: 4/7/2016

 You know, I haven't seen the Bautista play, so I'm not really up to speed on it. I do agree with you that the existing rules were sufficient to govern the play, IF THEY HAD BEEN ENFORCED.  

Bill, Esquire magazine as a book excerpt from "Midnight Assassin". It is about Americas "1st" serial killer, in Austin in the 1880s. There are some similarities with it and the man from the train.

Asked by: Steve9753

Answered: 4/7/2016

 Yeah, I know about that case. I'll look it up. .thanks. 

Dave Winfield had one of the great all-time moustaches. Trim, wrapping around his lip to a little past the corner of his mouth. It looked like a set of hockey end boards for his upper lip.  

Last month I saw a 70's picture of Dick Allen and a recent picture of Emerson Etem, both wearing it. Each time I thought, "Hey, the Dave Winfield moustache - that's a good look."

Asked by: bewareofdow

Answered: 4/7/2016

 I always thought Kim Kardashian should try growing a moustache like that. . . .

Bill, you have a calculation for when a basketball lead is safe. Do you have one for voting in the primaries?

Asked by: Steve9753

Answered: 4/7/2016

 I do, but it's not ready for prime time.  

I'm sure I'm not the first person to point this out, but the KU/Memphis game you're referring to was in '08 rather than '06.

Asked by: Brian G.

Answered: 4/7/2016

 Right. I was in Boston. In April of '06 I would still have been in Lawrence.  

Hey Bill, 

I was wondering about outfield arms, and trying to get an estimate on their strength. This kind of thing seems pretty easy with pitchers, who have radar gun readings to go with their fastballs. So if they put Jackie Bradley Jr on a mound and asked him to crank out a fastball at max effort, what would be your guess on the reading on the radar gun? Thanks!

Asked by: Roel

Answered: 4/7/2016

 If he used the throwing motion that he uses from the outfield, it would have to be over 100. You can't throw the ball as far as he throws it with an exit velocity of less than 100, I don't think.  

Hey Bill

15 Most Recent Questions

Regarding statistical variance, I used to play your simulation Bill James Classic Baseball. One season Bob Johnson hit about 37 homers, in a high budget league. In another high budget league he hit even better and won the MVP. The last year I had him his performance was so poor I decided to replace him in mid-season. There were many similar experiences. In an article you simulated 2000 seasons of Willie Mays, based on his career statistics. One season he had Triple Crown type statistics; the next season he hit .238. Random fluctuation accounts for a lot.

Asked by: LesLein

Answered: 3/30/2016

 Maybe you had accidentally drafted the wrong Bob Johnson. . .

My most memorable pitcher-hitter matchup was Clemens vs. Cory Snyder (with Snyder getting high fives from his teammates when he broke his 9 whiff streak against the Rocket with a fly out). You would have had a hard time convincing me back then there wasn't a matchup effect going on there. But it seems reasonable that if you look at all matchups between players with such propensity for strikeouts, that particular coin is going to come up heads 9 times in a row at some point. 

I do want to believe there is an effect there, but as you said, it's not really a choice. Fortunately, I think it's also fun to understand the probabilistic nature of things and how our wiring for pattern recognition can deceive us. 

Sorry no question - just enjoying the topic.

Asked by: rucksack

Answered: 3/30/2016

 Thanks. 

You were talking about simulations before and I have been playing Strat-O-Matic baseball for about 40 years, easily over 5,000 games. I know you haven't played that game, but assuming that the simulation represents accurate percentages, any idea why I can count the number of no-hitters on one hand?

Asked by: Brian

Answered: 3/30/2016

 That would be the right number, wouldn't it? No-hitters are less than one game in a thousand. If you've played 5,000 games of Strat-o-Matic, you SHOULD be able to count the number of no-hitters on one hand.  

Bill, to ask a more specific question about spring training numbers, if a young player has a huge spring, does that indicate he might be taking a step forward? In particular, if Nolan Arenado is hitting .580 and slugging 1.080 this spring, that means he's going to be the best player in baseball this year, right? Please, give us Rockies fans something to hang our hopes on.

Asked by: TJNawrocki

Answered: 3/30/2016

 Arenado needs to take a step forward? I thought Arenado was already great. . . .if a player hits .500 in spring training, generally what that indicates is that he can hit a fastball.  

I have seen this in other sports and was wondering if you've ever seen it in baseball at the major league level: the most effective highs school football players are rarely the best college players. The most effective college football players don't always translate to the being the best in the NFL. The NCAA tournament is full of guys who are highly effective players that will never make a dent in the NBA. However, it seems to me, there are plenty of guys skills don't mesh at the high school or college levels who then fit in better at the next level. Are there any guys you've looked at in major league baseball that you thought would have been more effective if there was a higher league that they could have played at?

Asked by: johnkzufall

Answered: 3/30/2016

 Well. ..not inclined to assume that the premise of the question is valid.  If you can star at one level but can't play at the next, most of the time it is because you're just not good enough. There is SOME change in the nature of the game that occurs between levels. A standstill shooter may score 20 points a game in college and not be able to play in the NBA.  

In baseball the most common example of this is off-speed pitchers. A pitcher with a good change-up and some understanding of how to use it can dominate the lower levels in baseball, but can't necessarily get outs in the major leagues, because the major leaguers don't react the same way to the change. But generally. . .I think the premise of the question is suspect.  

HeyBill: re NBA tanking. I too think they are tanking but statistically how can this be shown? I think/hope the players know not to play bad, lowering their stats, that would cost them $$$ later. Even the coach should know that his record would later cost him $$$. So its not 1919 with obvious buyouts. So how is the tanking being done? Playing many below avg players? 

or a separate theory explaining the extreme divergence in NBA W/L records: Allowing so many teams to make playoffs makes many teams not to strive to be first, just strive to be in the playoffs ........

Asked by: FrankD

Answered: 3/28/2016

 On the second issue, I would not tend to believe that too many teams making the playoffs contributes to the problem. If you make the playoffs at 44-38, you have to play somebody who is 65-17 or something, and everybody that I know in the NBA recognizes that a 44-38 team is not going to beat a 65-17 team in a playoff series. I think teams tank essentially by just taking their time about things. Philadelphia last year invested a high draft pick in Joel Embiid, who I saw at KU, who I don't think has played a minute for them yet. Believe me, Joel Embiid can play; he is 6-11 and can jump like Blake Griffin and can probably outrun anybody in the NBA, or could when he was at KU. But he has some Foot issues that are going to require surgery sooner or later, so there's no pressure to get him on the floor; let's get surgery on the feet, give him plenty of time to heal, and then, finally, when we're ready to have a real team, then we'll turn him loose on the league.   

My favorite one is they had shown on a TV broadcast that Wallach v Gooden was 2 for 19 or some such, right around when Elias was trying to make headway with their matchup stats. Then Wallach hit a HR. People so want to believe in patterns that they can't tell what is a pattern.

Asked by: tangotiger

Answered: 3/28/2016

 Well. . .yeah, except that it isn't "want".  Want is choice. We are hard-wired genetically to search out patterns. Pattern recognition is one of the keys that we use to make sense of the world.  So when people see a pattern, they are genetically pre-disposed to believe that it is a MEANINGFUL pattern.  

I was wondering: What is your opinion, particularly: How do you feel about Kansas and Missouri being combined as one team in the Native Son All Star Tourney? Is there any other combo for either state you consider to be more appropriate? What do you think of my suggested team name: The Kansouri Jay-Mules.

Asked by: villageelliott

Answered: 3/27/2016

 We would prefer to be put with the Bolivians.  

Hey Bill, 

Regarding batter-pitcher matchups, I agree they are usually meaningless. But could there be cases where even though the number of plate appearances is fairly small, the performance is so exceptional that it is meaningful? Similar to how if a pitcher strikes out 20 batters in a game and walks no one, that is a large enough sample to conclude he is an exceptional pitcher? Bobby Thomson hit 10 homers and slugged .843 off Herm Wehmeier in 83 at bats, much better than he hit any other pitcher he faced more than 50 times. Is that enough for us to conclude he "owned" Wehmeier? If not, what if he'd slugged 1.200 off him?

Asked by: W.T.Mons10

Answered: 3/27/2016

 Well, there is a difference between meaningful elements and meaningful data. There could be cases in which a given player sees a given pitcher well. . . the pitcher is afraid to throw his fastball to this guy so the hitter can sit on the off-speed stuff, that kind of thing. There COULD BE such cases. But as to whether there is ever DATA that is so exceptional that it couldn't reasonably result from chance, I would be surprised if there is.  I remember one year Dale Murphy hit six home runs in about ten at bats against some San Francisco reliever.  Andy McGaffigan. Must have been 1983. Anyway, such a thing seems at the boundary of chance but probably isn't outside the boundary of chance, given that, if you have 200 hitters in a league and 200 pitchers, then you have 40,000 hitter/pitcher matchups, and a very large chance that at least one of them will be ridiculously loaded one way or the other.  

Bill, 

I get what you mean by "...but I'm always working, so one place is kind of the same as the other." I travel a fair amount through Europe, Middles East and South Africa and even though I recognize your statement that each city kind of becomes like another office, I do find I feel a certain vibe that can affect my energy level. I always feel a bit more up when I visit London or Madrid, than say, Johannesburg or Milan. 

One thing I catch myself doing is kind of wandering around looking at the locals and wondering what its like to actually live in a certain city (except in Johannesburg - nobody wanders there and lives to tell about it...). Madrid and Barcelona are great for that.....

Asked by: markrice

Answered: 3/27/2016

 Yeah. . .I feel like I always have more energy when I visit New York. I know that's a cliche, but it seems to me to be true. 

What city do players complain about? I would guess Cleveland.

Asked by: Steve9753

Answered: 3/26/2016

 In my experience, Tampa Bay. . ..it's hot as hell, there is nobody at the games, and the experience of being in the town after midnight involves lots and lots of driving around empty streets without good public transportation.  But don't quote me. . .it's not something I know a lot about.  

Hey, Bill, I think I remember your saying here recently that research to date 

establishes that how you construct your lineup in terms of batting order makes 

very little difference to how many runs you score. Is that true even if you 

construct your lineup as badly as possible? I ask because I was listening to 

a spring-training game today in which the Nationals led off with Stephen Drew, whose on-base percentages were .237 and .271 in the past two seasons. I find it 

hard to understand how you would do as well with say a .370 OBP player in 8th place and Drew hitting leadoff as you would with the .370 player leading off and Drew hitting 8th. Is that indeed what the research shows?

Asked by: flyingfish

Answered: 3/26/2016

 Pretty much.  Of course there is SOME disadvantage to a poorly constructed lineup, and of course this advantage increases a little bit when you go to the extremes of illogic.  But you're still talking about marginal effects. Let's say you're talking about a .260 on base percentage as opposed to a .370, and about hitting 8th as opposed to 1st. That would cost you 0.77 baserunners (7 / 9 times .110), but some of that would be offset by, for example, the fact that you would have a better hitter coming up after the 5-6-7 hitters.  It WILL cost you; it's just not going to cost you A LOT.  

Hey Bill, I once read that most mlb players favorite city is Chicago. I'm wondering what you think of Chicago. I've never had occasion to go there, and since my two least favorite people in the world are from there, I'm not exactly dying to go there. (I'm a republican so you can probably guess who they are.)

Asked by: manhattanhi

Answered: 3/26/2016

 Well, there are great things about Chicago, and I can see why people would mark it as a favorite stop. Probably a lot of National League players in older times listed it as a favorite stop because they got to play day games and had an evening to get out on the town. There is great shopping, which is nothing to me because I don't shop, and there is a wonderful art museum which my wife loves and one of the best acquariums in the world, which the kids used to like. I've been there hundreds of times, but I'm always working, so one place is kind of the same as the other. 

What do you look at in spring training coverage, since the usual criteria of winning and losing don't count for anything?

Asked by: bobfiore

Answered: 3/26/2016

 Spring training games are actually very, very interesting; it's just a matter of re-orienting your thinking. In spring training everybody is struggling to establish their place (except the top-of-the-pecking-order guys.) David Price and Dustin Pedroia. . . we know where they are in their careers, so in their case we look for things like "Has he lost a step?  Is he moving normallly? Is he moving the way he did two years ago? Has he made any adjustments? Is he ready to start the season?"  But everybody else is trying to establish a position in the pecking order.  Brennan Boesch and David Murphy are both on the Red Sox spring training roster, trying to stay in the major leagues, so every plate appearance for them is an absolutely critical plate appearance. Every ball hit to the them in the outfield is a critical play for them.  We NEED a left-handed hitting outfielder, but. . . .it's a battle.  The young player who is going to begin the 2016 season at Salem gets a chance to get an at bat against Dellin Betances or Michael Pineda; show us what you've got.  The 18-year-old infielder gets to play three innings of shortstop in front of John Farrell and the major league staff. It matters tremendously to him whether he looks like a major league shortstop or whether he doesn't. You have to understand: these are not give-away at bats and give-away innings to these players; they are critical, career-shaping at bats and innings.  The rest of us. . .we're getting a chance to see players who we otherwise would only know as minor league records.  It's tremendously important that we use those opportunities to educate ourselves about those players--our players and those on the other teams. 

HeyBill: interesting book on simulations: Simulating War by Philip Sabin. This book has interesting discussions on simulation strengths and weaknesses as pertaining to actual battles.

Asked by: FrankD

Answered: 3/26/2016

 OK. Make Sims, not War.  

Hey Bill

In re Lombardi's dWAR: wdr1946 is wrong in his interpretation of Lombardi's defensive stats. Lombardi was -21 runs worse than an average catcher for his career per bb-ref.com, but he has a positive dWAR because that includes a positional adjustment. His negative total is in spite of being above average in caught stealing rate. I'm still not sure I'd take fielding WAR for catchers too seriously from this era regardless, but this assessment of Lombardi is pretty much in line with contemporary opinion.

Asked by: CharlesSaeger

Answered: 1/3/2016

Thanks. But who did you mean by "contemporary"? Contemporary 1930s or contemporary now?

Ernie Lombardi: According to Baseball Reference, Lombardi was the 17th best catcher in history. When he was elected to the HofF in 1986 he was the 12th best catcher in history. He is in an entirely different class from most of the other dubious choices for enshrinement: George Kelly is the 86th best First Baseman in history; Fred Lindstrom is the 69th best Third Baseman; Chick Hafey is the 58th best Left Fielder; Jesse Haines is the 300th best Starting Pitcher. Baseball Reference also states that he was +2.9 in dWAR, meaning that he was an above average defensive catcher.

Asked by: wdr1946

Answered: 1/3/2016

Thereby proving that Baseball Reference's dWAR is absolutely useless in this arena.

Garrett Morgan was the man who received a patent for a three signal traffic light. He filed the patent in 1922 and it was granted the following year. The collision that he witnessed was probably in Cleveland, OH. There were other, earlier traffic signals, but his was the first to include a caution light to warn drivers that the light was about to change, and they needed to drive slower(or faster, depending upon your inclinations). He was a very interesting man, born in Paris, KY(Bourbon County), son of a former slave, who developed a type of mask that could be used in smoke-filled environments, and may have been a precursor of gas masks used in WWI. He came up with several hair care products, and helped found the Cleveland Call newspaper, that later merged with another paper to become the Cleveland Call and Post. I got much of this information from Wikipedia, but it pretty much goes along with a biography of Morgan that we have in our elementary school library.

Asked by: Breckinridge

Answered: 1/2/2016

Thanks. Traffic light would be unworkable without the yellow light in between--much like a two-party political system is unworkable without a center.

Hey Bill! Don't know if you saw it, but Vern Rapp died on New Year's Day. His infamous tenure with the Cardinals came when i was growing up in St. Louis, but I never understood the finer details of that chapter until you wrote such an insightful essay on him in your book on managers. Thank you for that. (A friend of mine suggested that when Rapp reached the Pearly Gates, he would tell Saint Peter to shave.)

Asked by: mikeclaw

Answered: 1/2/2016

Well. . .I might have given him a break until he is cold, but I understand.

Re: Kazmir -- It just seems very unusual for a starting pitcher to lose it mid-career, leave baseball totally with their velocity and mechanics as far off as his were, then come back and pitch roughly as well as they had before. Guys like Lee and Liriano (and, one could argue, Colon) are comparable in a sense, but Kazmir got cut from Triple-A with an ERA over 17.00 in 5 starts there. My (perhaps mistaken) impression is that guys who fall *that* far don't make it back (unless there's some major injury that gets fixed), and that even among comeback stories this one stands out.

Asked by: RipCity

Answered: 1/2/2016

Well, every player is unique on some level. I don’t think it is generally unique for a pitcher to have a two- or three-year period of complete ineffectiveness in the middle of a career; in fact, I think it’s pretty common. As to closest parallels to Kazmir, Ryan Dempster was very effective as a young pitcher, dropped to basically zero value in mid career, then had a second career as a starting pitcher. Joel Pineiro had a similar career track, and also matches up well (age to age) with Kazmir, as does Jamie Moyer if you ignore the fact that 70% of Moyer’s career is at ages that Kazmir has not yet reached. Rick Rhoden and Jim Lonborg would also be on the list of similar career paths.

HeyBill, according to the website for the Kansas Department of Transportation, the first electric traffic signal was installed in Cleveland in 1914. It is prominently featured as the lead in the traffic section. They are probably tired of researcher inquiries.

Asked by: OldBackstop

Answered: 1/2/2016

OK.

I can't recall where, when or from whom I first heard that the first two cars registered in Kansas collided at an intersection and inspired an on- looker to invent the traffic light. I could never testify I remember it correctly or why I think it was in Kansas A cursory search on the net reports as urban legend a similar story set in 1895 Ohio. but found nothing else remotely similar I may have confused to support, deny or suggest alternatives. Nor did I find any claims re: invention of the traffic light to remotely suggest it was invented before the rabbit ball was introduced, much too late to be considered as possible. I admit my memory is inadmissible as evidence even if I could persuade a polygraph. I agree it sounds like an urban legend, particularly without any other easily accessible posting that can be distorted to support, rebuke, or suggest possible alternative. Do you recall ever hearing a similar story set in Kansas or elsewhere? Ohio

Asked by: villageelliott

Answered: 1/2/2016

Yes, I have read that story several times, but (I think) always set in Missouri, never in Kansas, and also about 1903, not 1895. I don't think any states were registering automobiles in 1895. The traffic light, I think, was invented in Cleveland about 1922.

I'm not familiar with books by Dick Beverly, so I'm wondering if you meant Dick Beverage? I have a book by him about the Los Angeles Angels. Or is there another PCL writer named Beverly?

Asked by: BobGill

Answered: 1/1/2016

No, I was just asleep.

Any pitchers come to mind who have had career paths comparable to Scott Kazmir? This has to be pretty unusual, right?

Asked by: RipCity

Answered: 1/1/2016

I must be missing something, but how is this supposed to be unusual? We're not starting another Cliff Lee discussion cycle here, are we?

Hey Bill, did you know that in the NBA they now use the WAR stat? It's mentioned in a recent article on the 538 blog concerning Porzingis. I guess the WAR concept would be applicable to any sport in which a player's contribution can be quantified, right?

Asked by: manhattanhi

Answered: 1/1/2016

I know there is WAR in different sports, yes. I've seen WAR in Soccer.

Amazon.com lists books by Richard Beverage on the Los Angeles Angels 1903-57 and the Hollywood Stars 1926-57. It looks like Dick is still running the Pacific Coast League Historical Society: http://www.milb.com/about/content_league.jsp?pid=history&sid;=l112

Asked by: Jack

Answered: 1/1/2016

Thank you.

Dick Beverage (not Beverly) is still with us and I believe still presides over the Pacific Coast League Historical Society. He is also a past president of SABR.

Asked by: sroney

Answered: 1/1/2016

Thank you. My apologies for screwing up his last name. Haven't seen him in 25 years.

Doubles as a % of Balls in Play. This is dead easy to calculate. I simply copied the annual (batting) totals from Baseball Reference into a spreadsheet, calculated balls in play (PA - HR - W - K - HB), and then divided 2B by BIP. The percentage of 2B rose from around 4% in the early 20th century to around 6% in 1930. It then fell and by the early 1040s was around 4.5%, where it stayed (with very little variation) until 1970. It has been rising pretty steadily since 1970, and is now around 6.5%. If anyone wants the spreadsheet, figure out how to get your email address to me (post something in Reader Posts? I don't know), or someone tell me how to upload the spreadsheet to this site. This all took me about 5 minutes.

Asked by: doncoffin

Answered: 1/1/2016

OK. For future reference, you don't have to account for your time here.

Please, do you have any recommendations as to which of the various books on the history of the Pacific Coast league are the best?

Asked by: MikeChary

Answered: 12/31/2015

The best I've read are Dick Beverly's books. . .and does anybody know, is Dick still with us? Anyway, Dick was a very serious researcher, and deeply interested in the PCL.

Bill: I was surprised to see your comment that Mickey Mantle's number of doubles was not unusually low for the number of times he put the ball in play. So I did some quick computations. Mantle had 9907 plate appearances. Subtract his home runs, strikeouts and walks, 5928 plate appearances. His 344 doubles were 5.8% of times the ball was in play. For comparison, I checked Al Kaline, who had 498 doubles and once led the league. Kaline had 11,596 plate appearances, which minus home runs, strikeouts and walks was 8900. So his doubles were 5.6% of his balls in play. For the heck of it, I checked Miguel Cabrera, who has 8322 plate appearances, minus home runs, strikeouts and walks comes to 5578. Cabrera has 492 doubles -- 8.8% of balls in play. Granting that Cabrera is an unusual and hardly representative hitter, and that someone with more time and inclination that I have could study the issue, it made me wonder: are doubles per plate appearance higher today than in the past?

Asked by: TigerTim

Answered: 12/31/2015

They are higher today than they were in the past, yes. David Ortiz has the highest rate of doubles as a percentage of his hits of any player in history, and there are other players in this generation right up around him. It's the game we play today. . . .Hardened bats, thin handles, high fastball velocities. . .there are just more hard-hit balls now (as a percentage of contact) than in the past. In the 1950s you still had quite a few 1920s-style hitters who were just up there slapping at the ball, like Johnny Temple and Nellie Fox. There are almost none of those guys now.

Hey Bill

Dear Bill, in my hometown, Ottawa, several police officers are being investigated for giving fake traffic warning tickets. Have you heard of this happening anywhere else?

Asked by: Steve9753

Answered: 3/11/2016

 No.

Hey Bill, with regard to your mini-essay on evidence, a good book I read recently was The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum, which was also made into a PBS special (think it ran on American Experience). Mostly focuses on the medical forensics office in NYC in the early 1900s. Dr. Charles Norris and Dr. Abraham Gettler there more or less invented the genre.

Asked by: sweaver64

Answered: 3/11/2016

 How many times do I have to tell you people: New Yorkers never invented anything. 

Twice before I've asked you to elaborate on your comment that there is a difference between disrespecting your opponent and disrespecting the game. Once you declined because the issue is too complex to answer in this forum, once because I referenced Cam Newton's comments and you hadn't heard them. This time it's Goose Gossage, calling Jose Bautista a disgrace and linking this to the "nerds" who "played Rotisserie baseball at Harvard" running baseball. Why is it traditional for baseball players to be undemonstrative when some celebration is tolerated or even embraced in other sports?

Asked by: russelfe

Answered: 3/10/2016

 I lost you about the third curve there, buddy. 

To take this backward a few generations, I spent some time researching NYC criminal justice in the first couple decades of the nineteenth century, and the structure was almost literally medieval. The Mayor was at once the head of the legislature, the chief justice of the criminal court, and the chief police officer. Frequently, anyone arrested was brought directly to him for questioning. The constables -- two per ward -- were not only nonprofessional, but frequently reluctant to serve and absentee. Where they did serve, they made all their money from fees and rewards, acting like bounty hunters. By a mile, victims were the most important players in their own investigations; the constables could be hired muscle, but they were rarely the brains. Victims also tended to pay court fees and fund the prosecution. As such, there wasn't a lot of interest in murders, as murder victims didn't pay up. This was a recognized problem, but nobody could think what to do about it.

Asked by: PB

Answered: 3/10/2016

 Thanks.

Speaking of POW movies, an underrated one is King Rat, with George Segal.

Asked by: Steve9753

Answered: 3/10/2016

 OK. 

I'm sure only a few here care about Ivy sports, but . . . one of the biggest reasons an Ivy team will never go to the NCAA championship game is that the Ivies don't give athletic scholarships. (UPenn did go to the Magic-Bird Final Four in 1979 though. Legend has it that the official merchandise called it Penn State.)

Asked by: Marc R

Answered: 3/10/2016

 Hahvahd has been pretty good in basketball in recent years. I guess they're down this year. Reminds me of the Bob Newhardt show when Bob, the psychologist, gets into a heated personal dispute with another psychologist, and eventually asks the psychologist, who is French, where he got his degree. "The Sorbonne," says the frenchman. "Where did you get yours?" 

"Loyola University in Chicago," says Newhardt. "We would have killed you in basketball." 

Wouldn't the issue about silencers, especially in NJ, be related to the Mafia, ie, trying to prevent hits using silencers? Not likely to be very effective but the argument would be, I would think, why do you need a silencer on a gun unless you are going to do something illegal with it, like murder someone? In fact, if you just wanted the gun for protection, wouldn't you want it to be as loud as possible? I'm not saying the law makes sense-it's probably not going to stop a hit man from doing his job-but I can at least see the rationale.

Asked by: Marc Schneider

Answered: 3/10/2016

 It's too bad you can't put a silencer on Chris Christie. . ..

HetBill re: WW2 POWs. The US treated prisoners fairly well based on statistics. I think there was one incident of a 'mass' shooting after guards had seen a film on concentration camps. The Brits kept POWs to do forced labor into 1949. The Russians kept most until 1955 and hardcore Nazis to 1965. The French used German POWs for labor after the war. Now here is an interesting tidbit: the French let German POWs out if they would join the Foreign Legion. Many did - especially those not keen on going back to Russian Occupied Germany. Some of these ended up at Dien Bien Phu. Doesn't it seem to be a cognitive disconnect to think of German (Nazi) Troops fighting in Viet Nam?

Asked by: FrankD

Answered: 3/10/2016

 My third-favorite Graham Greene novel. The Quiet Nazi. 

I remember Bob Feller was always a bit critical of Nolan Ryan, feeling with his stuff he should have won more. While Feller was a bit of a "get off my lawn" guy, his lifetime winning percentage was 95 points greater than Ryan's so Rapid Robert may have had a point. I don't think team quality was that different between the two. Any reasons why? My guess is Ryan's career was in an era with more stolen bases and particularly in his NL career, artificial turf stadiums. Get a walk off Feller, maybe you move to third on a single and not score. Get a walk off Ryan, steal second and score on a single. Does that sound logical to you?

Asked by: ZachSmith

Answered: 3/10/2016

 I think Feller INVENTED the "get off my lawn" syndrome; if he didn't he certainly purchased the patent. Feller was 34 games better than the teams he pitched for, and the teams had a .541 winning percentage when he wasn't on the mound, whereas Ryan was 22 games better than his teams, and his teams were .491.  So I wouldn't have much hesitancy in saying that Feller was a greater pitcher than Ryan.  

Ryan redux...I seem to recall an incident when he pitched for the Rangers and Bobby Valentine came out to the mound to remove him and Ryan wouldn't leave. Do you know the details?

Asked by: manhattanhi

Answered: 3/10/2016

 Valentine. . .Valentine. Don't believe I ever heard the name before. 

Hey Bill, I remember a couple of your comments in the Abstracts about Ryan. One regarded him being such an extreme pitcher, in terms of strikeouts, walks, HR, and so on, that his W-L record was more independent of his team than any other pitcher. Another was the respect other players had for him, especially as he neared the end of his career, because the others knew how difficult it was to do what he did.

Asked by: sweaver64

Answered: 3/10/2016

 Right. Roger Clemens idolized Nolan Ryan. First time I met Roger. . .since I am telling name-dropping stories here about the first time I met some famous guy named Roger. . . .I suggested to him that he might have surpassed Ryan at his best. This was probably 1988. He was appalled and annoyed that I would even suggest such a thing, and looked at me as if I had just spit on brother's name or something.

Now that I think about it, that wasn't the first time I had met Clemens. I met him when he was just out of college in '82 or '83. I used to work with his agent.     

On the Ryan "two explanations", is it 3? #1 = the increased MLB-wide K's. #2 = what the Batters would say, which implies something similar to what they said about Mike Scott and that Scott later semi-confirmed. Would #3 = the "Tom House Effect". Not in the sense of mechanicsm but in the sense of the other thing that House is famous for in baseball history, and with respect to Ryan is something you might not be able to talk about. It's been talked about since the 90s, at least among people who were a bit ahead of the curve on the issue.

Asked by: jdw

Answered: 3/10/2016

 I may have missed part of the conversation about Tom House, so I'm not quite sure what you're referring to. Great questions this evening; sorry I don't have more time to address some of them. I've got to get to bed because I've got to get up and go that Sloan Conference tomorrow morning.  

Hey Bill, Regarding the "I can die in peace" sentiment, I remember a sign in MSG when the (hated) Rangers won the Stanley Cup in 1994, after 54 years, which read "I can Die Happy Now" . Must've been a descendant of the early Mets' sign man. Of course, until 1980, the Phillies had never won a WS during my or anybody else's lifetime. Including Connie Mack's. Our lives overlap and, between us, cover all of pro baseball's history.

Asked by: AJD600

Answered: 3/10/2016

 Why did they write that in salt? I had dinner with Roger Angell during the 1980 World Series, first time I had ever met the great man. I pushed on who he was rooting for, and he confessed that he was sort of rooting for the Phillies, because their fans had been waiting much longer. "We've NEVER won the thing," I said. "How much longer can it be?"

I completely agree that the justice system is much better than it was 100 years ago. But much of that is because of intervention by the federal government and/or the Supreme Court in applying the Bill of Rights protections to state courts. I don't think the federal rules are perfect, but it's hard to see how 50 separate sets of rules-and it's actually more than that because local courts have local rules-can possibly lead to a consistent application of justice. And I don't think I am being an undue pessimist to suggest that justice often depends on the ability to hire the best lawyer. I don't do criminal law but I know damn well that public defenders, whatever their ability, are tremendously overworked. If you have to rely on the public defender, which many accused due, you are behind the 8 ball from the start. I don't think there is any way that OJ is acquitted if he had to rely on the local PD. And that's why some guilty people are acquitted and some innocent are convicted.

Asked by: Marc Schneider

Answered: 3/10/2016

 I don’t agree that the Federal government really has anything to do with the major improvements in the legal system, at least in the years 1900 to 1960, which is what really astonished me.  The biggest thing is actually evidence. My book covers basically the years 1898 to 1912.  At the beginning of that era there is almost nothing that we would now regard as actual evidence.  Although it had been known since hundreds of years before the time of Christ that the skin ridges on our fingers were unique to each individual, this knowledge had never been exploited or developed for use within the legal system.  That starts about 1904, although there had been isolated cases before that of individuals being convicted because they had left fingerprints in blood.  At the beginning of that era there is no blood typing; the Blood Groups A, B, AB and O and the positive and negative markers were completely unknown.  That understanding also was developed in a couple of breakthroughs usually dated 1903 and 1909, and police are just beginning to make use of that knowledge at the time my book ends.  In 1900 there are no ballistics.  Ballistics begin. . .well, I’m not an expert, but I would say in the 1920s. 

              It is not these advances themselves that I am talking about, but rather this: that a legal system which is organized around the concept of evidence is just totally different from a legal system which is organized without any understanding of these things.  In almost every crime scene in my book—about 40 crime scenes—the scene of the crime is overrun by literally thousands of curious neighbors and citizens.  A spectacular crime scene becomes an immediate tourist attraction for everybody within a day’s train ride.  SOME understanding of the concept of "preserving a crime scene" can be dated to the 1880s or even earlier, but the PUBLIC doesn’t accept that and isn’t aware of it.  People will write that the police failed to preserve the crime scene, but that’s not exactly what happened; the reality is more that the public failed to observe limitations that we now take absolutely for granted: STAY THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY.  

              When a crime occurs in a small town or rural area, as almost all of "my" crimes did, there is no automatic or immediate structure to investigate the crime. There are no STATE police investigative agencies, although some states (New England states, mostly) did have state police agencies by that time, and a few more by the end of that time.  But mostly, it’s just a sheriff and a city marshal, and they’re on their own.  These people are completely untrained.  Local sheriffs are often just local guys who ran for sheriff and won the election, and many of them have no idea what they are doing.  As often as not they are defeated for re-election in the middle of the investigation. Before anyone can START the investigation, they have to raise money somehow to start the investigation, and this often takes a week—before the investigation can start.  Once there is money there, the investigation draws private investigators, and some of the PIs are very professional and know what they are doing, but there is no licensing or regulation of Private Investigators, and lots and lots of guys who are complete amateurs show up and claim to be Private Investigators.  Some of them are obvious shysters and hucksters; many of them are nincompoops.  

              In one case, a man named James Linkous was executed—EXECUTED—by the State of Virginia. The absolute entirety of the evidence against him is (1) that several people thought that he didn’t behave the way he should have behaved in the crazy three-hour period after his dwelling was discovered to be on fire, and (2) that if he didn’t commit the crime, no one had any idea who did. That’s it; other than that there is NOTHING against him.  He wasn’t alcoholic or abusive, and there is no evidence that he was anything other than a loving husband. He had no criminal history, no known motive to have committed the crime. There are many other crimes in the book almost as outrageous as that.  

              Absent evidence, people routinely use gossip and outright slander as testimony against the accused.  A judicial system which has no concept of physical evidence is just very, very different from a judicial system which assumes a concept of physical evidence.  

              ONE of the things which changed after 1912 but before I became aware of the world around me (about 1960) is that, by 1960, there is an ingrained concept of evidence around which trials are organized, and also, by 1960, almost everybody understands that they should stay away from a crime scene.  But the other thing that happened, equally important, is the growth of a professional investigative system and a professional judiciary.  Between 1910 and 1940 every state started state police investigative agencies.  By 1950 the professional police investigative agencies had pushed the Private Investigators out of the process.  THANK GOD.  

              Forgot to mention. . . in 1912 most of the JUDGES have no training in the law.  They’re just people who ran for judge and won the election, or (in some cases) lawyers who got appointed to be judges, but in very few cases had they gone to law school.  These people have ethical lapses which are absolutely appalling.  The most blatant conflicts of interest. . .nobody bats an eye.   In one case a rich relative of the victims hires an expensive big city lawyer to prosecute the accused, and by "prosecute" what I mean is "Frame".  Ridiculous stuff is used as evidence.  A bank discovers blood on a bank note, deposited in the bank weeks after the accused has been in jail.  A story is invented as to how this bank note COULD have been given by the accused to a local businessman, and that businessman COULD HAVE given it to a third party could could have deposited it in the bank.  No evidence that he DID; merely that it is possible. This is introduced as evidence against a man on trial for his life. 

              Between 1910 and 1950 the Bar Associations professionalized the legal profession, and drove many or most of the most blatant shysters and incompetents out of the legal profession.  You may think that the ethics of lawyers are not great now, but. . .you have absolutely no idea.  I had absolutely no idea how bad it was.  It’s not the intervention of the Federal judiciary that was responsible for the improvements, not in the least.  It was:

              (1) the development of numerous lines of physical evidence,

              (2) the creation of a legal system which relied on actual evidence, replacing gossip and miscellaneous other nonsense,

              (3) the creation of statewide police investigative services,

              (4) the professionalism of the police services, and

              (5) the professionalism and reform of the legal system, led by the American Bar Association and by state bar associations.  

HeyBill, I've always thought there was one interesting twist to gun laws in my state. I could walk into a gun shop in New Jersey and buy a shotgun or rifle this afternoon, and I could get a handgun permit in six weeks or so (and have). But what I could not buy is a suppressor (aka silencer), and I could not buy one elsewhere and bring it into New Jersey without facing possible prison time (not jail, real big boy pants prison). Seems odd, like the government has a loophole to keep guns loud...surely there could be some technology to toss a projectile from a hand device silently, no? But then again, if I was going to commit a crime with a handgun, I'd guess I'd want to have some class and not be all flashy and ostentatious about it...

Asked by: OldBackstop

Answered: 3/9/2016

 Well, but you have that in every set of laws, don't you? The laws in many states (certainly mine) call for enhanced penalties if you are caught in possession of drugs near a school. The police, then, set up traffic stops in school zones, so that when they catch somebody with drugs, it is always near a school.  The law, in effect, says that driving past a school with a brick of marijuana in your trunk is worse than defrauding an old lady out of a million dollars. Every new law reacts with the set of old laws in unforeseen and unpredictable ways, so it is impossible to ever logically resolve all of the irrational conflicts.  

You and I Have Memories

By Steven Goldleaf

September 9, 2017

When I wrote last month (https://www.billjamesonline.com/articles/?AuthorId=23 ) about Roberto Clemente hitting the only walk-off grand-slam inside-the-park home run in major league history, it made me think a little bit about what memory feels like. It was a strange little piece, an experiment prompted by my reading an online article in the hellish waiting area at LaGuardia (it’s not hell, just hell-ish) and wondering if I could possibly get something, anything, written and posted in the 15 or 20 minutes available before they call my row number. Normally, I put a couple of days into planning, researching, writing, rewriting, rethinking, revising a piece before I post it, so I was basically daring myself to see if I could get anything remotely readable online before I had to clap my laptop shut. Maybe that haste showed. If so, sorry.

But the thing I realized, once I figured out that Clemente’s W-O G-S I-T-P HR just happened to occur sixty-one years to the day before I read about it, was how long ago sixty-one years was—or rather how long ago it WASN’T. I remember Clemente very well—I saw most of his career, though not the first few years of it (I turned 3 about a month before the day described in the article) but I remember vividly seeing Clemente as a young outfielder. He had a charismatic, almost royal, presence, especially in those days when Batting Average was still king and OBP wasn’t even a bump in its mama’s belly. For some reason, I remember a black-and-white photo of him down on one knee in the outfield: I’ve never quite seen any other player in quite that pose. It reminded me of an Irish Setter pointing at a bird, Clemente’s angular body down on one knee. What was he doing? Making a catch? Falling after making a throw? Anyway, 61 years isn’t that long a time to remember—I’m sure many of us have memories that go back 61 years—I know I have one or two, and I’m far from the oldest guy on this site. The first baseball game I ever saw was in late 1961, though, and if my logic holds up, that means that there were guys sitting in Yankee Stadium with me that day who remembered very well games before the American League began, and no doubt some even older guys who remembered a lot further back than that.

That strikes me as remarkable, somehow, that when I was very young I knew men who remembered parts of the nineteenth century but regarded those memories as nothing special. The nineteenth century now seems to me like a time just after dinosaurs walked the earth, but 1956? I can describe the sailor cap my dad wore that summer, or the precise shade of red my infant brother’s face turned when he cried that year. I actually have one very clear memory of my brother’s birth in 1955, and I find that 62-year-old memory fairly amazing in itself, for the clarity of it and the certainty of the scene I’m able to recall. But now I’m questioning my own sense of certainty.

I used to live next door, in upstate New York, to an older guy who remembered having seen Babe Ruth play, which struck me as amazing, but really when you come to think about it, Babe Ruth didn’t even die until 1948, and he died very young, 53 or 54, so of course I had neighbors who remembered him playing outfield for the Yankees—I just didn’t fully realize how close the past is to me, is to us all, on a personal level. F. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940, and I was able to interview in 2013 the woman who had been his secretary the last few years of his life, and to talk to Budd Schulberg, who had been Fitzgerald’s collaborator on a movie script in 1937. Both of these nonagenarians had sharp memories of Fitzgerald, and spoke with perfect lucidity as they told me about his daily routines. (They were also slightly annoyed, I think, that they were in such demand to discuss events of 70 years earlier, and that so few of the interviews concerned the lives they lived in those 70 busy years.) Somehow, I’d assumed that when I got to the point when I had memories that were over 60 years old, my mind would have frazzled and those memories would be as valuable and as tangible as dandelion spores in a strong breeze.

When I think of all the things I’ve wasted in my lifetime, and that’s a lot of waste, one of the biggest is not sitting down and taking notes when older people were willing to tell me about their lives. My dad served in Europe and in the Pacific during World War II—I can still feel my eyes rolling whenever he was willing to talk about his experiences during the war. He didn’t like talking about the war at all, but sometimes he would be reminded of something that happened to him as a young soldier. I, however, couldn’t wait to change the subject into one more relevant to me, not understanding that knowing about my dad’s life would be far more valuable than some pop song or TV show. Now that resource is long gone, forever lost, and I marvel at my own self-centeredness in having been unable to recognize the value in older people’s memories.

The images that keep replaying on a loop inside my cranium, even those over a half-century old, maybe especially those, are remarkably vivid. My brother likes to tease me about remembering useless stuff about baseball in the 1960s, and I do remember baseball from that decade far more sharply than I remember any other decade, partly because I didn’t have that much to focus on at the time other than baseball, and partly because I have reinforced those initial impressions with much re-thinking and research into the period since then. Truth to tell, I probably watch 10%, maybe 5%, maybe less, of baseball games today than I watched when I had nothing better to fill my days and nights with, or so I thought. I used to know the names of every utility infielder in MLB, and I could tell you some anecdote or oddball stat or association with every player in baseball, often many anecdotes and stats and stories about the most ephemeral players in the game, but now, honestly, I see the names of starting players, even MVP candidates, and I don’t know a damned thing about them—what’s worse, I’m not alarmed at my ignorance; in the same way I used to dismiss everything that happened before I was born with a casual "Well, that was before my time," I often view things that are happening in MLB right now with "Well, that was after my time."

I think of myself as a curious person, but my curiosity now extends to areas beyond contemporary baseball—I’m looking backwards to understand more about baseball history, but I’m also interested in expanding my knowledge in other fields entirely, beyond baseball, beyond sports, beyond my professional areas of expertise, which has been focused narrowly on certain American writers of the 20th century. Bill likes to rail against expertise, but I (and he) have made decent livings out of being experts in our specialized areas, as have most of you, I’m quite sure—we tend to know a lot about a very limited sphere of information (what Isaiah Berlin liked to call "Hedgehogs," as opposed to Foxes, who according to Berlin know a little bit about a lot of things), and that to me seems a very useful organization of information: I want my plumber to be extremely knowledgeable about pipes and sewer lines and such, and I don’t really care if he’s also an opera aficionado or a master chef in his spare time, while I’m pretty sure my students want me to be extremely reliable on Fitzgerald’s impressions of the 1926 silent film version of The Great Gatsby and couldn’t care less about my career as a bartender or a rock guitarist (both of which I abandoned early on, for a stunning lack of aptitude). I’ve always admired people who are expert in several divergent areas—the incongruity is always a marvel: while I admire Bill no end for his depth of understanding about baseball, for example, it pleases me even more that he is also knowledgeable about American crime stories or ancient Rome, so I’m trying to widen my own areas of expertise now that I have a little time in which to do so.

As I try to branch out, however, I’m always reminded of all the chances I had, and lost, to explore paths I walked right by earlier, not thinking to take a detour from my chosen route. (Frost’s road not taken, his point being, I think, that some roads are necessarily not taken, not that he made an especially poor call with that one road.) While it’s not a lie to say that I saw a lot of great ballplayers in my youth, a lot of those memories are only technically within my memory banks. I can produce ticket stubs as evidence that I saw Brooks Robinson play third base, or Mazeroski playing second base, but I don’t know that on the days I saw these things my attention was focused on Robinson or Mazeroski. It’s often fun, when I take some neophyte to see a game these days, I try to point out the one or two players who might someday make a good story that you saw them play a game. I took my girlfriend (not a baseball fan) to see the Mets play the Brewers in early June this year, and I asked her to pay special attention to Michael Conforto, more by way of default than anything else. It’s just impossible to pay your full attention to every player on the field at once, and it’s more fun to concentrate on just a few, if you have any idea which ones are worth your effort. I think I’m compensating for my own failure to strategize along these lines when I went to games as a neophyte, or even as a hardcore baseball nut.

I’ve inadvertently made some odd experiments in memory in the past few years, especially as concerning my friend Joe. You may recall that Joe, who celebrated his 95th birthday this spring, had very briefly broken bread with Ted Williams in the service during The War, and had baseball stories to share with me dating back to the early 1930s. The funny part is that I’m surprised, and Joe is embarrassed, to find out how often Joe’s sharp, vivid memories of baseball games hang a bit off-plumb. Sometimes a little off, other times a lot, but nearly always contradicting facts that Joe confidently asserts as 100% accurate. As I said, I’ve grown suspicious of "certainty" above all else.

A Giants’ fan (NY Giants—Joe doesn’t care for the SF johnny-lemaster-come-latelys), he told me a few weeks back about a masterful shutout (27 up, 27 down, one baserunner erased on a DP) that Carl Hubbell pitched against the Dodgers in Ebbets Field in the front end of a July 4th doubleheader, or possibly a Labor Day doubleheader, as his career was closing down, in either 1940 or 1941. Joe told me the score of the game, the score of the second game, the batting star of both games (a backup catcher named Harry Danning), and several other details. He told me where he sat in Ebbets Field, as he painted a lively picture of a baseball game he’d seen over 75 years ago. I marveled at his total recall.

It will not surprise you that I could find no such game on Retrosheet. I looked for July 4th and Labor Day doubleheaders for 1940 and 1941, and then for 1942, and then for 1939 and 1943. (Hubbell hung on for quite a while as what we would now call a back-of-the-rotation guy.) Nothing even close. Which was too bad because I’d hoped to surprise Joe with the boxscore of the game he had so richly described to me. When I reported my findings, Joe still insisted that I had to have overlooked something, so certain was he of what he’d seen (and had been remembering so fondly all these years).

Turned out-- thanks to Joe remembering wearing a jacket to the game, which he says he wouldn’t have worn to a July 4th or early September game--to have been a Memorial Day double-bill. Joe got the score wrong (but fairly close) and Danning did have a good day (3 for 11, with 2 doubles and 3 RBIS), but Joe had been mis-telling this story in detail for several decades now, positive he was remembering correctly every last detail: https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BRO/BRO194005301.shtml is the box score.

He was even more positive about one detail in the only World Series game he ever saw, the final game of the 1942 Series between the Cardinals and the Yankees, in which he described for me his pleasure at seeing Joe DiMaggio get thrown out stealing second base. We had discussed earlier our annoyance at Yankee fans’ insistence that DiMaggio literally never made a base-running error nor threw to the wrong base—I told Joe of the sabermetric view that every Attempted Stolen Base on DiMaggio’s stat line plainly showed a record of the only type of base-running error we (sometimes) kept a record of, so certainly there were instances of DiMaggio misjudging his jump, an outfielder’s arm, etc. on other types of running plays that we don’t track records of so readily. More significantly, and this applies equally to baserunning errors and errors throwing to the wrong base, a low error-rate (as opposed to a zero error-rate) is actually a sign of excellence: we all make mistakes, and the only sure way to guarantee against errors is never to try. An outfielder who never tries to nab the lead runner while the trail runner advances an extra base is simply playing over-cautious baseball, conceding all sorts of extra bases routinely to runners. Sometimes, the smart play is to throw the ball with only a 75% or 90% chance at nabbing him—naturally this means that 25% of the time, or 10%, both runners will be safe, but there is obviously some figure (well below 90%) that justifies throwing to the lead runner’s target, even though throwing to the trail runner’s target would cause that trail runner to hold.

What I believe, and what Joe believes, is that DiMaggio was a superb baserunner and thrower who probably did make a few errors in judgment per season on the bases and in the outfield, as superb runners and throwers will, but Yankee fans and Yankee announcers and other idiots just enjoyed bugging us by proclaiming a zero-error rate for DiMaggio, so it pleased us both that Joe remembered so well Dimaggio getting thrown out to snuff a rally in the 1942 World Series’ deciding game. "And it was in the ninth inning, too," Joe added. "The Yankees had DiMaggio on base, they were only behind by two runs, and he ruined everything by getting thrown out trying to steal second base. All by himself, he turned a promising rally into a no-one-on, two-outs situation. I can see him, trotting back to the dugout, head down. The Series ended a minute later. It was beautiful."

Problem was (you’re way ahead of me), that the 1942 Series stat line showed DiMaggio (and the Yankees for that matter) with 0 caught-stealings, and when I checked out the play-by-play for the final game, I found that DiMaggio didn’t get up to bat in the ninth inning.

When I reported this to Joe, for a second I thought he was angry with me, as if I were lying to him or teasing him. "I can see it—" he started to say.

"DiMaggio trotted back to the dugout," I chimed in. "Head down."

"Yes," Joe said, shaking his head vigorously, up and down. "Yes."

"No," I said. "Didn’t happen like that."

"Let me see that box score," Joe said. "I know what I saw."

What Joe saw, it turned out, was that Joe Gordon, the Yankees’ other star-Joe, had singled to open the bottom of the ninth, then advanced to second base on an error but promptly got himself picked off second base for the first out of the inning, blowing a gigantic hole in the 9th inning, two-runs-down rally his single had started. DiMaggio never got near the field in the bottom of the ninth, but somehow Joe remembered what he wanted to remember, DiMaggio slinking off the field in red-faced shame at his moronic attempt to steal a meaningless base that wrecked the Yankees’ slender chance to steal back the 1942 World Series from the Cardinals.

I had wondered, briefly, if Joe could have been confusing the final game of that World Series with the final game of the 1926 World Series, also where the Cardinals defeated the Yankees, ending on a very famous caught-stealing by a very famous Yankee slugger, but of course that was ridiculous. Joe was only four years old in the fall of 1926, so how he possibly have an image in his head of Babe Ruth slinking off the field in red-faced shame, etc. etc.? And while I still find it ridiculous, that is exactly what human memory does, conflating all varieties of experience into one experience, turning our lives into a smorgasbord that we pick and choose from, making up plates to suit ourselves, plates that have no order or reason or logic to them sometimes, just the disorder of our minds that fossilizes itself into vivid memories we swear by.

Joe and I spoke about this unreliability as well, which is another thing I like about Joe—he was actually pleased to be shown the things he had sworn by were wrong in critical places. We discussed traffic accidents we had witnessed in which our testimony was critically flawed—I remembered a green car being broadsided by a red car, only it turned out that it was the red car that had rammed into the green one (and just barely missed ramming into me), and Joe had similar experiences. Human memories, I’ve understood increasingly over the years, are deeply flawed, and we’re just beginning to understand and quantify the depth and persistence of those flaws.

This is why I spend so much time reading Retrosheet, and why I love sabermetrics as much as I do: both provide a solid antidote to the poison of human memory. A little poison (a lloydwaner, in baseball terms) can be a good thing, can inoculate us and even provide pleasure, in small doses—a glass or three per week of Irish whiskey might lead to your finest hours in those weeks, but a bottle or three as your daily regimen will surely wreck your guts sooner or later, and my money’s on "sooner." Remembering stuff vividly from childhood is a great pleasure, but it’s the swearing by those memories that’s so dangerous, a danger that Retrosheet and sabermetrics and recording history seeks to protect us from.

You can make all the wild claims you like about fantastic games, and plays, and feats, you saw as a boy, and until recently it was difficult to prove you wrong, but now when Joe and I and you want to make those claims, we have to do it in the face of recorded facts. The only facts that existed up until the past few decades were newspaper accounts, which didn’t always agree with each other, and which were recorded by human beings capable of committing errors to print. Now, not so much, and getting harder by the day.

When I was trying to trace out this story, I came across a famous DiMaggio story that belies all the "perfect ballplayer" nonsense that his idolators love to indulge in. (If you Google "DiMaggio" and "perfect ballplayer" or other such phrases, you’ll find all sorts of wild claims about him having perfect judgment, never making a mental mistake, etc., some of the quotes from respectable baseball people as well as fans and broadcasters.) It’s funny, because this counter-anecdote is very well known, and its point is that DiMaggio, when he was a young star, was far from perfect in his judgment—its point is, in fact, that he was a conceited young doofus who learned lessons the hard way. It’s the one about Joe D. playing shallow when Lefty Gomez was pitching, in order "to make them forget about Tris Speaker," and blowing the game by allowing a hitter to blast a ball deep over Joe’s head, losing the game for Lefty and the Yanks. You all know that one. Isn’t that exactly what I just said—a story about DiMaggio making a mental error?

I came across an excerpt in a magazine (New York mag, May 1-14 2017 issue, page 102), not the book itself, but it appears in a first-person narrative from Joe. D. himself, so I decided to run a tracer on this version of the story, with the usual unsurprising results: the game (as told) never happened. This narrative (the book is Dr. Rock Positano’s DINNER WITH DIMAGGIO) has Joe supplying enough details to run a tracer: the game took place in 1936, his rookie year, on a day the Yankees "were playing a doubleheader against the Red Sox. I played real shallow and we won the first game. Lefty pitched the second, and he was in trouble." Joe gives a few more details but the only ones that matters for my purposes is that the ball "rolled around out there all the way to the monuments" and the Yankees "lost that game." Since there are no monuments in Fenway, this tells us the game took place in Yankee Stadium.

In 1936, the Yankees played the Red Sox twice in doubleheaders in Yankee Stadium. The first one, on June 30th, the Yankees swept, so no go. (The pitcher in the second game was Bump Hadley, anyway.) The next one was on August 23rd. This time they did win the first game and lose the second, but again, the Yankee pitcher in the second game was Bump Hadley. Now, if the punchline of the story were "You keep playing like that, kid, and they’ll forget Bump Hadley," then I’d look at the boxscore of the second game on August 23rd to see if maybe that play were there, but, no, it’s always told as "Tris Speaker? You keep playing like that, kid, and they’ll forget Lefty Gomez," which is how it appears in the Positano book. (I'd already forgotten Bump Hadley.) I could keep looking, for other tellings, or other flaws in the story that make it possible (if the game were an away game, or took place in 1937, or wasn’t part of a doubleheader, or something else.) The minor point is, like most tracers, the story, as told, doesn’t check out, and it wasn’t all that hard to run a check. The major point is that, obviously, Joe DiMaggio did make mental errors, just like every ballplayer—he may have made fewer of them, or made all of them in his first few years in MLB, or compensated for them better, but he wasn’t, as the anecdotes have it, a perfect ballplayer, and the anecdote exists to memorialize that fact.

(A related memory-centric article to follow, in a few days or whenever I get it finished, whichever comes first.)

​

COMMENTS (37 Comments, most recent shown first)

FrankD
Dylan Thomas and memories:
One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

Its a wonder if we don't conflate our memories even more. We take in a huge amount of real-time sensory data, filter it somehow to make sense of the now, then filter the data again and store this data with some kind of time stamp. And years later we try to recall this information. Now oft told stories often seem to even change these memories, as we recall, embellish and restore these memories - probably not in the same state that we recalled them. And many people lie and repeat the lie so often that the lie now is, to them, a real memory.

As for Clemente on one knee: in '60s we were taught to take routine grounders in outfield on one knee to block bad hops ......
6:45 PM Sep 18th

Marc Schneider
I guess I'm misremembering that I hit a home run to win the World Series and after the game went out with a supermodel. Oh well! The mind works in mysterious ways. I have memories of things happening to me that were actually dreams but seemed so vivid I was sure they actually happened. One night when I was single I dreamed that I had met a very attractive woman and got her phone number and I woke up and went to check my address book and, yes, it was a dream. I just wish it had been a better dream than getting her phone number.
3:35 PM Sep 14th

Steven Goldleaf
I haven't read the Positano book, only the excerpt in New York magazine, but I've certainly read enough about DiMaggio to last me a while--I'm not so drawn to his personality, or lack thereof, to want to explore it further.

A funny thing happened when I contacted my friend Joe to find out if my house in Florida was still standing (which it is--Joe says I lost a screen door, but it's otherwise untouched by Irma) --he pointed out how he had told me that he mis-remembered Dimaggio getting picked off second base, not getting caught stealing, but I mis-remembered that in turn as him telling me it was a CS. Joe had shared his story, and I looked up the boxscore, several months ago, but that was time enough for me to forget one crucial detail of his story. It's a wonder (as Dylan wrote about a different idiot) that we can even breathe.
3:17 PM Sep 13th

steve161
Given that I've read the Richard Ben Cramer biography, is there enough value-added in the Positano book, even leaving aside the fallibility of memory? From Cramer (and many other sources, like the 'greatest living' business or banning some of her friends from Marilyn Monroe's funeral) I don't get the impression I'd much enjoy spending time with Dimaggio.

By the way: Steven, excellent piece.​
8:40 AM Sep 13th

MWeddell
I also read the Positano book and it was a rather odd book. It was written by an unabashed admirer of DiMaggio but yet clearly reveals DiMaggio to be an extremely self-centered, high-maintenance person during the last decade of his life. I'd often heard him described as "aloof" elsewhere, but his behavior extends far beyond that rather tepid description. The book is much different than the typical athlete biography.
8:08 AM Sep 13th

Brock Hanke
bhalbleib - My memory is that this is also in My War. Hornsby, trying to win a pennant, didn't like his team's September off days being consumed by exhibition games. To Sam Breadon, those games were more money for him. I probably should have said "money issues" instead of just mentioning the salary thing. Now that I think of it, this feature may be what started the dad/Broeg story. Heroic superstar player/manager trying to win pennant opposing money-mad front office. I can see that this would play to a hero-worshipping teenage baseball fan.
6:12 PM Sep 12th

bhalbleib
Brock, , Wikipedia has yet another story of Hornsby leaving the Cardinals (quoting a 2007 book/article by Lee Lowenfish as its source), which states:

"But during the offseason, Breadon traded Hornsby to the New York Giants, the result of a heated confrontation between owner and player-manager in September 1926 over the playing of exhibition games during the September pennant race."

Btw, that story is in the Breadon Wikipedia article, not the Hornsby one.
10:56 AM Sep 12th

Brock Hanke
evanecurb - I'd be inclined to question which Hornsby story was right myself, except that the one in My War makes Hornsby look much worse. My dad and Broeg's version sanitizes him, portrays him as a genius player/manager who got roasted by Rickey over credit. Now, I have noticed that the dad/Broeg story is completely PLAUSIBLE, as long as you don't have any actual "I was there" sources. Hornsby, realizing that he wasn't going to become manager of the Giants, gets them to trade (sell) him to the Braves, whose owner was trying to build his team up by acquiring both Hornsby and George Sisler (all true), and who was willing to let Hornsby manage. This didn't work, and Hornsby was apparently satisfied that he had had his chance, and went to the Cubs under Joe McCarthy with no resistance. However, once McCarthy was gone, Hornsby wanted to try managing again. That SOUNDS like it makes sense, and McCarthy, who did not like Southerners, apparently had no problems with Hornsby that I know of, but still. My dad was 15, Bob Broeg was younger than my dad, while Hornsby was an adult who was actually there. And his story makes him look worse than the dad/Broeg story. I'd love to see a version of this by McGraw or McCarthy, but I haven't found one yet.
2:28 AM Sep 12th

bhalbleib
Just a thought but you could check Gomez's games against the Indians during the same time period too, after all, Speaker almost 500 more games for the Indians than the Red Sox.
2:33 PM Sep 11th

bhalbleib
I wanted to share one that I had to figure out from my grandfather (who just passed away at the fine age of 97). He told me a story about seeing an exhibition game in Wichita (his farm was in western Kansas) as a kid where Honus Wagner and Rogers Hornsby stood on the field near the third base dugout with their bats and talked about hitting the entire game (showing each other stances and grips and such). When I first thought about it, I thought it wasn't possible, Wagner retired in 1917 and my grandfather wasn't born until 1920 . . . but then I realized that he coached for the Pirates (Wikipedia said 1933-1951). Hornsby also coached for the Cards in 1933, so my speculation is that the exhibition game would have taken place prior to the season in 1933 between the Cards and Pirates. It is also possible the game was in KC, not Wichita, but that wouldn't change the story.
1:53 PM Sep 11th

Steven Goldleaf
Can't edit here (I haven't figured out how) but Gomez pitched EIGHT games against Detroit in 1937, but Neyer focused on the three most likely games.
10:29 AM Sep 11th

Steven Goldleaf
Did a little more looking: Rob Neyer conveys yet another version of Dimag-Speaker-Gomez tale on pp. 144-5 of his Baseball Legends book, this time as filtered through NY Post columnist Milton Gross in 1971. This time around, Dimag tells it as happening in 1937 (specifically "my second year in the majors").

Neyer runs a tracer--there's no Greenberg here at all (apparently the greatest catch ever vs. Greenberg at the 461-mark in 1936 has gotten conflated with the Rudy York story here.) According to Neyer, Gomez pitched three games vs. the Tigers in 1937. Dimaggio tells the story about Gomez signalling him to play back, much deeper, against the rookie York, who smashed 35 HRs in 104 games that year, and Dimaggio refused to budge. York then smashed "the first pitch over my head, and I couldn't catch up with it. I managed to touch the ball with one finger. We lost by one run." And after the game, the discussion of forgetting Tris Speaker, and forgetting Lefty Gomez, ensued. Gomez, compensating for 1936, started 8 games vs. the Tigers in 1937, according to Neyer, but lost only two games by one run. The first one York didn't play in. The second one York got one hit, but it was a HR, so not the ball Dimaggio describes.

Neyer also traced out a 2-run loss to Detroit, but with similar results. In that game on June 26 1937, York also went hitless except for "a home run, this one dropping into the left field stands, presumably far from DiMaggio's outstretched finger."

It's really getting to look like DiMag and Gomez exchanged quips about "forgetting about Speaker" and "forgetting about Gomez" that made a good story but perhaps had no basis in an actual game. That'd be my guess at this point. Gomez used to tell colorful anecdotes in the rubber-circuit, and this might be one of them.
10:27 AM Sep 11th

evanecurb
Brock: It's possible that Hornsby is the one who got the story wrong. If you read Cobb's autobiography, there's an awful lot of revisionist history in there. (I"ve never read Hornsby's). On the other hand, did the Cardinals even have a farm system that was well established as early as 1926? I always thought it came about a little later.
9:06 AM Sep 11th

BobGill
So much for Gomez's story, then. But at least Chandler seems to have been right: He pitched the last four innings of the Aug. 2 game, and retrosheet says Greenberg flied out to center field in the ninth, so that must have been DiMaggio's great catch. Too bad about the rest of it, though. It really sounded genuine to me.
8:55 AM Sep 11th

Brock Hanke
I got burned earlier this year by one of these. In 1964, Sportsman's Park in St. Louis was an elderly building an a poor area of town. The metro area wanted to build a new ballpark, but St. Louis City and St. Louis County, which surrounds the city, could not decide on where. Then a guy got shot to death taking a pee by the side of the road on his way home from a game, and suddenly the path was cleared. My STRONG memory was that the murder victim was the son of my mother's best friend, Rosemary Lough (John was the son's name). Someone did a tracer on that and found out that John had been the DRIVER of the car, NOT the shooting victim. How could I possibly have had that wrong since 1964, when Rosemary was my mom's best friend? I have no idea.

Here's another. Both my father AND the old sportswriter Bob Broeg told me the exact same story about how Rogers Hornsby left the Cardinals. He and Branch Rickey got into an ego fight over who was responsible for the 1926 championship. Hornsby claimed that, as soon as he was named field manager in 1925, he turned the club right around into a contender (this is true, or at least the Cards did start playing like the 1926 bunch as soon as Hornsby became manager). Rickey claimed that it was his great farm system and GMing that had done the trick. Rickey convinced owner Sam Breadon to trade Hornsby to the one team in baseball where Hornsby would NOT get a chance to prove that he was a genius manager (Giants, McGraw). The thing is, if you read My War With Baseball (Hornsby's biography, 1961), it is very clear that all this is wrong. Hornsby got into a salary fight with Breadon. How could my dad AND Bob Broeg remember the same story wrong the same way since 1926? Well, dad was 15 years old at the time, and, while he thought that George Sisler was God, he thought that Hornsby was Jesus. So, that makes sense. Dad never read Hornsby's biography. But Bob Broeg? Who was the beat writer for the Cards for decades and was still active in 1961, when My War... came out? How did he miss it? Did he just never read Rogers Hornsby's biography? The beat writer for the Cardinals? I have no idea at all, to this day. And, since Broeg is now dead, I doubt I'll ever find out how he missed the correction.
9:51 PM Sep 10th

Steven Goldleaf
The catch Chandler refers to came on August 2. 1939. The next day's Times coverage (byline Louis Effrat, not James Dawson, though Dawson might have written a similar column later) calls it "probably the greatest catch ever made in the Stadium." Effrat describes Joe D. racing "to within two feet of the 461-mark on the wall and, without looking backward, clutched the ball in his gloved hand just as it appeared about to hit the fence." The next day, Monte Pearson pitched a complete game for the Yankees--no Lefty Gomez, who as I said did not pitch against Detroit all that season.

James P. Dawson was covering the NL at that point, but maybe sometime he described DiMag's catch. He certainly did not see DiMaggio make the catch, as he was covering the Giants playing in Cincinnati when he made the catch at the 461 mark in Yankee Stadium.
9:15 PM Sep 10th

Steven Goldleaf
Here's a pretty good 5)

In 1939, Lefty Gomez innings vs. Detroit: 0
8:44 PM Sep 10th

Steven Goldleaf
Also, 3) Lifetime triples Rudy York hit off Gomez: 0
4) Lifetime doubles Rudy York hit off Gomez: 0

the retrosheet record at BB-ref.com is missing 1 game, but it's pretty unlikely that that is the one game.
8:33 PM Sep 10th

Steven Goldleaf
Haven't traced this version out completely, but

1) in 1939, Rudy York hit only 1 triple on the year, so obviously he never hit 2 in one game

2) I couldn't find any NYY-Det series in 1939 at Yankee Stadium in which Lefty Gomez pitched the second (or third, or fourth) game of the series.

Either of these is sufficient for me to regard the story as seriously flawed. You've got all these competing versions, with various tellers supplying very specific details, some of which are certainly wrong.
8:11 PM Sep 10th

BobGill
Addendum to the DiMaggio story ...

In "Baseball When the Grass Was Real," Spud Chandler discusses DiMaggio's great catch of the ball hit by Greenberg. He says it was the greatest catch he ever saw, and he had a good view of it, because he was pitching that day. He also corroborates the year it happened: 1939.

7:43 PM Sep 10th

BobGill
Here's a different version of the "make 'em forget Speaker" story, from an interview with Lefty Gomez in 1977. This one has more of the ring of truth to me:

One day in 1939, playing in Yankee Stadium, Hank Greenberg blasted a ball 450 feet and DiMaggio made a spectacular catch of it, back among the monuments with his back to the plate. (It must've been similar to Willie Mays' catch in the 1954 World Series.) DiMaggio himself , presumably looking back years later, called it "the best outfield play I ever made." The next day, Jim Dawson (a name I don't recognize) wrote in the New York Times that with his ability to play shallow and still catch everything hit over his head, DiMaggio would make the fans forget Tris Speaker.

The next day, with Gomez pitching, Rudy York hit two balls over DiMaggio's head, both of which went for triples. In the dugout after the second one, Gomez asked why he was playing so shallow for York. DiMaggio, disgusted with himself, said, "Didn't you see the paper? I'm going to make the fans forget Tris Speaker."

To which Gomez replied, "OK, but just make sure you don't make 'em forget Gomez."

Bill mentioned this anecdote in the 2001 Historical Abstract, and said he didn't believe it, because in the more common shortened version, DiMaggio is boasting when he says he's going to make everybody forget Speaker. In this version, though, he's being sarcastic, mad at himself for failing to catch two long flies in the same game. That strikes me as more believable, as does the added detail of who the batters were, and the name of the writer with the Times.

I haven't tried to trace it, so I can't guarantee that this is THE correct story, but it's the one I'd pick, anyway.

7:34 PM Sep 10th

ajmilner
DiMaggio was introduced as "the greatest living ballplayer" at a ballgame, and in the press box Thomas Boswell said, "What, did Willie Mays die?"
5:22 PM Sep 10th

Rich Dunstan
Thanks for this beautiful reflection, Steven.

My grandfather was born in 1873 (he was 75 when I was born), older than Ty Cobb or Honus Wagner, and how I wish I could remember more of what he told me about baseball and everything else in a long and adventurous life.

On the topic of "make a good story that you saw them play in a game," when I saw Stan Musial play at Candlestick in his final season, I made a conscious decision at the time to acquire and preserve a mental image of him. My memory is of Musial moving no more than a step or two in from his position to catch an easy fly ball in left field, gloving it in front of his face.

It's a lovely memory, and I hope it's accurate, but... the only time I saw Barry Bonds play in person, 1998 in St. Louis, it left me with an absolutely ineradicable mental picture of Bonds, correct body type and general appearance, at the plate...batting right-handed, despite my knowledge to the contrary. So much for memory.​
4:10 PM Sep 10th

Steven Goldleaf
If you juxtapose the Lefty Gomez story with the "Never made a mental error" story, MarisFan61, in front of John Sterling, how long would it take for his head to explode? 10, 9, 8....
12:31 PM Sep 10th

MarisFan61
Yes -- hyperbole, but about a thing that's still quite true. I do wonder, though, how often people might actually believe literally their hyperbole.
I know they don't always.

Common hyperbole includes:

"It all comes down to the pitching."
I'm sure that even people who say that, if pressed, would concede that at most, pitching is only 90% of baseball. :-)

Or, about some good and conscientious utility guy (the Yankee announcers sometimes actually did say this about Luis Sojo, and they come close to saying it about Ron Torreyes):
"He always but always gets the job done."
I assume they know he didn't.

Or (like about Edgar Martinez; I come close to saying it myself):
"He's a guy who always hit the ball hard."

And, this one that was said a fair amount about DiMaggio:
"the most perfect player in history"
(which I've taken to mean he was, well, pretty good)
12:08 PM Sep 10th

Steven Goldleaf
To excuse it a little bit, it's just a fan's expression, an overly enthusiastic way of saying "He made very few errors," but it seems to have a life of its own, and some people no doubt take it literally, despite the evidence (his nine recorded CSs, his 105 fielding errors) we have that he put his pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else. I have no doubt that the crucial extra-base hit in the Lefty Gomez story, if it ever actually occurred, was scored a hit and not an error, and that he may have made hundreds of similar mental errors in his career--'I'll shade this guy a step to the left" and BOOM! he hits it to Joe's right--because how could he not? An editor of Roger Kahn's once told his writers to "Stop Godding up the ballplayers" and I think that DiMaggio's peculiar legend was maybe the greatest example of a great player whose reputation got Godded up out of all proportion. I mean, he was an unbelievably superb player, I don't mean to take anything away from Joe D.'s talent, but did he have to be formally introduced at every public appearance as "The Greatest Living Ballplayer" or else he wouldn't show? Could we negotiate this one, Joe, with Willie Mays and Ted Williams and Stan Musial and Ty Cobb, please?
10:17 AM Sep 10th

jewishtitofuentes
During my 4 hour layover in Atlanta later today, I am going to find a spot to down a lloydwaner.
10:10 AM Sep 10th

pgaskill
Back when I was much younger, perhaps in the 1960s or so, wondering even then about the "DiMaggio never made a mistake" meme, I noticed in some book or other that Joltin’ Joe made TWO errors in his—as I recall—first All-Star Game. "pop" went THAT particular bubble. . . .
10:01 AM Sep 10th

ajmilner
I just checked BB-Ref.com ... Through August 31st, 1936, DiMaggio had 109 RBI in his first 112 games. He was already driving in runs at a Gehrig/Greenberg level at the age of 21.
9:00 AM Sep 10th

Steven Goldleaf
I never really looked closely at DiMaggio's rookie stats before, but they are amazing, for reasons going well beyond his very impressive raw stats (206 hits, 29 HRs, 125 RBI etc.). I hadn't realized that he missed April entirely, and he had a pretty lousy September (in his final 121 ABs, all after August 31st, he batted only .240 with a pretty poor .636 OPS), meaning that he tore up the league from May through August. He had 668 PAs in 1936, despite missing the first month of the season.
7:52 AM Sep 10th

Steven Goldleaf
Lots of possibilities, Magpie. But in the telling in the Positano book (which is subtitled "Memories of an American Hero" btw), he is extremely specific about the game being against Red Sox, mainly because he's trying the prove he's as skillful a CF as the Red Sox' former CFer Tris Speaker. Another BTW I learned in the course of doing this tracer is that Dimaggio didn't even play CF until he was in the big leagues for several months (and he debuted in May) so he was still playing LF in the doubleheader against the Browns on July 19th. He first played center on July 31.
7:05 AM Sep 10th

Magpie
The Yankees did split a DH at the Stadium against the Browns in July 1936, and Gomez was the losing pitcher after a sixth inning single to centre by Tony Giuliani put the Browns up 5-4. An inning earlier, Harlond Clift had tied the game with a two run single to centre. I would venture that this game got mixed up with some others in someone's memory.
2:44 AM Sep 10th

MarisFan61
Yeah, I guess you could argue those things.... :-)

Maybe it's just that other factor of how things seem from the years prior to our lives compared to during (at least for me), but, in relation to the factor of......what to call it...... timeline-shattering, chapter-differentiation that I was musing on, those 3 things that I mentioned from the prior period seem more monumental and 'watershed' to me than those things you mentioned -- at least to me. The only thing in my lifetime that feels as "watershed" as I imagine those to have been is 9/11.

BTW, maybe it's just chronological proximity that makes me say this, but, depending on the full nature and results of the STORMS going on right now (and in the making -- Jose, Katia, whatnot), and depending on societal reactions, I can imagine these storms constituting another such watershed, no pun intended (I wouldn't be that tacky about it).
2:21 AM Sep 10th

taosjohn
"I do think that we haven't had anything as large as any of those things except perhaps 9/11"-- Marisfan

Man on the moon.
JFK assassination
Nixon and Agnew resign
Polio vaccine
the pill/sexual revolution
Interstate system/air travel/withering away of rail network
Pcs/cell phones
Nukes
Pollution
Rise and fall of the Iron Curtain
End of the British Empire as they knew it

And so on and so forth. We have lived through the normalization of a lot of things of enormous impact, less perhaps than the depression in some ways, but more in others...
12:29 AM Sep 10th

MarisFan61
About that first theme, about how any given years-ago amount seemed so much greater when we were kids -- absolutely. I often think of it, especially when (as for you) when I'm thinking back to some memory from kidhood, which doesn't seem that extremely long ago and which I remember vividly, that things like the Spanish-American War or the middle of Cy Young's career were no longer ago for a lot of people at the time we were kids. I'm pretty sure it's likewise for most people in our generation, but what I have no idea about is, is it a general and universal thing function of a person's age -- i.e. 60 years ago from one's childhood always seems more remote than 60 years ago from when you're in your 60's; or if it's something specific to just what these two 60-year periods have been. I can imagine that maybe it's something like that the two World Wars and the Depression made those earlier 60 years seem larger and with more changes. It's hard to be objective about our own times, but I do think that we haven't had anything as large as any of those things except perhaps 9/11.
9:40 PM Sep 9th

MarisFan61
Funny you should be talking about this kind of thing. By coincidence I came across an almost identical kind of thing -- maybe you know it, being kind of a political junkie but then again I am too and I never knew of it, even though it involves a researcher that I happen to have some connection with...

I was looking up some stuff about John Dean because of how much he's been on the air lately. I was only looking to see where he went to law school, but I also saw that he was so sure he was remembering all the Oval Office details so totally accurately and that his testimony was so spot-on in all its particulars, that when he learned that there were tapes and that they'd be released, he was thrilled, because he was sure it would bear this out. But it didn't. Although he's a very bright guy and (apparently) very into detail, and (I'd assume) blessed with a quite good memory, he had made all kinds of mistakes. His gist and basic narrative were right, but the details were no more right than what we find in your average Bill James "Tracer," or in one of your guy Joe's stories. A psychologist-researcher who had long believed that things like this were far more common than recognized used this stuff to further his work.
8:40 PM Sep 9th

Steven Goldleaf
"He was just a smooth outfielder and smooth in his hitting. No mistakes, ever. He was a solid ball player in every way. I never saw him make a mistake"--Red Schoendienst, quoted in Baseball-Almanac.com

"He never did anything wrong on the field."--Yogi Berra, same place.

Schoendienst's quote might be explained by he didn't see DiMaggio play that much, but Yogi saw him every day for years.

"Name a better right handed hitter, or a better thrower, or a better fielder, or a better base runner. That's right, a better base runner. Did you ever see him slide when he hooked the bag with his toe? Absolutely perfect." --Hank Greenberg
6:33 PM Sep 9th

Andruw of Center Field

By Bill James

January 15, 2018

   2018-3                       1. Media

           I will be all over the media this week.  I taped an interview with Russell Roberts of EconTalk (Podcast) in late November or early December; that will be available to the public today.  Dr. Roberts is very, very professional, meticulous in preparation for the interview; I hope it will be interesting.

           Also, my yearly Top 10 contributions to the MLB panel are now running on MLB-TV, I think; I haven’t seen them but I am getting feedback about them, so I assume they are on.  Also, I taped an interview with C-Span which should begin running this week or perhaps next week.  So I’ll be around. 

2.  Andruw

After spending a couple of days on Twitter arguing about Andruw Jones’ qualifications for the Hall of Fame, I received this e-mail from my friend Yo Poz:

Bill, I have been sort of following your Andruw Jones thread on Twitter and what I have seen, I guess I would condense it as follows:

1. The only real argument for Andruw Jones as a Hall of Famer is if you are convinced he’s the greatest defensive centerfielder of all time.

2. The argument that he is the greatest defensive centerfielder of all time is specious and unconvincing.

3. There is no other real argument for Andruw Jones because he was not a notable or outstanding offensive player, base runner, leader, postseason performer, etc.

Do I have that generally right?

The three statements are accurate, but they dodge the real issue. The real issue is that people who see themselves as pro-analytical or post-analytical revolution, people who see themselves as sophisticated consumers of information, are in fact behaving in a manner which is identical to the pre-analytic arguments commonly used before 1975.  They argue that Andruw Jones has 63 WAR or whatever it is and that other players who have 58 WAR are in the Hall of Fame, therefore Andruw should be in the Hall of Fame as well.  This is no different than arguing that Herb Pennock won 240 games and he is in the Hall of Fame and Waite Hoyt won 237 games and he is in the Hall of Fame and Whitey Ford won 236 games and he is in the Hall of Fame, so David Wells, with 239 wins, obviously deserves to be in the Hall of Fame as well.  It is precisely the same argument; it is just using a "new" statistical category, rather than an old one.   Or, to apply it to a hitter, Yogi Berra drove in 1,430 runs, Charlie Gehringer drove in 1,427 runs, Joe Cronin drove in 1,424, Jim Bottomley drove in 1,422, Robin Yount drove in 1,406 and Ed Delahanty 1,400, and all of those guys are in the Hall of Fame, so how can you say that Joe Carter shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame when he drove in 1,445 runs, you moron, you. 

Andruw Jones is not going to be selected to the Hall of Fame this year one way or the other, so that is not a real issue, and it doesn’t actually make any difference whether he stays on the ballot or not; his chance of eventually being elected is the same either way, so that’s not a real issue to me, although I can understand that people don’t like the process because it is a flawed process.  I agree that Jones was a superb defensive center fielder, so that isn’t the issue, either. 

Most people are not "analysts"; they are consumers of information, and before they were using old information and now they are using newer, better information, so what’s the problem with that?  

The problem is this.  It ultimately damages the analytic community, and it will ultimately bring disrepute upon our community, if we allow people who pretend to be members of our community to make arguments which have obvious flaws, and which may be false because of those flaws. If we allow people who think they are "with us" to make arguments which may turn out in the long run to have been complete nonsense, without contesting those arguments, without pointing out the problems, then it ultimately comes back on us. 

WAR looks to an un-skeptical reader as a "comprehensive" statistic—but what people don’t get is that pitcher’s wins, in their day, were understood to be a comprehensive statistic, as well. A pitcher's win total summarized EVERYTHING the pitcher did--until we realized that it doesn't.  It was very, very common, 40 years ago, for people to say that RBI were the most important statistic for a hitter. Now it is WAR, but later it will be something else—or, at a minimum, some better, more carefully constructed versions of WAR.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that I am 100% comfortable with the runs saved estimates derived on behalf of Andruw Jones; in fact it might be 85% or 90%, but it doesn’t matter. Let’s say that we’re 100 confident in those numbers.  The problem is that the Runs Saved estimates derived in this manner are much larger than the Runs Saved estimates derived by older methods, which are necessarily conservative because of the limitations of the data. They are not just larger for Andruw Jones; they are larger in general. They are larger for Andrelton Simmons than for Luis Aparicio.  Andrelton Simmons’ dWAR as a first-year regular in 2013 was larger than Ozzie Smith’s career high.  

Andruw Jones’ career dWar is shown as 24.1, in 17039 innings, whereas Willie Mays is shown at 18.1 in 24,427 innings.  On a per-inning basis, Jones is being credited with saving twice as many runs as Willie Mays, compared to a replacement level center fielder. 

Well, I believe that Andruw Jones was a fine defensive center fielder, but I don’t necessarily believe that he was twice as good a center fielder as Willie Mays.  I’m a little skeptical.  The problem is, though, that the people who are relying on Andruw Jones’ WAR as the basis of his Hall of Fame claim are, in fact, relying upon the conclusion that he was twice as good a defensive center fielder as Willie Mays. …or leave Willie Mays out of it; Garry Maddox.  Maddox’ per-inning is about the same as Mays’, which is a little over one-half of Jones’.  The people who are using Jones’ WAR to argue that he should be in the Hall of Fame are relying on that statement, but they either

a) do not understand that they are implicitly relying on this claim, or

b) will not admit that they are implicitly relying on this claim, or

c) don’t think that it’s a problem.

WAR seems to the less-educated public to be a fair and consistent method between generations, when in reality it is an apples-and-oranges comparison between generations. That’s not a criticism of WAR; it’s an inherent limitation of the facts available to us at this time.  

If people do not understand that this is what they are doing. . . well, that’s fine; they’re not analysts, they don’t quite get it.  99.9% of people are not baseball analysts; it’s not a criticism of them that they’re not.  It is our responsibility to help people understand this problem, not their responsibility to figure it out on their own.  

But if they don’t understand this and they are pretending to be sophisticated data analysts, then that’s a problem.  If you’re not an environmental scientist, that’s not a problem, most people aren’t.  If you’re not an environmental scientist and you’re pretending to be an environmental scientist, then that’s a problem.  Then it becomes a responsibility of the environmental scientists to point out that you are not an environmental scientist, and you don’t know what the hell you are talking about.  The people who are insisting that Andruw Jones should be in the Hall of Fame because he was the greatest defensive center fielder of all time do not know what the hell they are talking about, and it is an absolute responsibility of those of us who are in this field to say so.  

I wish I could stop there, because that’s a better closing sentence than anything else I have, but there were issues I didn’t get to. Some people will say "Maybe Andruw Jones really WAS a better defensive center fielder than Willie Mays.  Maybe Andrelton Simmons really IS a better defensive shortstop than Ozzie Smith."  

Well. . .yeah, maybe he was.  Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t.  Let’s figure that out before we elect him to the Hall of Fame, rather than electing him first and then working on the gigantic hole in the argument for him later.  That’s a way of saying that you don’t think it’s a problem, that we’re comparing apples to oranges. I think it’s a problem.  

Another argument that people make is that if we can’t elect Andruw because of this issue, then we can’t elect anybody post-2000, because we’re always comparing apples to oranges.  But of course we can elect other players post-2000.  It’s a problem for Andruw because Andruw’s Advocates are making a remarkable claim for him, which rests entirely on data which is not fully understood at this time with regard to inter-generational comparisons.  It’s not a problem for Miguel Cabrera, because Miguel’s Minions are not making any remarkable claim for him based on data that isn’t completely understood yet.  It isn’t a problem for Miguel, or Albert Pujols, or David Ortiz, or Ichiro Suzuki, or Mike Mussina or Roger Clemens or Greg Maddux or Roy Halladay or Curt Schilling or Derek Jeter or Chipper Jones or Adrian Beltre or anybody else, because none of those men are making any remarkable claims based on data which is not fully vetted in this context.  It’s a problem for Andruw because he is.

Thanks. 

​

COMMENTS (64 Comments, most recent shown first)

MarisFan61
P.S. to Brock: I'm well familiar with Bill's "letter grades" on fielding in the Win Shares book. I find them extremely interesting (if sometimes shocking!) and I often cite them.
11:57 AM Jan 20th

MarisFan61
Gary: Is it still available? If so, can you give a link?
10:23 PM Jan 19th

garywmaloney
Win Shares Digital Update followed the publication of the main Win Shares book (which was published by the old STATS combine, at about the same time as Bill's main publisher released the New Historical Abstract.

It contained masses of numbers and tables that could not be fitted reasonably into the original Win Shares book (it would have doubled the size of the book.) It can be emailed to you -- not that large a file as i recall -- or put on Dropbox. However -- the Digital Update file did come with a PASSWORD -- I think I remember it.
9:47 PM Jan 19th

Brock Hanke
Checking MWeddell's data a bit further, I looked up Jones' defensive innings, 17078.1, and divided 85.5 by that and then multiplied by 1000. Jones, for his career, had 5.01 Defensive Win Shares per 1000 Defensive Innings. I had to include Jones' innings at positions other than the outfield, but there aren't very many of those. 5.01 is a high A+. The A line is 3.30. On the other hand, as of 2001, Jones had 6.47 DWS per 1000 IP, which is a gigantic number. (That number is found in a listing of 2001 Gold Glove winners in Win Shares.) So it's certainly true that Jones lost a lot of value in the last parts of his career. Also, 5.01, while way above the A line, isn't absurdly high. Torii Hunter, as of 2001, had 4.88. Jim Edmonds was above 4. Mike Cameron was about 4.5. None of those guys was done as a player. All those numbers are from the 2001 Gold Gloves. And none of those guys was Tris Speaker or Willie Mays or Curt Flood.
5:45 PM Jan 19th

MWeddell
Running through some quick and dirty math ...

The John Dewan article posted on 1/19 lists Jones as having 85.5 fielding win shares. Divide by 3 = 28.5 wins. Baseball-reference credits Jones with 24.1 dWAR, but that includes the positional adjustment so I believe he has 24.7 dWAR without the positional adjustment. [Baseball-refernence's presentation of WAR is confusing, with the positional adjustment included in both oWAR and dWAR but counted only once in total WAR.]

So, Jones' career WAR would be roughly 3.8 higher if one modified baseball-reference WAR to use Defensive Win Shares (but of course all the comparable players' totals would change too). Also, it appears that Bill's complaint really is that Mays, etc. have their defensive rating muted rather than that Jones' defensive value was pegged too high.
3:34 PM Jan 19th

Brock Hanke
Marisfan - No, the book Win Shares does not carry separate Fielding Win Shares anywhere. What it DOES have is a listing, by position, of most players who had a significant career, along with their "Grades" (A+ to F), based on their Fielding Win Shares per 1000 Defensive Innings. These listings are divide by position, and only use stats that the player compiled while playing that position. So there are many players who played more than one position, but only played enough time at one of those positions to show up on Bill's chart. You can figure out the grade for a more modern player by looking up the Fielding Win Shares on Baseball Gauge, looking up the Defensive Innings on BB-Ref, and dividing. The book Win Shares does list the breakpoints for the individual grades. This is VERY useful in getting a general feel for how good or bad a modern player is. When Win Shares was published, in 2001, Andrew Jones had the highest number in CF, by a large margin, much higher than any of the other A+ CFs. But, as Bill noted, he was only part way through his career.

I first worked this out when dealing with George Sisler, who was my father's favorite player. Sisler's defensive grade as a first baseman, for his career, is C-, which is completely inconsistent with his reputation. I speculated that his grade before 1923, when he missed the whole season with some sort of physical problem, might be much higher than his grade after 1923. This turns out to be true. Before 1923, Sisler grades out as an A. After 1923, he grades as an F. For the career, a C- makes sense. But what it really tells you is that Sisler, after 1923, was a completely different player, and much worse, than he had been before whatever happened to him. The George Sisler through 1922 is the one who got elected to the Hall of Fame in 1939, of course.
3:13 PM Jan 19th

MarisFan61
Gary: What and where is "Win Shares Digital Update"?
I never knew of it.
Seems like it would have been good to know -- and maybe still is!

Because, depending on who does the method and how it's done, it could be better than what we find on the site I mentioned.
Or vice versa.

Let me ask: What does anyone know about who and how, on either or both of those?
(It's important.)
1:16 PM Jan 19th

garywmaloney
MarisFan -- Win Shares Digital Update had many many tables (that was the reason it was digital only), the coolest ones were the leaderboards giving best fielders and hitters at each position for each league.

BaseballGauge supersedes all this.
12:32 PM Jan 19th

Guy123
Brock: yes, it's great that B-Ref has fielding innings. I was simply too lazy to track them down for all the players I was looking at. In broad strokes, PA is a reasonable proxy. But a serious study of these issues should definitely use innings.
12:01 PM Jan 19th

MarisFan61
Brock: The Win Shares book gives FIELDING Win Shares for all player for all those years, or even for many players for any of those years?
If it does, I'd love to know where.

(Remember, what we were wondering about here was availability of FIELDING Win Shares, especially for years prior to what's shown on this site, which is just since 2002.)
11:35 AM Jan 19th

Brock Hanke
Marisfan - Sorry about the understanding. I believe that Baseball Gauge carries Win Shares all the way back to 1876. I emphasized that it continues after 2001 because you can get WS for every player from 1876 on in the book Win Shares. Baseball Gauge lists those too, as well as WS from 2001 on.

Guy123 - You're right about Play Index not containing Defensive Innings at positions. But that's because it's in the player page WITHOUT needing play index. Just type in the player's name on the Home screen, and look through his page for the section titled "Standard Fielding." Not only are defensive innings there, but they are separated out by fielding position. An ENORMOUS contribution to research, at least in my experience.

Also, with Jones, you have to make some kind of discount for his not having a decline phase. People talk about that with regard to Curt Flood, but Flood played something like 16 years before he retired. Jones really DOES lack his decline phase, which makes any ranking look better than Jones likely was. I don't know the size of the discount - I've never seen anyone research it - but I do know it's there. In any case, what is becoming obvious is that the advanced metrics, if you are careful using them, do not show Jones as being an impossible defensive CF. That's reassuring, whether it impacts his HoF chances or not.
10:37 AM Jan 19th

MarisFan61
Gary: It's not just "post 2001" -- in fact, that's really the least of it since this site has it from 2002 and since.

(I wonder if maybe he meant to type 'post 1901'....)
7:21 PM Jan 18th

garywmaloney
Brock -- Thank you for unlocking the Win Shares for us, post-2001. I have written here on more than one occasion of how WONDERFUL the annual WS charts were, as provided in WIN SHARES DIGITAL UPDATE (2002 - own at all costs). And, belatedly, thank you for the Big Bad Baseball Annuals (I own every copy -- FFA '95!!)

Those charts had a couple eye-popping numbers --

-- In one year (96, 97 or 98), Andruw Jones had the highest number of Fielding Win Shares for any outfielder, ever -- over 9. (Mays had years in the high 8s.)

-- Montreal shortstop Orlando Cabrera's 2001 Fielding Win Share, over 13, was (if memory serves) the highest ever, for any player.

Worth mentioning, I thought.


5:41 PM Jan 18th

MarisFan61
huh.....for some reason this page isn't now enabling italics, bold, or underline in the comments. (It did earlier.)
11:39 AM Jan 18th

MarisFan61
Brock: Thank you for coming back with the link for the Win Share data.

We ought to add this: Your post actually seems to [i]understate[/i] what data are shown there! (I assume you actually know that; not sure why you put it as you did.)
Your post looks to me like it's saying that the site only gives the Win Share data from 2001 on. Looks to me like it gives it for forever, including Fielding -- which was exactly what I had asked about. ([i]This[/i] site gives it from 2002 on[/i].)​
11:37 AM Jan 18th

Guy123
Correction on previous post: The best (top 10% or top 20%) post-1988 OFs average 14% higher TZ ratings than earlier players (I mistakenly said the reverse).
11:10 AM Jan 18th

Guy123
It is useful to separate Bill’s two arguments here: 1) that we cannot and should not directly compare defensive WAR ratings based on play-by-play data (like DRS) with pre-2003 defensive ratings (Total Zone), and 2) there is no remotely serious HOF case for Andruw Jones once you recognize the validity of point #1. On point #1 I don’t think there is any real disagreement: it seems clear that the range of ratings is much larger using PBP data, resulting in much higher ratings for top fielders. Future research may allow us to some day make a reasonably accurate conversion of TZ to DRS/UZR, allowing for valid comparisons of fielders (and this would be a great project for young saberists to undertake). But unless and until that happens, we cannot validly compare pre-2003 and post-2003 fielders using defensive WAR.

However, this important insight tells us relatively little about Andruw Jones’ HOF case. That is because DRS and TZ provide very similar assessments of his fielding for 2003 to 2012. So if we simply ignore the problematic PBP data, and rely on TZ for Andruw’s full career (as we do for earlier players), his fielding runs decline by only 16 runs, from 236 to 220, lowering his defensive WAR by about 1.6 wins and reducing his total WAR from 62.8 to 61.2. In other words, he remains – at first blush - a borderline HOF candidate.

Now, Bill is also right that defensive ratings have larger error bars than offensive ratings, so any player like Andruw whose case rests largely on defense should receive additional scrutiny. Let’s start with the fact that there are actually two versions of TZ, TZ1 used 1953-2007 and TZ2 used 2008-date. As Charles helpfully notes below, there is somewhat more variation in TZ2. But it’s a difference of degree, not kind (unlike the transition to PBP metrics)—I think we can still make valid comparisons over the 1988 line. I compared the top outfielders in these two eras, and the best (top 10% or top 20%) pre-1988 OF average 14% higher TZ ratings than more recent players. While it could be true that the range of fielding talent is higher in more recent decades, let’s be conservative and attribute all of this to the TZ methodology. That means we should boost the TZ for great CF before 1988 (like Blair or Mays) by 14% if we want to compare them to Andruw.

What does this mean for Andruw? Actually, not much. The TZ2 metric, using more information, is presumably more accurate than TZ1, so what we are really saying is that earlier CF are a bit better than TZ1 says. How does Jones stack up if we make this adjustment to TZ prior to 2008? Here are the top 10 CF in defWAR per 600 PA thru the end of Jones’ career (yes, innings would be a superior denominator, but B-Ref Play Index doesn’t provide that):
Blair 1.91
Piersall 1.59
Pettis 1.57
Jones 1.56
White 1.20
Maddox 1.12
Johnson 1.04
Flood 1.03
Lofton 1.02
Mays .99

By this measure, Andruw is one of the top 4 CF in history, with Blair the clear leader in this group. Is this a plausible set of ratings? I think so. Still, it’s fair to say that we should carefully examine any HOF case individually that relies on extreme defensive value. If we just look at raw putouts, did Jones make outs at an elite level? Yes. Did Jones “steal” plays for teammates? As best I can tell, Atlanta 2B, SS, LF, and RF did not see any decline in plays when Andruw arrived (Brian Jordan put up incredible ratings in RF playing with Jones). As far as I know, no one (including Bill) has offered any evidence that would lead us to doubt that Andruw Jones was one of the 4-5 best CF in history, or that he created something like 22 wins with his glove. I think the burden now shifts to the skeptics to make their case, if they can.

A word on Willie Mays. Does TZ understate Mays’ defense, even after adjusting for the gap between old and new TZ methods? Maybe, I have no idea. But I don’t see why that should change our view of Jones’ HOF candidacy. Mays' presence in this discussion seems mainly designed to say “defWAR says Jones was twice as good as Willie Mays, so please ignore this metric” (along with Jones’ Hall candidacy). This is clever, as it appeals to the assumption most of us older fans have that Willie was the greatest, but if TZ is wrong about Mays that tells us little about Jones’ case. (Note that being “twice as good as Mays” on these metrics actually means making one more catch every 12 games, not as wildly implausible as it may first sound.) Of if Mays is really “only” about the 10th best CF (far more likely), that also seems irrelevant to Jones’ case. So for now, let’s set Willie aside (although a separate discussion on why TZ may get Mays wrong could be fascinating).

Finally, does this all mean Andruw Jones belongs in the HOF? That really depends on your HOF standards. Personally I’m not sure, but I’d lean toward no. But it’s not true that his case hinges on his being “the best CF of all time.” To me, 60 wins/11 playoff teams/top 5 CF is not a materially different case than 60 wins/11 playoff teams/#1 CF. So I think Bill is mistaken when he simply dismisses Jones’ case with comments like these:

“Center Fielders who have to get into Hall of Fame before Andruw Jones is considered: Jim Edmonds, Bernie Williams, Fred Lynn, Wally Berger, Kenny Lofton, Jimmy Wynn, Cesar Cedeno, Johnny Damon, George Gore, Mike Donlin, Carlos Beltran, Andrew McCutchen, Paul Hines, Brett Butler.”

“The argument for Andruw Jones as a Hall of Famer rests on the belief that he was a BETTER center fielder than anyone or almost anyone before him. I don't see ANY evidence for that proposition, thus don't see any case for Andruw.”

Bill is right about the big picture here: we need to be very careful in making defensive comparisons over time, especially with modern play-by-play metrics, and we should approach defensive statistical outliers from any era with appropriate skepticism. But Andruw Jones is a poor choice to be the poster child for these ideas. So, to steal a line from 1964, we should go part of the way with BJ.
10:39 AM Jan 18th

KaiserD2
Michael Humphreys's DRA (Defensive Regression Analysis) did find Andruh Jones to be the best center fielder of all time, although he rated Willie Mays quite a close second, based on total runs saved. I think DRE does a better job of comparing people across eras than anything else that we have.

Using DRA for fielding and baseball-reference stats for offense (but without position adjustments), I show Andruh Jones with 4 seasons of 4 WAA or more. 4 such seasons is the most ambiguous figure, if you will, for the Hall of Fame. members of teh Hall with 4 such seasons includ Luke Appling, Robin Yount, Arky Vaughn, Tony Gwynn, Duke Snider, Frankie Frisch, Lou Boudreau, and Kiki Cuyler. They also include a lot of pitchers, led by Sandy Koufax. Players with 4 such seasons not in the Hall include Pete Rose, Minnie Minoso, Ken Boyer, Tony Oliva, Buddy Bell, Dave Parker, Willie Wilson, Bobby Grich, and Jesse Barfield. (This not an exhaustive list.) Also Don Mattingly, Manny ramirez, Rafael Palmeiro, Gary Sheffield, and Jason Giambi. Probably just about all of us could identify some people on that list whom we would like to see in the Hall, and quite a few whom we would not.

Now Chipper Jones, on the other hand, was a very good offensive player, playing in a very high-offense era, and a serious defensive liability. As a result, he had only 3 seasons of 4 WAA or more, one less than Andruh. I will regard it as a significant injustice if he is elected and Andruh is not.

This argument is not based on the idea that Andruh was by far the best center fielder ever, but on the overall value of his best seasons, hitting plus fielding. It does not suggest that he is an overwhelming choice for the Hall, but that he is, by historical standards, a reasonable one.

David K
8:38 AM Jan 18th

Brock Hanke
Riceman1974 - Thanks. That was useful to me. I didn't go through Win Shares or WAR just for results, because I know that the available statistics have changed over time. But, once you commented, I checked the book Win Shares for its formulas for the outfield. Bill uses the same formula from 1900 through to 2001, and the system, in Baseball Gauge, continues to the present. There are no stats used that aren't recorded in Speaker's time, much less Mays' and Flood's time. So there are no differences due to lack of data in Speaker's time. And sure enough, Jones does not come up as an outlier compared to Speaker. He comes up as comparable to Speaker in a shorter career.

And, since you mentioned Baseball Gauge and no one has given you a hard time for mentioning that on this site, I need to post this up for Marisfan61. I once said that there was a site that had Win Shares computed for every player for every year, all the way to the present. Marisfan asked where. I was worried about citing one site on another site's pages, so I didn't do that. But, now that it's out, here's how to get Win Shares for years after 2001 (it's not hard, just tricky and not obvious): Go to baseballgauge.com. On the home page, in the upper right hand corner, there is a little box labelled "Select Metric" or something like that, with the box filled in with "Wins Above Replacement." But there is a little slider bar at the end of the box, and if you click it, you get a selection of metrics, one of which is Win Shares. Select Win Shares. Now, Baseball Gauge will look the same in terms of design and presentation, but it will use Win Shares instead of WAR.

You can get a list of seasons easily, listing every player who played that season. The home screen makes it obvious how to do that. But getting an individual player is hard, unless you know the trick, which is similar to the slider bar trick to get Win Shares started. In the upper LEFT hand corner of the screen, you will see a little box labelled "Select Player" or something similar. There's no slider bar, but, if you just type in the name of the player you want, you get his whole career in Win Shares. If you just try the screen's obvious selection for players, you will get a list, starting with Babe Ruth, sorted by Win Shares. It will take you forever to find the player you're looking for. That little box in the upper left is the key to finding Win Shares for a player.

It also turns out that you can download this stuff, and it's not hard. Just run the cursor over the stuff you want, and use the Copy and Paste functions to put the data into a Word file or something like that. There may be a way to download the data while preserving columns, but I don't know it. I just cut and paste. In any case, the data presented for the player will include separate Batting and Fielding Win Shares, so you can get those defensive Win Shares, look up defensive innings on BB-Ref, and compute, using Bill's grading system in the book Win Shares if you want a grade.

Thanks, Riceman!
8:06 AM Jan 18th

sansho1
Regardless of where he ranks, this I know -- Andruw in his younger days was a joy to watch play the field. In person you could see his positioning, and so it wasn't a surprise to see him break left or right to snare low line drives to center. But on TV, where you don't see the entire field but you've watched enough to presume much of what you can't see, he retained the ability to shock with the angle he took as he arrived in the frame...not towards the infield, but sideways!
7:21 PM Jan 17th

BryanBM
Min 500 Games in CF through Age 30, how many innings it took the player to earn one fielding run according to baseball-reference

Juan Lagares 45.3
Andruw Jones 62.6
Jim Piersall 62.7
Devon White 67.4
Paul Blair 71.1
...
Willie Mays 1 Rfield per 116 innings

No idea on the accuracy of those numbers, but those are the numbers. Andruw is an outlier by a combination of empirically provable volume and subjective quality on par with past players even choosing an end-point that specifically favors Andruw.
6:09 PM Jan 17th

Riceman1974
Brock: Defensive Win Shares may provide such a method of comparison, as it essentially takes the same type of numbers and spits out a number at the end. According to The Baseball Gauge (which uses James's old Win Share methodology):

- Jones averaged 5.11 Defensive WS per/1,000 innings (87.1 DWS in 17038.2 inns).
- Speaker averaged 4.95 Defensive WS per/1,000 innings (117.3 DWS in 23698 inns).

But please note, Speaker was an excellent centerfielder through age 39, with 1-year of below average play at age 40, then he retired. Needless to say he was a tremendous hitter through age 39 as well.

Jones was a tremendous centerfielder through age 29, then fell off a cliff both defensively and offensively. He was out of the game by age 35. Through age 35, Speaker had 96.7 DWS in 18914 innings, or 5.11 WS per/1,000 innings, same as Jones.

I think it's safe to say Jones may have been among the 2 or 3 greatest outfielders the game has ever seen.

P.S: Mays averaged 4.29 DWS per/1,000 innings in his career.


3:56 PM Jan 17th

Brock Hanke
I'm afraid that this is a stupid question, but I've thought about it for a couple of days now, and it doesn't seem any stupider than when I first thought of it: If you're not happy with how far an outlier Andrew Jones' defense seems to be, and I am not happy about that, and you think that part of the problem is that we're using data in evaluating Jones that we just don't have for, say Tris Speaker (or Mays or Flood or DiMaggio) because it wasn't recorded at the time, then why not try to evaluate Jones by the method that you have to use to evaluate Speaker, INCLUDING that you do not use any data for Jones that is not available for Speaker, even if it is available for Jones? I don't have the database to try this, but someone here might. It's worth seeing what would happen, isn't it? There is a non-zero chance that it will clear up what is going on with Jones, which is what is needed, right?​
1:58 PM Jan 17th

MarisFan61
(As I thought I emphasized loudly enough :-) .... I didn't mean "catcher ERA" per se, just something along such lines -- anything at all. What I'm criticizing is when a metric fails to include anything that address the effect on pitchers beyond those easily-measured things, which I don't think address much of the aspect.)
1:29 PM Jan 17th

CharlesSaeger
@MF61: Funny, I did actually mention that the Dodgers were better than the Yankees in walks and strikeouts every year Campanella was in the league:

"Campanella led in steals, caught stealing, strikeouts, walks, and non-strikeout outs; all the other stuff was small either way."

"Personally, I favor giving a bonus for walks and strikeouts rather than ERA (the Dodgers had more strikeouts and fewer unintentional walks than the Yankees every year Campanella was in the league)"

But blindly applying a crude tool like catcher ERA is making the matter worse; catcher ERA is so bad that 15 years ago nobody could figure out any predicative tendency out of it. It's part of why traditional fielding stats tend more towards zero: there's something of an inherent level of doubt, and saying that if I don't know, I'm not going to make a dramatic adjustment.
12:41 PM Jan 17th

those
I love this article. I'm biased because I've said a few times on here that people blindly treat WAR as proof that one player was better than another.

When Bill talked about Andruw on Twitter, Rob Neyer responded, "Huh. I feel like we spent years, six or seven or eight of them, believing (for various reasons) that he was maybe the best since Willie Mays. Were we all wrong? And how?"

Bill: If you thought he was the best since Willie Mays, the word "wrong" seems hardly adequate.

Rob: I'm saying that was, at the time, a consensus opinion. That he might well be the best since Mays, and that the numbers we had then said the same. If there's better information now, I want to see it.

Bill: The sabermetric community, to have impact on the baseball community, cannot treat its OWN opinions as consensus opinions. It is only the consensus of a minority. To impact the larger debate, we have to address the larger issues.

I think the last comment boils down what Bill is saying in this article -- that the advanced stats are one way of looking at things, and that we haven't reached an endpoint.

There's a guy on Twitter (I think his handle is Hot Stove Stats) who posts a lot of stuff like this. He posted something the other day listing Andrelton Simmons' defensive runs saved over his first six seasons, how it was twice as much as Ozzie Smith over his first six seasons.

The guy had no clue what he was talking about. Somebody questioned how the numbers were derived, and Stove Stats said baseball reference has found a way to compute them accurately across eras. In different posts, he used this data to show that "nobody has any idea just how good Simmons is."

There are numbers CONSUMERS, like Stove Stats and me, and there are legitimate people in the field.
11:09 AM Jan 17th

MarisFan61
Charles: I agree with this thing you said, and in fact I'm gonna use it against what you said: [smirk]

" if you’re not going to do a good job of it, you’re better off ignoring the matter."

I'm surprised that you (or anybody) thinks it's meaningful to come up with some defensive metric for catchers without trying to include something about the handling of the pitching staff (and I don't mean "pitch framing" which seems sometimes to be considered some big part of that).

The way this interchange started was that you expressed surprise about Berra coming out ahead of Campanella on some analysis of catching defense despite being behind him on all those things, none of which involve what I'm saying is key. IMO, what those factors add up to is 'not a real good job' -- do you really think they add up to a major portion of catching defense?? maybe you do; I don't. I also agree that the "WAR" system, as far as I can see, doesn't do a real good job of evaluating catching defense. I think Win Shares, broadly, does do quite a good job, although I can't say I understand exactly what's in there now. (I did with the original system.)
If a system ranks Berra as a better defender than Campanella, despite his being behind on those things you mentioned, we can only assume that other things were included in the analysis. Maybe they were good, maybe they weren't; but the basic thing was, I don't see why you'd think that those things that you mentioned should give some major idea of how catchers compare with each other or what a particular analytic system might show.

If you think there's nothing that can meaningfully take into account a catcher's influence on the pitchers -- anything about his catching defense besides those traditional easily-measurable things -- then, unless you don't want to resign yourself to "not doing a good job of it," I don't know why you would imagine any catching defense metric to be much good at all, or think you can gather much of anything from it in the first place.
11:08 AM Jan 17th

ksclacktc
“I dunno and I’m not gonna speculate” is often the best answer.

This may be the best, simplest post I've seen in a long time. Thank you Charles!
7:38 AM Jan 17th

CharlesSaeger
@MarisFan61: Oh, I didn’t misunderstand you. I just disagree. Personally, I favor giving a bonus for walks and strikeouts rather than ERA (the Dodgers had more strikeouts and fewer unintentional walks than the Yankees every year Campanella was in the league), but if you’re not going to do a good job of it, you’re better off ignoring the matter. Even taking one tenth of all runs saved by the pitching staff, which Pete Palmer does, can easily overwhelm the other, more reliable data. The best solution is likely a With or Without You number, weighted for recency, and regressed.

“I dunno and I’m not gonna speculate” is often the best answer.
7:35 AM Jan 17th

Riceman1974
Charles: Great work on the TZR data. And I agree Catchers ERA is overrated. I never knew Jones only played 400+ games after age 30, whereas Mays of course played a zillion or whatever. Of course Mays couldn't field like Mays in his late 30s and early 40s (although that he was still effective at center at that age is remarkable as you note), and this likely explains the Dwar difference between Jones-Mays.

It also shows us just how bad Jones became offensively after age 30, that even with his high-quality D in center he wasn't worth being in the lineup.
4:15 AM Jan 17th

MarisFan61
(sp -- dam, I wrote the wrong "affect" one of those times, I hate when that happens)
2:23 AM Jan 17th

MarisFan61
Charles: Now it's my turn to note that you mistook some of my evidently ambiguous wording! :-)

What I said:
Those catcher data from pre-1960 (as well as any others) don't include anything along the lines of "catcher E.R.A."?
If they don't, then they're even worse than I thought.
Not that they're great even with it, but....

What you answered:
I'm pretty sure they don't, mercifully. Catcher ERA is crap.

------------------

I agree! I mean not totally; I wouldn't say it's total crap, but yeah.

That's why I only said "anything along the lines of"!!

The stuff that you had mentioned, which Campanella would beat Yogi on, didn't include anything at all about the catcher's affect on the pitchers.
So, I was surprised at, well, a couple of things:

-- That you would be surprised that a catcher who's ahead of another catcher on all that other kind of stuff would fail to come out ahead on some 'large metric' -- because I always thought (and do think) that handling pitchers, and effect on the pitchers, is by far the #1 aspect of catching defense.
The things you mentioned, relatively speaking, are just 'noise.'

....in view of which.....

-- I'd be surprised if any 'large' defensive metric on catchers failed to include something on that.

If dWAR for years prior to 1960 (or ever) doesn't, then, as I said, it's even worse on catching defense than I ever imagined.

I don't disagree with you that "catcher E.R.A." is less than great.
But if there's nothing in the metric about the catcher's effect on pitchers, IMO the catching defense metric ISN'T EVEN WORTH USING, and it disqualifies the overall method (in this case, "WAR") from having any (ANY!!) meaningful assessment or rating or ranking of those catchers.
8:51 PM Jan 16th

CharlesSaeger
@Manushfan: One thing when thinking about Jones's fielding is that he doesn't really have much of a down phase. He only played 436 games after age 30 after playing 1,760 games through age 30. Fielding skill goes down fast in your thirties. Mays played until he was 42, which is more time for a down phase (though the fielding runs over on bb-ref.com don't show Mays dropping off afield until he was 36, when he dropped to being an average fielder for the last quarter of his career, which is actually a pretty remarkable record).
6:48 PM Jan 16th

CharlesSaeger
I figured the standard deviation of TZR for CF from 1974-1980, 1982-1983, 1986-1987 (I threw out the strike season, and I had ditched 1984-1985 for some data reasons that aren't all that important) and it's 9.91. For 1988-1992, it's 12.15. So it's higher, albeit not radically so.
6:41 PM Jan 16th

CharlesSaeger
I'm pretty sure they don't, mercifully. Catcher ERA is crap.
6:27 PM Jan 16th

Manushfan
So, for those of us in the back, then, the defensive part of the whole WAR analytic (izzat a word? no?) isn't as well developed or advanced as the hitting part? And the further back you go, the harder it gets to be as sure. That makes perfect sense to me.

Andruw twice the CF as Mays? Really that's a fail from the start. Just...no. Great D sure but..is he better than say Fred Lynn or Edmonds or whatever? you tell me.

And I'll go back to the tired Pie Traynor thing--Jaffy's book has him dinged as a minus whatever for his career defense, and looking at any survey of commentary from his peers etc-that's nuts. If you don't have real proof of that, then you might want to just leave that alone until better evidence comes along. Just saying.
5:44 PM Jan 16th

MarisFan61
Charles: Those catcher data from pre-1960 (as well as any others) don't include anything along the lines of "catcher E.R.A."?

If they don't, then they're even worse than I thought.
Not that they're great even with it, but....
5:23 PM Jan 16th

sansho1
Mine is not a question of whether anyone played shallow before -- I'm familiar with Speaker. It's 1) whether shallower positioning is in fact better, and 2) whether Andruw employed superior positioning to Mays, either directly or in comparison to their respective peers.
5:08 PM Jan 16th

CharlesSaeger
I should note that even the catchers, who you would think are cut and dried, are messed up before 1960 or so. On a Facebook group, someone noted that Berra ranked as a better fielder than Campanella in spite of Campanella's stellar OCS rate, and after a look at the detailed stats, I concluded that there was no way in hell that this ranking made any sense, unless you placed an undue weight on wild pitches, which was the only big gap in favor of Berra (Campanella led in steals, caught stealing, strikeouts, walks, and non-strikeout outs; all the other stuff was small either way.)
4:33 PM Jan 16th

bhalbleib
Sansho1, the problem with that is that playing shallow was in no way a new phenomenon, in fact here is the quote from the HOF on Tris Speaker's defense:

Speaker was known for playing a shallow center field, which helped him lead AL outfielders in assists three times, while his ability to cover ground on balls hit over his head helped him lead the league in putouts seven times.

“I still see more games lost by singles that drop just over the infield than a triple over the outfielder's head,” Speaker said. “I learned early that I could save more games by cutting off some of those singles than I would lose by having an occasional extra-base hit go over my head."
4:18 PM Jan 16th

MarisFan61
P.S. Charles - I just noticed that in an earlier post, you noted that there's also an additional 'break' around 1950 in how dWAR is done -- and that it's not clear exactly what's done for the pre-1950 game.

Hardly anybody who puts forth historic dWAR data ever makes sure to indicate any of this, and as I said, I have doubts that anywhere over a tiny fraction of them realize it.
The stuff is cited as evidence for all kinds of things as though (1) it's reliable, and (2) it's well comparable for different eras.
3:34 PM Jan 16th

MarisFan61
Charles: Thanks for mentioning that.
No, I didn't know that "Total Zone" had a different formula for pre-1988 than post, and I doubt that most others did.

So, yes indeed -- For at least some dWAR formulations, I guess, there's an additional discontinuity in the meaning of dWAR besides the 2003 watershed.
3:22 PM Jan 16th

sansho1
Mays was a bit before my time, but I watched 100+ games a year of Andruw's Braves career. I wonder if those who are dubious that Andruw could have been the more valuable defensive CF take into account his famously shallow defensive positioning. He may not have been faster, or got better jumps, or went back on deep balls more gracefully than Mays....but it is possible he employed better initial tactics, and put himself in position to make the most of his range. Maybe all those singles he cut off were of greater value than the doubles that got over or past him. The deep CFs in Mays' time would have prevented him from setting up as shallowly, but I see no reason to think someone else couldn't come up with a different and better fielding strategy that would redound to "value".
2:48 PM Jan 16th

CharlesSaeger
I'll have to check to see if DRS has a wider range than TZ-hit location when I get home. (I work from a spreadsheet for 2004-2009 to see how I can reverse-engineer modern ratings from traditional data.) There wasn't a big difference between them IIRC.

Y'all are aware that Total Zone has two different formulas, one 1988-present and another before 1988, right? Pre-1988, it didn't use any hit location data, and instead apportioned the hits based on the hitter's out distribution. Or, if 15% of Jim Rice's outs in play (much better recorded in PBP than hits) went to shortstop, Total Zone would apportion 15% of all Rice's hits to shortstop. This kind of works for infielders, not so much for outfielders.
2:46 PM Jan 16th

MWeddell
It's the comparison between Jones and all of the pre-2003 center fielders to which Bill objects. It might be that DRS is a reasonable estimate of player's defensive performance (at least for outfielders) but that it's a mismatch to compare dWAR using DRS to dWAR using TZR.
1:27 PM Jan 16th

MarisFan61
MWedd: I agree with what you're saying and I imagine just about everybody will.
But, re what you're saying at the end there, your "either/or" doesn't cover it.
(Pardon if I'm making more of it than you meant -- maybe you didn't mean it as covering it.)

What it says:
"Is it merely that DRS yields a wider range of defensive rating that TZR does? Or that DRS is wrong (as Bill previously used to argue about DRS’s evaluation of the effectiveness of shifts)?"

First of all, both of these are true.
And also, it's not just DRS that's 'wrong'; TZR also is, and probably more so.
12:23 PM Jan 16th

MWeddell
Copied and pasted from a Reader Post (since comments weren't turned on initially for this article). Sorry it covers some of the same material previously mentioned.

* * * * *

Some of us may read Bill’s article as being against WAR, but I don’t see it that way.

Bill also says that he doesn’t know how players rank until he ranks them. He consistently is against a one-off, ad hoc approach to player evaluation. If someone wants to argue that Roy Halladay’s pitching peak was as good as Sandy Koufax’s peak, Bill’s approach would be let’s collect a lot of data, decide how to best measure “peak,” look at our method’s results to see if they are reasonable and tweaking them perhaps, and then as the last step look to see what the results tells us.

WAR is a systematic way to evaluate players. It has the virtue of not being designed today merely to advance today’s desired conclusion.

I think the problems are
(1) Bill would say that when it comes to WAR’s CF defense evaluation, someone should have stopped to say “Hmmm, Andruw Jones is evaluated to be twice as good per inning as anyone else in history – is that reasonable?” If not, how do we fix the problem? If it’s a data limitation that can’t be resolved, how do we better communicate that one can’t compare defensive WAR of recent players to defensive WAR of older players?”
(2) While it may be expecting too much of most users, let’s not invest too much into any particular yardstick. How does Jones’ evaluation compare not just in bb-refWAR but also in fWAR and WARP and Win Shares?

* * * * *

This is why many of us are more skeptical of defensive valuations. Bill criticized one or more of us a few weeks ago on this very issue. When we compare Andruw Jones’ career offensive value across the multiple WAR and WAR-like metrics, we’re likely to find greater consensus than when we compare Jones’ defensive value. That’s why we often have a tendency to want to regress defensive value toward the mean on an ad hoc basis.

* * * * *

It’d be nice to know what baseball-reference.com’s WAR is doing wrong (assuming it is) regarding Jones’ defense. The most obvious problem is that from 2003 – now, bb-refWAR uses Baseball Info Solutions’ Defensive Runs Saved and before that (when DRS isn’t available) it uses Sean Smith’s Total Zone Rating.

Is it merely that DRS yields a wider range of defensive rating that TZR does? Or that DRS is wrong (as Bill previously used to argue about DRS’s evaluation of the effectiveness of shifts)? Today’s article doesn’t say. I’d guess that Bill isn’t particularly interested in picking apart someone else’s evaluation system. He’s more interested on developing his own systems, his own metrics, answering his own research questions.
12:11 PM Jan 16th

MarisFan61
I'm loving what I'm seeing in the discussion here. I don't think I've seen such broad and loud resonance here before on the issues of fielding WAR, and certainly nothing like it about the differences in what it is for the different eras.

Charles: Thanks for clarifying what you meant by those lower and upper limits on the players' "fielding runs."
It's funny ([b[very[/b] funny) -- that word, "might," which you intended to indicate just that you were tossing out some casual numbers, could also mean -- and I took it rather to mean -- that that's the supposed EXACT 'range,' especially since you didn't give round numbers.
i.e. "might," meaning that the actual number could be anywhere in that very specific range.

=======================

A little off the subject, but:

I've wondered if a big part of WAR's "problem" and a big part of the problem for the makers of the metric (all of us should have such problems) is how widely accepted it is. I know (or assume) that they do keep trying to improve it, and I hope they approach it with a fully open mind, as opposed to the defensiveness that we sometimes see. But I imagine they're somewhat hamstrung by the wide acceptance. Maybe it gives them a certain conservatism and extra protectiveness about it; and about this other thing that I sometimes criticize them for, I'd guess that it must make them extra reluctant to trumpet forth too loudly about how a lot of the public so misunderstands it and makes too much of it. I mean, if I had a product that millions of people were using and talking about and writing about and were assuming to be uber great, I wouldn't be too eager to try to make them realize that it wasn't all that, and that they shouldn't keep using it the way they do.

11:43 AM Jan 16th

raincheck
Something seems off here. Willie played in an era with more outs on balls in play. So even if they are exactly equal as fielders it seems unlikely that Andruw could have had MORE value in the field than Willie. Willie also played for a long ass time and made a lot more plays (he had over 2,000 more chances than Andruw).

For comparing accross eras, we would need to use the methodology pre and post 2003. That seems like an obvious starting point.
11:26 AM Jan 16th

smbakeresq
This is a very good piece IMO. I understand the defensive metrics however I believe in many cases the value of a players defense is overstated compared to observation and opinion of him. Your observation of him is always colored by your experiences of course, people who saw Willie Mays apply a "Willie Mays" standard for example.

I grew up watching Paul Blair run down balls in Baltimore. So for me base upon my experiences I have a Paul Blair standard, and Jones might or might be as good a defensive player as Blair was. Certainly I don't think Jones was clearly better than Blair, I don't really think can prove one way or the other. When Gary Maddox came along I heard the hype as it was and thought he is about the same as Paul Blair. Watching them both I couldn't say which one was better.

I don't think WAR tells us either.
11:15 AM Jan 16th

CharlesSaeger
ksclacktc: You're absolutely right. You have no idea how many times I look at the output from Statcast bandied about and ask myself, "What is this crap? What does this mean? Is a 104.1 m.p.h. exit speed good or bad?"
10:18 AM Jan 16th

CharlesSaeger
Wizardry is admirable for its perspiration, but not for its inspiration. His refusal to evaluate individual errors throws the infielder ratings into serious question. However, I prefer his outfielder ratings to TotalZone pre-hit location, which assigns hits based on the out distribution of the batter who hit them, which causes huge issues with corner outfielders since outs do not track hits in the air as outs tend not to be hard-hit balls. (It isn't a problem for infielders, however; outs on the ground track hits.)

Regardless, evaluating pre-PBP fielding stats is going to look like a lot of work with loads of sub-formulas. Because it is.
10:16 AM Jan 16th

ksclacktc
I don't expect to be heard or received by some of you. I would just ask that you consider the following:

EXPERTISE BREEDS OVERCONFIDENCE

The pendulum has swung, at one time we SABR people were the ones on the outside and not the establishment. We were the ones on outside throwing the shit inside. NOW, we are the establishment and throwing shit outside.

The level of overconfidence I see is downright scary.
10:04 AM Jan 16th

steve161
One analyst who explicitly uses era-specific methodologies to evaluate defense is Michael Humphreys in Wizardry. He details them in a fairly dense introductory chapter, which gives the reader the opportunity to decide what he thinks. Especially for earlier times, his approach involves a number of steps, each of which introduces a margin of error (which he does not attempt to calculate). Even if each step is 90% accurate, which is pretty optimistic, the cumulative error potential invites skepticism as to the results.

Before Statcast, the only way to judge how an outfielder reacts to a fly ball off the bat was to watch him live in the ballpark; television showed it only rarely. I'm old enough to have seen Willie Mays in his prime and for the longest time, I didn't think I'd ever see a centerfielder get as good a jump as he did. Then I saw Andruw Jones a few times--in Atlanta, in the conditions he was most familiar with--and he seemed comparable to Willie. I had a similar impression of Jackie Bradley Jr in a couple of games in St Louis last year.

But those are just hints. There's a whole bunch of CFs I've never seen live, given I attend about 10 games a year on average, so the evidence of my eyes is of severely limited value. Statcast will be a wonderful thing, but until someone invents a time machine, it won't tell me much about how close Byron Buxton comes to Willie Mays.
9:28 AM Jan 16th

CharlesSaeger
dWAR since 2003 onward is based on DRS. Honestly, I'm not sure that this is a good choice; when I compared it with UZR and TZ-hitlocation, it sometimes was the odd man out, especially for corner outfielders. But it goes something like this:

2003-present: DRS
1988-2002: TZ-Hit Location
1951?-1987: Total Zone (pre-Hit Location)
1871-1950?: ¯\_(?)_/¯ It's some range factor-based something that Sean never disclosed that I've seen.
9:02 AM Jan 16th

3for3
Copied from my post in the Reader Posts section:

I find it interesting that Bill is assuming all of the Andruw lovers are blinded by his WAR.

My own view is that his war (low 60s) is one that automatically gets him in the discussion. Meaning, you have to at least think about him.

The 2 main questions beyond that are:

1. Is his WAR an accurate depiction of his skills? For Bill, the answer seems to be no. For me, I can see his point about the magnitude of Jones' greatness in the field.

2. Did he have impact beyond his WAR? Here is where Bill is doing exactly what he is accusing the WAR people of. I think he had substantial bordering on enormous impact. He was a key player on an historically great team. His team averaged close to 100 wins in his first 8 years. We all know the story of how poorly the Braves did in the 3 tiered playoff system. Put them in the 80s, or better yet the 50s, and they'd be in the World Series most seasons. Yes, they had other great players on those teams. But he was great then too.

As a side note, I also like to give a boost (from WAR) for players with one memorable skill. Sure, Dwight Evans was a great player because he did everything well. But, someone who is historically great at a central skill, like Jones, Ozzie, Brock, etc, DO get a boost, at least from me.
8:38 AM Jan 16th

Mike137
MarisFan wrote: "Defensive WAR" is a completely different thing for very recent times than for the past.

That is a very important point. If Method A is applicable for all data and Method B is only applicable for a certain range of data, one should not switch between the two methods. The results from Method A should be given for all data and those from Method B should only be given for the data to which it is applicable.

BBref seems to do that for some of fielding stats. So Rtot (total zone fielding runs above average) is given for all years and Rdrs (defensive runs saved above average) is given only for 2003 on. But then they mash it all together in dWAR. Just another example of "we don't know how to do this right, so we will just do it the way it is convenient".​
8:00 AM Jan 16th

CharlesSaeger
@MarisFan61: You're putting too much stock in those ranges. They were pulled out of my ass for sake of example. Hence the word "might" in them.

But yeah, they are pulled more towards the center, as we're hedging our bets. We don't know whether Tris Speaker or Heinie Wagner did more to save hits for the Red Sox, so we assign them pretty much the same. We can do things like look at doubles and triples allowed to help split between the infield and the outfield, and whether Speaker or Wagner was the one who got to more outs, but we're hindered.
6:38 AM Jan 16th

Riceman1974
I think pre-2003 Bball Ref Dwar uses Sean Smith's "JAARF" (Just Another Adjusted Range Factor) merhod in calculating defensive runs saved. FanGraphs uses "UZR" (Ultimate Zone Rating) for their pre-2003 defensive runs saved. Both sites use Baseball Info Solutions's (BIS) DRS method post-2003. JAARF and UZR are generally more conservative than BIS's DRS, in some cases strikingly so as Bill mentioned above. I am not qualified to take apart each method, but it seems to me that most of our problems with WAR in general originates with BIS's DRS run values. These values significantly increase the Dwar of post-2003 players, leading to conclusions as Bill mentions, that Jones was twice the centerfielder as Mays, which seems ludicrous.
6:37 AM Jan 16th

wovenstrap
A trap that I find myself falling into, speaking as a 40-something man who's been reading Bill's work since 1982, is that there's a difficult tendency to "see" the stats and not the game itself. That is, when you are watching someone at the plate, you don't see what is in front of you and "see" instead your prior understanding of him as a free swinger, pull hitter, whatever. As Bill points out endlessly, the truth is always more complicated than our mental constructs for it. I think that many of the Andruw boosters are doing something like this, they're not watching with fresh eyes, they're substituting the statistic or the widespread understanding of Andruw as an unbeatable fielder for their own perceptions.

In 1946, before he was famous, George Orwell wrote an essay with the title "In Front of Your Nose." Here was the key section of the concluding paragraph: "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle. One thing that helps toward it is to keep a diary, or, at any rate, to keep some kind of record of one's opinions about important events. Otherwise, when some particularly absurd belief is exploded by events, one may simply forget that one ever held it." It's hard to see what is right in front of you.

One of the things that amazed me so much about the Ballantine run of Abstracts was that Bill would re-formulate his player rankings system every year. To abandon a system that seemed to work, just to test your own premises. This was very inspiring. The WAR genuflectors need to attack this issue more in that spirit.
5:27 AM Jan 16th

MarisFan61
Charles: That's good and interesting information, and I think that by only a slight extension we can roughly infer this from it: Fielders from longer ago tend to be calculated by "fielding runs" as being more toward the center than they really were.
i.e. Good fielders probably usually were better than shown, and poor fielders probably usually worse than shown.
("Roughly" meaning not just only approximately but also not uniformly.)
I think that's probably implied by what you're saying, and I think it makes sense.

BUT, I think you take it too far in stating any kinds of specific figures for the possible upper and lower limits for any long-ago player.
(BTW I'm purposely avoiding the term "range" that you used -- like Mays's likely "range" of fielding runs -- because of the word's meaning with regard to fielding. It's the right word for what we're talking about, but it could lead to misunderstandings.)

I don't think it's possible to give anything like such precise estimates of the possible upper and lower limits for that -- especially upper.

I also think you're giving way too much credit to the system with regard to recent accuracy, and that you're mistaken in thinking that the figures for Andruw (or any current or recent player) are so reliable.
You say:
"Jones played in the 21st century and got 220 fielding runs.....we're pretty sure of that. His range might be 210-230 runs for his career."

We're NOT pretty sure of that, and IMO the possible limits are much more widely spread.

I say all of the above on a theoretical basis.
I would add this extra thing on a seat-of-the-pants basis:

There's a very loud thing in your figures that seems to beg for criticism of how you're seeing the issue. You're saying that the extreme upper possible limit of Willie Mays's "fielding runs" is barely more than the amount that Andruw Jones "pretty surely" had.

That doesn't meet the sniff test.

......even more so, when we consider that Mays had a much longer career and therefore had greater 'mass.' He had over 40% more innings in the outfield. So, what your reasoning is saying is that not only was Andruw a better fielder than Willie; he was so much better of a fielder that Willie, even in >40% more innings, didn't accumulate as many "fielding runs." I would say confidently that this fails on a simple Emperor's Clothes basis.

You put forth a very good basic framework, but you extend it into specifics that just don't work. I suspect that the basis of the error is very simple: You are way overestimating the accuracy and reliability of the system. You are way underestimating the degree to which old-time players' actual performance can differ from the calculation, and, although I concede that the method is far more accurate for more-recent times, you're way overestimating the accuracy and reliability of what the method shows even for our times.
12:01 AM Jan 16th

CharlesSaeger
The standard deviation of fielding runs is bigger now since we have better measures of fielding since about 1988 or so. As we go back farther, we're forced to rely more on the things we can measure better: team DER, fielding percentage, outfield assists, range factor. Team DER to reflect individual range means that players cluster around the team rate. Think of, say, Tris Speaker's fielding runs as being the midpoint of a range. BB-ref.com has his career for all positions (which is about 99.5% in CF) as 92 runs better than average. The range on that might really be 22 to 172.

Willie Mays had 176 fielding runs. After WW2, we have more data, though not perfect; the range might be 116-236 runs.

Now, Jones played in the 21st century and got 220 fielding runs. By contrast, we're pretty sure of that. His range might be 210-230 runs for his career.
10:15 PM Jan 15th

sayhey
A more basic argument against Jones--which you may or may not agree with--is that HOF players should continue to build their résumés through their 30s. They have to fill out the scenery, as Bill has put it. They don't have to win MVPs or Cy Youngs, but, at a minimum, they have to continue producing at a level that makes for a reasonable addendum to their peak years. Even guys like Vlad and Puckett, who both had short careers, they were productive players for the first half of their 30s. Koufax gets a pass.

Andruw Jones was essentially finished at 30. If he'd been been Mike Trout in his 20s, I might give him a pass too. But he wasn't.
8:48 PM Jan 15th

MarisFan61
This is the first fleshing-out that I've seen of a thing that I've noted countless times on Reader Posts, which has received virtually no resonance:

"Defensive WAR" is a completely different thing for very recent times than for the past.
......which has a couple of different important implications, both of which seem usually to be ignored when fielding-WAR figures are cited, and which I've suspected most people who cite them aren't even aware of:

-- The stuff is probably much less accurate and reliable for anything prior to about 2005 (give or take) than to the years since then -- so, to whatever extent those data may be quite good for recent times, don't assume anything about earlier times.

and.....

-- Beware of relying on such data for comparisons of players from different eras, especially comparing recent players to long-ago players.

I think the chronological dividing line for when the more-detailed fielding information starts being applied is somewhere in the first few years of this century.
I've never been able to get a clear straight answer on whether there are also multiple other prior chronological dividing lines on how the data are determined, or whether the method is pretty uniform for everything prior to the last decade-and-a-half or so. I suspect it's the former, and that it's quite helter-skelter -- which would mean that hardly anyone who uses the data really knows what has gone into them for any period or year and how much reliance should be placed on them.
8:24 PM Jan 15th

©201

Comparing a Player Outside His Era

By Bill James

January 17, 2018

 Dialogue

X-plenashun

           The Andruw Jones article which appeared here a few days ago was excerpted from an e-mail conversation with my friends Joe Posnanski and Tom Tango. After sending that e-mail I received a 163-word comment from Tom, to which I responded with a 2,908 word lecture.  Tom could have taken offense to my verbose response or its tone, but being the great man that he is he did not, so what follows is a three-part exchange.  (1) is Tom Tango’s e-mail, sent sometime late last week.  (2) is my very long response to this, written on Sunday and Monday (January 14 and 15, 2018).  (3) is Tom’s response to mine.  Thanks for reading.

1. Tom

In my view, we should be happy to compare players to their peers. Andruw was born April, 1977. His peers are born 1972-1982. You can go one more generation either way if you like, so as far as players born 1962-1992. After that, we get into the issue Bill is showing that the amount of information is different, so the uncertainty levels will be different. Older players have more depressed stats because of it.

You have about 12-15 nonpitcher in the HOF for any 10-11 year time period. If Andruw is one of the top 12 nonpitcher among his peers, great. If he’s one of the 40 nonpitchers born 1962-1992, great. (Though these numbers can be argued based on expansion.)

I don’t really see the benefit of starting to compare to Willie Mays. We’d never do that in hockey. And I think it’s unhelpful to compare current players to Bill Russell. 

This way, we don’t have to make "timeline" adjustments. That’s me though.

2. Bill

             I’d have to say that I 100% disagree with your main point here, and let me try to explain why. I would go so far as to say that I don’t think you can defend your position by saying "That’s me though". I think that position is untenable. I think it’s simply wrong.  Let me try to explain.  First, though, I think that that this part of your e-mail is very useful:

You have about 12-15 nonpitchers in the HOF for any 10-11 year time period. If Andruw is one of the top 12 nonpitchers among his peers, great. If he’s one of the 40 nonpitchers born 1962-1992, great. (Though these numbers can be argued based on expansion.)

             This is useful, because it suggests a way to inform the Andruw/HOF debate in the short run which we have not been using, and which we very much need.  

             If you believe that cross-generational comparisons in baseball are unnecessary and inherently flawed, then you have blocked the Andruw Jones-for-the-Hall-of-Fame argument, which Andruw’s advocates would not accept and I would not accept. Their argument is that

             1) Andruw is an all-time great defensive center fielder, and

             2) His contributions to the success of his team (as measured in wins) are equal to those of other players who have been elected; therefore justice and equity demand that he should also be elected. 

             Your position, if accepted, would deny to Andruw’s advocates the right to make either of these arguments.  If you can’t make cross-generational comparisons, you can’t argue (1) above, and if there are no cross-generational standards, then you can’t argue (2) above. 

             But these are very legitimate arguments, and, in my view, there is no reason that Andruw’s advocates should not be allowed to make them.  The problem is that they may not be true. 

             The first reason that I think that your position is just completely untenable is that I don’t think you realize, or I don’t think you have thought about, what this would do to the Hall of Fame debate, if we were to adopt your position.   Your position would not invalidate a certain limited number of Hall of Fame arguments, 15% or 20%; it would invalidate almost all of the central arguments for Hall of Fame selection which have always been made.  It would invalidate 80 or 90 or 95% of the Hall of Fame arguments which have always guided selection, and require that people develop new and different approaches in representing their favorite players.   Thus, it would set the careful and rational interpretations of Hall of Fame arguments, the sabermetric arguments. . .it would set the clock backward by 40 years, and require us to start over, developing new and different approaches. 

             But. . . and I was trying to point out where you were right here, and lapsed into explaining where I think you were wrong.  The value in this is that it points to a different argument that Andruw’s advocates could be making, which would help them to maneuver around this roadblock of not being able to use his "modern" defensive values in contrast to older defensive players. From my standpoint, if I were to study Jones’ WAR compared to a tight cadre of his generational competitors and find that he ranked at or near the front of that group, that would help me to accept that he might be worthy of selection. I doubt that that is what we would find, but I haven’t studied it in that way, so I don’t know.  

             Let me try to summarize what it is that you are wrong about:

             1) (Already noted) Your position, if accepted, would invalidate almost all of the arguments which have always been used to sort out who belongs in the Hall of Fame and who does not, thus setting the relevant field of understanding backward by generations. 

             2) You have tremendously overstated the difficulty of making cross-generational comparisons in baseball,

             3) You have overstated. . .again, tremendously overstated. . .the extent to which the Andruw Jones problem is a general problem, as opposed to a specific problem which complicates this particular player’s case, but has little to do with anyone else,

             4) Your position, if accepted, would close the door to lines of analysis which are quite interesting and potentially quite valuable,

             5) You are treating what is in fact an advantage for baseball as opposed to other sports as if this was a problem for baseball, and as if baseball was not allowed to have peculiar charms which other sports may lack.  

             2) You have tremendously overstated the difficulty of making cross-generational comparisons in baseball.  Yes, of course it is difficult to make cross-generational comparisons in baseball, but you ignore the fact that we have a constant frame of reference which applies across time and which stabilizes the data across time: Wins.  IF you can state a player’s contribution to his team in terms of wins and losses, then you have a valid basis for comparing a player from 1968 to a player in 2008—leaving only the large problem of the relative quality of play over time, and the relatively small issues of the length of the schedule and what to do with post-season play.  

             And, in fact, we HAVE 85% solved the problem(s) of stating a player’s contribution to his team in terms of wins and losses.  Yes, we still have the WAR/Wins and Losses Issue and the many problems inherent in WAR, but what we DO know about this issue now is much larger than what we do not know—unlike 1975, when we had not even reached the understanding that we needed to state these contributions in constant terms, and that wins was the constant unit which guides the debate.  

             3) You have overstated . . .again, tremendously overstated. . .the extent to which the Andruw Jones problem is a general problem, as opposed to a specific problem which complicates this particular player’s case, but has little to do with anyone else.   Your e-mail says that "After that (after getting beyond comparisons within a generation), we get into the issue Bill is showing that the amount of information is different, so the uncertainty levels will be different. Older players have more depressed stats because of it."  But this is only a problem if a player’s Hall of Fame case rests on claims that cannot be documented for players from the previous generation(s), and in reality this is very rarely a problem. 

             We should acknowledge that our statistician great-great-grandfathers did a hell of a job, in the 1870s, of setting up a record-keeping system for baseball.  We do have, in fact, relatively good and. . .I shouldn’t say complete.  We have relatively robust records for players and for games played from 140 years ago.  I actually don’t know of any other player, other than Andruw, whose Hall of Fame case rests directly on issues which cannot be sorted out one way or another based on the information which exists, although I am sure that there must be and will be other cases in which this is a problem. 

             4) Your position, if accepted, would close the door to lines of analysis which are quite interesting and potentially quite valuable.  There remains in front of us the issue of the relative quality of play over time.  What you are in essence saying, it seems to me, is that "Oh, well; that’s an unsolvable problem.  We don’t want to waste our time trying to figure that one out, because there is no way to answer all of the questions."

             But that’s not true; the question of the relative quality of play over time is (a) a very interesting question, (b) an issue the better understanding of which is vital to our true understanding of the game, and (c) a set of questions which absolutely can be addressed by study.  

             At risk of getting lost chasing rabbits, there are three ways of approaching this issue:

                            1. Internal data comparisons,

                            2. Characteristic of Quality analysis, and

                       ​;     3. Modeling. 

             Internal data comparisons. In 1975 (I think. . .could be wrong about the year). . .in 1975 or thereabouts Dick Cramer published a study of the quality of play over time, using this approach. He assumed (or "proved", if you accept his demonstration that this is true). . .he assumed that a player’s ability was constant over time, other than that players decline sharply in their last year in the majors.  Using this assumption, one can find a player who played in the National League in 1936 and in the American League in 1942.  If he was 7% better-than-league in 1936 and 11% better-than-league in 1942, that would suggest that the National League in 1936 was 4% tougher than the American League in 1942. If you make all possible such comparisons (ignoring final seasons), then you can evaluate the strength of each league relative to every other league.

             While there are of course a long list of problems with this approach, Cramer’s analysis yielded reasonable results on many issues.  It showed that the quality of play in the major leagues dropped sharply during World War II, that it increased sharply after the breaking of the color line, that the American League was the stronger league from 1920 until the late 1940s but the National League was the stronger league from the late 1940s until the late 1960s, and that the overall quality of competition dropped after expansion. 

             The study was too far ahead of its time.  In order to do the analysis, Cramer had to take fixed positions on issues which couldn’t really be understood at the time.  No one ever really followed up on his analysis, addressing the inherent problems—but it could still be done, and it should still be done.

             Characteristic of Quality Analysis.  While almost all of sabermetrics is based on study of accomplishments relative to the norms, the fact is that the norms themselves are sometimes indicative of quality.  At least fifteen generalizations about the quality of play over time are known to be true—for example, the percentage of runs which are driven in is consistently higher at higher levels of competition than at lower levels of competition.  By developing this type of analysis, we could evaluate the quality of play over time. 

             Modeling.  We could build computer models which represent the problems involved. . . .for example, (a) how much below average are the players introduced into the league by expansion, (b) how many such players are introduced into the player population, and (c) how much does the expansion lower the overall quality of competition? 

             If we combine these different approaches and work on them until they converge on a common point, then we have a solid basis for understanding of the issue.  

             5) You are treating what is in fact an advantage for baseball as opposed to other sports as if this was a problem for baseball, and as if baseball was not allowed to have peculiar charms which other sports may lack.    Well, first of all, I would argue that the history of the game—the history of any game—is the foundation of its appeal, and that one should never and can never sever the history of a sport from its current impact.  The easiest demonstration that this is true is to ask yourself, "If we were to invent a game which is superior to baseball, football or basketball in every conceivable aspect, what would be the immediate impact of that?"  It would have NO immediate impact, because the game would have no history, thus no following, thus no appeal.

             This seems obvious when you put it that way, but the failure to understand this damaged baseball tremendously between 1952 and 1972. A few years ago I had a guy on Bill James Online arguing that it was necessary and inevitable that teams like the Pittsburgh Pirates, in older and declining cities, must inevitably move to younger and larger cities like San Antonio and Orlando.  But this ignores an obvious reality: that 130 years have been invested in making people Pittsburgh Pirate fans.  There are PEOPLE in San Antonio, lots of people, but they are not Pirates’ fans.  If you move the Pirates to San Antonio, you are starting over in that long, long process of making people care about the team because they grew up caring about the team, and their father grew up caring about the team, and their grandfather grew up caring about the team.  Between 1952 and 1972 baseball owners hopscotched around the country willy-nilly, abandoning their fans, because they failed to think this through.  They confused the burst of attendance that follows a city’s introduction to major league baseball with real devotion to the team—and during that period, baseball per-game attendance declined steadily and alarmingly.

             Not SOME of baseball’s appeal rests on its history, but ALL of its appeal.   If you cut the game off from its history in the way that you suggest, blocking comparisons of Jose Altuve to Joe Morgan and Kris Bryant to Mike Schmidt, you are in fundamental conflict with the essence of the game.  

             If hockey does not do this, then. . .well, Hockey is an Ass.  But it is not really necessary to make that argument because each sport has charms that the other sports lack. 

             I was watching football yesterday, and thinking of the unique appeal of football, part of which is that every play is shaped by the immediate decisions of the offensive team.  The team DECIDES to run in a specific direction or to throw the ball to this player, or that one if this one is covered.  These decisions have an immediate impact on the game which is not really paralleled in any other sport, although basketball teams and to a lesser extent baseball teams do plan and execute designed plays, but in basketball only a limited number of plays are designed, and those usually break down and require the players to improvise the plans from second to second.  Anyway, my point is that football—and every sport—has unique elements of its appeal, or elements of its appeal which are weak in one sport but stronger in another. 

             In baseball, history is a large part of its appeal.  The super-organized nature of the sport enables you to make a record of the game as you are watching it, take that record home with you and study the game, re-evaluate the game, in ways that are not possible in sports which depend on continuous action improvised from moment to moment.  This is part of the appeal of the game. 

             We cannot write intelligently about baseball or baseball history while ignoring this part of the game’s appeal.  That’s what the Hall of Fame IS; it is an argument about how players stand relative to the history of the game.  It is a valid approach toward that issue to say "How does the player stand with respect to HIS OWN time?", but the debate does not end there and cannot end there and will not end there. If you pretend that it does, you are cutting YOURSELF off from the debate.  

             And if sabermetrics pretends that the debate can be conducted without this part of the discussion, then we are eliminating OURSELVES from the discussion.  This is pointless, and it is wrong. 

             I would also harangue you a little bit about the statement that "that’s just me" or that’s just my way of thinking about the issue. I remember a sportswriter that I very much admired as a young boy, a Topeka, Kansas writer named Bob Hentzen.  Hentzen would give his opinion about something, but then, when confronted with an opposing opinion, would use one of two expressions: We all understand that the newspaper is just fish wrap, or Whatever we say, it’s lining the bird cage tomorrow morning. 

             Sports writing—as opposed to sports analysis—sports writing spins its wheels.  The debates about who was the Most Valuable Player were the same in 1970 as they were in 1950, except that the names were changed, but the lines of analysis were exactly the same, unmoved by what anyone said. The accepted convention of sportswriters was that they did not change the debate by what they said.  I have my opinion, you have yours; it is all the same.

             I am not an arrogant person, I don’t think, but that is the difference between them and us—that we DO accept the challenge of permanently changing the debate.  It’s NOT fish wrap tomorrow, what we say about the issue is supposed to change the debate.  

             Of course it is appropriate, in debating the Hall of Fame credentials of Andruw Jones or Mike Mussina, or in debating the MVP candidacy of Aaron Judge or Giancarlo Stanton, to have as much respect for the opinions of others as for your own; this is just how I see the issue, and I acknowledge that there are other equally valid ways to look at the problem.  But sabermetrics is not a collection of individual opinions, one as good as the other; it is a commitment to resolve the issues by finding the compelling logic on the underlying problems.  This is an underlying problem. I don’t think that we have the freedom to shrug our shoulders here and say that one opinion is as good as the next. 

3. Tom

Bill:

Your entire points are well-balanced, so feel free to post it as-is, even if it can be superficially characterized as being "anti-Tango" (and for those who do that, well, that's on them). And you can post my prior email, as well as this one to book end it if you like.

My larger point is that BEFORE we start comparing say Scott Rolen to 3B born 50-100 years before he was, let's compare him to his peers (all nonpitchers born within 5 years) and his overlapping generations (nonpitchers born within 15 years). I would say I'm part of the very quiet minority that does this.

Inherent in the wins-as-the-great-equalizer debate is that it treats winning percentage of .500 as a constant. This forces a specific mindset: (a) do you adjust this across time, so that a .500 win% in 1917 is not the same as in 2017? (b) do you accept it is the same, solely for the purposes of peer-comparisons?

If you accept (b), we're holding the players accountable to their era only. And so any comparison of Ty Cobb to Rickey Henderson is limited to their comparisons to their direct peers, and then players of the early 1900s, as a group, are being treated as equals to the players of the 1980s and of today (.500 = .500). So, we're actually comparing Cobb and Rickey through this "common baseline".  

If you accept (a), you need to accept that players have gotten better across time, just like in every other sport, and so, the average player in Cobb's time would likely be a bench player today, at best. I say this not only because players must have gotten physically stronger and faster, but also because 3/8ths of the best players today would have been precluded from playing during the segregation era. If we use players of the 1900s as any kind of benchmark, by this assumption, we'd be voting in ten players every year.

In my view, before we jump through the hoops that a careful timeline comparison would require, (including establishing which of the two assumptions to follow, of which no one will agree with anyway) let's at least do the easy part and compare players to their direct peers.

If Scott Rolen is one of the 12 (or so) best nonpitchers of his peers, great, put him in.

If Scott Rolen is one of the 40 (or so) best nonpitchers of his overlapping generations, then great, put him in.

(And I'd rather see a debate as to what IS a good range to have.)

If Scott Rolen is NEITHER of the above, THEN, let's look at the history of baseball. Then you can try to find a bone for him to put him in the hall of fame.  

My point is that if Rolen qualifies under one of the two main tests, we can't knock him out because he fails the final test. He just needs to pass any of them.  

And same applies for Andruw Jones. His case does not rest on him being the best fielding outfielder of all-time. It's possible he can pass either of the peer or generational tests. Let's focus on the main points first. If he fails both, then we can have the spirited debate of Andruw, Willie Mays, and Paul Blair. In my view, we jumped over the main points directly to the Mays/Blair arguments.

I've been relying heavily on a player's birth date, more for logistical reasons. But, what I would do is find the player's "peak" value point (say take a 7 consecutive years, and mark year #4 as his central year). This makes the most sense for "peers" like Randy Johnson and Dwight Gooden, who were born in proximity, but whose peaks are 10-15 years apart. 

Then, find every player whose central years are within 5 years of that. That's the "peer" group. Then find every player whose central years are within 15 years of that. That's the "generational" group. So, RJ and Gooden are not part of the same peer group, but they are part of the same generational group.

Feel free to come up with better names.

Once you do that, we can then decide around "how many" players you'd want to honor. And decide how segregation and expansion impacts things.

Tom

​

COMMENTS (8 Comments, most recent shown first)

tangotiger
ks: it is only done when creating these all-time lists, usually to sell books or magazines.

When it comes to the Hall of Fame for example, you will NEVER see those comparisons being made, unless you are talking about an all-timer. You might see Mario Lemieux being compared to Jean Beliveau for example and usually just for one facet of their play.

Take the most recent inductees:
www.hhof.com/LegendsOfHockey/jsp/LegendsMembersByYear.jsp?type=Player

Dave Andreychuk
Paul Kariya
Mark Recchi
Teemu Selanne

These are great players, but not all-timers. The ONLY players they get compared against are their peers, the guys they actually competed against. You don't see Kariya being compared to Yvan Cournoyer for example (or anyone from the pre-Kariya era).

That's because we all realize that hockey has changed so much, not only in their size and speed, but also just style of play.


9:34 AM Jan 22nd

PeteRidges
Do we need to consider both views at the same time?

If we are looking at pitchers, an all-time comparison would suggest that 19th century pitchers did far more to help their teams win than 21st century pitchers- but we don't want to keep modern pitchers out of the Hall.

But if we say we want the same number of pitchers from each cohort, that means that the Hall of Fame should have as many starting pitchers who were born in the 50s as any other decade: but there really weren't many Hall-worthy pitchers between Blyleven and Clemens.

Why not try looking at both as far as we can?
2:59 PM Jan 21st

ksclacktc
Tango: I'm a huge hockey fan and you're being overly definitive with regards to player comps across eras in hockey. The NHL itself has created top 50 and top 100 lists for all time, and you have to compare players from different eras to do this.
www.thehockeynews.com/news/article/ken-campbell-ranks-the-top-100-nhl-players-of-all-time It is done all the time!
10:44 AM Jan 20th

MarisFan61
I think you're both 100% right. Truly.

It's definitely fun and interesting, and I think also meaningful, to compare players of different eras.
But, although meaningful, it's not at all clear what it means.

I compare them all the time, and it has meaning for me.
At the same time, I realize that there is no way to know what it really means. It's not even clear what we think we're talking about when we talk about it.

Do we mean taking the Ty Cobb of 1910 and imagining that exact player in some other era? As Tom says, there's a high chance that in any reasonably modern era the guy would have been a bench player at most. Do we want to take into account the better training, nutrition, health etc. etc. of modern times, and imagine what Ty Cobb would be, which includes that he'd probably be bigger physically? Do we just mean how good he was in his own time relative to his peers, whether with or without what we consider to be some meaningful time adjustment?

I'm sure that to many, this will seem like a meaningless Clintonian thing, like many of my comments must seem. :-)
But really, folks -- this depends big-time on what we think we mean.

And I'm saying that Bill and Tom are both 100% right.
11:31 AM Jan 19th

FrankD
Gentlemen:
Thanks for the interesting and thoughtful debate. I think the issue of 'normalizing' data for players from different eras to allow for meaningful comparisons of said players is difficult but doable and necessary. It is a core baseball fan appeal to compare players of different eras. Even Tom's statements of identifying the best players of a peer group requires 'normalization' - in this case spatial normalization to allow comparison of players from different leagues. Somehow the analyst in choosing the best players of an era must perform some correction for league differences. These corrections may be small compared to time era corrections, but these corrections still have to be made to quantify who are the best players.
11:05 AM Jan 19th

Guy123
There are a few methods in addition to those cited by Bill that may allow us to measure the changing level of quality of play over time:

1) Pitchers as hitters. One of the clearest signs of improving play is that the offensive performance of pitchers, relative to position players, has declined rather steadily for 100 years. Because their ability to hit plays no role in their selection to pitch in MLB, PAH represent a rather stable measure of ability over time that can be used as a benchmark for comparisons. Today's pitchers may be somewhat better, or somewhat worse hitters than those in the 1920s (we would definitely want to adjust for their hitting less frequently in recent decades), but the change is likely to be modest.

2) Absolute measures. We can compare the size, strength, and speed of players over time, and also estimate the impact of these characteristics on baseball performance. Height and weight info is notoriously inaccurate, but not useless, and could be supplemented by better sources (military, HS/college, family medical records, NFL combine, etc.). We could develop a "forensic sabermetrics" that uses old film and video to measure the actual velocity of pitches, runners, and balls off the bat from earlier eras.

3. Variance and quality. The higher the quality of play, the less variation we see among players. That is why, famously, we have no .400 hitters today. We have excellent tools for measuring variance in each time period, and that allows us to reverse-engineer an implied level of play. (This may fall under Bill's point #2.)

I don't believe any one of these measures alone can answer these questions. But to the extent several measures provide fairly consistent answers, they may collectively tell us quite a bit.

7:09 AM Jan 19th

tangotiger
No one compares Steve Yzerman to Stan Mikita. Or Peter Stastny to Toe Blake.

You are talking about the all-time greats. If you wanted to compare Barry Bonds to Ted Williams, fine. But, guys at that level are not the issue.
9:58 PM Jan 18th

Rich Dunstan
Not sure why Tom says we don't compare recent greats to long-ago greats in hockey. I've seen and heard a lot of discussion as to whether Wayne Gretzky or Sidney Crosby was greater than Gordie Howe or Maurice Richard. I once interviewed a former teammate of Howe's (Paul Henderson) and asked him who was greater, Gordie or Gretzky? He seemed to think that was a natural question, and told me he thought Gretzky was better.
3:59 PM Jan 18th

©2018 Be Jolly, Inc. All Rights 

Wrapping up Third Base

By Bill James

January 31, 2018

92. Williams and Caminiti

             In the mid-1990s the best third basemen in baseball were Matt Williams and Ken Caminiti:

             I believe (not checking) that Matt Williams hit 64 homers in a stretch of 162 games beginning about September 1, 1993. I always think about that—that, were it not for the strike, he might have been the guy who broke Maris’s record, and then all of the crap that rained down on Mark McGwire’s shoulders might eventually have fallen on Matt Williams. 

             I also have to point this out about Vinny Castilla, who was the Nolan Arrenado of his time.  In the history of baseball there are 596 player/seasons in which a player has hit 36 or more homers.  In those seasons there are 595 unique combinations of HR, RBI and Batting Average.  That is to say, there are 594 players whose Home Runs, RBI and Batting Average do not match any other player, and one combination which DOES match another season.  There are 176,715 possible season-to-season comparisons in there, and there is only one perfect match in terms of home runs, RBI and batting average.  And that one match is: Vinny Castilla in 1996, with Vinny Castilla in 1997.  40 Homers, 113 RBI, .304 average both seasons.  Do you have any idea what the odds against that are? 

93. Wood Chipper

             Chipper Jones was the best third baseman in baseball from 1998 to 2001:

             Jones remained on the list of the best third basemen in baseball through 2011, or ten full seasons after he was no longer #1.  That’s pretty unusual, if not unique, for a former #1 to stay ON the list for a full decade.   I think Lou Whitaker stayed on the list a long time while Sandberg was the #1 guy.  

94. Rock ‘n Rolen

             Chipper’s an obvious Hall of Famer.  Scott Rolen is harder, and may drop off the ballot.  He had only a two-year run as the #1 third baseman in baseball, but. . .and this, again, is pretty unique. . .his peak value at third base actually occurred in 2004, when he was NOT the #1 man:

95. A-Rod moves to Third

             In 2004 A-Rod negotiated (more or less) his own trade to the Yankees, and as a consequence of that trade moved to third base.  Winning MVP Awards in 2005 and 2007, A-Rod rates as the top third baseman in baseball from 2004 through 2009, except that one year Miguel Cabrera plays third base and one year David Wright slips ahead of him: