Walks and Fumbles
Posted: December 19th, 2008 | Filed under: Baseball, Other Sports | 112 Comments »
I was reading this fine Christopher D. Green article on Baseball Analysts about Jim Rice and the Hall of Fame, it really clicked something for me, something I’d been thinking about for a while. So while it may seem this way, this really is not another Jim Rice Hall of Fame blog post. I’m sure it will read that way, but I really hope to have a larger point that tackles the same question that I think Green was tackling in his piece:
The question: Is it fair to judge an old player using new measures?
This question applies to everyone, of course, not just Rice, but unfortunately Jim Rice remains in the cross-hairs because he’s just such a GOOD example of someone who seems to shrink under modern scrutiny. In fact, I would say he’s probably unique among Hall of Fame candidates in that the new trends in baseball analysis — the increased regard for walks and on-base percentage, the deeper appreciation for ballpark effects, the more involved statistical study of how much a player really contributes to runs and wins — have not been kind to him.*
*People sometimes throw Jack Morris into this hurt-by-the-new stats category too, but I don’t think that’s right. Jack Morris was a horse, and he was legendary one day (Oct. 27, 1991), and I am not trying to denigrate him — I want to be careful this year not to put down Hall of Fame candidates because, let’s face it, they were all outstanding players. Morris was an excellent pitcher. But in my mind he doesn’t stand up to the very high Hall of Fame standards … and that’s based on good old fashioned statistics. His 3.90 ERA was utterly ordinary for his time — and, more, he never once had a sub 3.00 ERA, not in his entire career (and I have to admit that I’m baffled by voters who are put off by pitchers who do not compile many 20 win seasons but have no issue at all with a pitcher who never once had a sub 3.00 ERA — and in a good pitcher’s ERA too).
His 2,478 strikeouts are quite a lot, but those more or less tie him with Mark Langston (who had a better career ERA+), and put him behind Jerry Koosman, David Cone, Frank Tanana and Mickey Lolich (all of whom have at least as good an ERA+, Koosman and Cone’s are significantly better). Morris never won a Cy Young and never really deserved to win one. His case is mainly built around his reputation as a big winner, and he won 20 three times — but Dave Stewart, Wilbur Wood, Mike Cuellar, Luis Tiant, Dave McNally and Johnny Sain won 20 or more four times.
And others who won 20 three times include: Ron Guidry, Dennis Leonard, Tommy John (who has 34 more career wins than Morris, a better ERA, a better ERA+, some excellent postseason work and a surgery named for him), Vida Blue, Denny McLain, Jim Kaat (30 more career wins, a slightly better ERA+, 16 Gold Gloves and a sure Cy Young in ‘66 if they gave out one to each league), Mel Stottlemyre, Don Newcombe and Vic Raschi, not to mention a dozen others.
Here’s the main point: Jim Rice hit .298 for his career, he led the league in homers, he drove in 100 or more RBIs eight times. He won an MVP Award and finished Top 5 in the voting five other times. He led the American League in a bunch of stats from 1975 to 1986. These are solid core numbers, and they are why he was a star in the 1970s and 1980s, why he was the highest paid player in baseball in 1986 and ‘87.
BUT … then you take a closer look, using new methods and looking at statistics that were not considered hip then:
– He only finished in the Top 10 in the league on-base percentage twice, and never better than ninth.
– He put up 282 career Win Shares, which is certainly good but probably not Hall of Fame caliber. Thirty Win Shares is generally regarded as an MVP type year, and he only had the one 30-plus win share season.
– He hit into 315 double plays, more than any player with fewer than 12,000 plate appearances (Rice had about 9,000 PAs). as many point out, that’s a reflection of numerous things, including the fact he came up with a lot of people on first base. But I think if you want to tell the RBI story, you should mention the double plays.
– And, of course, he spent half his games batting in a great-hitting Fenway Park.*
*I think we all know just how nice it was to play home games in a great-hitting park like Fenway in those days. But I’m not sure you FULLY appreciate it until you see the numbers some other players of that general era had at Fenway Park:
Jim Rice at Fenway: .320/.374/.546
Fred Lynn: .346/.420/.601
Hal McRae: .305/.374/.575
Lou Whitaker: .322/.400/.453
Lou Piniella: .359/.409/.535
Paul Blair: .329/.370/.575 (!!)
Tony Oliva: .376/.406/.596
Boog Powell: .293/.387/.510
Ken Singleton: .360/.430/.474
Frank Howard: .291/.365/.549
Andre Thornton: ..318/.401/.579
Pete O’Brien: .316/.380/.485
Jim Northrup: .364/.441/.552
Bill Melton: .345/.401/.594
Of course, not everybody in baseball hit great at Fenway. Most hit better that normal, but these are some extremes. And, we’re just playing around here; it would be utterly unfair to compare these players — most of whom had only 150-500 at-bats at Fenway and were doing it as visitors** — to Jim Rice who played his whole career in Boston. Still, I think it’s interesting and a little bit telling — what would Lou Piniella or Ken Singleton or Paul Blair or Andre Thornton’s career been like if they had played for Boston? Would Bill Melton have been a superstar?
**Obviously, Fred Lynn is an exception. Lynn played his greatest years in Boston and so got more than 1,800 plate appearances there. I think it’s a safe bet that if he had not been traded away, he’s in the Hall of Fame right now.
ANYWAY, it all leads back to the question: When you dissect Rice’s numbers by using formulas that were not around while he played — and statistics emphasizing talents that were not highly regarded by many while he played — is that fair to Rice (or anyone else)?
I have to admit — I’ve had a hard time really getting my arms around that one. I mean, look, it’s probably not fair to judge silent screen star Lillian Gish’s beauty or Carlyle Blackwell’s dashing-ness based on our current hotness values. It’s probably not fair to judge Slingin’ Sammy Baugh (RIP) based on today’s passer ratings (then it’s probably not fair judging, you know, Peyton Manning on passer rating either). I have been thinking some about the brilliant reader argument going on about Joe Morgan vs. Rogers Hornsby … I was thinking about writing a post about it. How can you compare the two across such different eras? I cannot get one thought out of my mind — I made some calculations to see what Joe Morgan’s numbers would look like compared to Hornsby’s if Joe had played in the 1920s and 1930s.
Here’s what I came up with:
Hornsby: .348/.434/.577 with 2930 hits, 301 homers, 1584 RBIs, 175 OPS+.
Morgan: .000/.000.000 with 0 hits, 0 homers, 0 RBIs, 0 OPS+.
Yeah, tough to compare against generations, if you REALLY think about it.
One thing I have never bought into is the notion that Jim Rice, had he appreciated the significance of walks and on-base percentage and all that, would have walked more. I’ve seen that argument in a few places, and I think it’s kind of absurd. Players are who they are. There have always been players who walked a lot and there have always been hackers and I don’t think perception would change that. In 1979, for instance, Darrell Porter led the American League with 121 walks. In 2008, Jack Cust led with 111 walks. Darrell Porter didn’t read Moneyball, and he didn’t play for Billy Beane, and probably was not an avid Bill James reader at that particularly crazy time in his life. He walked.
In fact, while playing around with this, I ran across a statistic, something that shocked the heck out of me. This might very well be common knowledge — it probably is — but I have never run across it, and I cannot even fathom it. You ready for it?
The walk rate in the American League in 2008 was 8.6%.
The walk rate in the American League in 1979 was 8.7%.
I am absolutely stunned by that. Absolutely, utterly and completely stunned. It does not seem even remotely possible that with the famously high strike in the 1970s, with the batters supposedly swinging at everything back then, with our new and keen understanding of how important on-base percentage is, that batters are walking LESS now that they did then.
But it’s simply a fact. I’m sticking with the American League for now — here’s a chart of walk percentages over the last six decades:
1950s walk rate: 9.7% (approximately … the entirely awesome Baseball Reference does not have sac flies for some early years in the 1950s so I had to guess on those, though I tried to guess high to keep the number fair).
1960s walk rate: 8.7%
1970s walk rate: 8.7%
1980s walk rate: 8.5%
1990s walk rate: 9.2%
2000s walk rate: 8.5%
You get that? Walks are DOWN since Moneyball came out. Walks are DOWN since all the supposed wacky-hacky 1970s. Walks are down since rotisserie teams have started incorporating on-base percentage in their games. Walks are DOWN since these management types from Ivy League school started to crunch the numbers and realized the true significance of the free pass. Walks are down since high on-base percentage players could make money in the open market.
Here’s another way to look at it, this time including the whole Major Leagues. Walks per game:
1950s: 3.6
1960s: 3.1
1970s: 3.3
1980s: 3.2
1990s: 3.4
2000s: 3.3
There’s no way around it. Batters are not walking more now than they did in the 1970s. It’s mind-blowing to me, but it’s also comforting because it confirms what I have come to believe: The ability to walk is just that, an ability, a talent, like being able to run or hit with power. You can improve it somewhat, perhaps, and every once in a while a player will discover the walking talent late. But for the most part a player cannot simply DECIDE to walk more often, just like he cannot DECIDE to start throwing 98 mph because it’s easier to get batters out that way. Walking takes too many distinct talents (including the ability to recognize balls and strikes, the ability to spoil good pitches, the ability to stay focused on each pitch, the respect to get that close call from the umpire, and so on and so on).
So that argument has never been especially interesting to me — I don’t think Rice, given the time machine, would have walked any more often than he did. But I have thought a lot about the overall fairness of judging a player’s career by something he simply did not know would be on the test. I’ve read quite a few things that fought against this argument, and some of them were quite good, but nothing ever really captured me. And then, while reading the Baseball Analysts piece, a thought hit me.
Derrick Thomas.
Derrick Thomas, as you know, was a great linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs in the 1990s. Football statistics are not nearly as precise as baseball statistics, of course, so what we had was that Derrick had a lot of sacks and he made a lot of Pro Bowls. There was nothing out there that I saw really seemed to sum him up — Thomas was an odd and singular player. He was out there to do one thing, only one thing, and that was disrupt the game.
For instance: It was sometimes brought up that he was not good against the run and he was not good at pass coverage (in fact, this has been brought up often in his Hall of Fame discussion), but stuffing the run and dropping in coverage was not Derrick’s job any more than it was Willie Mays job to sacrifice bunt (only 13 in his career — six the last two years) or Shaq’s job to make three pointers (1 for 20). Derrick was paid to go get the quarterback and force turnovers and net safeties and rush people into bad decisions and turn games around. It’s a hard thing to isolate. Football in general is a hard game to narrow down. That’s why coaches always say they need to see the film.
So is there anything out there that, in a quick form, can give Hall of Fame votes and general fans an idea of what Derrick Thomas is all about? As it turns out, there is: Forced fumbles. In his career, Derrick Thomas forced 45 fumbles. He had this great move — the Kansas City Chop — and he would chop down on a quarterback’s arm and knock the ball free. Everyone’s doing it now, and maybe people were doing it before him, but he popularized the move. And his 45 forced fumbles are an unofficial NFL record. The reason it’s unofficial (I believe it’s still unofficial) is that they only have been counting forced fumbles for a few years. Even now, force fumbles are not listed on Derrick Thomas’s NFL page.
So there’s our connection: A new statistic. And believe me, it’s a pain in the neck to try and track down anything in the years for the NFL started counting: I have spent way too long on the Internet trying to find out just how many forced fumbles Lawrence Taylor had in his career (Wikipedia says he forced 33 fumbles … I have over the last three or four years seen other numbers ranging from 26 to 37). I have tried but not really found a reliable way to count the fumbles Dick Butkus forced, or Joe Schmidt or Mike Singletary or Reggie White or Deacon Jones or so many of the great players of the past.
So the question here is: Is it fair to use forced fumbles to judge a Hall of Fame case when the statistic is so new? My feeling is absolutely clear on that: OF COURSE it’s fair. It’s more than fair. Forcing a fumble is just about the most devastating thing a defensive player can do (It isn’t fair, but I think of you Ernest Byner). It can be more of a game-turner than an interception, or a touchdown pass or a punt return* or anything else. Players have been trying to force fumbles since the beginning of football — just because it hasn’t been counted does not make it any less significant. A forced fumble meant plenty in 1958 and 1973 and 1987 and 1999 and 2008. And it’s the same thing with walks and on-base percentage and the ability to create runs.
*OK, I just have to share this with you: This comes directly from my editor at Sports Illustrated Chris Stone. It’s too beautiful. You remember Rick Upchurch, the great punt returner — he returned eight punts for touchdowns. OK, are you ready for this? Rick Upchurch was engaged to Condoleeza Rice.
That’s how it works as we make discoveries. We find new ways to look at the game. Some will look better in retrospect. And some players will not look as good. Some players will stand up to our memories and some will surpass our memories and some, like movies we may have liked 20 years ago, will not stand up at all. That’s not being unfair. That’s perspective.
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I will approve for Rice’s admission to the Hall if it means that I never have to read another article about his potential admission. I remember him being pretty solid on RBI baseball, the computer pitchers seemed to “fear” him.
So that’s why Condoleeza Rice’s picture is on this post!
Nate
[...] Continued here:Â Walks and Fumbles [...]
this year’s leader in forced fumbles is james harrison with 7.
atogwe is 2nd with 5.
i play in all defensive fantasy league that awards 15 points for forced fumbles. neither of them were on my team
Joe’s take on Steve Garvey from the old site has had me thinking about this issue for a while. Scroll down to the first base entry.
http://thesoulofbaseball.blogspot.com/2007/07/all-stars-then-and-now-nl-edition.html
Point well taken, Joe. I wonder what stats will be the forced fumbles of 2028?
Football – the receiver stats of “thrown to/caught”, same for “thrown at/passes defensed” for corners
Hockey – How about, um, shooting percentage? (as an aside, i’ve always been baffled at how penalty minutes is viewed as a positive stat – might be a worse stat than saves)
Basketball – Something like John Hollinger’s True Shooting percentage or PER. Doesn’t it seem like some analysis will show a team should just shoot 3 pointers all the time considering, per 100 shots, a 35% 3 point percentage will net you 5 more points than a 50% 2 point %?
Rice boosters always point to the regard with which he was held in his time, invariably saying how “feared” he was and how he had five Top-5 MVP seasons. The Christopher Green article shows that the fear/respect isn’t reflected in IBB, and we know how most MVP voting (up to the recent past) has been driven by reputation, momentum, and power numbers. I have my fuzzy memories of listening to Red Sox games and feeling all excited and hopeful because “Jim Ed” was coming up. But that feeling doesn’t get to trump the judicious use of modern statistical evaluation.
I also like the point that players can’t just DECIDE (Joe’s caps) to adjust their game to align with changing customs. When Bonds was reaching 500 HR/SB, Mays made a dismissive comment that he and some of his contemporaries (like Aaron) could have done at least 400/400 if they had known it would have been so historically significant. Yeah sure.
Condoleeza Rice is not a Hall of Famer.
When looking at the effect of Moneyball-style thinking on walk rates, don’t forget that while batters are being encouraged to take more pitches, at the same time pitchers are being encouraged to throw more strikes. There are many things that can have an impact on walk rates. Another is the increase in home runs, making a runner on base via walk even more valuable.
Certainly walking (on both batters and pitchers sides) is a tendency that you can’t change entirely just by deciding to. To the extent you can, perhaps an increased emphasis on walking would show up as a higher standard deviation in individual walk rates, rather than a change in the overall rate. It would be interesting to look at the numbers.
While I’m certainly no fan of players from a previous era disparaging modern players, I will take issue with KM’s point about Mays and Aaron and the stolen bases. The stolen base in the 50s and 60s (well, the early part of the 60s, at least) was quite out-of-favor. The mentality was very station-to-station … why take yourself out of an inning with a SB when you could sit back and wait for the home run? I would imagine if someone ran a similar statistical analysis to what Joe did with the walks per game on SBs per game, the result would show that SBs in the 50s were the lowest they’ve ever been. Since Mays and Aaron played most of their careers in the 50s and 60s, with the dominant thinking being that stolen bases were unnecessary, I think it’s safe to give some credence to their assertion that they might have been able to accomplish other goals if they “had known it was important.” Not saying they WOULD do it, but I will admit it is possible.
Agreed on the main point, and agreed on the borderline-ness of Jim Rice (and I live in Boston).
Minor quibble: in order to apply modern statistics to pre-modern eras, you obviously have to gather the data in the same way. In that way, forced fumbles could be like errors — they rely on someone’s judgment of what happened, or what would have happened, to be valid. Of course, that’s football: everything happens in a complex environment that significantly influences outcomes. And, on top of it, a football player will play many fewer plays than a baseball player will have PAs.
I’d argue that the football HOF process will always be broken for that reason — you just can’t ever know how good a player was because you can’t generate an independent metric of his performance.
Of course, maybe that’s why it’s surviving the statistical revolution better than baseball …
Seriously, what the hell got into Darrell Porter in 1979? 101 Runs? Only had more than 70 in one other year. 10 Triples? Only had as many as 6 in one other year. 112 RBI? Only broke 70 one other year. And that mind-boggling 121 walks? He only had 2 other years where he even broke 70. He even had THIRTEEN sacrifice flies. Highest in any other year — 7. And it wasn’t like he turned into Brady Anderson circa 1996, although he did hit a career-high 20 homers. I would love to hear some theories on why this happened, and also makes me curious how this ranks amongst players who had that one totally out-of-whack year in the midst of a relatively consistent career.
In response to Pistol Pete,
We have to separate the events in two categories: inner ability/reflex and motivation. Drawing a walk is definitely in the inner ability/reflex category as you need to quickly assert pitches thrown to you. However, stealing attempts are in the motivation category. We CAN steal more just by foolishly attempting steals. So yes, Mays could probably get to 400-500 sb (maybe more) but it’s different for drawing walks.
Hall of Fame again. Here is the Hall’s Rule 5, listing the qualifications for election by the BBWAA of players:
“Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.”
Note these criteria are not numbered or weighted. To say that they are listed in order of importance would be a stretch. Statistics attempt to measure one (or arguably two) of the six criteria.
Thanks to John Haskell for pointing out (on SABR’s SABR-L discussion site) something so elemental as the existence of rules for election, and that raw numbers and statistics form a minority of the criteria.
Ray C wrote:
>There are many things that can have an impact on walk
> rates.
No bleep, that’s Joe’s point, the walk rate hasn’t changed in 50 years.
Well, the player’s statistics would also probably capture his “playing ability” and “contributions” pretty well. So that’s half of the six.
“great-hitting park like Fenway in those days”
Sorry to be dense but I don’t get the “in those days” modifier. What’s changed at Fenway Park since the 70s?
I boggles my mind that Derrick Thomas is NOT in the Hall of Fame. With the fact that they let 20 people a year in Canton (It is 20 now…right??), it’s hard to believe he isn’t in yet.
Maybe it’s because he had his career (and life) tragically cut short — but that usually boosts HOF credentials
Maybe it’s because his production fell off his last two seasons, though he probably had 5-6 more years in him to pad his stats (he was only 32).
Maybe it’s because there were some un-savory facts about his personal life that came out after his death.
I don’t know…please, PLEASE some brilliant commenter MUST make a solid case AGAINST DT. There’s no acceptable reason WHY he is not in Canton.
BOOOOSH!!
I would like to know if Joe writes something like this more as ‘thinking out loud’ or in hopes that other voters might read it and reconsider yes votes for Rice.
DT has got to get in the Hall of Fame this year. I can’t believe he isn’t in yet. Joe, you and Whitlock need to make this happen.
Those walk rate stats are amazing, especially in light of the introduction of the DH.
Either DHs walk at the same rate as pre-1974 pitchers, which is hard to fathom.
Or position players walk so much less than they used to that they cancel the effect of the DH. That wouldn’t be unbelievable, just surprising.
I’ve thought about this some in reference to Ken Griffey Jr. who, as defensive metrics advance, will, I assume, appear to have given back tens of runs a year by playing CF despite being incapable of doing so competently in the latter portion of his career.
I’ve no doubt Junior will get elected but I’m pretty sure someone (a non-voter to be sure) will argue against him on the basis of his defense and I’m unresolved as to whether that’s fair to Junior as he wasn’t the one putting himself out there.
I don’t really dwell on this as Junior is unlikely to care. His induction into the HOF will surely be solace enough.
As for Derrick Thomas, he’s not in the Hall of Fame because the Chiefs’ offense and special teams conspired to lose most of the playoff games in which he participated which is certainly unfair and reflects poorly on the voters for that institution. As does Otis Taylor’s absence.
I don’t think that your question, “Is it fair to judge an old player['s HOF credentials] using new measures?” applies to Rice.
First, it’s not just new measures. In 1995, long before most voters had even heard of most new measure, he only got 29.8% of the vote. If we look at his second year on the ballot, still only 36.2%. The votes closest to his playing career weren’t even close.
So, yeah, a case can be made for him using the old stats. But it wasn’t a compelling case, apparently. The voters have show us that.
Second, the fact that the stats are getting better, or that the media is starting to accept some of them doesn’t mean that the game has changed. It’s generally our ability to measure the game that has changed, not the game itself.
Look at the other great players in his time, and before his time. I mean, look at the acclaimed players of his time. My fathers great players are generally still great, even with modern metrics. That you believe that “he’s probably unique among Hall of Fame candidates in that the new trends in baseball analysis…have not been kind to him” supports this point.
The new metrics* have not changed who was great and who is not. Instead, the new metrics have shown us that there are aspects of the game that are linked to other aspects, in ways that we didn’t realize. Most obviously, power and plate discipline are tightly linked for great players.
In fact, one of the biggest real changes actually helps him. Steals were considered much more imporant back then, and he didn’t contribute anything there.
I think that your football analogy makes the point. There are lots of football stats that weren’t well kept, but that didn’t mean that the deeds weren’t important. Blocked shots were important even before they were tracked.
And last, I’m sorry to disagree, but I don’t think that Derick Thomas invented that chop move. LT was terrorizing my Redskins with it in the 1980s. Thomas might have perfected it, but LT had it too, even if he didn’t feature it as much.
I don’t think football has been immune to the statistical revolution, it’s just that front offices have so enthusiastically adopted statistical analysis, some of the joy has been taken out of it. Baseball statheads get to have the feeling they are storming the gates and transforming the game, which may or may not be true, but it does make you feel smart. Baseball’s resistance to objective metrics may be infuriating to a fan, but it also sparks lots of passion to get them to accept it.
Football coaching staffs, on the other hand, are drenched in numbers. They have more charts on the tendencies of players and teams than they know what to do with. The game is dissected a million times, so that most coaches probably have quick access to how often an opponent runs a quarterback draw from a shotgun three wide receiver set.
Which is odd because the numbers available to the fans are pretty terrible. There’s almost no metric for offensive line play. QB ratings are incomprehensible. Wide receiver numbers don’t even come close to telling the story. Defensive stats are almost worthless. Football Outsiders does a great job tracking all of this stuff, but they seem to be the only ones. Where are the fans demanding good football numbers?
As I’m writing this, 16 people have said they would like to live in Boston. Unthinkable.
Mikey asks what’s changed about Fenway Park, in terms of its being a better hitter’s park in the 70’s as opposed to now.
Not much has changed about Fenway (adding the Monster seats, and some changes to the pressbox/luxury suites), but its not that – its what the other parks in the league are. The parks that are in the AL are better hitters parks now (in general) than they were in the 70’s, which reduces Fenway’s relative impact.
For example, Camden Yards is a better place to hit than Memorial Stadium was. That helps make Fenway less of a hitter’s park, relative to the league.
I don’t think it’s all that shocking that DT isn’t in the Hall of Fame….yet.
Thomas has been eligible for four years. During that time 22 men have been inducted. Two of them were linebackers. Harry Carson got in eight years after retirement. Andre Tippett got in 15 years after retirement. 2008 is the ninth season since Derrick Thomas’s death. That seems about right. Can anybody argue that DT should OBVIOUSLY get in more quickly than Harry Carson?
Of those 22 inductees, nine could fairly be said to be contemporaries of Thomas: Dan Marino, Steve Young, Troy Aikman, Reggie White, Michael Irvin, Bruce Matthews, Thurman Thomas, Darrell Green, Gary Zimmerman. I’m excluding Warren Moon, Art Monk, and Tippett, whose careers literally overlapped DT’s but were certainly at their peak during the 80s.
Is it really outrageous for any of those nine guys to go in ahead of Derrick Thomas? As electrifying as DT was, he was somewhat one-dimensional, never played in a Super Bowl, and was in decline at the time of his death.
That’s not to say he’s not a lock for the HoF. He is. It will be a shock if he’s not inducted in the next five years, if not this year.
Thanks MattD. Makes perfect sense.
“I cannot get one thought out of my mind — I made some calculations to see what Joe Morgan’s numbers would look like compared to Hornsby’s if Joe had played in the 1920s and 1930s.
Here’s what I came up with:
Hornsby: .348/.434/.577 with 2930 hits, 301 homers, 1584 RBIs, 175 OPS+.
Morgan: .000/.000.000 with 0 hits, 0 homers, 0 RBIs, 0 OPS+.
Yeah, tough to compare against generations, if you REALLY think about it.”
Joe, you are too damn good.
Mikey,
It’s not that Fenway has changed, it’s that a lot of the newer retro parks have been designed to strongly favor hitters, so Fenway doesn’t stand out the way it used to. Park Factor is relative to a neutral park in that league, so if the average league park is more hitter friendly, an unchanged Fenway will have a lower Park Factor. Fenway Park’s Batting Park Factor 1955-78: 113, 113, 118, 109. For 05-08: 103, 105, 106, 108.
Sorry, I meant Fenway in 1975-78, not 1955-78.
That is a stunning bit of info for all these years I thought Condoleeza played softball.
I have one quibble and one larger point. First the quibble – some of your numbers on Rice are wrong. You shorted him one each on 100 RBI seasons and top-5 MVP finishes.
To your broader point about using newer statistics to judge older players, I think your analogy with the forced fumbles is faulty. Forced fumbles are a hard-and-fast thing (scorer’s judgement aside). It’s a tally of the number of times that player did that thing. There’s no real arguing that it did or did not happen or that the player’s total is what it is.
That’s not the case yet with many modern baseball measurements. It works with OBP, because that’s a formula that has been set for a while and really isn’t “modern”. But the more comprehensive stats – WARP, VORP, Win Shares, TPR, etc. – have all evolved or are still evolving. The formulas or weights within the formulas have changed and continue to change. There is open and often angry disagreement among the smartest people who are developing these measurements as to which one is best, or whether any of them are good or not. At the moment, the only consensus seems to be that these measurements are all better than RBI, batting average, etc., and are at least directionally correct, but there is still major disagreement on the details. It should be noted that had Jim Rice been elected to the HOF as recently as 2001, his election would have been prefectly supported by the “modern” measurements that were available at the time. His WARP3 and TPR scores were firmly in the middle of all Hall of Fame left fielders. Now, due to shifting math, both his WARP3 and TPR scores have each dropped significantly, despite not having played a game in nearly 20 years, and Win Shares came out and didn’t show him in a good light either, so now the argument in his favor suddenly doesn’t look as good, but that wasn’t the case for the first half of his time on the ballot.
I agree with the notion that a more recent measurement is perfectly fair to apply to older players. But I think it’s only fair that the new measurement stops shifting and evolving before it’s used as a foundation for drawing conclusions. Quick example – Bill James famously said Roy White was a better player than Jim Rice, and one of his arguments was that White was “obviously” a better defensive player. He said this while he was putting the finishing touches on his Win Shares system, and used Win Shares extensively when creating his player rankings. Less than a year after writing that, James published the book “Win Shares”, and while trumpeting his defensive measurements in that book as the most accurate created to that point, he rated White as a “C” defender and rated Rice as better, a “C+” defender. So if the grandfather of all sabermetrics can use the same measurement system to contradict himself on a particular issue within the span of less than a year, I think maybe it’s time we tempered the weight we place on some of these measurements.
Ron C.: “Seriously, what the hell got into Darrell Porter in 1979? ”
According to Wikipedia, alcohol, cocaine, Quaaludes and marijuana. He checked into rehab in early ‘80, cleaned up, got religion and forgot how to play baseball.
I think Dawson’s been hurt just as much by the statistical revolution. There aren’t as many factors – few, if any, point to park factors when sizing up Hawk’s career – but he did more things well than Jim Ed (better fielder, better basestealer, and he had good power as well), but his opponents can just point to that brutal OBP, which wasn’t seen as being as important in his day as it is now.
Of course, I agree that any difference in his walk/OBP totals would have been negligible if walks had been properly valued in his day. He was a hacker, plain and simple.
I’ll be curious to see how Larry Walker’s case turns out. Objectively, he was a better player than Rice, and had some wildly underrated seasons in Montreal and St. Louis around his Colorado prime. He also quit the game when he still had some gas in the tank (he put up a 130 OPS+ in about half a season’s worth of at-bats with the Cards in his final year). It’ll be interesting to see if some of Rice’s ardent supporters vote no on Walker based on the Coors field argument.
His counting numbers aren’t as impressive as you’d like, but a .313/.400/.565 line over 17 seasons (albeit fewer than 7,000 at-bats) is nothing to sneeze at.
Excellent answer, Gogiggs! Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “playing out of his mind.”
Fenway HAS changed. The “600 Club” (or whatever it is now called), the luxury restaurant up behind home plate, was added circa 1988, and reportedly changed the wind flow patterns. More seats have been added to the roof, and more recently above the Monster. These things probably matter little to ground balls, but can impact fly balls a lot.
To Chipmaker’s point, has the park factor for Yankee Stadium also been lowered since the late 70s due to parks in general becoming more friendly to hitters?
By the way, if historic Park Factors are freely available online, please post a link. I know we hate it when someone asks a question that they could easily look up the answer to.
It is generally assumed that Lawrence Taylor is better than Derrick Thomas by a large margin. Why?
Taylor won Super Bowls and played in NY. DT won zero and played in KC. Also, Taylor was the first true rush backer and DT was prototype 2.
However, I am not statistically convinced that Taylor was a better player than DT.
I am really not convinced that Andre Tippett and Fred Dean are better players.
For someone who has watched the Chiefs for 35 years, DT has been the best player I have seen (with all due respect to Tony Gonzalez). Tony could not change a game the way Derrick did.
I missed many of Jime Rice’s best years due to the fact I was an 80s baby, but I do know this:
1. Jim Rice bought jewelry from the Gold Crown Jewelry, where my dad worked during the 70s. My first baseball stories were ones in which my dad talked to Rice about baseball.
2. Jim Rice gave an “interesting” speech a few years ago (2006?) during a preseason luncheon honoring Ben Mondor, the owner of the Pawtucket Red Sox. In the midst of Rice’s speech, he brushed off the harm of steroids, and pretty much endorsed universal cheating in baseball. Needless to say, I’d be willing to bet that the Pepcid had to be passed around after those remarks.
I second Mikey’s suggestion: if anyone has a link to historic park factors, please share it.
Same thing with all-time Win Shares for all players.
I’m not convinced that Tippett was better than Thomas either. Honestly, I was so young for Tippett’s peak years and I didn’t see enough Pats games growing up to really have a strong opinion.
I would say that Tippett waited 15 years to get in and had Thomas gone in ahead of him I think there’s a fair chance Tippett would never have made it.
I think LT deserves a little more credit for, as you say, being the prototype for a new kind of linebacker. The guy who invented the role does deserve more credit than the guy who came next and was also extraordinarily good at it.
That said, I agree that the LT legend has been a bit over-inflated by the NY media. Just last week I almost ran off the road when one of the WFAN guys called LT “probably the greatest player of all time”
For comparision sake, look these career numbers over:
PLAYER A – 18 Seasons, 1994 Games, 6847 ABs
1826 h, 332 2b, 340 hr, 1262 rbi, .267/.379/.476, OPS+ 137, 6.4 rc/g, 39 BtWin
JIM RICE – 16 Seasons, 2089 Games, 8225 ABs
2452 h, 373 2b, 382 hr, 1451 rbi, .289/.352/.502, OPS+ 128, 6.0 rc/g, 28.9 BtWin
PLAYER A had less counting numbers due to the almost 2 more seasons worth of ABs that Rice had…and the ballparks he played in, but look at the metrics.
Now I am not saying that Jack Clark should be in the HOF, but when he was playing he was better hitter than Jim Rice.
if a player like Jim Rice can’t make it in with his era’s own stats he shouldnt deserve to make it at all. anyway thats what i though until your forced fumbles arguement. and now i jsut dont know what to think
From the Rick Upchurch wikipedia page:
“Upchurch dated and was briefly engaged to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the 1970s. She left him because, according to her biographer Marcus Mabry, “She knew the relationship wasn’t going to work on an intellectual level”.”
Ouch.
I know this is America and all, but I just can’t wrap my brain around the notion that people actually prefer apple pie to cherry pie.
I think that very few people give Condi Rice the credit and respect that she deserves…Actually, the Rick Upchurch item is rather old news. Her interest in the NFL are legendary and she can play one mean piano. She has held up well in an administration that has not held up nearly as well….In 40 years let’s (if we are lucky enough) compare her years as a leading WH aide and Sec of State to the career of Hillary Rodham…My guess that it will be no contest. Condi has earned her stripes, most of Hillary’s have been obtained through an absolutely unexplainable marriage to Bubba, now the chief of Shieks.
BTW: Joe in SI, the link:
http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1149837/index.htm
i think condalezza rice is actually generally well received by both parties especially compared to teh company she keeps.
So Condoleeza broke up with Rick Upchurch of suburban Toledo, Ohio?
When did she marry Jim Ed?
JIM ED…??? I’m not following ….
Oh, and Condi is reportedly an excellent ice skater too!
She now is frequently seen on the arm of NFLer Gene Washington, although they both say that they are just great friends.
Mikey, historic PFs are on baseball-reference.com, on the team page for each season.
Slight Correction Joe: Jim Rice had 8 100 RBI seasons instead of 7.
OK, I’m 52 years old and I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know what the heck a “Win share” is (nor do I care to know).
This is do know: if you have to engage in a debate as to whether a particular player is HOF worthy, like the endless J Rice debate, then that player should not be in the HOF. Period. End of story.
So, this means Rice, one of my favorite players back in the day, doesn’t get in. I’m OK with that, even though he was in the top 5 of MVP voting six different times. Gee, six times! SOMEONE must have thought he was pretty good.
Paul
Thanks Perry. Just for comparisons sake:
Average Yankee Stadium Park Factor
1975-1978 – 99
2005- 2008 – 101
Average Fenway Park Park Factor
1975-1978 – 113
2005-2008 – 106
So maybe it’s not just changes in parks around the league. Maybe it’s mostly renovations to Fenway itself, as suggested by another poster. I don’t know.
How many players ran for several extra yards or first downs while Derrick was chopping at them instead of tackling them?
Mikey:
“As electrifying as DT was, he was somewhat one-dimensional…”
Yeah, and ‘pressuring the quarterback’ is SO overrated!! What team succeeds when THAT happens. I mean, it’s not like teams are spending $73.26 million over six years and two day-one draft picks for players that can do that one-dimentional ‘get in the QBs face’ thing. Poppycock!!
Joe made a terrific point that I have used many times to refute the DT haters: “He was out there to do one thing, only one thing, and that was disrupt the game.” Plus, when you have a defense with Dan Saleija–…Dan Sallamananna–…Dan Saleaumua, Dale Carter, and Neil Smith, why would you want to turn DTs motor down?? To stop the run??
“…never played in a Super Bowl…”
I guess you’re refering to the time when DT STORMED into Carl Peterson’s office and DEMANDED that Lin Elliott be signed, and that Rich Gannon be benched in favor of Steve Bono for their home playoff game against the Colts. Plus, I mean, like, if ONLY he didn’t have so many sacks, they would have totally won, like, seven Super Bowls…at least…
“…and was in decline at the time of his death.”
True, he had his worst statistical season the year before he died, but the Chiefs were in SHAMBLES in 1999 (which SHOULD have been CPs last year at the helm). That doesn’t hide the down-turn in stats, but it’s not inconcievable to see DT play another 5-6 years (he was only 32 when he died). He STILL, despite his cut-short career, ranks #11 in career sacks, and while Bruce Smith and Reggie White would still have probably been out of touch at #1 and #2, DT would most definitely have been #3 on the list when he retierd, even if he had to play four pathetic years in Washington (Smith) or draped himself in Carolina blue for a forgetable season (White).
You lose…I win…
Fenway’s less a hitter’s park now because of the better hitting dimensions of the newer parks. It doesn’t account for all of it, but Jacobs Field, Camden Yards, the Homerdome, Arlington, all bump up offense, with perhaps Safeco and Comerica dampening it from the previous parks.
Bravo Joe. Excellent, excellent post.
I wonder if this will change Paul White’s mind? No, it looks like it hasn’t
You write: “Batters are not walking more now than they did in the 1970s. It’s mind-blowing to me, but it’s also comforting because it confirms what I have come to believe: The ability to walk is just that, an ability, a talent, like being able to run or hit with power.” That, of course, is the entire point of Moneyball. If you could teach a batter to walk more, you would just do that. But judging well whether a ball is headed for the strike zone seems to be a fairly basic perceptual ability, like visual acuity. Early on, practice can enable one to realize more fully the ability that one has, but there will be fairly strict limits on how much it can be improved. So, according the Beane, you try to find players who have that ability early in their careers. If you can find players like that but who have do not have strong traditional hitting numbers, you are able to exploit an inefficiency in the player market. The player may only hit .260 (so other scouts will overlook him), but his OBP may be an above-avg .350. because he walks more than avg., and he rarely strikes out, to boot. Then you try to teach him to hit better.
No one will see this
I think it’s possible that as walks become more recognized – and therefore more valuable in the mind of the coaching staff, then they apply more emphasis in walking for hitters AND more emphasis in preventing them for pitchers…eventually canceling each other out…
On the cities to live in – not good choices for those of us who like a little peace and quiet now and then…
passes defensed
AAARRRGGGHHHHHH.
ESPN and their blatant rape of the English language!!!!!
*cries*
I’m just assuming that the walk rate of the 1970s is actually significantly lower until you account for Nolan Ryan.
Good god. Calm down.
I guess calling DT electrifying and a lock for the Hall of Fame makes me a hater.
I’m not sure about this, but my understanding is that the press box that was put up in Fenway changed the wind patterns, and also some taller buildings were built in Boston, effecting wind patters in the general area as well. This had the effect of taking a homer friendly park and turning it into a more home neutral (or slightly friendly) park. While BA and doubles have stayed relatively the same, the decrease in the HR rate (because there is not so much wind ABOVE the stadium blowing out) has made Fenway more neutral.
And, I couldn’t find the good spreadsheet being reference (although baseball-reference.com does list the factors on the team’s xxxx year page, so you could click through them manually to find them all). I only spent 3 minutes looking though.
I like Park Factors and all, but I’m pretty sure that “changing wind patterns” because of a restaurant built behind homeplate are nowhere near as influential on Park Factors as the quality of the home team’s hitters.
I’m just saying.
I believe the fact that average walks per game hasn’t materially changed over the last few decades is because pitchers have not become more accurate. Its the pitchers ability to be able to throw strikes that dictate walks….not the hitters keen eye. A crash test dummy standing in the batters box can draw a walk if the pitcher can’t throw strikes. Walks certainly have an impact on the outcome of a game but should not be a variable in deciding how good an offensive player was during his career.
As of now, New York is 2 votes ahead of Boston! 2!! C’mon people. Virulent racism and Red Sox/Pats fans! Now, I may be biased because I’ve never visited the place, but that’s the point. I never WANTED to.
Creston,
PF is calculated by comparing home and road scoring by both the home and away teams. So if the “quality of the home team’s hitters” improves, that would presumably affect their scoring both home and away, and wouldn’t affect opposition scoring at all, leaving PF unchanged.
Unless by “quality” you meant “type.” If the Red Sox somehow constructed the team in a way that they had a big home/road scoring discrepancy, then changed to a more balanced offense such that their total runs stayed the same but now they score equally well at home and away, while opponents’ scoring remanied unchanged, that would reduce the Fenway PF.
Been hanging out for the ERA pun for some time. Now that it’s appeared, I have to say well placed and worth the wait.
Walks and Fumbles…
Bookmarked your post over at Blog Bookmarker.com!…
Is it so surprising that the walk rate hasn’t risen? The point of Moneyball was never really “walks are awesome”. The point was, of course, that if someone could identify some undervalued facet of the game, they could “buy” wins at a discount. It so happened that OBP turned out to be undervalued, but, as Michael Lewis pointed out, that might just be because good OBP guys are big, fat, strikeout machines who don’t look appealing.
My point, if I have one, is only that it’s the raising of the *profile* of the walk that’s Moneyball’s contribution. It didn’t raise the *value* of the walk to the game; it surely raised the value of the walk in the free agent market, but that’s not the same thing.
A couple of quick thoughts.
“If you have to have a debate about whether the guy gets in, then he doesn’t get in” is a terrible argument. You can limit however you want, and there will always be some just on one side of the line, and some just on the other side of the line, and it will be debated. Joe just wrote about the fact that more than ten people voted no to Willie Mays. So by this rubric, there would be a debate about Mays, so he shouldn’t get in.
Players aren’t trying to get into the Hall; they are trying to win games. Ok, so some guys may hang around longer than they should to reach a milestone (no matter how much we bijou them). Rice was trying to help the Sox win games. If they changed the rules of the game – so that a walk was worth two bases, say – then it would clearly be wrong to evaluate him on the rules of today rather than the rules he played under.
Derrick Thomas was a beast and should be in hall, and it needs to happen this time.
I was actually talking about a similar football argument last night with my brother basically around the topic of “why do only quarterbacks and running backs win the Heisman.” My point was that they have the best statistics. We have so many more metrics to measure the contribution of those positions, especially compared to defenders and offensive lineman. Even forced fumbles are infrequent enough that it is very difficult to distinguish among players based on it, especially if you are looking at a game or a season.
“…I wonder if this will change Paul White’s mind? No, it looks like it hasn’t.”
Yeah, it didn’t take, sorry. I knew all this stuff already (well, except for the Condi Rice-Rick Upchurch thing; that was new information), so it really doesn’t change my mind.
And to the dude who hates Boston despite having never been there? Yeah, you’re a moron. You are the equivalent of Joe Morgan hating “Moneyball” despite never having read it, and you should consider that just about the most insulting thing I can say about a person.
“If they changed the rules of the game – so that a walk was worth two bases, say”
this would be the most amazing rule change in the history of baseball.
i would vote for this!
I forgot all about Rick Upchurch! I loved that guy when I was a kid. That put a smile on my face.
Couple mentions of Rice’s IBB rate. That might be a bit unfair considering for many of those years he hit in front of Yaz. Also the changing winds in Fenway, I believe, is the most significant change in terms of park effects from the 600 club/press box etc. At least many players have commented on the way the wind came from the west and blew out, and no longer does. (Boggs comes to mind as mentioning this several times, not that he ever tried to take advantage). Though certainly the changing dimensions in other parks since has also changed Fenway’s park effects relative to the league.
I wish I came down on the put Rice in side of the debate, but I don’t see it, and I wonder what the source of momentum is for it. I think Dewey deserves it before he does, which isn’t to say that I think he necessarily should be either. Comparing their careers, and considering that Dewey played an excellent right field (and Fenway’s RF is huge and oddly shaped) is an interesting exercise though.
I wouldn’t dismiss the idea that someone can try to walk more, or learn to be more patient. Most players (I think, I only scanned like eight players who randomly came to mind to check) tend to walk more as they enter their prime. Certainly some are always patient and others never will. Most of the greats walked a ton, but maybe that’s what separates the greats from the mortals. They waited and waited until they got what they wanted and hammered it, combining the physical skills with the mental approach that leads to both better contact and more walks. (grossly oversimplifying batting, I know)
So is it fair to Rice to criticize him for not walking more? I guess so. So long as we do so understanding that he played at a time when racking up hits, not getting on whenever you can was what players were striving for. He never struck out a ton, clearly this was a guy who went up trying to put the bat on the ball in whatever way he could. He was quite successful at doing what he was trying to do. I think there’s something notable in that.
Oh, and I voted Boston above. I used to live there, I live in NYC now, I wish I could go back. I love it there, great town, (few who actually hang out there don’t think so) but it doesn’t belong on that list. Those are the huge cities of the world, Boston’s a small town compared to them. I recall a great FJM post about the comparison a while ago, one of the NY Post writers wrote something comparing NYC and Boston, one of their better ones.
It’s interesting, but I think the way in which the recognition of the importance/value of walks would change things has little to do with the players. Control of the strike zone is a talent/skill, you can’t just choose it, as is control/command for pitchers. However, it would seem to have changed the selection process of players and job allocation. To take an extreme, Omar Moreno was a starting CF for about 7 or 8 years, and was given over 5300 plate appearances during which he had a whopping OBP of .306. In his best full season, in a hitters park, he was at .339. Not so sure he gets that much time to suck in modern baseball, although Juan Pierre’s career might argue otherwise. However, maybe the attention works as much on pitchers, offsetting the selection of more selective hitters with less wild pitchers?
On the subject of cities, I have to agree — anyone who would comment on a city’s livability having never even visited is a moron, although desire to visit and livability don’t necessarily have much to do with each other. As background, I grew up outside NY, have lived in NY and LA, have spent extensive time in Boston and Chicago, and have visited all of these cities except Tokyo. They all have good things and bad things. Is Boston somewhat provincial? I think it probably is, but it is tremedously livable, much moreso than NY. NY is maybe the greatest city in the world to visist and certianly one of the greatest — so much to do at such high quality. But it is HARD to live in NY — the place just wears you down. Unless, of course, you have an obscene amount of money — then, maybe not so much, but NY is hard. Personally, I picked LA — living at the beach was just phenomenal. And the list is odd — sort of the biggest sports cities in the US, plus London, Tokyo and Paris. Any idea how Joe chose this group?
Darrell Porter 1979 = Al Cowens 1977
Since walks are down and we do realize their importance, I think that brings another factor into the discussion. Are players better at making contact now? Do they put the ball in play more often on weak hits that used to be foul balls? I mean I feel like a guy that has a high swings to contact ratio is losing out on a lot of walks simply because he can’t swing and miss. Without the ability to miss the pitch, one or two swings in an at bat almost guarantees that player will make an out, get a hit, or strikeout (less likely w/ high contact as well).
Derrick Thomas would have been a 1st ballot HOFer if he had played somewhere on the East Coast. It’s a tragedy he still isn’t in. Thomas played 15 games less than the great Lawrence Taylor and had 15.5 less sacks than him (counting LT’s rookie season), but LT made it in the HOF on the first ballot. Whatever.
I don’t want to live in *any* of those places. I love Florida.
Joe:
I need to take severe exception to your calling into question Kirby Puckett’s HoF credentials over at cnnsi.com!
Kirby reached 2,000 hits at the second fastest pace in history; he hit for power, average, and stole bases; his 1988 season was one of the best of all time; his lifetime BA – .318 – was extraordinarily high; he won six Gold Gloves in centerfield; AND, he led his (small-market) team to two highly improbable World Series victories in five years
On top of all that, he was so charismatic and lovable that he was the de facto King of Minnesota.
Kirby Puckett absolutely deserves to be in the HoF.
How dare you impugn him! Trust me, Bernie Williams was a very good player — but he was no Kirby, not by a long shot.
–A Minnesota Native
If you hold playing in Fenway against Rice, you have to do the same to Yaz. Here are Yaz’s home away splits for his career.
.306 .402 .503 .904
.264 .357 .422 .779
Actually worst than Rice.
Also Rice had a .352 OBP for his career. That’s excellent, especially when matched with a .502 SLG for his career.
During the 70’s and 80’s, when Rice played, the league average for OBP was around .330 and for SLG around .400.
So while Rice was only around 20 points higher than the league in OBP, he was 100 points higher in SLG.
These days, the average OBP is the same, but the slugging is around 30 points higher, so basically, Rice was a big slugger in the days when there weren’t many. Modern day stat guys obsession with walks make me laugh. They seem to be arguing that guys who walk are more valuable than guys who hit extra base hits. Comical.
Zero, the so-called obsession with walks is not because people don’t understand the relative value of walks vs. extra base hits. Rather, it’s that people who ignore modern statistical analysis forget that the opposite of OBP is OUT Percentage. Earl Weaver wrote a long time ago that the most valuable thing an offense has is its 27 outs. THAT’S why someone like Rice is less valuable than he might first appear — because he made so many damn outs to produce the extra base hits he did. And because his stats were inflated by Fenway. And because he had no defensive value. And he only had about a 3 year run as a great player. And because this “dominant” and “feared” slugger didn’t even get to 400 HR because he was washed up early. If you compare Rice to someone like Andre Dawson, who also didn’t walk , I’m not sure how you come up with Rice as the better player. Dawson was a better fielder, stayed good longer, had some value as a baserunner, hit more HR, and his stats, at least at peak, were suppressed rather than inflated by his home park. Rice was better at peak, but it was a damn short peak…
Zerocasah,
Walks ARE pretty valuable. Obviously, a double’s more valuable than a walk taken on its own, but on-base-percentage as a statistic is FAR more indicative of a player’s value than slugging percentage. There are plenty of studies, run expectancy charts, etc that bear this out. Because of that, Yaz was actually more valuable than Rice in road games, making that comparision inapt.
Another strike against Rice in re: Yaz, Rice played in a better offensive era. It wasn’t the high-scoring days of today, but it wasn’t exactly as low-scoring an environment as the 60s, either.
Also, Rice’s OBP was decent, but not “excellent,” as you suggest. He ranks in the top 600 all-time in that category, sure, behind such luminaries as Paul Konerko, Delino DeShields and Marcus Giles. He was better than those guys, sure, but let’s not go suggesting he was an “excellent” on-base guy.
So did I miss the part where you talked about PITCHERS realizing how important walks truly are as well?
Seems to me the logical flow here is that while batters are focusing more on taking pitches and working walks, so, too, are pitchers working to AVOID giving up walks.
Your assumptions seem to be based around the fact that only batters were aware of the increased importance of walks. It seems to follow, however, that in a 3-0, 3-1 or 3-2 count, a pitcher is more apt to throw a strike TODAY than in 1970.
If the reverse is true (more strikes thrown on 3-0, 3-1, 3-2 counts in 1970 than today), then your logic holds. You should check this out if you really want to prove something.
@hoopinion- KG,Jr. had such a long and tremendous peak, ie, his first 10 years get him into the HOF that the decline doesn’t matter. You can’t fault a guy for wanting to play his position; you might blame his manager for inking him or his gm for signing him.
“…his 1988 season was one of the best of all time; his lifetime BA – .318 – was extraordinarily high…”
How was his 1988 season one of the best all time? Sure, he hit .356, but his OPS+ doesn’t even crack the top 500 (500!) single seasons in history. And he’s not even closing to being top 500.
He is #57 all time for batting average, which is certainly very good,, but I don’t know if it’s exactly “extraordinary.” Damn good, sure. but extraordinary…no.
Justin,
You criticize me for comparing Rice to Yaz since they are from a different era, and yet you compare Rice to Konerko, DeShields and M. Giles. Seriously?
OBP is more important than SLG, never said otherwise. I actually am a Saber fan. It is just that too many Saber guys buy too deeply into the notion that walks are more important than extra base hits. My argument is that Rice had a very high OBP, that was driven by hits, especially extra base hits, and not walks and that is why some Saber fans criticize him. Saber fans love a high IsoD, which is very, very overrated. Walks are not as valuable as hits, especially extra base hits. A guy with a high OBP, like Rice, but a low IsoD , creates more runs than a guy with the same OBP, but a high IsoD.
JEFFSOL claims that Rice so many damn outs to produce the extra base hits he got, and that is just false! He had an OBP of .370 or more SIX TIMES! That is not making a ton of outs. And a lifetime of .352 is not making a ton of outs, that is around 20 points higher than the league average back then. I am sorry, but that is excellent in my book.
Zerocasah,
I obviously wouldn’t argue that Konerko, DeShields or M. Giles were better than Rice. I was just pointing out that his OBP wasn’t particularly “excellent.” If you want to argue that that’s excellent, then your bar for excellence is lower than mine.
Perhaps wrongly, I assumed that you were arguing that Rice’s case looked better when seen in light of Yaz’s HoF career (I assume you weren’t suggesting he was better than Yaz) and Yaz’s own splits. I was making a completely different point – suggesting that some pretty pedestrian players have racked up similar OBPs (and you yourself said the league-wide OBP hasn’t really changed over that time.
Was Rice’s OBP above average? Sure, when he was in Fenway. Because he was able to take advantage of home park dimensions, he was able to hit .320 (!) there, which helped fuel a very good .374 home OBP.
On the road, though, he OBPed a league-average (by your own count) .330.
He managed that while playing below-average defense at a non-premium defensive position. He had some great years at the dish, yes, and a very good career, but in my mind I don’t see a Hall case for him.
As someone wrote above, I always considered that “Kansas City Chop” to be Lawrence Taylor’s move. He definitely did it and my dad told me at the time he thought Taylor had invented it (or at least popularized it).
I’ve only skimmed through the comments but comparing LT to Derrick Thomas based on sack per game numbers doesn’t prove anything. I’m aware Thomas was a great player, though I didn’t see him play a lot, but I have never heard him described with anything near the reverence given to LT. I started watching LT in ‘84, his 4th season, and the guy was already a legend. He was the best player I ever saw and from what I’ve read, I may have missed his best (defensive player of the year his first two seasons). That’s not just local media bias.
Anyway, defensive stats in football are probably as useful as in baseball or hoops. I don’t think most people who cite LT as the greatest or one of the greatest players ever even know many of his stats, aside from the 20.5 sacks in ‘86. It’s based on watching the games and hearing what opponents and teammates and coaches and others said about him. I’ve heard dozens of stories about how entire offensive game plans were focused on him, and how he changed the game when he arrived. It doesn’t denigrate Thomas to say he’s inferior to LT.
Shonepup:
Kirby Puckett’s 1988 season:
AB H R 2B RBI AVG TB
657 234 109 42 121 .356 358
Gold Glove, CF
For the pre-steroid era, that’s superlative.
As for OPS+, I don’t think the term had even been invented at that point.
In any case, Kirby walked a total of only 23 times that year; his style was to swing at everything, an approach that worked extraordinarily well for him as he never struck out 100 times in any season and his explosive bat could dominate not only whole games, but whole weeks and even months of the season.
As for OPS+, I don’t think the term had even been invented at that point.
lol ? that has to be the worst argument i have ever heard
While I think Rice is a borderline HOF Candidate at best, I think counting the double plays against him is a bit unfair. He had a pretty normal GIDP rate until 1982, when it almost doubled. 1982 corresponds to the entry into the league of one Wade Boggs, who was
1)Rice’s leadoff hitter
2)Probably one of the top 5 leadoff hitters in history, with a .415 OBP
3)really, really slow
I just don’t see why where a guy played is relevant to whether or not he should be in the Hall Of Fame. The Hall of Fame is not for the players with the most talent or the most skills, or the players who put up the best stats, it is for the players who were the most valuable to their team over a long career. It is for the players who were the best at their position over a long career.
Rice clearly was that. He played for the Red Sox, and was one of their star players for over 10 years, and was one of the best left fielders in the game for over 10 years.
Whether he might not have been as valuable if he played for teams is irrelevant. Who knows, if he played in Dodger stadium, maybe he would have adjusted him game and put up similar numbers. Just because he didn’t do it on the road as a Red Sox does not mean that he wouldn’t have, if he had been playing his whole career at another stadium. If you think you can assume that he would not have, then you are making grand assumptions from stats that should not be made.
The fact is that Jim Rice was a Hall of Fame player as a Red Sox. Would he have been playing for another team? We will never know and it doesn’t matter.
Dusty:
“As for OPS+, I don’t think the term had even been invented at that point.
lol ? that has to be the worst argument i have ever heard.”
Two points:
1. In Kirby Puckett’s era, no one worried about OPS+, thus it wasn’t relevant to his reputation and perceived impact;
2. If a player doesn’t know about a statistical category, how can he focus on it? If someone had told Kirby he needed to raise his OPS+, I’m sure he could have done it; but nobody did.
It’s unfair to retroactively apply new statistical measures to players.
For example, nowadays Complete Games are de-emphasized; but does that mean we don’t care that Warren Spahn notched up 382 CG’s, over half the games he started? No; we’re amazed at his prowess.
Likewise, if we decide that now we’re going to measure players on fly-out to ground-out ratio, and find that Lou Gehrig was mediocre in this area, are we going to lower him in our estimation? No; because it wasn’t relevant in the era in which Gehrig played.
It’s absurd to look at Kirby Puckett through the lense of OPS+; it’s much more relevant to look at how fast he reached 2,000 hits and how he led the Twins to two World Series victories in five years, championships that none of the experts saw coming. Kirby was supremely talented and a true leader.
OPS+ simply does not capture that.
Addendum:
Having focused only on defending the reputation of Kirby Puckett, I had failed to read the entire blog post above until just now; I see that I rely on some of the arguments about contemporary statistical measures applied to the past that Posnanski wants to debunk.
But I still stand by the assertion that Kirby was a great player easily worthy of the HoF; and, on top of his baseball exploits, for over a decade he was the most popular and beloved person in the Upper Midwest.
Is there a new statistic to measure one’s status as an icon?!!
I had to look up Lillian Gish. Wow – gorgeous, by any standards, in any age.
(well, yes, she’d be about 100 now … but, as the joke goes, she’d still hit .275)
And, on top of it, a football player will play many fewer plays than a baseball player will have PAs.
Isn’t it Football Outsiders’ argument that this isn’t true?
For an NFL player to play 600 plays in a season, he only needs to be in the game for 37.5 plays a week. In the 14-game seasons of the ’60s and early ’70s, he would have had to be in for about 43 plays. That’s part-time work.
KK:
You’re right — wrote that without thinking. It’s more that, statistically speaking, PAs are (nearly) independent and identically distributed (iid) but football plays are harder to compare. In other words, it’s less about being in the game (37.5 plays, reasonable) but being individually tested in some comparable way. If you had a RB who ran 37.5 times a game, then that would be closer, but still hard to compare (straight runs, sweeps, draws, etc.).
Big fan, btw.
–Bryan
Mr. Blaine, if Kirby Puckett had “one of the greatest seasons of all time” in 1988, how is it that he didn’t lead the league in RBI, runs, extra base hits, times on base, slugging average, on base average (not in the top 10) home runs (ditto) or even batting average?! That was a fine season, but historic? He didn’t even lead his TEAM in several of those stats.
And the idea that his low walks totals were not noticed at the time is simply not true. They were often part of the discussion at baseball gatherings in Minnesota that I attended at the time, even getting into sports talk radio and newspaper columns occasionally.
As for his icon status, do you think he would have been elected if his personal scandals had been made public before rather than after he was elected? If you want to include image in your argument, you should include all parts of it.
Kirby Puckett was a fine player. You could consider all of my points and still decide that he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, and you might be right. But several of your arguments on his behalf misrepresent the case for him.
Come on, ops+ is high when you get on base and hit for extra bases at high rate relative to the league. You think Puckett could have done that at a higher rate if he was trying?
I can’t argue against Kirby, my all-time favorite player, but this is the first time I’ve ever kind of wanted to. The “he didn’t know from OPS+” and “his 1988 was one of the best seasons of all time” arguments are just non-starters.
I sure can argue against Jim Rice, though.
Zerocasah, .352 is 15 points higher than the league average, when you consider he was playing in Fenway. Great for an outstanding second baseman, but not so much for a guy who’s “all wood,” as they used to say. Even before considering that Rice benefited from Fenway even more than most would have, Rice hit about 25% better than the average player. But second basemen, shortstops, and catchers are factored in as part of that average player. If you’re a left fielder who provides no real value in the field or on the bases, you’re kind of expected to be about 125% of average. Which isn’t to say that Rice wasn’t a good player, becuase he was a LITTLE better than that, and not many guys keep that up for 12 years. But he’s no Hall of Famer. Or if he is, so are Reggie Smith, Dwight Evans, Dave Parker, Ken Singleton, Frank Howard, Dick Allen, Dale Murphy, Andre Dawson, Harold Baines, Tony Oliva, Bobby Murcer, &c., &c.
Your argument that where he played is irrelevant fails because it goes both ways. It’s not just that he would very likely have fallen well short if he played for another team (he would have). It’s also that, if he really were such a great player, we would’ve expected his numbers with the Red Sox to look a lot BETTER. We *know* that Fenway inflated his numbers. That’s just not debatable. So if he were a Hall of Fame player, his numbers in that environment would look out of this world. And they look…pretty good.
“He hit into 315 double plays, more than any player with fewer than 12,000 plate appearances (Rice had about 9,000 PAs). as many point out, that’s a reflection of numerous things, including the fact he came up with a lot of people on first base.”
Are you counting the first baseman, first base coach and first base umpire in addition to the baserunner(s) on first?
JP –
You say “Come on, ops+ is high when you get on base and hit for extra bases at high rate relative to the league. You think Puckett could have done that at a higher rate if he was trying?” I think you may have meant “couldn’t” instead of “could” (implying that his numbers would be better if he were trying to elevate them).
Either way, though, are you implying that Puckett could have done better at OBP or SLG “if he was trying”? Is that not the same as saying that during his actual career, he wasn’t trying? I mean, really — what else would he have been focusing on in his playing days, other than (a) getting on base, and (b) getting as far as possible when on base?
Not much of an argument for Kirby’s effort level, much less his qualifications for the HoF.
Joe,
Not to be mean, but…
Comparing forced fumbles to Win Shares (VORP, WARP, etc) is a poor analogy. Forced fumbles are a count of something that happened. Win Shares assigns a value to a counted statistic (like a forced fumble).
An example: You mention “It (a forced fumble) can be more of a game-turner than an interception, or a touchdown pass or a punt return”
Well yeah, I guess it could, but someone out there (maybe football outsiders) has actually attempted to quantify the value of a forced fumble (almost assuredly worth less than an interception). If in someone’s analysis in the future it was determined that a forced fumble wasn’t worth all that much would it change your opinion of DT? That is the point that is trying to be made in the article. At one time the media relied on RBIs to value players. Today we realize that RBIs are a poor metric to value a player since opportunities, which are outside of the player’s control, contribute so much to the statistic.
this might be the first time in the history of the internet that the Bush administration has been linked to perspective.
as a bostonian who voted for tokyo i would not vote for jim rice to be in the hall of fame.
i’d also like to replace him w/ bill lee on the red sox pre and post game shows.
in fact, i’d like to nominate bill lee for the hall of fame for everything he’s done for the sport of baseball worldwide.
i’m also patiently waiting for a great hockey post, joe.
maybe you’ll be in wrigley for the winter classic?
I agree that Jack Morris belongs in the Hall of the Very Good with Bert Blyleven, Ron Guidry and Tommy John et al rather than the Hall of Fame. I do think though that Jim Rice suffers unfairly when his HR and RBI numbers are compared with current players, especially his HR numbers. Prior to the 90’s, a 50 HR season was extremely rare and a player that reached 500 HR for his career was a sure-fire Hall of Famer. Those events have become so much more common that Rice’s numbers seem less impressive.
It may be that Rice ultimately falls into the category of good-but-not-great hitters like Fred McGriff, Jim Thome and Rafael Palmeiro. It would be interesting though to see if someone could estimate Rice’s statistics in the present era.
David,
I meant what I said. I was responding to the argument raised earlier in the comments that he didn’t know what ops+ was, but if he did and intended to raise it he could. I guess you would have to read my comment with an implied “seriously? you really think that? wow that’s not a very supportable position.” What I was implying, though now reading I can see why you understood it to mean what you did, is that getting on base and hitting for extra bases would be the goal in the first place, the existence of the metric is irrelevant because what it measures is exactly what he would have been trying to do. We agree.
- JP
Joe, you’re looking at the wrong league if you want to check historical walk totals. The DH is a walk suppressant. Yeah, I know, the DH is supposed to be a good hitter, replacing a bad hitter. But two things happen with the DH in the lineup. First of all, the risk of walking somebody goes up with an extra slugger in the lineup, so pitchers err more on the “make them hit the ball” side of how good a strike to throw. Secondly, in the NL today (and as long as I can recall, back into the 1960s) there is still a *huge* OBP bump for the number 8 hitter, the guy hitting in front of the pitcher. You generally have a 100 point batting average difference between the #8 hitter and the pitcher in the NL, so intentional and semi-intentional walks are quite reasonable. But in the AL, the difference between #8 and #9 is likely to be only 20 points, so there’s little incentive to walk the #8 hitter. I bet if you compared NL only, you’d see walks had gone up from the 1970s to this decade; 1950s, not so sure; it was the biggest walking decade of recent history.
As for Jim Rice’s double plays, it’s also the same reason he has so many RBIs; lots of guys on base in front of him. Which is why I discount both of those statistics. I know, some folks here think RBI are more important than runs. I have to debunk that. Consider: if it’s a tied game in the late innings, with a runner on third, the infield will play in and the ground ball won’t generate an RBI. But if it’s the second inning, or a blowout, the infield plays back. So where is there skill? And if there was a double play while the guy on third scores, or if there’s a steal of home, an error, a wild pitch, no RBI is given. Give a guy a three high OBP types in front of him, and he could have a terrible season and still get 100 RBI because of so many opportunities. On the other hand, 100% of the runs scored do require somebody to get on base, touch second safely, third safely, and touch home before the third out is made. A player like Rickey Henderson, who was as good as there ever was at getting himself into scoring position for the hitters behind him (via single or walk then a stolen base, if not a double), was far rarer and more valuable a talent than Don Mattingly or Jim Rice.
You can even take the comparison one step further. Rice had Boggs batting in front of him his last eight seasons. In those seasons, Boggs put himself in scoring position (without a home run) 364 times via double, triple, or stolen base. Henderson put himself in scoring position (the same ways) 923 times those seasons. That’s over 500 more opportunities Rickey gave Mattingly to drive him in with a single (and given Rickey’s speed, a single was almost always enough; with Boggs, not so always) that Boggs didn’t give Rice. That’s over 80 times a season, or probably 20+ RBI a season more if Rice had Rickey instead of Boggs (I’m figuring that some of Boggs’s extra times on first base he scored via homers). That probably would have given Rice a couple of 140+ RBI seasons, another 100+ RBI season, all because he had a better leadoff hitter in front of him. Also, give Rice Rickey those eight years, and an extra 150 RBI putting Rice about 30th all time, and I bet Rice is already in the HOF.
Which is an important point. Rice had some superb guys getting on base in front of him. Put Rice on the Dodgers of those years (1982-1988) and Rice gets 150-200 fewer RBI because of fewer RBI opportunities, even if he hits as well playing in the friendly confines of Dodger Stadium. Boggs had *five* seasons with an OBP of .444 to .476 batting in front of Rice, and was over .400 every season. George Brett got to have Willie Wilson, who led off with an OBP of .365 one year, .350 one year, and .289 to .320 the other six. There were two elite leadoff hitters in the American League in the 1980s, and they helped Rice and Mattingly look better than they really were. But Rice and Mattingly weren’t that good. Rickey and Wade were the true HOF’ers. Wilson was on base 1548 times from 1982-1989. Boggs had 1597 *hits* those seasons, and 771 more times walking or getting hit by a pitch. So Rice was driving in runs those eight years in a context of having 100 more times having a man on first base than Brett *each* *season*. I don’t know who was batting second in front of Brett those years, but in 1985, all the obvious candidates (McRae was clean up, IIRC) had possible OBP ranging from .284 (Frank White) to .321 (Lonnie Smith). So should Rice go into the HOF because he was blessed by Wade Boggs? That’s why I look at some stats that nobody knew about when Rice was playing, like OPS+, and I look at things like speed, defense, World Series titles, and I must say: no. Rice, Mattingly, Dewey, and a whole lot of other guys, were not quite good enough. Because once you start letting in Rice, because he had Boggs, then you have to consider a guy like Garvey, who played in pitcher’s parks, won four gold gloves, one World Series ring, played in five World Series total (Rice played in only one), batted .338/.361/.550 in 55 postseason games (Rice was .225/.313/.366 in 18 postseason games), also batted almost twice as high as Rice in more All Star game at bats, which certainly showcase the game, and then the floodgates are open for the HOF to become the HOVG.
Jim Rice did not set any single season records. He only finished in the top 44 all time in one career statistic: 6th in GIDP, a negative stat. He was 45th in sacrifice flies, another stat that has as much to do with the guys batting in front of him reaching third as it does with his showing any particular talent in getting them home. He was a superb player whose best wasn’t great enough to overcome his career length, and whose career wasn’t long enough to overcome the lack of true greatness. My rule of thumb for a slugger is that there must be 15 useful seasons (OPS+ 110 or higher) with some greatness sprinkled in there, or 10 All Star seasons (130 OPS+ or so) with some greatness sprinkled in there, or 5 MVP like seasons (150 OPS+), or something close to that with one or two seasons that can be argued stand out as amongst the best of all time. Rice has 2 MVP like seasons; I’ll give him three with the 147. He has only 7 All Star level seasons by OPS, 8 in real life (112 and 123 are not AS level production for a left fielder in Fenway, but by that time in his career he was *Jim* *Rice*, so he got in anyway). He had 12 useful seasons, OPS+ of 110 or higher. By each evaluation, he falls short. His best season was an OPS+ of 157, which doesn’t come close to all time standards. Rice’s Red Sox contemporaries did better: Dewey had a 162, Yaz a 170, 177, and 193, Boggs a 173 and 166 getting on base for Rice, and that was without much power. In 1988, when Rice became a DH,Greenwell had an OPS+ of 159, better than Rice’s best, and nobody would thingk Greenwell is a HOF candidate. Fred Lynn had two years better than Rice’s best. In fact, for all of Rice’s career, there were only two seasons (1977-78) where he had the best OPS+ on the Red Sox, and Rice always played LF or DH, where his OPS+ was almost all of his value to his team. As for Rice’s fearsome reputation as a hitter, he was so scary that he was never walked more than 10 times in a season. Greenwell and Boggs both were walked intentionally 18 times in 1988.
Rice is a guy who got some great press and it makes him seem better than he is. Same with Jack Morris, who gets great press for one awesome shutout, never mind that his postseason ERA overall was almost 4. That’s a lot of bad games everybody forgets to make up for that one shutout. They weren’t HOF worthy. They didn’t raise their game in the post season. They got good press and good memories. But 100 years from now, if these two get in, visitors to Cooperstown will look at the numbers and wonder, “Were the BBWAA suffering from steroid usage when they voted in Rice and Morris?”
[...] Posnanski pointed out in this piece I agree that it probably is not fair to compare players of different eras to each other. In HOF [...]
This post is so old, but I have to:
If someone goes .000/.000/.000, then their OPS+ is 100(.000/lgOBP + .000/lgSLG – 1) = 100(-1) = -100.