Quote:
Originally Posted by rats60
Pie Traynor played 13 full seasons. During those seasons he led the league in put outs 7 times, 2nd 3, 3rd 1. In assists 3 times, 2nd 4 times, 3rd 2 times. In DP 4 times, 2nd 2 times and 3rd 1 time. He was considered the greatest defensive 3rd baseman of the preWW2 era by those who saw him play. He had tremendous range often cutting in front of his shortstop to make plays. His defense was so highly regarded that he was voted the greatest 3rd baseman of all time in 1969 for the 100th anniversary of pro baseball. All of his great defense is only worth 2 WAR. Obviously the data we have is seriously lacking and can't be relied upon to properly judge a player's defensive ability.
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or perhaps the data confirms what we already know: the eye test is seriously damaged by confirmation bias.
If the same standard is applied equally to all players, even if the methodology is not perfect (and with defense it probably never will be perfect) at least the ratio of performance relative to each other is accurate enough for comparison. And will always be a better gauge than the confirmation bias ridden eye test.
Pie Traynor grades out as the 209th best fielding 3b of all time. Now, that may not be perfectly accurate, but the data isn't so awful that it is somehow screwing Traynor out of 200 spots. You can either hand wave away the data, or you have to come to the more logical conclusion; the people using inferior statistics and the eye test were wrong.
P.S. you must remember too that defense is weighted by difficulty of position SS, CF, 2b, C get the most extra weighting, DH the biggest subtraction. a really excellent 3b will generally be an avg SS whereas an avg SS would generally be an elite 3b (but it would be a waste to put them there)