Quote:
Originally Posted by bravos4evr
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)
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Or the model, which is biased, is completely wrong. You have done nothing but hand wave. There is nothing logical about any of your posts. You just want to hand wave away what people have seen. However, current defensive metrics are partially based on...the eye test. We now observe where balls are hit or for older players try to recreate that data, which is not available for Dahlen.
If you have a player who has poor range but gets a lot of balls hit right to him, he is not as good of a player who has to use his range to get to the same number of balls. Or another way to put it, Derek Jeter has led the league in assists and put outs, but we have enough observable data to know that he is not a good defensive player. I will trust those that saw Dahlen play that say he wasn't a HOFer and not a top defensive SS. I trust the people who saw Pie Traynor play and consider him the greatest 3B up to 1969. If you want argue otherwise, present new facts or data. If you are going to be lazy and just cite WAR, there is no further need for discussion.