FWIW, the defensive stats that we now have are not kind to Mr. Traynor. He comes in at -32 Rfield, meaning that he was a slightly below average defensive third baseman for his career. (That is, an average third baseman would have prevented 32 more runs than he did.) Old defensive stats are certainly suspect, and he could have been a fair bit better than that. But "a fair bit better than that" doesn't get you from "slightly below average" to "one of the best ever". I know that he had an excellent defensive reputation, but it's very easy for observation to lead to really inaccurate opinions when not backed up with anything quantitative. He could have made plays with style (like Jeter) without actually making many or difficult plays (like Jeter). Or they could have seen a great play or two and think that that's his norm. Or observers could hear the opinions of others, and then confirmation bias kicks in when they're watching him play. Or etc. Observers are prone to so many biases that contemporary observations aren't really worth much.
I'm not saying that the defensive numbers are right. The old ones are only rough approximations. But they're the most trustworthy data that we've got, and there's no reasonable amount of correction for their known inaccuracies that will make Traynor a decent selection for the hall of fame. He was elected because he was a well-regarded player, but he wasn't actually a great player. The comparison that someone made up-thread with George Kell is spot-on.
|