I decided to get a free trial of Stathead (
https://stathead.com/), which is just a more in depth analysis built on top of Baseball Reference. Pretty cool for nerds like me, but probably not for most people. Also, this is not a paid advertisement of any kind, just something interesting I found.
I wanted to see how some more modern analytics would rank my favorite era of Base Ball and what I found was somewhat surprising.
Ed Williamson (my favorite 19th Century player) was regarded by his peers as the best player they had ever seen (this is a direct quote from Paul Hines, Cap Anson, and a committee in 1894 that included James Hart, James O'Rourke and Arthur Irwin). To say that this was widely believed among his contemporaries is not a reach.
Williamson's stats at first glance don't back this up. They are good, yes, but the greatest? There are a couple of things you have to take into account, all facets of the game in the 19th Century were important, but absolutely none were as important as fielding prowess. Ok...This is starting to make a bit more sense. Williamson was an incredible fielder, arguably the best of his era.
So I started looking at more advanced metrics, offense and defense, without even thinking about Williamson and a picture began to emerge. I wanted to see how players from 1871-1899 stacked up and what I found was a bit surprising.
NOTE: For Runs Created and Runs Produced, I divided by PA to get their "Efficiency", basically turning RC and RP from a counting stat into a "how effective were they really during each Plate Appearance". Also, I narrowed it down to players with 2500 or more PA's. The rest of the stats are as is since they already made sense and speak for themselves.
The categories in the screenshots are all from 1871-1899 and they are as follows (2 defensive, and 2 offensive metrics):
Efficiency (via Runs Created, RC/PA)
Runs Produced w/Efficiency (in order to make it into a non-counting stat and more of a "potency per PA" stat) (RP = R + RBI — HR)/PA
dWAR (info:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/a...position.shtml)
Fielding Runs (info:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/a...position.shtml)
These are all top 30 lists and Ed ends up 77th and 94th, respectively, on both offensive lists in case you were wondering. I hope you all find this interesting!
Jeremy