Yep. I don't go off of WAR and all this new stuff in the last 5 yrs. I just watch the players with my own eyes. You'd think that would be good enough.

ARod was a vastly superior shortstop in comparison to Jeter. Who ended up moving?

Completely disagree with that. There are far too many aspects of baseball that don't translate well, or at all, to statistics. Making a great cutoff throw. Taking an extra base. Taking a pitch to allow a steal. Attitude. Pitch framing. Calling a game. How do you statistically measure Gibson's ability to inspire a team by hitting a home run while playing on one leg? You can try, but its kinda hard to do. Its pretty easy to see though if you watch the game.

Most defensive statistic are, to say the least, imperfect. Stats are obviously an important tool, but they fall waaaaayyyy short of the eye test in that regard IMO. And, for my money, Grich was a far better baseball player than Kent :-)

It was 3 guys who just can't stand players wearing their caps backward.:D

The story there was that since ARod was going to the Yanks, he would move to a new position. If it had been Jeter going to the Rangers, then ARod would have stayed at shortstop and Jeter would move to a new position. This was what both Jeter and ARod told the media at that time, I believe.

In the Kent/Biggio case, Kent moved to the Astros, but it was still the incumbent Biggio who ended up moving positions. Hmmmm.....

Jeff Kent had less range at second than the McCovey statue. I would pay good money go see him try to play center field.

Tom C

Agree on defensive stats and Grich. The problem with your first point is that most of us see only a smattering of games, and even if we watch our home team loyally, we see almost nothing of the other league and get only a small sample of other teams in the same league. So one is left with subjective impressions that may be distorted. The only way we know how good guys really are is because we have the box scores and stat lines. is it perfect, no, of course not, there are always some intangibles.

That is no longer true today nor has it been for a long time. You can watch any game you want today and if you miss it, you can catch all the highlights at night. Everyone can see any player they want and it's been that way for years. We aren't living in a time when there's one game a week on TV. And we're discussing players who retired no later than 2006.

How many of Bumgarner's starts have you caught? Kershaw's? What percentage of Halliday's innings pitched did you see personally?

Glad you asked. I lived in San Francisco for four years and regularly watched Baumgarner pitch against the Dodgers, who included Kershaw. Not to mention watching West Coast games the entire time I was there. I also watched Halladay pitch every time the Yankees played him and the Blue Jays.

Had I not seen them in real time, I have every opportunity to watch them on the news at night, or on Sportscenter, MLB Network and/or Youtube, along with their team's websites.

Somehow I doubt the average or even above average fan is catching hours of baseball on a nightly basis. I could be wrong. Personal observation is great, but I am guessing even someone as devoted as you would not be able to accurately rate players just based on what you saw if hypothetically you had no idea what their stats were.

I think that's an old world view. For the Sportscenter generation (like me) we are used to seeing sports highlights played round the clock every day. The fantasy generation (like me) is well aware of stats and who's who, perhaps even more than ever before. While fantasy is stats based, it does not take into account things like WAR or JAWS, only what you see in front of you.

If all you see are highlights how is that an accurate representation of a player's abilities at bat to at bat and game to game? You see a guy do something great in the clutch on Sportcenter every other week and in your mind he must be "clutch". Sportcenter may not be showing the 9 other times he came up with the game on the line and crapped himself. But without seeing it on Sportscenter you wouldn't know. Perception versus reality.

And are you saying that because fantasy baseball uses counting stats that those are somehow more valid?

Tom C

The fans aren't voting on who gets into the HOF. The baseball sports writers are. Since its their job to watch and report on games, I would venture to guess that they see quite a few more games in any given season than almost any fan.

Then I guess the corollary of that is you should have faith in their voting.

Ah, deflection away from the issue at hand. Nice. I like it. Very lawyerly. Kind of reminds me of arguing with my wife. :)

Heh. :D

No, I'm saying fantasy baseball uses the same counting stats people in this thread have brought up to show why they feel a player (like Kent) was worthy of the HOF. And that fantasy stats are more in tune with what your eyes see than something like JAWS or WAR.

In terms of highlights, I think you're treating people like they're blind or have no concept of the game. If you hear things about a player like Mike Trout and then watch highlights of Mike Trout, it should be apparent to even a casual fan that he is elite. If it's not, then that person shouldn't really have a valid opinion on who is a HOFer and who isn't in the first place.

If Mike Trout is elite, his stats will reflect it -- and of course they do.

Though ESPN highlights won't tell you that he still strikes out an awful lot.

Yes but I don't need to know his WAR or JAWS to know the player he is, which is my point. I can watch him play.

You cannot possibly watch players from all 30 teams regularly enough to accurately judge them without statistics.

Counting statistics yes, JAWS and WAR no.

Well that is a different debate, no? I thought we were talking about statistics versus observation. Whether JAWS WAR etc. are meaningful compared to more traditional stats is a whole 'nother discussion, it seems to me.

No all I've been saying the whole time is I don't need WAR or JAWS to discuss a player I'm watching. They are only relevant to discussing players from bygone eras. So when you start using JAWS and WAR to discuss someone like Jeff Kent, they mean nothing to me because I saw him play and I know what he did (i.e. counting stats).

Got it. And my view is that counting stats, even aided by personal observation, don't tell you enough because to me the other metrics give a better overall context (both present and historical). So with that, I think we have had a good discussion.

This debate isn't over until we decide it is!

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!!!

Tom C

You guys have been great to debate with. I appreciate the mutual respect even in disagreement. Sometimes people just start throwing out four letter words after two posts.

I thought this was a pre-WAR forum.

I know I am.:D

JAWS was a movie.

Right, the issue is that stats like WAR and JAWS (which is based on WAR) is not like traditional statistics, in that they are based on someone's opinion on the weighting that goes into the formulas not to mention who knows what else. In addition, these newer stats become skewed in the age of PED users. You are comparing players to other players around the league, but if those players are using, and their stats go up, then the non-users WAR goes down in comparison.

The other thing is that WAR is trying era-adjust, so that you can compare players across the years. That is like saying, in every year, there have to be a few players that are HOF-worthy. It does not take into account that there may be valleys and spikes across the eras, where there may be a bunch of really great players in one decade, but a dearth of them in another.

Any metric has its limitations, for sure. But that said, would you not agree that purely using counting stats can be very skewed? Regarding your last point, I guess it's possible some 40s players get the benefit of being high relative to a mediocre average given the depleting effect of WWII, but other than that, can we really say that as a whole, "baseball" overall was better in one decade than another?

Let's ask it another way, if you look at the JAWS/WAR rankings (or the related Baseball Reference metrics), how many instances do you really see where you say, that's insane?

Well, when I see players like Bobby Grich with such high WAR's, I think that's insane. Seriously, I was taking a look at one of his highest WAR year, and in that year, Grich batted 6th in his lineup. So, we're saying that his manager thought he was the 4th best hitter on his team, at best, yet this guy is somehow a marginal HOFer, while the 3-4-5 batters on the team (like Brian Downing) are like jokes when considering them of the Hall? Just the common sense of this doesn't ring true to me.

Peter, most of that article uses elements of what goes into WAR, which as I've said has flaws. For example, if we use WAR, Cy Young (WAR of 170) destroys Walter Johnson (WAR of 152) for same number of years played. And Sandy Koufax has about the same WAR as Urban Shocker for about the same number of years played.

Keith Hernandez having a lifetime defensive WAR of 0.6.

Adam Jones being rated an average or below average center fielder.

Defensive WAR is not something that can be relied on.

yeah I am not convinced yet about defensive stats

HOF Voting
 

Peter, while I am a fan of WAR/JAWS metrics, from a pitcher's perspective, Phil Niekro and Bert Blyleven being rated ahead of Christy Mathewson is absolutely ludicrous....beyond insane. Yet, as with any rating xystem, there has to be flaws and the Matty ranking is certainly one of them....LOL!!!

Right, I do think that WAR has its uses as another stat when used in conjunction with other stats. For example, if you have a player like Dave Kingman with a lot of home runs, you also have to take a look at his Mendoza line batting average. I think a lot of folks consider WAR the "best" stat because it consolidates a lot of others. However, I think it should be used in with other stats and obvious common sense. This was like the BCS in college football before where they had computers do the rankings. Obviously, no matter how much you tried to input into the system, there were still issues with what the computers came up with.

That was an excellent article breaking down the case for Grich in layman's terms. Basically he is one of the top 8 offensive second basemen of all time, and one of the top 10 defensively of all time. The only second baseman better than Grich on both offense and defense is Nap Lajoie. That's it.

OPS+ is a quantitative stat. Nothing to do with someone's perception of value going into a complicated formula. OPS+ is what it is. Grich's career OPS+ is 125. Only four second basemen with 8,000 or more career plate appearances have a better career OPS+. Lajoie, Rogers Hornsby, Eddie Collins and Joe Morgan.

But you are basing it on where he batted in the lineup during his best year?

Do you see the problem here?

Tom C

Not according to what I am looking at. Matty blows them away using JAWS and is still ahead using WAR.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/jaws_P.shtml

or

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/jaws_P.shtml

Where Grich really stands out offensively is power and patience. He slugged .424 while the league slugged .384. His OBP was .371 while the league’s was .324. That is a huge difference. Add it up and Grich’s OPS was .794 against the league’s .707. That’s how you get an OPS+ of 125. Steve Garvey’s OPS+, for example, was 117. Jim Rice was 128. Dave Parker was 121. That’s how good an offensive player Grich was. He just did it with plate discipline and power during a power-depressed era. That’s how you fly under the radar.

HOF Voting
 

Thx Peter. The listing I was looking at had Matty's WAR at 95.3 versus the 101 in your reference? Maybe it was outdated.....

Yeah he had a couple of good seasons recently.:D

No clue, actually.

Pretty sure Matty could slip out of the grave today and out pitch at least 2/5 of the 2016 Pirates rotation.

Tom C

Reminds me of when Cobb (allegedly) was asked in the 1950s how he would do against today's pitching. He said he thought he would hit about .275. He was then asked was the pitching really that much better than in his time, and he said, well I am almost 70.

Tom, I know you're using stats, but I'm looking more at common sense. Grich, you are not even the most valuable player on this team, maybe the 4th most valuable at best, not including pitchers. Yet you're the only one who deserves to be looked at for inclusion into the Hall of Fame. Doesn't that just seem strange to you?

If he were an outfielder we wouldn't be having this discussion. He was a middle infielder where the standards are different.

That's where it vexes me, especially for 2nd basemen. You don't have the arm or athleticism for SS. And you don't have much of a bat either, but you're decent on defense, just not as good as our SS. Yet we need to meet our quota for 2nd basemen in the HOF. This and catcher are like where players who can't hit try to get a position on the team. (e.g., if Piazza played 1B, I doubt he'd be in the HOF.)

Please, please, please next year be the year Raines gets it.

I don't have a horse in this race regarding Grich/Kent but if you're comparing Grich's OPS against the league, you should do so to his batting average as well for a broader scope. Most years you'll find that he wasn't that much better (and sometimes worse) than the league average. League average for middle infielders, I'm sure he was better. But that's one thing about Kent - his average was significantly higher than the rest of the league more times than not and against middle infielders, I'm sure it was even higher.

I know you're talking mostly power at this point, but it's still something I think you have to consider if you're comparing Grich to the rest of the league offensively. I say that as someone who thinks Grich was undervalued as a power hitting middle infielder, too.

That is why Grich gets so overlooked (one of seceral reasons really). His batting average wasn't anything special, even compared to league averages. Where he separates is on base percentage plus the power. He got on base at a much higher clip than league average. He hit for far more power than league average. Amd he likely should have won 7 gold gloves on defense instead of the four that he actually won.

His 1973 season may have been the best defensively for a second baseman ever. That year his OPS+ was 116, which was the worst that it was over a five year period.

Tom C

I agree - I think if you look at him as a power hitter, he has a lot more value. Kent hit for both power average, which was what made him unique. Offensively, he fit the profile of a corner outfielder. Defensively, he was certainly not Grich's equal and there's no question that Grich is the more underrated of the two.

I am curious how Grich would be considered a better hitter than those three.

He did have the athleticism and the arm to play SS. He was recognized as an outstanding SS in the minor leagues and played the position for the Orioles when he first made the majors where he was still considered outstanding. He was only moved to 2B to accommodate Mark Belanger who probably ranks w/Ozzie Smith as the GOAT defensively at the position. As it turned out Grich was even better at 2B than he was at SS so he remained there for the rest of his career.

Belanger came up years before Grich. I think he was injured Grich's rookie year which is why Grich played some SS. Once Belanger was healthy, Grich was moved.

Belanger wasn't injured in 1972 (at least he wasn't on the DL) but he hit so poorly that Earl Weaver benched him frequently. Grich played most of his minor league career at SS and had progressed to the point that he was named the IL's best defensive IF as well as being the league's best hitter in 1971. So it was a logical move to try him in place of Belanger in 1972. It might have stayed that way but 2B Davey Johnson was so bad in 1972 that he was traded, making room for Grich and making Belanger the regular SS again.

Oh he played only 100 games as opposed to 150 for all the years before and all the years after so I just assumed it was injury. Yeah the guy couldn't hit although he somehow managed to throw a couple of pretty good years in there along with all the awful ones. He had a .287 a .270 and a .266 along with a slew of absolute dogs.

Career WAR

Bobby Grich 70.9
Frankie Frisch 70.4
Ryne Sandberg 67.5
Roberto Alomar 66.8

Career OPS+

Bobby Grich 125
Roberto Alomar 116
Ryne Sandberg 114
Frankie Frisch 110

Offensive Runs Above Average Career

Roberto Alomar 272.5
Bobby Grich 254.5
Frankie Frisch 223.9
Ryne Sandberg 178.5

wRC+ Career (100 is league average...this stat is both league and park adjusted similar io OPS+)

Bobby Grich 129
Roberto Alomar 118
Ryne Sandberg 115
Frankie Frisch 112

Runs Above Replacement Career (Frisch greatly aided here by career longevity versus the others on this list)

Frankie Frisch 769.8
Bobby Grich 648.1
Roberto Alomar 638.3
Ryne Sandberg 582.3



That's why.

I could keep going.

Tom C

Go figure. If he was anywhere near those numbers for the rest of his career he might be a hall of famer. Yet he never even reached .230 in any other season.

+1

I feel Elston Howard was a little better.

Couldn't agree more. This theoretical crap is for jock sniffers.

Jock sniffers? Really? What is that supposed to mean? That people who believe in advanced metrics don't know what they are talking about because they never played the game or something? That seems a bit insulting and prejudiced. It is certainly untrue in my situation.

Had I said "Thank goodness these idiot dinosaurs who are too stupid or too lazy to try to understand advanced metrics are either dying off or being thrown off the BBWAA voting rolls so we can get some people in there who actually get it".... would you feel a bit insulted? It isn't how I feel, but it would be the same thing as what you just said.

Tom C

Tom, I'm just glad Daren found a friend. :)

More HOFers Wear a Grich Strap
 

Lol

Insulted? Not at all. That's your opinion. You know mine.

Very true. I was never all that impressed with Kent, but given all the guys here whose opinion is that Kent should be in the HOF, I checked out his stats. To me, they still don't add up to HOF:

• His hitting was above average, but certainly not great.
• He was MVP once, but other than that never received more than 6 votes.
• He never won a gold glove at his position, so if you are going to argue that he was a 'great' hitter compared to other second basemen, you'd also have to admit that he wasn't as great of a fielder as other second-basemen - even those playing at the same time he was;i.e-compare his hitting to those second basemen who were all-around HOF'ers.
• While his 162 game numbers are above average, he only played 140 games or more in 7 seasons, so not a great fielder and no iron man.

I think he easily makes the 'Hall of above average'