Adrian Beltre - HOFer?

[rats60]

Originally Posted by EldoEsq

Don Mattingly was no slouch at first base...why are you ignoring that? What about Keith Hernandez then? Defense is very tough to incorporate into an argument like this...

That is exactly what WAR does. Estimates the value of a player's offense and defense. Mattingly's defense is factored into my numbers, unlike the poster above me who just used offensive numbers like ops and oWAR.

[the 'stache]

Originally Posted by rats60

How many of those guys who hit 50+hrs were doping? Bonds, Sosa, Rodriguez, Ortiz, etc. You care about awards, well Beltre should have been MVP in 2004. Bonds only won because he was doping. How many of those mvp votes and as game selections went to dopers?
What you call bad years, are a clean player being overshadowed by cheaters. Then you want to further discredit his numbers because cheaters drove up overall production. Sorry, those arguements don't hold water.

If you want to compare Dawson to Beltre, how about these numbers

WAR
Dawson 64.5
Beltre 77.8

Best season WAR
Dawson 7.9
Beltre 9.5

Seasons of WAR 5+ (all star level seasons)
Dawson 4
Beltre 8

You really think the difference between Beltre and Mattingly is a bunch of mediocre seasons? Well Mattingly only had 4 all star level seasons of WAR of 5+. His best year was 7.2, his only year of 7+ WAR. Beltre has not only had twice as many AS level seasons, he's had 4 7+ WAR seasons and 2 better than Mattingly's best season.

The problem with your arguement is that it ignores Beltre's defense. If Beltre was an average defensive player, his hof credentials would be questionable. You could make the same argument about a lot of others who are no brainer hofers. Beltre 's defense added to his career offensive numbers make him an easy choice for hof.

Originally Posted by rats60

That is exactly what WAR does. Estimates the value of a player's offense and defense. Mattingly's defense is factored into my numbers, unlike the poster above me who just used offensive numbers like ops and oWAR.

WAR for current games, where their defensive performance is being documented accurately per current standards, is a useful metric. For older players, defensive WAR is highly inaccurate. Beltre has won four Gold Gloves. Dawson won eight. He was an elite defender, and only nine outfielders in the history of the game have won more Gold Gloves (granted, the award didn't start until the late 50s). But the assertion that Adrian Beltre was worth 23.2 wins with the glove, while Andre Dawson was only worth 0.9 wins with the glove, is utter excrement.

As far as Beltre's MVP runner up goes, ok, give him the MVP in 2004. The whether or not Beltre should have won the MVP Award is another discussion, but for the sake of argument, go for it. What exactly does it change for this discussion? Nothing. It's not at all germane to the discussion at hand. Not in the slightest. It still doesn't explain that he didn't have a single MVP vote in any of the other 10 years I referred to. It still doesn't explain why a guy blows up for a single season, and then is decidedly average for the other decade surrounding that monster season. And you're seriously discounting the MVP vote by steroids? Was every other player in the National League when Beltre was playing on steroids, and Adrian was the only clean player. I'm sorry, but talk about arguments that don't hold up. We should have all the baseball writers go back, and recast their votes for those ten years, because those big bad home run hitters getting all the MVP votes were on steroids, and Adrian Beltre clearly was not.

Maybe Adrian Beltre used steroids for a year? Can you categorically state that he did not? How else would you account for the incredible jump in his statistics for one season....in eleven? He didn't get hurt, and then suffer statistically as the result of some terrible injury. He had at least 500 plate appearances the five seasons before, and the four seasons after his MVP season. Yet his MVP season's OPS of 1.017 is ridiculously higher than any of the other ten seasons I've discussed. The second highest OPS statistic during that span was .835 in 2000, and he only broke .800 one other time, .802, in 2007. He only came within .200 points of his MVP OPS in one season in ten.

And as for all those seasons of 5 + WAR Beltre has had, nobody is disuputing that he's been a terrific player since going to Boston, and I've said as much. So, I don't know what you're trying to accomplish with your statement. The point I am making is that the first decade of his career, save for one oddly uncharacteristic 2004 season, was wholly underwhelming (and therefore his Hall of Fame candidacy should not be the slam dunk that everybody is making him out to be), and you've done nothing to challenge that fact. And by the way, those four seasons that you referenced of Dawson's with a 5 + WAR...did you happen to notice that his MVP season...he had a 4.0 WAR?

Let's just soak that in for a second.

Playing on a last place team, leading the Major Leagues in RBI with 137, leading the NL with 355 total bases (14 off George Bell's Major League leading 369), and putting up the highest home run total in the Major League within a decade, Andre Dawson had a 4.0 WAR.

If there is any other individual WAR calculation that shows just how entirely inaccurate WAR is for players who were in the Major Leagues before WAR was being calculated, it's this one. They would have us believe that a 1982 season where Dawson hit .301 with 23 HR and 87 RBI, 39 stolen bases and an .841 OPS was better than an MVP season in which he hit .287 with 49 HR and 137 RBI, with an .896 OPS. Now, he only stole 11 bases, as he was older, but most of his other stats are quite similar. He scored 17 more runs, had 13 more doubles, pretty much the same walk and strikeout figures. But in 1982, when the Baseball Writers voted him 21st in the MVP ballot, he was better offensively (with a 5.7 WAR) than he was in 1987 (with a 4.0 WAR), and won the MVP. WAR is wins above replacement. A guy that hit nearly 50 out of the park, and drove in nearly 140, is only worth four wins? Really? So, more than double your home run total (23 vs 49), drive in 53 more runs, and offensively, you're worth 1.7 fewer wins.

Makes perfect sense to me. /boggle

Don't forget, Andre Dawson was no slouch in the field, either. He won the Gold Glove, yet we are told by my fellow stat geeks that some replacement level player was worth nearly a full win more (-0.7) in the field than a Gold Glove winner in Dawson.

See what I mean about WAR being an imperfect metric? I think today, official scorers and statisticians have a better understanding of defensive play than they did back in the 60s and 70s, and certainly earlier. Back then, fielding percentage was all the rage. Yet can we really expect somebody to go back into a 30 + year old box score, and determine just how far a center fielder, or a shortstop, had to range in order to make a play? Because zone ratings, range factors, etc, these all factor into dWAR, I do believe. Since all we have is the documentation of people who had never heard of UZR when they were watching the games, how can we place faith in their documentation? Offensive numbers are cut and dry. Double, triple, walk, home run, strikeout. Fly out to right, fly out to left, ground into a double play. But just how far Lou Boudreau had to slide to his right to make the catch at short, how can we possibly know what? If the game film even exists, do we have teams of guys going back, and watching every old Major League game to update these defensive metrics? Nope.

Finally, throwing out the career WAR of Dawson and Beltre, and pointing "Beltre's better" is absurd. Of course he's better. Did you see how I did the statistical comparison? I didn't take the entire career sample of Misters Dawson and Perez. I only compared their careers to age 35.

Why?

Because while players develop at different rates once reaching the Majors (some players are superstars right out of the box, like Ted Williams, and some, like Robin Yount, need to mature before becoming a superstar), most players do start slowing down--substantially--as they draw closer to 40. Now, players today might be able to delay the inevitable because of advances in nutrition sciences, and conditioning, etc. So, maybe Adrian Beltre will see a few more years at peak levels before he starts to experience that inevitable decline. We don't know yet. But it happens to everybody, and it happened to both Perez, and Dawson both.

Andre Dawson played another 609 games post his age 35 season. In those last six seasons, he had a combined oWAR of under 4.0, and a dWAR slightly better than -4.0. His numbers dropped because he slowed down. He went from .283 9 HR 100 RBI averages per 162 games between 1977-1990 to .268 25 HR 96 RBI per 162 games after age 35. Still a pretty good clip, especially in that era. But his WAR figures dropped because a.) he wasn't playing as many games each year (101 games on average), and b.) his defense lapsed. Tony Perez realized even a more precipitous drop in performance. To compare their entire careers to Beltre's performance to date, when he is still really in his prime, is not going to paint an accurate picture. Beltre will push for the Hall of Fame, trying to get 3,000 hits. Like most Major League players, he will probably play too long, and his overall performance will drop. Once he's done, then we'll be able to compare him to other players on a career basis. But not now.

Remember, I think that Beltre will be a Hall of Fame player. I think he will get voted in. But is he a Hall of Fame player right now, if he retired today? No. His career numbers are pretty good, so I'd say he's borderline, but they don't compare to the other Hall of Fame third basemen. And that is, and should be the measuring stick. Nor do they compare favorably to Chipper Jones, who played the game at the same time, at the same position. And with inter league play, the American League vs National League thing is a little less important, as the two leagues meet head to head.

Remember, at this same age, Chipper Jones was actually better than Beltre, at least offensively. At age 35, Jones hit .337 with 29 HR and 102 RBI, and an NL best 1.029 OPS. Beltre hasn't come anywhere near that since 2004. In 2012, he managed .921, and a .919. Outside of 2004, he's never gone above .900 again. Now, maybe he does again this year. That would help his cause. But Jones has had 6 top ten MVP votes to Beltre's four. He also finished 11th two other times. In all, he received MVP votes in 13 seasons to Beltre's 6. At age 36, Jones hit .364 in 128 games, winning the batting title, and leading the league with a .470 OBP. But the next season, he began his decline.

I don't want anybody to think I don't like Adrian Beltre. I do, quite a lot, actually. But as a lover of the game, I tire of people wanting to throw every good player in the Hall of Fame. And that's what Beltre has been to date. A very good player overall, who has had multiple outstanding seasons in the last 4-5 years. But the lack of production for so much of his early career bothers me. It does, I can't lie. A power hitting third baseman driving in an average of 76 runs for a decade just doesn't scream Hall of Fame to me. The Hall of Fame is meant to reward a player's body of work, not just a 4-5 year period.

I guess we'll see what happens.

[rats60]

Originally Posted by the 'stache

WAR for current games, where their defensive performance is being documented accurately per current standards, is a useful metric. For older players, defensive WAR is highly inaccurate. Beltre has won four Gold Gloves. Dawson won eight. He was an elite defender, and only nine outfielders in the history of the game have won more Gold Gloves (granted, the award didn't start until the late 50s). But the assertion that Adrian Beltre was worth 23.2 wins with the glove, while Andre Dawson was only worth 0.9 wins with the glove, is utter excrement.

As far as Beltre's MVP runner up goes, ok, give him the MVP in 2004. The whether or not Beltre should have won the MVP Award is another discussion, but for the sake of argument, go for it. What exactly does it change for this discussion? Nothing. It's not at all germane to the discussion at hand. Not in the slightest. It still doesn't explain that he didn't have a single MVP vote in any of the other 10 years I referred to. It still doesn't explain why a guy blows up for a single season, and then is decidedly average for the other decade surrounding that monster season. And you're seriously discounting the MVP vote by steroids? Was every other player in the National League when Beltre was playing on steroids, and Adrian was the only clean player. I'm sorry, but talk about arguments that don't hold up. We should have all the baseball writers go back, and recast their votes for those ten years, because those big bad home run hitters getting all the MVP votes were on steroids, and Adrian Beltre clearly was not.

Maybe Adrian Beltre used steroids for a year? Can you categorically state that he did not? How else would you account for the incredible jump in his statistics for one season....in eleven? He didn't get hurt, and then suffer statistically as the result of some terrible injury. He had at least 500 plate appearances the five seasons before, and the four seasons after his MVP season. Yet his MVP season's OPS of 1.017 is ridiculously higher than any of the other ten seasons I've discussed. The second highest OPS statistic during that span was .835 in 2000, and he only broke .800 one other time, .802, in 2007. He only came within .200 points of his MVP OPS in one season in ten.

And as for all those seasons of 5 + WAR Beltre has had, nobody is disuputing that he's been a terrific player since going to Boston, and I've said as much. So, I don't know what you're trying to accomplish with your statement. The point I am making is that the first decade of his career, save for one oddly uncharacteristic 2004 season, was wholly underwhelming (and therefore his Hall of Fame candidacy should not be the slam dunk that everybody is making him out to be), and you've done nothing to challenge that fact. And by the way, those four seasons that you referenced of Dawson's with a 5 + WAR...did you happen to notice that his MVP season...he had a 4.0 WAR?

Let's just soak that in for a second.

Playing on a last place team, leading the Major Leagues in RBI with 137, leading the NL with 355 total bases (14 off George Bell's Major League leading 369), and putting up the highest home run total in the Major League within a decade, Andre Dawson had a 4.0 WAR.

If there is any other individual WAR calculation that shows just how entirely inaccurate WAR is for players who were in the Major Leagues before WAR was being calculated, it's this one. They would have us believe that a 1982 season where Dawson hit .301 with 23 HR and 87 RBI, 39 stolen bases and an .841 OPS was better than an MVP season in which he hit .287 with 49 HR and 137 RBI, with an .896 OPS. Now, he only stole 11 bases, as he was older, but most of his other stats are quite similar. He scored 17 more runs, had 13 more doubles, pretty much the same walk and strikeout figures. But in 1982, when the Baseball Writers voted him 21st in the MVP ballot, he was better offensively (with a 5.7 WAR) than he was in 1987 (with a 4.0 WAR), and won the MVP. WAR is wins above replacement. A guy that hit nearly 50 out of the park, and drove in nearly 140, is only worth four wins? Really? So, more than double your home run total (23 vs 49), drive in 53 more runs, and offensively, you're worth 1.7 fewer wins.

Makes perfect sense to me. /boggle

Don't forget, Andre Dawson was no slouch in the field, either. He won the Gold Glove, yet we are told by my fellow stat geeks that some replacement level player was worth nearly a full win more (-0.7) in the field than a Gold Glove winner in Dawson.

See what I mean about WAR being an imperfect metric? I think today, official scorers and statisticians have a better understanding of defensive play than they did back in the 60s and 70s, and certainly earlier. Back then, fielding percentage was all the rage. Yet can we really expect somebody to go back into a 30 + year old box score, and determine just how far a center fielder, or a shortstop, had to range in order to make a play? Because zone ratings, range factors, etc, these all factor into dWAR, I do believe. Since all we have is the documentation of people who had never heard of UZR when they were watching the games, how can we place faith in their documentation? Offensive numbers are cut and dry. Double, triple, walk, home run, strikeout. Fly out to right, fly out to left, ground into a double play. But just how far Lou Boudreau had to slide to his right to make the catch at short, how can we possibly know what? If the game film even exists, do we have teams of guys going back, and watching every old Major League game to update these defensive metrics? Nope.

Finally, throwing out the career WAR of Dawson and Beltre, and pointing "Beltre's better" is absurd. Of course he's better. Did you see how I did the statistical comparison? I didn't take the entire career sample of Misters Dawson and Perez. I only compared their careers to age 35.

Why?

Because while players develop at different rates once reaching the Majors (some players are superstars right out of the box, like Ted Williams, and some, like Robin Yount, need to mature before becoming a superstar), most players do start slowing down--substantially--as they draw closer to 40. Now, players today might be able to delay the inevitable because of advances in nutrition sciences, and conditioning, etc. So, maybe Adrian Beltre will see a few more years at peak levels before he starts to experience that inevitable decline. We don't know yet. But it happens to everybody, and it happened to both Perez, and Dawson both.

Andre Dawson played another 609 games post his age 35 season. In those last six seasons, he had a combined oWAR of under 4.0, and a dWAR slightly better than -4.0. His numbers dropped because he slowed down. He went from .283 9 HR 100 RBI averages per 162 games between 1977-1990 to .268 25 HR 96 RBI per 162 games after age 35. Still a pretty good clip, especially in that era. But his WAR figures dropped because a.) he wasn't playing as many games each year (101 games on average), and b.) his defense lapsed. Tony Perez realized even a more precipitous drop in performance. To compare their entire careers to Beltre's performance to date, when he is still really in his prime, is not going to paint an accurate picture. Beltre will push for the Hall of Fame, trying to get 3,000 hits. Like most Major League players, he will probably play too long, and his overall performance will drop. Once he's done, then we'll be able to compare him to other players on a career basis. But not now.

Remember, I think that Beltre will be a Hall of Fame player. I think he will get voted in. But is he a Hall of Fame player right now, if he retired today? No. His career numbers are pretty good, so I'd say he's borderline, but they don't compare to the other Hall of Fame third basemen. And that is, and should be the measuring stick. Nor do they compare favorably to Chipper Jones, who played the game at the same time, at the same position. And with inter league play, the American League vs National League thing is a little less important, as the two leagues meet head to head.

Remember, at this same age, Chipper Jones was actually better than Beltre, at least offensively. At age 35, Jones hit .337 with 29 HR and 102 RBI, and an NL best 1.029 OPS. Beltre hasn't come anywhere near that since 2004. In 2012, he managed .921, and a .919. Outside of 2004, he's never gone above .900 again. Now, maybe he does again this year. That would help his cause. But Jones has had 6 top ten MVP votes to Beltre's four. He also finished 11th two other times. In all, he received MVP votes in 13 seasons to Beltre's 6. At age 36, Jones hit .364 in 128 games, winning the batting title, and leading the league with a .470 OBP. But the next season, he began his decline.

I don't want anybody to think I don't like Adrian Beltre. I do, quite a lot, actually. But as a lover of the game, I tire of people wanting to throw every good player in the Hall of Fame. And that's what Beltre has been to date. A very good player overall, who has had multiple outstanding seasons in the last 4-5 years. But the lack of production for so much of his early career bothers me. It does, I can't lie. A power hitting third baseman driving in an average of 76 runs for a decade just doesn't scream Hall of Fame to me. The Hall of Fame is meant to reward a player's body of work, not just a 4-5 year period.

I guess we'll see what happens.

Dawson was an elite defender? LOL. I suppose Derek Jeter is an elite defender because he won 5 gold gloves. Your response is to ignore Beltre's defense. Brooks Robinson wouldn't be in the HOF without his glove. Brooks' career OPS+ is 104, so should we kick him out of the HOF? Granted Beltre's defense isn't at Brooks' level, but it is exceptional. WAR is the only way to factor both offense and defense into a players performance. As of right now, Belre's WAR and JAWs are at Brooks' level. Brooks was a first ballot HOFer, but Beltre is not a HOFer yet? You can't be serious.

As far as Jones, he did have a better year at 35, but what about the years before that?

WAR by age
31 Beltre 7.8
Jones 4.4
32 Beltre 5.8
Jones 3.9
33 Beltre 7.2
Jones 4.1
34 Beltre 5.4
Jones 3.6
35 Beltre 7.0
Jones 7.6

So, Beltre was better from age 31-34, and not just a little, by a lot. I should ask, why aren't you bothered by Jones lack of production past age 30? Outside of age 35 and 36, he was worse than Beltre in Seattle and that is playing in a hitters park vs. a pitchers park. You may be bothered by Beltre's lack of production is Seattle, but park has a lot to do with it. He still had 2 AS level seasons of WAR 5+ and it makes sense that if he was clean,his offensive production would drop moving to SAFECO. It's not like Barry Bonds moving from a hitters park (3 Rivers) to a pitchers park (Candlestick)
and is power numbers taking off and people thinking he was clean.

You may want to ignore WAR, but it is a major factor in HOF voting. Bert Blyleven wouldn't have sniffed the HOF without advanced metrics. Pedro Martinez wouldn't have been a first ballot HOFer. In the past voters would have just looked at his total wins and passed on him for a few years. Beltre is a no brainer for the HOF. When you compare him to his peers, he is going to sail in. Now that the voters have decided to pass on the dopers (Bonds, Clemens, etc.) they are going to look for the best clean players. Unless something comes to light that says Beltre was doping, he is near the top of the clean players.

[D. Bergin]

Beltre should make the HOF just for all the harassment he gets from team-mates for his touching phobias.

[howard38]

Bill, you say defensive WAR is highly inaccurate for older players yet you recently used it to defend your choice of Robin Yount as the best player you ever saw. Yount and Dawson's careers were more or less contemporary so the same standards should be used for both.

[clydepepper]

Originally Posted by howard38

Bill, you say defensive WAR is highly inaccurate for older players yet you recently used it to defend your choice of Robin Yount as the best player you ever saw. Yount and Dawson's careers were more or less contemporary so the same standards should be used for both.

Uh-Oh...you shouldn't have gone there...

[ooo-ribay]

As long as no major paper assigns two reporters to dig dirt and/or the federal government doesn't spend $50M to go after him, he's probably in. Same with Bagwell. And Piazza. See where I'm going, here?

[the 'stache]

Originally Posted by howard38

Bill, you say defensive WAR is highly inaccurate for older players yet you recently used it to defend your choice of Robin Yount as the best player you ever saw. Yount and Dawson's careers were more or less contemporary so the same standards should be used for both.

I didn't use dWAR to defend anything. The discussion was about the best player ever, and I said Roberto Clemente. When the discussion turned to the best player I'd ever seen in person, since I clearly never saw Clemente in person (as I was two when he died), I said Robin Yount, and I would still say that with or without the dWAR metric. dWAR was not the basis for that statement. I said he had a complete skill set, and he did. He could do everything, and he did.

Where I brought up dWAR was in reference to his lack of Gold Gloves at the position in the early 80s. Multiple awards went to Alan Trammell, who in at least two of the years, did have inferior dWAR figures. Yes, I do feel that dWAR metrics are inaccurate. That doesn't, however, negate anything I said, does it? No. Why? Because the metric would be off across the board. I'll explain my rationale.

I watched an awful lot of baseball back in the early 80s. When I was a kid, nearly every spring or summer, I had a broken arm, or leg, and had to spend my days inside when school was out. We didn't have cable tv back then, so what did I do? I watched baseball. Any game that was on, or This Week in Baseball. Anything to do with baseball. There was no ESPN in my house growing up, so I had to watch the games. And my opinion about Yount was the best player in the game, and the best shortstop based off of the plethora of games I saw him play in person, as well as Trammell. I probably went to 10, sometimes 15 games a year at home, and watched as many as I could on tv. So, it was my personal observations that led me to believe that Yount deserved the Gold Gloves over Trammell (and some youthful bias, I'm sure). The dWAR figures were provided as a reference point. Yount is shown as having a 2.8 dWAR in 1981. Is that accurate for 96 games? Probably not. I feel that dWAR for older games is over calculated, either to the positive, or the negative, meaning very good defensive players are made to look slightly better than they are, and below average defenders are made to look slightly worse then they are based off of the metric alone.

If dWAR is too high by 20%, and Yount's 1981 dWAR goes from a 2.8 to about a 2.25, and Trammell's dWAR in 1981 goes from a 2.3 to a 1.85, does it not still show Yount was better? I do not discount it entirely. Whether Yount had a 2.8, a 2.25 or a 2 dWAR in slightly less than 100 games played, he was still sensational, and what I saw him play that year backed it up. I thought he was better defensively in 1981 than he was in 1982 when he did win the Gold Glove. I also pointed out in that same blurb that Robin Yount won the Gold Glove in 1982, even though Alan Trammell had a higher dWAR. That should support my recent statement that dWAR is not the be all, end all metric of defensive performance, at least in older games.

Each season there are 162 games. And 27 outs in each game. A shortstop might handle 10 balls a game. That's a lot of chances each year, and there's no way to know in hindsight how well Yount did getting to all those balls. So, dWAR is probably using some fancy algorithms to arrive at the final number. It doesn't mean that Yount wasn't great defensively. It just means that we probably can't compare a 2.8 dWAR from 1981 against a dWAR of 2.8 from 2014. I wouldn't expect complete accuracy.

What Yount was able to do, in his prime, at one of the two or three toughest defensive positions in baseball, was remarkable. He hit for average. He hit for power (he was an extra base machine). He stole bases. And he was really outstanding defensively, both with his glove, and throwing out runners with his arm. I felt that for a few year period, he was the best in the game, along with George Brett and Rickey Henderson. Those guys had so many tools, so many ways to beat you. I can't tell you how many times I watched Yount take a game over. The last game of the 1982 regular season against Baltimore is a prime example.