Adrian Beltre - HOFer?

[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?

[Tabe]

Dawson was NOT a superstar when he arrived in Chicago. He'd been pretty average for three straight years from 84 to 86. And he was out of a job all the way up till spring training in 87. And he only got a job because he gave the Cubs a blank contract and told them to fill in a number.

And those big power numbers in 87? Are we forgetting that MLB juiced the baseballs in 87? Wade Freaking Boggs hit 24 homers that year. Dawson hit 49, yeah, but in context that number isn't nearly as impressive.

[earlywynnfan]

Originally Posted by Tabe

Dawson was NOT a superstar when he arrived in Chicago. He'd been pretty average for three straight years from 84 to 86. And he was out of a job all the way up till spring training in 87. And he only got a job because he gave the Cubs a blank contract and told them to fill in a number.

And those big power numbers in 87? Are we forgetting that MLB juiced the baseballs in 87? Wade Freaking Boggs hit 24 homers that year. Dawson hit 49, yeah, but in context that number isn't nearly as impressive.

That's a mighty tainted view, based on the fact that barely anybody signed a contract in 1986-7 due to collusion.

[Tabe]

So ignore the contract stuff - he still wasn't a superstar at the time and the fans weren't over the moon to get him.

[Econteachert205]

The Dawson comparison is apt. Dave parker was a better all around player IMO. Back out that one skewed 87 season (when juan Samuel was hitting 28 homers) and Dawson's career is much less impressive. Even if he did play for the cubs , who have this amazing capacity to get marginal candidates into the hall of fame, read Sandberg, Santo. I guess it's the consolation prize for never winning anything.

Edit to add, I'd be fine with Dawson parker and beltre (with another year or two of good productivity) being in the hall. I just want consistency.

[the 'stache]

Originally Posted by Tabe

Dawson was NOT a superstar when he arrived in Chicago. He'd been pretty average for three straight years from 84 to 86. And he was out of a job all the way up till spring training in 87. And he only got a job because he gave the Cubs a blank contract and told them to fill in a number.

And those big power numbers in 87? Are we forgetting that MLB juiced the baseballs in 87? Wade Freaking Boggs hit 24 homers that year. Dawson hit 49, yeah, but in context that number isn't nearly as impressive.

Hmm. I'm not sure how 162 game averages of .262, 33 doubles, 24 home runs, 102 RBI and 19 steals are average, especially when you consider he also won two Gold Gloves in those seasons, as well. Was he as good as he'd been the prior four seasons in Montreal? No. But the difference isn't as big as you'd make it out to be.

162 game averages
1980-1983 .302 AVG, 40 doubles, 28 home runs, 101 RBI, 36 SB. 140 OPS +
1984-1986 .262 AVG, 33 doubles, 24 home runs, 102 RBI, 19 SB. 111 OPS +

The batting average dropped, yes. But the power and run production was remarkably similar.

I guess I remember it differently than you do. I lived in Milwaukee, and made several trips to Chicago each year, as most of my family lived there (and still do). I remember talking with my cousins, and they were pretty excited to get Dawson. If I remember correctly, they felt that the Hawk still had plenty left in the tank, and that a change of scenery might do some good.

And the balls couldn't have been that juiced. Only Dale Murphy (44) of all those National League power hitters managed to jack out 40 or more home runs besides Dawson. In fact, Murphy was the only National League hitter to come within ten home runs of Dawson, as Darryl Strawberry came in third in the NL with 39 home runs.

Two hitters with 40 + HR.
Six other hitters with 30 + HR.

No, juiced was 2004 when Adrian Beltre hit 48 home runs. Six NL players had 40 or more homers that season, and 17 more hitters had 30 or more home runs.

So, to compare:

1987: two hitters 40 + home runs, six others 30 +.
2004: six hitters 40 + home runs, seventeen others 30 +.

Eight guys with 30 + home runs vs twenty-three.

Hmm. That's a pretty big difference.

[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.