Most overrated baseball stats????

[the 'stache]

Agree with the bolded part completely. I see that Roberto Clemente's defense in right was worth only 12.1 wins over 17 seasons, and I laugh myself silly. Then I look at somebody like Andruw Jones, who was a fine center fielder, no doubt. But you'll never convince me that, for his career, his defensive contribution was twice as good as Clemente's. Jones had 24.1 dWAR to Clemente's 12.1. The argument has always been "Clemente made 140 errors in 17 seasons". How many of those errors came on balls that no other right fielder in baseball could have even gotten to? If you get a glove on the ball, but don't catch it, the official scorer is going to give the fielder an error. The point being that any other fielder in right is going to let the ball drop in for a double. Clemente's range in right was unrivaled, and his gun might be the best the game has ever seen. Of course, he's going to have more errors, because he's going to also attempt to throw out more runners than the average outfielder. When you're throwing the ball from the warning track in right field all the way to third base, some balls are going to skip away because the third baseman can't handle it, or it hits the runner.

Please. I've watched a ton of footage from Clemente's defense over the years. The man was a god in the outfield, and some stupid metric trying to convince us that his defense didn't even net 1 win in 162 games a season is utter bullcrap.

Originally Posted by bravos4evr

absolutely. Though, we must put a little * on WAR before the advent of UZR and DRS, range factor and total zone stats just aren't very good and thus it's pretty well agreed that the defensive value of players before the 90's is harder to determine (and the more you go back, the harder it gets).

[zachtruitt]

An OF's arm has been historically overrated in defensive value. If Clemente had played CF then he may have rivaled Jones in dWAR. Errors cost bases and I doubt Clemente's OF assists overcome the bases lost to errors.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by zachtruitt

An OF's arm has been historically overrated in defensive value. If Clemente had played CF then he may have rivaled Jones in dWAR. Errors cost bases and I doubt Clemente's OF assists overcome the bases lost to errors.

I don't entirely agree.

An outfielders throwing ability - at least for the ones with really good arms - leads into the sort of thing that isn't covered by stats. (I don't think, there might be something very recent)
The players with really good arms, -Ichiro, Dwight Evans, probably Clemente, although I haven't watched much video of him. At least those two after a fairly short time didn't get as many outfield assists, but did have a fair number of times when a player might have tried for a double or triple but decided against trying. You can see it happen watching the game, but there's not many easy ways to put a number to something that didn't happen. Especially if why it didn't happen is open to interpretation. Would the player have run against a different outfielder say Johnny Damon? Or was the extra base not taken because it wasn't likely against anyone?

Other players have more outfield assists and they're either ones with above average arms or quick releases. Manny Ramirez had a lot of OF assists, and while I never heard it discussed, watching a lot of games I began to think it was because he had this lazy looking approach to a routine single that encouraged people to try for second more often. Same thing for wall singles, meanders to the ball, looks like he's not paying much attention, then a quick catch and throw to second.

Again, hard to put numbers to, aside from the assists.

Errors today totally baffle me. Shortstop drops a fairly easily reached ball, and sometimes, maybe even usually it's scored a hit. Maybe the guys have better range so it would have been a nearly unreachable ball 30 years ago, but a drop on a ball in your own range should be an error.

Steve B

[Peter_Spaeth]

As I recall in his discussion of Clemente, Bill James takes on the value of the great outfield arm.

[CMIZ5290]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

As I recall in his discussion of Clemente, Bill James takes on the value of the great outfield arm.

This Nick Barnes guy is too much. Andruw Jones or Clemente? Hmmmmm, let me think...Andruw Jones was a joke as a hitter...To even hold him in the same breath as Clemente is beyond ridiculous, and I grew up in Atlanta as a Braves fan...And by the way, Clemente had the best arm I have ever seen....Vlad Guerrero is a close second

[nat]

Andruw Jones isn't nearly the player that Clemente was (and this is also what WAR says, Clemente leads Jones 94 to 62, so it's not even close). Clemente was a much better hitter (and had a longer career, even given, you know). Clemente did a much better job getting on base, even though he played in an offensive environment that was friendlier to pitchers than Jones did.

However, according to the data that we have, Andruw Jones was the greatest defensive outfielder of all time. He's 20th all-time in the defensive component of WAR (behind Brooks and a bunch of short stops, basically). Clemente is 160th in the defensive component of WAR.

Basically, the defensive component of WAR looks at every defensive thing that a player did on the field, asks how likely other players would have been to make the same play, and looks at, historically, what has happened if the play wouldn't have been made. So if player A makes a play that a run-of-the-mill fielder would have made only 80% of the time, and if a ball hit to this part of the ball park has historically led to 0.7 runs scoring, player A gets credit for (0.2 * 0.7) = 0.14 runs saved. And then you do this for each defensive play that he made, and add them all up. There are limitations to the defensive part of WAR (which I mentioned in a previous post in this thread). We now have very finely grained defensive data: we know exactly where each ball was hit, how hard it was hit, etc. We use that data when calculating modern players' WAR. We use less fine-grained data when calculating older players' WAR (because they didn't keep track of this information back then). There is, consequently, more room for error in older players' fielding records. Clemente may have been better than the data indicates - we just don't have any evidence that he was. And no, subjective impressions from watching him play don't count as evidence. Lots of people who saw Jeter play thought that he was a great defensive player, even though we have very detailed records of the plays that he made, and they were not, in fact, very impressive. He just looked impressive making mostly routine plays.

We've got lots of really bright people working really hard to figure out how to measure baseball performance. Let's help them. If you think that there's something wrong with WAR (and I do, as noted up-thread), let's figure out what's wrong with it, and how to fix it, so that it can become more accurate.

[bravos4evr]

Originally Posted by CMIZ5290

This Nick Barnes guy is too much. Andruw Jones or Clemente? Hmmmmm, let me think...Andruw Jones was a joke as a hitter...To even hold him in the same breath as Clemente is beyond ridiculous, and I grew up in Atlanta as a Braves fan...And by the way, Clemente had the best arm I have ever seen....Vlad Guerrero is a close second

sorry, I just happen to know and understand more about baseball than you do. You are stuck in flat earth land. I have moved into the 21st century.

I hate to be like this, but your attitude, cursing and hand waving really leave me no choice. It's time to grow up, evolve with the times or GTFO the way.

[bravos4evr]

Originally Posted by steve B

I don't entirely agree.

An outfielders throwing ability - at least for the ones with really good arms - leads into the sort of thing that isn't covered by stats. (I don't think, there might be something very recent)
The players with really good arms, -Ichiro, Dwight Evans, probably Clemente, although I haven't watched much video of him. At least those two after a fairly short time didn't get as many outfield assists, but did have a fair number of times when a player might have tried for a double or triple but decided against trying. You can see it happen watching the game, but there's not many easy ways to put a number to something that didn't happen. Especially if why it didn't happen is open to interpretation. Would the player have run against a different outfielder say Johnny Damon? Or was the extra base not taken because it wasn't likely against anyone?

Other players have more outfield assists and they're either ones with above average arms or quick releases. Manny Ramirez had a lot of OF assists, and while I never heard it discussed, watching a lot of games I began to think it was because he had this lazy looking approach to a routine single that encouraged people to try for second more often. Same thing for wall singles, meanders to the ball, looks like he's not paying much attention, then a quick catch and throw to second.

Again, hard to put numbers to, aside from the assists.

Errors today totally baffle me. Shortstop drops a fairly easily reached ball, and sometimes, maybe even usually it's scored a hit. Maybe the guys have better range so it would have been a nearly unreachable ball 30 years ago, but a drop on a ball in your own range should be an error.

Steve B

modern metrics don't use OF assists alone as a measure of arm, they take into account extra bases taken by base runners (or lack thereof) . But, in the grand scheme of things, just like first base scoops, OF arms just don't make that great of an impact over the course of a season or a career. The difference between an avg arm and a great one isn't large enough to make a huge difference.


ETA: on one play, sure the difference can be huge, but if a great arm prevents say 20 extra bases during a season, that only adds up to maybe 3 or 4 runs and that's not even half a WAR.

[bravos4evr]

Originally Posted by the 'stache

Agree with the bolded part completely. I see that Roberto Clemente's defense in right was worth only 12.1 wins over 17 seasons, and I laugh myself silly. Then I look at somebody like Andruw Jones, who was a fine center fielder, no doubt. But you'll never convince me that, for his career, his defensive contribution was twice as good as Clemente's. Jones had 24.1 dWAR to Clemente's 12.1. The argument has always been "Clemente made 140 errors in 17 seasons". How many of those errors came on balls that no other right fielder in baseball could have even gotten to? If you get a glove on the ball, but don't catch it, the official scorer is going to give the fielder an error. The point being that any other fielder in right is going to let the ball drop in for a double. Clemente's range in right was unrivaled, and his gun might be the best the game has ever seen. Of course, he's going to have more errors, because he's going to also attempt to throw out more runners than the average outfielder. When you're throwing the ball from the warning track in right field all the way to third base, some balls are going to skip away because the third baseman can't handle it, or it hits the runner.

Please. I've watched a ton of footage from Clemente's defense over the years. The man was a god in the outfield, and some stupid metric trying to convince us that his defense didn't even net 1 win in 162 games a season is utter bullcrap.

playing Cf gives you more value because it's a more difficult position. Andruw is not only the best fielding CF'er of all time, but it's not even close and Clemente had a great arm, but his range wasn't as good as old timey memory may make us believe. Confirmation bias skews things (which is why we have stats) (and man alive quit using baseball reference, it's old, antiquated and behind the times)

Clemente was a great OF'er, but by playing RF he is always going to be worth less than an equally great fielder who plays CF because of the range required.

oh, and Fangraphs has him worth 1+ win a year for his fielding :-)


edited to add: errors are not included in metrics, they are based on plays made relative to avg, in zone and out of zone as well as arm, distance covered...etc and yelling at math because it disagrees with your opinion is not really very scientific, it's the reason we needed metrics, confirmation bias skews things far too much for things like fielding% or errors made to have much value

[nat]

Don't listen to Nick about B-R, it's a very useful site. Philosophically divergent from Fangraphs on a few issues, but that's all. bWAR (the one on baseball-reference) and fWAR (the one on fangraphs) are useful for different things and in different ways (pretty much as with any two stats).

We know that fielding is the roughest part of the WAR formulae (and the hardest thing to measure in any case). Nick is right that it gets less accurate the further back in time that you go. The folks who put the various WARs together decided to use the best defensive measurements available for each season. Since our measurements improve over time, this means that the numbers that go into the WAR formula for a player in 2016 aren't quite the same as those that go in for someone who played in 1966. They could have used the same measurements all the way through, but at the cost of making evaluations of modern players less accurate.

This means that we know that there are some errors in our evaluations of older players, we just don't know who is being affected by the error, nor precisely how significant the error is. People in 1966 just weren't recording enough data for us to be able to tell these things. Clemente may have been better than dWAR gives him credit for, but there's no way to tell, and there's REALLY no way to tell how much better.

[bravos4evr]

Originally Posted by nat

Don't listen to Nick about B-R, it's a very useful site. Philosophically divergent from Fangraphs on a few issues, but that's all. bWAR (the one on baseball-reference) and fWAR (the one on fangraphs) are useful for different things and in different ways (pretty much as with any two stats).

We know that fielding is the roughest part of the WAR formulae (and the hardest thing to measure in any case). Nick is right that it gets less accurate the further back in time that you go. The folks who put the various WARs together decided to use the best defensive measurements available for each season. Since our measurements improve over time, this means that the numbers that go into the WAR formula for a player in 2016 aren't quite the same as those that go in for someone who played in 1966. They could have used the same measurements all the way through, but at the cost of making evaluations of modern players less accurate.

This means that we know that there are some errors in our evaluations of older players, we just don't know who is being affected by the error, nor precisely how significant the error is. People in 1966 just weren't recording enough data for us to be able to tell these things. Clemente may have been better than dWAR gives him credit for, but there's no way to tell, and there's REALLY no way to tell how much better.

I'm just giving him guff about BR dating back to that Jim Kaat argument.

It is useful, I just don't think much of their version of WAR.

you bring up a good point about older (and even present day) defensive numbers, they could equally overestimate as underestimate defensive value, people tend to lean towards their perception of a player, but that's usually not a good idea.

[FourStrikes]

"tonight's attendance is..."

yeah, I KNOW it's PAID attendance, but when the announcers are trumpeting a "full-house" or "standing room only" crowd and it's obvious there's sh!tloads of empty seats, my reply is always "WTF???"

JMO, of course - whether or not the above is actually considered a 'stat' or not, I gotta laugh..

DS

[CMIZ5290]

Originally Posted by bravos4evr

playing Cf gives you more value because it's a more difficult position. Andruw is not only the best fielding CF'er of all time, but it's not even close and Clemente had a great arm, but his range wasn't as good as old timey memory may make us believe. Confirmation bias skews things (which is why we have stats) (and man alive quit using baseball reference, it's old, antiquated and behind the times)

Clemente was a great OF'er, but by playing RF he is always going to be worth less than an equally great fielder who plays CF because of the range required.

oh, and Fangraphs has him worth 1+ win a year for his fielding :-)


edited to add: errors are not included in metrics, they are based on plays made relative to avg, in zone and out of zone as well as arm, distance covered...etc and yelling at math because it disagrees with your opinion is not really very scientific, it's the reason we needed metrics, confirmation bias skews things far too much for things like fielding% or errors made to have much value

Are you actually comparing Andruw Jones to Roberto Clemente?? Holy s****. Also, you need to get off this WAR shit. Look at the players and not these bullshit statistics. You are also the one the said Ed Reulbach was not even close to a HOFer. His record was 182-106 with an ERA of 2.24....What the Hell is his WAR?

[bravos4evr]

Originally Posted by CMIZ5290

Are you actually comparing Andruw Jones to Roberto Clemente?? Holy s****. Also, you need to get off this WAR shit. Look at the players and not these bullshit statistics. You are also the one the said Ed Reulbach was not even close to a HOFer. His record was 182-106 with an ERA of 2.24....What the Hell is his WAR?

times change, more information becomes available, either you learn to evolve or you fade away.

I don't see how cursing at me is improving your argument.....

Andruw Jones is the greatest outfielder defensively of all time and it isn't even close, I can present all the information to back up my claim (and none of it revolves around what I claim to have seen but rather with the scientific way: using statistics and data)


A jones- total zone runs 243

Clemente- 205

A-Jones- baseball references d-war (which I don't like particularly) 24.1

Clemente- 12.1


fangraphs DEF ranking (a conglomerate of several stats)

A-Jones - 281.3

Clemente- 84.4


Clemente was a much better hitter (hence his 80+ fWAR vs AJ's 67.1) but Andruw was a better fielder not only because of his range, and skill but also because he played the much more difficult position of CF for most of his career.