What stats most important for HOF?

[the 'stache]

Ok, good. That makes me feel better about Clemente's numbers when I look at them. It was explained to me wrong, then. I suppose I should have just looked at the formulas right off the bat.

I knew certain positions got bonuses, ie catcher, shortstop and center (maybe second base, too), and that first, and the corner outfield positions (?) get a negative adjustment. Third should get a bonus, as well. Or is it neutral?

I guess I don't see the logic behind first being severely penalized. When I think of the greatest hitters in the game's history, I would assume that there are more great lefties than righties. One reason being that coming from the first base side of the plate is a somewhat shorter distance to run to first, therefore lefties should get a slight bump to average. That, and better head to head match ups with pitchers. I'd have to look at the historical numbers, but I'd almost have to think that there's a 3 to 1, or thereabouts, advantage with there being more righties than lefties on the mound, if not an even greater disparity. Therefore, left handed hitters have an advantage seeing a lot more right handed twirlers. They'll pick the ball up much more quickly than they would against a left handed pitcher. Righties will get penalized by the preponderance of right handed pitchers. Infield composition plays a role, too. Right handed pull hitters always have a shortstop and third baseman to contend with, and a second baseman can be pulled over to the third base side of the bag. Lefties only ever have second and first.

All that said, first base not only has to defend against left handed batters, they have to worry about men on first base. A second baseman can always shift to help them cut down on the pull alley to right, but the first baseman still has to guard down the line.

I'm sorry, I'm rambling trying to work all this out, and I'm going on about two hours of sleep. For the premium positions, I can see a slight positive adjustment. But I don't see the need for a negative adjustment for first base, if that's indeed the case.

When you start getting into zone rating, range factor, I question how they can do that from a historical perspective? Now all the games are archived, so a statistician can go in and watch a play from a billion different angles in high definition. You can't do that for games in the old days. A lot of the games only have information like "fly out to right field". It obviously doesn't tell a statistician anything about the ball's launch angle/trajectory, exit velocity, etc. How can you determine how good a fielder truly was, but first hand accounts?

Ugh. This is making my head hurt.

[nat]

For recent seasons WAR uses play-by-play data, which gives you precise information about exactly where the ball was hit. Obviously that's not available for older seasons. For those seasons it uses data comparing plays made versus average numbers of plays made by other players at the same position. (Presumably with adjustments for the field the guy plays in - outfielders in big parks have a harder time, for example.) I don't have the details handy, but because the older data is less reliable than the current data it's also regressed to the mean to some degree. This means that really good and really bad defensive performances are going to be smoothed out a bit.

Given the limitations on the data, this is the best we can do. But it's not too bad. For both recent and old players their defensive contributions are on the same scale (we can estimate runs saved, and hence games won, from both sets of data). For older players you should take their defensive numbers to be an estimate with a bit of uncertainty on either side. As with anything statistical, how much uncertainty there is depends on how big of a sample you're talking about - for individual seasons its kind of iffy, for whole careers it'll be much better.

Clemente, by the way, was awesome. By Rfield even Ozzie Smith has only one season better than Clemente's best. Most of the guys on the career dWAR list ahead of him were middle infielders or catchers (because they get a big positional bonus). Curiously, he's exactly tied with another right fielder with a legendary arm, Jesse Barfield.

Third basemen get a small positional bonus (about 2 or 3 runs per season). You can find the adjustment on baseball-reference under the column labeled Rpos.

[the 'stache]

Thank you so much, Nat. I really appreciate it. That makes a bit more sense to me, now. I'm still fighting through this insomnia after switching two medications, so my body is off balance, and my brain has been scrambled since I woke up yesterday. I'm going to re-read your post, and go back over to the Sabermetrics site tonight after I've gotten some rest.

I've been trying to modernize my statistical approach in all four sports for a while, but I think I'm going to just stick to baseball, for the time being, as it's my first love. That will ensure that I take it all the way to home plate, if you will, and I think I'll grasp some of the newer concepts more quickly with a strong base of knowledge. My plan is to write about the four North American professional sports (but focusing most on baseball), and film. So, I need to round it all out.

I'd give my left foot to go back in time, and watch Clemente play. My father grew up in Chicago, and took in Cubs games at Wrigley all the time. He started going in the late 50s, and saw Roberto multiple times. Oddly enough, he was a Milwaukee Braves fan more than anything. That was eerily prophetic, as we'd all live in the Milwaukee area for almost 20 years. Anyhow, a family friend back in Wisconsin knew one of the authors of this book, This Date in Pittsburgh Pirates History. I believe I still have it in storage. It's autographed inside, but I forget which author. It's been about 40 years.



I think I mentioned it previously. Anyway, that book came out in 1980, right after the Bucs won their last Series. It was "The Family" led by Willie Stargell, Dave Parker, Bill Madlock. The Brewers have always been my team, but a real affinity for the Pirates (and soon after, the other teams from the city. Since Milwaukee has never had an NHL team, the Penguins became my adopted team) came out of that book. That was my introduction to Honus Wagner, the Waner brothers, Ralph Kiner, Stargell. The Pirate history just knocked me out.

Roberto was larger than life as I grew up. Though he died when I was not even two years, he loomed large as my love for the game grew. When Youtube sprung up, and videos of the game from before I was born began to slowly collect, that's when I started to really get to see his play. The only other time I think I'd ever seen more than photos of him was on a few segments of This Week in Baseball. Good old Mel Allen. Clemente might be the most exciting player I've ever seen. He and Willie Mays. I'd put Griffey, Barry Bonds, Bo Jackson, and certainly Mike Trout in there with them. I always thought Paul Molitor was a hell of a lot of fun to watch, too. He could just flat out fly when he was healthy. He was the catalyst. "The Ignitor". I couldn't have been more lucky, sitting third base side with my Dad, or both parents if Mom felt up to sitting outside in the cold spring weather. Seeing Robin Yount and Molly side by side was the stuff of dreams. Not too many kids get to watch two future 3,000 hit club, Hall of Famers virtually from the start. My first game at old County Stadium was in 1979. Yount's sixth season, Molitor's second. Robin was only 23, and Molitor 21. I can't tell you how strongly the game got inside of me. It's probably my life's greatest passion. I could watch the game, and talk about it all day.

Off to try and get a few hours of shuteye. You guys have a great Saturday afternoon!