Just a heads-up that I have a chat today at 1 pm over at the Four-Letter.
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The collected thoughts of sportswriter, bookworm, & food critic Keith Law
Just a heads-up that I have a chat today at 1 pm over at the Four-Letter.
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From your chat (edited for space):
Scott, (Eugene, OR): Keith, Earlier you mentioned that you would not vote for Vizquel if Trammell and Concepcion are not in. I noticed however that Vizquel has a career .984 Fld% and a .274 Avg, which are both higher than Ozzie Smith who is in (.978 Fld%, .262 Avg.). So wouldn’t this qualify Vizquel to be in the hall of fame?
Keith Law: (2:27 PM ET ) Fielding percentage is a terrible measure of defense, and batting average isn’t a good measure of offense. The difference here is that Smith was a far, far better defensive player than Vizquel is. Smith was the best ever at the position, and that’s why he’s in.
Full disclosure – I’m a Vizquel fan who saw little of Ozzie at his best.
The point I want to make though, is that even granting Ozzie’s superior defense (Range Factor gives him an extra .6 A+PO/game (wow!), Fld% is what it is, FRAA shows a 5-6 run per season difference, favoring Smith), Omar has better triple slash (not just BA) numbers on the offense side, .274/.340/.357 vs. .262/.337/.328 . Since defensive analysis is not as fully developed as we’d like it to be, do we really know HOW MUCH better the Wizard was with the glove?
Thanks for the forum, and for your always insightful commentary! And huge props for dropping a BGG link into a blog. Were you a Strat-O-Matic player in your youth?
missed the chat today because my PST self got to your chat at 1 P.M. pacific time. but it was good as usual.
i was wondering about the likelihood of a Lowry (and cash) for LaRoche trade between the Giants and Dodgers, despite the fact that Lowry may have peaked and LaRoche probably hasn’t reached his ceiling yet.
Doug,
First, we don’t know enough about defensive metrics to say anything with full precision, but 5-6 runs a year over 20 years is a LOT. That can’t be ignored as possible statistical noise. Essentially it says that Ozzie, relative to average, was TWICE as valuable as Omar. Other non-FRAA metrics (such as Bill James’ methods) have come to the same conclusion.
Second, you aren’t contextualizing the triple slash stats by ballpark and era. When you do, Ozzie has an 87 OPS+. Omar’s in 84. Not a big difference, but certainly negates the argument that Ozzie had anything to make up for.
Keith, just finished reading your chat. You said that if you had to add one player, it would be Dawson. If you had to subtract one player who would it be? And would you prefer to add Dawson, or delete someone?
If forced to make a change, I would delete Trammell. His Hall case is the weakest of the five, and I’d rather see a small Hall than a large one.
From your chat, which I just read:
Will- (Los Angeles, CA): Keith I’ve been reading your recent thoughts on the hall of fame process and I’m curious who you think are the least worthy of those enshrined in the HOF.
Keith Law: Tony Perez. Catfish Hunter. Bruce Sutter. Phil Rizzuto (as a player – I’d put him in as a broadcaster, or for general contributions to the game). Candy Cummings (in because of a myth). Jim Rice (answer not valid until January 10th, 2009).
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In my best Rod Serling voice, other names submitted for your approval as WORSE Hall of Famers: Tinkers to Evers to Chance (they live together); Dave Bancroft, Rick Ferrel, Chick Hafey (only 1466 hits for his career and only eight seasons with more than 100); George Kelly. There’s more, but I suggest these are all worse.
Just curious if you could expand on this report of Gio Gonzalez “Fringy fastball, overuses his CB (works in the minors, won’t work like that in the majors), iffy command.”
What constitues up a fringy fastball that produces such dominant numbers (11 k/9, 3 k/bb, few homers) in AA but won’t work in MLB?
Chip: He’s getting swings and misses on his offspeed stuff, but his fastball (just 84-86 mph last time I saw him, touching 89) is very hittable. And by the way, he was a level-repeater. Check his stat line from AA the year before – he was extremely homer-prone.