Bill: Re wovenstrap's Warren Spahn question from yesterday ("I wonder if you could do a quick sketch of Spahn as a pitcher for those of us who don't remember him"), I very much recommend Jim Kaplan's The Greatest Game Ever Pitched. You get a detailed account of the Spahn-Marichal 16-inning game, but it also serves as a parallel biography of both pitchers.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 1/26/2021
Haven’t read it. Thanks.
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Bill: I know Joe Carter would register a high overrated score; it’s hard to make a case that he wasn’t overrated while active. Having said that, besides his good luck in the teammates who hit in front of him, the other big factor in his annual 100+ RBI was his durability, and obviously that was a good thing. He was a known known, and I think you wrote in one of the Abstracts how valuable that was to an organization. I also started wondering—and I guess I’m asking you to speculate on the dreaded intangibles here—if his teammates looked at him like "Joe’s our RBI guy, we can count on him," and if that has value too? Or were they, playing alongside him every day, more likely than anyone to be aware of his limitations?
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 1/6/2021
Well…I know for certain that some of Joe's teammates recognized and were annoyed by Joe's limitations. But whether those players were representative or not, I couldn't say.
I think what you're referencing is something that I wrote about Nolan Ryan. 40 years ago, you needed PITCHERS that you could count on to make their starts and pitch their innings. 50 years ago, teams had 9-man pitching staffs; 40 years ago, 10- or 11-man pitching staffs, and players didn't bounce up and down between majors and minors the way they do now. With a 10-man pitching staff, you really need to have 2 or 3 starters that are GOING to be out there and make their starts. A left fielder or right fielder…well, you've got other guys who can do that. Joe Carter misses a game, you've got somebody who can play the position and hit; probably he is either a better outfielder than Joe or has a higher on base percentage or something, so that the team is better off without him in one way or another, although maybe less well off in another way.
Now, since teams have 13-man pitching staffs and 3-man benches, it is different; you can juggle the pitchers better than you can the lineup.
Teams do start to unravel if you don't have anchors. Any sport, any level, I think; if you don't have anchor players that you can count on, you're going to find yourself just scrambling day to day, trying to pull something together, and that isn't going to work for very long. A guy gets red hot, you think you can count on him, then a weak later he's hitting 4th for you and is 0-for-4 and you're in a slump. But also, I think, you don't want TOO many anchors. The old 1930s lineups where you have 8 guys who play every game except that you give the catcher 1 or 2 days off every week…that's not really workable in the modern world. You need to give everybody on your roster a chance to contribute, or they're not going to be there when you need them.
So what I am trying to get to…I'm not sure I would generalize about the subject in the same way that you are generalizing about it. I'm generalizing about the subject, obviously, but I'd follow a different path toward a broad, general understanding. And following that path, I don't know that I would want Joe Carter to be an anchor player.
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Bill: Thought of you during the impeachment hearings, something you once wrote in an Abstract about working arbitration cases (I'm paraphrasing from memory): don't lie or exaggerate, because once you do, it brings everything you say into question.
So that ridiculous collage Trump's lawyers had of various Democrats saying the word "fight": if they'd limited that to a handful of the most egregious clips, even though it would still have been a false parallel, those isolated examples might have seemed semi-credible. Instead, 98% of the collage rendered the whole thing suspect.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 2/16/2021
Well it isn't necessarily a false parallel; it's a completely valid parallel that you perceived as a false parallel because of your bias. They did overdo it; it would have been more persuasive if they had stuck to a small list of examples with context, rather than quoting people using the word "fight" without context, which is deceptive, but also cumulative. It goes to prove a point already proven, thus is perceived as a show, rather than as a valid point.
It does seem mysterious that politicians…not the lawyers, as much as the politicians…seem incapable of looking at themselves and understanding that, when they squeak at one another in endless partisan rhetoric, it makes all of them look like idiots. I really can't quite feature why intelligent people, most of them ex-lawyers who have been in a courtroom, will make statements that they should know to be untrue and should know to be non-persuasive. But 90% of them do.
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Bill: Not sure if you want them, but you're going to get a bunch of "players who are remembered more for some non-baseball act on the field than a baseball act." First ones I thought of were Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich, for coming up with a platoon arrangement that even Casey Stengel hadn't thought of.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 4/28/2021
That wouldn't qualify; that wasn't on the field. Lots of people are remembered for something OFF the field, rather they be murderers or philanderers or Governors of their state or inventors or founders of some religion.
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Bill -- Sorry about Peterson/Kekich; read the initial question ("players who are remembered more for some non-baseball act on the field than a baseball act") too quickly.
Maybe Ozzie Smith's gymnastic somersault? You're talking about a Hall of Famer who's remembered for many things, but I think that signature somersault as he ran out to his position is at least as famous as his "Go crazy, folks!" walk-off HR in the '85 NLCS.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 4/29/2021
Sure.
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Bill: I'm reading and very much enjoying Gary Pomerantz's Wilt, 1962: The Night of 100 Points and the Dawn of a New Era. Two questions: 1) Any specific memories of watching Chamberlain play? I started watching basketball in '73, the year the Knicks pulled an upset, so I think I just missed him; 2) Is what Chamberlain did in '62--the 100-point game, the 50-point average--the closest parallel ever to what Ruth did in 1920/21 in terms of the gap between him and the rest of the league? The author suggests as much.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 4/7/2021
Well, I saw Chamberlain play on TV many times. His size and strength manifested themselves in every little movement, plus he had a natural flair, a CONCERN for how he looked doing things. He constantly fed the legend that he was more than human, that he could do things that nobody else could do. He was a very fast runner, when he was young, and even when he was old and slow, he would sometimes pull out a sprint and beat people down the court (and then save his energy by not going past the half-court line on the next five possessions. But he would wave the ball around in one hand, demonstrating not only that he could very easy palm a basketball, but that he could grip it so tightly that you couldn't knock it out of his hand. Probably the most memorable thing I ever saw him do was, these four guys were starting to fight on the floor, which would happen in the 1960s, and he walked up and wrapped him arms around them and pinned all four of their arms to their sides at the same time until they looked at him like "Sorry, Wilt, we didn't mean any trouble." You know, guys were like 6-8, 250 pounds; he just locked them all up at the same time.
I don't know how tall he really was, because he wouldn't let anybody measure him, but he came back to KU in the last year or so of his life. KU had two future NBA players in Scott Pollard, who was 6-11, and Raef LaFrentz, who was 6-10 or 6-11. Chamberlain stood on the court with them flanking him on either side, and they looked like midgets. Overstated a little, but he was WAY taller than either one of them.
On the "Gap" issue…I've heard that referenced in different ways. I've heard people say Wayne Gretzky, when he first appeared, dominated the NHL to a similar extent. You hear all kinds of things; I remember ESPN would regularly describe that Japanese guy who could eat all the hot dogs as "the greatest athlete in the world" because he dominated the hot-dog-contest-eating-world by such a wide margin. Unless you have some sort of organized way to compare, it's just something you say, you know?
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Bill: Any thoughts on whether deGrom has a realistic chance to break Gibson's modern-day ERA record? I took a quick look at the three closest seasons to Gibson's since then--Gooden's 1985 (1.53), Maddux's 1994 (1.56), and, same season, Tiant's '68 (1.60)--and eliminated the three worst starts for each pitcher. Their revised ERAs: Maddux, 1.19; Gooden, 1.25; Tiant, 1.27. I don't know if this is the right interpretation, but I began thinking that one or possibly two disastrous starts might have done them in, and that's not true: even in a strike-shortened season, eliminating Maddux's three worst starts still leaves him short (albeit very close). Which to me doesn't bode well for deGrom's chances, especially when he'll probably only pitch around 200 innings.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 6/4/2021
It's very unlikely. I've seen dozens of players who, a third of the way through the season, were on pace to break the record for homers or RBI or doubles or stolen bases, a good many players who were hitting .400. It is very different sustaining that pace for 162 games, rather than 56 or whatever. ERA is different from counting stats, in that the raw data SHOWS the player to be ahead of the record pace, whereas a counting stat you have to project it out, but…I'd say it is a 5% chance, maybe.
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Bill: Do you see the same similarities I do between Bryce Harper and Fred Lynn? Statistically, they're very close in a few basic categories at the same point in their careers (age-28 season). Harper's career slash line right now is .278/.379/.520; Lynn's, after the 1980 season, was .308/.383/.520. Harper's adjusted OPS is 141; Lynn's was also 141. Harper had a three-year head start, so he's ahead in WAR by about six games. One MVP each (Lynn probably should have won in '79, too), a few injuries, and--fair or not fair--a perception that they never quite lived up to the promise of their famous MVP years. Lynn fell apart (or maybe was injured) in the '81 strike season, and he was steady but unspectacular after that. Harper's an MVP candidate this year; next year, who knows.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 9/9/2021
OK, thanks. No, I had never thought of it.
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Bill -- Your
response to DanaKing below about the diminishing role of the World Series
starter perfectly encapsulates my own feelings: just because it makes sense
doesn't mean I have to like it. I was taking shots at the Ian Anderson removal
on another message board this morning, and someone posted a long, carefully
argued Joe Sheehan piece defending the decision to take Anderson out--indeed,
arguing that it was obviously the right move from a managerial standpoint. Hard
to argue with anything Sheehan wrote...but still--irrational or not--it makes
the Series less interesting for me if the possibility of a great, legendary
performance by a starting pitcher is now officially a thing of the past. And if
great and legendary has been redefined to include five innings and 75 pitches,
well, same difference.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 10/31/2021
I haven't seen Mr. Sheehan's piece. I would hate to make rules or policies that say, in effect, that the game is not allowed to change so as to get rid of old values and put new ones in place. Each generation has to make of the game what is best for them. But intuitively, I agree with you that we can't carelessly throw away concepts from the past like "no hitter". It's some sort of balancing act; this much of tradition must be preserved, this much may be discarded. But I don't have any organized way of thinking it through.
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Bill: On the Jays broadcast today, Pat Tabler said Alek Manoah "loves to compete." It struck me as one of those old-school statements that may have some essential truth to it or may be completely meaningless, I don't know. Could you play a sport professionally--any sport--and not love to compete? Is there a meaningful variance among players on that count?
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 10/3/2021
I would think so, yes. Some players are NOT highly competitive. You do get players on your team occasionally who just really don't like playing baseball. They liked doing it years ago, maybe, and they're good at it and making a lot of money, so they do it, but they don't really like it. They're spent. More specifically, you OFTEN get those guys in the minor leagues. One of the key things you look for in a draft pick, especially a HIGH draft pick, is how much he likes playing baseball. You look for that because playing baseball at a major league level is really, really hard, and if a player doesn't like playing the game, he'll just give up after a couple of years. Or less.
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Bill: Do you think a late peak helps or hurts a player's HOF chances? (Or maybe neither.) I was thinking about Dwight Evans, who Joe Posnanski listed today as the eighth best player not in the HOF, and whose best seasons were from age 29 to 35 or 36. I can see an argument on either side. It maybe hurts because by the time you peak, a lot of sportswriters have probably decided you aren't a HOF'er (the opposite transpired with Jim Rice). But it could conceivably help, too, in that your best seasons are still relatively fresh in voters' minds.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 12/10/2021
It would be a pretty easy thing to study, I think. I'll try to take a look at it.
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Bill: I was talking about Gary Sheffield on a message board, how his itinerant career may be hurting his HOF chances; HOF'ers tend to (I think, anyway) be strongly associated with one or two teams. Anyway, I then realized that with Sheffield, that lack of identification may be because he was so consistent wherever he went. Five seasons:
Question: Can you think of another player who had five seasons that good with five different teams?
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 1/8/2022
I'd be a little surprised if there is one. Let's see…Hornsby had great seasons with the Cardinals, Giants, Braves and Cubs, but I think he is one short.
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Bill: Would you have pulled Kershaw today? Or is that a pointless question unless you have as much first-hand information about the situation as Dave Roberts?
I'm pretty sure you once wrote--maybe more than once--that pitch-count in the abstract is meaningless, the important thing is how many pitches are thrown after a pitcher is tired. Seeing as Kershaw was seemingly sailing through the game, and had a six-run lead, my instinct is that he hadn't reached that point yet...but I know it's early in a season that had a late start to spring training.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 4/15/2022
No, I didn't write that, although I remember that somebody did…I read it somewhere. I don't know the right or wrong of it. The chance that he would have finished the Perfect Game is about 10%. Is a 10% chance of a perfect game a big enough thing to risk an injury that might devastate his season? It isn't JUST the pitch count; you're talking about an older pitcher, and a very early-season game after a shortened spring training. Not saying that he SHOULD have come out; I would just urge you to present the problem fully, rather than with a slant.
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Bill: Not a question, but I liked how you laid out the Kershaw game as a perfect storm of different factors that made it so controversial. I'd add one more: Kershaw's stature as a future inner-circle HOF'er (and one whose résumé has virtually everything except a perfect game). If he were a journeyman, I don't think the game would have drawn as much commentary (or at least as much impassioned advocacy on the leave-him-in side).
The perfect storm concept is something I would also very much apply to the O.J. case, 2008's Obama/Clinton nomination contest, and the 2012 AL MVP race between Cabrera and Trout. (How's that for a mixed bag?) Each one brought together a number of things people like to argue about into one complicated, messy package that had each side shouting down the other.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 4/21/2022
OK.
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Bill: I jokingly said on a message board that Wainwright pitched a 2022 version of a shutout today (6 IP), but then I thought, I don't know, maybe they should redefine what constitutes a shutout--either that, or just let it linger along as a ghost, a freak-show stat like the cycle or a triple play.
Has a prominent stat ever been redefined? All I can think of is the tinkering they've done with the definition of a save over the years.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 4/8/2022
They're all re-defined in their early years; it's just that that phase was over before you remember it in most cases. RBI were an official stat some time in the 1880s, I think as RRF (Runs Responsible For), then were dropped for 20 years, then were added back about 1910 but not listed as an official stat. Sac Flies were not RBIs in 1910, I think, and then they were. The definition of an Earned Run was changed early on. The definition of a pitcher's win was altered about 1915. For at least one year, I think about 5 years, Sacrifice Hits were re-defined to include any out that advanced a runner, bunt or not. GIDP in the NL were originally Hit into Double Play, and included, for example, if you hit a hard liner and a runner was doubled off, and then that was taken out of it. All new stats are tinkered with in their first 15-20 years.
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Bill: The internet tells me you once identified John Mayberry and Andre Thorton as the most similar players ever (Similarity Score of 964.8). Might Freddie Freeman and Paul Goldschmidt be even more similar, even though they have a slightly lower similarity score (948.8)?
1) Mayberry and
Thorton debuted 5 years apart; Freeman and Goldschmidt, one.
2) Mayberry had a
more concentrated prime than Thorton, who was more up and down; Freeman and
Goldschmidt are both more consistent across their entire careers.
3) Freeman (2.38)
and Goldschmidt (2.34) are almost dead even in MVP shares on Baseball
Reference.
4) Teams played for: Mayberry (4) and Thorton (3) played for different numbers of teams; Freeman and Goldschmidt are both on their second team. after many years with their first.
And then of course their stats, which are eerily similar--as are Mayberry's and Thorton's, but it just feels like Freeman and Goldschmidt are literally the same player to me, right now, marching in lockstep.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 5/22/2022
I do think of Freeman and Goldschmidt as a unit. But no two players even HAVE similarity scores until they are retired, so…
"Similarity" is an inherently subjective quality, thus there should not be any such thing as a "right" answer, but merely the right answer in this particular context, looked at in this particular way. I invented Similarity Scores with the notion that they would have fungible value systems; that is, that in each case, the person using the system would modify the system for the purpose of the study. I do that; every time I use the system--and I use it constantly--but I always re-invent it with new values, appropriate to the particular study. In one case, for example, players coming up in the same season might an appropriate element; in other cases it might be completely inappropriate, or even a negative. I've certainly done many studies, studies about how the game changes over time, which try to compare similar players from different eras, and when you do that, then coming up in the same season becomes a strong negative for the comparison, rather than a positive.
It's kind of the same thing that Tom has with WAR; I intended to Similarity system to be a malleable system that you use as you need to use it, just as Tango intended with WAR, but to other people, it's an "output" system that gives a set of data points, and what matters is not the system but the data points.
Two players that I always think of as peas in pod, for example, are Leon Wagner and Dick Stuart. If you just look at the similarity lists on Baseball Reference (which is my formula), they don't show up on each other's list (although Gus Zernial, for some reason, shows up as a similar player to each of them, but anyway…), so they don't rank as similar.
But:
Both players were power hitters, 30-homer, 100-RBI guys who hit for decent averages but not batting champion type guys.
Both were notoriously terrible fielders.
Both were colorful, quotable players, both among the MOST colorful players of the 1960s.
Both came to the majors in 1958 and both played their last games in 1969.
Their career numbers are roughly the same--batting average and OPS about the same.
Both had phenomenal seasons in the minor leagues in 1956, Wagner hitting .330 with 51 homers and driving in 166 runs at Danville, and Stuart hitting 66 homers and driving in 158 runs at Lincoln the same season.
Both came to the majors in the National League in 1958, and both had tremendous half-seasons the second half of 1958, Stuart hitting 16 homers and driving in 48 runs in 67 games for Pittsburgh, and Wagner hitting .313 with 13 homers, 35 RBI in 221 at bats for San Francisco.
Both, however, got traded to the American League, and both had their best seasons in the American League, Wagner being listed in the American League MVP voting in 1962, 1963, 1964 and 1966, and Stuart leading the AL in RBI in 1963, second in 1964, and being mentioned in the AL MVP voting those two seasons (as well as the NL vote in 1961).
Both had their best seasons playing for non-competitive or not-really-competitive teams in the American League.
Both had huge egos.
By that system that I outlined in the 1980s, they're not highly similar, but they ARE profoundly similar…one's an outfielder, the other a first baseman, one's a left-handed hitter, the other a right-handed hitter, one's black, one's white, one usually batted third, the other fourth, but they are profoundly similar, sort of the same guy in a different uniform. I could write the formula so that they wind up as most-similar to one another, and that would be just as accurate as the version that Baseball Reference uses.
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Bill: With all the Sibby Sisti talk, I've got to quote my very favourite line from Ball Four, prompted by the Pilots' one and only father-son/daughter game:
The kids beat the fathers 40-0, and Sibby Sisti said, "Forty runs, for crissakes, and nobody gets knocked down."
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 5/6/2022
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Bill -- Before the NBA final started, Nate Silver's 538 site had the Celtics as 83% favourites, based on their ELO system (don't know what the acronym stands for). Even to a casual basketball fan such as myself, this seemed very generous.
If it were you, would you just trust whatever system you had in place, or would you have made an adjustment for, say, the Warriors' obvious edge in playoff experience, or even for things not so quantifiable ("intangibles," I guess)--their inspiring comeback narrative (worst record in the league two years ago), the presence of Steph Curry, just the weirdness of favoring one team by so much (especially the team with the worse regular-season record and the home-court disadvantage).
Don't mean to second-guess, but on a message-board I'm on, even the hardcore basketball fans were dismissive of 538's 83% probability.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 6/18/2022
Well, sometimes you have time to work on the wrinkles, sometimes you don't. I don't have any idea what goes into that system. The director of Basketball Operations for the Celtics is a longtime friend of mine, so I was rooting for the Celtics, but I wouldn't say that I was ever 83% sure they would win. But, as Mario Chalmers used to say, you can't win a Championship without a Jayhawk on the roster.
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Bill: Judge led off for the Yankees today, third time in his career. He's got to be the tallest leadoff hitter ever, no? Tried Googling, no luck.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 6/6/2022
I would guess he's the tallest leadoff hitter ever. Is this the Yankees year, you think? They going to win 120 games, or hit a snag somewhere?
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Bill: I'll throw out a name for the best-player-acquired-for-the-postseason question: the Jays trading for David Cone in 1992.
The trade was made on Aug. 27, later than the Kluszewski trade just mentioned. I checked, and the Jays were 2.5 games up on the Orioles at the end of play that day, so you can't strictly say they got Cone for the postseason; no wild card then, so the Jays had to get there first.
But they did, and Cone was a huge part of that: he won four of his seven starts, posted a 2.55 ERA, and--symbolic, I know, but it sure felt real at the time--conveyed the message that management was ready to do whatever it took to finally win a World Series, after years of falling just short. He was a little shakier in the postseason, with two excellent starts and two that weren't very good.
They did give up Jeff Kent in the trade, but Roberto Alomar was doing just fine manning 2B…
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 7/23/2022
Thanks.
