1974 Lou Brock
 

How is a 1974 Lou Brock rated at a 65? Seriously, who designed the flawed system to make this happen! There is more to baseball than striking out 200 times and hitting 40 homeruns.



His defensive numbers alone should make him an 80. Then add in his speed, batting average, on-base & stolen bases. Oh, and he scored over 100 runs.



I have to ask, who is your baseball historian? Someone screwed up here big time.



Lou Brock is/was a much better player than Aaron Judge or Stanton.

You should just take advantage of the fact that he is so cheap and play him.

Exactly. I can understand taking exception to a player's individual category ratings if you don't agree with them (though the majority are explainable), but if the overall rating is low, make use of it and say thank you! (Unless you get them in a pack and wish they would sell for higher)

Yeah, you lost me here. Show me any defensive metric that says Brock was anything better than a mediocre left fielder.

Totally agree, Brock was never anywhere near a top defensive player. Although I do recall thinking Strat-O-Matic were a bit cruel in rating him a 4 back in 1974.

Brocks best year was 5.3 WAR and Judge put up 8.2 his rookie year. Judge plays good defense and has a career .400 OBP...he's not all HR & strikeouts like you imply.

Bill James in his revised Historical Baseball Abstract said, “Brock was…well, not as bad in left as Lonnie Smith, but never very good.”

I miss the humor of Bill James and the excitement of getting his yearly Baseball Abstract prior to the start of the new season. It was hard to wait for it sometimes.

One of my favorite comments was one he made about SS Bill Russell... Something like "the end to a long and mediocre career"

Seeing both Lonnie Smith and Bill James reminds me of possibly the funniest things I can remember in a Bill James Abstract. When talking about Lonnie (Skates), Jame said something about Smith being so bad consistently, that he was good at being bad (recovering). He said that when Lonnie would miss a ball and it would bounce off his head, he was able to calculate the exact direction and distance the ball would go and could quickly recover to chase it down faster than the normal player could recover from the miss play. I'm not doing it justice as it was genius on James' part. Tried to google it but couldn't find it, though there was a mention of James once writing that Smith could have a post-retirement career teaching "defensive recovery and cost containment"

If I heard Kris Jardine correctly (in his weekly recap), there are some goals to further improve the stats of defensive players. So Brock may see an improvement for OOTP20.

Also, everyone should keep in mind that players get adjusted toward 2010.

For some players this works in their favor for others it may not be helping their ratings.
Example: RA Dickey and his movement rating is further pulled down to a point where he is only acceptable from Bronze to Gold (Diamond if he has a good year).

That is especially needed for the older players. It´s amazing to me how guys who were known by their contemporaries as superb fielders, such as Speaker and Sisler, could have such poor ratings. It isn´t Speaker´s fault he didn´t have a glove the size of Montana, so why penalize him for this?

yeah, hopefully they improve those defensive stats a decent amount.... can't say I've ever sat down to do a like-for-like comparison of fielding stats for old time players vs their contemporaries, so not sure how Speaker matches up against the other OF of his time as far as errors/fielding pct/etc... but if you just compare raw numbers across time, that might explain part of where the low ratings are coming from....

Speaker career OF errors/fielding pct: 222 / .970 (in 22 seasons)

vs someone modern known for his defense....

Andruw Jones career OF errors/fielding pct: 50 / .990 (in 17 seasons)


completely different times/field conditions/equipment/etc, but just from raw numbers a huge difference.... but still, I'd like those old time players to perform a bit better in the field as I have a team full of 'em :laugh:

I have to imagine most of the difference is this:

https://i.ebayimg.com/thumbs/images/...00-/s-l225.jpg

https://www.baseballsavings.com/wcss...137181/1-t.jpg

As you can probably guess from my avatar, I am all for giving Brock all the recognition he deserves :)

The fields were little more than pastures too.

And they had to walk uphill 10 miles in the snow just to get there!

Guys, this is not an "old timers vs new guys" argument. Try looking at some players from Brocks era who had the same equipment and whatnot. He was just not a good fielder.

Brock, 1961-1979:
https://i.imgur.com/zJC2CRU.jpg

Paul Blair, 1964-1980:
https://i.imgur.com/nOL7EKu.jpg

That is the defensive component of WAR from Fangraphs.

At least in this iteration, the 1974 Brock card is basically unplayable beyond Bronze level. He is a mediocre defender in OOTP, and when I had him on my themed Cardinals team, he never produced higher than a 650 OPS.

Not a comment on who he was as an actual player, just as an OOTP card. I think there is a lot of room for a different Brock card at least at Silver, hopefully a card that has him closer to peak and not as a 35 year old at the end of his career.

A peak all-time legend Brock would be really nice.

I am playing him! I am partial to older players. Heck, I gave Sale card away cause he sucked for me.

Brocks on pace for 160 stolen bases (more like 100 by the season's end). I just think when a player performs overall for 20 + seasons that should mean more than 52 home runs in a season. I still don't get why Willie Mays after three seasons had all time lows based on career numbers. But JD Martinez (who is not even close to Mays) puts up mostly good seasons. It seems (just my observation) current players are favored.