Joe Cronin

[kebecois666]

he is list as a catcher but Baseball reference says he never play that position in 17 season

https://www.baseball-reference.com/p...ronijo01.shtml


there is way too much catcher now i know why

[HumanRainDelay]

Yes, if you are wanting a more historically accurate performance from those old time players in your sims, there are numerous settings that you will want to consider. Since Cronin was around six foot tall in the 1920s and evidently had a cannon arm, it makes sense that he played as a prospect catcher for 99 games one year, and then 90 games another season in the minors before establishing himself as a shortstop.

[joefromchicago]

This roused my curiosity. I never knew that Cronin played catcher at any level of competition, but sure enough, BBRef says that he played behind the plate for 90 games when he was with New Haven of the Eastern League in 1926. But that didn't make any sense, as that was the only year that he is ever listed as playing catcher.

So I dug through some old issues of The Sporting News online and there's no mention of Cronin during 1925-27 playing any position other than second base, which is where he was being considered by the Pirates. But I also found a mention of a guy named Cronin who was a catcher for the Providence club of the EL in the same year - 1926. Turns out this was Bill Cronin, a catcher who had a long career in the minors and who played briefly in the majors. But BBRef shows that, in 1926, he played all year at shortstop.

Well, that doesn't make any sense either. Bill Cronin played his entire career as a catcher, except for one year in the EL, when BBRef says he played all season as a shortstop, while Joe Cronin played almost his entire career as an infielder, except for that same year in the EL, when he played all season as a catcher. To me, the conclusion is fairly obvious: BBRef got Bill Cronin's stats mixed up with Joe Cronin's stats. A check of the New Haven stats for that year seem to bear that out. New Haven has three catchers listed as playing a total of 246 games, which is about 90 games more than the team played that year. On the other hand, there's only 38 games listed for shortstop, which is about 100 games shy of the team total (I don't have the EL schedule or final standings for 1926, but in 1925 and 1927 the EL schedule was 154 games).

I am reasonably confident, therefore, that Joe Cronin never played catcher, and that he probably played shortstop for New Haven in 1926, while Bill Cronin played catcher all season for Providence. QED. BBRef, consequently, is wrong, which means that OOTP is too. I'll drop a note to the historical rosters team so that this can be corrected in time for the next version of the game.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by kebecois666

he is list as a catcher but Baseball reference says he never play that position in 17 season

https://www.baseball-reference.com/p...ronijo01.shtml


there is way too much catcher now i know why

Please don't post the same question in two different forums.

[No Pepper]

joe, is the historical rosters team primarily concerned with the major league database or the minor league as well? In a project I'm trying to get off the ground (OOTP20) I'm importing minor league players from the dead ball era and finding more than enough players importing out of position. From memory this seems to be common among players who seem to have been assigned "generic" catcher, SS and outfielder fielding stats that don't match up with real playing time. I don't know if this is a relic "fill-in" for missing stats that Spritze used or what, but when trying to construct historic minor league rosters, one runs into roster construction issues without having to dig deeper with manual edits.

For those that use this database alongside the major league database, there's got to be a lot of players swept under the rug (under utilized, forgotten, misrepresented) for this reason. This may only be an issue in the deadball era where fielding stats and position assignments are incomplete, and is not seen as much in more modern eras.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by No Pepper

joe, is the historical rosters team primarily concerned with the major league database or the minor league as well?

They're interested in both, but the information for the minor leagues just isn't as reliable or detailed as it is for the majors. Evidently, BBRef has a lot of problems in this regard - it's not just a case of the confused Cronins. But that's understandable. BBRef is relying on spotty information collected, I assume, by amateur researchers. OOTP then relies on this information when formulating its ratings. So it goes from printed source to amateur researcher to BBRef to OOTP. At any stage in that process an error can creep in, and with tens of thousands of player-seasons worth of stats, it's difficult to check them all for accuracy.

That's not a knock against anyone involved in the process. Spritze did a magnificent job with the OOTP rosters - he'll be difficult to replace. And I can't say anything bad about amateur researchers - after all, I'm one myself . I think the best thing we can do is continue to raise these issues whenever we find them.

As for players importing with the "wrong" positions, that might be the result of incorrect stats or it might just be that the player played a different position in the minors. The problem, as I understand it, arises when a player imports with the "wrong" position and then can never develop out of it, as seems to be the case with Joe Cronin. If you start in 1925, he imports as an infielder and develops as an infielder. But if you start in 1926 he imports as a catcher and stays in catcher-development hell for the rest of his career. That's probably true for a lot of other players who started out at one position but then became much more successful at another, like George Sisler or Jimmie Foxx. Maybe those kinds of players should have some sort of rating for every position that they would eventually play, even if it's the lowest rating possible, just so they're not forced into one path depending on when they were imported.