What are ideal players for big parks?

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Curve Ball Dave

Agreed about the 80s Cardinals, but as a point of correction, their other power guy outside of Clark was George Hendrick.

I was talking more about the “big bat”; IIRC they handed that off to Clark. The 5 hole guy, yeah, went from Hendrick to Andy Van Slyke, although both had like 15 HR power...

[CBL-Commish]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

If memory serves, Tommy Herr set a record one season for most RBIs by a player who didn’t hit a homerun.

I swore that was true, too. He did have 110 RBI in an 8-homer season, but that's not even the highest total with less than 10 homers since WWII. His most RBI in a zero-homer season was 46.

Hughie Jennings of my Orioles had 121 RBI in a zero-homer season in 1896. He also had 19 walks that year with a .472 OBP. He hit .401 with 51 HBP. In '97 his teammate Willie Keeler became the only player to OPS 1.000 in a zero-homer season.

[NoOne]

you'd have to average out all the parks you'll see on the schedule, to maximize player-park causal relationships.

since that changes each year at least a bit... it's not feasible in a more than negligible way, imo. if it makes sense mathemetically, then sure...

the bigger thing to take out of this is that if oyu have a 'weird' stadium, it's going to be difficult to tailor a roster to your park without considering potentially large negative effects in more normal stadiums.


going even deeper, i'd only be worried about this relative to likely playoff teams and their stadiums. if i am going to maximize something, it'll be the winning probabilty in the playoffs rather than the regular season.

just as you should never compare a player to average or replacement for any meaningful assessment, if you want to make a winning team, lol. (excluding which crappy players you inevitably have.. it's great for evaluating those lower quality players.)


this is a bit of a game within a game and some luck... if you have a giant stadium and face off against a small stadium team, both of which are 'tuned' for their staiums, you better have home field advantage or it simply isn't going to add up in your favor no matter what. not that you can't still win, of course.

the volatility in wins in over 162 games is large... there are several teams every year that win 10-15 games more or less than they deserved relative to talent on team. all the top teams have a good shot at home field advantage, and luck accounts for a large portion of that overlap.

luck of who you face in playoffs... luck of how your 162 games went etc etc... by differentiating your roster based on a variable that isn't the same everywhere, you are now somewhat depending on how the cookie crumbles... and if it doesnt' crumble your way, your strategey does the exact opposite for your team, even if on average it's a plus overall. increased volatiltiy... more dependent upon luck.

i'm not a fan of large stadiums based on what i've seen in RL out of comerica park... just as i don't like circus attraction-like stadiums like fenway or NY's right field porch i could hit with a 60-degree lob wedge and a wiffle ball. flyball outs don't deserve to be HR

stadims should be standardized dimensions.. it's just insane not to. you end up with hills or flag poles out in the field of play for no reason whatsoever... LOL end up having your ashes tossed out of a plane over the field like Bump!

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by CBL-Commish

I swore that was true, too. He did have 110 RBI in an 8-homer season, but that's not even the highest total with less than 10 homers since WWII. His most RBI in a zero-homer season was 46.

Hughie Jennings of my Orioles had 121 RBI in a zero-homer season in 1896. He also had 19 walks that year with a .472 OBP. He hit .401 with 51 HBP. In '97 his teammate Willie Keeler became the only player to OPS 1.000 in a zero-homer season.

So... in researching this a little more I figured it must have been "in the modern era" but even there, Pie Traynor had a season where he hit 3 HR but drove in 121 batters. So... post-WW2 maybe?

According to his Wikipedia bio, he's the last player in the NL to drive in more than 100 people with fewer than 10 HRs (Paul Molitor had 9 and 113 in 1996), although I definitely remember reading about the "record", whatever it was, in the mid-80s when it was happening, not years later.

ETA: the best I can come up with is that he was the first person to do it in 35 years. The last guy to hit 100+ RBI with <10 HR was George Kell in 1950, and before him it was Dixie Walker in 1946 (one year before he threatened to quit over having to play on the same team as Jackie Robinson).

https://www.statmuse.com/mlb/ask?q=1...by+most+recent

[Curve Ball Dave]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

I was talking more about the “big bat”; IIRC they handed that off to Clark. The 5 hole guy, yeah, went from Hendrick to Andy Van Slyke, although both had like 15 HR power...

Prior to coming to St. Louis Hendrick was a solid 20-25 HR guy. He was silent but deadly. If you threw him anything middle out you were asking for big trouble, maybe not a home run, but a line drive into the right center gap or even down the right field line. This coming from a right handed batter with an extremely closed stance.

Van Slyke was an excellent all around athlete and player. He was totally overshadowed by Bonds when he played in Pittsburgh and he tends to be overlooked and under rated. Van Slyke could start for any championship team, then or now.

[CBL-Commish]

Originally Posted by Curve Ball Dave

Prior to coming to St. Louis Hendrick was a solid 20-25 HR guy. He was silent but deadly. If you threw him anything middle out you were asking for big trouble, maybe not a home run, but a line drive into the right center gap or even down the right field line. This coming from a right handed batter with an extremely closed stance.

Van Slyke was an excellent all around athlete and player. He was totally overshadowed by Bonds when he played in Pittsburgh and he tends to be overlooked and under rated. Van Slyke could start for any championship team, then or now.

Van Slyke was a very good player in the 80s. A little down-ballot MVP support a few years.

Unfortunately I remember his few months in Baltimore. The '95 Orioles had Van Slyke, Kevin Bass, Bobby Bonilla, Matt Nokes, Doug Jones, Jesse Orosco, Sid Fernandez, Jamie Moyer... that's more than 20 All Star games and a bunch of MVP and Cy Young votes among that group. And Bonilla and Orosco were the only ones who weren't a disaster. Van Slyke went 10-for-63 and was traded in June for the last four innings of Gene Harris. Bass had a .639 OPS. Moyer and Jones had ERAs over 5.00. Nokes hit .122. And Fernandez had a 7.39 ERA.

It was like a trainwreck version of the 1928 A's, right down to the playoff appearance the next year after almost all the old guys were gone.

[Curve Ball Dave]

Originally Posted by CBL-Commish

The '95 Orioles had Van Slyke, Kevin Bass, Bobby Bonilla, Matt Nokes, Doug Jones, Jesse Orosco, Sid Fernandez, Jamie Moyer...

That's a very good team....if it were 1986

[NoOne]

this stuff shouldn't be measured by RBI. it's a bad stat without context.

i don't have the link anymore, but there was an awesome artilce/blog about "rbi-opportunities" and the success rate... which is a much better metric when deciding if someone is good at driving in runs or not.

obviously, power drives in more runs, but if you swing your bat like a maniac, that won't translate well, either.

But, it had a chart of some crunched numbers showing %-success of driving in rns then played teh what-if game if they had the same opportunities as a traditional slugger like "miguel cabrera" which at that time was relevant ( )

there were more than a few instances where less powerful guys would have had many more RBI had they been batting 4th in their lineup. they were better at driving in runs, and if that holds up over time that is simply a fact. it doesn't matter if they hit 10hr or 50... althought it's easier when you hit 50, obviously.

john deer (tigers batter, early 90s, may have first name wronge for obviousl reasons) would be an example where 50hr might not even get you 100RBI. that's basically the prototype for today's power-hitter with no brain otherwise... swing hard, everytime. forget about the situation or what's best for the team, lol.

extrabase power and consistency is what a good rbi-producer is most likely to be, imo... i'd let the math dictate break-even / horizons for choices or thoughts... understanding the grey nearby those somewhat arbitrary lines, albeit based in reality and centered/balanced properly with good data collection.

this is where you focus on the overall results... either they consistently do it, or they do not. how many hr they hit is only a piece of that puzzle, even if it is a larger piece. you can do other things so poorly that it cancels out the positive in many contexts.

i think volatility is something that has increased with greater reliance on HR. you may score 20-30more runs a year, but what good does that do if they are bunched up and redundant relative to winning any single game?

(that was obvious with the deer-tigers team in teh early 90s with tettleton and fielder... sure, you'd have 20+ run games a couple times, but then the offense would disappear for a month... plus a pitching stuff with an ERA north of 5.00, lol)

i don't think the "hr-guy" is always the best choice, but i do believe they have the highest correlation before you look at other factors or results (assuming that data exists). it'd be dumb not to, but you cna't look at it as black and white.. it's a wide spectrum with numerous factors to consider... many possible correct answers... many many more wrong answers.

too often peole think of it as a binary choice.. it's not.

[Clovidequano Dovatha]

Are you thinking of Rob Deer, who mainly, if not entirely, played for the Brewers, if I remember correctly, NoOne? Just curious, that's all. CD out.

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by NoOne

this stuff shouldn't be measured by RBI. it's a bad stat without context.

i don't have the link anymore, but there was an awesome artilce/blog about "rbi-opportunities" and the success rate... which is a much better metric when deciding if someone is good at driving in runs or not.

obviously, power drives in more runs, but if you swing your bat like a maniac, that won't translate well, either.

But, it had a chart of some crunched numbers showing %-success of driving in rns then played teh what-if game if they had the same opportunities as a traditional slugger like "miguel cabrera" which at that time was relevant ( )

there were more than a few instances where less powerful guys would have had many more RBI had they been batting 4th in their lineup. they were better at driving in runs, and if that holds up over time that is simply a fact. it doesn't matter if they hit 10hr or 50... althought it's easier when you hit 50, obviously.

john deer (tigers batter, early 90s, may have first name wronge for obviousl reasons) would be an example where 50hr might not even get you 100RBI. that's basically the prototype for today's power-hitter with no brain otherwise... swing hard, everytime. forget about the situation or what's best for the team, lol.

extrabase power and consistency is what a good rbi-producer is most likely to be, imo... i'd let the math dictate break-even / horizons for choices or thoughts... understanding the grey nearby those somewhat arbitrary lines, albeit based in reality and centered/balanced properly with good data collection.

this is where you focus on the overall results... either they consistently do it, or they do not. how many hr they hit is only a piece of that puzzle, even if it is a larger piece. you can do other things so poorly that it cancels out the positive in many contexts.

i think volatility is something that has increased with greater reliance on HR. you may score 20-30more runs a year, but what good does that do if they are bunched up and redundant relative to winning any single game?

(that was obvious with the deer-tigers team in teh early 90s with tettleton and fielder... sure, you'd have 20+ run games a couple times, but then the offense would disappear for a month... plus a pitching stuff with an ERA north of 5.00, lol)

i don't think the "hr-guy" is always the best choice, but i do believe they have the highest correlation before you look at other factors or results (assuming that data exists). it'd be dumb not to, but you cna't look at it as black and white.. it's a wide spectrum with numerous factors to consider... many possible correct answers... many many more wrong answers.

too often peole think of it as a binary choice.. it's not.

This is a good post except for this BS

today's power-hitter with no brain otherwise... swing hard, everytime. forget about the situation or what's best for the team, lol.

People look at hitter statistics, but they don't look at the pitching.

Every no name middle reliever throws 95+ with a slider as good as anything anybody hitting in the 90's ever saw.

Sit back, wait for your pitch, and poke a few singles doesn't really work anymore.

Swing and hope you make contact with these insane projectiles being launched in your general direction is what works.