1974 Lou Brock

[joehart]

Originally Posted by BidPro

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.

It is probably not an easy way to balance the old timers vs. today’s game that is focused on measuring every aspect and further improving on every little area with technology, equipment, and highly focused training.
If you tilt the stats too much, 50% of the cards become irrelevant and there are already a lot of discussions about how the Live cards just don’t hold up well as you move up. If the developers further boast all the older cards, it will only increase that notion.

[Orcin]

It makes sense to me that the Perfect Leagues should be dominated by Hall of Fame player cards, and the bronze-gold leagues should be the domain of the bulk of the current players along with the cards representing good seasons from historical players.

Obviously, some current players will get into the top leagues, but that should be all-star, etc. cards from their peak seasons. Trout, Betts, Treinen and maybe a couple of others certainly deserve to be there for their 2018 seasons, but many current player cards are over-rated (example, the plethora of 2018 Live Diamond third basemen).

[BidPro]

It may be a bit of that. Brock's arm was up there with Mays and he caught everything, I am not sure as to why his numbers would be bad.

[atabakin]

Originally Posted by BidPro

It may be a bit of that. Brock's arm was up there with Mays and he caught everything, I am not sure as to why his numbers would be bad.

There's a quote that goes something along the lines of, "In God we trust. All others must bring data."

Our eyes lie more than numbers do.

[Splitter24]

Originally Posted by BidPro

It may be a bit of that. Brock's arm was up there with Mays and he caught everything, I am not sure as to why his numbers would be bad.

I can't really agree with you here. Brock was not much of a defensive outfielder. He wasn't a great judge of flyballs and he made double-digit errors in the outfield just about every year (which is really hard to do). His range factors were in line or below the league average for his position even with a bunch of innings being thrown by flyball pitchers like Gibson and Carlton.

If he really did catch everything and had an arm up there with Mays, he wouldn't have been a left fielder. You would have thought a guy fitting that description would've been in CF after Flood left or in RF. Instead, the Cardinals went with Jose Cruz in CF. And Cruz wasn't exactly a Gold Glove candidate. I haven't been able to find any source, be it contemporary press, scouting reports or statistical analysis that is complimentary about Brock's defense.

[Orcin]

Brock played center field as a rookie with the Cubs, but the Cardinals had Curt Flood. By the time that Flood left, Brock was established in left field and older. I would say he was a decent left fielder (league average). No way his arm was as good as Mays, but he had high assist numbers as a younger player. I would say he was somewhere between Splitter24 and BidPro, closer to BidPro's description before he turned 30 and closer to Splitter's after 30.

[Splitter24]

Brock did have many double digit assist years from left field. But the thing is, if you look up the left fielders who did that on a consistent basis in the post-WWII period, you get a laundry list of guys who didn't have very good arms. Guys like Time Raines, Barry Bonds. Gene Richards had a season where he had 20+ assists from LF (if you remember Gene Richards's throwing arm, you'll know how amazing that stat is). The only LF that I know of who was constantly reaching that assist level and had a good arm was Willie Stargell. Of course, Willie ran like a wounded water buffalo. So despite having a gun for an arm, teams were taking chances on him because it took him a while to get to the ball. Brock had a similar type of problem on the other side of the coin. Everyone knew Lou was going to get to the ball quickly once he tracked it. And I might even go so far as to say that his arm strength was above average for a LF. But his throwing accuracy was erratic enough for teams to feel comfortable taking the gamble. About a dozen times a year, the gamble didn't work.

tl;dr - Double digit assists in LF usually means a throwing issue of some kind. Double digit assists in RF usually means you have a serious arm.

[zrog2000]

Originally Posted by Splitter24

Brock did have many double digit assist years from left field. But the thing is, if you look up the left fielders who did that on a consistent basis in the post-WWII period, you get a laundry list of guys who didn't have very good arms. Guys like Time Raines, Barry Bonds. Gene Richards had a season where he had 20+ assists from LF (if you remember Gene Richards's throwing arm, you'll know how amazing that stat is). The only LF that I know of who was constantly reaching that assist level and had a good arm was Willie Stargell. Of course, Willie ran like a wounded water buffalo. So despite having a gun for an arm, teams were taking chances on him because it took him a while to get to the ball. Brock had a similar type of problem on the other side of the coin. Everyone knew Lou was going to get to the ball quickly once he tracked it. And I might even go so far as to say that his arm strength was above average for a LF. But his throwing accuracy was erratic enough for teams to feel comfortable taking the gamble. About a dozen times a year, the gamble didn't work.

tl;dr - Double digit assists in LF usually means a throwing issue of some kind. Double digit assists in RF usually means you have a serious arm.

Right, if teams run on a defender every time because they think his arm sucks, he'll still get a lot of assists. But that doesn't mean anything about how good he is. The guy with the best arm ever probably gets less assists.

[Splitter24]

Originally Posted by zrog2000

Right, if teams run on a defender every time because they think his arm sucks, he'll still get a lot of assists. But that doesn't mean anything about how good he is. The guy with the best arm ever probably gets less assists.

Actually, it doesn't quite work that way, either. There's no baseball equivalent to the cornerback in football who people don't throw at. Clemente would rack up 20 assists per year even though everybody knew how good his arm was. Jesse Barfield, same thing: 16-20 assists per year despite having an arm that should've been registered with the local authorities.

Just like a lot of numbers, raw outfield assist totals in of themselves have to be placed in context with the player and the position.

[zrog2000]

Originally Posted by Splitter24

Actually, it doesn't quite work that way, either. There's no baseball equivalent to the cornerback in football who people don't throw at. Clemente would rack up 20 assists per year even though everybody knew how good his arm was. Jesse Barfield, same thing: 16-20 assists per year despite having an arm that should've been registered with the local authorities.

Just like a lot of numbers, raw outfield assist totals in of themselves have to be placed in context with the player and the position.

It absolutely works like that today with a lot more data. Teams know who to run on and who not to. Maybe teams were really dumb 50 years ago over and over again, but I also find that hard to believe. After a certain point, it's just plain stupid to get thrown out again and again against someone with a great arm, even without any helpful data. Each assist is just about meaningless without analyzing what happened. If someone gets thrown out by 40 feet, the fielder deserves almost no credit because the assist was caused by being a terrible base runner.

And then you see an assist like this and it's worth about 10 normal assists because of how amazing it was. Other RFs probably throw out Kemp on that play about 1% of the time if that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ele_6M4rUHQ

[Splitter24]

Originally Posted by zrog2000

It absolutely works like that today with a lot more data. Teams know who to run on and who not to. Maybe teams were really dumb 50 years ago over and over again, but I also find that hard to believe. After a certain point, it's just plain stupid to get thrown out again and again against someone with a great arm, even without any helpful data. Each assist is just about meaningless without analyzing what happened. If someone gets thrown out by 40 feet, the fielder deserves almost no credit because the assist was caused by being a terrible base runner.

And then you see an assist like this and it's worth about 10 normal assists because of how amazing it was. Other RFs probably throw out Kemp on that play about 1% of the time if that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ele_6M4rUHQ

Actually, an assist is worth an assist. Sure, if you throw out the potential tying run at the plate to end the game, it might have more impact. But it's still one assist.

Seeing Dave Parker hose Brian Downing at the plate in the 1979 All Star Game didn't stop people from trying to run on him. Of course, Parker was almost as likely to throw it 20 rows into the stands as he was to throw a guy out. Having the data didn't stop people from running on Ichiro. Yasiel Puig, who has an excellent arm, throws out double digit runners every year (or projects out to for his partial seasons).And the data clearly didn't keep Kemp from trying for two against Mookie despite what we know about his throwing (off topic: I'm a Sox fan and I heart Mookie).

[zrog2000]

Originally Posted by Splitter24

Actually, an assist is worth an assist. Sure, if you throw out the potential tying run at the plate to end the game, it might have more impact. But it's still one assist.

Seeing Dave Parker hose Brian Downing at the plate in the 1979 All Star Game didn't stop people from trying to run on him. Of course, Parker was almost as likely to throw it 20 rows into the stands as he was to throw a guy out. Having the data didn't stop people from running on Ichiro. Yasiel Puig, who has an excellent arm, throws out double digit runners every year (or projects out to for his partial seasons).And the data clearly didn't keep Kemp from trying for two against Mookie despite what we know about his throwing (off topic: I'm a Sox fan and I heart Mookie).

If you're a Sox fan, then you should certainly know that Betts' arm hasn't gotten worse over the last 3 seasons, when he had 14 assists in 2016, 8 in 2017 and 5 in 2018. Teams stop testing arms when they know how good it is.

[Splitter24]

Originally Posted by zrog2000

If you're a Sox fan, then you should certainly know that Betts' arm hasn't gotten worse over the last 3 seasons, when he had 14 assists in 2016, 8 in 2017 and 5 in 2018. Teams stop testing arms when they know how good it is.

Bett's arm certainly hasn't gotten worse. I agree. But Puig still throws out double digit runners just like every year he's been in the league. Do teams not know how good his arm is?

Edit: I went and found some stats on Baseball Reference that are pretty interesting (well, at least to me). Under the advanced fielding metrics, they have a section that shows different situations such as trying to go first to third on a hit to a particular rightfielder or how many times a runner was on 3rd with less than 2 outs and if he tagged and scored/was thrown/held up on balls hit to individual outfielders, etc. Anybody who was thrown out in those situations was consider a "kill." Under these attempts to take an extra base, Betts threw out 1.8% of these runners. Puig threw out 4%. That's the same ratio of their overall assists, too. In other words, runners were just as likely to try to tag and score, stretch a single into a double, go 1st to 3rd, on either player. But Puig threw out a little more than double the runners. It's only one season, sure.

I wonder if Betts assists have gone down partly because of zrog2000's reason that they've learned about his arm. After all, he was a minor league second baseman. Not the type of guy that you would imagine would have a strong arm. And he certainly doesn't have the "traditional" RF arm that Puig does, the long-distance howitzer. As can be seen in the video, Betts gets off his throws so quickly and accurately. He's not the wind up and throw a missile type of guy.

Anyway, I've hijacked this thread a bit. Sorry.

[BidPro]

I sold off Mays, put in Brock. Brock's hitting .330 with 30+stolen bases. I may sell Judge off too. He has done nothing since I got him. I put Ichiro in and got better results. I am trying to figure out how to play the game besides the rating. Judge was really good at striking out for me.

I may get rid of Goldschimdt too. 4 HRs and 30 somethings rbis. in 90 games. I kind of thought about tanking to get dropped a level or 2. Win a low level WS is better right?

[BidPro]

Did you happen to compare the 1974 season defensively of Brock to the Gold Glove National League outfielders? Brock's defensive numbers were identical to Bobby Bonds who won a GG. Paul Blair was a top American League outfielder.

[<Pion>]

Originally Posted by BidPro

Did you happen to compare the 1974 season defensively of Brock to the Gold Glove National League outfielders? Brock's defensive numbers were identical to Bobby Bonds who won a GG. Paul Blair was a top American League outfielder.

Quickly checked the range (RF/9) of all starting LFers in the NL and could only find three lower than Brock, and one or two of those were not full time LFers splitting time at other positions. The top RF/9 was Dave Winfield and Pete Rose (2.36 and 2.22, Brock was 1.96). Winfield played all three positions so not a large sample at LF. I did not take the time to consider fielding pct and assists. I could be wrong, but I don't think GG is the always the best yardstick.

[zrog2000]

Originally Posted by BidPro

Did you happen to compare the 1974 season defensively of Brock to the Gold Glove National League outfielders? Brock's defensive numbers were identical to Bobby Bonds who won a GG. Paul Blair was a top American League outfielder.

In 1974, they probably only considered errors and assists (and reputation) for gold gloves and not range. Range is by far the most important factor for fielding.

[BidPro]

It is the same now as it was then.

The game may have different factors but why is Ichiro so low, especially with eye and discipline. I know he gets screwed because he doesn't hit home runs. I am going with the development of this game has biases. There's no way to explain how Aaron Judge is better than Ichiro at year two of their major league careers. Look at Tony Gwynn's card as well. It just seems that homeruns are considered more.

[<Pion>]

Originally Posted by BidPro

It is the same now as it was then.

The game may have different factors but why is Ichiro so low, especially with eye and discipline. I know he gets screwed because he doesn't hit home runs. I am going with the development of this game has biases. There's no way to explain how Aaron Judge is better than Ichiro at year two of their major league careers. Look at Tony Gwynn's card as well. It just seems that homeruns are considered more.

In the past, the triple crown stats (BA,HR,RBI) were about as far as people went when evaluating a player, and for many, they could not get past the BA in seeing a player's worth (valuing a high average player over a player who made up for a low average with walks and extra base hits). Most of the analytics used today make more of an attempt to evaluate a players overall contribution to the team. OPS (OBP+SLG) is probably the minimum that should be looked at, while other stats such as RC27, WAR, wOBA and others incorporate things like SH, SF, SB, CS, GDP to try to get a full value of a player's contributions.

When looking at the seasons represented by some of the player's cards in PT and using oWAR so as to not bring defense into the picture (but still giving Brock and Suzuki credit for their baserunning), it's easy to see why it's hard to value Brock/Suzuki over a player like Judge.

Brock 1974: 4.0
Suzuki 2001: 6.2
Suzuki 2004: 6.1
Judge 2017: 7.2
Judge 2018: 3.9 (hurt by playing in only 112 games)

It looks far worse when just considering OPS (OBP+SLG) and not using stolen bases...

Brock 1974: .749
Suzuki 2001: .838
Suzuki 2004: .869
Judge 2017: 1.049
Judge 2018: .919

It's only when you look at just batting averages that the question comes up regarding Brock and Suzuki being better than Judge...

Brock 1974: .306
Suzuki 2001: .350
Suzuki 2004: .372
Judge 2017: .284
Judge 2018: .278

This pattern holds up in PT as can be seen by the following numbers of actual stats achieved in a very large sample size using the following categories: BA/OBP/SLG/OPS/RC27

Brock 1974: .265/.305/.349/.654/3.45
Suzuki 2001: .295/.316/.385/.701/4.03
Suzuki 2004: .303/.331/.372/.703/4.49
Judge 2017: .237/.358/.444/.802/5.54
Judge 2018: .238/.345/.402/.748/4.97

[chazzycat]

Originally Posted by BidPro

It is the same now as it was then.

The game may have different factors but why is Ichiro so low, especially with eye and discipline. I know he gets screwed because he doesn't hit home runs. I am going with the development of this game has biases. There's no way to explain how Aaron Judge is better than Ichiro at year two of their major league careers. Look at Tony Gwynn's card as well. It just seems that homeruns are considered more.

Why should Ichiro have a good eye rating? His walk rate, which is what that rating represents, was always below average.


I think you are just getting too hung up on the "overall rating". It really doesn't matter that much...just makes those players cheaper. Go ahead and play Ichiro...he is actually a very popular choice.