How to Judge a 1600 Rbi career.

[tejdog1]

This anti-walk movement is kinda disturbing to me.

[Curve Ball Dave]

Originally Posted by tejdog1

Swing the bat, who cares if you strike out?

Not saying the guy in the OP did, he actually didn't, but... I mean, you'd be OK with someone being uber hacktastic? Jeff Francoeur like?

No, not another Jeff Francouer and that's why he's in the PCL right now.

But give me a guy who, when there's runners to drive in and the batter has the ability to do so, jumps on good pitches rather than takes them and tries to drive those good pitches somewhere to drive in those baserunners.

[sc_superstar]

The guy is definately the good but not great type. Its not a crime if he does or doesnt get in, its a very borderline call. He has some solid numbers and some not solid numbers.

I personally would say no, just because other than the RBI's he didnt do enough to justify a HOF vote for me.

But if you are really unsure I would use contributions to the team as a sort of deciding factor.

Was he a monster in the playoffs? Leading a team to a WS or at least into the playoffs? Any individual awards or multiple all star games of note?

Sometimes looking at a single stat or a small group of stats can be misleading

My example is a player in my online league.

3451 Hits 3 Batting Titles 5 Gold Gloves at SS and counting
seems like a sure fire hall of famer?
but of the hits he only has 301 Doubles, 6 triples, 59 HR's and 13 Stolen Bases!
His career BA is .315 but his OPS is only .727 and OPS+ is 95 he has 2 seasons of over 5 WAR and thats from an ELITE defender (19/17/20/17 and 19 SS (out of 20)rating at age 38 +160.8ZR for his career at SS)

[Mancandy]

Originally Posted by frangipard

Given the OPS+ figures, he looks to me like a very good, but not truly great, hitter; but he had a long and durable career, and that is not to be ignored: reliability counts. It depends on the context and narrative behind those numbers: Was he a core member of four pennant winning teams, or just the best player on a perennial loser? A plus defender, or a liability? A frequent all-star, or constantly overshadowed at his position by others? Did he have some kind of backstory (heroically overcame injury/troubled childhood/etc.?*) Was a he a prince of a guy, always helping the rookies, or a clubhouse cancer perpetually bitching about his contract? Did he have a signature postseason moment? Was he MVP in '41 or '43?

Assuming 2-4 positive answers to the above, I'd say yes to HOF.

This sums it up nicely. His numbers certainly have him in the HOF conversation, but a definitive answer depends on the rest of the story. How good his teams were and any awards he won would really make the difference. If he won a few MVPs and took his team to the World Series a couple times in 40-43, and was regularly an all-star afterwards(44, 46, 47, 50), that's a completely different story than a guy who was an all-star a few times on bad or average teams and then spent the rest of his career as a decent hitter. The former is a HOFer, the latter is not.

The one thing we do know about Les is he spent his whole career on one team, which can definitely help.. That can be the difference between a Jeff Bagwell type career and an Andres Galarraga type career, which is a difference of 50%+ and 4.1% of votes in HOF voting. (Not saying their numbers were identical, but if Bagwell spent his career going from team to team and Galarraga spent his whole career in one city, Bagwell definitely doesn't get 10 times as many HOF votes on their first ballots. And Les here seems pretty similar to both.)

HOF or not, that's still a very good career, any team could use a player like that.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Curve Ball Dave

No, not another Jeff Francouer and that's why he's in the PCL right now.

But give me a guy who, when there's runners to drive in and the batter has the ability to do so, jumps on good pitches rather than takes them and tries to drive those good pitches somewhere to drive in those baserunners.

Guys who tend to jump on pitches don't usually distinguish between good and bad pitches to jump on. Guys with a good enough eye to wait for good pitches to jump on also typically draw a lot of walks. It's not an either or situation.

[tejdog1]

The best hitters in baseball will generally have a fair amount (10+%) of walks.

Vladimir Guerrero is a freak of nature.

Quicky FanGraphs search, top hitters by wRC+ (weighted runs created, based on normalizing wOBA) aggregated from 2010-2014, of the top 30 hitters, 20 have walk rates of 10+%

http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.asp...rs=0&sort=17,d

[Curve Ball Dave]

Originally Posted by tejdog1

The best hitters in baseball will generally have a fair amount (10+%) of walks.

Because pitchers don't give them good pitches to hit, if they can help it. It's not because they went up to the plate trying to wait out a walk.

[Carlton]

Originally Posted by Curve Ball Dave

That doesn't mean anything except he jumped on strikes and hit them hard somewhere. No one ever became a Hall of Famer because he waited out a lot of walks.

Hank Aaron didn't walk a lot either (never a 100 walk seson) because he hit the snot out of the strikes he saw. Have fun trying to hold that against him.

Perfect assesment

This player hit in a lot runs by making contact, I am certain his outs were also productive

Your #1 and #3 hitter, sure, let them have very good OBP, but your 4 and 5, they are better when they are like this player

[Carlton]

Originally Posted by tejdog1

This anti-walk movement is kinda disturbing to me.

What?

What is anti walk movement? Do you mean people who understand baseball that know you need a variety of player types to win?

I am glad the myopic view mentality is going away, 10 years ago all you heard were Bill James parrots saying the inaccurate "walk is good as hit" and now Bill James changes his stance and no one even questions it.

Really, here is a plausible scenario that can happen (and I've seen it)
Players up to bat
Walk
K
Walk
K
Walk
K

"What a great lineup, they can draw walks!"

0 runs on the board

Mike Trout, Miggy Cabrera, David Wright
All players that will take a walk when they are pitched around, but go up looking to put the ball in play

[24Rocks]

Originally Posted by frangipard

That isn't a realistic picture, its stacking the deck.

The question is not "BB vs. 2B" -- nobody in their right mind would choose anything but the double. The question is "BB vs. (2B AND all the outs made swinging at iffy pitches)." A guy with a .314 OBP is clearly making a lot of outs swinging at pitches he could let go, and that has to be subtracted from his contributions.


A lot of it has to do with the league environment and the team structure. I tend to build teams that look like Whitey Herzog's Cardinals squads: speed, defense, and one or two big bats in the middle of the order. If I only have one good hitter, I'd just as soon he swing, because I don't have a ton of confidence in the guy behind him. OTOH, if the guy behind him slugs .500 himself, I'd just as soon you take the borderline pitches and give him a shot.


Given the OPS+ figures, he looks to me like a very good, but not truly great, hitter; but he had a long and durable career, and that is not to be ignored: reliability counts. It depends on the context and narrative behind those numbers: Was he a core member of four pennant winning teams, or just the best player on a perennial loser? A plus defender, or a liability? A frequent all-star, or constantly overshadowed at his position by others? Did he have some kind of backstory (heroically overcame injury/troubled childhood/etc.?*) Was a he a prince of a guy, always helping the rookies, or a clubhouse cancer perpetually bitching about his contract? Did he have a signature postseason moment? Was he MVP in '41 or '43?

Assuming 2-4 positive answers to the above, I'd say yes to HOF.



* A guy from the DR with the name "Les Musselwhite?" I'm saying yes to "interesting backstory."

He was MVP both Seasons and 2045 World Series Hit game 3 tieing HR in top of the ninth, in a game we won, Help my Hacksawed Pitching staff get another win in a tough series which would go 7 games, All rookie SP or call up guys lost my top 3 SP to injures in august 4 days apart and game one of WS so it was a pretty big hit for me. 10 time all-star core player in toughest time in club history with me at the helm only 7 WS titles for him. Never was playoff MVP but was close in 41.

If you exclude the #1 overall pick of his draft year whos stats would be better if he didn't go to japan (he was also in my minors to) he is the best play from his draft class 38 overall pick and he did have 112 SF and 3 SH.

[Bub13]

So he was probably your best player on teams that won 7 World Series titles? (I did read that right, yes?) Seems like he'd definitely be in the Hall, counting his stats and his championships. Seems like HoF voters in the Big Four sports give extra weight to guys from multiple championship winners.

[24Rocks]

Originally Posted by Mancandy

This sums it up nicely. His numbers certainly have him in the HOF conversation, but a definitive answer depends on the rest of the story. How good his teams were and any awards he won would really make the difference. If he won a few MVPs and took his team to the World Series a couple times in 40-43, and was regularly an all-star afterwards(44, 46, 47, 50), that's a completely different story than a guy who was an all-star a few times on bad or average teams and then spent the rest of his career as a decent hitter. The former is a HOFer, the latter is not.

The one thing we do know about Les is he spent his whole career on one team, which can definitely help.. That can be the difference between a Jeff Bagwell type career and an Andres Galarraga type career, which is a difference of 50%+ and 4.1% of votes in HOF voting. (Not saying their numbers were identical, but if Bagwell spent his career going from team to team and Galarraga spent his whole career in one city, Bagwell definitely doesn't get 10 times as many HOF votes on their first ballots. And Les here seems pretty similar to both.)

HOF or not, that's still a very good career, any team could use a player like that.

Well these are the teams he was on and he had 3 players from 2042 (2 of them since 2039) who have .378 .406 .448 OBP hitting a head of him from 2039 till 2047 then injurys and other players but 2051 his last good year they were batting 1-2 les-4 and my ball part isnt a HR park persay .995 RHB but it is a 2B park 1.120.

[24Rocks]

Originally Posted by Carlton

What?

What is anti walk movement? Do you mean people who understand baseball that know you need a variety of player types to win?

I am glad the myopic view mentality is going away, 10 years ago all you heard were Bill James parrots saying the inaccurate "walk is good as hit" and now Bill James changes his stance and no one even questions it.

Really, here is a plausible scenario that can happen (and I've seen it)
Players up to bat
Walk
K
Walk
K
Walk
K

"What a great lineup, they can draw walks!"

0 runs on the board

Mike Trout, Miggy Cabrera, David Wright
All players that will take a walk when they are pitched around, but go up looking to put the ball in play

UM Jose Bautista is one of the best at that

[24Rocks]

Originally Posted by Bub13

So he was probably your best player on teams that won 7 World Series titles? (I did read that right, yes?) Seems like he'd definitely be in the Hall, counting his stats and his championships. Seems like HoF voters in the Big Four sports give extra weight to guys from multiple championship winners.

The best hitter on most of those early teams and in 2051 kinda carried our sucking team to the post season.

[sc_superstar]

if he was a catalyst that pushed the team over then that would be enough to give him the vote

[jaysdailydose]

7 world titles as your best guy? I was leaning no, but is now an unquestioned yes for me, especially with you saying he carried the team more than once.

Thank you for sharing!

[JMDurron]

Yeah, the postseason story puts him over the top for me. I've gone from "sure, because the competition doesn't look great in that league" to "even in MLB today, he'd get in", although, of course, being on consistently good teams really takes some of the steam out of the RBI argument itself. It's like if Fred McGriff played on the 1996, and 1998-2000 Yankees teams with the same stats.

[24Rocks]

Originally Posted by JMDurron

Yeah, the postseason story puts him over the top for me. I've gone from "sure, because the competition doesn't look great in that league" to "even in MLB today, he'd get in", although, of course, being on consistently good teams really takes some of the steam out of the RBI argument itself. It's like if Fred McGriff played on the 1996, and 1998-2000 Yankees teams with the same stats.

With the players that were batting ahead of him ya just a wee bit of a advantage.

[tejdog1]

Dude won 12 WS titles and put up good numbers doing it. I think he's a HoFer even though his raw batting stats aren't ideal.

[chucksabr]

Of all the major league analogs, this guy's career looks probably closest to Andre Dawson:

Player	         HR	RBI	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS	OPS+
Musselwhite	437	1663	.283	.314	.516	.830	122
Dawson	        438	1591	.279	.323	.482	.805	119

Is that a Hall of Famer? You tell me.