BBF Progressive HoF Election: 2009

[Ubiquitous]

If it was easy to find a DH with an OPS+ of 120-130 then more than 7 of the 14 teams would be doing it. That's the bottom line here. Not what some great fielding 2Bman COULD do as a DH, but what the actual DHs did do as a DH.

What it should show you is that finding a postional player that can hit is far more tougher than finding someone who can simply hit and that teams value positional far more than they value designated hitters.

Secondly nothing is EASY at the major league level, everything is relative. Could every single team in the league get a player that has a 120+ OPS+ or greater level of skill for the DH spot? Yes. Could they find a positional player to replace the guy who switched? Generally no. So the spot that is valuable and hard to fill isn't the DH spot it is the positional spot.

[Ubiquitous]

Nobody is arguing that.

The argument here is whether it is REALISTICALLY easy to get an OPS+ of 120-130 from your DH.

And it is. What isn't realistically easy to get is a positional player that can put up an 120+ OPS+.

[Ubiquitous]

Plus, you have to look at this in the real world. If you take a young star who plays 3B or 2B and tell him he's not playing the field anymore you are probably going to cause some clubhouse problems. You can't just look at players as computer chips that can be interchanged at will with no residual problems.
.

You mean like Edgar Martinez?

[SavoyBG]

You mean like Edgar Martinez?

Martinez was one player who clearly had no problem with not playing the field.

[Ubiquitous]

What would you rather have? Edgar Martinez at DH or Edgar Martinez at 3B and Randy Johnson batting? Which scenario provides more production for the team?

The argument isn't that Edgar Martinez is the best DH of all time so he should be in this HOF. It's that he is one of the greatest HITTERS of all time, so he should be in the HOF. If you want to give some kind of discount for his lack of playing the field, give him Harmon Killebrew's dWAR as a penalty. That still puts him well into our hall.

But in order for Edgar to be considered one of the greatest hitters of all time we have to compare him to everybody that hit and played the field. That is an apples and oranges comparison.

[Ubiquitous]

Martinez was one player who clearly had no problem with not playing the field.

So then the word "probably" in your statement should have been "might", perhaps?

[jjpm74]

But in order for Edgar to be considered one of the greatest hitters of all time we have to compare him to everybody that hit and played the field. That is an apples and oranges comparison.

So is comparing AL DH era pitchers and NL DH era pitchers, but the same people who have a problem with comparing Martinez to other hitters seem to have absolutely no problem making this comparison. Also, how do you score the runs you need to win games in baseball? The ones that show up on the scorecards involve taking a piece of wood and hitting a sphere made of thread and leather. If someone cannot do this well, their team will suffer and they will lose games.

[Ubiquitous]

I'm not sure why anyone would have a problem with comparing pitchers.

Also, how do you score the runs you need to win games in baseball? The ones that show up on the scorecards involve taking a piece of wood and hitting a sphere made of thread and leather. If someone cannot do this well, their team will suffer and they will lose games.

Which has nothing to do with comparing Edgar to his peers on a level playing field.

[jjpm74]

I'm not sure why anyone would have a problem with comparing pitchers.

Are you being facetious here? What is the OBVIOUS difference between the AL and the NL today in regards to pitchers?

[DoubleX]

If it was easy to find a DH with an OPS+ of 120-130 then more than 7 of the 14 teams would be doing it. That's the bottom line here. Not what some great fielding 2Bman COULD do as a DH, but what the actual DHs did do as a DH.

I'm sure that John Elway could have been a very good strong safety, but nobody is going to move him off of QB to play safety just like nobody is going to move Longoria off of 3B to DH.

Should we rate the defense of LFers based upon the players who actually played LF or should we say that there are loads of CFers who would be great LFers so therefore it is easy to find a great defensive LFer? This is what you want to do with the DH position.....ignore what really happened there because there are other players who are not playing DH but who could do a good job there is they did.

You're still completely ignoring that it takes no special skillset to DH. It take a very different skillset to be a QB and to be a safety. It takes a different skillset to be a catcher than to be a shortstop. However, what is one thing that all baseball positional players have in common? They all have to hit. Now what you're talking about is how teams choose to use players. Sure a team would rather have Robinson Cano play 2B than DH because he's more valuable at 2B. But when you make that point, how is that any different than a team choosing to have Mike Piazza C than play DH? It's exactly the same - Piazza has more value as a C and that's why his teams wouldn't use him as a DH. Same as Cano and same as Longoria.

The point is that because there are 40-50 players in a given year that can have a 120 OPS+, there are 40-50 players that could in theory make a suitable DH. Just because teams don't use many of those players as a DH doesn't change the fact that those players could DH at a high level. However, there are very few players in the entire game's history that could play catcher and hit like Mike Piazza.

I'm done with this conversation at this point, because it's clear we'll never come to an understanding on this.

EDIT:

Nobody is arguing that.

The argument here is whether it is REALISTICALLY easy to get an OPS+ of 120-130 from your DH.

If this is the argument, then you've changed it midstream, because it seems that this entire time we've been going over value. Yes, in reality, it doesn't always work out that a DH will have a 120-130 OPS+, as you've shown, but it doesn't change the fact that there is also a large pool of players that would be capable of doing that, and that fact diminishes the value of a DH in comparison to other positions. In sum, there is a larger pool of players that can be a productive DH than there is for any other position because DH does not require any special skills as other positions do. Consequently, when making a choice of how to deploy players, if a player is capable of being productive at a typically lower-productive position, you have the player play that position, such as Piazza at C or Cano at 2B, rather than have that player DH, because it's easier to find someone to be productive at DH than it is to be Piazza a C or Cano at 2B. If you put Piazza at DH and leave the C spot open, you'd be very hardpressed to find anything close to Piazza's production at C, which goes back to the example I've posted a few times now, that a team is better off with Piazza at C and looking for someone to DH, than to have Piazza DH and look for someone to catch. This is what UBI and I have been arguing all along.

EDIT 2: Despite my addendum, I'm sticking with leaving this conversation for others at this point. It started off as the best conversation we've had in this project in a long time, but at this point we're beating dead horses, as think we're all just restating the same points over and over again, unwilling to budge and unable to add anything new.

[leecemark]

--You don't even need to find a 120 or 130 OPS+ guy to be significantly better off with Piazza catching and somebody else DHing. There are dozens of guys sitting NL benches, banished to Japan and making a career of minor league ball who are league averagish hitters but have little or no defensive value. if teams fail to man the spot with one of them - at a minimum - that is simply an organizational failure.
-- A player who can catch and deliver league average offense is a much rarer commodiity. A player who can handle the position on a regular basis and deliver league average offense is an All Star candidate not a fringe major leaguer.

[Ubiquitous]

Are you being facetious here? What is the OBVIOUS difference between the AL and the NL today in regards to pitchers?

One has an "A" in front of the L and to the other has an "N"?

I'll say it again, I'm not sure why anyone would have a problem comparing pitchers.

[Paul Wendt]

Re #82 and 85-87.

12% to 14% better than the second guy is BY FAR.

So you say and that perspective may explain your surprise that Piazza trails several other catchers by career WAR (#82,86).

Piazza rates merely 12% ahead of Berra by *oRAR* (batting/running without positional adjustment) while Edgar Martinez rates 41% ahead of Piazza, 812 to 575. That 62-run margin for Piazza ahead of Berra simply isn't so great, nor are his 69- and 70-run margins ahead of Bench and Fisk. It isn't any surprise to me that they rate ahead of him when defense is included (whether "defense" is fielding alone, or that plus positional adjustment).

And the "best hitter" would be judged more by rate stats anyway. When Bonds was injured and missed most of 2005 he was still the "best hitter" on the team, he just didn't play much.

Savoy, you are the one who introduced career WAR (#82). In my opinion "greatest overall catcher" as well as "best hitter" should be judged more by rate stats than by any lifetime sum.

[Paul Wendt]

One has an "A" in front of the L and to the other has an "N"?

I'll say it again, I'm not sure why anyone would have a problem comparing pitchers.

Mike DoubleXX should have a problem.
He puts a lot of weight on the twisting, turning, and pivoting that one must do in order to field firstbase. In fact we don't have any good evidence that a Ted Kluszewski or a Harmon Killebrew would be notably more productive, durable, or longeved :-) as a full-time DH. Batting requires more twisting. Baserunning may be more injurious and more exhausting than fielding first.
(Kluszewski and Killebrew have been mentioned in this thread; "a Klu" or "a Killer" is simply a primary 1B in life who is a good what-if candidate for primary DH.)

While Edgar Martinez is a "terrible fielder" who hangs out in the cozy confines of the dugout while other men suffer injury and exhaustion through all that twisting, turning, and pivoting,
so every AL pitcher is a "terrible batter" who hangs out in the cozy confines while other men suffer injury and exhaustion by taking their turns at bat and on the bases.

The canard that "pitchers are not paid to hit" is no better than the one that "firstbasemen are not paid to field".

Mike's exaggerations are gross but there is some truth in his lamentations on the rough life of the major league firstbasemen, relative to DH. It's truth for NL pitchers too, relative to AL pitchers.

If there were no truth in it, we would see more pitchers used as pinch-runners. Not most pitchers, but some of them are quite fast and capable. Few of them pinch-run once a season, although many teams now carry only 13 men who are not pitchers. Starting and stopping on the basepaths is inherently risky, not to mention diving into first on a pickoff.
Batting may be riskier. It seems to me that a batter is seriously hit on the hand by a pitch, or hit on the fout by a foul tip, every week in the major leagues. (That may be an illusion as I am not paying close attention.) For some pitchers, as for most of us, simply swinging a bat in earnest is risky.

[Paul Wendt]

(my emphasis)

EDIT 2: Despite my addendum, I'm sticking with leaving this conversation for others at this point. It started off as the best conversation we've had in this project in a long time, but at this point we're beating dead horses, as think we're all just restating the same points over and over again, unwilling to budge and unable to add anything new.

Mike, if you reread the thread in 2010 (next week in more ways than one) I think you will see why Savoy infers your hatred for the DH. Alternatively there may be more than a pinch of personal antipathy for Edgar Martinez or personal fandom for Jorge Posada. It's difficult for outsiders to judge the mix of emotions but the emotional content is evident.

If you reread it after recognizing that WAR does include a positional adjustment --and it's a 223-run premium for Piazza relative to Martinez, worth about 22 wins-- then you'll see why much of it seems to be a rant from ignorance.

--
See #73 and #61 for more information about WAR components using the example of six recent stars with equal career ratings for "offense": Tony Gwynn, Mike Piazza, Roberto Alomar, Edgar Martinez, Mark McGwire,and Barry Larkin.

[Ubiquitous]

How many pitchers get injured batting?

Answer: Very very few of them. It happens but not enough to worry about it in the vast majority of pitchers.

[jjpm74]

How many pitchers get injured batting?

Answer: Very very few of them. It happens but not enough to worry about it in the vast majority of pitchers.

So to sum up your rationale:

Edgar Martinez vs. Harmon Killebrew = apple vs. orange
Tommy John in the NL batting vs. Tommy John in the AL not batting = not worth discussing

reason: because

okay. thanks for playing.

[Ubiquitous]

So to sum up your rationale:

Edgar Martinez vs. Harmon Killebrew = apple vs. orange
Tommy John in the NL batting vs. Tommy John in the AL not batting = not worth discussing

reason: because

okay. thanks for playing.

Are you completely unaware of metrics that measure offensive, defensive, and pitching contributions of players?

I'm not sure how one can sum anything up based on a statement about a pitcher getting injured due to batting.

[jjpm74]

Are you completely unaware of metrics that measure offensive, defensive, and pitching contributions of players?

I'm not sure how one can sum anything up based on a statement about a pitcher getting injured due to batting.

When a pitcher bats for negative oWAR year after year and they move to the league where they no longer have to hit, they no longer amass negative oWAR, do they not? AL pitchers have it easier because they do not have to bat. They don't get penalized like their NL counterparts by number crunchers who are too busy calculating statistics to watch a game.

[Ubiquitous]

When a pitcher bats for negative oWAR year after year and they move to the league where they no longer have to hit, they no longer amass negative oWAR, do they not? AL pitchers have it easier because they do not have to bat. They don't get penalized like their NL counterparts by number crunchers who are too busy calculating statistics to watch a game.

Oh goody personal attacks.

So the answer to my question is that you know these metrics exist but you don't really understand them.

[jjpm74]

Oh goody personal attacks.

So the answer to my question is that you know these metrics exist but you don't really understand them.

Personal attack on who? Please don't even post if this is how you "debate."

[Ubiquitous]

They don't get penalized like their NL counterparts by number crunchers who are too busy calculating statistics to watch a game.

I apologize, I wasn't aware this was meant to be a compliment. So let me just say thank you for the kind words.

[jjpm74]

I apologize, I wasn't aware this was meant to be a compliment. So let me just say thank you for the kind words.

It wasn't intended to be anything. Are you a number cruncher who never watches baseball? If not, I don't see why you are turning a non-issue into an issue except to kill this thread further. I will not be replying to anything you say in this thread in the future since I obviously struck a nerve in you and you have no interest in actually discussing anything; only in attacking with multiple posts in a row (there is a multi-quoting feature here).

[Ubiquitous]

I believe the line is "now pull the other one".

[DoubleX]

Mike DoubleXX should have a problem.
He puts a lot of weight on the twisting, turning, and pivoting that one must do in order to field firstbase. In fact we don't have any good evidence that a Ted Kluszewski or a Harmon Killebrew would be notably more productive, durable, or longeved :-) as a full-time DH. Batting requires more twisting. Baserunning may be more injurious and more exhausting than fielding first.
(Kluszewski and Killebrew have been mentioned in this thread; "a Klu" or "a Killer" is simply a primary 1B in life who is a good what-if candidate for primary DH.)

While Edgar Martinez is a "terrible fielder" who hangs out in the cozy confines of the dugout while other men suffer injury and exhaustion through all that twisting, turning, and pivoting,
so every AL pitcher is a "terrible batter" who hangs out in the cozy confines while other men suffer injury and exhaustion by taking their turns at bat and on the bases.

The canard that "pitchers are not paid to hit" is no better than the one that "firstbasemen are not paid to field".

Mike's exaggerations are gross but there is some truth in his lamentations on the rough life of the major league firstbasemen, relative to DH. It's truth for NL pitchers too, relative to AL pitchers.

(my emphasis)


Mike, if you reread the thread in 2010 (next week in more ways than one) I think you will see why Savoy infers your hatred for the DH. Alternatively there may be more than a pinch of personal antipathy for Edgar Martinez or personal fandom for Jorge Posada. It's difficult for outsiders to judge the mix of emotions but the emotional content is evident.

If you reread it after recognizing that WAR does include a positional adjustment --and it's a 223-run premium for Piazza relative to Martinez, worth about 22 wins-- then you'll see why much of it seems to be a rant from ignorance.

Do you really want to go this place, Paul? I have bit my tongue many times in the past at insults you seem to believe you've deftly shrouded in subtly, but if we're going to pull back the curtain on blatancy now, I can accommodate you. Since we're now advising people to re-read their posts and see them for what they are, perhaps you might be interested in going back through some of your history, as I'm sure you'll quickly recognize your gross penchant for twisting words, reading into minutia, and drawing inferences that were never intended. These elements too have long been evident, but until now, were best left to pass.

And Paul, maybe if you re-read this particular conversation, you'll notice I never said anything about a lack of a positional adjustment in WAR, just that WAR's positional adjustments, especially for catcher, seem to be insufficient.

EDIT: I hope my emotional content here wasn't too evident.