Is Sadaharu Oh a top 100 player?

[yanks0714]

Oh, oh.....

I rate Mr. Oh in the neighborhood right with Willie McCovey and Johnnie Mize. Yes, I think he was that good. I see him as behind only Gehrig, Foxx, Greenberg (war time credit given), and Bagwell. Thomas as well if you list him as a 1B instead of DH.

[mac195]

Jim, I imagine you did the right thing adjusting Oh's walks down. His total was probably inflated a bit because he was so much better than the players hitting behind him - kind of a Barry Bonds situation, which would not have occured if he was in MLB. Did you use a formula to try to adjust for that effect? Who did hit behind him anyway? Nagashima must have hit in front of him, right?

[538280]

Cepeda with better plate discipline, and a longer career is a top 50 player.

Here is Jim's projection for Oh:

Games   AB   Hits  2B  3B  HR  TB    walks  avg  OBP   Slg 
2995   9939  2778 372  39 527  4809  2235 0.279  0.412  0.484

Based on that, and considering that it is projected to the low offense '60s, you would have to rate Oh as a top 50 or 60 player.

That would come out to about a 148 OPS+, which is the same as Willie McCovey. I must admit, not too shabby. I must ask though-what was the park like that Oh played in?

Also (and I don't know if Jim adjusted for this), I think that Oh wouldn't have lasted as long in the major leagues. Looking at his stat line, it seems he did hang around a few years when he was a shadow of his former self, probably mostly just because he was Sadaharu Oh, the greatest Japanese player ever, and everyone wanted to see him play. Also, the higher quality of play in the majors may have drove him out even earlier. Also, I don't think he would have walked nearly as often the majors because he wouldn't be feared nearly as much by the pitchers.

I still need to see far more evidence before I consider him even close to the equal of McCovey, who I have in the mid 40s all time.

[jalbright]

Jim, I imagine you did the right thing adjusting Oh's walks down. His total was probably inflated a bit because he was so much better than the players hitting behind him - kind of a Barry Bonds situation, which would not have occured if he was in MLB. Did you use a formula to try to adjust for that effect? Who did hit behind him anyway? Nagashima must have hit in front of him, right?

Actually, Oh hit third once he started to produce and Nagashima (who was already batting cleanup) stayed there. It worked out because Oh with his patience gave Nagashima plenty of RBI opportunities despite all the homers. However, that wasn't the reason--Nagashima was wildly popular, and Oh wasn't nearly as well received--so the concept of face had a lot to do with it.

I'm unaware of any reliable method to do what you suggest. I can tell you, nobody in Japan in his right mind disrespected Nagashima I think when Nagashima retired and they acquired Harimoto, Harimoto hit third and Oh cleanup--and I'm not sure who hit behind him then.

Jim Albright

[jalbright]

That would come out to about a 148 OPS+, which is the same as Willie McCovey. I must admit, not too shabby. I must ask though-what was the park like that Oh played in?

Also (and I don't know if Jim adjusted for this), I think that Oh wouldn't have lasted as long in the major leagues. Looking at his stat line, it seems he did hang around a few years when he was a shadow of his former self, probably mostly just because he was Sadaharu Oh, the greatest Japanese player ever, and everyone wanted to see him play. Also, the higher quality of play in the majors may have drove him out even earlier. Also, I don't think he would have walked nearly as often the majors because he wouldn't be feared nearly as much by the pitchers.

I still need to see far more evidence before I consider him even close to the equal of McCovey, who I have in the mid 40s all time.

In response to the last sentence, your post indicates you have read few if any of my articles on Oh. Try going to http://baseballguru.com/jalbright/ and look for the Oh articles. They're easy to find.

Now for some other issues you raise:

1) The park.

Oh had 4200+ AB in his main stadium, Korakuen, and 5000+ elsewhere because the Yomiuri Giants (Oh's team) played "home" games at various places in Japan to capitalize on their popularity. I actually have home/road splits for Oh's homers, and those records indicate that Korakuen gave him a small advantage of about 14-15 homers over a normal home/road split. I can't see the park giving such a dead pull hitter as Oh any great advantage in average since he rarely went left of center field and teams shifted accordingly. I wish I had the data to confirm this, but I do not.

2) The walks issue has already been discussed, and I won't reiterate it here. However, if he got less walks, he'd have had more balls to swing at and probably more career hits and homers to go along with more career outs. In fact, my career home run estimate is conservative because I simply eliminated the walks the formulas said he should get rather than turn them into AB and hit and homer opportunities. Seeing as the formulas would give him over another season's worth of walks, he might well have finished in the 550 range. I prefer the more conservative approach so as to protect myself from charges of overromanticizing Oh.

3) As for Oh's career, it would have been shorter, but not nearly so much on the end you suspect. I don't have him in the majors until 1962, when he adopted his signature "flamingo" (one leg in the air) batting stance. I gave him a full rookie season that year despite the fact it wouldn't have been superb (246/326/430), but I think a 22 year old hotshot would get some patience. To me, he merited full time consideration through 1979, as he would be projected to hit at least .250 with a .368 OBP and a .416 slugging percentage. He set all but one of those lows in 1979, when he is projected to hit .258 with the OBP and slugging marks. From 1963 through 1978, his OPS is never projected below 800, and usually is well over that. In 1980, I gave him his actual playing time on the theory 1) he'd be given a chance to solve his problems, and then 2) he'd get some extra playing time in his "farewell tour" that he probably wouldn't otherwise deserve. So that one season might be a bit overstated, but it's hard to justify picking other numbers, since they would almost come out of a hat with just about as much justification behind them.

Jim Albright

[mac195]

With Nagashima hitting behind Oh, there probably wasn't that much of a "Bonds effect" then. Oh's projected walks total looks pretty solid.

[Honus Wagner Rules]

Jim,

Just curious, did Oh ever hit some "tape measure" HRs, say over 500ft?

[jalbright]

What I've got on distance is that 49 of his homers went 427 feet or more, 29 of those leaving the park he was in. As for the accuracy of the estimates, I have no idea.

Jim Albright

[jalbright]

For another look at Oh's seasons, see this article (Oh is the first player covered) which compares Oh's projection to actual major leaguers in the season of the projection: http://baseballguru.com/jalbright/an...lbright32.html

Jim Albright

[jalbright]

I understand why folks are reluctant to accept that in the 1960-1980 period, major league pitchers walked guys more often than Japanese pitchers did, even when those players played in both leagues. It's counterintuitive. In the 1990's the more intuitive situation has come about, where Japanese pitchers walk the same guys more often than their major league counterparts.

Why did this happen? I can think of three possible main reasons:

1) the umpiring
2) the fact Japanese pitchers trained by throwing hard on their off days and
3) the in-game workloads of Japanese pitchers

The umpiring may be a small factor, but major leaguers still gripe that they don't get the calls Japanese players do. Perhaps the umpiring has gotten a little less biased in this regard, but I have trouble seeing this as a major factor in why this walk situation occurred.

Japanese pitchers certainly haven't abandoned this style of training, though the impression I get is that it has diminished. However, one can still ease it off a little in practice versus a game even if the coaches want your best. It's a factor, I think, but primarily because of the last issue.

Japanese pitchers were worked much harder than their major league brethren in this era. In 1960-68, the Japanese pitcher with the fifth highest IP had more IP than the major leaguer with the fifth highest IP seven times despite the fact Japanese seasons were at least ten and often as many as 32 games shorter than major league seasons. In the entire period 1960-1980, the guy finishing fifth in IP in the majors had more IP per team games than the fifth guy in Japanese IP precisely once. I chose the fifth place pitcher simply to eliminate the effect of one outlandish case of pitcher usage.

The Japanese didn't start to abandon the idea that ace pitchers should serve as relievers in close games they didn't start until the seventies, which accounts for some of this concentration of workload on to a team's best two or three pitchers. The idea of the importance of the complete game was stronger in Japan than in the majors as well, and Japanese teams were known to start guys multiple games in a row at least early in this period.

Thus, top Japanese pitchers were expected to play much more often in games and , if they weren't used in a game, to throw hard that day anyway. Under those conditions, pitchers needed to find a way to protect their arms, and one way to do that was the old American deadball era solution: throw strikes, don't nibble. As the expectations of workload eased (and to a lesser extent as theories of how to practice eased as well), then Japanese pitchers slowly changed their approach to include more nibbling at the edges of the plate.

Jim Albright

[DoubleX]

Jim, how did you make these year by year projections?

[Honus Wagner Rules]

I just wanted to hear from the eight people who do not think Sadaharu Oh is a top 100 all-time player. I'm just curious.

[jalbright]

Jim, how did you make these year by year projections?

The method is described in detail at http://baseballguru.com/jalbright/an...lbright08.html the context is home runs, which is where I started, but I carried the method to all other categories with the exception of walks as noted earlier.

This article has more to say on how the projections were arrived at, though emphasizing the career marks: http://baseballguru.com/jalbright/an...lbright13.html

A discussion of the season by season projections is here: http://baseballguru.com/jalbright/an...lbright14.html

And then there is the comparison of the single season projections to actual major leaguers in each season, which link has been previously provided in this thread.

Jim Albright

[jalbright]

I've worked on my rankings for all of baseball history, and Oh comes out about 35th, the fourth best retired first baseman of all time, behind Gehrig Foxx and Anson. My system is hardly perfect, but I think that verdict on Oh is reasonable.

Jim Albright

[scottmitchell74]

I see a lot of people rank Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson, and Satchel Paige in their top 100. But I never see Sadaharu Oh on anyone's top 100 list, except for Jim Albright of course.

Do you consider Sadaharu Oh to be one of the top-100 players of all time?

Good question.

The best hitter by some margin in a very good professional league he probably would have been and MLB great...but maybe that jump does him in? I love the thought experiment. Fun!