Tweet
When we talk about "the average player," who do we have in mind?
I looked at Baseball Ref's daily updated totals from 1876 to the present, and I reduced them to a 500-at-bat season. Then I looked for a player with similar rate stats, and I found Ed Charles and put him in a comparable seasonal notation:
It's pretty uncanny how the counting stats turned out, since I only looked for comparable rate stats. It's also uncanny (or not) that defensively Charles played 3rd base, the middle of the defensive spectrum, with time on both the higher (ss, 2b) and lower (1b, OF) edges, making an average amount of errors. He played for 8 years, amounting to 7 full ones.
He did break in at age 29, though, which of course is not typical,
Our image of an average player, though, might not be someone at the arithmetic mean. There are pitchers, for one, to drag the average down, and all the below average players who hardly register because they aren't good enough to play much. So the mean player may appear below average, even though he's well above the median.
On the other hand, Ed seems to do everything at about the same level, nothing outstanding, nothing shameful, good enough to play on a world champion team or to be the best player on a cellar dweller. I find it an appealing record; he gives journeymen a good name.
What do you think? Who's your poster boy for mediocrity, and why?
I looked at Baseball Ref's daily updated totals from 1876 to the present, and I reduced them to a 500-at-bat season. Then I looked for a player with similar rate stats, and I found Ed Charles and put him in a comparable seasonal notation:
Code:
[B]Player OPS+ OBP BA SLG PA G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO HBP E GDP SB OPS [/B] [B]Norm [/B]100 .329 .262 .386 550 144 500 66 131 22 5 10 66 46 70 4 18 13 10 .715 [B]Charles[/B] 103 .330 .263 .397 558 144 497 63 131 21 4 12 60 47 75 4 17 13 12 .727
He did break in at age 29, though, which of course is not typical,
Our image of an average player, though, might not be someone at the arithmetic mean. There are pitchers, for one, to drag the average down, and all the below average players who hardly register because they aren't good enough to play much. So the mean player may appear below average, even though he's well above the median.
On the other hand, Ed seems to do everything at about the same level, nothing outstanding, nothing shameful, good enough to play on a world champion team or to be the best player on a cellar dweller. I find it an appealing record; he gives journeymen a good name.
What do you think? Who's your poster boy for mediocrity, and why?
Comment