40 HR/40 2B

[Ubiquitous]

Not sure if you are joking but after he left Brooklyn he played in the Coliseum and was chronically injured.

The baseball diamond was crammed into one end of the stadium, resulting in a left-field line measuring only 250 feet. A 40-foot screen was constructed to counter the intimate dimensions, but it didn't do that much good: the balls flew out of the park because of the intimate dimensions. In fact, the disparity between home runs hit to left and home runs hit to right field was staggering. In 1958, 193 home runs were hit in the Coliseum -- 182 to left, 3 to center, and 8 to right.

For a lefty this was murder and guess what Duke was a lefty. Not only that but he was injured and wasn't the same player. After he left Brooklyn his away homers dropped as well as his home homers.

[SABR Matt]

OK...I didn't know the dimensions of the Collesium were so goofy...but, that was kinda my point anyway...his numbers were in fact influenced by BOTH Ebbots (in a ridiculously positive way) AND his new park in LA (in a bad way)...and I still think he was dramatically overrated.

And yes I know he had some injury trouble after 1957...I don't believe that is a sufficient excuse though. There was a clear difference in his play and it's not an accident that it occurred that year.

[Ubiquitous]

Duke Snider only played 106 games in 1958. AFter 1957 the most at bats in any one year for Snider was 370. I'd say injuries had a very big impact on Sniders performance after 1957.

There was a clear difference in his play and it's not an accident that it occurred that year.

Well actually funny you should mention it but Snider was in a car accident during spring training of the first year in LA. That same year Duke injured his cannon of an arm during a throwing contest at the Coliseum. He played through it because if he didn't the Dodgers were going to fine him for every day he missed. Throw in the fact that he had a bad knee and one cannot say that it was simply the change of ballparks that did him in.


One final note take a look at what splits retrosheet has for Duke. They only have one season in Brooklyn but all his seasons after that. Every year at the Coliseum except his first he was a great player at home not so great away.

[SABR Matt]

Interesting...

Note...I wasn't saying it was JUST the park doing him in...merely that Ebbots Field was a major reason he did so well from '53 through '57 and even if you account for his injuries, not quite as well after 1957.

[Ubiquitous]

Okay so how do you account for the injuries? You don't know what injuries he suffered and how they effected his play so how can one account for his injuries when looking at his seasonal play?

[SABR Matt]

His injuries, while they certainly had an effect, are not that much worse than what typically happens when a player ages. Applying a standard aging curve to his career and prorating out his playing time to fuller seasons gives you a decent estimate.

[Ubiquitous]

His injuries, while they certainly had an effect, are not that much worse than what typically happens when a player ages. Applying a standard aging curve to his career and prorating out his playing time to fuller seasons gives you a decent estimate.

Again how do you know what they are and if they are worse, the same or better?

Can one simply say that Mike Schmidt's or Don Mattingly's injuries are not much worse then what happens when a player ages? So we should apply a standard aging curve?

[SABR Matt]

You've already defined what Snider's injuries were...much of which I already was aware of from reading (though I didn't know about his arm injury...or I knew his arm was hurting I didn't know why he hurt it or played through it though)...I certainly agree that injuries hurt his performance significantly following 1957, but it baffles me that you would deny just how much Snider was helped by Ebbots...truly baffles me.

[Ubiquitous]

NO I told you what Snider's injuries were and so did the books but neither I nor the books actually no what impact they had on Snider.


Do you know what impact Ebbets Field had on Snider? I don't, and I am pretty sure you don't either. All we have is one season of data for Ebbets field and Snider, and it was his last season. I have his seasonal home run data, and in the yeasr in which he hit 40 or more homers he ended up hitting 27 more homers at home then on the road 117-90. It was almost uncanny, he hit 23 homers at home a year for 4 years (plus a year at 25) and had two seasons of 19, 2 seasons of 17 and one of 18 on the road. Playing at home boosted his homers by 5 compared to all other parks except Ebbets in his prime.

The splits we do have for Snider in away games show that he was pretty good hitter even though he was clearly in his decline phase and injured a lot. The away homer data shows that in his prime Snider was more then capable of being a 40 homer hitter year in and year during his prime. And guess what in his prime he was, so how is Ebbets obviously overrating Snider. We don't have the data to support so what we have is an assumption of help. I'm not going to make a declarative statement based on virtually no data that supports or debunks the view.

[SABR Matt]

Focusing on the individual player's home/road splits has long since been LOUDLY debunked as the correct process by sabermetricians. As BIll James put it, "that side lost, because in the end they realized that what mattered when talking about park effects was how we expect the park the influence a player, not how the numbers happened to fall over his career...a matter that is often left largely to chance."

The numbers that matter are Ebbots Field's dimensions. They've been posted here at the Fever before. Ebbots field was RIDICULOUSLY small compared to other parks in the NL and small in ways that we would expect would positively benefit a player like Snider. It is impossible to draw meaning from a sample of 40 HRs a year and conclude that Ebbots Field had limited effect on Snider.

I'm not saying he wasn't a good hitter. He was...that much is obvious. I'm saying he is dramatically overrated as a fielder because the methods we normally use to factor out the park aren't good enough and don't do the terrors of pitching in Ebbots justice.

[MyDogSparty]

I've heard of Ebbets Field, the one named after owner Charles Ebbets, where the Brooklyn Dodgers used to play, but not Ebbots Field. Is that a typo or was there an Ebbots Field too?

[SABR Matt]

Cute...very cute.

Excuse my misspelling.

[Ubiquitous]

One could say that Bill James has LOUDLY debunked linear weights but that doesn't mean it is true.


If you collect data and find that 80% of the time the home team wins and then somebody asks hey who won yesterdays game do you bother to look up the result or do you just say the home team won and then refuse to believe that the away team won despite the actual result?

Yes Ebbets field is supposed to be a hitters park but if Snider didn't take advantage of it then how can Ebbets field over-rate him? If anything it would under rate him because you are taking more off his numbers then one should.

As for all those random chances well those random chances produce events and those events counted. Looking forward and predicting is one thing but in trying to measure the past it no longer matters how the result happened only that it happened.

If a .200 hitter goes 10 for 10 or 30 for 30 and we want to know what we should expect in the next 60 at bats then it is important to know how those 10 or 30 at bats happened. But if we simply want to measure the impact of those 10 or 30 at bats in those specific games then it doesn't matter how it happened only that it happened and who was involved.


But you have no clear idea how Ebbets field affected Duke Snider or the players of that era. What we do have is Park Factors based on runs and some data for its last year, and that is it. Duke played full time at Ebbets field for 9 years. 6 of those years have an average PF of 1.017 while in three seasons they have a park factor greater then 110 and the last year being a really insane year for runs.

In 1949 the Dodgers hit 14 more at home
1950 29 homers
1951 12 homers
1952 35 homers
1953 5 more homers were hit on the road
1954 20 homers
1955 2 homers
1956 7 homers
1957 32 homers

Unfortunately I don't have the numbers for the away teams.

I don't know what happened in 1957 but everybody was scoring runs at Ebbets field that year

[baseballPAP]

Back to the topic of the thread......

Alfonso Soriano is pushing territory I'm pretty sure no one has touched...a truly historic season.

His current numbers: 37 2B, 44 HR, and 38 SB! The closest I could find from the list given here is Larry Walker, who managed 33 steals to go with his monster season in 97. Soriano also missed it by a single HR back in 02, and was in the neighborhood the next year as well. Possibly the best offensive player in the bigs right now, if only he'd take the occasional walk.

[SABR Matt]

Soriano will never walk and will never be anything remotely near the best offensive player in the league. Not that he sucks or anything...I'd certainly be happy to have him on my team. But there is a reason why he went from the AL where he hit like .280 with mediocre power to the NL where he's God again. The NL is no longer a major league.