THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Andre Dawson and the OBP

Poz has talked about Dawson many many times. 

Rally has his version of WAR (wins above replacement) which is probably very close to mine.  Here are his threshhold lines:
73+: everyone in the Retrosheet era with 73 or more WAR is in the Hall of Fame
40-: everyone below 40 WAR is not in the Hall of Fame

Of the 92 players with 40 to 72 WAR, 15 are in the Hall of Fame (16%).  Obviously, the closer you are to the 72, the better your chances.  Indeed of the 30 players with 60 to 72 WAR, 9 are in the Hall of Fame (30%), and of the 62 players from 40 to 59 WAR, 6 are in the Hall of Fame (10%).

At the top of that list is Tim Raines with 72 WAR.  It looks like Rally has Dawson at around 65 WAR.

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Andre Dawson’s offense was worth about +40 wins above average. 

He was a great fielding centerfielder in his 9000 innings there (1000 games, duh, or six full seasons).  Let’s say he was +1 win as a CF relative to the average CF, and average as a RF relative to the average RF.  That gives him another +6 wins for his fielding.  He also played a little bit of DH.  His positional adjustment comes out to -0.4 wins per season, which at 15.4 seasons is -6 wins.  So, his overall fielding impact is that of an average player.

You give a player 2.25 wins above replacement per full season, which gives Dawson 34 more wins.

That makes Dawson (+40 +6 -6 +34) a 74 WAR player.  Now, I’m sure I don’t have the same baseline as Rally.  If I repeat the exercise for Raines I’d end up with (+45 +7 -10 +33) 75 WAR.  So, we’re probably around the same page.  I can guess that Rally didn’t give Dawson as much credit for his glove as my WAG is giving him.

The point is that the low OBP for Dawson can’t be looked at in isolation, as something he has to overcome.  It’s one piece of the puzzle, that’s all.

You can easily construct a scenario, as I have just done, whereby Andre Dawson is at the line where he should be in the Hall of Fame with little debate, much as Tim Raines is at that line.  It is unfair to Dawson to look at his (obvious) lack of walks and at the same time not look at his (purported) great glove, his (purported) great arm, and his (purported) great baserunning. 

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Win Shares has Andre Dawson at 340, which is right at the 50/50 mark of making the Hall of Fame or not.  That is, around that level, of players eligible, half are in the HOF and half are not.  So, again, you can make a reasonable case using Win Shares that The Hawk should be in the HOF.