THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I also did the following: after I established a player’s best 12 year reign, I removed those years from his career.  I was interested in looking at how players did in their NON peak years.

Jim Rice for example, had only 20 win shares in his non-peak years, which puts him at #423. 

Tim Raines is #55 in peak years, and #95 in non-peak years.  The idea that Raines in his non-peak years wasn’t that great is foolish.  If you remove the 12 best years of everyone, Raines is one of the 100 best players of all-time, according to Win Shares.  And if you only look at his 12 best, he’s #55.

Since you’ve got around 200 players in the HOF, Raines passes the test.

The top non-peak players are Ruth at 256 and Barry at 251.

Jack Morris’ best 12 years: 181 win shares.

That puts him #80 all-time for starting pitchers.  Steve Rogers (Expos) was 182.  Frank Viola, 185.  Jerry Koosman, 186.  Chuck Finley, 186.  David Cone, 192.

Dave Stieb, 201. 

BERT BLYLEVEN, 215 (1970-1981).

Here’s another “best 12 years”, for guys aged 22-33 (Rice’s best), for guys born within 10 years of Rice’s birth year (1943-1963).  That is, his peers:

http://www.bb-ref.com/pi/shareit/wMzz

Rice is 15th in OPS+ (yechh… I’m going to start hating it soon, as much as WARP).  Remember, this was chosen as Rice’s most favorable.

You want to talk about “feared”, how about #5, Jack Clark?  Fred McGriff (#7)?  Reggie Smith and Keith Hernandez?  Rusty Staub?

There’s no question that Jim Rice was a great hitter.  But, he stands among other great hitters, not above them.

How about Runs Created (no park adjustment), again using years most favorable for Rice:

http://www.bb-ref.com/pi/shareit/t6zE

He does great here, #3 with 1238 RC, and Raines is just 4 less.  But, Rice did that while using up 400 more outs than Raines did.  That’s a good 70 or so runs that Raines allowed his team to score.

If you go through those players (after adjusting for the outs), you’ll see that Rice does fairly well.  But three points:
1. we purposely selected the age group to be most favorable to Rice
2. we made no park adjustments for Fenway
3. we don’t consider any years outside of age 22-33 (meaning, longevity is not an issue at all)

And under those favorable conditions, Rice is a borderline candidate.

Voros mentioned Eric Davis:
http://vorosmccracken.com/?p=54

He was talked about as the “next Willie Mays”.  Andre Dawson had that tag before him.  And Davis was sensational.  From the age of 24-27, of guys born within 10 years of Davis, he ranked 15th in RC per out.  Frank Thomas (next Ted Williams) led the pack.  After him are Jim Thome, Junior, Manny, Sheff, Tim Raines, Chipper, Barry, Tim Salmon (!), Piazza, Brett, Bagwell, Boggs, and Olerud.  After Davis was McGriff, Rice, Mattingly, Will Clark, Rickey, Rusty Greer (!), Delgado, Eddie Murray, Mo Vaughn, and Fred Lynn (kindred spirit) to round out the top 25.

We should have expected a hitting career for Davis around the average of those guys.  He fell short of course.

He was also a great fielder (from what I remember, but I’ll have to check WOWY to get confirmation).

There are roughly 2 players selected per birth year, on average.  To, we should expect about 42 guys born between 1952 and 1972 to make the HOF.  About 70% of them are nonpitchers, so close to 30 of them should make it.

If Frank Thomas only had those 4 years, would you put him in?
BA OBP SLG
0.324 0.449 0.611
Fabulous numbers, and unquestionable talent.  If you consider fielding and position, not alot separates Eric Davis and Frank Thomas.  You can argue for Davis, Thomas, Junior, Barry, and Piazza as the best aged 24-27 players of our generation.  The only thing separating Eric from the group is injuries.

On pure talent, he’s among the best of our generation.

In the Sandy Koufax “unquestionable talent” view, you can make a case for Eric Davis in the HOF.

After how many years would Gretzky or Bobby Orr or Ted Williams or Magic Johnson need to perform at a high level to get into the HOF?  (Who’s the football equivalent?  Jim Brown?)

I’m not hung up on “career value” or that stuff.  I’m more interested in “demonstrated high talent level”.  In statistical terms, “what is the chance that this player was a below average (or maybe below replacement level) player?”

And Eric Davis, after his age 27 season, must have one of the lowest numbers.  Now Frank Thomas, if you look a longer set of years, has an even lower number than Davis, because we have a larger sample of high performance.

But, to me, that’s how you resolve the Sandy Koufax issue.  It’s how people, I think, really see it.  I think that’s the model of fan’s perceptions.

I wrote this in response to that.

That:
http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2008/01/_rich_lederer_s.php

This:

Dear Buster,

Let’s presume that you are right, that Rice’s mindset regarding walks is that he didn’t properly value walks, and therefore, approached each at bat suboptimally (even if Eddie Murray and Mike Schmidt were able to approach the at bat more optimally).  That is, Rice was not well-educated, and therefore, let’s not hold the student accountable.  I’ll grant you all that.

At the same time, if there are no runners on base, Rice must realize that his job is to get on base, to not make an out, right?  “A walk’s as good as a hit” has been drummed into my head since I was a little boy.  That couldn’t have been a saying that was local to Montreal, was it?  I’m guessing the rest of America was parroting the same thing?  Surely, Rice is not thinking that he needs to put the ball in play with no one on base.

Jim Rice, with bases empty, drew 310 walks on 4429 PA, or an average of 42 walks per 600 plate appearances.

Jim Rice, with men on base, drew 283 walks on 4552 PA, or an average of 37 walks per 600 PA (excludes IBB).

Jim Rice, with RISP, drew 186 walks on 2646 PA, or an average of 42 walks per 600 PA.

Exactly why do you think that Rice thought that the walk had less value when he was up at the plate as an RBI man?  Rice drew walks at the same rate, regardless of the base/out situation.  And why did he do that?  Because he approached the game as optimally as he could, and drawing walks was not something he was able to do.  If he were able to, then he’d do it when his RBI-manhood wouldn’t come into question.

Tom