THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

No Pujols?

Definitely Pujols.  Robby Alomar.  Granderson?  Rolen in his prime (5 seasons of double digit steals for a 3B is pretty good).  Longoria is on his way.  Also if we’re going back to ‘93, Bonds was still pretty solid on D and a base-stealing threat back then.  Griffey as well.

Carl Crawford.

barry bonds? or did he tail off in the speed category?

Bagwell and Sizemore? I always thought they struck out more than average.

Pujols: I based it on SB and 3B, and he is below average.  That means, he’s not a 5-tooler.

Alomar, for the period in question (1993-) was ever slightly below average in HR.  I mean, it’s close enough that if you want to argue it, then, yeah, he could be in there.

Granderson: bad on strike zone judgement.

Rolen: ever so slightly below average in speed.  Same reasoning as Alomar if you want to put him in.

Bonds: ever so slightly below average on BIP.  Same reasoning as above if you want to include him.

Junior: below-average on BIP (and speed, if you can believe it).  He’s not in, based on my 5 categories.

Crawford: bad on SZ, and below average on power.

Sizemore: good BB/SO ratio.

Bagwell: great BB/SO ratio.

David DeJesus

Good points on Bonds and Rolen.

Holliday’s someone else that popped to mind, but I guess he’s just below the cut as well

Vlad

.... and Torii Hunter

What, no Derek Jeter?

This post just lost all credibility.

JD Drew 13 Seasons:
47-3B 229HR 87SB 815BB 1054K .282career BA

Vlad Guerrero 15 seasons:

45-3B 428HR 179SB 713BB 914K .320 career BA

Vlad has unreal arm, more than above average fielder

advantage Vlad

I remove Torii Hunter based on his terrible SO/BB ratio.... didn’t realize how bad it was

Believe me, I wanted Vlad there.  It all depends where his fielding falls in.  If you use TZ, it doesn’t make the cut (-56 runs after positional adjustment), even with the unreal arm.

Vlad v Drew: it’s NOT a question of who is better.  It’s a question of who is above average in the five categories I identified (in scouting talk, whoever is 51+ in each component).  Bonds is an obvious example of someone who is 60 or 70 or 80 in 4 components and is a 49 in the fifth one.

Don’t take this too seriously.

love this kind of fun stuff. thanks tom

In what area(s) was Barry Larkin below average?

1993-onwards…

I haven’t read too many positive things about Hanley Ramirez’s defense. Do I have a misconception or are you saying that Ramirez’s defense, though average to below average for a SS, is better than the average for all players by virtue of the defensive spectrum? Are you comparing players defensively against their positional peers or against the entire set of major leaguers?

I am taking this too seriously.

Right, including the positional adjustment.