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Thursday, March 17, 2011
Scott Rolen, Derek Jeter, tomayto, tomahto
Dave makes the case:
Scott Rolen has a career batting line of .284/.369/.498, good for a .375 wOBA. His park-adjusted wRC+ of 125 shows that he’s been a good hitter throughout his career.
Derek Jeter has a career batting line of .314/.385/.452, good for a .371 wOBA. His park-adjusted wRC+ of 125 shows that he’s been a good hitter throughout his career.
Despite the fact that Rolen has almost certainly provided more defensive value throughout his career, Jeter gets the bump from having played the more difficult position. Unfortunately, the pattern is generally to compare up the middle guys against each other, and then compare corner guys against other corner guys, but not to compare third baseman to shortstops, despite the fact that they stand next to each other on the field and there is significant overlap in the pools of talent at the positions.
Can we really argue that Jeter has been so much more valuable in the field than Rolen to justify the differences in their expected differences in HOF election?
Whatever positional value you want to give to a SS over a 3B (5 runs? 10 runs? 15 runs?) it won’t be enough to cancel out having possibly the best fielding 3B of all time against an average-fielding-at-best SS. You’d have to set it at 20 or 25 runs to do that. And if you do that, then what positional adjustment do you give a 1B?
3B is one of those in-between positions that simply confounds people unless they sit down and analyze it in a more comprehensive manner.
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