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When I was a kid -- and I remember this distinctly -- my Dad pointed to a huge man who was coaching for the Milwaukee Brewers. "Look," he said, "that's Frank Howard. He's in the Hall of Fame." Of course, I believed him. I knew nothing at all about Frank...
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This is great Joe. Any chance you can share what calculations you used to get each score?
I’m not sure I understand the methodology….how is it possible to score below a 25 if that’s the lowest score you can give someone?
Joe, you must love writing about this as much as I love reading it for you to post the polls, run the numbers, and write the articles.
Not that I ever question my monthly $3 investment, but things like are wonderful and add so much value to it.
Some serious questions on double plays…why does all the blame for those two outs go to the hitter? And why only for ground ball double plays, but not line drive double plays, or double plays on a fly ball where a runner is caught trying to advance or get back to a base, or the infamous “strike ’em out, throw ’em out” double play? What is so magical about the GIDP that it counts entirely against the hitter when no other kind of double play does? Teammate-dependent statistics, like RBI, have fallen out of favor when evaluating players, so why hasn’t this one? Also, why raw totals of GIDPs instead of GIDP rate? Someone who hits into 20 double plays when he comes to bat in 200 double play situations is dinged twice as hard on his WAR score as a player who hit into 10 DPs in 100 DP situations, even though both players hit into DPs at the exact same rate. Why? I’ve never seen a cogent explanation for any of this.
some really good points here that I never thought of. context and # of opportunities should matter.
The last question is easy to answer: because WAR is not a rate statistic. It’s also not judgemental. 20 GIDP’s cost a team twice as much more than 10 GIDP’s, and there you go. Most criticisms of WAR result from not understanding what it is trying to measure. If you don’t like it, there is always WPA or other stats.
…
On the long fly DP and the strikeout DP, the runner who got doubled is clearly primarily responsible. On GIDP, the batter is mostly responsible; I don’t know how much, probably about 90%. That’s close enough to 100%. Line drive DP’s probably should be put in the GIDP category, but I don’t know if stats for them are easily available. Maybe you should find where to get that stat and propose an alteration to that part of the WAR formula.
I wasn’t intending to criticize WAR, I had genuine questions about the logic behind putting some (but not all) double plays entirely in the hitter. I still have those questions. For instance, if we’re always blaming the runner on a fly ball double play, then there’s some situations where we shouldn’t even count the batter for one out. Runner on 3rd, less than two outs, hitter does his job with the fly ball, but the runner gets a bad jump, or is slow, or misjudges the outfielder’s arm, whatever. That runner not only cost his team a double play, but also cost his teammate and RBI and sacrifice fly. So, again, we have a situation where a teammate’s action is damaging the hitter.
On strikeout double plays, I don’t think it’s clear at all that the runner was primarily responsible. Many of those situations are essentially hit and run plays, and the hitter completely failed to protect the runner by not making contact, a situation that would seem to call for the hitter getting more blame for both outs. Likewise, not all GIDP’s are equal. A hitter who bats behind a high-OBP guy that runs well is going to hit into fewer DPs than a hitter who faces the same number of GIDP situations with a slow-running teammate on first base. The runner will be sent to steal more if he’s fast, eliminating many of those situations, or will outrun the throw to second, or simply by being a threat to run he will force the middle infielders to be positioned differently instead of being at standard DP positions. None of that is accounted for in crude GIDP numbers.
My only point is that teammate-dependent variables are so many, and are purposely eliminated from most advanced stats, that it seems counter-intuitive to attach all GIDPs solely to the hitter and ignore every other type of DP entirely. As for your point about finding missing data and proposing an alteration to WAR…if I had that info and the skill to apply it, I probably wouldn’t be asking these questions.
There are actually lots and lots of low-percentage things that WAR doesn’t cover. You have given some, but the list goes on and on. I don’t know if WAR will ever cover all these things… I’d bet that the people who would be working on such improvements are instead looking at using Statcast-type information to replace actual hits and outs with how well a batter hit a ball, to remove BABIP from the equation. And probably the same for pitchers, to measure how well the pitcher threw the ball, and take the batter out. In fact, I’d bet that several MLB teams already have a stat like this, and don’t use WAR for anything (when Statcast or Pitch FX info is available).
Joe Torre, while playing for the Mets, set the major league record for single-game GIDP with 4.
After the game, he blamed it all on Felix Millan, who had singled before each of the GIDP. After the game, he told the reporters, “If he weren’t on base, I couldn’t have grounded into all those double plays.”
I should’ve looked for this first, but you should’ve too. bb-ref’s Rdp does indeed have GIDP situations in its formula, and of course Rdp leads into RAA, and then WAR. The formula is:
R_gidp = .44 × ( GIDP_OPPS_player * GIDP_RATE_lg – GIDP_player)
and the OPPS stands for opportunities. Source: https://www.baseball-reference.com/about/war_explained_position.shtml
Thank you. That answers one of my questions.
btw, this is amazing and can’t wait to see the rest of this series.
Fred Lynn! This little leaguer from the suburbs of Boston turned 10 in the summer of ’76, and Fred Lynn was God! My light bat knew nothing of his sweet swing, but I could chase down fly balls all over the outfield, and scoop up extra-base hits with impossible diving catches, just like my hero. We both peaked in ’79, and then that strange prepubescent grace left me. But even now, on occasion, I still drift off to sleep reliving those few, still-vivid moments when I played like the most beautiful athlete I’d ever known. He’s in my Hall of Fame.
I have wondered – Mark Belanger rates as one of the best-fielding shortstops, Brooks Robinson as one of the best-fielding third basemen, and Paul Blair as one of the best-fielding center fielders (and Bobby Grich wasn’t bad at second base, either). But how can these all be true – wouldn’t they have been taking away balls from each other? If you’re next to an all-time great fielding third baseman, doesn’t that necessarily pull down the defensive ratings for a shortstop?
It matters which stat you’re using, but definitely not necessarily. I suppose your maximum range factor might be decreased a hair if the guy next to you was a great fielder. But I’m pretty sure that the WAR-like current stats don’t really use range factor, but rather the location of the ball determines how likely the fielder is to make the play. The only way a penalty would be incurred is if a ball went between two fielders, one fielder made the play (which would have to be a very good play at least), but then the fielder on the other side gets penalized for not making the play. I doubt if that’s the case, again except for range factor.
Joe,
I don’t always read the other comments, and so if someone else already said something like the following somewhere, my apologies.
I find myself in the odd position of loving your writing and rolling my eyes when I see yet another project/long list. Looking at the just the first page of posts that this site presents, I see four longterm, large-scale projects: the State of Baseball Series (chapter 2); the HHOF; the top 100 baseball players (or whatever that one is called; it’s up to #81, part II); and now the Ultimate Hall of Fame Guide (#96 and counting). Plus there’s one of those great one-off posts you do responding to the events of the day, in this case, the death of Don Newcombe. And, of course, there are other projects out there that aren’t on p. 1 of the site. The Shadowball list leaps to mind (I think that’s up to the mid-80s somewhere), and then there’s the Hall of Fame ballot thing which you acknowledged sort of fizzled this year.
Some of those projects I like more than others–HHOF doesn’t really work for me; the top 100 is “Drop Everything and Read This New Post Right Now” reading in my world–but that’s just one reader’s reaction, and other people’s mileage may vary. Moreover, of course, this is your site. If I don’t want to read a post, I don’t have to read it; if I’m unhappy w/ the site, I can cancel my subscription. I clearly haven’t done the latter (and I don’t have any interest in doing so), and I can’t remember the last time I did the former (probably a post about tennis, which as far as I can tell is a sport redeemed only by your affection for it).
But all of these lists make it hard for any of them to really add up to anything. Even my favorites like the top 100 baseball players don’t really cohere because the entries are so spread out through time that it’s hard to remember who you’ve been writing about, much less to think about the sort of trajectory that you’re tracing–and then I’m supposed to add in the Shadowball stuff and relate that to…. Sure, I could do all of that by going back to the archives and re-reading the posts and the like. But you’re a good enough writer to know that’s not what good writers ask of their readers.
So, for me, this endless proliferation of inter-mixed lists that never end detracts from each individual entry on each individual list. In fact, when I open the site now, I find myself hoping to see not an entry on my favorite list but a one-off piece that is self-contained and finite.
Take all of that for what it’s worth, which may not be much. You’re a truly gifted writer and storyteller, and I’m always delighted to see a new post on this site. But goodness would I like to see what you could do if you actually threw yourself into one or another of these lists.
Josh