A Win Shares/Loss Shares comparison of the two Yankee Stars.

Bill, Hopefully you have received my correspondence on the Jeter/Abreu comparision by snail mail.  Your estimate of Hall Of Fame chances for Abreu (0%) and Jeter (95%) is probably accurate but is it fair?  When you compare career numbers Abreu comes out ahead in On Base Percentage, Slugging Percentage, OPS, Home Runs, RBI, Stolen Bases, Walks, and even the Win Shares per year are almost identical.  Your anaysis on p.188 was an eye-opener showing Abreu had more RBI hits excluding HRs than A-Rod (49-34).  Since Abreu only hit .228 in his first 51 games last year, wasn't his turn-around one of the largest contributions to the Yankee late surge?  Even last year Abreu bested Jeter in RBI, Runs, Home Runs, Triples, Doubles, Walks and  Stolen Bases, yet Jeter got all the press. Why has Abreu been the invisible man?

--Jim Ammon

            1)  Sending snail mail to me is kind of like sending flowers to a walrus. 

            2)  Pointing out that an outfielder has better hitting numbers than a shortstop is not terribly convincing, in that we expect outfielders to hit better than infielders.

            3)  Let’s do a Win Shares/Loss Shares comparison of the two players:

            The “26+1” for Jeter’s offense in 1999 means that the positive impact of his offense in that season was greater than the area of responsibility assigned to him as an offensive player. . .in essence, 26 wins in 25 decisions, thus creating a negative loss.   Since a loss is itself a negative, that creates a negative-negative, and I write that as a +1.   It happens much more with fielders than it does with hitters.

            Anyway, Abreu is ahead on percentage contribution, Jeter ahead (and will probably stay ahead) on “gross weight” contribution.   On a “marginal value” analysis, Jeter is +107 compared to a .400 player, and +133 compared to .333, while Abreu is +104 and +124.

            4) Mr. Ammon’s point appears to be essentially true.  We have Abreu as an .805 player at bat to Jeter’s .718, while Jeter has only a small advantage in the field--.523 to .480.  This leads to the question:  why is there is a “perception gap” between the two players?

            It seems to me that it occurs mostly because of the undervaluing of Abreu.   What the data shows is that Jeter is clearly a Hall of Famer—as I said that he was—and that Abreu is on the same level as Jeter.   I may have sold Abreu short in saying that he had only a 20% chance to eventually make the Hall of Fame, or I may have been accurately reflecting the reality of how he is viewed by the media.   It is, as I said about Omar Vizquel, a question of the perception of perception, which is a way of saying that there’s little to be gained by pursuing that issue.

            5) Jeter’s .523 defensive winning percentage is exceptionally low for a shortstop—thus essentially negating point (2) above.   I pointed out that one expects an outfielder to hit better than a shortstop—but one also expects a shortstop to field better than Jeter.   Jeter is, essentially, a shortstop who hits like an outfielder but also has the defensive value of an outfielder.

            6) There are two ways to see this situation.   My way of seeing it is that the success of the Yankees with Jeter at short is strong evidence that people over-value the defense of a shortstop.   Another way of looking at it would be to say that this is evidence that Jeter is a better fielder than I think he is.   I’ll leave that up to you.