Dave Winfield was born on October 3rd, 1951. Dwight Evans was born a month later, on November 3rd. Same year, if you skipped the class on how calendars work.
There is scant information about what kinds of baseball players they were in elementary school.
Dwight Evans was drafted out of high school, selected by Boston in the fifth round of the amateur draft. He was the 109th player selected. Dave Winfield, a St. Paul native, decided to attend the University of Minnesota on a full baseball scholarship. Winfield was drafted, way down near the bottom of the draft, but it was a flier in case he remembered what winters were like in Minnesota.
Dwight Evans had a strong Triple-A season in 1972, winning the International League MVP award. Dave Winfield, an elite pitching prospect for the University of Minnesota, was the MVP of the 1973 College World Series.
Just to break into the narrative a little: Winfield pitched a shutout in the first game of the College World Series playoffs, striking out fourteen Oklahoma Schooners. He started the semi-final against defending champs USC, and dominated again…through the first eight innings Winfield had struck out fifteen batters while allowing just an infield single. The Gophers built up a 7-0 lead… you know where this is going.
The first batter of the 9th singled, but Winfield coaxed a double-play grounder from the next hitter. The umpire at first missed the call and the runner was called safe. And then, in spectacular fashion, the wheels came off the Golden Gophers’ bus. The wheels and axles and most of the seats. Winfield was relieved after a few more batters reached and sent out to play left, where he watched USC come all the way back, winning 8-7. Fun way to cap off your college career.
Winfield was the drafted fourth overall by the Padres in 1973. He was also drafted by an NBA team, and an ABA team: he was a star cager for a team that won the Big-Ten championship. And…just for kicks…the Minnesota Vikings drafted him in the seventh round. Winfield hadn’t played college ball, but what the heck. I think the national bobsled team tried to sign him up, but he didn’t fit in the sled.
Winfield jumped right to the major leagues…not as a pitcher but as a leftfielder. By the summer of 1973, Evans and Winfield were both starting outfielders in professional baseball.
This was at a moment where there was a lot of uncertainty about what the best path to success in the majors was. College and the minors were in a kind of war to decide which one would shake out to be the better road to the majors, with advocates on both sides. Winfield was a great college player, and Evans was a great minor-league player: no one really had any real idea which one was more likely to succeed.
Winfield succeeded first, out-hitting Evans in 1973 and popping twenty homers in 1974, his first full stint in the majors. Winfield made the All-Star team in 1977, finished 10th in the NL MVP vote in 1978, and probably deserved to win the MVP in 1979, when he paced the NL in RBI while hitting .308 with 34 homeruns.
Dwight Evans made the 1978 All-Star team, but he was the third-best outfielder in Boston, a defense-first player eclipsed by AL MVP’s Fred Lynn (1975) and Jim Rice (1978).
I am as big a fan of Dwight Evans as there is in the world, and I strongly suspect that Evans would have broken out as an elite hitter earlier than he did, but for a Mike Parrot beanball that sidelined him at the tail end of 1978. Rushed back too quickly and likely suffering from a concussion, Evans hit .161 down the stretch with diminished defense as Boston punted a pennant lead to the Yankees.
Evaluating them thought 1980, because 1981 would be a transitional year for both men:
Player
|
G
|
HR
|
BA
|
OBP
|
SLG
|
OPS+
|
Evans
|
1064
|
128
|
.262
|
.344
|
.448
|
114
|
Winfield
|
1117
|
154
|
.284
|
.357
|
.467
|
134
|
Evans had the lead in Gold Gloves, three to two, but Winfield had four All-Star appearances to Evans’ one, and Winfield had placed 10th and 3rd in consecutive MVP votes. Evans hadn’t ever received an MVP vote.
And the raw numbers undersell the differences between them. Both Evans and Winfield were right-handed hitters, but they were right-handers in very different parks. Dwight Evans benefited tremendously from the friendly confines of Fenway Park, which had a multi-year park factor for hitters of 112. Winfield endured the much tougher San Diego Park, which had a factor of just 89 for hitters.
The fans and writers at the time understood this. Dave Winfield was a star player: he was viewed as one of the game’s best player, right there with Dave Parker and Jim Rice and Mike Schmidt and Tom Seaver. Dwight Evans was a good player, but he was no one’s idea of a star.
And then things changed. Strike-year, everything has to change.
Dave Winfield, a free agent, signed one of baseball’s greatest blockbuster contracts prior to 1981: a ten-year deal with the Yankees for $23 million dollars. This was the highest contract ever given to a player, and no one thought Winfield was the wrong guy to get it. If you’re going to sign anyone to a ten-year deal, Winfield’s a decent bet.
Signing with the Yankees meant that Winfield was going from one of the toughest park for a right-handed hitter in the NL for one of the toughest park in the AL. That didn’t matter: hitters hit.
Up in Boston, Dwight Evans would see the Red Sox lose stars Fred Lynn and Carlton Fisk on some late-mailed contracts, an event that increased Evans’ visibility on the team. Dewey capitalized on the chance, posting an out-of-nowhere, MVP-level season. Tying the AL lead in homeruns, Evans paced in total bases, walks, and OPS, and finished third in the AL MVP vote.
Dewey followed that breakout with a 32-homer season in 1982, a 1984 season that saw him pace the AL in runs scored and OPS while collecting his first 100-RBI season, and then a three-year kick to close out the 1980’s with century marks in RBI, along with his only +.300 season as a hitter (.305 in 1987). Dewey would win five Gold Gloves before shifting to first base in 1987. Evans jumped from a defense-first ‘good’ player to a legitimate offensive powerhouse.
Winfield continued his efficiency, receiving MVP votes every year between 1981-1985 and also in 1988. All this while trying to avoid wrath of Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, who was hell-bent on making Winfield the goat for the Yankees playoff failures. Winfield popped a career-high 37 homers in 1982, nearly won a batting crown with a .340 mark in 1984, and made every All-Star team through 1988. He won five Gold Gloves, along with one citation for murdering a seagull. That counts as a capital offense in Canada.
Winfield missed the entire 1989 season with back problems. Despite this, Evans and Winfield were comparable players through the decade. 1981-1989:
Player
|
G
|
HR
|
BA
|
OBP
|
SLG
|
OPS+
|
Evans
|
1318
|
238
|
.281
|
.388
|
.498
|
139
|
Winfield
|
1152
|
203
|
.291
|
.357
|
.497
|
135
|
Jumping to the 1990’s…
Dwight Evans didn’t last into the 1990’s, getting one last season in Boston as a DH for a surprise Red Sox team that won the division and then got buried by Oakland in the ALCS. He followed that up with an effective platoon year in Baltimore, posting an on-base percentage of .393 during his last season. Then he was done.
Winfield came back from a year on the DL with something to prove, and he proved it. Trading pinstripes for an Anaheim halo, he had a couple solid years with the Angels before signing a free-agent deal with the Blue Jays. At forty, Winfield had a surprisingly excellent season, hitting .290 with 26 homeruns and 108 RBI for the champion Jays, while finished fifth in the AL MVP vote.
Winfield followed that with an inevitable homecoming in Minnesota, collecting his 3000th hit for the Twins in 1993 before finishing out the string with Cleveland.
1990’s totals for both men:
Player
|
G
|
HR
|
BA
|
OBP
|
SLG
|
OPS+
|
Evans
|
124
|
19
|
.257
|
.366
|
.386
|
110
|
Winfield
|
704
|
108
|
.267
|
.337
|
.453
|
114
|
And their final tale-of-the-tape:
Evans
|
Stat
|
Winfield
|
2606
|
G
|
2973
|
1470
|
R
|
1669
|
2446
|
Hits
|
3110
|
483
|
2B
|
540
|
73
|
3B
|
88
|
385
|
HR
|
465
|
1384
|
RBI
|
1833
|
78
|
SB
|
223
|
1391
|
BB
|
1216
|
.272
|
BA
|
.283
|
.370
|
OBP
|
.353
|
.470
|
SLG
|
.475
|
.840
|
OPS
|
.827
|
127
|
OPS+
|
130
|
8
|
Gold Gloves
|
7
|
3
|
All-Star Gms
|
12
|
0
|
AS Starts
|
8
|
5
|
MVP ballots
|
9
|
4
|
Top-10
|
7
|
2
|
Top-5
|
3
|
* * *
Wait…why am I doing this?
Dwight Evans is my favorite player. As my favorite player I am willing to entertain arguments about his greatness that I might not stake for anyone else. I believe Evans was a greater outfielder than Rice or Lynn. I think he was better than Parker. I think he deserved the 1981 MVP. He is a deserving candidate for the Hall-of-Fame.
When it comes to a comparison with Dave Winfield, there is a reasonable argument that Dewey was a more valuable player than Dave Winfield during Evans’ peak in 1980’s. It’s very close, but I can entertain that notion. Evans had an extra year, after all, and he did walk a bit more often than Winfield.
But if you consider their careers in total, Dave Winfield was a superior player. Winfield was a star in the 1970’s, playing in a gigantic ballpark, while Evans was still trying to get on his feet as a hitter. And Dave Winfield was still productive in the 1990’s, posting All-Star seasons as a DH-for-hire after Evans had left the game.
Their batting numbers are a little deceitful. Just looking at their career home runs and triple-slash lines:
Player
|
HR
|
BA
|
OBP
|
SLG
|
OPS
|
Evans
|
385
|
.272
|
.370
|
.470
|
.840
|
Winfield
|
465
|
.283
|
.353
|
.475
|
.827
|
What this misses is that Evans was significantly advantaged by playing in a favorable home park, while Winfield was significantly disadvantaged by his home fields. Both players at home:
Player
|
HR
|
BA
|
OBP
|
SLG
|
OPS
|
Evans
|
203
|
.283
|
.379
|
.505
|
.885
|
Winfield
|
218
|
.276
|
.349
|
.463
|
.812
|
In more neutral road contexts, Winfield’s superior hitting shows up in better contrast:
Player
|
HR
|
BA
|
OBP
|
SLG
|
OPS
|
Evans
|
182
|
.261
|
.361
|
.437
|
.798
|
Winfield
|
247
|
.289
|
.356
|
.485
|
.841
|
While Evans retains a slight edge in on-base percentage, Winfield gains thirty-points in batting average, and fifty points in slugging percentage. Remove their park contexts, and Winfield’s triple-slash line comes into parallel with the many other places where he shows as being a better player than Evans.
Switch their parks…imagining that Dave Winfield spent his career in Fenway while Dewey bounced around between San Diego and the Bronx… it is very likely that Winfield would’ve reached 500 homeruns. Stuck in bigger stadiums, I don’t know that Evans would’ve even reached 300.
Winfield was a perennial All-Star almost from the start, and he was paid like a star. Evans was a good defensive player who turned into a very fine hitter later in his career, but he wasn’t ever viewed as one of the elite players in the game. Winfield stole a decent numbers of bases in his younger years; Evans never crossed double digits. Winfield nearly won a batting title; Evans never came close. Winfield collected 3100 hits and 465 homeruns; Evans never reached 2500 hits or 400 career homers. Winfield hung around forever and was still a force at 40; Evans dropped off quicker. Winfield was elected to the Hall-of-Fame during his first year of eligibility; Evans fell off the ballot after three years, never gaining any traction with the voters.
There is a strong consensus among the people who watched both men play that Dave Winfield was the greater player. That consensus is supported both by the broad arc of both of their careers, and by the statistical record they left behind.
* * *
And then there is WAR.
WAR tells us that Dwight Evans was a better player than Dave Winfield.
Player
|
FanG WAR
|
BB-Ref WAR
|
Evans
|
65.1
|
67.1
|
Winfield
|
59.9
|
64.2
|
Understand, first, that I very much want this to be true. I would very much like to rest in the knowledge that Dwight Evans was a greater player than Dave Winfield. I’m pleased at the reconsideration Evans’ career has received: he has gone from extremely underappreciated to a-little-appreciated to very-likely-to-get-elected to the Hall. I have been incredibly happy to witness that movement.
But these numbers are broken. They’re wrong. They do a disservice to both players, forcing an unreasonable comparison, and they do a disservice to the field of sabermetrics.
Dwight Evans wasn’t a better player than Dave Winfield. Considering the totality of their careers, it wasn’tclose. I want Dwight Evans’ career to be lauded as much as anyone, but I don’t want it this way. This is bullshit hidden in numerical chaos.
So let’s dive into that chaos.
The gap inWAR lies in the way the metric measure of both players’ defensive abilities. Baseball-Reference counts Dwight Evans as a slightly negative defensive player, and Dave Winfield as a more-than-slightly terrible defensive player. FanGraphs goes further: Dwight Evans is counted as a pretty darned horrible, and Dave Winfield was what you’d get if you made Adam Dunn play outfield in a blindfold.
Here’s how FanGraphs credits Winfield and Evans:
Player
|
Off
|
Def
|
Evans
|
348.4
|
-68.6
|
Winfield
|
406.5
|
-243.9
|
‘Off’ – short for ‘Offense’ – is an attempt to combine a player’s context-neutral value at the plate and on the bases. It is a combination of park adjusted batting runs above average. Dwight Evans, according to the math, was worth a context-neutral 348.4 runs as an offensive player.
I have some quibbles with ‘Off’, but it’s not an awful metric. It isn’t perfect, but it isn’t terrible. If you want to tell me that Dave Winfield’s value over Evans as offensive players is somewhere in the neighborhood of 58 runs above average…well, that feels a little light to me, but I don’t need to die on that hill.
But ‘Def’ is terrible…it is a flawed, damaging statistic.
Def stands for ‘Defense’, and it is a metric that tries to do two things: calculate the number of runs a defensive player saved against the league average (Mookie Betts is a better right-fielder than Bryce Harper, for example), and make a positional adjustment on the value of those runs (a shortstop has more defensive importance than a right-fielder).
This is juggling a chainsaw, and then adding a beaker of anthrax. It is, from a statistics perspective, a risky move.
The first component is measured by a stat called Total Zone, or TZ. This is an attempt to measure a player’s fielding runs above average.
TZ credits Evans as being +80, or eighty runs above average. And TZ credits Dave Winfield as being worth -94 runs. Ninety-four runs below average.
Let us stop right there and ask: does that make any kind of intuitive sense? Does that feel logical, in any way?
It feels logical for Evans. I don’t know what +80 looks like in context, but Evans was a good defensive player, who set a bunch of records while playing in a tough park for a right-fielder. He received 8 Gold Gloves and had a canon of an arm…if the number for that is +80, I can buy it.
But how in the world is Dave Winfield so significantly worse? Winfield isn’t just zero: the evaluation of his defense goes from Evans-to-zero-to-Anti-Evans. How is that possible?
Winfield won seven Gold Gloves. Winfield played in big outfields and had a cannon of an arm. Winfield was a gangly player, as tall people often are, but he was fast and tall and he could climb the fence.
Here are the ten outfielders with the most assists since 1961. Both men make the list:
Name
|
G
|
A
|
E
|
DP
|
R. Clemente
|
1631
|
185
|
88
|
28
|
Barry Bonds
|
2887
|
172
|
97
|
22
|
D.Winfield
|
2570
|
164
|
95
|
32
|
Jesse Barfield
|
1429
|
163
|
62
|
48
|
Jhn Callison
|
1646
|
160
|
53
|
29
|
Tony Gwynn
|
2353
|
160
|
63
|
27
|
Dwg Evans
|
2160
|
158
|
60
|
42
|
Larry Walker
|
1821
|
154
|
48
|
33
|
K Griffey Jr.
|
2386
|
154
|
89
|
33
|
Roberto Clemente, missing seven years of his career, is still ahead of the pack. Dave Winfield, credited with having a terrific arm, ranks third. Evans ranks seventh.
This seems like a perfectly reasonable list. Barfield is there: that man had a canon. Bonds is a surprise, but Gwynn could throw. Walker was incredible in his Montreal days. This is a good list.
Evans made thirty-five fewer errors than Winfield, in 400 fewer games. Evans notched a few more double plays. Let’s imagine that Winfield makes an extra error a year, and Evans nets an extra double play every other year. Let’s also assume that Evans got better jumps on the balls, and ignore that Winfield was tall enough to snag a few more dingers. I’m fine with all of those allowances.
Does that in any way justify a gap of +80 to -94? Of course not. Whatever gap on defense exists between Evans and Winfield, it’s not that big. It can’t be, given all that we know about both men.
And is that gap so significant that it makes up for Winfield’s edge as an offensive player? Does that difference on defense make up for Winfield’s extra eight seasons as an elite hitter?
Again, of course not.
Think it through. Just use your head.
How many more runs, on offense, was Winfield worth in 1978, when he hit .308 with 24 home runs and 21 steals in a Death Valley park, while Evans was hitting .247 in Fenway? How many more runs was Winfield’s bat worth in 1991 when he 28 homers in Anaheim to Evans’ six in Baltimore? What about 1992, when Winfield drove in 108 runs for the Jays while Evans was out of baseball?
And then there is the positional adjustment. Certainly, you have to adjust for position. A shortstop who creates 100 runs with a bat is a rarer thing than a right-fielder who creates 100 runs. I understand.
But this is ridiculous:
Player
|
Off
|
Def
|
Winfield
|
406.5
|
-243.9
|
If your combination of defensive runs counting and positional adjustment negates most of the impact of an elite hitter, and when that negation flies in the face of a broad consensus of observers and analysts, you’ve got to admit you made a mistake.
Dave Winfield might’ve been an overrated defensive player, but there is no way that his defense was so terrible that it knocks out more than half of his value as a hitter. There is no way his defense was so bad that is closes the gap.
* * *
I do not generally attempt to write anything that risks venturing in an area that Bill is already writing about. This is because I don’t want to make the mistake of imagining I know what the heck Bill is thinking. If he wants to talk about something like ‘Runs Saved Against Zero’, I’m going to assume that he knows something I don’t know, and then I’m going to back out of the room slowly.
But I’ve been meaning to write this article for a while, and Bill’s article reminded me about it.
The two versions of WAR both conclude that Dwight Evans was a better player than Dave Winfield.
That conclusion rests, as far as I can tell, on a defensive measurement that is not calibrated to zero. It is calibrated to one thing that isn’t zero (defensive runs above average), and then it is calibrated again to something else that isn’t zero (positional adjustment). Those acts of calibration lead, in the case of Winfield and Evans, to a conclusion so improbable that the inventors should have recognized a flaw in their system and made an adjustment.
They didn’t. They haven’t. They’ve dug their heels in and let it stand.
Dwight Evans was a great baseball player. He was better than anyone thought at the time, and it is a great fact that his career is getting more attention than it received during his playing time. As a member of the sabermetric community, I am happy about it. As a Dwight Evans fan, I am over the moon about it.
But that re-evaluation shouldn’t happen on an architecture of bad math. Dwight Evans was a great player, but he wasn’t a greater player than Dave Winfield, and the comparison doesn’t do him any favors. It doesn’t do our community any favors, either: if our best statistic wants to tell us that Dwight Evans was a better player than Dave Winfield, we have work to do.
David Fleming is a writer living in western Virginia. He welcomes comments and questions here and at dfleming1986@yahoo.com.