Rolen Ousts Boyer as Second Round Begins

September 23, 2010

            OK, let’s start the second round by re-setting the brackets as well as we can with our limited graphics.   There are now 32 players left in the tournament, which means 16 second-round games.   There are four divisions, four games in each division or region, which are as follows:

Baltimore

Cleveland

St. Louis

Los Angeles

            So it will take us four days to go through these second-round games, which will leave us with a sixteen-man tournament.  I probably should have done a summary like the one above every day. . ..I will from now on.   In the Final Four, the winner of the Baltimore Region will face the winner of the Cleveland region (the East), and the winner of the St. Louis region will meet the winner of the Los Angeles region (the West).

Lansford Still Standing

            Carney Lansford is a player that sabermetricians may have had their issues with over the years, but nonetheless he has advanced into the third round of the Brooks Robinson invitational tournament, defeating Ken McMullen 89-68.

            I would ordinarily mention here that Lansford in the next round will face the winner of tomorrow’s matchup between Buddy Bell and Mike Lowell, but. . .you can see that above.  McMullen was a far better defensive third baseman than Lansford, took more walks and had more power.   Lansford, however, won the American League batting title in 1981 at .336, and just missed another title when he hit .336 again in 1989 (Kirby Puckett hit .339).    This gives Lansford a 24-2 edge in Hitting for Average.  Lanford’s career was longer, he was faster, and. . .it was enough.

            Ken McMullen came out of the Dodger system at the time when I was just becoming a baseball fan, when I studied every box score, read everything I could find about the game, and spent an immense amount of time with a few hundred baseball cards.   The Dodger system was a machine in those days, producing talent like a fire producing smoke.   McMullen in 1961 was a member of one of the most impressive low-level minor league teams of all time, the Reno Silver Sox of the California League.  The catcher, Hector Valle, 20 years old, hit .325 with 7 homers, 71 RBI.   First baseman Dick Nen is famous for three things:

            1)  He is on the palindromic All Stars, with Toby Harrah and Eddie Kazak,

            2)  He was the father of Robb Nen, and

            3)  He got the biggest hit of the 1963 season, a 9^th-inning pinch hit home run that crushed the Cardinals and effectively ended the pennant race.

            With Reno, Nen hit .351 with 32 homers and 144 RBI.   Second baseman Lou Ertle hit 34 doubles, 13 triples and 18 homers, scoring 119 runs.    Shortstop Don Williams won the batting title at .363, had 18 homers, 13 steals, and scored 132 runs.   He was 23 years old, a little bit old for the level, a little behind schedule; he became a good triple-A player but never made The Show.   Third baseman McMullen—arguably the weakest link in the infield—hit just .288 that year with 21 homers, but led the league in walks, with 107.

            An 18-year-old pitcher with that team, Joe Moeller, was 11-3 with a 1.82 ERA; he would continue to dominate at higher levels in the minors, and would be in the Dodgers’ rotation the next season, at the age of 19.    Less fortunate was Bruce Gardner, a left-handed pitcher who was 20-4 for Reno.   Gardner, a star at USC, later carried a pistol to the USC mound in the middle of the night, and committed suicide.   Gardner had wanted to enter pro baseball out of high school, but his father had forbidden it, and insisted that he go to college.  Gardner was a huge star at USC, but he left his best stuff in college; in the pros he could dominate the lower levels, but didn’t progress much.   He apparently ended his life on the USC mound as a way of saying “This is where my life ended.”

            Anyway, Reno finished 97-43, and, to get back to my point, the Dodger system at that time seemed to produce talent effortlessly.   The Dodger farms, built by Branch Rickey in the 1940s and nurtured after Rickey left by Walter O’Malley, had developed the team to the level where they were pushing the Yankees for the distinction of being the dominant franchise in the game.   The Dodgers tried to keep the best products from that farm system, and package the rest in trades.   Everybody does that; what made the Dodgers different was that they were fantastically good, for a period of about five years, at creating the impression that everybody who came out of their system was two steps away from Cooperstown.   They’d come up with guys like Pete Richert and Nate Oliver and Johnny Werhas and Nick Willhite, and they’d have half of baseball convinced that these guys were All Stars, just waiting for a chance to play.   They got to be too good at it; they started fooling themselves.    They should have kept McMullen and made him their third baseman, but instead, they packaged McMullen with four other guys in a trade for Claude Osteen, and, a couple of years later, traded Maury Wills to Pittsburgh for Bob Bailey.   That was a disaster.

            McMullen had some good years with Washington in the American League, but it was a pitcher’s park in the middle of a pitcher’s era, and the numbers don’t look great.   He was a regular until 1972.  On the Won and Lost chart below there is a number that doesn’t look right.   McMullen in 1972 hit .269 with 9 homers, 34 RBI—but is credited with a won-lost contribution of 18-8.   34 RBI and 18 Win Shares is not a normal combination.   I believe it is accurate to say that those who were on the scene at the time—the Angels—did NOT believe that McMullen had had a very good year, at all.   They thought he was finished, and they traded him away to be a backup player.

            True, but look again at the 1972 Angels.   They scored 454 runs—less than three runs a game—and finished almost .500 (75-80).   That team scored fewer runs than any other American League team between the beginning of the Lively Ball era (1920) and the 1981 strike.   They scored fewer than any other major league team in that era, save one (the 1942 Phillies).  Obviously, the ratio of runs to wins there is extremely unusual, and this is reflected in McMullen’s won-lost numbers.  The Angels traded him away, true, but the Angels in that era didn’t really know what they were doing, either.   Despite the immense good fortune that they had in trading Jim Fregosi for Nolan Ryan before that season, they still finished under .500 in 1972, ’73, ’74, ’75, ’76, and ’77.   They were worse in ’73, ’74 and ’75 than they had been in ’72, when they had McMullen in the lineup.   I am not insisting that our evaluation of McMullen in that season is right, but it is not apparent to me that it is wrong.

            In 1973 McMullen was with the Dodgers, backing up Ron Cey, when his wife Bobbi was diagnosed with cancer.   She died on April 6, 1974, and was buried on April 8, which was the day that Henry Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s career home run record with a home run against the Dodgers, against Al Downing.   The Dodgers played that historic game with a black arm band, in

memory of Bobbi McMullen.   McMullen took a couple of weeks off, returned to the game, and played as a backup until 1977.

Ken McMullen—Won and Lost Contributions

Say It Ain’t So

            Triggering a near-riot in St. Louis, St. Louis baseball icon Ken Boyer has been eliminated from the Brooks Robinson Invitational Tournament by current Cincinnati Reds third baseman Scott Rolen.   Although the two players were evenly matched in almost every area, Rolen was given credit for small advantages in terms of power, defense and plate discipline, and staggered out of the contest with a 59-55 victory.

            Look, guys, no one is more surprised than I am that Rolen comes out ahead of Boyer.   As a kid who grew up listening to Harry Carey and the Cardinals whenever the A’s weren’t on or were hopelessly behind, Ken Boyer was a giant of my childhood (a), and (b) I had no idea in the world that Scott Rolen had reached that level.   But. . .facts are facts, and this is where we are.  I’ll write more about Rolen when the time comes to write about Rolen, which will be when he is eliminated from the tournament.

            Boyer was one of 14 children, and had five brothers who also played professional baseball, two of whom played in the majors.   This fact created an identity for him—it was something that everybody knew in that generation--and this helped to make him a star.  He was the unofficial captain of the Cardinals as Stan Musial aged and receded into the background, and he won the MVP Award in 1964, the year after Musial retired—as Brooks Robinson did in the American League that same year.

            To be honest, I have avoided figuring Win Shares and Loss Shares for Boyer, up to now, because I was afraid that he would come out ahead of Ron Santo.   I’ve always been a Ron Santo fan, and I am on record lobbying for Santo to be in the Hall of Fame.   If Boyer had come out ahead of Santo, this would complicate the debate.

            Boyer doesn’t come out ahead of Santo, but he does come in above the minimal standard of a Hall of Famer; more on that later.   When I was thinking about who should be in this tournament and who should not, Boyer had two problems:  He was too fast, and his batting averages were too high.   Aurelio Rodriguez. ..no, doesn’t hit enough. . .Bob Bailey is perfect as a hitter, but he’s not good enough in the field.   Boyer was over qualified for the tournament; the only problems with saying that he was a Brooks Robinson-type player was that he was much faster than Brooks and he hit .300 five times.   But Boyer is naturally matched against Robinson because they won MVP Awards the same year, and there aren’t 64 true Brooks Robinson-type players in baseball history, so. . .in he goes.  

            Boyer was really good.  There are a lot of guys in this tournament who have won-lost contributions like 20-11, 21-13, 22-10—for three or four years.   Boyer was at that level for eight years, above that level in some of those.  There are two kinds of Most Valuable Players:  those who have a big year, and those who are at that level every year, and eventually it is their turn.   Boyer was the latter .  He won the MVP Award in 1964 with a season that was, in reality, just his normal year.

            The standard that I use is that a Hall of Famer should have 300 Win Shares or should have 100 more Win Shares than Loss Shares.  If a player meets one of those standards, he can be in the Hall of Fame.   If he meets both of them, he should be.

I first proposed these standards about three years ago, in a tentative, let’s-just-try-this-and-see-how-it-plays way.   Three years later, I’m pretty much married to those standards.

            Here’s why those numbers work.    300 Win Shares is 100 team wins.    100 Team Wins is a pennant.

            +100 is 33 games over .500.    33 games over .500 is a pennant.  

            In saying 300 Win Shares or +100, then, what we are saying is this:  that this guy won his team a pennant.

            A baseball team is 25 players, but not all of them regulars.   Counting part-time players as half-time regulars, a team consists of about 16 to 19 “regulars”.

            And what does a career consist of?   16 to 19 years, right?   If you are a regular for 16 years, that is a full career.  Therefore, in the same way that a pint is a pound (the world around), a full career is also a team.   A “team” and a “career” are units of essentially the same size.   If, in your “team”, you win the pennant, that’s a rational standard for the Hall of Fame.

            300 Win Shares is like 300 Wins by a pitcher.  It is never going to be easy to get there.   A player can only meet that standard by many years of outstanding play—and this will always be true, no matter how batting numbers or pitching numbers may fluctuate.   Unless they start playing 200 games a season, nobody is going to get to 300 Win Shares without having a heck of a career.   Ever.

            It’s a rational standard, but does it work?

            I have never seen a case where it doesn’t, other than perhaps 19^th century pitchers, maybe one or two others.  Maybe a reliever, maybe Campanella.   But if you take any player who clearly should be in the Hall of Fame—Schmidt, Brett, Seaver, Carew, Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter, whoever—he is going to clear those standards.

            If you take any player who is a marginal Hall of Famer, a guy who is right on the line and you can’t say easily whether he should be in or out—Andre Dawson, or Jim Rice, or Earl Averill, or Joe Torre, or Albert Belle, or Kirby Puckett or Steve Garvey—most of the time, those guys are right on the line.

            You take any of the old Hall of Fame mistakes, the guys that they put in the Hall of Fame before they realized you could actually do research.  ..Freddy Lindstrom, Chuck Klein, Chick Hafey, Jesse Haines, Rick Ferrell, any of those guys. . .when you figure the numbers, they always come up short of those standards.

            Of course there are always hard cases, players who have short careers and players who weren’t as good as everybody thought they were, etc.   But still, those standards always seem to work.   Sandy Koufax?   Well above the +100 standard.    Hank Greenberg?   Well above.

            In my view, who belongs in the Hall of Fame and who doesn’t is ultimately a judgment call, requiring more than simple calculation, and more than complex calculations.   The numbers are not ultimately going to tell us who should be in and who should be out.   We don’t work for the numbers; they work for us.

            But the numbers can play a valuable role, in telling us where players stand with regard to objective standards—tolerant standards, flexible standards, but reasonable standards.   “Flexible standards” doesn’t mean that Freddy Lindstrom gets in; Freddy Lindstrom gets in because people don’t use ANY standard.    Flexible standards just means that we can work with you in a hard case.   Flexible standards are logical guideposts, but they don’t kill you if you run into them.

            We take the player’s Won and Lost contributions, and we turn that into a “Wins above replacement” type of number (WSV, Win Shares Value) by the formula (3 W – L )/ 2, or, if you prefer, W + (W – L)/2.   For Boyer, that’s 255-155, which would be 305, although it actually works out to 304. 

            These are the standards that I believe in.

            Less than 250 WSV, a player has no business being in the Hall of Fame other than in some very exceptional case, where the arguments for him are compelling, such as Roy Campanella.   There are lots of guys who are in the Hall of Fame with totals under 250 (probably about 30 of them, maybe more), and generally speaking, I don’t believe that any of those guys should be in there. 

250 to 300, players generally should not be in the Hall of Fame, but there are many who are, and in some cases—like Koufax—they should be.   Dale Murphy is in this range, and so is Ellis Burks, and Earle Combs and Cecil Cooper.   Johnny Damon.     Roger Maris.  Joe Gordon.   Darryl Strawberry.  Ross Youngs.  Tony Oliva.    Gordon, Combs and Ross Youngs are in the Hall of Fame, and I kind of think it would be better if they weren’t, but they’re not Travis Jackson and Jim Bottomley, either.

300 to 350…then it’s a judgment call.   About half the guys in this range are in; about half are out.   There are many players in this range who I think should be in the Hall of Fame; there are some that I think probably should not.    A player can be in the range of 300 to 350 without meeting either of the standards that I prefer—300 Win Shares, or +100.    If you have a won-lost contribution of 280-210, in my view your career has fallen short of Hall of Fame standards, but your total is over 300, and there are a lot of guys in that range who are in the Hall of Fame, and I don’t really object to them being there.  In this range of value, the odds are swinging in your favor.

            350 to 400, there is a strong presumption that a player is a Hall of Famer.   The great majority of players in this range are in the Hall of Fame, I believe, and the exceptions are all players who, in my judgment, are above the line that has traditionally marked a Hall of Famer.  You can’t get to 350 without reaching either 300 Win Shares or +100; therefore, if you reach that level, you’re good to go by me, unless you’re not eligible.  Andre Dawson is in this range, and Larry Doby.  But there are still many players in history who are in this range, and who have not been selected, like Dwight Evans and several third basemen that we will meet later in this series.

            Above 400. . .it’s a no-brainer.   There are lots of guys way above 400—Mays, Aaron, Mantle, Frank Robinson, Speaker, Walter Johnson, Honus Wagner, Schmidt.   Richie Ashburn was over 400, and Duke Snider was.  I’ve never figured Mike Schmidt; I KNOW he’s over 400.  He’s probably over 500; he’s probably over 550.   All those kind of guys are over 400, and some of them are up around 600.    There are two players in this tournament who are over 400, and they will meet in the Championship Game.  There are a handful of players in history who are over 400 and who have been left out of the Hall of Fame.

            With a won-lost contribution of 255-155, Boyer is +100, meaning that he is at least minimally qualified for the Hall of Fame.    With a WSV of 304, he is in the area where it’s a judgment call.    If he went into the Hall of Fame, I would be pleased—but I’m not going to argue for him, because he is not the best qualified candidate who could be elected.   His won-lost contribution is very similar to Don Mattingly’s (243-127, 302).    If Mattingly was elected to the Hall of Fame I would be very pleased, because Mattingly is a good guy and he is a qualified Hall of Famer by the standard of who has been elected in the past.   Boyer is at the same level.

            Dave Parker is in this group (296-205, 342).   I wouldn’t vote for Dave Parker to go into the Hall of Fame, but if he was elected I wouldn’t say anything, because he’s better than a lot of the other guys who are in there.   Steve Garvey. . .Same thing.  Garvey’s at 291-199, a value of 337.   Tinker, Evers and Chance are all in the range of 300 to 350.

            In my opinion, a qualified Hall of Famer should have at least four high-impact seasons, defining a High Impact Season as a Win Share Value of 30 or higher.   Boyer had four such seasons.   He meets the standard; he doesn’t crush it.

            The thing is, third basemen have never done well in Hall of Fame voting.   I believe that I understand why this is true. . .reminding ourselves that all kinds of people believe they understand stuff that they don’t really understand at all.   But. ..my basic theory of the universe is that the external world is much more complicated than the human mind; therefore, people operate—and have to operate, by necessity—on theories about the external world which are much less complicated than the real thing.   At some point, your mind gives up and you retreat to the NAS.   Nearest Available Simplification. 

            I think that people use two standards to judge potential Hall of Famers:  one standard by which they judge outfielders and first basemen, and one standard by which they judge defensive players (catchers, second basemen, shortstops and exceptional defensive center fielders.)   If you’re a “slugger”, you get in if you’re above a certain level, the very bottom of which is Jim Rice and Orlando Cepeda.   If you’re a shortstop or a catcher, then it’s a different test; then it depends on contributions to pennant-winning teams and winning awards, that sort of thing.

            The problem with third basemen is that they are neither fish nor fowl, neither true sluggers nor true defenders.   Third basemen—and only third basemen—need to be judged by a half-and-half standard—but that’s just a little bit too complicated for the process.   That’s just over the “complexity line” where people’s patience runs out, and they retreat to the NAS.

            Because of that, third basemen have always done very poorly in the Hall of Fame battle.   There are several third basemen who, in my judgment, are above the Hall of Fame line, but who aren’t in.   I can’t argue for all of these players to go into the Hall of Fame.   I have to keep my powder dry.   Ken Boyer is over the line where there are a lot of Hall of Famers, but I can’t argue for him because there are other third basemen who should go in before he does. 

            So if Ken Boyer is a qualified Hall of Famer and Scott Rolen beats him, am I saying then that Scott Rolen is a qualified Hall of Famer?   Well, I’ll talk about Scott Rolen when it is time to talk about Scott Rolen, but. . .yes.   Scott Rolen’s career is better than I had any idea that it was until I sat down and did the research.   That’s why you do research.   Ken Boyer was a great player; Scott Rolen has been a little bit better.

Ken Boyer—Won and Lost Contributions

Bob Elliott 67, Heinie Zimmerman 52

            Bob Elliott, who was the Most Valuable Player in the National League in 1947, has defeated Heinie Zimmerman, who was denied the Most Valuable Player of the same league in 1912 despite very nearly winning the 1912 Triple Crown. 

            Zimmerman in 1912 hit .372 (leading the league by 14 points) with 14 homers (which led the league) but only 99 RBI.   The 99 RBI missed by 3 of leading the league.

            Of course, it wasn’t until years after that that the concept of a “Triple Crown” was invented, I think sometime in the 1940s.    Zimmerman was portrayed by journalists of his era as being a jovial but slightly addled egomaniac.    He was tight with baseball’s prince of thieves, Hal Chase, got involved in the fixing of games when that became fashionable, and was banned from baseball in 1920, although he may have left the game voluntarily before then. 

            As his career was short, his walks were very infrequent, and his intelligence and character were questionable, one can’t get too excited about him.    He was a very good player at his best. 

Heinie Zimmerman—Won and Lost Contributions

Jimmy Collins 70, Matt Williams 65

            Jimmy Collins, elected to the Hall of Fame in 1945, has defended the honor of the institution with a narrow 70-65 victory over Matt Williams.

            Very often in these contests we have had a power player, like Williams, matched against a high-average player like Collins.   When that happens, the high-average player generally wins the “speed” category, those more or less offset, and then it becomes a matter of defense, plate discipline and career length.

            So it was here.  Williams led 27-25 after power, speed and defense, and the two were nearly even in four of the last five categories.    Collins won by four points in “defense”, and thus won the contest by five.

            Which brings up a question:   exactly how good was Jimmy Collins’ defense?    As you can see (below. .I’ll put it in gray) Matt Williams was a very good defensive third baseman—the fifth-best among the 38 players now eliminated from this tournament, behind Cirillo, David Bell and the Boyer brothers.   Matt Williams didn’t lose “Defense” because his defense was bad; Matt Williams lost “Defense” because Jimmy Collins’ defense was great.

            Collins’ career high in walks was 41; Matt Williams’ was 43.    In some sense, that’s what sunk him—the opportunity cost.   Returning to the analogy of the basketball game, suppose that one team goes 3-for-17 shooting threes, and the other team goes 3-for-18.   You can’t say, at the end of the day, that you lost the game because you missed your threes, because, after all, the other guy missed his threes, too.

            But on some level it’s still true:   you throw up 18 threes and you don’t hit them, it’s going to kill you.   Williams was a very good player—38 homers, 110 RBI, .294 average in 1993 (22-9), 142 RBI in 1999 (21-11).   But that .317 career on base percentage.. . .that’ll kill ya.

Matt Williams—Won and Lost Contributions

            In the original Win Shares system, I divided each player’s Value in a “Hitting” percentage, a “Fielding” percentage, and a “Pitching” percentage.   This calculation can also be made with Win Shares and Loss Shares, by doing a “WSV” calculation of the Hitting won-lost record, the Fielding won-lost record, and the Overall won-lost record.    For example, Matt Williams has a “Hitting” won-lost record of 165-135, which is a WSV of 180:

            165 – 135 =   (495 – 135) / 2 =  180

            He has a “Fielding” WSV of 69.5:

            55 – 26 =  (165 – 26)/ 2 =  69.5

            That’s 72% hitting, 28% defense.  Ken Reitz, eliminated earlier, comes in by this method at 46% hitting, 54% fielding.    Dean Palmer comes in at 95% hitting, 5% fielding.    This chart summarizes all 66 players in the tournament, by the percentage of their value which is in their fielding.   As you can see, the four guys eliminated today all have about the same percentages: