October 1, 2010

Baltimore Regional

Cleveland Regional

St. Louis Regional

Los Angeles Regional

ROBBY IN FINAL FOUR

          Brooks Robinson became the first player to qualify for the Final Four in the Brooks Robinson Invitational Tournament, using a 16-2 advantage in “Defense” to fend off Toby Harrah.

            Harrah and Robinson were fairly evenly matched in terms of hitting for average and hitting for power, and reasonably even in some other areas.  The game came down to Harrah’s walks against Robinson’s defense.    Harrah, who had walk totals of 98, 91, 109, 83, 89, 98, 84 and 113, had a .365 on base percentage, compared to .322 for Robinson, whose career high in walks was 63.  Over the course of a long career that amounts to a difference of about 500 times on base—obviously a substantial margin.   The question of the day was whether that margin would be larger or smaller than Robinson’s advantage with the glove.

            Smaller.   Robinson’s advantage in fielding percentage at third base (.971 to .963) amounts to about 70 plays over the course of a career.    Robinson played more than 25,000 innings at third base in his career; Harrah, a little more than 9,000, making a straight comparison difficult.   However, Robinson, per 1400 innings—assuming 1400 innings to be a season—Robinson per 1400 innings averaged 151 putouts, 347 assists.   Harrah per 1400 innings averaged 119 putouts, 295 assists.   We have to try to adjust for strikeout context, try to adjust for balls in play, the team’s overall defensive success, and Harrah’s contributions at other defensive positions, and that’s not easy.   Still, one can easily see how Robinson’s advantage on defense could amount to much more than 500 plays over the course of a career.

            Harrah was an interesting player, an extremely good athlete who had power and speed in addition to his throwing arm and his ability to get on base—a quite remarkable combination of assets.    He was, perhaps, a little bit like Tulowitski; he looked more athletic that Tulowitski, but Tulowitski’s a hell of an athlete although he doesn’t exactly look the part.

            Harrah—whose real name was “Colbert Dale Harrah”—had a little bit of Wally Moses’ Disease, which is to say:  he was always good at something, but not necessarily everything at the same time.  He hit as many as 27 homers, stole as many as 31 bases, walked as many as 113 times, hit as high as .304, had on-base percentages as high as .432, and played a pretty decent shortstop.   He tended to do two or three things well every year.   His on-base percentages from 1984 to 1986 read .331, .432, .322. 

            Although Harrah had decent footwork he did not have the superior quickness of the top-rank defensive shortstops, nor did he have Cal Ripken’s arm to set up deep and compensate for it.   He could have been a good third baseman, but he insisted on playing too shallow, even though he was repeatedly asked to back up.   His argument was that he was “cutting down the cone”.   If you visualize the trajectory of baseballs leaving the bat and heading toward left field over third base, you get a “cone” that gets wider as you leave the plate.   Harrah thought that he came out ahead by playing the narrower part of the cone.   He was certainly wrong about this.  There is a formula in there somewhere that could be used to explain this, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.    Let’s say that the width of the cone is proportional to the distance from home plate.   By pulling in ten feet you make the cone’s width 9 (90 feet) rather than 10 (100 feet). 

            The thing is, if the third baseman was 15 feet from home plate, obviously he would be unable to make any plays (or virtually any plays), because he would not have time to react.   Thus, his reaction time is proportional not to his distance from home plate, but to his distance from home plate minus about 20 feet—the “startup time” to get his body in motion.  By pulling in ten feet, Harrah was reducing the width of the Cone about 10%, but reducing the area that he could cover about 15%.   That’s not exactly right, but there’s something there.

            This would be an interesting real-world experiment.   Paint a “cone” on the ground, a cone about 35 feet wide at a distance of 100 feet, then tapering down to one foot wide at the origin (the plate).   Take a group of infielders, and ask them (one by one) to “guard the cone”—that is, field any ball they can field—at a distance of 50 feet, 60 feet, 70 feet, 80 feet, etc.   Then have a coach try to hit hot shots past them, but within the cone, and then figure the percentage of balls within the cone that were fielded at each distance.   I’m quite certain you would find that the percentage for every fielder increased as he backed up—limited, of course, by his ability to throw the hitter out from that distance.

            Harrah played so shallow at third base that he really couldn’t get to pop ups in shallow left that would ordinarily have been routine outs.  This made him a defensive liability at third base, and obviously, you’d rather have Brooks Robinson at third base than a player who hits for the same average with the same power, but who’s a defensive liability.   Robinson’s “marginal win percentage” compared to Harrah was .587, and Harrah’s career, though outstanding, is below the minimum standard of a Hall of Fame candidate.

Toby Harrah—Career Won and Lost Contributions

NETTLES OUSTS SANTO IN OVERTIME, 67-66

            Ron Santo hit .300 four times in his career; Graig Nettles never did.   Santo’s career average, .277, was 29 points higher than Nettles (.248)—but Graig Nettles is moving on to the Final Four, and Ron Santo is out of the tournament.

            Although Santo won five Gold Gloves and scores at 75-38 as a defensive player, he loses the defensive comparison to Nettles, 16-9.   That gave back 7 points of the 14 that he gained from “Hitting for Average”, and Nettles also beat Santo in terms of Power (13-11), Career Length (11-8), and Team Success (8-3).

            Ron Santo is the best player eliminated from the tournament thus far.   In my opinion, as I have stated many times, Santo’s career is well above the standards of the Hall of Fame, and I believe that he should have been selected long ago.   He played at something near an MVP level every year from 1963 to 1969—easily the best seven-year stretch by any player in the tournament.   He was a good player for four years after that stretch ended.

            Nettles’ marginal winning percentage, above Santo’s career, was .360.   It is not absolutely clear that Nettles was better than Santo, but. . .that’s the result that I got from the system I set up, and I don’t see a compelling argument to ignore it.

Ron Santo—Career Won and Lost Contributions

            These are the best seven-year stretches by any third baseman in the tournament: