Stan from Tacoma

Which raises the question: how long does it typically take for new stats to gain general acceptance among GMs, managers, fans, etc.? Has anyone seen a history of various metrics, including when they were first devised and when they gained acceptance into the canon?

From what I can tell, there are still plenty of folks who rely solely upon traditional "box score" stats (many of which are as old as the game itself) to evaluate players, and shun even the least frightening "new" stats (e.g. OBP, SLG, etc.). Have these traditional stats always been accepted, or did they have a waiting period as well?

But that si.com has a wicked east coast bias. A whole article about fielding metrics and the eyes v. the adding machine and nothing about Alex Cora v. Jeff Kent! Someone should let these guys know there's baseball west of the mississippi.

So it does take time, but these things do gain ground. Not all, but some. And because the old fielding stats are so inadequate - no one likes them, no one is beholden to them - I think one or more of the new ones has a great chance of being embraced.

I'm sure Alan Schwarz's recent book on the history of baseball statistics would answer this question much better.

5 - Yeah, yeah, yeah ...

Stan from Tacoma

I could be wrong, but I also don't think in some of these new systems that Jeter gets penalized for a play that was taken away from him - a play that results in an out. But in a sense, even if he does, you have to ask yourself, why is A-Rod making the play? Because he's a ballhog, or because he was better positioned to make the play. Just hypothetical, of course.

And the foul balls that Jeter goes five rows into the stands to get are very infrequent. Jeter gets full subjective credit for those, but the systems are designed to prevent him from getting too much credit for what, after all, is just one out.

Last night I couldn't sleep. Didn't want to watch TV or start a new book so I spent 2+ hours reading DT archives. Not only was it a trip down memory lane (e.g. I had no recollection I supported giving Nokomura more playing time. What was I thinking?) but I was again reminded of the quality of the insight and people who frequent this site. I remain convinced Bob is really Ken Jennings. And Steve is Dennis Miller: the humor is sophisticated and caustic and I am always 5 seconds behind his last joke.

In any event, I don't blog elsewhere cause it would only be a step down. The Warden can write with the best of them as evidenced by his new SI peice and the rest of us inmates just keep plugging along. Don't mean to get all Brokeback Mountian here but it really is the best baseball blog on the web and we are lucky it is for our team.

When Bill James created Range Factor in the 1970s, there were a lot of complaints from Phillies fans that Larry Bowa shouldn't be penalized for not getting to as many balls as the numbers indicated because Mike Schmidt was so good.

But if you asked about Jeter's fielding at Bronx Banter, I would think the majority of the people there would tell you that Jeter isn't all that good of a fielder.

If you wander into a Baseball Primer game chat for a Yankees game (you only have to wade through 500-1000 comments per game) you will often hear the joke "Past a diving Jeter" every time a Yankee opponent gets a hit up the middle. John Sterling says that all the time. In Sterling's mind, if Jeter can't catch a grounder, he just missed it by a thousandth of an inch and failed only because his superhuman effort failed.

Rob Neyer wrote a column about going on the radio with Sterling to discuss Jeter's fielding and I think Rob was ambushed not unlike an ACLU member popping up on the "O'Reilly Factor".

That's a funny line. And as one of the presumably few New Yorkers on DT, I was going to chastise you for exhibiting West Coast bias and getting the name of the Harlem River/East River wrong.

But lo and behold, I just looked it up, and there is indeed a Bronx River. Shows how much I know. It turns out, there's even other boroughs here besides Manhattan! Wow.

One last question though. What is an Izturii?

It's a compact that goes from 330 to 0 in six weeks flat.

I'm told that the Bronx River is, quote, "murky."

One aspect of fielding that I don't think gets much recognition, and why I am a skeptic about the numbers and even observation, is how much defense is a function of teamwork. The best infield defense I have ever seen was played by the Mariners in 01. Olerud could cover a lot of ground at first, which allowed Boone to play up the middle. Carlos Guillen could make the play in the hole at short and David Bell would take away what should have been extra basehits down the line. Take away any one of those guys and the remaining three players would have had to play defense differently.

As far as observation being deceiving, Garry Maddox had the best range of any centerfielder I have ever seen. He had Luzinski in left and Jay Johnstone in right and somehow the Phillies had a good defensive outfield. Any fly ball in the outfield Maddox had to catch. If you put Mays in the same situation I suspect Willie could have done as well. But Mays was not in the same situation, so Garry Maddox gets my vote as having the best range of any centerfielder. He couln't throw like Willie though. Few could.

Stan from Tacoma

That doesn't sound like teamwork as much as the fact that just all four infielders were above average in ability.

"I'll take New York geography for $1000, Alex."

From the NY Times, June 27, 1984:

The Assembly voted tonight to move the Marble Hill section of the Borough of Manhattan into New York County, thereby correcting a 46-year old mistake.

The neighborhood of Marble Hill was severed from the rest of the Manhattan Island in 1895 when a ship canal was built to connect the Harlem and Hudson Rivers.

A dispute over Marble Hill followed, but the matter was mostly put to rest in 1938, when the boundaries of the Borough of Manhattan were shifted to include Marble Hill.

But last month a judge ruled that the neighborhood remained part of Bronx County. Tonight the Assembly voted 140 to 4 and joined the Senate in moving to change that, and the measure now goes to the Governor. It would be retroactive to Jan. 1, 1938.

But seriously, L.A. has a lot of weird border issues as the city was pieced together over time by annexing unincorporated areas. The city of L.A. is so big that it contains cities that are enclaves, such as San Fernando and Beverly Hills.

Hershiser leaving Rangers
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ap-rangers-hershiser&prov=ap&type=lgns

Let's start the speculation on his new role in Chavez Ravine.

https://griddle.baseballtoaster.com/archives/317782.html

At the end of Schwarz's book he talks about a new fielding system that would be fully up and running by 2005 or maybe 2006 (can't recall.) It consisted of 3 cameras I believe. One measured the speed of the hit ball, another the height and the third the exact direction it was going in. These three together were going to be the basis of a new fielding formula. I don't know if it actually happened, but they were using it in a couple stadiums already.

iz

Some of the guys I talked to liked Defensive Win Shares, some didn't. Ultimately, I was okay with leaving them out because James himself contributed to the new book, The Fielding Bible - including a new system called Relative Range Factor.

http://www.waswatching.com/archives/2005/08/in_defense_of_j.html

But I think the other article treats the questionable range as a throwaway point. But for a shortstop, my sense is that range is very important.

Stan from Tacoma

In Wills' era, the only team that likely kept detailed fielding stats with charts would have been the Dodgers and Allan Roth.

However, in the famous Life magazine article by Branch Rickey and Allan Roth where Rickey talked about stats, the Mahatma discounted fielding statistics as "useless". So I wonder if Rickey used stats for hitting and pitching and then just picked fielders on a hunch.

And if you remember that Campanis was a Rickey disciple and Rickey liked to change players positions to get their bats into the lineup, you can understand why Bill Russell became a shortstop instead of an outfielder.

For all the Ken Jennings fans:

http://www.blacktable.com/lindsay060127.htm

http://espndeportes.espn.go.com/news/story?id=405547

And to go with it many of the stars will be guys who jumped out of high school or who skipped college before their junior year.