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HeatherC12

By HeatherC12
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Baltimoron Major Leaguer Cup of Coffee

Baltimoron

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Pardon me if I'm a little skeptical of a fan rating system that seems to list John McDonald as the best shortstop in baseball for the 2008 season.

Its a list compiled by fans of particular team. It was posted here and opinions on Orioles were solicited.

I see you disagree. Why?

Are you a Blue Jays fan too? If so, get out and vote. There are seven categories like instincts, first step, hands, arm strength, etc. Here is the Toronto Ballot.

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The Fielding Bible thinks he is amazing, as does a number of other advanced stats and other sources.

But a simpler way to get there is to consider he has had 1700+ plate appearances in the major leagues and his career OPS is .586.

He simply has to be an incredible fielder, unless you think professional scouts morons.

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Migrant Redbird All-Star

Migrant Redbird

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Its a list compiled by fans of particular team. It was posted here and opinions on Orioles were solicited.

I see you disagree. Why?

How many fans are we talking about?

Even if we're dealing with thousands of fans who cast ballots, I suspect that the opinions of most fans are heavily influenced by the coverage of their players by their team broadcasters.

The Fielding Bible thinks he is amazing, as does a number of other advanced stats and other sources.

But a simpler way to get there is to consider he has had 1700+ plate appearances in the major leagues and his career OPS is .586.

He simply has to be an incredible fielder, unless you think professional scouts morons.

A below average career fielding percentage of only .967, coupled with a career range factor that's below average, would seem to imply that he's not quite all that amazing or incredible.

He's a utility infielder who rates better at 2nd than he does at SS and can also play 3rd. Perhaps he's just an incredibly useful player to have around, and that accounts for him lasting through 10 major league seasons?

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Baltimoron Major Leaguer Cup of Coffee

Baltimoron

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How many fans are we talking about?

Even if we're dealing with thousands of fans who cast ballots, I suspect that the opinions of most fans are heavily influenced by the coverage of their players by their team broadcasters.

But your opinion is better because by not watching McDonald play, you don't get "heavily influenced" by the announcer's alleged biases?

If you watch them, vote, and also tell us what you think of his hands and his first step and etc.?

Do you really doubt fans can actually watch the game and make their own observations without being "heavily influenced" by the Blue Jays equivalent of Buck Martinez? Do you hold your own observations about the Cards in such a light? (Of course this all assumes commentators are way wrong about this stuff too, even though they watch a lot of games and have access to the club talent evaluators)

Even further, maybe even some of the fans who responded go to games, where there are no commentators. :)

And we could also discuss sampling techniques, but the questions are pointed and focused on unique skills, not nebulous is he good?

Here is Tom Tango's take on the data:

Baseball's fans are very perceptive. Take a large group of them, and they can pick out the final standings with the best of them. They can forecast the performance of players as well as those guys with rather sophisticated forecasting engines. Bill James, in one of his later Abstracts, had the fans vote in for the ranking of the best to worst players by position. And they did a darn good job.

There is an enormous amount of untapped knowledge here. There are 70 million fans at MLB parks every year, and a whole lot more watching the games on television. When I was a teenager, I had no problem picking out Tim Wallach as a great fielding 3B, a few years before MLB coaches did so. And, judging by the quantity of non-stop standing ovations Wallach received, I wasn't the only one in Montreal whose eyes did not deceive him. Rondel White, Marquis Grissom, Larry Walker, Andre Dawson, Hubie Brooks, Ellis Valentine. We don't need stats to tell us which of these does not belong.

Ask him about it here.

A little about the Wisdom of the Crowds and more.

A below average career fielding percentage of only .967, coupled with a career range factor that's below average, would seem to imply that he's not quite all that amazing or incredible.

He's a utility infielder who rates better at 2nd than he does at SS and can also play 3rd. Perhaps he's just an incredibly useful player to have around, and that accounts for him lasting through 10 major league seasons?

Why are you citing fielding percentage and range factor? Do you regard these as more authoritative than the Fielding Bible or other advanced pbp measures?

We expect a really good SS to rate better at 2b, because 2b easier and where lesser defenders reside. 2b is a typical spot for weaker defensive SS to migrate too. We expect an athlete who can also play SS at a high level to be able to play 2nd and 3rd, because SS is harder.

I'm glad you seem to agree with my point, which is that MLB teams find him a useful (perhaps incredibly useful) utility player and he is an absolutely atrocious offensive player. Which means he must be good at something - and its clearly not hitting. Hmm, maybe its that he is really good at playing the infield.

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Baltimoron Major Leaguer Cup of Coffee

Baltimoron

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On the idea that fielding percentage and range factor are very unhelpful, go read this excellent piece. Excerpts:

Errors certainly are bad things. However, the problem with using fielding percentage as one's primary fielding statistic is that error rate only evaluates part of fielding performance: making an out once you get to a ball. It completely ignores the ability of fielders to actually get to the ball in the first place, which, our modern fielding statistics tell us, is where the biggest differences among players actually exist.
Unfortunately, there is a significant problem with range factor. What James was trying to approximate with range factor was Outs/Opportunities. Because he was limited by data at the time, he had to make the assumption that Opportunities/G was more or less constant, at least within a position. If true, then range factor (outs/G) would tell you the same thing as Outs/Opportunities.

...

From the above table, you can see that James' assumption does not hold. There is substantial variation in these players' average number of Opportunities/G, which all but masks variation in the rate of Outs/Opportunities in the range factor calculations. In fact, the correlation between range factor (outs/G) is dramatically higher with the rate of Opportunities/G (r = 0.60 in this dataset) than it is with Outs/Opportunities (r = 0.10)! Therefore, range factor tells you almost nothing about how many outs a player makes given his opportunities, but rather how many balls are hit his direction.

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Frobby Hangout Grand Counsel

Frobby

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Do you really doubt fans can actually watch the game and make their own observations without being "heavily influenced" by the Blue Jays equivalent of Buck Martinez?

I think you also have to consider what fans we are talking about. It isn't Joe Casual Fan who is voting in Tom Tango's poll. It is diehard baseball fans, many of whom are students of the various sophisticated defensive statistics now available.

That said, it wouldn't surprise me if there is a little home town bias in the poll, but that should be true for all 30 teams and therefore the relative position of the players at each spot shouldn't be affected much.

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Migrant Redbird All-Star

Migrant Redbird

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But your opinion is better because by not watching McDonald play, you don't get "heavily influenced" by the announcer's alleged biases?

If you watch them, vote, and also tell us what you think of his hands and his first step and etc.?

.... Do you really doubt fans can actually watch the game and make their own observations without being "heavily influenced" by the Blue Jays equivalent of Buck Martinez? Do you hold your own observations about the Cards in such a light?

I've already acknowledged that I don't regard my own scouting judgments as being particularly authoritative. However, I don't accept the judgments of other scouts as definitively authoritative either.

Since my judgments are influenced by what the commentators say; what the unbiased statistical metrics tell us; and by my own observation, I have to assume that's true for the fans voting in this poll to varying degrees.

The rationale seems to be that if you collect a sufficient amount of excrement and blend it all together, the outcome will be gold. Even if that's true, and it's a difficult thesis to prove, how do I know that Tangotiger's poll has accumulated enough crap to be valid?

Why are you citing fielding percentage and range factor? Do you regard these as more authoritative than the Fielding Bible or other advanced pbp measures?

No, I regard fielding percentage and range factor as less valid than more recent metrics. That doesn't mean that I consider them worthless, and I have to look askance at a shortstop whose career fielding percentage and range factor are both below league average. If he's getting charged with more errors because he's getting to more balls, then his range factor ought to reflect that to some degree.

I'm glad you seem to agree with my point, which is that MLB teams find him a useful (perhaps incredibly useful) utility player and he is an absolutely atrocious offensive player. Which means he must be good at something - and its clearly not hitting. Hmm, maybe its that he is really good at playing the infield.

He wouldn't be the first utility player who managed to hang around simply because he could be plugged into the lineup at any position. His limited playing time -- an average of 60 games per season over a 10 year career -- reflects that his defense hasn't been valuable enough to overcome his poor hitting.

McDonald may have been the best shortstop in baseball for the 2008 season. I'm not saying that he wasn't; just that I'm a little skeptical.

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