The great and (defensively) powerful Ozzie Smith was a popular choice as the 19th inductee into the Circle of Greats. More on Ozzie and the voting after the jump.
Baseball-Reference’s stat known as dWAR (or Defensive Wins Above Replacement) combines two aspects of a player’s value on defense: the player’s productivity in terms of his success in converting opportunities to make a play on defense into an out, as compared to the average player, and then an adjustment reflecting the number of innings he played at more demanding demanding fielding positions. The combination can be said to reflect one version of a player’s overall, relative value on the defensive side of the ball. With that introduction, here is a list of the top 15 career dWAR numbers among all players in major league history (the numbers are from baseball-reference.com, but the ability to sort this particular stat is from The Baseball Gauge at seamheads.com):
1. Ozzie Smith 43.4
2. Mark Belanger 39.4
3. Brooks Robinson 38.8
4. Cal Ripken 34.6
5. Joe Tinker 34.3
6. Luis Aparicio 31.6
7. Rabbit Maranville 30.7
T8. Bobby Wallace and Ivan Rodriguez 28.7
T10. Bill Dahlen and Omar Vizquel 28.4
12. Art Fletcher 28.3
13. Pee Wee Reese 25.6
14. Gary Carter 25.5
15. Bob Boone 25.3
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Ozzie appeared on exactly half the ballots, 28 of 56, only four more than Tony Gwynn and seven more than Paul Molitor. Tim Raines also appeared on more than 25% of the ballots. Holdovers received every single vote this round — not one newly eligible player appeared anywhere on anyone’s three-player ballot. That helped all three of the holdovers on the bubble (Alomar, Sandberg and Murray) maintain their eligibility, although not quite with enough support to avoid the bubble next round. Roberto Alomar missed the 25% threshold, that would have gotten him off the bubble, by one vote.
As always, you can review the complete voting record for this past round at Google Docs. The link is here: 1952 Part 1 Vote Tally
If you would like to review the history of the COG voting, a spreadsheet summary of the voting is here: COG Vote Summary , with a summary of the raw vote totals on Sheet 1 and a summary of the percentage totals on Sheet 2.
The Circle of Greats membership thus far:
Jeff Bagwell
Wade Boggs
Barry Bonds
George Brett
Gary Carter
Roger Clemens
Tom Glavine
Rickey Henderson
Randy Johnson
Barry Larkin
Greg Maddux
Mike Mussina
Mike Piazza
Cal Ripken, Jr.
Curt Schilling
Ozzie Smith
Frank Thomas
Larry Walker
Robin Yount
