Circle of Greats 1947 Balloting

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This post is for voting and discussion in the twenty-sixth round of balloting for the Circle of Greats. This round adds those players born in 1947. Rules and lists are after the jump.

The new group joins the holdovers from previous rounds to comprise the full group eligible to receive your votes this round. The new group of 1947-born players must, as always, have played at least 10 seasons in the major leagues or generated at least 20 Wins Above Replacement (“WAR”, as calculated by baseball-reference.com, and for this purpose meaning 20 total WAR for everyday players and 20 pitching WAR for pitchers).

Each submitted ballot, if it is to be counted, must include three and only three eligible players. The one player who appears on the most ballots cast in the round is inducted into the Circle of Greats. Players who fail to win induction but appear on half or more of the ballots that are cast win four added future rounds of ballot eligibility. Players who appear on 25% or more of the ballots cast, but less than 50%, earn two added future rounds of ballot eligibility. Any other player in the top 9 (including ties) in ballot appearances, or who appears on at least 10% of the ballots, wins one additional round of ballot eligibility.

All voting for this round closes at 11:00 PM EDT on Wednesday, August 21, while changes to previously cast ballots are allowed until 11:00 PM EDT Monday, August 19.

If you’d like to follow the vote tally, and/or check to make sure I’ve recorded your vote correctly, you can see my ballot-counting spreadsheet for this round here: 1947 COG Vote Tally . I’ll be updating the spreadsheet periodically with the latest votes. Initially, there is a row in the spreadsheet for every voter who has cast a ballot in any of the past rounds, but new voters are entirely welcome — new voters will be added to the spreadsheet as their ballots are submitted. Also initially, there is a column for each of the holdover players; additional player columns from the new born-in-1947 group will be added to the spreadsheet as votes are cast for them.

Choose your three players from the lists below of eligible players. The eleven current holdovers are listed in order of the number of future rounds (including this one) through which they are assured eligibility, and alphabetically when the future eligibility number is the same. The new group of 1947 birth-year guys are listed below in order of the number of seasons each played in the majors, and alphabetically among players with the same number of seasons played.

Holdovers:
Lou Whitaker (eligibility guaranteed for 10 rounds)
John Smoltz (eligibility guaranteed for 8 rounds)
Bobby Grich (eligibility guaranteed for 3 rounds)
Edgar Martinez (eligibility guaranteed for 3 rounds)
Roberto Alomar (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Craig Biggio (eligibility guaranteed for 2 rounds)
Kenny Lofton (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Eddie Murray (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Rick Reuschel (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Ryne Sandberg (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)
Dave Winfield (eligibility guaranteed for this round only)

Everyday Players (born in 1947, ten or more seasons played in the major leagues or at least 20 WAR):
Carlton Fisk
Darrell Evans
Bob Boone
Jose Cruz
Johnny Bench
Richie Hebner
Amos Otis
Aurelio Rodriguez
John Lowenstein
Don Money
Kurt Bevacqua
Terry Crowley
Cliff Johnson
Ken Singleton
Al Bumbry
Larry Hisle
Fred Stanley
Bill Stein
Ray Fosse
Bob Heise
Mick Kelleher
Joe Lahoud
Elliott Maddox
Roger Metzger
Thurman Munson
Bernie Carbo
Wayne Garrett
Bill Plummer
John Vukovich

Pitchers (born in 1947, ten or more seasons played in the major leagues or at least 20 WAR):
Nolan Ryan
Gene Garber
Larry Gura
Kent Tekulve
Joe Coleman
Dick Tidrow
Steve Stone
Tom Hall
Bob Moose
Gary Ross

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Dr. Remulak

10 years ago

Munson, Biggio, Ryan.

Author

birtelcom

10 years ago

Reply to Dr. Remulak

Most WAR for the Yankees by a Yankees first round draft pick:
Derek Jeter 72.2
Thurman Munson 45.9
Ron Blomberg 9.5
Joba Chamberlain 7.1
Phil Hughes 6.5
Andrew Brackman 0.1

Phil

10 years ago

Bench, Fisk, and Munson together is tempting. But: Bench/Ryan/Alomar. I know Ryan is not a sabermetric favorite. But he’s one of a kind, and I’d want him in any kind of a HOF.

T-Bone

10 years ago

Sandberg
Reuschel
Bench

Dr. Doom

10 years ago

Hmm… I may need to change this later, but for now I’m going:

Bench
Grinch
Sandberg

I do worry, though, that I’m underrating some catchers (Fisk in particular).

Mike HBC

10 years ago

Bench, Ryan, Fisk

…Yep.

latefortheparty

10 years ago

Johnny Bench
Carlton Fisk
Darrell Evans

Evans gets the vote since I’m confident Ryan will get the support to stick on the ballot. And a special shout out to Jose Cruz, who played so well during his sentence to the Astrodome.

David Horwich

10 years ago

Alomar, Bench, Fisk

J.R.

10 years ago

Wow is this one tough, as there are legitimately 7 guys I would love to vote for.

I will go with Ryan, Bench, and Biggio.

Jeff

10 years ago

Bench
Whitaker
Grich

Nick Pain

10 years ago

Nolan Ryan, Johnny Bench, Lou Whitaker

Bix

10 years ago

2 new guys and one holdover whose eligibility is about to run out: Bench, Ryan, and Lofton.

(Sorely tempted to vote for Amos Otis, though).

bells

10 years ago

This is a rich new class. I’ll go with what I think are the three best players and then make any strategic changes (to keep someone on or to take support away from a rival of my favourite) later on.

Bench, Fisk, Ryan

Chris C

10 years ago

Wow. Amazingly tough ballot.

Bench, Fisk, Biggio

Aidan Mattson

10 years ago

Bench, Ryan, Murray

ATarwerdi96

10 years ago

Johnny Bench, Edgar Martinez, Bobby Grich

10 years ago

Edgar Martinez, Johnny Bench, Nolan Ryan

koma

10 years ago

Carlton Fisk, Johnny Bench, Nolan Ryan

Artie Z.

10 years ago

Bench, Murray, Alomar

Insert Name Here

10 years ago

Hooray for the return of birtelcom and the COG! Initial vote based on merit alone: 1. Johnny Bench (6.8 WAR/162 during 1968-79) 2. Kenny Lofton (6.7 WAR/162 during 1992-99) 3. Bobby Grich (6.6 WAR/162 during 1972-83) Here’s the ranking of the other candidates that, based on my methods, also deserve COG consideration: 4. Ryne Sandberg (6.2 WAR/162 during 1984-92) 5. Craig Biggio (5.8 WAR/162 during 1991-99) 6. Lou Whitaker (5.5 WAR/162 during 1979-93) 7. Eddie Murray (5.7 WAR/162 during 1978-86) 8. Thurman Munson (6.0 WAR during 1970-77) 9. Rick Reuschel (5.5 WAR/162 during 1973-80) 10. Edgar Martínez (6.4 WAR/162 during… Read more »

bstar

10 years ago

This one’s tough. If I don’t vote for Fisk, how many catchers will actually end up in my personal COG? I’ll put it off for now. Shout-out to Jose Cruz, always underrated. Cruz could do it all: hit, hit for power, run, field. And he was really fun to watch. Cruz’s career didn’t really take off until he got to Houston in his late twenties, so he doesn’t have the career counting stat numbers or any sort of Hall narrative whatsoever, but his rate stats compare favorably to several recent HOF outfielders. WAR per 650 PA: Tony Gwynn – 4.37… Read more »

Voomo Zanzibar

10 years ago

Nolan Ryan, 1987

In his 10 no-decisions:

2.30 era

66.2 IP
37 H
21 BB
83 K
0.870 WHIP

Voomo Zanzibar

10 years ago

Reply to Voomo Zanzibar

Nolan Ryan, with 0-2 runs of support:

288 Starts
43 Wins
200 Losses

3.28 era

.177 Winning %

His career era was 3.19

e pluribus munu

10 years ago

Reply to Voomo Zanzibar

Voomo, This is a striking record – the proportion of losses with weak run support in Ryan’s total reord seems very, very high (though I have no basis for comparison). I’m sure others have observed before that the type of game Ryan pitched would seem more likely than others to lead to poor offensive support, since his teammates had to spend so much time in the field waiting through the exceptional number of Two Time-Consuming True Outcomes. Ryan averaged 14.2 of these per 9 IP (during his Angels years, which should have been his prime, his rate was 15.4, with… Read more »

Richard Chester

10 years ago

Reply to e pluribus munu

I ran the PI split finder to determine W-L% for pitchers with 1500 career IP and 0-2 support runs. Sandy Koufax had the highest W-L% with .378. Dizzy Dean was second with .333 and Vic Raschi was third with .327. Ryan’s .177 mark left him in 181st place

Voomo Zanzibar

10 years ago

Reply to Richard Chester

181 out of what?

Richard Chester

10 years ago

Reply to Richard Chester

181 out of 563. That 1500 IP cut-off I used is for career IP both as a starter and reliever. The W-L% is just for games started.

e pluribus munu

10 years ago

Reply to Richard Chester

Koufax, of course, worked in a particularly run-starved environment for his prime years, so it would make sense that 2 runs meant a bit more during that period. Not so the others. Tangential: To me, one of the oddest aspects of Ryan’s record is that despite playing on teams that were a bit over .500 without him, and a couple of 90-win teams, he never once had a truly outstanding W-L record. His best season, in terms of percentage (excluding the short ’81 season) was 16-10. He certainly outperformed some of his bad teams by a lot (as you’d expect… Read more »

Hartvig

10 years ago

Reply to Richard Chester

To be fair, not all of Koufax’s best seasons came in historically low run scoring environments. Of the 6 seasons when his face was appearing on my baseball cards among the National League leaders (1961 to 1966): 1961 & 62 are 2 of the 4 highest average run scoring years in the National League between 1957 & 1992 (which admittedly are also Koufax’s 2 least exceptional seasons during his prime) but the R/G average during the years of 1964 to 1966 look to be very typical for the time frame mentioned. Only 1963 was well below average but even that… Read more »

e pluribus munu

10 years ago

Reply to Richard Chester

Hartvig, Writing any comment about Koufax that implies less than pious awe is painful to me, but I wanted to (appear to) be fair to Ryan, given the that I was otherwise turning the knife. The fact is that 1963-66 is the basis of Koufax’s high rate of wins with low run support. He was, by my count, 24-23 in games with 0-2 run support (16-8 in games where he had 2 runs to work with, 8-9 in games with just 1 support run [!], while somehow blowing all six opportunities to show he could win when his team was… Read more »

Voomo Zanzibar

10 years ago

Reply to e pluribus munu

Interesting, epm _____________________ 0-2 runs of support Mets 74 GS 2-26 Angels 288 GS 19-73 Astros 282 GS 17-65 Rangers 129 GS 5-26 TTCTO 14.8 Mets 15.4 Angel 13.0 Astro 13.9 Rangers ________________________ Well, in 1976 he was at 16.2 That was the year he led the league in Shutouts Walks Strikeouts, and… Losses he went a respectable 5-13 with low support, bolstered by throwing 4 shutouts. _________ In 1972, he got 0-2 runs of support in an amazing 20 starts (out of 39). He went a pretty damn good 7-13, again with 4 shutouts, and 9CG. ________ How about… Read more »

BryanM

10 years ago

Bench, Whitaker, Lofton — I feel like we’ve got good defense up the middle here

Voomo Zanzibar

10 years ago

Will someone who saw him in his prime describe Johnny Bench’s defensive prowess?

e pluribus munu

10 years ago

I don’t want to vote for Nolan Ryan, and I don’t want to list the real reasons because none of them will reflect well on me – they are all based on small-minded fan prejudices. However, over the years, I invested a lot of effort in selecting rational arguments that would confirm my biased view of Ryan (and gazing past counter-arguments). I do believe that Ryan may have been the most gifted pitcher of all time – perhaps a 27-season version of the young and abbreviated Herb Score, whom I idolized when I was little. But for me the headline… Read more »

Gary Bateman

10 years ago

Reply to e pluribus munu

Munu,

I am swayed by your analysis. I always thought of Ryan as overrated, despite the no-no’s and K’s. I’ll go with:

Bench, Alomar, Smoltz

Voomo Zanzibar

10 years ago

Reply to e pluribus munu

Excellent analysis, epm.
Did you use this article in your approach?

http://deadspin.com/i-spent-all-day-trying-to-figure-out-if-these-are-lou-g-522408121

e pluribus munu

10 years ago

Reply to Voomo Zanzibar

Absolutely, Voomo. Didn’t mean to cover up my sources; just careless of me to let the citations drop.

Lawrence Azrin

10 years ago

Reply to e pluribus munu

@27/Gary Bateman, I completely agree with you that Nolan Ryan is quite overrated by the general fan populace (I think he was voted the #1 pitcher in 1999 on the All Century Team). He was a good-to-excellent pitcher for an incredibly long period of time. He does _ NOT _ belong in any discussion of the very greatest pitchers ever, with the likes of Walter Johnson, Pete Alexander, Lefty Grove, Tom Seaver, Roger Clemens or Greg Maddux (by no means a complete list). Simply put, he just never had a high enough peak to seriously compete with those all-time greats.… Read more »

10 years ago

Reply to Lawrence Azrin

Lawrence @48 I’ve been on the “Ryan is overrated” bandwagon for years but I’d say comparing him to Don Sutton is going a bit too far. In a similar # of innings, Ryan has 83.8 WAR and Sutton only 68.7. That’s a big difference.

The pitcher with a similar WAR and Innings pitched to Ryan is Steve Carlton. Carlton probably deserves to be ranked ahead of Ryan because he has two seasons of 10+ WAR, something that Ryan never came close to doing. But it’s not a big difference.

Lawrence Azrin

10 years ago

Reply to Ed

@50/Ed, I guess we’re arguing about semantics. Ryan vs. Sutton, to me, is much more interesting (than Carlton), because they are obviously totally different types of pitchers, and I don’t consider a difference of about 15 WAR over 20+ full years to be a “big” difference; “somewhat substantial”, but not big – see what I mean? I’m not the only one to rate Sutton as very similar to Ryan; I’ve seen Bill James, amongst others, do that. The way most people regard Ryan and Sutton nowadays, they’d think I was comparing, say, Early Wynn or Jim Kaat favorably to Ryan.… Read more »

bstar

10 years ago

Reply to e pluribus munu

epm, I’m curious about your methodology involving the surplus of a pitcher’s W-L record vs. team W-L record. I’m not convinced this is a great way to evaluate a pitcher’s career. The problem I see with it is in the team evaluation. Since none of the other starting pitchers on Nolan Ryan or John Smoltz’s teams were pitching when they were on the mound (duh), and since it’s not just the offense, defense, and bullpen of the “rest of team” but also the other starters in the rotation that determines a team’s “other W-L%”, isn’t this measurement going to be… Read more »

Editor

John Autin

10 years ago

Reply to bstar

bstar, well put. Bill James used a “wins over team W%” method in his Tom Seaver rating in the HBA, which so upset me that I scribbled my criticism in the margin: “Imagine a good pitcher on a team with average offense, but with 3 other pitchers even better than he is. His W% might be worse than the team’s….”

10 years ago

Reply to John Autin

You should have gone full Pierre de Fermat and just written, “I could disprove this theory but for the smallness of this margin.”

Hartvig

10 years ago

This will be the first time I haven’t typed Alan Trammell’s name on my ballot since he was first eligible.

This is a ridiculously deep and talented year. In addition to multiple COG worthies you’ve also got some others that probably should be in the Hall of Fame and several of the very best of the Hall of Very Good not to mention some of the most under-rated players ever plus a couple of what-might-have-beens.

For now:
Bench, Fisk, Sandberg

Author

birtelcom

10 years ago

Reply to Hartvig

“This is a ridiculously deep and talented year.”

With 37 ballots cast so far, the new guys from the 1947 birth year have received 70 of the 111 total votes. So the average ballot cast so far has basically had just one place for a holdover. Contrast the previous round, when the 1948 birth-year guys received exactly 2 of the 183 votes on the 61 ballots cast, with the other 181 votes going to holdovers.

mosc

10 years ago

Reply to birtelcom

This round is the first time I can seem some reason for a redemption round. The previous two were unnecessary IMHO. There are few people after this round who won’t prefer a single candidate on the redemption ballot over one we’ve already elected.

KalineCountry

10 years ago

Whitaker, Grich, Bench.

MikeD

10 years ago

Bench, Alomar, Munson.

I’m figuring Fisk will get plenty of support, so I’ll leave him off for now.

MikeD

10 years ago

Reply to MikeD

…and I missed the pitcher section. Ryan should be in there, but I’ll leave my vote standing for now. Just looking at the votes above leads me to believe this will be a crazy vote. Lots of deserving players.

Part of me would love to do a straight catcher vote: Bench, Fisk and Munson. That was quite a birth year for catchers.

Yet my initial vote stands.

Hub Kid

10 years ago

Darrell Evans, Kenny Lofton, Craig Biggio I think all this time spent at HHS and other stats based sites is turning me into a real sucker for the careers of underlooked players with a mix of Slugging/power, BB, good OBP & low BA (e.g. Darrell Evans). I liked Biggio enough during his career to vote for him at least this one time (even if he stuck around too long and still didn’t get the HPB record), and while the the 2nd base logjam over these players may never end, I think that Lofton is worth keeping on the ballot to… Read more »

GrandyMan

10 years ago

Three new guys! Bench, Ryan, Fisk. It’s close between Fisk and Whitaker but I’m sick of voting for Sweet Lou.

GrandyMan

10 years ago

Reply to GrandyMan

Alomar: 1 extra round of eligibility, 12% of the vote
Sandberg: No extra rounds of eligibility, 8% of the vote

There’s no justice in this world. I’d like to drop Fisk for Ryno, please.

Brent

10 years ago

Bench and Fisk. And I will vote for a KC favotite A.O.

Editor

Bryan O'Connor

10 years ago

Welcome home, Birtelcom!

Wins Above Average, excluding negative seasons:

Bench 49.1
Grich 43.6
Whitaker 42.7
Martinez 41.3
Reuschel 40.6
Fisk 40.4
Smoltz 40.1
Lofton 39.3
Ryan 39.1
Sandberg 38.8
Alomar 36.8
Biggio 36.3
Murray 34.9
Winfield 31.7
Evans 29.9
Cruz 27.5
Munson 25.3

Getting harder to call Smoltz the best pitcher on the ballot, but he beats Ryan by this measure and by munu’s justification above. I’m sticking with Smoltz.

Bench. Edgar. Smoltz.

The Diamond King

10 years ago

Murray, Bench and Fisk. I’m sad that Murray might drop off after this vote. I know I love him more than everyone else, despite the WAR list in the comment above.

Editor

John Autin

10 years ago

Reply to The Diamond King

Diamond King, I’m with you on the Eddie Murray bandwagon. So is Bill James, who ranked Eddie 5th at the position back in the 2001 edition of the Historical Abstract, summarizing thusly the effort to identify Murray’s best season:

“His best year was every year. He never won an MVP Award–but he was an MVP candidate every year.”

Indeed, Eddie’s 3.33 “MVP Shares” is the best of anyone who never won it.

brp

10 years ago

Bench
Grich
Whitaker

Voomo Zanzibar

10 years ago

Right up the middle.
The guys who defied time and the best centerfielder:

Carlton Fisk
Nolan Ryan
Kenny Lofton

JEV

10 years ago

Bench, Fisk, Biggio

Editor

Doug

10 years ago

Fisk, Bench, Ryan

Sorry, Thurman.

mosc

10 years ago

Bench, Ryan, Munson. Yes, I do think Fisk belongs. As does Campy and Munson. The COG should be over-represented with catchers. That said, Ryan is one of a kind and his career WAR total reflects that.

I am tempted to leave off bench to vote for Winfield but I will always vote for the best player. and Winfield wouldn’t make it with or without my vote. Looks like we’ll be saying goodbye to a lot of people this week. I don’t think anybody on the bubble makes it and nobody else from carry over gets any additional rounds.

Lawrence Azrin

10 years ago

– Johnny Bench
– Carlton Fisk
– Eddie Murray

I’d like to save most of the on-the-bubble guys, but I can’t ignore two all-time great catchers, so I’ll confine my vote for a one-more-chance guy to only Murray.

Fascinating that amongst the one-more-chance for the COG guys, there’s two first-ballot HOF guys (Winfield, Murray) next to a guy who dropped off the ballot earlier this year because he didn’t get 5% (Lofton).

Kirk

10 years ago

Bench, Fisk & Reuschel

RonG

10 years ago

Bench, Ryan, Fisk

Joel

10 years ago

Bench
Fisk
Ryan

10 years ago

Bench, Whitaker, Grich

Nadig

10 years ago

Bench, Martinez, Ryan.

Jeff Hill

10 years ago

Bench, Ryan, Smoltz I think Nolan Ryan is a tremendous pitcher and if not for his “bad luck” for most of his career being stuck on lousy to moderate teams he’d be looked at by stat heads better. HIs high walk totals are really the only thing that hurts him in my opinion. The best H/9 ever and the 5th best K/9 rate are nothing short of amazing. W/L records are garbage and without the Mets seasons his ERA never touches 3.80 IN ANY SEASON until he hits age 46! Sorry, he was more than the 7 no-no’s and K’s.… Read more »

Jeff Hill

10 years ago

brp

10 years ago

Reply to Jeff Hill

His WHIP of 1.247 puts Ryan 275th on the leader board, and his ERA + of 112th is 271st. Now I don’t think there are 270 better pitchers, but there are flaws. While the strikeouts are remarkable and nobody’s ever touching that record, his K/BB ratio is barely 2. Now I’m picking nits, but he’s got the 2nd most games started and 5th most innings pitched but is “only” 20th in pitching WAR and WPA according to BBRef. That feels about right. No doubt, no question HOF, but borderline for the COG… which also seems about right. “stat heads” never… Read more »

Author

birtelcom

10 years ago

Reply to Jeff Hill

Although Ryan’s “ERA never touches 3.80”, he pitched in relatively low-run scoring environment. Converting to a neutral run environment (go to this page and scroll down to the Neutralized Pitching table: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/ryanno01-pitch.shtml), shows 10 seasons in which his ERA as neutralized to an average run environment was over 4.00.

e pluribus munu

10 years ago

Reply to birtelcom

Neat tool, birtelcom – I haven’t found this B-R table before. Doing a quick tour, Pedro 2000 looks even more amazing. Back to Ryan and Jeff’s spirited defense: I’ve always wondered why it took Ryan so long to master control and develop new pitches, which he ultimately did. Bill James has an interesting discussion of him in his New Historical Abstract (where Ryan ranks as the 24th best pitcher, just behind Fergie Jenkins – James adds that he would rank lower if win shares had been designed differently), where he essentially pictures Ryan as a guy who made a career… Read more »

Lawrence Azrin

10 years ago

Reply to birtelcom

@68/epm, Here’s a discussion of Nolan Ryan on the old B-R blog, from 04-11-2011, that Andy moderated (sorry,I don’t know how to create links here): http://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/11038 For those who do not wish to cut/paste into their address bar, birtelcom at #12 gives of the Bill James discussion that you referred to: (I added the {{…}} for emophasis:) “Bill James in the Historical Abstract ten years ago, Ryan ranked 24th, between Fergie Jenkins and Dizzy Dean. Presumably that would put him a few steps lower now, ten years later (as Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and other then active pitchers moved past… Read more »

e pluribus munu

10 years ago

Reply to Lawrence Azrin

Thanks for the link, Lawrence. I see that I basically rehashed what others said better a few months before I first found the old B-R blog.

I don’t generally count pitchers’ batting because I’m a Koufax fan. I believe that if the Deity had intended pitchers to get hits, he would not have batted them ninth.

Lawrence Azrin

10 years ago

Reply to Lawrence Azrin

@106/epm, You’re welcome. Your #68 above is fine. I tried to say the same thing about the difference in value measured by replacement-level and league-average level, in twice as many words. All I can add is that I also remember Bill James in his NHA writing something to the effect of, Nolan Ryan made the decision for most of his career that he would try to throw nothing but a series of unhittable pitches, one after another, instead of doing what it took to actually win a game. The “ease up and don’t try to strike out every hitter” software… Read more »

Mike G.

10 years ago

Bench, Reuschel, Sandberg

TJay

10 years ago

Ryan, Bench, Winfield

Author

birtelcom

10 years ago

Reply to TJay

First vote for Winfield this round.

mosc

10 years ago

Reply to birtelcom

And it wasn’t by me, I feel guilty now

paget

10 years ago

Reply to mosc

There’s still time to change your vote! Maybe others will follow suit. I have to imagine the primary reason for the lack of HHS love for Winfield stems from his punishingly low dWAR. I’m open to the idea that he wasn’t quite as magnificent a defender as he seemed to folks back when he played, but I just don’t believe that his dWAR is an accurate reflection of his play. By the way, does dWAR take into account intimidating runners into not advancing extra bases? Because except for maybe Barfield, I don’t think anyone did that better than Winfield in… Read more »

mosc

10 years ago

Reply to paget

Anybody who watched Winfield regularly would skoff at that dwar score. He was one of the best defensive outfielders in the game over much of his career. Well below average? No.

bstar

10 years ago

Reply to paget

Yes, paget, Total Zone’s outfielder arm metric, Rof, includes baserunner “kills” and baserunner advances. You can find that stat in the Fielding section. Click on More Stats and scroll down to Sabermetric Fielding.

Lawrence Azrin

10 years ago

Reply to paget

@97/mosc, Going by B-R’s dWAR’s (-23.7), you’d think that Winfield was a bigger defensive liability than Harmon Killebrew or Ralph Kiner (who have lower negative dWARs). I, too, cannot reconcile Winfield’s dWAR with the actual fellow I saw play. While Gold Gloves don’t necessarily indicate the best defensive players, I don’t think that a fellow who won seven of them could be anywhere as bad as his B-R dWAR indicates. OTOH- to play devil’s advocate, I read ages ago that Winfield usually played fairly deep, because he just LOVED to goback and rob someone of a HR, which he did… Read more »

paget

10 years ago

Reply to paget

bstar,
Sweet. Thanks for that lead. Looks like judging from his career through the ’80s, Winfield was right there with the best in the game (except for Barfield, who really was otherworldly out there — I never saw Clemente, but of all the rightfielders I’ve ever seen, Barfield had the scariest arm. More than Ichiro’s even.).

10 years ago

Reply to paget

Lawrence: @100 A few points: 1) Rfield is, in my opinion, more useful for making these sort of comparisons. 2) Not sure where Killebrew fits into the discussion…he only played 470 games in the outfield. 3) With Kiner vs. Winfield, you’re comparing a very short career to a very long career. So of course, Kiner’s going to look relatively good. If you focus just on ages 23-32 (Kiner’s career), you’ll see that Kiner was -40 in Rfield and Winfield was -21. Not a big advantage for Winfield but it is an advantage. Of course, we’re still talking about a LFer… Read more »

Lawrence Azrin

10 years ago

Reply to paget

@102/Ed, 1) I originally wrote this using Rfield, but since since #91 used dWAR, I changed the metric to that. Winfield also does poorly by Rfield – still considerably worse than Killebrew and Kiner (even if you double Kiner’s total). 2) I wasn’t specifically comparing outfielders, but trying to make the point that I (and Paget in #91) had a hard time believing someone who had as good a defensive reputation as Winfield would rate _WORSE_ than acknowledged defensive liabilities as Killebrew and Kiner. Yes,I know Kiner had a very short career, but if the dWAR metrics came close to… Read more »

bstar

10 years ago

Reply to paget

Lawrence, I hold a very unproven belief that outfielders who play shallow will catch more balls “in their zone” than outfielders who play deep, simply because there are more balls hit in front or just to the side of outfielders than balls hit over their head. Andruw Jones did this his entire career and was **maybe** the most dominant force to ever roam an outfield. As for Winfield’s low Rfield, I think he suffered from Tony Gwynn Syndrome: he just played in the outfield too long, far past his defensive prime. Stargell, Musial, etc. all eventually got moved to the… Read more »

Lawrence Azrin

10 years ago

Reply to paget

@104/bstar, Actually, Musial bounced around from left, (some) center, right, and first up base till 1960, then played mostly left field at the end of his career from 1960-1963 (ages 39-42). So he wasn’t shifted to first as he aged. I’ve read that Musial was probably shifted around to accomodate the other players on the Cardinals, not because of his defensive strengths or weakneses. They knew he could handle any of those three above at least competently. I agree with you about playing shallo, I remember Fred Lynn doing this with the Red Sox. Tris Speaker is still regarded as… Read more »

bstar

10 years ago

Reply to paget

Thanks for the correction on Musial.

I’ve often wondered whether Andruw played shallow because of personal choice or team philosophy, with that philosophy being that the Braves pitchers were so good they’d rather have bloopy singles taken away than doubles since Glavine and Maddux often partially sawed off hitters and didn’t allow many XBH anyway.

--bill

10 years ago

Bench, Reuschel, Murray.

aweb

10 years ago

Bench, Ryan, Grich

Lawrence Azrin

10 years ago

birtelcom,

I don’t see my vote (at #55) counted in this round’s COG voting. Normally I wouldn’t mention it, figuring that you just hadn’t got around to it. But Tjay’s vote was a day and a half after mine.

More importantly, it puts Eddie Murray over the magic 10% mark, to stay on the ballot.

Author

birtelcom

10 years ago

Reply to Lawrence Azrin

Thanks, L.A. — I don’t know why I didn’t input your original vote (jet lag?), but it’s in now.

Lawrence Azrin

10 years ago

Reply to Lawrence Azrin

79/birtelcom,

Thanks, big guy. Murray now has 6 of 46, so even if no one else votes for him, he’s safe as long as the total vote for the 1947 COG does not exceed 60.

How many total votes were there last time? Yep – 61!

Also with eligibility for just this round, and in danger of falling off (5 or less votes):
Sandberg, Winfield, Lofton, Reuschel + new candidates Thurmon Munson, Darrell Evans, Amos (my man) Otis