MLB Overrated or Note v2: Ozzie Smith

[Crapshoot]

Dola,
I think Ozzie's rated pretty well - he was a slightly below average hitter for his time, but his defense was exemplary. In fact, if I had to pick a comp for Ozzie today, I'd probably say its Adam Everett - who IMO (and I'm a Giants fan!) is the best defensive SS in baseball. He's a lot worse as a hitter, however ( relatively speaking) than Ozzie was.

[Arles]

I think it shows three things that many people forget when talking about Ozzie:

1. The national league's hitting numbers were horrid in the 1980s. So, when Smith hit .280 with a .360 OBP from 1985 to 1993, that was very good for the era (phenominal for a SS).

2. He played in one of the league's biggest ballparks (and a pitcher's park). As was stated above, St. Louis was a top team in the NL hitting between 55 and 90 HRs a season. So, the value of a good defensive infield was very high.

3. Ozzie had a very good batting eye and played small ball to perfection. For his career he had 1072 walks and 589 Ks. In his prime, he averaged 70 walks and 30 strikeouts a season. He was also a phenominal bunter, averaged 75 runs in his prime (again, good for a poor hitting NL) and stole 580 bases in his career (80% success rate).

[st.cronin]

I know that there's no predicting clutch behavior - but Ozzie Smith did hit a home run off Tom Niedenfuer that was incredibly clutch. That's something that happened, and he deserves credit for it.

Using clutch to predict future performance - stupid.
Dismissing clutch performance that's already happened - just as stupid.

[clintl]

This part of the article is either inaccurate or out of date.

Posted by Arles

Thanks to the good folks at baseball-reference.com we can do another comparison. Ozzie Smith scores a 35 on the HOF Standards Test (where an average HoFer score at 50; he scores 142 on the HOF Monitor, where 100 indicates a likely Hall of Famer.

Vizquel is at 24.9 and 52, respectively.

Vizquel is at 32.9 and 104.5 on the HOF Standards and HOF Monitor tests. That's below Ozzie's numbers, as they should be, but the gap is much narrower than the article tries to argue.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/v/vizquom01.shtml

EDIT: Actually, these guys don't have Ozzie's numbers quite right, either. He's at 30.9 on HOF Standards (which is slightly below Omar) and 142.5 for HOF Monitor. I wonder if they wrote the article right around the time of Ozzie's retirement (which would mean mid-career for Vizquel).

[Atocep]

I think Ozzie is rated about right. Probably the best defensive shortstop ever and an average-ish hitter. He was a much better defender than Vizquel has ever been.

Ozzie's (and a lot of shortstops from the 80s and prior) biggest problem is the position has developed into more of an offensive position. Guys like ARod, Jeter, Reyes, Nomar, and Hanley Ramirez are changing the perception of past shortstops.

Vizquel shouldn't get anywhere near the hall of fame. He's been overrated as a defender his entire career and he's a below average hitter. He probably doesn't belong among the top 40-50 shortstops.

[Pumpy Tudors]

OK, a preface here: I'm not one to put down people who are big into sabermetrics, but I admit that I don't understand some of the sabermetric arguments. I understand that wins aren't a good measure of a pitcher's ability, and I understand that RBI really doesn't say very much about a hitter's ability. What I don't understand is which "traditional" stats are useful for evaluating a player. So here's where I'm going with this...

Is fielding percentage "out" as a useful statistic? Obviously, I'm asking this because of Omar Vizquel. I mean, for the past several years, people say to look at OPS (or OPS+) instead of batting average. People say to look at ERA+ instead of ERA. So what are we looking at instead of fielding percentage now? I'm not trying to ridicule. Like I said, I just don't understand.

I almost want to hit myself for taking a thread about my favorite player and using it to argue a case for Omar Vizquel. It was my choice to do it, though.

[rowech]

Originally Posted by Pumpy Tudors

OK, a preface here: I'm not one to put down people who are big into sabermetrics, but I admit that I don't understand some of the sabermetric arguments. I understand that wins aren't a good measure of a pitcher's ability, and I understand that RBI really doesn't say very much about a hitter's ability. What I don't understand is which "traditional" stats are useful for evaluating a player. So here's where I'm going with this...

Is fielding percentage "out" as a useful statistic? Obviously, I'm asking this because of Omar Vizquel. I mean, for the past several years, people say to look at OPS (or OPS+) instead of batting average. People say to look at ERA+ instead of ERA. So what are we looking at instead of fielding percentage now? I'm not trying to ridicule. Like I said, I just don't understand.

I almost want to hit myself for taking a thread about my favorite player and using it to argue a case for Omar Vizquel. It was my choice to do it, though.

Most people will probably tell you to look at range factor and compare it to the league average. Range Factor is assists and putouts compared to the league average at a particular position basically. The theory is it represents how much extra stuff a guy gets to.

[clintl]

Originally Posted by Pumpy Tudors

Is fielding percentage "out" as a useful statistic? Obviously, I'm asking this because of Omar Vizquel. I mean, for the past several years, people say to look at OPS (or OPS+) instead of batting average. People say to look at ERA+ instead of ERA. So what are we looking at instead of fielding percentage now? I'm not trying to ridicule. Like I said, I just don't understand.

I don't think fielding percentage is out, but where Ozzie beats Omar defensively is in range factor. The stats say that Ozzie got to a lot more balls than anyone else (Omar included).

[MikeVic]

Originally Posted by rowech

Most people will probably tell you to look at range factor and compare it to the league average. Range Factor is assists and putouts compared to the league average at a particular position basically. The theory is it represents how much extra stuff a guy gets to.

But this doesn't say how good the guy is at actually fielding normally, does it?

[clintl]

One thing about range factor - I think it's a good measure, but I think it doesn't take into account some factors that the fielders have no control over. For instance, if you're shortstop on a team with a bunch of strikeout pitchers or a bunch of fly ball pitchers, you might not have as many opportunities to make plays as you would playing on a team with a lot of ground ball pitchers.

Does anyone know for sure?

[Pumpy Tudors]

Originally Posted by clintl

One thing about range factor - I think it's a good measure, but I think it doesn't take into account some factors that the fielders have no control over. For instance, if you're shortstop on a team with a bunch of strikeout pitchers or a bunch of fly ball pitchers, you might not have as many opportunities to make plays as you would playing on a team with a lot of ground ball pitchers.

Does anyone know for sure?

See, that's what I think about range factor. A shortstop can't control how many opportunities he gets (at least not to any significant degree). Is this one of those stats that just pretty much "evens itself out" because of the large number of balls put into play each year?

[Crapshoot]

Originally Posted by clintl

One thing about range factor - I think it's a good measure, but I think it doesn't take into account some factors that the fielders have no control over. For instance, if you're shortstop on a team with a bunch of strikeout pitchers or a bunch of fly ball pitchers, you might not have as many opportunities to make plays as you would playing on a team with a lot of ground ball pitchers.

Does anyone know for sure?

Yup. Essentially, the best way to measure fielding (in an ideal world) is this - of the balls in his area, how many did he get to - ie, measure his skill as a function of his opportunity. Range Factor doesn't properly account for the situation you described above. Its a useful number, but a SS playing all his games behind Derek Lowe would look substantially better than one playing behind Curt Schilling, to take one example.

[Crapshoot]

Dola,
Range Factor is almost like the RBI of fielding in that sense, but the distortion between it and the "true performance" level is a lot less than with RBI.

[rowech]

Originally Posted by MikeVic

But this doesn't say how good the guy is at actually fielding normally, does it?

Nope...just says if he gets more putouts or assists more than the average guy so in theory then, he has better range. As clintl points out though, it doesn't take a lot of things into account. Bill James, makes a point in his book, not about this stat but a similar one, that the 1971 Cardinals I think it was had the biggest difference between assist chances compared to the average shortstop and it was because they had a bunch of LH pitchers. Then you obviously have GB vs. FB pitchers into it as well.

[clintl]

Yeah, but in Ozzie's case, the range factor is so much higher relative to the league average than anyone's else's I've looked at that there's no way those things could possibly make that much of difference. His career range factor is 5.03 compared to a league average of 4.10. That's just a huge difference.

[DeToxRox]

Originally Posted by Hammer755

Dola

I really don't know where Ozzie's reputation and actual on-field play converge. Sure he played in a relatively offense-depressed era at a position where not much was expected at the plate, but a 0.328 SLG is still a 0.328 SLG - even his 0.337 career OBP was only slightly above average when corrected for league and park effects. Does his obvious defensive wizardry and stolen base acumen (600 SB @ an 80% success rate is pretty darn valuable) justify his elite status? I honestly don't know.

FTR, the subject of these first few Overrated/Underrated polls have been brilliant, IMO. Might I suggest Tony Gwynn or Mark McGwire for the next baseball version?

McGwire and Gwynn were my next two thoughts actually ha. Football one coming up shortly tho, I think could be the most fun one yet.

[Arles]

Originally Posted by Hammer755

Dola

I really don't know where Ozzie's reputation and actual on-field play converge. Sure he played in a relatively offense-depressed era at a position where not much was expected at the plate, but a 0.328 SLG is still a 0.328 SLG - even his 0.337 career OBP was only slightly above average when corrected for league and park effects.

Here's a site with average NL shortstop numbers:

http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~rickert/BB/avgSS.html

     year  BA   OBP  SLG R
  NL 1984 .243 .298 .314 40
  NL 1985 .256 .306 .347 50
  NL 1986 .254 .317 .336 43
  NL 1987 .256 .312 .355 46
  NL 1988 .246 .296 .335 51
  NL 1989 .253 .303 .353 48
  NL 1990 .253 .309 .352 55
  NL 1991 .262 .321 .368 53
  NL 1992 .256 .323 .345 49

So, in that light, a .280 AVG, .360 OBP, 75 runs and 30-40 SBs at 80% is very good offensively. Throw in his defense and he was a dominating presence at SS (which is why he was a yearly all-star).

[twothree]

Originally Posted by Arles

Here's a site with average NL shortstop numbers:

http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~rickert/BB/avgSS.html

Off-topic Post

Ack, I am getting old. Links from that page eventually led me to the Mathematics department. Kind of weird seeing almost every math professor that I had, all listed under the Retired and Emeritus Faculty section.

[Honolulu Blue]

Originally Posted by Pumpy Tudors

Is fielding percentage "out" as a useful statistic?

Fielding percentage isn't very useful because the difference between player errors at every position is swamped by the differences in their range.

Range factors are better, but the state-of-the-art these days is zone ratings or similar, where the path of each ball is plotted and fielders are given credit for successfully fielding balls in their zone, or not if they don't. This requires advanced scoresheets, which probably don't exist for most of the Ozzie era.

On topic, as one of the best defensive shortstops ever and not a complete offensive millstone, Ozzie seems like a Hall of Famer to me, and therefore, not overrated.

[cougarfreak]

Originally Posted by johnnyshaka

No, but Omar did play in the juiced-ball era.

And Oz played in the stolen base era.

[cougarfreak]

Originally Posted by Crapshoot

Yup. Essentially, the best way to measure fielding (in an ideal world) is this - of the balls in his area, how many did he get to - ie, measure his skill as a function of his opportunity. Range Factor doesn't properly account for the situation you described above. Its a useful number, but a SS playing all his games behind Derek Lowe would look substantially better than one playing behind Curt Schilling, to take one example.

Exactly true. I wonder how Ken Oberkfell, and Tom Herr looked in relation to other 2b and 3b in that time frame. That might give you a pretty decent indication of if St. Louis' pitchers got a disproportionate amount of GB's.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by Brillig

If we split it 25-25... then if a pitcher can get into Cooperstown as a starter, being great at once every five days at that 25% (call it a 5% team contribution), then why can't a shortstop (call it a fifth of the defense every day) get in by being great at that same 5%?

?!?!?!? There's just something about this calculation that makes my head explode and I can't place my finger on what it is...

SI