The Futility Infielder

On the heels of my dustup with some hired goons, two of my loyal readers added some input regarding my Whitey Ford comments which is worth addressing. Studes, a.k.a Dave Studenmund of the fine Baseball Graphs site, mentioned some information in Bill James' Baseball Managers book in which the bearded one stated that Casey Stengel used Whitey more frequently against good opponents, while Johnny C mentioned a Rob Neyer comment about the AL's dearth of black players during the Yankees' heyday (1949-1964).

I'm a big fan of the James Managers book; I enjoy it more than the New Bill James Historical Abstract. The part to which Studes refers is on page 192; essentially it says that during the Stengel years (1953-1960 in Ford's case), Whitey had a lot more decisions against the good teams in the AL (usually Chicago and Cleveland) than the bad ones, and that his winning percentage during that time, already a stellar .681, should have been higher if the distribution of opponents was more proportional. He is almost certainly onto something there, even if he overemphasizes the pitcher's Won-Loss record rather than his outstanding ERAs (something James still tends to do).

In the Neyer piece to which Johnny C. refers, Rob is pointing out similar effects but in the opposite direction on the careers of Lefty Grove (who faced the Yankees less frequently than expected) and Warren Spahn (same, except it's the Dodgers). He doesn't refer to Ford; rather it's a more general quote about the Yankees: "I did know that when the Yankees were running roughshod over the American League from 1949 through 1964, a great majority of the great black players were in the National League, which perhaps should give us pause when considering the true greatness of those Yankees."

Recall that the Yanks didn't get a black player until Elston Howard in 1955, eight years after Jackie Robinson, and Howard was the first black AL MVP in 1963, by which time Jackie, Roy Campanella, Willie Mays, Don Newcombe, Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, Frank Robinson and Maury Wills had combined to win eleven NL MVP awards. Exactly as Rob said it, a great majority of great black players were in the NL. For what it's worth, the two teams Ford faced most often had, in Minnie Minoso (White Sox) and Larry Doby (Indians), two of the top black stars in the league during the time. But I suspect that the two effects my readers pointed out, both involving the levels of competition Whitey faced, essentially cancel each other out.

Actually, there's a way we can look even more closely at this. The Davenport system upon which I based my Hall study contains three formulas for Wins Above Replacement. WARP1 is adjusted for a single season, while WARP3 is adjusted for all time, using the level of competition as one of its factors (park effects, league scoring levels and schedule length are others). A bit of what "comes out in the wash" historically can be seen in the way the two totals compare. For Whitey's career (1950, 1953-1967), he's got 98.7 WARP1 and 95.5 WARP3, meaning his contributions are devalued about 3.3 percent historically over the course of his career. A Hall contemporary whose career is essentially contiguous, Robin Roberts (1948-1966), spent all but three years in the NL; his WARP1 and WARP3 totals are 129.3 and 129.5, meaning his contributions are undervalued by 0.2 percent. If that's not convincing enough, I recalculated using only the seasons for which they exactly overlap and were in opposite leagues, and -- allowing for the fact that we may be losing a bit with rounding, since I'm just pulling numbers off of the page rather than going from Clay Davenport's database -- Ford is "overvalued" by 3.0 percent while Roberts is "undervalued" by 1.6 percent. Neither of these are uncommon; I suspect if you look at the Hall of Famers, you'd find the 20th century ones are mostly within 5% one way or another, with the 19th century ones and the ones from the more extreme eras of baseball history, scoring-wise -- the late '30s and early '60s -- changing the most.

I should stress that I am not, by my assertions, trying to take away from Ford's accomplishments. The man was a fantastic pitcher who accomplished a hell of a lot, and the Davenport system doesn't even attempt to account for some of those accomplishments -- the World Series stuff, his performance against key opponents, his hardware, etc. It's a macro system, not a micro system, and I'm trying to use it to value groups of seasons in a manner that Bill James does with Win Shares. The reasons I turned to this are that I think Win Shares makes a few pretty big E-6's, such as when it comes to the concept of replacement level or the reliance on pitcher W-L and S totals to measure their value.

Based on my system (which itself is based on Clay's system), Whitey is quantifiably a few hairs below the average Hall of Famer. Not enough that we should take up a petition to vote him out -- I can point to at least 15 guys who we should -- and it doesn't mean he wasn't a great ballplayer. But even if I had defined peak a bit differently -- say, for five best overall seasons rather than consecutive -- he would still probably come out below average, because he simply never achieved the single-season levels that a lot of other HOFers did. That said, were he a player currently on the ballot, I would see that he's close to average, consider his success in postseason play, and write him down without hesitation.

Looking at it from a more traditional angle, Whitey won 20 games or more only twice. I guarantee you THAT is below average for a Hall of Fame pitcher, especially one pitching in the era he did. Does it matter? Not much in the grand scheme of things, but by the "system" I just devised to suit this example, I can say, "He's below average for a Hall of Fame pitcher."

Well, that's a pretty crappy system right there, but I hope that the one I built to answer the questions I had about the 2004 ballot is at least a bit better -- certainly a lot more thought and time went into it. If one of the measurements it takes tells us Whitey comes up a little below average, does that mean the system is useless? I hope not. I've given a very qualified answer within a certain context, and the statement, taken away from its context, might look foolish. But within the context, it's a statistical fact, at least until Clay's system takes its next step forward and we can look again.

People are extremely resistant to accept new statistical systems when they tell us things which contradict what we think we know. Look at the case to be made against Derek Jeter's fielding via any one of several advanced measures, and at how resistant a certain segment of Yankee fans and mainstream baseball people are to accepting something which is by now as statistically obvious as the nose on Joe Torre's face. Look at the ridiculous scrums and bench-clearing brawls which plague baseball discussion sites across the Internet. People get very defensive about this stuff. I don't blame them, but I've come around to the other side on a lot of what I held dear, even with regards to the Hall of Fame ballot; in the past I've voted for Tommy John, Jack Morris, and Andre Dawson. Given the research I've done, I don't think I'd vote for any of them again, unless somebody can show me a better system which says I should do otherwise.

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In more things Prospectus-related, I was interviewed on Wednesday by Will Carroll for Baseball Prospectus Radio, a syndicated program which probably isn't available in your market but which you can hear over the Internet. Will and I talked for about eight minutes, mostly on the subject of my Hall of Fame pieces and then a bit on the Yankees. The spot will air on Saturday, and though you'll probably be sleeping while it airs, rest assured that I'll link to it once it's added to the archives.

Still on the Prospectus topic, B-Pro's Joe Sheehan was interviewed by Rich Lederer last weekend, while over on Baseball Interactive (a site where I sometimes contribute), Gary Huckabay was interviewed by John Strubel. Both are lengthy interviews which do a good job of getting the Pros -- two of the top analysts in the field -- to talk a bit more about their company's philosophies, its history and its direction. Good stuff.

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A few more random thoughts which might have become columns if I had fewer things on my plate:

* Yankee fans and media whining about Roger Clemens' departure or branding him a traitor should get a friggin' life. We all knew what we were getting when he arrived in the Bronx, and we shouldn't be surprised that a) he prefers living in Texas; and b) he still wants to pitch. The Rocket was a free agent, the circumstances for his return didn't exist at the time the Yanks had an option to persuade him to do so; and anyway, he'd accomplished everything he wanted to here. He owed the Yankees nothing, they owed him nothing, and the circumstances of his tenure in Houston are much different than they would have been here. To paraphrase Simpsons' bartender Moe Szyslak, I'm a well-wisher in that I don't wish him any specific harm.

* Pete Rose spent 14 years deceiving the American public, not to mention himself, when it came to gambling on the game of baseball. Here's a suggestion: he can only be reinstated after 14 years of penance. Being banned from the game while carrying out a lie DOES NOT count as penance. Maybe if he pledged to do something along those lines, writers and peers wouldn't be tripping over each other to back away from him more quickly. Chickens -> home -> roost.

* This story, which has nothing to do with baseball, is amazing and touching. This one, with photos, is hilariously bizarre. With friends like those...