Several months ago, I posted a sort of survey asking who the top three shortstops in the history of the game were/are. The class that I was writing the paper for is finished, and we ended up having several heated debates about who the best players were at all positions (including pitchers). 

As for the shortstops, the arguments mostly were around Honus Wagner and Derek Jeter. In the comment section of my previous post, no punches were pulled as readers attempted to compare two players that player during completely different eras of the game. Looking strictly at their triple slashes, it's hard to discern who was significantly better than whom:

Jeter: .316/.386/.458 

Wagner: .327/.391/.466 

So Wagner was better, but not really by much. It's when you look at their wRC+ numbers, relative to the league they played in when it gets a bit more clear:

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No, this isn't an argument about how Derek Jeter should be on the short list of greatest shortstop of all time. For the Sports Statistics class I'm taking, we were assigned a year-end project dealing with baseball and who the best players were and are at each position. What it entails is first deciding who the top 3 of all time are and then going from there and ordering them 1, 2, 3. I drew shortstop.

The first name that comes to my head when I hear "shortstop" (other than Derek Jeter) is Honus Wagner. He dominated the game in his day, and is widely regarded as the best ever. The others that came to mind where Appling, Yount, Vaughan and Ozzie Smith. Aside from those, we I was looking at some more recent players. My professor told me not to count Alex Rodriguez. Even though he has over 400 more game as SS, when his career is over he'll almost certainly have more at 3B. Cal Ripken is in the mix though and should be considered for his incredible, steady performance. Current players (i.e. Jeter) can be in the mix, but it must only be based on what they have already accomplished. No doubt Jeter will have over 3,000 hits by the time he's done and hopefully more World Series rings to go along with it. But keep in mind we're ranking them based on things they've already accomplished.

In his Historical Baseball Abstract, Bill James ranked them (based on his Win Shares):

1.Wagner

2.Vaughan

3.Ripken

Then it was Yount, Ernie Banks, Barry Larkin, and Ozzie Smith.

As simply a starting point, I was wondering what some of you guys (and gals) thought about the subject. If you could post the top 3 (in your opinion) shortstops of all time, it would be greatly appreciated.

In baseball, the ultimate goal is to score more runs than your opponent. It might be said in some circles (like Seattle) that the goal is to force your opponent to score less often than you, though. Theoretically, they should be looked at as equals: offense and defense. As with almost everything baseball related though, it's not that simple. I was recently looking at Bill James' Pythagorean record formula. For those of you not familiar with this, it is a simple formula used to determine how many wins and losses a team "should" have had based on the amount of runs scored and runs allowed. The reason "should" is in parentheses, is because often teams can either get lucky or unlucky, sometimes winning a great deal of close games or losing a great deal of them. The luck can at least partially be explained by quality bullpen though. I've conveniently linked a more in depth explanation of the formula from the most unbiased, truthful source I could possibly find here.

When I was looking at it, I decided to plug in some random numbers to see what would happen when I altered them. For example, if a team scored 1,000 runs and gives up 1,000, they would expect to have a .500 record, going 81-81. But if that same team improved their offense by 200 runs and it was 1,200-1,000, they would have a .59 winning percentage, going about 96-66. Interestingly though, if a team were to reduce runs allowed by the same amount, making it 1,000 scored vs. 800 allowed, they would improve more. They would have about a .61 percentage and go 99-63. Of course, the idea of a team scoring 1,000 runs while giving up the same amount is rather far fetched. The team would probably have to invest all their money into a lineup full of mashers who played no defense and started a rotation of Kei Igawas and still not even get there. 

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I had originally posted this over on pinstripe alley but garnered little to no interest. Let me know if you guys want to join in on this by leaving your email address and I'll invite you. We have a bunch of teams still available:

If you’re like me, you enjoy fantasy baseball. If you’re even more like me, you are frustrated by some of the limitations of fantasy baseball. Most of the stats regularly used in the hobby are ones that very poorly reflect a player’s performance. Often, a player’s fantasy baseball stats such as runs scored, RBI, and wins are more a product of the team’s performance than the player himself. This causes some very good players on poor teams to be undervalued and worse players on better teams to be overvalued.

Another issue I have is the way certain players that dominate a particular category have so much fantasy value. Jacoby Ellsbury’s 70 steals last year have led him to be ranked the 6th best position player by ESPN.com. While Ellsbury is a good player, any system that ranks him above Ryan Braun and Matt Kemp is just silly. Another thing is that defense is essentially ignored completely. It’s hard to take a game seriously when Franklin Gutierrez’s defense in CF is valued the same as Vernon Wells’.

The problem with started a league based on advanced metrics such as UZR, wOBA, and wRC+ is that ESPN and Yahoo! don’t allow you to use them. Categories are very limited to say the least. I decided that instead of doing this; why not just use the stat that is generally regarded as the one that best encompasses a player’s value. I decided Wins Above Replacement (WAR) was the way to go. Since I’m more familiar with ESPN, I’ll be starting the league there. My plan is to have 20 teams, with each team having 5 keeper players from the real life team. That is, if you choose the Yankees, you might make your keeper players Derek Jeter, Mark Teixeira, Alex Rodriguez, Mariano Rivera, and CC Sabathia (whatever you see fit). The rest of the players will be pooled together and either drafted or auctioned. I will then do weekly calculations of the players’ performance based on their WAR numbers and post the weekly standings. We will essentially ignore ESPN’s standings as they’ll likely be different from mine.

Please let me know if you guys are interested by putting your email address in your comment and which team you’d like and I’ll send you an invite. Also, let me know if you have any suggestions about his.

Edit: I'm considering scrapping the pick a team, get 5 keepers idea in favor of just a straight draft. We'd still have keepers if we want to keep the league going in 2011, but they would just be your drafted players, not the ones from any specific team. I think this might create a greater appeal. Anybody who is interested let me know which you prefer.

I had originally posted this over on pinstripe alley, but garnered little to no interest. Let me know if you guys are interested in this:

If you’re like me, you enjoy fantasy baseball. If you’re even more like me, you are frustrated by some of the limitations of fantasy baseball. Most of the stats regularly used in the hobby are ones that very poorly reflect a player’s performance. Often, a player’s fantasy baseball stats such as runs scored, RBI, and wins are more a product of the team’s performance than the player himself. This causes some very good players on poor teams to be undervalued and worse players on better teams to be overvalued.

Another issue I have is the way certain players that dominate a particular category have so much fantasy value. Jacoby Ellsbury’s 70 steals last year have led him to be ranked the 6th best position player by ESPN.com. While Ellsbury is a good player, any system that ranks him above Ryan Braun and Matt Kemp is just silly. Another thing is that defense is essentially ignored completely. It’s hard to take a game seriously when Franklin Gutierrez’s defense in CF is valued the same as Vernon Wells’.

The problem with started a league based on advanced metrics such as UZR, wOBA, and wRC+ is that ESPN and Yahoo! don’t allow you to use them. Categories are very limited to say the least. I decided that instead of doing this; why not just use the stat that is generally regarded as the one that best encompasses a player’s value. I decided Wins Above Replacement (WAR) was the way to go. Since I’m more familiar with ESPN, I’ll be starting the league there. My plan is to have 20 teams, with each team having 5 keeper players from the real life team. That is, if you choose the Yankees, you might make your keeper players Derek Jeter, Mark Teixeira, Alex Rodriguez, Mariano Rivera, and CC Sabathia (whatever you see fit). The rest of the players will be pooled together and either drafted or auctioned. I will then do weekly calculations of the players’ performance based on their WAR numbers and post the weekly standings. We will essentially ignore ESPN’s standings as they’ll likely be different from mine.

Please let me know if you guys are interested by putting your email address in your comment and which team you’d like and I’ll send you an invite. Also, let me know if you have any suggestions about his.

Edit: I'm considering scrapping the pick a team, get 5 keepers idea in favor of just a straight draft. We'd still have keepers if we want to keep the league going in 2011, but they would just be your drafted players, not the ones from any specific team. I think this might create a greater appeal. Anybody who is interested let me know which you prefer.

If you’re like me, you enjoy fantasy baseball. If you’re even more like me, you are frustrated by some of the limitations of fantasy baseball. Most of the stats regularly used in the hobby are ones that very poorly reflect a player’s performance. Often, a player’s fantasy baseball stats such as runs scored, RBI, and wins are more a product of the team’s performance than the player himself. This causes some very good players on poor teams to be undervalued and worse players on better teams to be overvalued.

Another issue I have is the way certain players that dominate a particular category have so much fantasy value. Jacoby Ellsbury’s 70 steals last year have led him to be ranked the 6th best position player by ESPN.com. While Ellsbury is a good player, any system that ranks him above Ryan Braun and Matt Kemp is just silly. Another thing is that defense is essentially ignored completely. It’s hard to take a game seriously when Franklin Gutierrez’s defense in CF is valued the same as Vernon Wells’.

The problem with started a league based on advanced metrics such as UZR, wOBA, and wRC+ is that ESPN and Yahoo! don’t allow you to use them. Categories are very limited to say the least. I decided that instead of doing this; why not just use the stat that is generally regarded as the one that best encompasses a player’s value. I decided Wins Above Replacement (WAR) was the way to go. Since I’m more familiar with ESPN, I’ll be starting the league there. My plan is to have 20 teams, with each team having 5 keeper players from the real life team. That is, if you choose the Yankees, you might make your keeper players Derek Jeter, Mark Teixeira, Alex Rodriguez, Mariano Rivera, and CC Sabathia (whatever you see fit). The rest of the players will be pooled together and either drafted or auctioned. I will then do weekly calculations of the players’ performance based on their WAR numbers and post the weekly standings. We will essentially ignore ESPN’s standings as they’ll likely be different from mine.

Please let me know if you guys are interested by putting your email address in your comment and which team you’d like and I’ll send you an invite. Also, let me know if you have any suggestions about his.

Edit: I'm considering scrapping the pick a team, get 5 keepers idea in favor of just a straight draft. We'd still have keepers if we want to keep the league going in 2011, but they would just be your drafted players, not the ones from any specific team. I think this might create a greater appeal. Anybody who is interested let me know which you prefer.

After the Johnny Damon drama finally ended and we all (well, most of us) got sick of arguing whether Joba Chamberlain or Phil Hughes belongs in the rotation and why, most of the attention here on Pinstripe Alley has turned to who should bat second. I suppose it is a better argument than the Joba-Hughes argument since some of us aren't quite completely rooted in our own ideals thus it still is just that: an argument.

The popular suggestions so far have been either Curtis Granderson (because of his speed) and Nick Johnson (because of the astronomical on base percentage). Traditional knowledge tells us that the first two hitters should be able to steal bases, but sabermetric knowledge has more or less thrown that out the window in favor of on base percentage. I decided to take a closer look at each player's hitting based on how the first inning would play out.

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Since so few of Robinson Cano's plate appearances end in a strikeout (career 11.7%) and even fewer end in a walk (career 4.2%), what he produces at the plate hinges more than the average player on what he does with the balls he puts in play. The Major League average for BABIP is about .303 on any given year, but Cano has had the ability to maintain a career rate of .321. This isn't something new either, in the minors, his rate was an even more astounding .362. One needs to look no further than the correlation between his last three years worth of BABIP against his wOBA to see just how much his game is affected by this:

	2007	2008	2009
BABIP	.329	.283	.324
wOBA	.358	.307	.370

This data is fine and dandy (and generally well known, especially around most Yankee circles), but what does it mean in predicting the future of Cano? Looking back at his 2008 numbers, if we remove his putrid numbers in April, his batting average was actually a solid .297 for the year. His wOBA that month was a worse-than-awful .196 which was a product of an equally painful .156 BABIP. This isn't only a one year trend either, in his career, he holds career total wOBAs of .299 and .300 in April and May, respectively, which is brought on from a .286 and .287 in those same months, well below both his career and major league averages.

I started to think the only thing that could probably bring this on was freakishly low line drive percentages during these two month, so I looked up his career batted ball rates in April and May vs. his Sept/Oct. totals, where his wOBA is his best (.390):

	LD%	GB%	FB%
April	18.1	52.0	29.9
May	18.1	51.1	30.8
Sept./Oct.	21.3	48.2	30.5
Career	19.3	49.5	31.2

 

Another thing Cano seems to have going for him is his HR/FB%. His career rate is 11% while the major league average is generally around 10%. In April it's close to normal at 10.4%, but his career May number plummets to 6.4%. In August and September it's back up to 13.9% and 13.8%, respectively. So as he is hitting more fly balls as the season progresses, they are going out of the park at a higher rate as well. If we multiply his total fly balls hit in May by his career HR/FB% of 11, we'd actually expect him to hit 17 home runs in the month, over twice what he's normally done. Conversely, we'd expect him to hit exactly one fewer home run in both August and September for his career. This can easily be attributed to simple luck of course, it's just interesting to see that Cano's doesn't appear to be "spread" as evenly as we'd expect.

Yesterday and Wednesday I wrote about Nick Swisher and Curtis Granderson, respectively, in regards to how their splits from 2009 might predict how they will perform in 2010. Today, I'd like to tackle the remaining Yankee outfielder, Brett Gardner. All offseason, while the Yankees' front office decided over and over again not to resign Johnny Damon, Gardner was viewed as 2010's starting left fielder. Even with the recent signing of Randy Winn, Gardner appears to still be in line to get a good chunk of starts in left and at least some in center as well. Gardner did miss a good deal of time last season after winning the starting CF job out of spring training, but was still able to put up solid numbers in a limited amount of time.

As for the coming season, Gardner has been predicted to be anywhere between below replacement level to all-star caliber. I'd like to look at his stats from this past season and his minor league career to better form an opinion on what we can expect from the speedster in 2010.

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Yesterday, I wrote about Curtis Granderson's interesting HR/FB rates, and I was curious as to how another Yankee outfielder's splits would stack up. Nick Swisher came into last year essentially as the backup RF and 1B. Some wanted him to start right away, but it appeared he would have to share a role with Xavier Nady. Of course after Nady went down for the year, Swisher was thrown into the starting role and exceeded most expectations.

Swisher seemed to struggle mightily at home in 2009 last season (as far as home runs go) but at the same time, seemed to hit a home run in just about every away game last year. His totals (21 HR away vs 8 at home) support my theory. While his batting average also fell greatly when he returned home (.268 away vs. .226 at home), his batting average on balls in play (BABIP) did not. His .274 home mark was just slightly below his .280 away mark. This certainly wouldn't be the reason to explain his huge dropoff in average. His ISO saw perhaps the most stark contrast, a robust .316 away from Yankee Stadium, but only .168 back at home.

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I'll be the first to admit, when I first heard of the Curtis Granderson trade this offseason, I was less than thrilled as a Yankee fan. Not only were we giving up one of our top 3 prospects at the time, but I wasn't sure Granderson was ever going to return to his 2007 form when he hit .302/.361/.552. His 2008 season saw him suffer a dropoff in production to .280/.365/.494. His walk rate went from 7.7% to 11.3%, so despite his dropoff in batting average, he was still a solid player, especially for a center fielder.

In 2009 however, his walk rate fell to 10.1% while his strikeout rate rose from 20.1% to 22.3%. He ended up producing a .249/.327/.453 line. Which, despite being a far cry from his 2007 or even 2008 seasons, still had him at 6 runs above average based on his wOBA of .340. 

Granderson's case appears to be a curious one, his stats were falling as he moved into his prime. However, there are certain splits that might argue a different point. We all know by this point that the new Yankee Stadium is friendly to hitters, namely left handed hitters. The Hardball Times did an article on park factors at the end of this past season. A 100 score means it is exactly average, while above 100 is hitter friendly and below 100 pitcher friendly. Yankee Stadium came in with an unprecedented 130 score. Higher even than the Great American Smallpark Ballpark. Comerica Park in Detroit had a park factor of 94. Granted, these are only one year scores and can fluctuate a great deal from year to year. Comerica's 4 year weighted total was 101, very close to being average. If we take the conservative approach to Yankee Stadium and call last year sort of "fluke" year, it will still likely be in the 115-120 range.

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A couple weeks ago, there was a post on The Hardball Times about who was the most valuable asset in baseball today. The story discussed not who was the best player in baseball, that title (according to THT at least) belongs to Albert Pujols. A close second is Joe Mauer, who can be considered more valuable simply because of the age advantage he holds on Pujols as well as the fact that he plays a far more premium position. The latter reason suggests decline on Mauer's part though, catchers tend to peak earlier and rarely hit in their 30s the way they did in their mid to late 20s.

The article goes on to dismiss household names like Sabathia, Utley, Rodriguez, Halladay, and Ichiro, arguing that their advanced age will also deny them the chance to continue to put up their regular numbers a great deal longer.

A more realistic winner for "MVA" would be someone like Zach Greinke or Evan Longoria. That is, a young, proven superstar locked in with his team for a long time.

This got me thinking: Who is the "MVA" of the Yankees? It could be argued that Sabathia, Rodriguez, or Derek Jeter are the most important assets to our current team. What about a few years down the road though? Sabathia, Rodgriguez, Burnett, and Teixeira will all still be with the team, but some may not be as productive as others at that point.

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With Jorge Posada injured again, many questions have come up about the Yankees catching position. The fact that Jose Molina went down with his own injury doesn't help matters. Molina is in the final year of his 2 year contract. His older brother Bengie is also in the final year of his contract with the Giants. He will make $6MM this year. I came across this the other day:

Buster Posey, catcher, Giants: Hitting .314 with 5 homers and 22 RBIs in Single A San Jose, he is on a fast track to the big leagues. This is working out well for the Giants because Bengie Molina will become a free agent. In a perfect world, the Giants would want Molina to re-sign to mentor Posey, but Molina isn't ready for the mentoring role. He told reporters in San Francisco that he'll be looking for a starting job next year as well. He'll likely have suitors.

Posey was only drafted last year, but the early numbers jump out, which makes many think the Giants won't resign Molina and potentially switch Pablo Sandoval back to catcher at least part time until Posey is ready to be called up.

Of course the Yankees already have more than enough money commited to the Catching position, but if they are perhaps able to sign Molina to a Bobby Abreu-esque contract, would this be something we'd like to see? I'd be more than happy with 1 year at $5MM. Chances are both of Jesus Montero (if he does continue catching) and Austin Romine won't be ready until 2011, so a two year contract for a reliable holdover might be even better. The next outstanding young catcher that will hit the FA market won't be until after 2010 with Joe Mauer.