Gammons and Cyberspace

A nice column yesterday by Peter Gammons on the impact of the Internet on the sports as well as the political culture (similar to another column he wrote back in 2006). Two quotes in the column in particular caught my eye (other than the mention of this blog, Baseball Prospectus, and The Hardball Times albeit sadly not in that order) that deserve a few comments.

First, Gammons says:

I make no bones about my strong feelings about the human element. Pure numbers cannot do justice to character and drive and energy. They cannot measure the impact Robin Yount had on teammates when he ran down the first-base line at the same breakneck speed (one scout had nearly 90 Yount games in a six- or seven-year period and claimed he never got Yount faster than 3.9 seconds, or slower than 4.0).

What a wonderful anecdote and one that relates to what I found when looking at the baserunning exploits of Yount in last week's column. To summarize, Yount was the only player who was a career leader (from 1956-2007 anyway) in multiple of the five baserunning metrics. Overall Yount contributed +54 theoretical runs ranking him 13th in total number of runs. However, he was first in advancing on hits (EqHAR) at +39 runs and first in advancing on fly balls (EqAAR) at +17 runs. He did this despite costing his team 7 runs in stolen bases (EqSBR) and a half run in advancing on passed balls, balks, and wild pitches (EqOAR).

Below you'll find Yount's career baserunning statistics.

Year   Opps EqGAR  Opps EqSBR  Opps EqAAR  Opps EqHAR  Opps EqOAR  Opps EqRuns
1974     24   0.8    15  -3.0    19   1.0    38   2.1   203   1.2   299   2.1
1975     42  -0.9    17   0.1    37  -0.2    42   1.1   317   0.1   455   0.3
1976     33   0.6    31  -3.9    49  -0.7    42   2.2   311  -0.6   466  -2.2
1977     39   0.0    24  -0.5    49   0.5    63   0.4   397  -0.1   572   0.4
1978     27  -0.4    21   0.5    32   0.4    41   0.9   278  -0.7   399   0.7
1979     30   0.9    23  -1.1    47   2.5    43   2.6   311   2.0   454   6.9
1980     39   1.2    27   0.7    46   1.7    46   2.5   353   0.0   511   6.0
1981     26  -0.2     5   0.1    30   0.8    29   1.5   199   0.0   289   2.2
1982     46   0.9    17   0.9    60   2.5    47   3.5   399   0.3   569   8.0
1983     29  -0.8    15  -0.4    53   0.9    47   3.3   343  -0.8   487   2.3
1984     43  -0.7    18   1.1    56   0.9    64   2.6   386  -0.1   567   3.8
1985     20  -0.2    15  -0.7    24   0.1    51   3.5   252  -0.8   362   1.9
1986     40   0.7    20   0.6    42   1.8    47   1.8   367  -0.4   516   4.6
1987     39   0.0    26  -2.2    50   1.0    32   1.3   406   0.9   553   1.1
1988     25   0.2    24   2.4    49  -0.6    45   1.1   397   0.1   540   3.2
1989     29   1.5    21   1.6    53   0.5    61   0.4   402  -0.9   566   3.1
1990     23   0.7    21  -1.6    46   2.1    52   2.6   360   0.6   502   4.4
1991     16   0.5     9  -1.2    43   0.5    39   2.1   277  -1.2   384   0.7
1992     32   0.0    20  -0.7    47   0.9    44   2.3   311  -0.6   454   1.9
1993     16   0.3    11   0.4    30   0.2    48   1.5   258   0.4   363   2.7
        618   5.3   380  -6.8   862  16.7   921  39.4  6527  -0.5  9308  54.1

Yount managed to turn in a positive run value in EqHAR in each of his 20 seasons - a rare feat to say the least.

I was also interested by this comment in Gammons' piece.

Bill James is trying to define clutch, what made George Brett so different, or sets David Ortiz, when healthy, apart in swagger and presence. You can present me with 4,765 pages of anti-Derek Jeter material; it won't work, I watch him too much.

Although he mentions in the column that he was reading The Hardball Times apparently he didn't let Tom Tango's excellent piece titled "With or Without Derek Jeter" sink in. In that article Tom uses Retrosheet data to demonstrate without a doubt (at least to me) that Jeter is among the worst fielding shortstops of his generation by showing that when Jeter is on the field, regardless of the other context which Tom does a great job of neutralizing, fewer batted balls are turned into outs. Period. And one would think that should be the bottom line when evaluating defense.

In tomorrow's Schrodinger's Bat at Baseball Prospectus I go one more round with the fielding system dubbed Simple Fielding Runs (SFR) that I developed for use with Retrosheet style play by play data. In the article I compare SFR to UZR (Ultimate Zone Rating) as well as John Dewan's Plus/Minus system. Not coincidentally both Plus/Minus and SFR rate Derek Jeter as the worst shortstop in baseball from 2005 through 2007 and of course UZR is no fan either. For my part, here are Jeter's SFR numbers since 2002 (ExR is expected runners, Rn is actual runners, and Balls are the number of balls allocated to Jeter's area of responsibility).

Year     Balls      ExR      Rn    Diff     SFR
2002       461       14      10       4       3
2003       479      119     139     -20     -15
2004       637      154     151       3       2
2005       721      183     195     -13      -9
2006       625      163     174     -11      -8
2007       615      168     194     -26     -20
          3538      800     863     -64     -47

So over the course of six seasons Jeter is worth -47 runs by handling 64 fewer balls than would have been expected.

What I find interesting about Gammons' comment (and his take on Jeter is of course not a rare one and so I'm not just picking on Gammons) is the almost absolute faith in observation over other evidence when the evidence from every analytical tool available concurs as to the quality of Jeter's defense. Perhaps people are simply wired differently with some inherently more skeptical of what they see (or think they see) and therefore more willing to let other kinds of input shape their opinions. I'll admit it's kind of a mystery to me.