From:  (Gerry Gryschuk)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.baseball
Subject: Re: Mattingly, what a fine fielder (was: Hardly not etc.)
Date: 6 Nov 92 10:26:13 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Saskatchewan

From article <7936@transfer.stratus.com>, by gene@bogus.sw.stratus.com (Eugene Loparco):
> In article <7911@transfer.stratus.com> jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com writes:
[some deleted ...]
> I think Mr. Lee's point (and mine) is that if you want to think that
> Luis Rivera is as good as Ozzie Smith defensively that is your opinion
> and you are entitled to it.
> 

Sure your entitled to an opinion, however by posting it presumably you
want people to acknowledge it as somehow having some "worth". That is
is the truth value of your opinion good or bad in the scheme of things?
Otherwise why post it? You could have this opinion, keep it to yourself
and nobody would care. By posting it though you also will be asked to present
some evidence as to its validity. Now that evidence could be simply subjective
and thus difficult to argue with since not all people view things the same way
or it could be objective in which case tests can be done on the objective
evidence to see if it holds true.

Consider the thread on favorite players of peoples youths. I've read some
of them and have yet to see anybody arguing over it. Why? Because everybody
understands that "favorite" is a subjective truth having merit only to
the individual. I can say Bill "Spaceman" Lee was my favorite player and
nobody would argue with that. On the otherhand if the thread was about
who I thought was the *best* player of my youth and I claimed it was
Bill Lee I would properly be expected to provide evidence, mainly statistical,
on how he made a greater impact in baseball then other players of his/my
generation. If I never presented any evidence, stubbornly claiming it
was only my opinion, saying I don't care what other people think, then
eventually I would get flamed for it and rightly so I might add.


> I personally felt that Alvaro Espinoza was an exceptional fielder, in
> fact one of the best in baseball, just by seeing him play.  I was flamed
> to charcoal for that statement, but I defended myself by saying it was
> MY opinion and not fact.

Well if you were flamed immediately after making this opinion known then
I would say the flame was probably unwarranted. However if after continuation
of the discussion and being presented with evidence to the contrary you
still held to the view he was one of the best in baseball simply claiming
its only your opinion, I think the act of flaming you would be defenseable.

> 
>>You have to judge players based on a reasonable number of games.
>>A dozen isn't enough. The only way to do this is stats. (Oh,
> 
> I disagree.  According to some people on the net the "stats" prove that
> Don Mattingly and Andy Van Slyke are mediocre (at best) fielders.  If you
> talk to the people who see them all year (namely the players and managers)
> you will find that this is simply not the case.

But as others have pointed out the players and managers may not see them
play anymore than you or me. They will see their own players significantly
more than everybody else but not necessarily other teams players. Thus
they will have no greater evidence for their subjective opinion then
the fans who see them, thus players' and managers' subjective opinions
will be at best only a little better than the everyday fans' subjective
opinions.

BTW I have never seen anyone say the stats "prove" anything, provide evidence
for, even overwhelming evidence for, maybe but never "prove". Believe me
I'm a physicist in training and if anyone here had said statistics and
prove in the same statement I would have been all over them like cats on
a gut wagon.

> 
>>I've found this (and previous debates) on defense to be rather
>>interesting, because it is the last place in baseball where
>>many baseball people still try to judge the "best at XXX" just by 
>>watching them, not by any coherent statistical basis. We may
>>debate which stats make someone the "best power hitter" or
>>"best hitter"  (OPS vs. BA vs. SLG vs. OBP vs. all sorts of
>>other things). But on defenese for too long it's come down
>>to "I watched him and he looked good."  I'll be interested 
>>to see if baseball as a whole (and not just isolated pockets
>>of stat fans) adopt some kind of better defensive stat in the
>>near future.
> 
> I don't think there is a defensive stat that can accurately measure a
> player's performance...

Fine, again this is your opinion, but it would be helpful to explain why
you think this way, by knowing what faults may lie in a statistical
analysis the analysis itself can be better designed to get rid of these
faults if indeed a change is needed. Or are you bothered by the fact that
a statistic can be designed around your objections in which case probably
invalidating many of your subjective opinions?
--
Gerald Gryschuk            Saskatoon,Saskatchewan = a place with 9 months
gerry@sask.usask.ca           of hockey and 3 months of poor skating.
Go Habs!!!		              (The Bum rules!!!)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.baseball