From: spira@panix.com (Greg "Sarcasm Is A Way Of Life" Spira)
Subject: Re: Sandberg (was Re: Ty Griffen)
Organization: Boo! 
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 21:37:39 GMT

In <C1AwHM.67F@Novell.COM> dtokarew@tokafew.Doc.Provo.Novell.COM (Deb Tokarewich) writes:

>In article <1993Jan22.213038.14499@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>  
>gspira@nyx.cs.du.edu (Greg Spira) writes:
>> 
>> The 38 points of OBP are obviously worth a lot more than 25 points
>> of slugging, and we're not even taking into consideration all of
>> Morgan's speed and the fact that Sandberg hasn't had his down years yet.
>> (It is safe to say that Sandberg is the better defensive player, but 
>> that doesn't begin to make up the offensive ground between them.

>Why not let's try your comment this way: It is safe to say that Morgan is  
>the better offensive player, but that doesn't begin to make up the  
>defensive ground between them.

>The discussion is about "premier second basemen" in sum and total, not  
>about "premier second basemen offensively." So why are so many posts  
>putting so much emphasis on the offensive comparison? It seems that the  
>position played is an important factor in the topic--after all, it's not  
>about "premier hitters" or "premier players no matter what position they  
>play." [Is DH a "positon"? ;-)]. So is the discussion downplaying (if not  
>outright ignoring or dismissing) Sandberg's position play?

Well, I didn't.  Sandberg is a very good second baseman defensively.
He's not, in my opinion, a great second baseman like Jose Lind; he
doesn't have Jose's range.  But he is very good, and, in terms of
career value, is probably going to end up as one of the ten greatest
defensive second basemen ever.  (Most of the Lind types don't last because of
their bats)  

Joe Morgan was a decidely below average defensive second baseman, I think.

That being said, even if Sandberg was the greatest defensive second baseman
ever (see Mazeroski, Bill), I don't think the difference in defense would
make up for the large difference in offense.

Morgan had five offensive seasons better than Sandberg's best. (72-76) 
Morgan had tremendous on-base skills, tons of speed on the basepaths,
and not all that much less power than Sandberg has.  Sandberg's stats
are all inflated by Wrigley Field, Joe's were deflated by most of the parks
he played in.

Let's look at Pete Palmer's Linear Weights system.  I don't like his
fielding stuff usually, but for a rough estimation they'll do here.
LW rates Joe Morgan, for his career, as being -110 fielding runs.
LW, as of the end of 1989, rated Sandberg as +103 fielding runs.  He's
probably up to, say, +140 by now.

That's a big difference.

But it doesn't come close to bridging the offensive gap.

In baserunning alone, Morgan has a +65 edge

In terms of career batting lw runs, Morgan has an edge of about 330
runs currently, I believe.

Now, if Sandberg keeps hitting like he has the last 3 years for the next
7 or 8 years, he'll catch up in terms of career value.  I doubt that he
will, but it's certainly not impossible.  There's no way he'll ever
catch up in terms of peak value; they're only about 10 players in
history with as good a peak as Morgan's.

Note about Sandberg: His career has been up and down.  His first two
full years were quite bad offensively.  Then he had two great years
in '84 and '85.  But then he had a period of 3 years '86 - '88 -
during which he really wasn't any better than league average for 2b
offensively.  Only in the last 4 years has he really been great over
a number of years.  So we're only really talking about 6 years in which
he was very good offensively, while Morgan had about 15, with 5 of them
better than the best of Sandberg's.

Greg