Any luck with Jackie Robinson?

[Mean Dean]

[quote:fb4aa19dda]was he really a bad fielder?[/quote:fb4aa19dda]Evidence suggests that Jackie was a phenomenal fielder. Bill James discusses this in p. 502-3 of the [i:fb4aa19dda]New Historical Baseball Abstract[/i:fb4aa19dda]. He notes that, by his Defensive Win Shares method, the top defensive 2B with at least 3,000 innings at the position are:

[list=1:fb4aa19dda][*:fb4aa19dda]Hal Lanier[*:fb4aa19dda]Bill Mazeroski[*:fb4aa19dda]Jody Reed[*:fb4aa19dda]Glenn Hubbard[*:fb4aa19dda]Jackie Robinson[/list:o:fb4aa19dda]James then says:[quote:fb4aa19dda]Jackie also played about 2,000 innings at third base, at the end of his career. Guess what? As a third baseman, he rates as even more sensational than he was as a second baseman... The highest [Defensive Win Shares] figure since 1940, by a player who played 10,000 or more innings, is 4.97 by Clete Boyer.

Jackie is at 5.52.

He's off the charts. Nobody else (post-1940) is even in the same zone.

He also played (about) 1,175 innings in the outfield, mostly in left field. He rates as sensational there, for a left fielder... he has a per-inning rate which wouldn't be half bad if he was a center fielder. He rates about the same, per inning, as Rick Manning, Earle Combs, Matty Alou, and Roberto Clemente, a little bit ahead of guys like Dwight Evans and Al Kaline and Minnie Minoso, who are the best of the left/right fielders.[/quote:fb4aa19dda]I dunno why SOM does not rate him as such. I think they tend to be skeptical that a player who moves between positions could be exceptionally good at any of them; perhaps that's why. If you do buy that Jackie was an all-time fielder, which I personally suspect is correct, then he is most likely highly underrated as an actual baseball player.

[ADRIANGABRIEL]

Good stuff, Dean. It would be an interesting case study to compare New York writers' coverage of Jackie Robinson's defense with Cleveland writers' coverage of Larry Doby's defense.

[scorehouse]

care to explain "defensive win shares"? hal lanier better than maz. cool!

[rburgh]

Maz was a terrific pivot on the DP, and made exceptionally few errors for the day. He may have been the best ever at both of those categories, when you consider that he played with a glove that was a joke by today's standards. He has a 1e5 card from the 60's; only now are we having guys go through seasons with fewer errors (and much of that is because they shun reporters who charge them with errors).

He didn't cover a lot of ground, though; he was slower than molasses. I know, I got to see him play a dozen times or more. He and Groat could well have been the slowest DP combo in history.

[scorehouse]

no biz in the hall. imagine he's in for 1 hr and Maris isn't for 61 and back to back MVP's? COS! teh hall and the writers.

[thaibill]

[quote:fc2a4d2eed="jamesgang77"][quote:fc2a4d2eed="El-Saltman"]Wish we had Jackie card with at least a 2 defense.
Would make all the difference.

Ditto that on Utley.[/quote:fc2a4d2eed]


Jackie is a 3 or 4 fielding in the 5 seasons i have him playing on Cd rom..48,50,54,55,56.. Utley is a 1 for the 2010 season which someday should make it to ATG...[/quote:fc2a4d2eed]

1951 - 2e8, career high OPS+. Plus it's super-advanced, one of the cards I've lobbied for.