Blog Entry of the Week (February 20, 2004)
Aaron Gleeman chimes in with once in a great while there comes an article that is simply begging to be torn apart. And he does.
In baseball equivalency, is Gleeman like Pete Rose (the player)?
--posted by TangoTiger at 10:56 AM EDT
Posted 11:15 a.m.,
February 20, 2004
(#1) -
Mike Green
Allan Roth. How little I knew? The name was familiar before, but I did not remember from where. As it turns out, he was the statistics guy on the Game of the Week (in the Curt Gowdy/Joe Garagiola era?); that is where I vaguely knew of him.
Now, I learn that he was Branch Rickey's stat guy, and also did the work on the original Strat-a-Matic. And I gather, for good reasons, a SABR hero.
Posted 2:59 p.m.,
February 20, 2004
(#2) -
Dr Scott
In baseball equivalency, is Gleeman like Pete Rose (the player)?
So he hustles a lot, scores a bunch of hits, but not much power to his writing, and is destined to hang on for years after he isn't worth anything? Gleeman, I wouldnt take that if I were you.
Posted 3:05 p.m.,
February 20, 2004
(#3) -
Patriot
I'm with Dr. Scott. Gleeman's better than Rose ever was. Right now, Gleeman is like Mickey Mantle in 1953. He might be the greatest player of all time, or he might hit some bumps of some sort and "only" be the 20th greatest player of all time.
Posted 3:19 p.m.,
February 20, 2004
(#4) -
tangotiger
Gleeman has started drinking, I think. He's on his way.
Posted 3:43 p.m.,
February 20, 2004
(#5) -
Greg Tamer(e-mail)
How about Albert Pujols? I've heard rumors that Gleeman is actually 33 and still lives with his mother -- not that there's anything wrong with that.
Seriously -- Gleeman is there every weekday morning with above-average gleeman-length writing....so I'm going with Cal Ripken Jr as his MLB equivalent.
Posted 5:29 p.m.,
February 20, 2004
(#6) -
f_k_a Scoriano
Well, Mantle said if he hit like Rose, he'd wear a dress.
So, what's Aaron wearing?
Posted 6:19 p.m.,
February 20, 2004
(#7) -
Dick Ward
I suspect that's a typo (1.1 per PA). I'm sure Aaron wouldn't want to be ripped over a typo (of course, he could correct it with anyone knowing after it was pointed out). And unlike Aaron, Plaschke has an editor. Possibly an editor who is more familiar with the subjunctive than OBP.
I think Aaron is more like Soriano - lots of ABs with good production - we'll see how good it is when he's older.
Posted 6:48 p.m.,
February 20, 2004
(#8) -
tangotiger
I think he was looking at OPS and saw 1.1, and interpreted as he did (or something like that).
Posted 7:12 p.m.,
February 20, 2004
(#9) -
Patriot
I seriously doubt its a typo. Remember when Skip Bayless wrote something like, "Using the new stat On Base Plus Slugging, which is figured as R+RBI-HR..."
Posted 7:48 p.m.,
February 20, 2004
(#10) -
Dick Ward
Tango, Patriot -
Does he still not have an editor?
Posted 9:09 p.m.,
February 20, 2004
(#11) -
Ryan
Reading this just made me think of something... I hate to dredge the old Moneyball debate, especially if this angle has already been covered somewhere... but the whole thing about OBP being worth 3x as much as SLG.
What if Michael Lewis was hearing something about getting on base was three times as important as power, and transcirbed that to SLG instead of ISO? Maybe OBP is 3x as valuable as ISO? I dunno... I'll see if I can take a look at that later.
Posted 12:43 p.m.,
February 23, 2004
(#12) -
OCF
The Times did publish a letter to the editor about the Plashke article from Eric Enders. Nice letter, Eric.
Posted 1:24 p.m.,
February 23, 2004
(#13) -
tangotiger
(homepage)
Here you go. (Will probably only be available for 10 days).
Posted 3:10 p.m.,
March 2, 2004
(#14) -
Noffs
Ryan,
The idea is that 3*OBP + SLG (times a constant) best approximates runs per game. For the AL in recent years, I actually have numbers to back that up (I came up with 2.8). But getting to your point:
3*OBP + SLG = 3(ISOobp + BA) + (ISOslg+BA) = 3*ISOobp + ISOslg + 4*BA
The ratio of the coefficients of OBP to SLG is the same as ISOobp to ISOslg