ALL-TIME TOP 100: Catchers

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Originally Posted by yankee hater

A report like this probably is not fair to the catcher position, and yet, the players still deserve mention. It will be more interesting to see how the rankings go at other positions, which we will start next week.

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Correction: which have already happened.

This is an article from over 3 years ago.

Actually, YH wasn't saying that. He copy and pasted it from the website. I added some quote tags to his post to clarify that.

Got it.

Yogi Berra = 1.

Piazza like 5 or 6. Part of being a catcher is being able to throw out baserunners and play defense. Piazza could do neither. He was a converted 1Bman.

This argument could go on and on forever for the simple fact that no one is going to be righ there. You can compare offensive stats of two players in the same era against each other, you can even compare errors and runners thrown out. The problem is that you can't compare players from different eras accurately, at least enough for my taste, and you will never be able to come to a consensus on how much offense and defense offset each other.

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Originally Posted by metsguy234

But he didn't make that list. He c&p'd it from a different site and posted the link at the bottom.


P.S.

Look at the date this was posted on the site wass linked to:

Friday, November 5, 2004

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But, at least, Wass made the effort of c&p-ing the extract, which is more than you or I did :p

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But, at least, Wass made the effort of c&p-ing the extract,

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And thank you for doing so, not all of us have all day to play around on the net.

But to what extent is the question that I am referring to. We all know that defense at the position of catcher is important, but at what point does the offense overcome the defense. For example, Piazza. At what point would his offense no longer have been good enough to cancel out his poor defense? If he hits only 25 homers is that not good enough, if he hits .290 instead of .300 is he now not good enough to overcome his lackluster defense?

I don't think that you will ever be able to come to a consensus on that. There is a lot to defense, and we don't really have the stats that will allow you to really judge the defense of two players against one another. I mean just think about how many guys never ran against Pudge based on his reputation and how many more ran on Piazza for that very same fact.

Yep, pretty much what I have been saying above. The problem lies with the "guess" part of things. It is for that reason that I stated the argument could go on and on forever. When making an accurate guess there are always going to be differing opinions.

The list isn't that bad. Some of them are in the wrong spots on the list, but I have no problems with most of them being at least included in the top 100.

Bill James did not leave defense out of his Win Shares. These are not his WS stats either....this is based on his stats, and then adjusted by the guy that made his own list.

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Originally Posted by yankee hater

Every statistical total rating goes off of a guess. You can't get around it. The guess is based of averages.

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You dont guess how many home runs a guy hit, you don't guess how many people a pitcher struck out. When comparing offense to offense it is very easy, more often then not there isn't much of a "guess" going on there. When you try to factor in defense and offense together is when, at least to me, the problem pops up.

You are correct, jcbarr, and virtually all baseball analysts agree that defensive stats are difficult to measure. Offense is...what is is. Defense is not. Attempts to evaluate defensive stats, like the defensive measures in Win Shares, are somewhat fuzzy. This doesnt mean that they have no value.... just that they are somewhat of an educated guess.

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Originally Posted by yankee hater

I am aware of this. Bill James however did not use the new improved defensive stats. Also, I already complained about the 'objectivity' of the study due to its subjective weighting.

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He didn't use the improved defensive stats for two perfectly legitimate reasons, one of which you've mentioned.

1) They don't go far back in history, and James wanted Win Shares to be able to compare players from different eras.
2) When he developed Win Shares, improved defensive stats like UZR, +/-, RZR, etc. were still very much in their infancy.

Thanks Hater. I am quite aware of what jcbarr was saying. I agreed, and added my own observations. You need a hobby, or something. You appear to be looking to argue anything, at any time. Of course, thats what a few others do as well. You know, the ones you disdain?