Elktonnick

Actually we did pretty well that I won a debate scholarship to Emerson. I did not take it because I get a scholarship elsewhere. But thank you for bringing it up. I may still have the trophy if the wife hasn' t thrown it out.

Hey I was not the one who went so far out on the limb by claiming Jeter was the worst that I couldn't get back.

I notice you completely ignore what Gammons actuallywrote only to embark on ad hominem attacks. You brought up Gammons not I but hey I get your style now when the facts do not agree with your conjecture.

Some one else. I only have to prove he wasn't

I will admit he wasn't the best but neither was he the worst of his era. BTW Peter Gammons while a HOF still never played the game but here is what he has written about Jeter " https://www.espn.com/gammons/s/2001/0212/1079272.html How good is Jeter, really? Mailbag: Feb. 12 The consistent excellence of Yankees SS Derek Jeter -- at the plate and in the field, in the regular season and in the postseason -- puts him in elite company. Q: I have just read the Jayson Stark and Rob Neyer columns about Derek Jeter and whether he's in the same class with Alex Rodriguez and Nomar Garciaparra. Both of their arguments were pretty strong. What's your opinion: is Jeter in the same class as them? -- Derek Kanarek, New Brunswick, N.J. PWG: First of all, range factor is a phony stat. It will tell you that Roberto Alomar is a mediocre second baseman, and he's the best I've ever seen. It doesn't take into consideration instinct. Jeter is the most consistent of the three making the tough play, and he makes the double play -- starting and finishing -- the best. Offensively, he has yet to jump into their class -- partially because he had some injury problems last year, partially because hitting second he controls that inside-out swing and doesn't let go. If you watch him take BP, if he lets it fly, he has tremendous power, and I would not be surprised if he hit 30 homers. I say this each October: the best thing about watching the postseason is watching Jeter play every day for 15-20 games so I go home each winter realizing how great he really is. No stat sheet shows that NOW DOES THAT SOUND LIKE SOMETHING THAT SOMEONE WHO THOUGHT JETER WAS THE WORST DEFENSIVE SS OF HIS ERA WOULD WRITE IN A COLUMN I THINK NOT

There is no one who officially determines where on the grid the ball lands which is the key data point for determining UZR or DRS The only official determining anything is an umpire who says it is fair of foul. Once again quoting from fangraphs as reported in the KC Star in May 2019 “We don’t know exactly where each fielder was stationed, we certainly don’t know the exact location of the batted ball to the nearest square inch on the field, and we definitely don’t know how long the ball was in the air or on the ground. In reality, it might have been an easy ball to catch or it might have been a difficult one to catch, or somewhere in between. So unless something has changed since in the past six months what I said is accurate. Even if it it has changed since then, it certainly was true from 2002 until 2014 when Jeter was playing. But hey like I said you should address your quibble to the Kansas City Star. After all I am just repeating what they wrote so your beef isn't with me. it is with them

Yes I realized there was that variable in offensive data but in both cases the official scorer and umpires judgments are determinative of the fact and it is entered into the record books as such. But in defensive metrics such as UZR and DRS there is no official determiner of fact. That is the difference. So a hit is a hit a strike a strike etc because the official determiner of fact says so.

They are but they haven't yet. That may reduce one source of error but questions remain as to the measures reliability and validity. We know for example UZR and DRS frequently come up with different results as to the relative rankings of specific players. What I would like to see are truly blind studies. Namely two or three different teams take the measurements and enter the data independently of each other and see if there is a variance in the results. A hit is a hit a walk is a walk etc so offensive metrics do not have the inherent issues that defensive metrics have. Such a study however would not eliminate some of the other variables that tend to skew defensive metrics which are too numerous to list here.

Shaughnessy may be correct but I suspect Nomar's s***** attitude, pouting on the bench and public statements complaining also had more than a little to do with his departure as well. Of course Cabrera himself would later be suddenly dealt in what remains today "curious" circumstances.

Stop misquoting me. I said GG voting has its flaws. You never address the issue of the flaws in Defensive metrics. As for the Fielding Bible and the Fielding Bible Awards I believe none of the Award voters actually played the game so they are so called "experts" who never played the game. They are sabrmetricians, So just like carpenters to them every problem is a nail. All their fielding awards are is recognition of players with the best defensive metrics they are only valid in terms of their own definition. It doesn't mean they have any scientific validity since they are beset with the same issues as all defensive metrics which I cited above.

First of all I am hardly a Yankees fan just a fan who sees the inherent flaws in Defensive metrics I think the May 2019 KC Star addressed the flaws in DRS as well as UZR. Fangraphs includes the following admonishment: DRS uses Baseball Info Solutions (BIS) data in calculating its results. It’s important to note that this data is compiled by human scorers, which means that it likely includes some human error. We are never going to have wholly accurate defensive data; human error is impossible to avoid when recording fielding locations by hand, no matter how meticulous the scorers. As the Star article points out it is the subjective input of opinion as to whether a ball should or should not have been caught by an 8dllr an hour data entry clerk. Garbage in Garbage out as we used to say when evaluating data from our information management systems. Another article made the following point re DRS. "Defensive Runs Saved has its share of drawbacks, too. For one thing, it doesn’t take into account defensive shifts or positioning. Imagine that a batter hits a routine grounder to where the third baseman would normally be positioned — except that the team is using a Chris Davis-type shift with the third baseman stationed near second. There’s no possible way he could make that play, through no fault of his own, but DRS would still give him demerits...... There are many factors in play that could lead to discrepancies. DRS, like any stat, shouldn’t be considered a foolproof measurement." Let me repeat that in case you missed it DRS like any stat shouldn’t be considered a foolproof measurement." Did you catch that. BTW the article that Bellhorn cited specifically mentioned that Jeter;s positioning tended to adversely impact his defensive metrics. GG voting may be flawed but at least it is the product of managers and coaches who have played the game. What it comes down to is that defensive metrics are the product of 8dllr an hour data clerks which hardly qualify as a scientific objective measure just because the end product is the result of some mathematical formula. Garbage in Garbage out.

25 per cent. However that still does not make the defensive measures scientifically valid it just means that MLB added them to the process. Eyeballs evaluating the talent determines the winners not some 8 dllr an hour data clerk entering unverified data into a computer and crunching some numbers based on an artificial formula.

No the real point is Jeter was not the worst. The other real point is baseball is more art than science. The other real point is Lichtman the creator of UZR recognized its limitations and so much as admitted it lacked scientific rigor. The other real point is that the GG may not be scientific but it is the judgment of one's peers and has more validity than any artificial measures which even sabrmetricians view as flawed. Here is the KC Star's take published May 19 2019: " Then read these excerpts from what FanGraphs has to say about Ultimate Zone Rating: “Just because UZR or any other defensive metric “says” that someone is X, even if that X is based on many years of data, does not make it so. When you are dealing with sample data, as we almost always are with every metric in baseball that we encounter, there is a certain chance that the metric is going to be ‘wrong.’ “The reason for that is that the data is imperfect. “We don’t know exactly where each fielder was stationed, we certainly don’t know the exact location of the batted ball to the nearest square inch on the field, and we definitely don’t know how long the ball was in the air or on the ground. In reality, it might have been an easy ball to catch or it might have been a difficult one to catch, or somewhere in between. “There is no guarantee that our UZR number reflects what the player actually did or his true defensive talent.” If that strikes you as an awful lot of stuff not to know for a metric that supposedly measures a player’s defense, join the club. Slog through the fine print of advanced baseball metrics and you often find a passage that says, Yeah, these numbers might not be accurate, but it’s the best information we’ve got, so let’s go with it. Which is pretty much the same thought process that led to the belief that the Earth was flat, the sun orbited around it and a good way to identify a witch was to tie her up and throw her in the nearest lake to see if she sank. “Sure, we might be ‘wrong’ and drown a few people, but it’s the best system we’ve got.” Here’s the problem with that: When we accept and use these numbers without question we give them validity, and players are now being judged by metrics that even the metrics’ advocates admit may not be accurate. I’d trust the opinion of a coach or scout who has watched thousands and thousands of baseball games and tens of thousands of players far more than the opinion of a “video scout” watching a game on TV, making $8 an hour, doing a summer job and feeding what may or may not be accurate data into a flawed system. So why do we continue using these numbers? Because we want to have opinions without going to the trouble of developing expertise. Developing expertise not only requires watching thousands of baseball games, it also requires you to actually pay attention and know what to look for ... and most of us can’t be bothered. , even if the number we regurgitate is inaccurate. So after looking into how defensive metrics are put together I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw the Royals’ team bus, but I’m guessing that won’t change a thing. It’s much easier to look up a number on a website and sound knowledgeable Advanced defensive metrics might not be accurate, but they sure are convenient and that’s usually enough to keep people using them. Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/sports/mlb/kansas-city-royals/article230967538.html#storylink=cpy That article pretty much makes the case that I have been making. So you guys should write to the KC Star to object I remember when we were up grading our legacy information management systems and using the data it was going to spit out we had to be very aware that our data input was accurate. Garbage in garbage out that is one of the huge inherent flaws in defensive baseball metrics as opposed to offensive metrics, a hit is hit a walk a walk and runs scored are runs scored.

Obviously you do not think much of managers and coaches judging talent. Major leaguers are a small fraternity. Small fraternities usually are the best evaluators of who are their best performers since they constantly talk with each. Having known guys who have played, coached scouted and umpired in professional baseball, these guys generally live, talk, ea,t and sleep baseball. They know who is who

This whole discussion started because you said that Jeter was the WORST defensive SS of his era. He clearly wasn't. Face it it was a ridiculous statement to have made. The only clown show is some one who insists he was the worst in spite of the 5 GG. In order to accept your contention one would have believe all the experts were wrong and you are right. The fact that I do not accept the scientific validity of UZR which I don't its crap scientifically speaking, doesn' t mean I do not know how it is calculated. I do. I just do not accept its utility. You just can not accept the fact that some one values the opinion of the professionals who voted him 5 gold gloves for his steady consistent defense over a scientically invalid measure.

I suggest you read the various articles on UZR and you will find most sabrmetricians have the same issues I have. Here is an excerpt from Michael Lichtman's article on UZR which he created, Conclusions So, what are the lessons here? One, use as much data as possible before drawing any conclusions about a player’s likely defensive ability, talent or value. But, because true talent can change from year to year, try and weight recent data more heavily than past data. Two, consistency from year to year means almost nothing. Ignore it, combine the data (hopefully with some weighting), and go on your merry way. Three, a player’s UZR, be it one year, one month or 5 years, is not necessarily what happened on the field and is not necessarily that player’s true talent level over that period of time either. That is why we regress, regress, and regress! A player can have a plus UZR and have played terrible defense, because the data we are using is far from perfect. It is exactly the same with offense and pitching. Do not for a second think that that is a unique problem with defensive metrics. It is not! The more data we have, however, the less likely the gap between UZR and what actually happened, and the smaller the gap between UZR and that player’s true defensive talent. And once we regress the sample numbers appropriately, we essentially shrink those gaps to zero, although there is still uncertainty with regard to the regressed number itself. So, even after regression, there is no guarantee that our UZR number reflects what the player actually did or his true defensive talent over that time period. But, it is the best we can do (not knowing anything else about that player)! I read and saved the above article a couple of years ago. The last sentence is telling since it means as purely scientific standard UZR and UZR/150 is neither reliable nor valid Statistically speaking UZR fails as a scientific measure. And that's not me saying it but UZR's creator, Michael Lichtman.

Precisely Jeter has the 17th highest WAR in baseball history. Moreover his UZR numbers are artifically skewed against him. Players are disadvantaged in UZR calculations by not being positioned in the center of the UZR rating zone. This is just one of the many issues that make UZR virtually worthless from a purely scientific standpoint. The sabrmetricians counter saying "We know it's flawed but it is the best we got" It is for this reason I will take the opinion of those professionals who voted Jeter 5 gold gloves and Joe Torre over any one who posts on a baseball forum.

First of most baseball sabrmetricians recognize the serious limitations of UZR. It's limitations are so severe that no serious statiscian would accept their reliability or validity if such a measure were used in anything other than baseball. Secondly your argument is that Jeter was the worst because his HOF manager Joe Torre played him 2-3000 innings more than anyone else. LMFAO!!!!!

Interesting article! I suggest everyone read the entire article especially the last few paragraphs which makes the point that the sabrmetric flaws from Jeter's defense were a result of poor positioning.

First of all I never said that shifts negate the value of range but merely that it diminishes it. I find it amusing and cavalier that the amateurs who post here totally devalue the judgment of the professionals he voted Jeter 5 gold gloves. At least you weren't so off base (pardon the pun) as to call Jeter the worst defensive SS of his era.

I think Pirates ownership would settle for him to stop players and coaches from throwing punches at each other.

The point was he was never the worst shortstop playing in his era. One can not defend the indefensible.

You are correct. There is so many flaws with the idea of range over consistency. Jeter is a first round hall of famer. To label him the worst defensive shortstop of his day is nonsense. Btw the advent of defensive shifts tends to diminish the value of range re emphasizing consistency.

Guess you never saw Don Buddin play

We are all entitled to our opinions but I think 99.9% of all baseball fans, coaches and anyone who has played the game beyond tee ball would take issue with that opinion. I certainly wouldn't repeat that opinion out loud anywhere between the Hudson and Connecicut Rivers unless I had police protection and was wearing Kevlar vest.