Rice, Rice Baby ...

There’s a spirited debate going on here in the comments about the Hall of Fame merits of Jim Rice. The debate is spearheaded by brilliant reader and Rice lobbyist Paul White. I have received numerous thoughtful and thought-provoking emails through the years from Paul on the subject of Jim Rice – and, in fact, I was one of those “morons” who took points away from Rice because of his penchant for the double play. Paul straightened me out pretty good on that one.

For the record: Paul has not changed my mind on Rice – I still do not see him as a Hall of Famer – but he has softened my views.

That’s not the point of this blog, though. I’m always fascinated by the logic of arguments. In a way, this is what I do as a columnist: Try to break down the logic of arguments. Paul makes many good arguments about Rice, but in one place he does something that brushes me wrong, something that I see people do all the time. It is even something I caught Bill James doing in an email once -- and he actually conceded the point. I bring this up because I NEVER win arguments with Bill. I never really even try to win arguments with him; it’s like having LeBron James as a neighbor and playing him one-on-one basketball in the driveway. The point isn’t to win. The point is to enjoy the losing.

ANYWAY, back to Rice. Here is one of Paul’s basic arguments for Rice: There are 18 left fielders in the Hall of Fame right now (the Hall Web site actually lists 20, but they have Dave Winfield as a left fielder and also a couple of other players who may not qualify in your mind as left fielders). And Rice’s statistics rank quite favorably with the median of those in the Hall. Paul offers these statistics – these are Baseball Prospectus’ translated stats, and not actual stats – for the median Hall of Fame and for Rice.

AVG: HOF, .299; Rice, .293
OBP: HOF, .370; Rice, .354
SLG: HOF, .531; Rice, .545
OPS: HOF, .900; Rice, .899
HR: HOF, 480; Rice, 494
RBI: HOF, 1505; Rice, 1471

Rice, as you can see, ranks right there with the big boys. Of course, I very seriously doubt most BBWAA voters are using Baseball Prospectus’ Translated Stats, but for the sake of this blog, let’s concede the point: Let’s say Rice is at least comparable to the median standard set for left fielders in the Hall of Fame.

Paul then makes the bad jump, in my opinion. He believes that writers are doing him a disservice. The standards have been set, and Rice has met these standards and perhaps surpassed them. He’s as good or better than half the left fielders in the Hall and thus the writers should vote him in. This, as I understand it, is the argument.

Other people have pointed out one obvious flaw: That there are numerous outfielders out there who were better than Rice and are not in the Hall of Fame, including his old teammate Dwight Evans. I would agree wholeheartedly (although I have a pretty passionate email from Paul on the subject of Evans vs. Rice – Paul’s good, folks). But this is not my point either.

My point is this: There is more than one way to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Over time, yes, it has all blended into one building, which is great. But of those 20 left fielders – let’s use all 20 for counting purposes – nine were inducted by the veteran’s committee. One, Monte Irvin, was inducted by the Negro Leagues Committee. That means half of the Hall of Famers were, in fact, not voted in by the Baseball Writers Association of America.

I’m not saying that these men are in any way less worthy of the Hall of Fame because the writers ignored them. I believe both of those committees have righted some wrongs and put in some great players that we writers flat missed. It's a shame, for instance, that it took a special committee to put in Monte Irvin, who merits mention as one of the greatest players who ever lived, but spent his best years in the Negro Leagues and fighting for our country in World War II.

No, I’m not suggesting the writers' Hall of Famers are somehow superior or more worthy. I’m saying it isn’t logical to hold up the writers to standards which they had absolutely nothing to do with. The fact that Kiki Cuyler or Chick Hafey or Goose Goslin are in the Hall of Fame has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not the writers should vote in Jim Rice. These guys were not writers’s choices. They were veteran’s choices. In fact, I would argue that because the voters very specifically DID NOT vote in Goose Goslin, any argument comparing his numbers with Rice’s (Paul points out that they are similar) is entirely backward. Goslin’s numbers weren’t good enough for the writers. So what’s the point?

There are 10 left fielders who were voted in by the writers (I will keep in Winfield and Stargell if only because they are Rice contemporaries). The 10 left fielders voted in by the writers are Brock, Kiner, Medwick, Musial, Simmons, Stargell, Billy Williams, Ted Williams, Winfield and Yaz.

Comparing the median numbers of these 10 with Rice doesn’t look quite as good:

AVG: HOF, .292; Rice, .298.
OBP: HOF, .371; Rice, .354.
SLG: HOF, .517, Rice, .502
OPS: HOF, .888, Rice, .854
HR: HOF 439; Rice, 382
OPS+: HOF 133, Rice 129.

And if you want to go with Baseball Prospectus’ translated stats – which are OUT there by the way; they translate Stan Musial to get 730 career homers – it doesn’t get much better for Rice.

AVG: HOF .299; Rice, .293
OBP: HOF, .369; Rice, .354
SLG: HOF, 560, Rice, .545
OPS: HOF, .919, Rice, .899
HR: HOF 575, Rice, 494

And if you just want to neutralize their stats on Baseball Reference, the gap in slugging percentage closes, but everything else is about the same:

AVG: HOF, 298; Rice, .298
OBP: .HOF, 370; Rice, .351
SLG: HOF, .500; Rice, .500
OPS: HOF, .869; Rice, .851
HR: HOF 453; Rice 390

To further the point, all 10 of the writers-choice left fielders were ranked way above Rice in the Bill James Historical Abstract (Winfield was ranked as a right fielder, but he still ranked much higher). That's only one opinion (though it's a pretty good one), but I simply don’t think Rice was better than any of those 10. Maybe you could argue against Brock, though they were very different kinds of players. Maybe you want to get into the Billy Williams vs. Jim Rice debate. In any case, it seems to me quite clear that using the writer’s 10 left fielders as the standard, Rice does not cut it.

Now, let me also say this. I think the writers WILL vote Jim Rice into the Hall of Fame. Momentum is pushing him to Cooperstown. We writers as a group are of that age, we feel that certain nostalgia for the time period, and Rice in memory was a fearsome hitter. The steroids thing has helped him too … how many columns or articles have you read already that gush how Rice hit homers when men were men, when strike zones were real, when bats were made of balsa wood and whatever? I’m not even saying that Rice going into the Hall of Fame is a bad thing … I mean, no, I’m not voting for him, but Rice was a terrific player and a fearsome hitter. He would not be anywhere near the worst player in the Hall – he wouldn’t even be on the “20 man throw-them-out” ballot that I want to create. Which I suppose is Paul’s main point.

But I’m saying the exact opposite of Paul’s argument is true. If we as writers use our own standards set through the years, we absolutely would not vote for Jim Rice.

I love this ...

We were trying to talk the other day about decency and sportsmanship (we might have chosen a better example than Michael Moore, but hey, we take our blog inspiration where it comes), and a brilliant reader named Jeff left this comment, which I thought deserved full attention.

I'm around your age, when I was a kid, I was a good baseball player in a small town that took baseball seriously. I was the sort of kid who always made the all star team, but rarely got to actually play in the all star games (now that I think about it, sort of like the Royals representative).

Well, when I was 10, I made the all star team again, and the coach was the only really good coach in the league. He apparently took a shine to my particular brand of tiny person hustle and defense, so I got to start at 2b and bat 8th or 9th. This coach was a good human being by all accounts...the sort of coach who didn't put up with bullying and offered many words of encouragement, I still admire him. But one game, I was at bat (nervous as all hell) with runners on in a tight game, and a pitch came right at me...I fell/jumped/ducked/evaded. The umpire said "take your base" but I turned to him and said "the ball didn't hit me." The umpire ruled it was a ball and I had to step back into the box (I ended up walking).

Later, after the game, the coach sat me down and lectured me about how wrong I was to tell the umpire the ball didn't hit me. I spoke to my parents about this, and my mother praised my honesty. My dad looked a bit dubious, but stood by my mother.

I'm a 35 year old lawyer now, and I still think about this incident often. I'm proud of what I did, and I'm proud that my parents supported me. There isn't any championship worth winning if you have to avoid your own reflection in the morning.

I asked a good friend about this ... he has a son just entering that Little League age. He's likely to coach his son's teams forever, so I asked him what he thought about this. He immediately said: "The kid's right." I think so too, but I suspect a large minority -- perhaps even a majority -- of youth coaches would have at least felt like the coach in this story. It is so bred in us as to get every edge. Then I asked my friend if he thought that he might someday feel the way the coach felt.

He said -- and I believe this is the most honest answer imaginable -- "I hope not."

Left field: Carl Crawford

Editor's note: We are reporting live from Kauffman Stadium, where Mark Teahen just hit hit first homer in 250 at-bats. We have David Foster Wallace-inspired footnotes again on the bottom of this entry.

Imagine for a moment that they gave out infield Gold Gloves. You may not believe it, but this was actually a verse in the original version of John Lennon’s “Imagine.” No, really, I saw it at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.*

Point is imagine that they did not break out infielders by position – first base, second base, shortstop, third base (you know, just in case you forgot the names of infield positions) – and instead just gave out four Gold Gloves to the four best defensive infielders in each league.

That’s stupid, of course. I’m sure you’ve already picked up the point, but I need to keep going through this charade. What would happen if they gave out four “infield” Gold Gloves? Well, I imagine that no first baseman would ever again win a Gold Glove. Keith Hernandez may have won 11 Gold Gloves and he may be considered by many as the best defensive first baseman ever. But I say he wins zippo if they’re just giving out infield Gold Gloves. You really think he would win over the second-best defensive shortstop in the NL (say, Dave Concepcion)? Not a chance.

No, I think that if they had an “infield” gold glove, they would probably go to two or three shortstops every year. A third baseman or two might win. A few second basemen would sneak in there now and again. And because first basemen would never win a Gold Glove, that defensive position would be viewed with less and less respect until everybody believed that you could win, more or less, with a rock playing first base (or, if a rock is not available, Travis Hafner).

Of course, you being a brilliant reader, you’ve already made the leap to the outfield where they DON’T separate outfielders by position but instead give out the Gold Gloves to what the voters perceive to be the three best outfielders. Because of this:

1. Last year, five of the six outfield Gold Gloves were given to center fielders, and the other one was given to Ichiro Suzuki, who now plays center field.

2. Since 2000, only four non-center fielders have won Gold Gloves. You know Ichiro was one. Well our AFLAC Trivia question (AFLAC, ask about it at work) is: Can you name the other three?***

3. No left fielder has won a Gold Glove since Darren Erstad in 2000, and no one in the NL since Barry Bonds in 1998 (according to our own brilliant reader Paul White).

Partly because of this, I believe left field defense has become vastly underrated in baseball today. I mean, from a logical standpoint: Is left field defense really THAT much less important than the other two positions? Sure, center fielders have to cover more ground, and right fielders have to make the long throw to third. Still, it isn’t like the ball never goes out to left. And it seems to me that left fielders have their own unique challenges. The ball slices away from them, each park has a different area of foul ground, the walls are of various heights and distances; I remember thinking this last year when Royals center fielder David DeJesus (an above average defensive center fielder in my opinion, even if he isn’t particularly fast) moved to left. He really, really struggled. He didn’t like the spin, he had trouble with the wall, he never looked comfortable.

So it seems to me that left-field defense is much more important than most people believe. BUT because most people believe left field defense is not that important, there are not many good defensive left fielders out there. Managers do need a place where they can put their clunky sluggers. The formula seems to go like this:

-- Clunky sluggers who are immobile but are into the game play first.
-- Clunky sluggers who are slightly faster than immobile and have minds that drift play left.

There are exceptions, and the first is obviously Carl Crawford. He’s so good defensively in left, you wonder why the heck he plays left. This is the only kind of left fielder who can win a Gold Glove – a guy who makes you wonder why he’s in left field.

Before I give the rest of the rankings, I want to introduce a concept called I’ve called RASS – the “Rainman Airplane Scouting System.” I believe is one of the most prominent scouting system used in America today. To explain it, I will use one of my favorites, Emil Brown. It is unanimously assumed in Kansas City – and anywhere else where people might care – that Emil is a brutal left fielder. He has always felt that this a bad rap, and I might even agree, but we have very different reasons.

Emil feels like he’s an athletic guy, he has a strong arm, and he says that people judge him poorly because he tends to go for the spectacular (“I’m a playmaker,” he has said, one of those quotes that can be hard to live down).

I think he might be getting a bad rap too, because of RASS. You might recall that in Rainman’s mind, once an airline crashes, that airline is forever unsafe. It doesn’t matter if the airline lands a billion planes in a row safely after that … the crash trumps all, forever.

So it goes with Emil Brown. Four or five times a year, Brown will make an unforgettably bad play. He will kick a ball. He will drop a pop-up. He will do a tango with a ball bouncing around in the in the corner. And it’s quite impossible to get these humorous plays out of your mind. So it really doesn’t matter if Emil Brown is actually an average fielder (John Dewan’s plus/minus system – which I believe is the most exhaustive defensive system out there – ranks him as the fourth best left-fielder in baseball and says he he makes more players out of his zone than anyone else). You can’t help but view him as horrendous because of those few plays.

The RASS system is especially true of actors (Kevin Costner could win four Oscars in the next four years, and I will never be able to get that hideous accent he had in “Thirteen Days” out of my mind****), football players (one bad interception or missed kick at the wrong time will ruin a player’s reputation forever) and presidential candidates.

The best defensive left fielders so far:
1. Carl Crawford
2. Shannon Stewart*****
3. Geoff Jenkins
4. Eric Byrnes
5. Alfonso Soriano

The worst defensive left fielders so far:
1. Josh Willingham
2. Adam Dunn
3. Manny Ramirez******
4. Pat Burrell
5. Jason Bay

Footnotes:

*They also have a cover of Tolstoy’s “War: What Is It Good For?**”

** I’ve been thinking a lot about books lately – well, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want my next book to be. I have lots of ideas, all of them entirely unmarketable (The Duane Kuiper Story; Chess With Priest; What Bob Barker Meant To Me, etc). So I’ve spent even more time than usual wandering through book stores looking to see what sells, and it has made me realize that pretty much every single sports book that has come out in the last 10 years (maybe even the last 100 years) has promised to be some sort of life-altering thing. This is the year that changed baseball, the homer the changed America, the touchdown that changed our economy, the golf chip that cured cancer, the quarterback who changed the alignment of stars … either that or these books are the last something. The Last Innocent Year. The Last Dynasty. The Last Coach. The Last Hero. The Last Batter to Run out a Ground Ball. Damn, we’re staring at a bleak sports future. All the good stuff is over.

Some of these, incidentally, are outstanding books … I’m really not making fun. I know a little something about how you get pushed toward evocative book titles (The Soul of Baseball, after all, wasn’t my choice). Still it does make me wonder if every last, best, life-altering sports book has already been written. I might be stuck.

*** The other three are Erstad (we gave you that one), Larry Walker and Jermaine Dye. AFLAC. Ask about it at work.
(This is incorrect. As one brilliant reader already pointed out ... Bobby Abreu won a gold glove in 2005 playing right field. So add him in too. I may have missed others too).

**** There is no way Kevin Costner will win those four Oscars. None. I had a huge argument once on a bus at the Olympics in Salt Lake City about which actor was worse, Tom Cruise or Kevin Costner. I had Cruise, but I think it’s one of those Clemente vs. Kaline, Wilt vs. Russell, “If a tree falls in a forest …” philosophical questions that can never be answered. You throw Costner’s inanity in “Robin Hood” out there, and I’ll counter with Tom Cruise’s hideous Irish accent 'n “Far and Away.” Give me Costner’s self-righteous performance in “Dances with Wolves” and I’ve got Cruise’s torturous “Give me an Oscar” work in “Born on the Fourth of July.” In recent years, though, I’ve kind of grown to like the crazy Tom Cruise act, plus I thought he was surprisingly good in Minority Report. I’ve never thought Costner was “surprisingly good.” So I may have had a change of heart.

***** A reader suggests that I may have lost my mind by putting Shannon Stewart so high. I respect the sentiment -- I've never particularly liked Stewart defensively. But his numbers are really good. According to my statistical formula, which accounts for several defensive stats, he's the best left fielder in baseball this year. Scouting reports are generally good except for his arm. So I have him second. But I could be wrong.

****** A reader -- well more than one over time -- would like to have a brief explanation why Manny Ramirez ranks so low defensively. Well, I judge these thing by three things: 1. Statistics; 2. Scouting reports from people I know; 3. My own observations. I tend to put my own observations lower than the other two. So ...

-- Statistics. The John Dewan plus-minus system ranks Manny as slighly below abysmal. At last check, he was -14, which means that he is 14 plays worse than the average Major League left fielder. That is very, very bad. His zone rating of .698 is not only the worst among left fielders -- it is the worst among any everyday player at any position. Now, I'm sure the wall plays a role in all of this, but his statistics spell putrid.

-- Scouting reports. I've actually gotten mixed reports, but only because one of my friends just keeps insisting that Manny is underrated defensively. I trust him a lot, actually, but I have other friends who say Manny is every bit as bad as his reputation or worse.

-- My own observation is that when Manny's interested he can make some really nice defensive plays. But he isn't interested much. I don't see him every day, obviously. But I've seen him make too many bad plays out there to believe it's a fluke. That's why I have him as the third-worst in the game.

Bonds Redux

Editor's note: Well, it's been a little while since I've posted. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to apologize for that, but I will, because I'm a big apologizer. Sorry. I've scribbled a few thoughts on Barry Bonds here, and I'm telling you right up front that these are not really finished thoughts. Yes, you are getting unfinished thoughts, a rough draft of my mind. You can't pay enough for that, eh? You also get a few footnotes and a Polish joke. Now that's a blog. Oh yeah, please buy the book.

Well, that was an interesting three weeks. I went to Detroit to sign books, to Milwaukee to watch Barry Bonds ground out, to San Francisco to hear Bud Selig say he would make a sincere effort to see Bonds break the home run record (he did not – Selig, I mean), to New York to escape Bonds and get chased by a beautiful bartender, to Kansas City to change clothes (and not a moment too soon*), and to River Falls, Wisconsin to try and figure out my old friend Priest Holmes (rolled snake eyes on that one). And now, finally, I return home to Kansas City, where it will hit 100 degrees every day for the next week (it is 11:30 p.m. and 90 degrees outside right now -- and that isn't a dry heat, people).

Ah, the glamorous life of a sportswriter.

I will probably tell you the story of the bartender at some point, but first I figure this is a good time and place to wrap up my feelings about Barry Bonds**. I can’t really say I have a much greater grip on this thing after the chase than I did before but I can tell you this: I have never in my life been on an assignment that created more angry email and phone calls than this one. Sure, I’ve had plenty of individual columns that have sparked much greater rage***, but I’m not talking about the columns themselves. I’m talking about the assignment. People were freaking TICKED at me for going on the Bonds chase in the first place.

It was very strange. At the beginning, the “You need to come home and write about something else” emails and phone calls seemed odd and almost quaint, but they kept coming, more and more of them, and they grew angrier, and after a while I started to think that this wasn’t necessarily the minority opinion of a few crackpots. These people – a substantial number of them – were really mad at me for writing about Barry Bonds. I couldn’t tell if it was because they didn’t want ANYBODY to write about Bonds or if they specifically didn’t want ME to write about Bonds, but in either case it was quite unlike any reaction I’ve ever received on any assignment.****

All of this is a way of saying that by the time Bonds finally started hitting home runs, I was gone, and I was more or less emotionally drained. I was in River Falls when Bonds hit No. 756, and I can’t say I felt anything resembling emotion while watching him round the bases, and then point to the sky while his son tried to hug him. I recall the words Roger Maris said went through his mind when he hit his 61st home run: “It’s over.” Not “Thank God it’s over” or “I can’t believe it’s over” or even “It’s finally over.” No. Just “It’s over.” That’s what I thought too.

Since then, though, I have thought more about it, and while I can’t say that I’ve had any breakthrough of clarity on this whole issue, I guess I can say that I’ve started to look at it all a bit differently. Yes, I suspect Bonds used lots of illegal stuff. I suspect many baseball players did. I suspect the powers of baseball not only allowed it to happen, they tacitly encouraged it. Those homers brought a lot of people out to the ballparks. Whether steroids were a big reason for those homers or a small reason (or even no reason at all), I don’t think anyone in baseball wanted to shake things up.

I guess the way I see it now is this way: This is our time. I don’t like the use of performance enhancing drugs. But I don’t like that before 1947, there were no dark-skinned players in the big leagues. I don’t like that for many years, greenies were popped like PEZ in clubhouses (I was told on this trip that amphetamines are actually rated more dangerous – and are therefore punished harder -- on the government drug list than steroids). I don’t like that players threw the 1919 World Series, and I don’t like that Charlie Comiskey sent those players flat champagne. Hey, I don’t like lots of stuff.

But this is what we have. Players have hit lots of home runs in the last 15 years. And now Barry Bonds is the all-time home run champ. He’s the best baseball player I’ve ever seen. He may not be lovable, he may not be admirable and he may not be clean. But I guess I'm not as bothered by that now. It's easy to forget that the home run record -- as cherished as it has been -- is only a number. People will remember Barry Bonds for more than the record, just as we remember the all-time greats for more than their numbers or achievements. Ted Williams spit at fans. Stan Musial signed autographs until the last kid was happy. Rogers Hornsby was a jackass, Ty Cobb sharpened his spikes and, later, may have killed a man, Bob Gibson pitched baseballs with a fire that bordered on pure hate, Gaylord Perry scuffed and spit on baseballs, Babe Ruth visited sick kids in hospitals and also ran naked through trains while being chased by women with knives. Pete Rose gambled on baseball and got more hits than any man ever. Mickey Mantle was an alcoholic. John McGraw once hit an umpire. Cap Anson, more than any single player, created the color line in baseball. Leo Durocher was suspended for gambling. And so on. And so on. And so on.

These are human beings who play these games – multi-layered, multi-faceted, chaotic, untidy, heroic, cowardly, honest and lying human beings – and our memories of them are not simple or stark; they don’t have to be one-dimensional. For me, it has been a thrill to watch Barry Bonds play ball even if I have my misgivings about him. I recognize him as the home run champ, even as I admire Hank Aaron’s home run achievement more. I even like Bonds in an odd way, but I don’t think it would be any fun going to dinner with him (not that he has invited me). One day in San Francisco, I met three different people, and they defined Bonds alternately as: “Cheater,” “Misunderstood,” and “Asshole.” I’ll bet he’s all three and then some.

He’s also man of our time. In many ways, he’s THE athlete of our confusing time. He’s gifted but angry, arrogant but self-aware, rich but needy, transcendent but unloved, innocent but guilty, charming but cruel, private but hungry for the spotlight. If you somehow land 200 years into the future – and the ozone layer still exists – and you were ask: “How would you describe America of the early 21st Century?” you could do worse than to tell the story of Barry Bonds.

I guess that’s how I see it now. I think when I started on this chase, I worried some about the conflicting emotions that Bonds can inspire. How do you tell such a muddled story? Now I think those conflicting emotions ARE the story. There’s nothing neat or orderly about baseball, and there never really has been. In the end, we have this: Barry Bonds is a big character. I suppose the home run king should be a big character.

Footnotes:

* I can’t help but think here of one of my father’s favorite jokes. It’s about the Polish Army – I guess if you speak Polish (my father; not me) and a have a name like Posnanski, you’re entitled to tell Polish jokes – and it goes like this: Apparently the army had been on a very, very long march. Finally, they reached a resting area, and the commander called everyone together and said, “Good news everyone. Tonight, we will have a change of underwear!” Everyone cheered. And the commander said: “Good. Now Grabowski you change with Krzyzewski. Bielawski you change with Mihalik. … In honor of my heritage, the names chosen for this joke are all members of the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame, of which I am a proud voter.

** I want to reiterate that what follows is a babbling mush. I’ve read ahead. It's not too late to turn back.

*** I once wrote a column that inspired very large Cincinnati Bengals’ tight end Tony McGee to threaten me. It was strange too because McGee was quite a good guy, and I liked him, and he had actually studied journalism in college, and I wasn’t trying to rip him, and as far as I could tell he did not read the column in question. It is also true, though, that in the column I wrote that he had real trouble catching the ball, and while I can assure you (and tried to assure him) that the context of the column was different (it was actually intended to be a sympathetic column designed to show how hard Tony worked on his receiving skills), I also cannot deny that the premise involved his inability to catch. Well, hey, he did drop two or three touchdown passes that Sunday..

**** It can wear on you as a writer when you are covering something that you suspect people don’t care about. I felt that way a little bit at the Winter Olympics in Torino last year. Remember those? Of course you don’t. Nobody watched. I felt like I was writing for crickets. Still it’s much worse when you are writing stories that you suspect a percentage of readers are violently opposed to reading.

Third base: Pedro Feliz (really!)

Editor's note: OK, we're back on with our best defensive players series. I'm looking for this year's best defensive players, and I'm using common statistics, the super secret information I have received from John Dewan (author of The Fielding Bible), scouting reports from various people I know around the game and my own observations.


Every single time Pedro Feliz throws the ball to first base, I anticipate that he has overthrown the third baseman. I noticed this on about Day 3 of the Bonds chase. There would be a grounder hit to third, I would be half-heartedly paying attention, Feliz would scoop it up and throw the ball and my mind would immediately go, “Oh man, that’s in the stands.”

And the ball would plunk in the first baseman’s glove, shoulder high. Every time.

The first couple of times this happened, I didn’t think much of it. And then I realized it was a constant – there is something about Feliz’s throwing motion that (to me, anyway) makes it look like the ball slipped out of his hands and it will soar high. I asked a scout friend about this, and he said that he had not noticed that (actually he said: “It’s possible you could use a vacation,”), but HE had noticed that Feliz has a funny way of setting his feet when he throws. He said that Feliz looks a little bit off balance when he as he makes the exchange from glove to throwing hand – he just isn’t very smooth.

I asked a different scout about this theory, and he said he had not noticed that at all. HE thought Feliz was fairly steady at third but he, “lacked range.” “He doesn’t have very good instincts, especially to his right,” this scout said.

I bring up these three conflicting views about Pedro Feliz because statistically there is absolutely and positively no doubt that Feliz is the best defensive third baseman in baseball. None. For you traditionalists, he has the best fielding percentage. For the Bill James lover in all of us, he has the highest fielding range. For those looking for a little bit of a statistical edge, he has the best zone rating. And for those, like me, who love John Dewan’s plus/minus system, Feliz is FAR AND AWAY the best in baseball.

And yet, there is something about the way Feliz plays that keeps most people from believing this. Hell, I have a hard time believing it. As I look through the various scouting reports I have on the guy, the best I’ve found is that he’s “reliable” at third. I’ve found others who think he’s a below average third baseman.

This might get at the core purpose of this defensive series – it’s just plain hard to judge defense by what you see. Bill James has often said that if we didn’t keep trustworthy offensive numbers, we would likely not be able to tell much difference between a .300 hitter and a .275 hitter, a 25 homer guy and a 20 homer guy, a 100 RBI guy and an 80 RBI guy and so on. I think this is true, though I would say there are exceptions here – I do think that, in a very short period of time, we would realize that Jason LaRue can’t hit.

Tangent: This year, in 127 at-bats, LaRue is hitting .157. That would be a 1 followed by a 5 followed by a 7. Now, many people have wondered why LaRue keeps playing on a fairly regular basis, and I don’t have a particularly intelligent answer for this; I do have a theory. I think it may have something to do with the regret the Royals feel for not going into the National League a few years ago when they had a chance. Since they cannot have their pitchers hit, they are doing the next best thing.

Two other points about LaRue:

1. He hit .194 in 191 at-bats last year. So that means that in his last 318 at-bats, LaRue is hitting .179. The last guy to get 300 at-bats in ONE season and hit that badly … the great Rob Deer in 1991. He hit .179 in 448 at-bats. Deer did bang 25 homers (13 more than LaRue) and walk 89 times (50 more than Larue). Before that, you have to go back to 1974.

2. Tony La Russa made big news by hitting his pitcher eighth. So where was the national media when Buddy Bell hit LaRue seventh?

The point is we DO have offensive statistics (and pitching statistics) that people generally trust. And while it’s certainly true that even those statistics don’t tell the whole story, and people do seem to think that A-Rod’s RBIs are somehow less filling than Jeter’s or whatever, nobody disagrees that, say, Albert Pujols can hit.

Well, that’s the kind of defensive year that Pedro Feliz seems to be having. He’s having an Albert Pujols defensive year. He leads the league in pretty much every statistic. But because people generally feel that defensive statistics are misleading, inconclusive, incomplete or flat stupid, I suspect most people do not believe in Pedro Feliz.

* * *

Something about awe and the arms of third basemen: I played third base at Royals fantasy camp, in large part because, well, I’ll tell you the story.

First, though, I am about to brag about an athletic talent I have, and I feel it is important to preface this by saying that I am fully away that I am a fat slob. I’m short, I have no jump shot, I was slow even in high school when I weighed 135 pounds, I have brutal eyesight, I can’t hit a golf ball into the air, I fell off a horse the one time I tried to ride, I can’t really skate, and I have never, to my recollection, won a game of pool when the other guy (or girl) did not scratch on the eight ball. So I cherish the very few athletic skills I was born with. These are two:

1. I have always had a ferocious first serve in tennis. I rarely get it in. But when I do, it’s a monster. It was clocked at 103 mph at one of those “How fast is your serve?” booths they have at tennis matches (trust me, they have them). And I wasn’t using my racket there, and the booth was crowded – I’m pretty sure I could have hit 110.

2. I’m a good fielder.

The second talent was hard earned. I have mentioned, time and again, my hero worship of Duane Kuiper and Buddy Bell – it was their fielding ability that captured me. I would go to our little basement in South Euclid and spend hour after hour after hour throwing the ball against the wall and fielding the grounders that bounced back. I really did make myself a good defender. I once went an entire Little League season at second base without making a single error. Now, to be fair, this is partly because except for the one or two lefties in the league, nobody in our league really hit the ball to second base. Cleveland kids, for whatever reason, were pull-crazy. But the point stands.

Of course when I went to fantasy camp, I had no idea how my childhood fielding skills would stand up. It had been more than 20 years since I had played in a hardball game. That was a lot of pasta ago. I was standing by third base and George Brett was working with some guy in the cage. The guy ripped (well, sort of ripped) a hard grounder to my left. I stepped, lunged, and scooped the ball smoothly. Two things happened* (PG-13 Language approaches):

1. George Brett shouted, “Holy shit!”
2. George Brett shouted: “Holy shit!”

No, that’s not one thing. That’s TWO things. First, George Brett, one of the two greatest third basemen ever, a man who towered over the childhood of everyone my age, the guy who hit the pine tar homer, the guy who won batting titles in three decades, the guy who almost hit .400, the guy who hit three homers in a playoff game, the greatest clutch hitter probably of the last 50 years, the king of Kansas City … GEORGE BRETT was stunned enough by my defensive play to unleash the holy expletive.

And second, well, OK, yeah, it’s just one thing. But I wanted to bask in it for an extra minute.

Anyway, after that people saw me as a third baseman (even though I had always played second base). So I went out there and the first play, someone hit a slow roller down the third base line. I charged, scooped, and threw him out. I’m making that sound a lot smoother than it was for brevity’s sake. Anyway, that got my manager and friend Frank White (eight-time Gold Glover, you know) to whistle in admiration. I’m telling you, just for those two moments alone this camp was worth the 3,500 bucks I paid. True, my kids will have to go to Community College but still …

Now, I wasn’t really bringing all this up to dwell in the few pathetic moments of glory that a 40-year-old man feels playing at a baseball fantasy camp. That just sort of happened naturally. No, I was bringing it up to say that I played third base, and I’m a pretty good fielder, and I can tell you first hand that the throw from third to first is like the drive from Jacksonville to Miami. It’s MUCH longer than you think it is. It is slightly longer than one of the runways at LaGuardia.

I mean I have a reasonable arm (as represented by my tennis serve) and I made that throw for three days (or, more accurately, I’d didn’t come close to making that throw), and now I simply don’t look at third basemen in the same way. One of the constant themes of this blog – and my general feelings about sports – is that we should, in the immortal words of that philosopher John Cougar Mellencamp, “hold on to 16 as long as we can (changes come around real soon make us women and men).” That is, every so often it’s good to notice awesome things. This comes naturally when you’re young. But as you get older, you sometimes need to stop and remember that a lot of really cool stuff that happens in sports, that there is nothing routine about routine plays, that it really is a ridiculously long throw from third to first.

So now I watch the way Adrian Beltre just sort of sidearm flips the ball across the diamond, I see the way Scott Rolen charges a bunt and throws off his right foot, I see the way David Wright dives, gets up, and just HAMMERS his throw over there, and I feel a little bit of that childhood awe.

OK, here are my Top 5 defensive third basemen:
1. Pedro Feliz
2. Scott Rolen
3. Ryan Zimmerman
4. Adrian Beltre
5. David Wright