Murphy should get more votes than Dawson

[nanwynnfan]

Ok, back to Dale Murphy, yet again.

At a dirt-cheap, no effort quick glance, we have Richie Asburn in the HoF, a non power guy whose career RC/G = 5.9 vs. Dale Murphy, a pretty well-regarded power guy @ 5.7. To call it a day there, I'll admit, would be a lazy conclusion that fails to look closer. S let's do that.

I figure Asburn's peak seasons to have been 1950 tru 1958, a nine year continuous block of seasons during which Asburn's offense was as follows:

Ashburn..........PA = 6305; RC = 911; RC/PA = 14.45%

Murphy's peak, I have as 1979 thru 1987.

Murphy..........PA = 5651; RC = 956; RC/PA = 16.92%

On a 600 PA basis, that would have Ashburn "creating" 86.7 runs with the bat. On the same 600 PA basis, Murphy would "create" 101.52 runs with the bat. Murphy, purely on that basis, edges Ashburn by 14.82 runs created at bat.

However, MLB is a game of context, so why would a slugger produce only 14.82 offensive runs more over 600 PA than a guy lacking the power to be considered a slugger by any means?

The answer, for me, is consistency and efficient productivity. Over his careerr, Murphy averaged 1.768 bases per hit to Ashburn's 1.242 total bases per hit. The old, much-discarded old BA comes into play here, with Ashburn batting safely .308 to Murphy's .265. That's a hint at "equalizing."

Now let's explore outs. A contact guy can have productive outs, moving guys along or scoring them with bunts, flies, grounders, etc., so long as they don't hit into DP's. If we consider K's and Dp's a generally non-productive, then here's how the two size up.

NOTE: DP's are counted once, not twice, as they create ONLY ONE EXTRA out.

Player.............PA................K's.......... DP's..........Neg. Outs, % PA

Ashburn.........9,736............571..........83.. .............6.72%

Murphy..........9,040.........1,748.........209... ..........21.52%

Bottom line: Once on 16 PA would Ashburn possible fail to put a ball into play or squelch a rally. Murphy had that chance once in 5 PA.

Contact guys help their teams.

Back to runs created. The game also has a defensive side; and Asburn typically sved his team anywhere from 20-40 runs above average in CF. I went with 23 [conservative] for 9 years of peak = 23*9 = +207 Runs saved.
Murphy in his prime batting years was defense neutral = +0. Fold in the offense + Defense and we get:

Ashburn = 86.7 + 23 = 109.70
Murphy = 101.52 + 0 = 101.52

Top it all off with OB% and we see how a non power guy [Ashburn .396, PLUS *@ 160 [E] Sac Hits and Sac Flies] can create 5.9 runs to a power guy [Murphy, .346, + 66 Sac Hits + Sac Flies] at 5.7 over a lengthy career. [And that leaves out the defense].

*Sac Flies not officially recorded for much of Ashburn's career, so I made a conservative estimate of the SF portion.

[Triad]

Originally Posted by nanwynnfan

The game also has a defensive side; and Asburn typically sved his team anywhere from 20-40 runs above average in CF. I went with 23 [conservative] for 9 years of peak = 23*9 = +207 Runs saved.
Murphy in his prime batting years was defense neutral = +0. Fold in the offense + Defense and we get:

Ashburn = 86.7 + 23 = 109.70
Murphy = 101.52 + 0 = 101.52

I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with your methodology, but I'm wondering if you adjusted for the league norms, and then I would also weight each of their top seasons a little more.

Strikeouts don't really add much to the equation, since flyouts and groundouts are more valuable than them in only about 1-2% of all situations.

It would also be interesting to study any natural curves in offense, to where a certain level of offense from a player at a given position gets progressively more detrimental to the rest of the lineup. We're assuming that it's a steady slope, but there has to be a point where it starts curving. For example, a center fielder with a 60.0 offense and 40.0 defense is probably hurting the lineup too much for his compensatory fielding to kick in the assumed difference.

By the way, if you consider Ashburn a no-doubter Hall of Famer at 109, wouldn't that make Murphy at least a borderline candidate at 101? Where's your cutoff for CF?

[nanwynnfan]

It's not a matter of cutoff; it's a question of role, performance to expectation or better, function in the lineup.

To me, a player leaves a legacy, which is essentially reflected in his statistics as recorded, with some pretty exquisite refinement and enhancement at Baseball-Reference and Baseball Prospectus, the latter a bit better on the defensive presentation.

We can emphasize peak and then debate what time frame properly defines peak. We can then dissect data into park factors and subjective focus, which can make the entire process both prismatic and ultimately tedious, which, at a saturation point, kills my enthusiasm for the entire exercise.

Here, in brief, is how my mind works the evaluations:

What were this player's strong points? Did they pretty much define his role? Where did he generally hit in the batting order? How well did he deliver in that function? How did he defend his position?

Was he a productive hitter, relative to his primary role in the lineup?

You are quite right about the relative % value of a K vs. a batted-ball-in-olay out; and, on the old boards, debating with a sabermetrician on the matter, I did a study for a few hours and then posted how mathematically correct he was.

However, that mathematical "discount" is a bit like the cuckoo's egg in a robin's nest. The low negative value is derived from the numbers of times it happens to occur in key situations. In other words, overall, it seems harmless, worth a shrug and "who cares?"

In real life however, with the game on the line and less than 2 out with a runner on third base, who would you want at the plate, Ashburn or Murphy?

That, in the truest baseball sense, is where the true definitions and evaluations kick in ... when it's not math, it's baseball.

[Triad]

Originally Posted by nanwynnfan

It's not a matter of cutoff; it's a question of role, performance to expectation or better, function in the lineup.

We can emphasize peak and then debate what time frame properly defines peak. We can then dissect data into park factors and subjective focus, which can make the entire process both prismatic and ultimately tedious, which, at a saturation point, kills my enthusiasm for the entire exercise.

I'd say the peak idea should be analyzed one season at a time. Just as the general sabermetrician is not comfortable lumping career stats into one amount, I'm likewise not comfortable lumping 8 or 9 or 10 peak season stats into one amount. I think each season is an island to be separated from all the others and analyzed independently.

Originally Posted by nanwynnfan

What were this player's strong points? Did they pretty much define his role? Where did he generally hit in the batting order? How well did he deliver in that function? How did he defend his position?

Isn't a role rather subjective, though? I know certain players emphasize speed, while others emphasize power, and a team needs table setters, but at the end of the day even though the Brett Butler types do what they did very well, the amount of runs they generated for their teams is going to fall short when measured next to the better sluggers. In the long run, the sluggers by and large are going to come out as being more productive. So, Butler filled his role very well, but the ceiling of that role was lower than for a slugging role.

As for order in the lineup, this would seem to be dictated by the player's value, so it would be a self-fulfilling prophecy, or redundant. I think it would be too speculative to try to project how much Bobby Bonds or Alfonso Soriano would have been worth batting third instead of leadoff. Too many variables would have changed to say how much they would have benefitted. And if a batter is 7th in the lineup for most of his career, then we can't very well give him credit for what he might have done batting 4th, because a strong argument can be made that if he didn't bat 3rd, 4th or 5th for a significant portion of his career, then he was not a big run producer in the first place and didn't deserve to be put in those slots.

Originally Posted by nanwynnfan

However, that mathematical "discount" is a bit like the cuckoo's egg in a robin's nest. The low negative value is derived from the numbers of times it happens to occur in key situations. In other words, overall, it seems harmless, worth a shrug and "who cares?"

I would submit that each inning is nearly equally valuable, or at least say that the 9th inning is not more valuable than the first inning. Getting out to an early lead is just as important as closing up the game well. So, I would say that key situations occur throughout the game. And for sluggers, a key situation can be a runner on first, because he scores that runner and himself with a dinger. A slap hitter, on the other hand, generally needs the situation to be more ideal in order to capitalize. Who would you rather have up to bat with two outs and no one on base or a runner on first? The slugger. The whole notion of RISP is a little misleading. It's a very arbitrary term. With a slugger, first base is scoring position.

Ask yourself this: Before most home runs are hit, is it considered a key situation? Usually it's either with no one on base, or a runner on first or second, and it seems like an ordinary situation. But it's the home run that makes it a key situation after the fact. Sluggers create key situations, whereas singles hitters often need to be in the right scenario, such as leading off the first inning.

Originally Posted by nanwynnfan

In real life however, with the game on the line and less than 2 out with a runner on third base, who would you want at the plate, Ashburn or Murphy?

In that situation, I'd go with Ashburn. But isn't that situation less common than having runners on first?

I don't know if this is the right question to ask, because game-on-the-line situations are pretty much random, and don't exist in a vacuum, separate from the rest of the game. You need to look at the entire game, and not just one at-bat. Murphy might have done more in the first three at-bats to get the team to that point. Let's say they're in the same lineup, and the Phillies pitcher is Steve Carlton. Now we've got three generations of Phillies on one ballfield, but if Joe Jackson can come out of the cornstalks, then surely this arrangement wouldn't be all that difficult. With Carlton on the mound, Ashburn's fielding might not be that much of a factor. But Murphy's batting would still be.

If Murphy and Ashburn are on the same team, I would think Murphy would get more intentional walks with Ashburn batting after him than Ashburn would with Murphy batting behind him.