Anyone that spends any time looking at any and all stats know that sometimes the numbers don’t tell the whole story--in some cases they can tell a tale that upon further inspection is an outright lie. For example, if a hitter has a season where he tops 20 HR and 100 RBI your average baseball fan would tell you that he enjoyed a terrific year.
Well, there have been instances where those numbers lied … and lied badly. For example:
Year Player HR RBI AVG OBP SLG OPS+ 1989 Joe Carter 24 115 .232 .290 .391 85 1993 Ruben Sierra 22 101 .233 .288 .390 86 1997 Joe Carter 21 102 .234 .284 .399 77 2004 Tony Batista 32 110 .241 .272 .455 80How can anyone dispute a season of over 30 HR and 110 RBI as being anything but an excellent season? Many media experts would tell you that the above players had, at the very least, a solid year. However, due to the sheer amount of outs used to ‘purchase’ those home runs and RBI all three players were far below league average when all was said and done.
This is just one of many examples where we can tell where the numbers did not tell us what really happened. Sometimes though, we do not need to examine a different set of stats to know that one set (of statistics) isn’t telling us the whole story. At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeonly sportswriter, occasionally we have to trust our eyes over the numbers.
What has got me going today on this subject is the discussion surrounding Roberto Alomar and his Hall of Fame chances after an article appeared in the Globe and Mail the other day.
To me Alomar is, and should be, a first ballot lock. As I wrote awhile back when discussing potential BBWAA screw-ups down the road (as regards Robbie)…
Alomar often drew comparisons to Joe Morgan; he was a 12-time All Star, ten time Gold Glover, was a career .300/.371/.443 hitter, topped 1500 runs, 1100 RBI, 2700 hits, 500 doubles, 200 HR, and stole 474 bases at an 80% success rate. Alomar is seventh in baseball history in reaching base among second sackers. In 11 post-season series, he hit .313/.381/.448 (.347/.407/.449 in the World Series) and stole 20 of 22 bases. Alomar’s home run off Dennis Eckersley in game four of the 1992 ALCS was the moment the “Blow Jays” went from chokers to champions.The point of controversy is in respects to his defense. Some state that modern defensive metrics prove that Alomar’s defense was overrated. To this, I say that any statistic that states that Alomar was not a superlative defender is suspect and warrants closer scrutiny.
Of course, the spitting incident, the fact he didn’t reach 3000 hits, that his best years were spent in ‘smaller markets’ (like Tim Raines) and his career hit the skids when he finally came to New York. Alomar rolled into Flushing a .306/.376/.455 hitter and batted .262/.331/.367 until he retired. The perception will be he wasn’t strong enough mentally to play in the glare of the Big Apple.
The thing is this--the ultimate defensive evaluation metric is considered sabermetrics’ Holy Grail. At times, some feel they have found it only later to discover its flaws. If you went to anyone who watched the entirety of Alomar’s career or played with him and told them that you looked at the numbers and he wasn’t as good as his reputation--it would be akin to the old saw ‘Who are you going to believe--me, or your own lying eyes?’ It may be part of the whole ‘Get your head out of a spreadsheet and watch a game once in a while’ slur used by those who do not wish to leave their comfort zone. Something is incredibly obvious contemporaneously, but later those who may not have witnessed what occurred tell us that they can prove what we saw was not real.
This isn’t about a player who made the easy play look difficult or somebody who made highlight reel plays but sometimes scuffled in other situations. Alomar was very raw defensively in San Diego--no question. Part of that is he reached a lot of balls yet lacked the experience of how to finish off a play.
As he matured, he made his share of jaw-dropping, eye-popping defensive gems but day in and day out he reached balls in his area code and turned them into outs. In 1992 and 1993, he partnered with two stellar glovemen in Manny Lee and the superb all around Tony Fernandez. A few years later, he was in Cleveland where he and Omar Vizquel gave nightly clinics around the keystone.
I have looked at the ‘advanced’ defensive numbers and I saw Roberto Alomar’s career in its entirety. I have also seen the best and worst of Joe Morgan, Rodney Scott, Bobby Grich, Tommy Herr, Ryne Sandberg, Ted Sizemore, Carlos Garcia, Mike Lansing, Jody Reed, Chuck Knoblauch, Ron Hunt, Chase Utley, Tom Foley, Craig Biggio, Frank White, Jeff Kent, Orlando Hudson, Aaron Hill (hopefully still better to come), Carlos Baerga, Delino DeShields and many others. Some were overrated, others underrated--I think I have watched enough baseball to know what good/average/poor defense is supposed to look like.
I know that sounds like a copout but no more so than saying a player can hit 30 HR with 110 RBI and have a subpar year.
I have got a sickening feeling that when Roberto Alomar reaches the ballot that people will forget how great he was in all aspects of the game. During his career, he was rightly discussed in Hall of Fame terms. More often than not, I trust what the numbers tell me but not always. Paul Beeston once famously opined on the business of baseball that he could take a $4 million profit, turn it into a $2 million loss, and get every national accounting firm to agree with him. To a degree, I think that baseball stats can be used in a similar manner and in both cases, you have to look harder at what is in front of you to make sure the numbers indeed reflect reality.
Roberto Alomar was in front of me from 1988-2004 along with a lot of other second sackers. For about nine-odd years (1992-2000) he was (and is) on my short list of the finest glovemen I have seen at the position. I can’t see any metric ever convincing me otherwise. I have had eight years since to let the best of Alomar be compared to subsequent second sackers in both leagues and he remains among the best I have been privileged to watch.
Best Regards
John