Whoops, Voomo, somehow I missed your comment (And largely just echoed it in @97). Anyway, Amen.

@102,
I think Carew is a good comp too. Tony Gwynn maybe even more so (and with Gwynn you get the added benefit of them having played the same position). Waner strikes me as even more dominant at the plate than either of them (something his Rbat total would seem to confirm).

@99, *It’s faith-in-WAR run amok in my opinion because Nettles and Waner simply shouldn’t be in the same conversation when it comes to being all-time greats. Waner has slightly more WAR, but only slightly. And he’s much greater. *You’re right, these guys are totally different kinds of ballplayers. I would never have thought to make the comparison at all; I only did so because mosc said that he wouldn’t include Waner in his COG, and that he would include Nettles. A position I find more than a little perplexing. *You bring up Nettles’ secondary batting average. That’s bound to make… Read more »

Doom (et al): If you go to b-ref and Nettles player page, you can go to the ‘scenario builder’ and just about duplicate his career stats by placing his entire career as if he played every year with the 1984 SD Padres. If you place Waner with the 1984 Padres, he gets to 3,000 hits with seven 200-hit seasons and a slash line of .315/.386/.448 . I realize this exercise is a huge leap of faith but his career OPS+ of 134 seems to put Waner in good-enough company. As for the similarity scores, it’s a list of 10 HoF’ers… Read more »

@125, Just a point to further your evaluation of Paul Waner. Waner and fielding: most of the comments on him seem to have assumed that he was a below average fielder. I’ve never heard anything about his reputation fielding-wise, so I can’t really talk about it, but it’s probably worth noting that, at the very least, WAR seems to judge him a solidly above-average fielder. I don’t often have a ton of faith in Rfield, but it’s worth bringing up that WAR doesn’t rate him an “adequate-if-somewhat-sub-par-defender” (comment 99). On the contrary, he was worth 38 fielding runs in through… Read more »

@136,
That’s incorrect, he’s not a below average fielder. He’s an above average (solidly above average) fielder for his position. To only look at his total dWAR misunderstands the nature of his contribution.

I agree that Waner wasn’t a below average fielder – he did have 23 Rfield for his career, for whatever Rfield from the 1930s is worth. And I also have him in the COG, though I didn’t vote for him this time. Now time for some fun. Comparison time – who’s the greater player? Rbat: 460 to 420 Rbaser: -7 to 40 Rdp: 0 to 10 Rfield: 35 to 94 Rpos: -82 to -75 PAs: 8088 to 8030 The first player is Paul Waner through his age 34 season (mainly to get the PAs near the same as the other… Read more »

Come on Bstar….99% of the time when someone says “Player X is an above (or below) average fielder”, they’re talking about “for their position”. They don’t bother to write or say “for their position” because it’s implied and everyone knows what they’re talking about. No one’s claiming that Waner was as good as Larkin or Cronin.

@179 Yeah, he’s sure. I recalled that during one of HHS’ Larry Walker dust-ups you had some comments to make about Walker’s fielding. I went back and found that you referred to Walker not only as a “fantastic right fielder” but also simply as a “great fielder.” How can you defend calling Walker a “great fielder” when he was worth only 1.5 dWAR for his career? The only way you could is if you implicitly accepted the idea that, in calling him a great fielder, you actually meant in comparison with all his peers at RF. Now, Walker had 94… Read more »

@184/bstar, This is a helpful and interesting comment. And also not condescending at all, which makes it easier to digest than your earlier ones in this particular discussion. David P in comment 157 hit the nail on the head — no one here is looking at raw Rfield and then saying something like Waner is as good a fielder as Larkin, or as valuable in the field, or whatever. My point was always only that Waner was considerably more valuable in the field for most of his career than the average RF and that that would be another point in… Read more »

The smaller the number, the higher the weighting towards peak. NYEAR25 is chosen to be the length of an extremely long career to standardize the time window without penalizing all but the most extreme cases. Even at 25,as opposed to say NYEAR15, you’re extremely peak weighted. When I get home I’ll show an example with Koufax and Blyleven.