Blessed With The Best Player In Baseball

Bill James on the 1978 Pirates

Blessed With The Best Player In Baseball

Here’s another great Bill James clipping:

There are three different things to comment on here.

First of all — was Dave Parker the best player in 1978?

No.

I hate doing it like this, but WAR gives us a clue. Here are the top 10 position players in 1978 according to Baseball Reference’s current WAR formula:

Now, we can quibble over the specifics. However, it’s pretty clear to me that the 0.6 WAR difference between Jim Rice (who won the AL MVP) and Dave Parker was pretty significant.

Interestingly enough, Parker’s defense kept him from ranking higher. This is despite his famous arm, which he showed off in the 1979 All Star Game.

There is an argument that the position penalty (-5 in Parker’s case; see Rpos) might be unfair. Sure, right field is easier than shortstop — but somebody has to play there, right? Even still, I think it’s pretty safe to conclude that Parker’s defense in right field in 1978 wasn’t all that remarkable.

And then we have to look at the pitchers:

Maybe WAR overrates Niekro, who went 19-18 in 1978 with a 2.88 ERA at age 39. However, I don’t think anybody would conclude that WAR is overrating Guidry, and Mike Caldwell famously had an excellent season that year.

So, yeah, James is exaggerating here. Next.

Was Pittsburgh’s defense awful?

Well, yeah. The Pirates committed 167 errors in 1978; the Phillies, meanwhile, committed fewer errors than any team in both leagues.

Is that an incredibly significant difference, though? 63 errors is less than 1 every two games. Are we looking at a problem that necessarily cost the Pirates the pennant in 1978?

I think that’s a more difficult question to answer. For one thing, the Pirates only allowed 0.34 more runs per game than the Phillies:

If we pretend that pitching doesn’t matter, that runs allowed is entirely a function of fielding, and that there was no real difference between Three Rivers Stadium and Veterans Stadium — even if we assume that this was all because of those 63 errors — it doesn’t strike me as particularly significant.

I’ll put it a different way. The Phillies allowed 586 runs in 1978; the Pirates allowed 637. Both teams allowed a below average number of runs in 1978. Is it reasonable to believe that the additional errors were responsible for a significant total of those 51 runs?

This brings up a much bigger question that I can’t really answer now — a question about just how important defense really is in baseball. There’s also a very interesting question here about where pitching ends and “fielding” begins — or, for that matter, whether we should even worry about distinguishing between the two.

At any rate, the reason why the 1979 Pirates won the pennant while the 1978 Pirates fell flat might have more to do with improvements in the offensive performances of Rennie Stennett and Bill Robinson than anything else.

And finally — stolen bases.

James’ writing here is inelegant. It’s not entirely clear which team he is accusing of using the stolen base as “a test of masculinity.”

Of course, if you look at the numbers alone, you can figure it out pretty quickly. The Pirates stole quite a few more bases than the Phillies:

The Pirates stole 213 bases and were caught 90 times, for a 70.3% stolen base percentage. The Phillies stole 152 and were caught 58 times, for a 72.4% stolen base percentage.

Honestly, I’m not really seeing the difference here, aside from a difference in volume. At some point in time, the benefits of stealing a base are going to be worth the potential drawbacks of being caught.

Now, if you spend some time reading what others have said on the subject, you’ll realize that stolen bases are only helpful in certain situations. This chart comes from The Book by Tom Tango, which is one of the best contemporary sabermetric studies out there:

It’s going to be pretty difficult for us to go through every single potential stolen base attempt by both the Pirates and the Phillies in 1978. However, note that the “break even” point that Tom Tango found in his comprehensive study of play by play accounts was 0.687. In other words — if you’ve got more than a 68.7% chance of successfully stealing the base, it’s worth stealing.

Basically, it’s incorrect to say that the Pirates shouldn’t have stolen so many bases. As long as they could continue to steal at a 70% clip, it would be in their best interests to try — provided, of course, that they weren’t down by 2 runs or more.

And that makes sense when you think about it. If you’re down by 3 runs in the late innings, stealing second isn’t going to significantly change your chances of winning. In fact, the defense might not even throw to second. Meanwhile, if you’re up by 3 runs in the late innings, stealing an extra base doesn’t mean much other than statistical bragging.

Now, James was writing in an era of frequent stolen bases. I’m pretty sure that he put an emphasis on stolen bases in his work in part to attract attention — after all, the vast majority of sportswriters in the late 1970s weren’t paying any attention to the times their heroes were caught stealing. Having said that, I really think James is exaggerating his point here.