By Michael Humphreys
Baseball fans love to compare the players of today to the players who came before, but one must wonder how great the margin of error in these comparisons is. Is there any way of knowing who the real baseball greats are, and whose legend should stand the test of time?
Let’s take Omar Vizquel as an example. So says Wikipedia, “Vizquel is considered one of baseball’s all-time best fielding shortstops.” It’s true, Vizquel “is considered” a great fielder. Of shortstops, he
-holds the highest career fielding percentage of those with a long career.
-has participated in more double plays (and his primary double play partner just entered the Hall of Fame)
-is third in career assists
-has played more games at shortstop than anyone in major league history.
On top of all that, Vizquel has received more Gold Gloves than any other shortstop except for Ozzie “Wizard of Oz” Smith. Indeed, writers have described Omar and Ozzie as the “graceful Fred Astaire” and “acrobatic Gene Kelly,” respectively, of shortstops.
Vizquel has something of a signature play—fielding ordinary grounders (not just bunts) with his bare hand and throwing in one motion. He was the starting shortstop for the most successful American League team of the 1990s, second only to the Yankees. He hasn’t been much of a hitter, even for a shortstop, so it’s not unreasonable to infer he must have been a great fielder to hang on as long as he has.
But, after all that, how do we really Vizquel actually is one of baseball’s all-time best fielding shortstops? With metrics.
Let’s start with the question: What is the job of a fielder? To help his team prevent runs. At shortstop, this mainly involves converting ground balls into outs and getting the second out on double plays—in other words, recording assists. (It is very rare that shortstops catch fly balls or pop ups that couldn’t be fielded by at least two and as many as five other fielders. Most of the differences in putout rates for shortstops reflect how much they ‘hog’ these easy chances, not how many marginal hits they help their teams prevent. And line drive putouts at short are mostly dumb-luck plays.)
It is not the job of a shortstop (or any fielder) to look “graceful” or make trick plays. It’s not even a fielder’s job to avoid errors. In fact, a fielder who makes ten more successful plays but also ten more errors has just the same value as the fielder who makes an average number of plays and errors, because an error is no worse than a play not made.
Any fielding metric for shortstop needs to estimate how many assists a shortstop generated above or below what an average shortstop would have, playing for the same team. My system uses some arithmetic and the statistical technique of “regression analysis,” resulting in what I call Defensive Regression Analysis, or DRA.
DRA estimates the number of assists the league average shortstop would have recorded in place of the shortstop you’re rating by starting with the average number of shortstop assists per team that year and adjusting that number up or down based on statistically significant relationships between shortstop assists and other defensive statistics of the player’s team that are
1. not influenced by the shortstop himself,
2. as little influenced by the fielding quality of his teammates as possible, and
3. independent (approximately) of each ot
By Nikita & Redford
Translated by Jen Quigley, Sales Associate, and Betsy DeJesu, Publicity Manager
Though the 2010 World Cup has drawn to a close, there is a very important lesson we can glean from that spectacular, month-long, global soccer match. And not just that vuvuzelas are very ear-splittingly loud. Instead, the World Cup has shown us that despite our many differences—of geography, culture, languages, time zones, and beers of choice—there are still certain things that can bring together even the most opposite of peoples.
In that spirit of unity, then, we wanted to foster a partnership between two of the world’s most, shall we say, unfriendly beings. We’re not talking about Team Jacob vs. Team Edward or the Yankees vs. Red Sox vendetta. We’re talking about the real deal. That’s right. Dogs and cats.
Though typically considered enemies and many times relegated to different parts of the yard, we are here today to take the first steps to bridge the gap between our species. Representing for canines will be Redford, and weighing in for the feline perspective will be Nikita. Redford and Nikita have agreed to meet on neutral territory to open up a dialogue and see if they can find some common ground for their people to run around on.
Nikita: Hello, Redford. Thank you for agreeing to this meeting. Please disregard the copious amounts of catnip I have sprinkled on the floor. It keeps me grounded during situations like this.
Redford: (Silence…Redford looks up from eating 
catnip off the floor). Bone. Cat. Squirrel. (more chewing).
Nikita: Let’s start. I figured that since we are both big readers, we could discuss our love of the written word.
Redford: I like book. Smells good. Tastes even better. Squirrel!!! (Redford takes off and returns several moments later out of breathe.) I like book. (Panting….)
Nikita: Great. First question: What recent book, in your opinion, deserves two paws up and a tail wag?
Redford: Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain. Paws down. Stein took it to another level with this one. Intellectual pups, race cars, rain puddles and a bunch of tail wagging moments between person and dog. Truly an empowering moment for any young canine after reading this book. I mean, it’s our job to take care of our people and any person, cat or dog that thinks otherwise can duke it out with Mr. Stein.
Nikita: Who is your favorite character in literary fiction and why? It’s okay if it is a human. Or a cat. No one will judge.
Redford: Does the squirrel sitting outside that window count….
Nikita: What was your favorite book when you were a puppy?
Redford: That monkey, George. I like him. Yellow Hat. Hugs. Monkey.
Nikita: Blog vs. print?
Redford: Bone. Wait, what? Oh sorry. My little legs prevent me from reaching the computer screen. Print. Read it. Eat it. Pee on it. Enjoy it.
Nikita: Steampunk or YA fiction?
Redford: When I grow up I’m going to be an astronaut. (Redford lies down to lick his paws and scrounges for catnip crumbs,)
Nikita: Thank you for your time, Redford. I hope thi
Justin Hargett, Associate Publicist
In part one of a two part series on Major League Baseball’s spring training, OUP editor, Theo Calderara reports from Tampa, FL on the New York Yankees‘ season prospects and financial standing. Stay tuned for part two from Port St. Lucie, FL and the New York Mets, coming soon… To learn more about spring training check out 
Under The March Sun: The Story of Spring Training by Charles Fountain.
“I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going. There will be fewer people unemployed and everybody will work longer hours and harder than ever before. And that means that they ought to have a chance for recreation and for taking their minds off their work even more than before. Baseball provides a recreation which does not last over two hours or two hours and a half, and which can be got for very little cost.”—Franklin Delano Roosevelt
These days, it’s a rare baseball game that is over in two and a half hours. And a trip to the Yankee Stadium can hardly “be got for very little cost.” But with the economy collapsing around us, can baseball still help us keep our minds off our troubles? Oxford marketing’s own Brian Hughes and I headed to Tampa, spring home of the Yankees, to search for the answer.
It’s certainly not a foregone conclusion. Baseball is bigger business than ever, so money is never far from the field, and for no team is that more true than the Evil Empire. The Yankees are set to open a new, $1.5 billion stadium this year, but with New York’s financial firms collapsing, they’re having trouble selling the luxury boxes that were the unspoken motivation behind the so-called House that Jeter Built. When we arrived in Tampa, the Yankees’ 275-million-dollar one-man circus, Alex Rodriguez, had just left town to have hip surgery, placing third base in the hands of the less-than-immortal Cody Ransom, and drawing attention away from his other offseason travails. Scheduled to take the mound in the first game of the weekend was C.C. Sabathia, the team’s latest high-priced free agent acquisition, who is poised to take home $161 million of the $441 million the Yankees committed to new players this offseason.
It has been eight seasons since their last World Series title—an eternity in Yankee Years—and angry ticket holders, already upset about the byzantine process of obtaining seats in the new Stadium, could be forgiven for feeling as if their money was being used to bail out yet another failing corporation.
So what would the mood be like at George M. Steinbrenner Field? Would bloodthirsty populism rule the day? Would fans decry supposedly wasteful spending and demand a return to fiscal responsibility?
Absolutely not. We heard no complaints about the new ballpark in the Bronx. And nobody said a word against the Yankees’ new starting pitcher, who turned in a couple of solid innings, working around some incredibly shoddy defense by two players who, luckily, aren’t expected to see much action this year. No one grumbled about Spring Training ticket prices—which, as Charles Fountain could surely tell you, aren’t so far off regular season prices. The only time anyone brought up the recession was in response to the price of beer—far below prices at the old Yankee Stadium, much less the new one—and even that seemed more like the old fashioned New York tradition of amusing oneself by giving other people a hard time than like a serious complaint. After all, nobody actually turned down the beer.
And once Sabathia let loose the first pitch, financial worries seemed to melt away, replaced by a whole other set of worries: about the movement on C.C.’s fastball, or the durability of Joba Chamberlain, or the aging outfield. So we soaked in some sun, saw a pair of good games (one win, one loss), and even stimulated the local economy a bit by indulging in that other great American pastime, eating. Ultimately, we found that, while you can’t take the money out of baseball, you can at least forget about it for a few innings.
Maybe President Roosevelt was on to something. I wonder whether he had any interesting ideas about how to solve an economic crisis.
