Jimmy Rollins: HOF?

Who cares what Jonas Salk says when doctors have been using leaches to cure polio for 100 years!

 

Well, then he couldn't counteract the fact that Bobby Grich got on base and hit for extra bases at a rate 25 percent better than his peers over the course of his 17-year major league career.

 

I don't understand what is so hard about admitting: "I don't think that the 'eye test' is a good way to evaluate a major league baseball player's career."

 

Sorry, I won't discount the eye test. Bobby Grich was never a reason alone to go to the ballpark. That works for me.

Alomar was. You never knew when he was going to spit on an umpire.

 

Dick, if the eye test was objectively quantifiable in any way, someone would've answered your question by now.

It's not, so they can't. Let it go.

 

He's right. I'm arguing a ghost.

 

I'll agree to disagree with you here, because what we have here is a difference in values. I don't really value WAR much because it involves projection. I value hits above OBP & OPS because they both factor in walks. Only the hitter can control hits. OBP and OPS include walks, over which hitters have limited responsibility. When I see that Rollins has 600 more hits, 183 more doubles, 67 more triples and a comparable number of home runs, I really don't need to go to the second tier on baseball reference to decide who I value more.

 

How do hitters have little responsibility over walks?

 

I'm a little confused by this argument.

Hitters have "limited responsibility" over walks. Yet, somehow, the same players are at or near the league lead in walks year after year. Joey Votto has led the National League in walks four of the last five years. Is Joey Votto simply lucky? Over the course of thousands of career plate appearances, Bobby Grich had an on-base percentage nearly 50 points higher than Jimmy Rollins, even though they had virtually the same batting average. Was Bobby Grich simply lucky? By a factor of 50 points?

And, yet, Grich had a higher slugging percentage.

 

It's quite different from hits, where they get to take the ball and drop it wherever they want on the field.

 

Outs
Jimmy Rollins - 6,726
Bobby Grich - 5,057

 

First off, I didn't say "little," I said limited. Semantics, perhaps, but I chose that word specifically to account for this particular question. While the hitter has a choice on whether to swing, he only gets a walk if the pitcher fails to throw strikes.

By .004. I'm willing to call that a wash. It's a function of fewer at-bats due to fewer games and more walks. If you take BB+H, Rollins is still about 300 ahead of Grich. Which to me more than offsets the difference in slugging percentage.

I'm done. Pick it apart if you want. Again, agree to disagree.