Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot Released

The numbers don't back that up. Alomar's range factor per game was 4.73. The league average for when he played was 4.40.

Sandberg's range factor per game -- at the same position, in nearly the same time period -- was 5.10 (which, as Doc said, is the best among 2B in the last 25 years.) The league average was 4.47.

Sandberg's fielding percentage was 9.89 (league avg. 9.81.)
Alomar's fielding percentage was 9.84 (league avg. 9.81).

Ryno was a better fielder. He got to more balls, and he fielded them cleaner. ... He just never dove for them.

 

Alomar will also have the fact that he was perhaps one of Peter Gammons five favorite players working for him.

Which is nice.

 

C'mon Buck, range factor is another bogus sabermetric invention.
You can't prove a fielder's range statistically.

 

Kudos to your stats. I'm impressed. If I'm ever in position to hire a high-profile position I'm going to consider you.

 

I'm a member of SABR, spnited, so I'm a little biased. And while I agree with you that you can't "prove" anything with statistics (defensive or otherwise), they do serve very useful purposes. You can build a very strong case for Sandberg's range using his statistics.

Although, granted, Alomar played a lot of his peak years in Toronto, on artificial surface where balls skip through the infield a lot faster.

Sandberg was able to get to a lot more balls on the Wrigley grass, which is much, much slower.

 

I can't argue with someone who says that Sandberg had more range than Alomar.

I will quietly exit this conversation... silently wishing you would send me a bag of that.

 

Fair enough.

This one's for Doc: Wanna see a log of every home run Ryno ever hit, organized by date, opponent, park location, etc., etc., etc? <a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/pi/event_hr.cgi?n1=sandbry01&type=b">Check this out.</a> Thank me later.

 

And that alone makes "range factor" a bogus stat.

 

By that logic, home runs are a bogus stat, too.

After all, Babe Ruth played his home games at Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium, where right field was 258 and 295 feet, respectively. So bogus, huh?

You've always got to account for park effects in any discussion of baseball -- which is different from any other sport. That doesn't make the numbers bogus.

 

Thing is, park effects are freely acknowledged in marking a guy up or down as a hitter or pitcher.... it just is not accounted for in common conversation for fielders.

 

Buck, in my vision of the Hall of Fame, that ended the debate right then and there. Know what I mean?

We keep putting in the borderline guys, and the Hall's going to reach to Oneonta before long.

 

How often do you have "common conversations" about fielders? I don't think park effects are freely acknowledged often in any conversation, because I don't think it makes *that* much difference. But it does make some difference, which is why you have to account for them.

Totally agree. But ... the Hall of Fame is what it is. And Sandberg belongs in that Hall. You can't just grandfather the substandard guys (ahem, Travis Jackson; ahem, Chick Hafey) that made it through during all those corrupt years of the Frischian reign on the Vets' Committee, and start implementing a new standard now.

If you wanted to rearrange it a little, and have a pyramid of HOFers, with the Cobbs, Ruths, Mays, Aarons at the top, then by all means, we can properly give credit where credit is due instead of worrying about "fringe" HOFers.

But the way the system is ... you can't keep Sandberg out.