View Full Version : Is Alex Rodriguez the best 3B of all-time?
TheImpossibleMan
09-22-2008, 09:21 PM
If you count his entire career towards 3B, is Alex Rodriguez the best third baseman ever?
Hawk the Slayer
09-22-2008, 09:23 PM
I disagree with the premise. His whole career WASN'T at third... so I still put Schmidt #1, George Brett #2... ARod might be #1 when he's finished, but not yet.
Schmidt cried like a bitch baby when he retired.
I can never forgive that. Even Tom Haks knows that there is no crying in baseball.
Titus_Pullo
09-22-2008, 09:26 PM
He was retired at the time he cried, so officially he didn't cry in baseball.
TheImpossibleMan
09-22-2008, 09:27 PM
I disagree with the premise. His whole career WASN'T at third... so I still put Schmidt #1, George Brett #2... ARod might be #1 when he's finished, but not yet.
Bill James does it...I mean, what are you supposed to do then? He doesn't get to rank as either a SS or a 3B if you don't do it. It completely shafts guys like Craig Biggio who spent significant years at one position or another.
Draven X 23
09-22-2008, 09:29 PM
I like Brooks. But I am a Baltimore guy.
BooBooBear
09-22-2008, 09:29 PM
A-Rod's the best. 'Nuff said. :)
wacker
09-22-2008, 09:30 PM
Stax is gonna lap this up.
nuclearjew
09-22-2008, 09:31 PM
I like Eddie Mathews. But I am an Atlanta guy.
fixed
detroitwilly
09-22-2008, 09:32 PM
never mind Wade Boggs, right?
TheImpossibleMan
09-22-2008, 09:41 PM
Boggs is top 5 but no one compares to A-Rod or Schmidt. There is a bigger separation between those two guys than there are between Ruth and the #2 RF (aka Aaron).
Phil Theehor
09-22-2008, 09:49 PM
What are your criteria? And how are you taking defense into account? Or the era in which they played?
A-Rod will go down statistically as the best offensive 3B ever. I never saw Brooks Robinson play, but I have read that he was the best defensive 3B ever. How are you weighting this?
TheImpossibleMan
09-22-2008, 09:53 PM
Bill James likes to look at a players 3 best seasons and also at their five best consecutive seasons. I'm not "weighting" it, just going through their numbers and making a decision.
goldsoundz
09-22-2008, 10:14 PM
he's certainly going to end up being better than schmidt or anyone else you can throw out there. by the end of his career he'll have spent more time at third than short so there you go
The only way you can rate a player is to assign him a position where he accrued the most value in his career and then judge his ENTIRE career, but assign him a ranking at that chosen position. Hank Aaron goes down as a RF, even though a lot of those HR he hit as a DH.
BBTF's rankings are pretty good. They list Schmidt as unanimous #1 (ARod not a candidate yet), Mathews unanimous-but-for-one-vote #2, then Brett 3, Boggs 4, Baker 5. If you simply give anything hit as a SS to ARod's SS column and anything hit as a 3B to his 3B column he'd probably have to fight to make top 5. If you do the more traditional thing and keep in mind his full career when rating him as a 3B (keep in mind 3B is EASIER than SS, so his #s would probably actually look slightly sexier had he been a 3B the whole time) he's likely already eked past Schmidt for #1 and he's got many years to go.
What are your criteria? And how are you taking defense into account? Or the era in which they played?
A-Rod will go down statistically as the best offensive 3B ever. I never saw Brooks Robinson play, but I have read that he was the best defensive 3B ever. How are you weighting this?
The same way you weight anything. You can measure how many runs are saved defensively and put it on the same scale as offense. FRAA has Brooks Robinson saving 286 runs above average through defense at 3rd for his career (and 160 with his bat). ARod is (combined SS and 3B) -7 for his career defensively and +660 with his bat. And I'd be more than willing to bet had those young, prime defensive years been at easier 3rd and not short he'd look better defensively.
Phil Theehor
09-22-2008, 10:32 PM
The same way you weight anything. You can measure how many runs are saved defensively and put it on the same scale as offense. FRAA has Brooks Robinson saving 286 runs above average through defense at 3rd for his career (and 160 with his bat). ARod is (combined SS and 3B) -7 for his career defensively and +660 with his bat. And I'd be more than willing to bet had those young, prime defensive years been at easier 3rd and not short he'd look better defensively.
Understood. By your criteria, it's really not even close. He'll blow everyone else away at 3B.
How do you account for the era in which a player plays? I'm not asking this to be a wiseass, but it seems as though the James disciples quantify everything. Does that have weight in your formula?
Understood. By your criteria, it's really not even close. He'll blow everyone else away at 3B.
How do you account for the era in which a player plays? I'm not asking this to be a wiseass, but it seems as though the James disciples quantify everything. Does that have weight in your formula?
Stats like FRAA and FRAR compare your performance to league average (the AA = Above Average) and league replacement level (AR = Above replacement) so are naturally tuned to the era. Some like OPS+/ERA+ are directly scaled to league average.
One of James' biggest things were "Major League Equivalencies" (MLEs). He essentially designed them to try and figure out how minor leaguers would perform in the majors, scaling a player's performance against that minor league's averages so he could translate it into minor league terms (we hear all the time about .300 AAA hitters who suddenly don't hit like that in the majors, but if their AAA league wass offense-friendly it might make sense). However he realized it could be applied to any league to make such a translation.
So, as TiM recently posted in the Greatest lineup thread:
I was dead wrong about Cobb because I didn't understand how good a power hitter he was for his era. If he played in the 90's he'd probably be a .330/.430/.580 guy while splitting Gold Gloves with Junior and regularly leading the league in steals...yeah, he's better.
Ty Cobb was a .366 (inflated by the era)/.433 (inflated by his inflated AVG, deflated by lack of power so lack of ability to draw walks)/.512(deflated by era) hitter. You can scale those things and try to figure out where Cobb would actually fall in modern times. For a quick rough translation he had a 167 OPS+, so was 67% above league average for his career. Going by 2008 league average OPS of .761 that means that for his career in today's game (assuming every year was at 2008 levels, it varies slightly but to make things simple) he would be a fantastic defensive CF with a 1.270 career AVERAGE OPS. That's a .XXX/.600/.670 line. Now obviously some of that dominance was due to a weak, non-integrated league, but still. Obviously Cobb wouldn't hit for that line today, but it shows you his dominance despite the apparent only decentness of his raw #s.
EDIT - Ok, something is up with B-Ref's Lg Avg OPS # because that figure isn't right. Pujols OPS this year is right about 1.000, but his OPS+ is 184. Anyways, Cobb was crazy good and you can see this even across eras.