THIRTY 2; VFTD PICKS AT 6

Hello Baseball Fans,

We’re a mere handful of days before Spring Training kicks into high gear kids. Pitchers and catchers have already begun to start reporting to workout and hangout in the twilight of the 2015-16 off-season.  And what an off-season it’s been.  We’ve had the typical storm of player movement and simply awesome break-the-bank deals for free agents (see Zack Greinke to Arizona and Jason Heyward to the Cubs among others).  Spend it like it’s going out of style all you owners.  There’s roughly $9 billion of revenue to be spread around annually now-a-days.  Fans and critics alike can say the players get paid way too much to play a ‘kids’ game’, but I haven’t seen any teams go out of business lately.  The billionaires are doing just fine thank you.  Besides, why shouldn’t the 720, or thereabouts, MLB players average a $4 million-a-year salary when they’re the only ones in the world who can play at this level?  That’s low supply to a high demand in my book.  And the mad t.v. money doesn’t come from awesome camera angles aimed at the club and owners’ boxes.  It’s all about the skills on the field folks.

Speaking of owners pulling out all the stops to lure free agents that possess great ball skills, we’re going to rank the All-Time Greatest Shortstops in MLB history due to a fan request to us here at ViewFromTheDish.com that dates all the way back to 30 August 2012.  It took a lot of work to accomplish a special assignment without reading existing lists of greats and becoming opinionated/influenced. Believe me though, it hardly took the 3.5 years since the request; more like it got lost on the shelf of cyber drafts.  We’re crazy, but ain’t that crazy here at VFTD!! Plus, it’s already been two years since famous number 2 Derek Jeter came to camp so it seemed like a good time to crunch some numbers.

In order to get our kicks at 6, we needed to analyze statistics of many players along with the already enshrined and future Hall of Famers.  Plus, longevity was a huge factor.  Afterall, ‘All-Time’ is a HUGE term.  However, all MLB players were included in the search for the greatest.  We didn’t want to exclude players prior to the start of the Modern Era in 1900.  Some fans may take exception to that, but do you want your era cut out someday?  The game evolves as does anything.  We don’t rank the greatest U.S. Presidents starting in 1900 do we?! (That’s a good thing.).  Besides, we think we have devised a formula (or three) to shake out who did what regardless of the differences in style in the many eras that make up the fabric of baseball today.  Perhaps that last line was a bit rich?? Oh well.

First off, just because you are in the HOF doesn’t mean you’re on this list.  Why? Because a player needed to meet an absolute FILTHY combination of two rare happenings.  The first requirement is to have played 1450 or more games as a Shortstop.  Why?  Because only 67 guys have done it.  That’s NOT a lot.  Plus, that’s over nine seasons worth of games without missing one and that proves reliability and validation as an everyday shortstop (Coincidentally, it turned out to be essentially identical to the 10 year minimum to be eligible for HOF voting, thank you.).  The other category had to be offensively related, and it’s the career 2000 hit plateau.  To summarize, we took the guys with 1450 games at short who also compiled 2000 or more career hits, regardless of position, and we quickly got down to 32 players all-time.  This eliminated nine of 22 listed Hall of Famers including Ernie Banks (played just 1259 at shortstop & more at 1B), Lou Boudreau (field general who put the ‘Boudreau Shift’ on Ted Williams), George Davis (2660 career hits), Travis Jackson (batted .291), Hughie Jennings (.311 avg.), Phil Rizzuto (.351 OBP), Joe Sewell (2226 hits), Joe Tinker (member of 1907 & 08 Cubs championships), and John Ward (540 SB).  And you won’t see Alex Rodriguez on the list either because he only played 1272 games at shortstop and his total games at other positions (3B, DH, 1B) is higher than that. These great players represent several eras as well as different molds of players and yet they had to be left in the clubhouse.  Dems da breaks.

Here’s our 32 players in our 1450 Games and 2000 Hits Club (HOFers in bold): Luis Aparicio, Luke Appling, Dave Bancroft, Dick Bartell, Larry Bowa, Orlando Cabrera, Bert Campaneris, Dave Concepcion, Tommy Corcoran, Joe Cronin, Bill Dahlen, Tony Fernandez, Jack Glasscock, Dick Groat, Derek Jeter, Barry Larkin, Herman Long, Walter ‘Rabbit’ Maranville, Pee Wee Reese, Edgar Renteria, Cal Ripken Jr., Ozzie Smith, Jimmy Rollins, Miguel Tejada, Garry Templeton, Alan Trammell, Arky Vaughan, Omar Vizquel, Honus Wagner, Bobby Wallace, Maury Wills, and Robin Yount.  Let’s hear it for ’em fans!  Wooooo!!!!

Well it was a great feeling getting down to the 32 All-Time Greatest Shortstops. However, the job wasn’t complete and the question was where to go from there, and how?  Lots of them led the way in hits or stolen bases or gold gloves or silver sluggers or MVPs or championships or all-star games.  Well, those trophies are great and we all play to win the game and the World Series, but crowded mantles aren’t how you sort guys out.  Not at this level.  That’s when we came up with what we now call the View-Dish-Value.  It’s a comprehensive player evaluation of both offensive career statistics where ALL games played count toward totals regardless of defensive position and defensive statistics compiled of games played ONLY at shortstop.  Remember, these guys already played a minimum of nearly 10 years worth of games at short.  Therefore, if they still felt like playing after that wear and tear up the middle, we we figured we should consider the additional offensive numbers.  Besides, our system accounts for offense and defense in a per game manner via a checkbook style of pluses and minuses. Here’s how:

OFFENSE:  First, we gave 1 point each for Singles, Stolen Bases, RBI, and Runs, and added them up.  Next, we rewarded extra base hits with 2 points for Doubles, 3 points for Triples, and 4 points for HRs and added those numbers on to the running total.  From there, we subtracted 2 points each for both Caught Stealings and Strikeouts.  After that was totaled, the number was divided by the total career games played.

DEFENSE:  Similar system here, but focuses only on games at shortstop.  We assigned 1 point to Putouts, Assists, and Double Plays.  Next, we assigned negative 2 points for each Error.  We added these numbers up to get a sum to divide by Games Played at Shortstop.

Basically, these numbers provided an Offensive and Defensive average for our greats.  To finally obtain the final View-Dish-Value (VDV), we just had to add them together.  The player with the highest number is the best.  We have our 32 guys ranked now and #32 is the low player and #1 is the best.  Simple, right?  So let’s get to the results.  The Offensive Averages ranged from 1.271 to 3.347 per game while the Defensive Averages ranged from 4.235 to 6.850 per game. Add those together and the VDV range was 6.183 to 8.721.  Here are the standings with VDV in parenthesis and HOFers again in bold:

Number 32 thru 26: Edgar Renteria (6.183), Garry Templeton (6.276), Derek Jeter (6.317), Bert Campaneris (6.328), Dave Concepcion (6.435), Omar Vizquel (6.553), Larry Bowa (6.582).

Number 25 thru 21:  Jimmy Rollins (6.653), Maury Wills (6.663), Orlando Cabrera (6.670), Tony Fernandez (6.919), Alan Trammell (6.961).

Number 20 thru 16:  Miguel Tejada (7.061), Barry Larkin (7.068), Tommy Corcoran (7.107), Dick Groat (7.143), Luis Aparicio (7.154).

Number 15 thru 11:  Robin Yount (7.393), Pee Wee Reese (7.395), Cal Ripken Jr. (7.429), Jack Glasscock (7.461), Ozzie Smith (7.501).

Number 10 thru 6:  Luke Appling (7.847), Bobby Wallace (7.871), Herman Long (7.893), Dick Bartell (7.907), Dave Bancroft (7.932).

Number 5 thru 2:  Joe Cronin (7.999), Bill Dahlen (8.297), Arky Vaughan (8.359), Honus Wagner (8.663).

And our number one All-Time Greatest Shortstop is Walter ‘Rabbit’ Maranville with a high VDV of 8.721.  He was number one in Defensive average and a whopping point higher than 2nd place Bancroft.  He came in at 25th place in Offense average.  He was tops in Putouts with 5139 and fourth in Assists with 7354.  He had 2605 hits and just 28 HRs, but did score over 1200 runs.  He played from 1912 to ’35, largely with the Boston Braves (NL).  Perhaps to no surprise, the Wizard Of Oz (Smith) was the top finisher on Defensive average among post-1950 players. He came in 4th with a 5.436.  He also had the highest score prior to it being divided by number of games at 13652.  No wonder he won 13 Gold Gloves, and they were consecutive!

Wagner posted the top Offensive average with a 3.347.  His 3430 hits and 1732 RBI were driving forces.  Larkin and Ripken were 10th (2.452) and 11th (2.328) on offense, respectively, and were the top two post-1950 guys.  In the top 10, only Appling and Dahlen surpassed 2000 games at shortstop, which is indicative of the wear and tear if you were surprised not to see more of your favorite contemporaries higher up the ranks.  The biggest difference between eras is the power and lack of power.  Obviously, today’s players hit more homers and strikeout all the time.  Shockingly, Jeter led the way in K’s at 1840, which is 490 more than second place Yount and Ripken is just 35 behind him.  However, Cal did have 431 HRs, which is over 170 more than both Jeter and Yount.

Overall, these VDV values are tremendously close together, which is hopefully indicative of a decent ranking system.  These players are of the best cream, regardless of any ‘top ten’ list.  However, it can be noted that the offensive average is lower in range than the defensive ones.  With that being said, a shortstop’s four at-bats per game are many more times than not going to be outnumbered by the amount of times he will get the ball on defense via the bat or a throw from a teammate.  Therefore, the discrepancy between O and D may just be how it is folks.  Remember, this ain’t fantasy baseball.

And since some of you may be disappointed with Number 2’s ranking at 30th out of 32, our research here discovered a great bonus stat in Derek Jeter’s favor.  He is on another very rare-air list.  He is one of just 5 players to rack up the 1450 games at short while amassing 2000 career hits AND produce a .300+ career batting average.  That’s some pretty sweet stuff right there.  Jeter joined the likes of players from long ago:  Honus Wagner, Luke Appling, Joe Cronin, and Arky Vaughan.  Who says there is no connection to yesteryear’s game?  All the eras interconnect some way or another.  By the way, those other four guys are ranked in the top 10 on the VFTD list.  Hmmmm, food for argument, er thought??

Later Baseball Fans.