Question fo the Day: A Rod or Pujols?
Posted by
Kevin
Who is the better player. Pujols is younger and has slightly better offensive numbers. But A-Rod has speed that Pujols lacks, very good offensive numbers, and can play above average to extremely good defense at two different positions. Pujols has also gotten his offensive numbers in a league that has been inferior for at least the last half decade. So, if you had to pick, who is the better player?
If you’re disregarding salary, A-Rod. Without question. If he can play well in the pressure cooker that is the Bronx, he can play well anywhere.
Frankly, I’m not even sure Pujols is the best first baseman in the league.
Comment 7/13/2007
I wouldn’t be so sure…
Just to throw some numbers around. This un-Pujolsian season that Phat Albert is having, in a sense, proves how unparalleled his offense has been.
Taking the quick and dirty route to start, in this “off-year” for Pujols, he is currently sitting at an OPS of .927. His OPS+ is currently at 146. A-Rod’s CAREER OPS is 147. So, that means during the season in which people are acting like Pujols dropped off the face of the earth, he is producing at the rate of a guy who is basically a lock to finish his career as one of the ten best (position players) to ever play!
Pujols’s career OPS+ of 169 is mark slightly above A-Rod’s single season high! I’ll let that sink in for a second. Offensively, A-Rod has never once put up an average Pujols season (although he is on pace to match Pujols’s best campaign this year).
Now, A-Rod does make up ground by being a faster, though not necessarily better, baserunner. At this point in his career, his edge, in that facet, over Pujols isn’t as large as it once was.
Pujols is a very good defensive 1B. A-Rod is a borderline GG-level SS (I say borderline because even though he won a few and could resume the position as the best in his league, there are several SSes in the NL who I think are better than A-Rod).
I evaluate A-Rod as a SS, because his move was not precipitated by a decline of skills. He moved, actually, because he was better than Jeter. Jeter’s weaker arm and complete absence of glove side range makes 3B impossible for Jeter to play. If you were starting a team, and you drafted A-Rod, he’d be your SS.
So, what it comes down to is if A-Rod’s SS status trumps Pujols’s clear offensive advantage.
Age and salary aside, I think I’d take A-Rod, but it is real close. If you’re going to use A-Rod as a 3B, I think I’d rather have Pujols.
Comment 7/13/2007
I should ammend one of my statements. A-Rod is actually a very good baserunner. One of the best, IMO. I can’t really remembering him making a clearly stupid decision.
Pujols is not slow, he’s just not notably fast. He, too, is a very smart and good baserunner. He’s fast enough to go first to third on balls one should be able to, and so forth.
So, what you have is two guys who are up there with the best baserunners in the league, one of whom is faster than the other.
What I intended to imply is that the gap in speed is greater than the gap in decision making and savvy.
A lot of people conflate being a fast baserunner with being a good baserunner. You can be very fast and have no idea what the fuck you are doing - like Alfonso Soriano. You can be only marginally fast and be one of the best overall baserunners in the league - like, say, Larry Walker was throughout his career.
Comment 7/13/2007
A-Rod
Comment 7/13/2007
OK, now that I am sitting at a computer that has a functional keyboard..
Digg, why is it that on one hand you place so much value on a derivative quantification of ability (OPS+), but on the other you go all squishy (smart base runner, goes from first to third well…) A-Rod’s career seasonal average numbers for steals are 22/5 and Albert’s are 6/4. The two are not even in the same zip code. Or even GIDP – A-Rod is at about 13.8 per year, AP is at 18.2.
What I don’t like about A-Rod are his intangibles. He seems to have made great strides this year, but he is still certainly not a team leader. Can’t compare with Pujols, don’t know enough. Plus he has that uncanny knack for making a crass move every 100 games or so.
To counter that, you can easily find six or eight games that the Yankees would have lost this year if not for A-Rod – which means without him they are more than dead and buried.
And of course the question was who is the better player, not the better bargain. I think it is clear that if you factor salary (and especially projected salary) into the equation, Pujols is the better deal. (I heard yesterday that Mr Boras might shoot for $40 mil per plus part ownership. Talk about setting the starting point high. For that money, Steinbrenner could just buy the Cardinals, plug Pujols in at first, and then resell them.)
Comment 7/13/2007
Well, of the commonly available stats, OPS (though problem-ridden too) is the best thumbnail sketch you are going to get.
There is no formal clock in baseball. The outs function like the clock - make 27 of them without the lead and you lose.
OBP measures how frequently a batter doesn’t make an out - the single most important thing a player can do, BBs, 1Bs, 2Bs… are just degrees of success. But seeing as how players fail to not record an out (save Teddy Ballgame, Barroid…) more often than they do record an out, not making an out is the most important thing a player can do. It’s not just not making the out, the non-out also creates another AB for another player in a context in which it is more likely for a run to score, it turns over the order, gets your better players more ABs and so on.
SLG is a measure of how productive your non-outs are.
Some quick problems with OPS are that it counts hits (singles, being the problem here) as twice as valuable as walks, when walks are worth more than half a single. A walk will only register in the OBP portion, while a single will register in both measures.
The other problem is that it weights the two metrics evenly, when OBP is more important. More glaringly, OPS exists on a scale of .000 - 1.000, while SLG exists on a scale of .000 - 4.000. Therefore, a player with an OBP of .410 and a SLG of .490 and a player with an OBP of .425 and SLG of .475 would register equal, though the second player would be clearly more valuable (all other things being equal). This would be true even if both parts had equal value. It is compounded by the fact that it is easier to increase your rating in the less important half of the formula.
OPS+ uses run scoring indexes at different ballparks and “adjusts” for home field. It simply compares your OPS against your own league’s average, adjusted for ballpark.
It’s not great, but for a thumbnail sketch of offense, without getting very stats-heavy. You aren’t going to do better.
I go all squishy because there are no stats to measure baserunning smarts.
A-Rod is a better baserunner, and a better basestealer. I don’t deny that. My only point is that baserunning is not soley defined by stealing bases, and that Pujols is very good at all those other aspects, as is A-Rod. It’s not the blowout one may think it is if they extrapolated blindly from the SB numbers. That’s all.
The GDP numbers are interesting. They reflect value, but not necessarily skill. I would like to say that they are context dependent (which the are to a high degree) but I would find it hard to believe that Pujols got more ABs with runners on than A-Rod.
But alas, Diggs will reach into his bag of tricks and throw out a hypothesis. Look at the K numbers. A-Rod strikes out twice as often as Pujols. A-Rod probably Ked in some of those situations, whereas Pujols made contact - some of that contact being grounders right at infielders. Sometimes, a K isn’t the worst outcome in a given situation. Adam Dunn, a K machine, has never once grounded into double-digit DPs.
Back to Pujols for a second. Last year, he hit 49 HRs and had 50Ks. Go and try to find a power hitter in the last 50 years who put up a season where he even came close to hitting more HRs than his K total. Looking back at guys who I know did it at least semi-regularly, Yogi had 24/24 in 1957. Theodore Samuel didn’t do it for a full season in the 50’s. Dimaggio last did it in ‘48. 361 career HRs and 369 career Ks for the Yankee Clipper - that’s one of my favorite stats of all time.
I remember that Mike Piazza used to hit into a ton of DPs. He too, was a big power, low K guy. Sheff seems to stay away from putting up really ugly GDP numbers for a big power/low(er) K guy. He’s also faster than he gets credit for.
Today’s useless info will be a novelty regarding GDPs. Craig Biggio (1997) is the only right-handed hitter to ever play a full season without grounding into a double play.
Going solely on post length, I think I’m going to anoint myself, the KTK of sports threads…
Comment 7/14/2007
Correction, I meant OBP exists on a scale of .000 - 1.000, not OPS.
OPS exists on a scale of .000 - 5.000 (the sum of the highest possible OBP and SLG).
Comment 7/14/2007
Um, OK. I did not communicate my point to you clearly. I’m fine with OPS+ as a metric. I like derivative metrics. I am a Red Sox fan and thus am indebted to Bill James for all that he has done for my team since ‘02. My point was that when the hard stats help your case you stress them; when they don’t, you ignore them and go with “smart baserunner” (and ignore stolen base stats). I could counter that with “A-Rod is more clutch at the plate”. In other words, a purely subjective, unquantifiable observation (which until this year I would have scoffed at anyway WRT A-Rod).
I mentioned GIDP as another indicator of speed, not batting skill. I was actually surprised to see it in my post - I thought I had edited it out before I submitted because it is a weak point.
Two more points. You continue to state that “not making an out” is the most important thing when batting. Have you played a lot of ball yourself? They might not show up in the OPS+ formula, but sac bunting, hitting behind the runner, sac flies - these skills we were all taught as kids still have validity. Watch the reaction a player gets when he returns to the dugout after advancing a runner. The players understand the value here. There is nothing more frustrating to me than late, tied, no outs, runner on first, and an all or nothing hitter (think Wily Mo) at the plate. Three big rips later, he’s walking back to the bench and the runner is still on first.
Other point. Check out Sheffield’s upcoming interview on “Real Sports”. I’m introducing a new stat - OPPS+ which is adjusted onbase percentage, personality, slugging. The personality factor knocks about 30 points off his total (not as bad as Barry, but well above the mean).
My trivia to you. How can a theoretical team with an OPS only half that of its theoretical opponent win every game in a blowout? My team has an OPS of 0.667, yours has an OPS of 1.25. And I beat you by 18 runs every game. I take advantage of the OPS bias towards slugging. Your guys hit a home run every four at bats. Nine runs a game. My guys walk two out of every three plate appearances. 27 runs a game (assuming my team is away). Now, shave a measly 0.167 off my team’s OPS and my runs scored goes from 27 to zero, but I’ll ignore that
Comment 7/14/2007
Well, I don’t think I was “ignoring” anything. I don’t know of a stat the measures baserunning ability as a whole. A-Rod is better at stealing bases. He is faster. He is a better baserunner. All those things, I have admitted. There’s no stat to measure making good decisions, knowing whether a ball will hang up or dunk in, etc. In watching Pujols and A-Rod, I’ve noticed that they both do those things very well. Pujols is not a below average baserunner just because he doesn’t steal bases. I just wanted to guard against anybody who may use the SB numbers to make wider generalizations about their baserunning ability. Base running and base stealing are two different things, with the latter just being one part of the former.
I don’t know how you quantify “a lot of ball” I played from early Little League until I was about 16. I chose to play on traveling All Star teams instead of playing High School ball, because I went to a nerd school with a terrible team that already required over an hour of commuting time. I play in some Rec leagues now, but I play more softball than baseball at this point.
Hitting behind a runner or sac bunting are over valued. A productive out is a misnomer, or a twist at best. Those events are only productive in relation to possible forms of outs. If I’m up with 1st and 2nd and nobody out, and I strike out. That’s productive in comparison to a double play, but what does that mean?…
In very specific situations, like the one you noted, you can make a certain kind of out and increase the likelihood of scoring a run, at the cost of decreasing your likelihood of scoring multiple runs.
Are you familiar with run-expectancy tables?
http://www.tangotiger.net/RE9902score.html
Yeah, Sheff’s a jerk. But he’s one hell of a ballplayer.
Your theoretical proves the point about OBP being the more important component of OPS. If you had a player with an OBP of .667, he would be the most valuable player in the league, basically regardless of his SLG. That’s also why Barry’s ‘02 and ‘04 were both better than the ‘01 campaign that broke the single season HR and SLG mark.
Comment 7/14/2007
I’m a bit confused. You are now saying OBP is more imporatnt than slugging? That seems to be a switch, but maybe I’m misreading this - or earlier - comments. Anyway, not important.
The run table you linked to is OK, but it doesn’t address the question. I think we would need about two pages of calculations before we reasonably compare the expected outcomes of sacrifice attempt vs swing away. Not the least of which is the marginal value of each run scored. Which as you know depends on relative score, inning, strength of each lineup, place in batting order (when late), pitchers for both teams, ballpark, weather, and probably the price of gold.
If I relied just on the table you linked to, I could never justify intentionally walking a batter. According to the table, I only hurt my chances by doing so.
The Greek God himself was recently quoted talking about how, in certain cases, one has to be more agressive that the plate. The specific instance he cited (or “sited” as gattaru would say) was second and third and one out. Your table backs this up. Second and third and one out results in at least one run more often than bases loaded and one out.
Finally, before you dismiss the concept of a productive out, keep in mind that the absolute best players make an out over half the time, so it is unrealistic to simply compare a productive out to reaching base safely. In other words, there are degrees of failure. A ten pitch AB that reults in a rope that happens to be caught requires skill on the batter’s part. Skiil that typically will translate into positive things in future ABs. A first swing hack at a ball out of the strike zone that falls for bloop single does not require skill.
All of which probably boils down to me being more entertained by considering as many possible factors as possible when watching a game and you being more entertained by a more theoretical approach. Neither preferable, just different. Or, as Fred would say, why do you lie so much you strange person?
Comment 7/14/2007
I always find these discussions interesting. I want to say, off top, that I think a lot of your points here are valuable. I always find that my approach is too “SABR” for those with a more traditional bent, and it is too “human” for those who are hardcore sabermetricians.
First, to address the bunt, Tom Tango, creator of that table, deals with this question in his book. One of the things that he addresses, laudably, is game theory. Even if a bunt is, theoretically, almost never a smart numbers play, that doesn’t mean it is a good decision to never bunt. Part of the increased value of not bunting comes from it being easier to get a hit in when the bunt is a credible threat to the infield. When they have to protect against the bunt, plenty more grounders get through, and plenty more shallow pop-ups become “ducksnort” singles. If the threat of the bunt is removed, more of those hits become outs. That’s a “human” element that formulas can’t account for.
And there are considerations like that to accompany any of these formulas. The way I like to think about this stuff is that the formulas are correct in the larger sense, but any individual event or cluster of games can wholly contradict the formula - without having any impact on the overall veracity of the table. These tables are a guide to what will win more games over a huge sample size. One playoff series is its own animal. And that’s why I claim that every manager should know these tables as background, but I don’t feel they should be required to make every decision based on tables like this.
Regarding intentional walks, I do believe, for example, that Barry Bonds was walked way too much - and in many cases, it was to the detriment of the opposing team.
I can certainly understand a team’s fear of ever pitching to Barry Bonds. But simply speaking, from ‘01 - ‘04 his SLG range was from .749 - .863. That’s still less than one base per AB. Of course there’s the limited capability of BBs to advance runners as opposed to other outcomes (even singles). But, I can’t really see how there were 120 times in 2004 when it was to the opposing team’s advantage not to pitch to Bonds.
My own theory here, I think that part of Barry’s greatness is his discipline. He motivated several IBBs because his eye was so good that pitchers couldn’t really pitch around him, or try to get him to go fishing. He wouldn’t do it. So, instead of playing around and risking making a mistake trying to get him to fish, other teams just said fuck it, and walked him. Vlad Guerrero could hit 70 HRs in back to back seasons and would not be walked intentionally 120 times because pitchers still believe they can get him to hit their pitch. “Get a good pitch to hit,” Ted Williams’s cardinal rule of hitting.
I understand your points about the “productive out.” Situational hitting is more important at some points in a game than others, though.
I don’t know if I gave you a different impression earlier, but OBP is the single most important offensive stat. Outs are the only fixed number in the game.
Comment 7/15/2007
We certainly agree about OBP - with the following condition: OBP is the most impotant individual offensive stat provided team OBP is not at the bottom end. If team is in 300 range, slugging becomes more impotant. OBP feeds on itself, but without others contributing, one player with high OBP but low slugging will not add as much to the offense.
Comment 7/15/2007
OPS exists on a scale of .000 - 5.000 (the sum of the highest possible OBP and SLG).
You could theoretically have a SLG of 4.0?
Comment 7/15/2007
HR every official at bat => SLG = 4.0
Comment 7/15/2007
well pujols has a-rod in his mouth and a-rod has a mouthful of pujols
Comment 7/16/2007
They’re both great, but I’ll take A-rod because I have no reason to think he uses roids while Pujols has a body type that screams “roids user.”
Comment 7/18/2007
Yeah, kinda like Alex Sanchez, Juan Rincon, Rafael Betancourt, Ryan Franklin, Felix Heredia, Matt Lawton, Jason Grimsley…
When will people learn that they can’t look at somebody’s muscles and determine anything about their steroid use?
Comment 7/18/2007