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Player Value Posts
To avoid spamming the general blog page with the Player Value posts for each season/team, this blog page will serve as a separate listing of all of the Player Value posts for each season/team. These posts will be less detailed, mainly just listing out the top players each season and including the necessary files.
Well, by "all-time", I really mean from 1912-2021, as that is currently the span of years that I have the data for. As the headline suggests, these rankings are according to my Player Value metric as of the date listed above. You can read my initial Player Value post here and its addendum here. Since then I have used Retrosheet play by play data to better fine tune the run value weights of the various events, but haven't been able to write up a post detailing them yet. Rather than listing them out again in this post, you can view them towards the top of my latest Hall of Fame post here. When we're discussing positional rankings, there's a couple of ways we can decide what a player's primary position was. One approach is to do it based on games played, which is the easiest but results in guys like Pete Rose and Ernie Banks being first basemen. I instead elected to take the approach of using the position that a player accumulated the most Player Value at. This way, Rose is a left fielder and Banks is a shortstop. I still list out their main position by games played in the data files below, but that's not what I went off of. There's also the matter of if we should take a player's total Player Value for their career and then just group them by their main position, or should we only use the Player Value that a player accumulated at this specific position. This choice is a little trickier, so I've gone ahead and listed out the top rankings for each option. So, without further adieu: Top 25 Shortstops From 1912-2021, Based On Total Player Value At All Positions
Shortstop has less nuance than catchers and first basemen when it comes to Player Value, especially on the fielding end, so I have less need for commentary on justifying the rankings you see above. I think they are pretty believable, but I will make the following notes:
Top 25 Shortstops From 1912-2021, Based On Total Player Value As A Shortstop
A-Rod drops here due to his time as a third baseman, and Banks drops here due to his time as a first baseman. Yount drops due to his time in center field. Top 25 Shortstops From 1912-2021, Based On Batting Value At All Positions
Top 25 Shortstops From 1912-2021, Based On Fielding Value At All Positions
Top 10 Shortstops From 1912-2021, Based On Baserunning Value At All Positions
From the span of 1912-2021, I have just 397 players that contributed most of their value as shortstops. This is very interesting, considering there are 8,646 total position players in this span. If you go based off of games played, however, there are 955 shortstops in this span. This makes sense, as any shortstops that were negative for their careers would have been assigned to a different position, based on value. So to be in the top 1%, a player would have to be among the top 9-10 shortstops during this span. To be in the top 1.18% (the general Hall of Fame mark), a player would have to be among the top 11-12 shortstops during this span. There are currently 28 shortstops in the Hall of Fame, but that includes the mainly pre-1912 players George Davis, George Wright, John Ward, Bobby Wallace, Hughie Jennings, Joe Tinker, and Honus Wagner, as well as the Negro League players John Henry "Pop" Lloyd, Willie Wells, and Martin Dihigo, whom we don't really have Player Value for. That 23 also assumes that we include Ernie Banks. Leo Durocher was primarily a shortstop (by games played) during his playing career, but was inducted as a manager. So if we want to actually match the Hall of Fame numbers, that leaves us with 18 shortstops to work with. If we look at the top 18 shortstops according to Player Value, 15 of them are in Cooperstown. The exceptions are Luis Aparicio, Derek Jeter, and Phil Rizzuto, who rank 21st, 23rd, and 31st respectively. Rizzuto was inducted by a Veteran's Committee rather than through the BBWAA ballot. He probably gets some slack for winning an MVP and being a part of 7 World Series champion teams, as well as for missing 3 years of his career due to WWII. Aparicio was a poor hitter but one of the best baserunners and defenders in history. He won 9 Gold Gloves and and stole 506 bases, leading the league in steals for 9 seasons. Jeter was one of the best offensive shortstops in history, but arguably the worst defensive one. It's no shock that Jeter was inducted given his being part of 5 World Series champion teams, being the position's all-time hits leader, etc. Alex Rodriguez, Dick Bartell, and Troy Tulowitzki should presumably be in Cooperstown as they are the three top 18 shortstops not in the Hall of Fame. However, Tulowitzki has yet to appear on the ballot and A-Rod is still on the ballot, though his induction is hindered by his PED usage. Next in line would be Tony Fernandez and Miguel Tejada, but Tejada is also marred by PED use. From there the next highest is Aparicio, so I guess Bartell and Fernandez should theoretically be swapped in for Jeter and Rizzuto, according to Player Value. Of the 955 shortstops in my dataset based off of games played, 20 are in the Hall of Fame. That's 2.09%, larger than the "top 1%" idea that many people think of the Hall of Fame as, as well as the top 1.18% that the Hall actually operates at. This is a lower induction rate than first basemen, but higher than catchers, second basemen, and third basemen. Based on this, there should either be less shortstops in Cooperstown if we think 2% is too lenient (which I don't think it is), or there should be more players inducted at other positions so that this 2% rate holds across all positions. Below you can graphically see how all of our shortstops compare in terms of Player Value, along with the black line denoting which players provided positive value, the gold line denoting the Hall of Fame mark, and the blue dots denoting the actual Hall of Fame members: Our two obvious non-Hall of Famers above the gold Hall of Fame line are A-Rod and Dick Bartell. The Hall of Famer with the extreme Fielding Value on the far right is Maranville, with Ozzie Smith and Dave Bancroft also grouped together. The Hall of Famer with the extreme Batting Value in the top left is Derek Jeter. The non-Hall of Famer with the most Fielding Value to the right is Dick Bartell, and the non-Hall of Famer with the least Fielding Value to the left is Hal Janvrin. The lowest Hall of Famer here that didn't play mainly before 1912 (i.e. Wallace, Tinker, and Wagner) is Rizzuto, with ~200 in Fielding Value and ~75 in Batting and Baserunning Value. I'm honestly fine with his induction, but think that there are certainly players that were more valuable and deserve to get in. Generally, I'd say any identifiable point in the right direction of these types of graphs should be inducted. It symbolizes how a player stood out from the rest of the crowd, the mass huddle of points around 0 Player Value. Below you can graphically see how the top 25 shortstops compare in terms of Player Value: So you can be all bat and no glove like Jeter, all glove and no bat like Maranville, or a mix of both like Tulowitzki. Below is the dataset of primarily shortstops from 1912-2021, as determined by which position the player provided the most Player Value at. There are 397 players in this dataset.
Below is the dataset of primarily shortstops from 1912-2021, as determined by which position the player played the most games at. There are 955 players in this dataset.
Thanks for checking out this shortstop rankings post. I plan to update it whenever I develop new Player Value iterations, and hopefully we'll get closer and closer to some rankings that we can more firmly support. I'd say the main takeaways for now should be:
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