The Splendid Splinter and The Rock

One of my very favorite arguments to tear apart is the "Ted Williams didn't really do that much for the Red Sox. After all, they only won one pennant while he was on the team." I just read an old Baseball Digest article that posited this theory. Fans will insist that a man who was arguably one of the top two or three hitters in the game's history had inflated stats because he played in Fenway; because guys like Bobby Doerr were on base to give him those gaudy RBI totals; that Ted was an indifferent fielder; that Ted wasn't a team player. Just before Rocky Colavito was traded, people were saying similar things about The Rock. It was bullshit in both cases.

Some players do benefit from home field advantage. Ted was one. But he still hit .328 on the road--and had more road homers in fewer at bats than at Fenway. Yes, he had people on base in front of him to drive in. but don't you think if the various managers that managed both players thought Doerr was the better run producer, one of them would have put Bobby behind Ted? C'mon, he was a great and powerful hitter. He got paid to drive in runs and he did that.

Was Ted an indifferent fielder? Maybe he just wasn't that good. You could make a long list of HOL outfielders who weren't. When you drive in 140 runs, you can let in 6 or 7 more a year than Willie Mays and still not hurt your team. And team player? Richie Allen was not a team player. And teams dumped him after a while, despite his talent. Ted may have thumbed his nose at fans and snubbed the press, but that doesn't mean he was a disruptive influence. Again, if you drive in between 113 and 159 runs in 9 seasons, you are ateam player, whether you go drinking with the boys after the game or not.

These are the kinds of arguments that get started when people react emotionally to a player they either like or don't like, and then try to find statistics to support their emotions. What I always loved about Bill James was that he, too, had his opinions. He reacted emotionally many times. But he didn't mix his opinions on a player's character with that player's stats.