sweaver
08-08-2003, 04:00 PM
I haven't read it, but had my attention called to this book by David Pinto in his Baseball Musings weblog. He references a Newark Star-Ledger article on it, because it questions Hogan's rating of Derek Jeter as the worst fielder among current shortstops.
Now, this isn't news to fielding stats veterans. Most fielding ratings put Jeter pretty low, and I for one have talked about Jeter's defense hurting the Yankees. But, of course, it's scandalous to Yankee fans. Here's the article: http://www.nj.com/yankees/ledger/index.ssf?/base/sports-1/1060320621325020.xml
The book is available here: http://www.booklocker.com/books/1243.html Hoban is a math Ph.D. at Monmouth University (NJ), an emeritus at CUNY, and a member of SABR. He does apparently put a lot of stock in fielding percentage, although I haven't found his formula yet. In the book, though, he also throws in a hitter evaluation, so it's a smorgasbord.
He's been kicking this stuff around for awhile, because I found a 1997 Cincinnati Enquirer article on his evaluation of Tony Perez: http://www.enquirer.com/columns/sullivan/1997/12/122197_ts.html Craig Wright is quoted in the article as having some doubt about Hoban's methods.
Hoban also has a book entitled "Baseball's Complete Players," available on amazon.com, which appears to attempt to do the same as the Total Player Rating, Win Shares, and WARP. I have seen some bad reviews, however, to the effect that Hoban ignores park effects and league contexts, and comes to the conclusion that Earl Averill was better than Mickey Mantle.
There's a review of Hoban's work available in an on-line SABR journal (PDF file) at http://philbirnbaum.com/btn1999-02.pdf
Now, this isn't news to fielding stats veterans. Most fielding ratings put Jeter pretty low, and I for one have talked about Jeter's defense hurting the Yankees. But, of course, it's scandalous to Yankee fans. Here's the article: http://www.nj.com/yankees/ledger/index.ssf?/base/sports-1/1060320621325020.xml
The book is available here: http://www.booklocker.com/books/1243.html Hoban is a math Ph.D. at Monmouth University (NJ), an emeritus at CUNY, and a member of SABR. He does apparently put a lot of stock in fielding percentage, although I haven't found his formula yet. In the book, though, he also throws in a hitter evaluation, so it's a smorgasbord.
He's been kicking this stuff around for awhile, because I found a 1997 Cincinnati Enquirer article on his evaluation of Tony Perez: http://www.enquirer.com/columns/sullivan/1997/12/122197_ts.html Craig Wright is quoted in the article as having some doubt about Hoban's methods.
Hoban also has a book entitled "Baseball's Complete Players," available on amazon.com, which appears to attempt to do the same as the Total Player Rating, Win Shares, and WARP. I have seen some bad reviews, however, to the effect that Hoban ignores park effects and league contexts, and comes to the conclusion that Earl Averill was better than Mickey Mantle.
There's a review of Hoban's work available in an on-line SABR journal (PDF file) at http://philbirnbaum.com/btn1999-02.pdf