Leveling The Field by G.Scott Thomas {merged threads}

[pwdennis]

Browsed through this book last night while at Borders - the premise seems to be to equalize to some standard, although by what methodology, and to what standard, I didn't have time to determine.

The author did some equalization tables of great ballplayers in the back of his book. Judging by the Babe Ruth entry which has Ruth with a career average of .329 and 1100+ homeruns, I think the author may have derailed somewhere en route

Does anyone have this book or has anyone read it through to comment on it ?

[rcartman28]

If that is Ruth playing the 90s and 00s, yeah, he could hit about 1100 home runs.....of course, he would have drawn about 300 walks a season, too......

[sweaver]

Edited the title to reflect the one I found at amazon.com at this link:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1579122558/qid=1037199722/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-9893333-1091910?v=glance&s=books
Thomas is employed by Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal, and has written for the Baseball Annual as well. It seems to be basically an alternate history book, revising scoring to 1996-2001 levels, and playing out 162-game seasons with two divisions from 1901-68 and three divisions from 1969-today. He has Ruth hitting 94 homers in a season, and Gehrig making $48M in 1931, in today's dollars. Of the site reviews, two of four recommend it.

Interesting? Likely. But it sounds a little "out there."

[pwdennis]

This book was given to me at Father's Day and I tossed it into my "to read" pile. I finally got around to the book this weekend, and while I think the premise, to equalize or normalize baseball statistics to a common base, is commendable, I think the execution here is way off.

Quite Frankly, I really don't fathom the author's assumptions. For example, he credits Tommy Leach (the 1902 NL Homerun Champion) with an "adjusted " homerun total of 37. Since Leach was a jackrabbit who hit down on the ball (he led the NL in triples), I would suppose that most of his homeruns were of the inside-the park-variety. I don't see Leach (or anyone else, for that matter) ever being capable of legging out 37 inside-the-park homeruns.

It appears that he is normalizing in some manner to MLB in 1998. Unbelievably, Thomas actually inflates the offensive batting stats of the 1920s and 1930s, instead of deflating them, as would be appropriate , even relative to 1998. Thus Babe Ruth's "adjusted" homerun totals from 1918 to 1934:48,73,91,94,54,73,75,34,73,89,78,62,64,69,55, 53, 33

Or take Napolean Lajoie 1897-1904 : 44,33,24,30,55,32,38,36

Or Adrian "Cap" Anson credited with 489 "adjusted homeruns"

These numbers aren't adjusted - they're hallucinated ! I wish I had fished this book off the pile sooner so I could have returned it to Borders, where the gift-giver purchased it. It's good for a laugh but worthless as anything serious.

There are also adjustments to pitching records but what these are predicated on is beyond me. Cy Young 579-355, Walter Johnson 443-294 ? Where are these extra decisions coming from ?

Has anyone else read this book ? Am I missing something ??

[Batman]

.

pw -- On behalf of aspiring baseball writers (among whom I do not count myself): Thank you. Just the fact that such pronouncements as you describe can gain publication -- unless perhaps by self-publication -- has got to give hope and encouragement to the prolific talent we’ve seen or discussed on these boards.

Sorry you had to slug through it; but thanks -- especially for the review. It’ll inspire someone to get it right.

.

[sweaver]

Just picked this up in Waldenbooks' "Bargain Bin." More to come.

[sweaver]

OK, time for the "more to come."

The book is interesting, in a train-wreck sort of way. Thomas is normally a business writer, and is familiar with the CPI, Consumer Price Index. This uses a percentage to equate the amount made and/or spent today with the same amount years ago. I believe 1980 is typically used as the base date.

Thomas decided to use the same method to 'adjust' baseball statistics to the present day. He therefore assumes that if players in a particular year hit 1/6 of the home runs they hit in 1997, that under the same conditions those players would have hit six times as many, and posts them as such. This leads to situations such as PW mentioned, with Tommy Leach hitting 37 'adjusted' homers in one season.

While that is patently ridiculous, it gets worse (or better, depending on your point of view). The most interesting 'adjustments' come with the oldest stats, of course. Thomas lists 'adjusted' career and season-by-season totals for Hall of Famers in his book, and my favorite is probably Buck Ewing. According to Thomas, Ewing has an adjusted 53 home runs with 62 RBI in 1883. Now there is a fun ratio! Thomas also has Ewing with 21 homers and 37 RBI in 1886. He does nothing to control for such things, and I looked to find a season where a player was credited with more homers than RBI, but didn't find one.

There are also the abrupt swings, like Johnny Evers having 18 homers in 1907, 0 in 1908, then 12 in 1909. All while playing regularly, of course. And I just love the 'adjusted' total of 180 steals for Maury Wills in 1962. That's gonna be tough with 217 hits, 9 of them triples and 9 HR, in 'adjusted' measures.

There is interesting stuff here, though. For some unknown reason Thomas decides that the 'modern' fan will relate better to divisional play, and separates the leagues into divisions starting with 1901, keeping his divisions between 3 and 5 teams as baseball expands. That means in today's game he has four divisions, with no wild card. In the 12-team league days, he has three divisions with a wild card. He then plays a hypothetical postseason, simulating a series 100 times but taking an outcome at random. Under this system, the Yankees have won 18 championships, not 26. This does nothing to show "desire" or "character" of course, but it does support the idea of more playoff teams giving more random results.

I do like Thomas' method of ranking great teams, which ends with the 1927 Yankees on top. It largely includes winning percentage and run margin, with some other additions. It's one of the better systems I've seen.

All that said, I'm glad I only spent $6 on the book.

[Skip]

There are also the abrupt swings, like Johnny Evers having 18 homers in 1907, 0 in 1908, then 12 in 1909. All while playing regularly, of course. And I just love the 'adjusted' total of 180 steals for Maury Wills in 1962. That's gonna be tough with 217 hits, 9 of them triples and 9 HR, in 'adjusted' measures. ... All that said, I'm glad I only spent $6 on the book.:loud: on the first - I just love revisionist history with no sense of either commonsense/logic or the absurd.

As for the second ... I'm glad it was your 6 bucks! ;)

[sweaver]

It was worth six bucks, because of the unique look at the postseason, and the way the "levelling" works fairly well for recent seasons. But not more.