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January 2008
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Thursday, January 24, 2008

Rich and Buster


Rich Lederer and Buster Olney have been debating the Hall of Fame qualifications of Jim Rice in an open manner, swapping points back and forth in their blogs. You can read Rich's latest post, which includes a fair rendition of Olney's arguments, at his blog. Their willingness to continue their debate in the open air of the Internets is valuable for all of us.

Now, I'm as sick of the endless Hall of Fame debates as anyone, but something in Olney's argument stopped me from working on the THT Season Preview for a couple of minutes to investigate something he implied: that Rice shouldn't be held accountable for his relatively low OBP because people didn't "know" that walks were so valuable when he played.

This implies a number of things that bother me. One, that a player like Rice could dramatically change his batting approach based on sportswriters' expectations. Two (and more importantly), that the game was somehow "different" back in the 1970s and 1980s, and a different set of skills was required to be successful. I'm not sure Olney meant to imply either point, but I think they're both wrong.

Yet I was curious as to his primary point: that teams and batters value walks more than they used to. If true, then might batters be walking more than in the past? That would seem to reinforce his point, wouldn't it? So I did a little digging...

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Posted by Dave Studeman at 9:59am (0) Comments