Former Cardinals Watch

[MAGA]

This team is so good at knowing when to cut them loose.

[InvincibleCakeEater]

This team is so good at knowing when to cut them loose.

except for the times they don't

[Radbird]

[cardsfantx]

This team is so good at knowing when to cut them loose.

except for the times they don't

[InvincibleCakeEater]

Bill Madden gave Placido Polanco a HOF vote.

[haltz]

Bill Madden gave Placido Polanco a HOF vote.

more career WAR than Yadi

[Joe Shlabotnik]

Bill Madden gave Placido Polanco a HOF vote.

more career WAR than Yadi

Says more about WAR than it does about Polanco.

[MAGA]

This team is so good at knowing when to cut them loose.

except for the times they don't

Why even root for the team?

[greenback44]

Bill Madden gave Placido Polanco a HOF vote.

more career WAR than Yadi

Says more about WAR than it does about Polanco.

Catcher defense is hard to measure, but Polanco was really good. I might compare Polanco to somebody like Lou Brock instead. Both are very batting average-centric with their value. But Polanco was a good defender at medium-tough positions. Brock was a bad defender at an easy position, and with Brock this isn't just WAR talking, everybody knew he was a bad defender at the time. With WAR you can weight base-running against that defensive disadvantage with thorough, sophisticated accounting. There's little chance that the base-running is worth it.

Brock had two other components to his value that are harder to incorporate into the standard model. First, he hit 391/424/655 over 21 World Series games in an era where the World Series was it for the post-season (uh, of course it probably says something that the Cardinals didn't play in the post-season between 1969 and 1979). If you do a "pennants-added" thing instead of a pure WAR/WAA calculation, then that's going to be huge. Honestly, while the math makes sense in the approaches I've seen, I'm not sure I like the metrics that could show David Freese's career is better than, say, JIm Edmonds'. Second, Brock was ridiculously durable, averaging a little over 700 plate appearances per year from his age-25 season to his age-35 season. That's a [expletive] ton of plate appearances.

[Socnorb11]

That's a great, informative post, greenback.