BB: Pre-season All-American Teams

[StarvinMarvin]

A-Rod won an MVP award with the Rangers when they finished last in their division, so I don't think that's a viable example (no offense).  Therefore was he not deserving of the award because his team had a poor season?  If anything, players who put up numbers on an underachieving team have to work that much harder.  Pitchers might not get the run support and hitters may not have people getting on base in front of them or protection behind them.  As I said previously, team success should neither help or hinder individual awards in my opinion.  This assures objectivity and doesn't punish players for being on bad team.  Post-season awards like World Series MVP or making an All-Tournament Team rewards the best players on the best teams.  That's where team success should have the most influence and the best players on the best teams get their due.   
 
 
 
 
 

[Mr. Ypsi]

Amen, SM!  Clearly team success DOES affect voting for individual awards, but I don't think it should.  (To me, the most amazing season any MLB pitcher ever had was when Bobby Shantz won 25 games for a team that won 55.)
 

[dgilblair]

A-Rod won an MVP award with the Rangers when they finished last in their division, so I don't think that's a viable example (no offense).  Therefore was he not deserving of the award because his team had a poor season?  If anything, players who put up numbers on an underachieving team have to work that much harder.  Pitchers might not get the run support and hitters may not have people getting on base in front of them or protection behind them.  As I said previously, team success should neither help or hinder individual awards in my opinion.  This assures objectivity and doesn't punish players for being on bad team.  Post-season awards like World Series MVP or making an All-Tournament Team rewards the best players on the best teams.  That's where team success should have the most influence and the best players on the best teams get their due.   
 
 
 
 
 

So I take that as a no.  You don't think A Rod would have gotten more recognition (awards) if he played his whole career for NY.  Maybe not.

Stats can be very deceiving.  If you take a very good freshman pitcher for example. His starts are mid week games against lesser quality teams he could end up with a bunch of great stats.   Now if he is on a top notch team and makes it to the tournaments he will have a much better chance of being in the running for an award than being on a club that doesn't make it.  Don't you think? 
 

[dgilblair]

Amen, SM!  Clearly team success DOES affect voting for individual awards, but I don't think it should.  (To me, the most amazing season any MLB pitcher ever had was when Bobby Shantz won 25 games for a team that won 55.)
 

He was the MVP that year.  That doesn't happen to often for a pitcher. I think they won a few more than 55 games.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/mvp_cya.shtml

[mr_b]

Amen, SM!  Clearly team success DOES affect voting for individual awards, but I don't think it should.  (To me, the most amazing season any MLB pitcher ever had was when Bobby Shantz won 25 games for a team that won 55.)
 

He was the MVP that year.  That doesn't happen to often for a pitcher. I think they won a few more than 55 games.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/mvp_cya.shtml

In 1952, Shantz went 24-7 for an Athletics team that finished 5th with a record of 79-75-1 (yes, a 3-3 tie versus the Tigers ).

The other Cy Young winner in the same mold was Steve Carlton.  He won 27 of the Phillies' 59 games in 1972.  Perhaps that's the season the original poster was thinking about.

[Ralph Turner]

Amen, SM!  Clearly team success DOES affect voting for individual awards, but I don't think it should.  (To me, the most amazing season any MLB pitcher ever had was when Bobby Shantz won 25 games for a team that won 55.)
 

He was the MVP that year.  That doesn't happen to often for a pitcher. I think they won a few more than 55 games.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/mvp_cya.shtml

Fifty-six years later, would sophisticated sports medicine diagnose major damage to Bobby Shantz' arm because of his workload during that year?

That was during the era of the Reserve Clause.  (How much different was baseball before the Reserve Clause?)

The 1952 A's went 79-75 and finished 4th in the 8-team AL, 16 games behind the Yankees.

[Jim Dixon]

One factor that has yet to be mentioned why there are those All-Americans in Appleton is that because of the success of a few players, the team is there.  Take away a team's all-american player and they might not be there.

I only know the process I go through to select a list of All-Americans and I expect it is a little different than any other voter.   (an aside: If we all voted the same, I would make unilateral decisions but I have rarely seen an voter's All-American Ballot agree completely with another.)

You only have to look at the Championship where the MVP went to Zimmermann on a third place team (the second time the MVP was not on the Championship team) to know that it was the performance that was rewarded.  If there were too comparable players, the nod certainly would go to the team who placed better.

In Zimmermann's and A-Rod's cases, they were both clearly the superior player but if another player was comparable on a team that did much better than theirs, I would expect that in this case the team's performance would be the deciding factor.

[Jim Dixon]

To see the press release with stats for the preseason team see:

http://www.d3baseball.com/all-american/preseason2008.pdf

[Mr. Ypsi]

Amen, SM!  Clearly team success DOES affect voting for individual awards, but I don't think it should.  (To me, the most amazing season any MLB pitcher ever had was when Bobby Shantz won 25 games for a team that won 55.)
 

He was the MVP that year.  That doesn't happen to often for a pitcher. I think they won a few more than 55 games.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/mvp_cya.shtml

In 1952, Shantz went 24-7 for an Athletics team that finished 5th with a record of 79-75-1 (yes, a 3-3 tie versus the Tigers ).

The other Cy Young winner in the same mold was Steve Carlton.  He won 27 of the Phillies' 59 games in 1972.  Perhaps that's the season the original poster was thinking about.

Kind of you to offer me a graceful 'out', but I confess I was recounting what I've 'remembered' about Shantz's season nearly my whole life.   (Another childhood memory destroyed by mere fact, but cut me some slack - I was only 4 at the time! )

Well, with Shantz gone (how my memory went from 24 to 25 wins I don't know, but the 55 presumably came from hearing the number of games all the othe Phil's pitchers combined to win), I suppose I can join the 'real' world in debating whether the best pitching season would be Carlton in '72 or Gibson in '68!

[StarvinMarvin]

A Most Valuable Player award goes to the player who was the most valuable to his team.  It might be a player who made his team that much better or saved his team from being that much worse.  The name of the award defines itself and is open to some interpretation.  However, the award isn't the most valuable player on the best team or the most valuable player to a team's success. 

With that being said, an All-American team is defined as the best player at each particular position and the best of the best are on the first team followed by second, third and honorable mention.  An objective set of criteria must be used and I assume that statistics are it.  Yes, partiality is probably involved and objectivity is probably compromised at times but stats are stats.  A guy can go 3 for 3 with three duck farts and he's hitting a thousand and another guy hits three rockets that are caught and he ends up hitting zero.  The better hitter is probably the guy who didn't get a hit but we have to give the nod to the guy who went three for three because stats are our criteria.  The bottom line is that in DIII baseball, there are far more average to below average teams than good to great teams.  Some teams play in a better conference, make their non-conference schedule competitive etc. but at some point every AA or potential AA is going to play against an inferior opponent where they are going to "pad their stats."  I just don't like to see kids punished for what they cannot control.  They don't make the schedule, they just do their job and play the game.   

[Mr. Ypsi]

As a retired stats prof, I'll have to take issue with the implications of 'stats are stats'.  While I won't go quite so far as Disraeli's masterful line "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics", they MUST be both put in context and weighted against non-statistical evidence.  The statistically 'best' player is sometimes (often?) not THE 'best' player, assuming experts eyes can be trusted.  I would certainly hope that AA voters do not rely SOLELY on statistics, though that is an obvious (and no doubt correct) STARTING point.  Statistics are 'objective', but they are not always 'correct'.

Sorry, I'm retired and absolutely must stop being so pedantic!

[Old Spartan]

If statistics were dispositive, versus serving as a starting point, there would be no purpose in this message board.  That would deprive all of us the enjoyment we take from debating the many issues that we do here.

Professor, I appreciate your point.

OS

[StarvinMarvin]

There's no question that statistics are somewhat misleading at times but because DIII baseball is so vast (over 350 programs), statistics are often all we have to rely on when we judge and debate players.

[dgilblair]

As a retired stats prof, I'll have to take issue with the implications of 'stats are stats'.  While I won't go quite so far as Disraeli's masterful line "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics", they MUST be both put in context and weighted against non-statistical evidence.  The statistically 'best' player is sometimes (often?) not THE 'best' player, assuming experts eyes can be trusted.  I would certainly hope that AA voters do not rely SOLELY on statistics, though that is an obvious (and no doubt correct) STARTING point.  Statistics are 'objective', but they are not always 'correct'.

Sorry, I'm retired and absolutely must stop being so pedantic!

Had to look up that pedantic word.
Baseball is all about stats.  I agree they are not always correct.  Some do get hits or RBI's in 13 - 2 games more than others.  How would the people that select the AA teams know that without really following all these teams.  So stats have to be the starting point and weigh heavily in the selection process.  On any given team you could have two teammates with 50 RBI for the season.  The difference could be one had a majority of those in less meaningful spots.  Don't get me wrong any RBI is a good RBI.  But the guy that gets them in a tight spot, game winners, those are the big ones and could separate the two players with the same amount of RBI's. How would you know that? Thats why picking tournament MVP's is so much easier.  It's right there in front of you.  
Why did MLB remove the game winning RBI stat years back?  Anyone know?  I always thought that was a cool stat.

[Mr. Ypsi]

There's no question that statistics are somewhat misleading at times but because DIII baseball is so vast (over 350 programs), statistics are often all we have to rely on when we judge and debate players.

Due to this board (among other resources), au contraire!

I won the very first 'pick ems' contest I entered in CCIW basketball, despite having not seen a game in 34 years.  When others congratulated me on my 'statistical analysis', I replied that I didn't really trust the stats - analyzing their posts was what did it (taking into account known biases, general reliability, etc.)!  [Since then, my 'success' in both basketball and football pickems have shown that 'beginner's luck' was also a principal component!]

While d3baseball.com doesn't (yet?) have the wealth of 'data' that d3hoops or d3football has, there is a lot more information than 'just' stats.

DG, your post came in just as I was about to post mine.  I think it pretty much responds to your post also, except I will try to stop being so pedantic with words like 'pedantic'!

As to the 'game winning RBI', I agree that was a cool stat - I confess I hadn't realized they dropped it (I think the Detroit Free Press still does it for the Tigers).