Perception Differences

Let’s play one of baseball writer’s favorite games – anonymous player comparison!

Player A, 2007: .386 OBP, .562 SLG, 3.42 WPA/LI
Player B, 2007: .386 OBP, .554 SLG, 3.51 WPA/LI

Player A, 2008: .384 OBP, .526 SLG, 2.32 WPA/LI
Player B, 2008: .373 OBP, .528 SLG, 2.31 WPA/LI

That’s two years where both players have been almost identical in terms of offensive value. They couldn’t be viewed any more differently by most of baseball, however.

Player A is Hanley Ramirez, the Marlins all-star shortstop, sometimes mentioned MVP candidate, and widely considered one of the most valuable players in the game. Player B is Adam Dunn, the guy who was traded for a marginal minor league starter and two PTBNL’s on a waiver-wire deal yesterday.

Now, there’s obviously a big difference between them – Ramirez plays shortstop, and Dunn plays outfield. But neither of them are particularly adept defenders relative to their peers, so most of the actual difference between their value comes from the position adjustment required to make up for the difference in expected offensive from an SS and an LF.

The average NL SS is hitting .271/.328/.396, while the average LF is hitting .273/.351/.460. That’s a significant difference, and when plugged into a win value calculator, the difference comes out to about one win over the course of the season. Even if we wanted to give Ramirez a bit of extra value for being a better shortstop than Dunn is an outfielder (which is arguable, but possible), the most we’ll be able to get the difference up to is 1.5 wins over a full season.

There’s a difference, no doubt, but can you imagine the media reaction if the Diamondbacks had traded for Hanley Ramirez yesterday? It’s not exactly a proportional response to the actual difference between the two. More than anything else, the way Dunn and Ramirez are perceived tells us just how strongly batting average still has a hold on the game as a whole.