Comments on: Contest: most dissimilar player

By: JohnnyTwisto

JohnnyTwisto — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 17:54:31 +0000

I think Sheffield will have difficulty making the HOF soon because of his bouncing around from team to team, multiple injury-shortened seasons earlier in his career, and the various attitude/character questions. But he may very well deserve it as he was a tremendous offensive player for many years. He could be the type of guy who gets in 50 years down the road, when people mostly just have the numbers to go on and can't believe this type of hitter was never inducted. (On the other hand, Dick Allen doesn't seem to be particularly close to getting in...)

Here's an impressive list of hitters with similar career numbers: http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/S8kYz

By: Andy

Andy — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 20:21:11 +0000

I don't think you'll find a 1000 score because they aren't given unless a player has at least a minimum playing time and the odds are stacked quite high against any two players with, say, 3 years of experience having identical totals across all categories. I'd say it's a million-to-1 shot. Sheffield compares to those guys because he's played many years and racked up high totals. He's a very good player but falls short of HOF in my eyes mainly because he was not a particular dominant player for any significant stretch of his career. He put up big numbers alongside a bunch of other guys.

By: SpastikMooss

SpastikMooss — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 03:26:40 +0000

Also, still messing around here. Has anyone seen Gary Sheffield's similarity by age?
You've got Gary Clark, Ryan Zimmerman, Scott Rolen, Dale Murphy, Jack Clark, Chipper Jones, Duke Snider, Jeff Bagwell, Fred McGriff, and Reggie Jackson in there. And similarity overall he pulls Mel Ott, Reggie Jackson, Ken Griffey, Fred McGriff, and Mickey Mantle as his top five (three hall of famers and two who probably will be).

Impressive comparison. But would any of us consider Sheff a HOFer? He did win a world series, and he finished in the top 3 in mvp three times.

By: SpastikMooss

SpastikMooss — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 03:16:03 +0000

This was really cool to mess with, though I missed the boat by a lot. Now I'm trying to find some pair with a 1.000 similarity rating. The closest I have so far is a .991 at age 27 by John Foster and Rodrigo Lopez. I know there's gotta be a 1.000 out there somewhere (at least for a young age with little MLB time), but I'm looking for two players with like a .994 over two ten year careers. How wacky would that be?

By: Andy

Andy — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:16:57 +0000

As you might imagine, I did not know the dissimilar leaderboard existed!

By: cubbies

cubbies — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:11:34 +0000

p.s. wouldnt it be cool if there was a thing like the oracle except for similarity scores?

By: cubbies

cubbies — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:10:53 +0000

wow. waking up at noon has its consequences. when reading this article, i knew it had to be pete rose becuase i coincidentaly was looking at the most dissimilar players leaderboard.also, most unique "active" is barry bonds at 762. http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ti-uggla111309 -at the bottom of this acticle it says that bonds is still active. So because of the leader board i know that if you want to consider him active, he is the least similar, if if he isnt active, it would have to be a-rod with 771 through age 33.

By: Tiger_fan

Tiger_fan — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:00:18 +0000

I give Ty Cobb a shot. Not sure how the numbers differ on your list and this one: http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/similarity.shtml

By: BunnyWrangler

BunnyWrangler — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:29:35 +0000

Tiger_Fan:
I wasn't saying that the system whiffed or anything, and I know that it measures only statistics (although it does factor in position). My comment was more about how odd I found it that the career statistics - at least the ones measured by similarity score - of two very dissimilar catchers, Martin and Estrada, were actually pretty close.

By: Andy

Andy — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:05:05 +0000

Pete Rose was the guy I'd found with the lowest score, but that doesn't mean he's necessarily the answer...let's see if anybody can find someone even lower. As for comments about Martin and Estrada, I totally agree that the sim score system breaks down when the guys haven't played too many games. Sim scores are calculated strictly on a points system, not a rate system, meaning that two players who played 1500 games and have a sim score of 900 are actually much more similar than two players who played 500 games and also have a sim score of 900. In other words, either way there is 100 points of variation, but in the first case it might be spread across 10 years while in the second case it might be spread across just 3-5 years.