Monte Irvin, Hall of Fame. His WAR stat says he's not even among the top 5 players born on February 25th. No wonder many fans are turned off by the stat heads. These scientific people inevitably fail to measure the one quality that combines with ability to produce greatness - and that's the heart that flowed through Monte's game like the blood of life..
At a site called Wezen Ball.Com, a fellow named Larry Granillo has written a fun little piece called “The Best Player Born on Your Birthday.” As an exercise in personal amusement, Granillo has listed the top five MLB baseball players born on each day of the year, based on players with the highest “WAR” ratings who were born on that date.
“WAR” stands for “wins above replacement.” It is a statistic that attempts to measure a player’s contributions to his team’s wins in comparison with how a mythical replacement player from AAA might have performed under the same circumstances. (Ouch! It almost hurt to explain even that much of a stat that I neither fully understand or believe in. All I know is – any stat that leaves Monte Irvin off the list of top 5 players born on February 25th relative to guys who made it there is suspect in my book.)
If you really want to learn more about “WAR” – here’s a link to Baseball Reference.Com and an explanation:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Wins_Above_Replacement_Player
If you simply want to check out who “WAR” says are the five best ball players born on your birthday, here’s a link to the Granillo article. If you are an Astros fan, make a note of all the Astros listed as the best players on certain dates in history. The next Astro up on that scale is our own Jimmy Wynn, who has his next birthday coming up on March 12th. According to his “WAR” rating, our Mr. Wynn is the best player born on that date in history.
http://www.wezen-ball.com/other/other/the-best-player-born-on-your-birthday.html
Have fun. That’s what this exercise is supposed to be about.
And thanks to Bill Rogers of the St. Louis Browns Historical Society for sending this material to me.
Tags: Baseball, History, Monte Irvin
The Pecan Park Eagle 
March 3, 2011 at 2:10 pm |
A fun thing to play with, but I couldn’t find any listings beyond 01/30.
What’s the trick?
Mark
March 3, 2011 at 7:54 pm |
Bill, thank you for your help. For anyone else with the same problem, on my screen the right-side scroll bar is partially buried underneath the green margin and I didn’t readily see it. But once I found it, everything was there.
February 5th and 6th would be good days on which to be born, if birthdate is what confers baseball talent!
Mark
March 3, 2011 at 9:35 pm |
Mark:
What am I missing here? I can see how Babe Ruth made it as the #1 player born on 2/06, but how could he also be the 5th best player born on 2/06? Is the other for pitching?
I am mystified.
March 4, 2011 at 5:54 am |
Bill, I didn’t catch that my first quick glance through the chart, but now that you mention it, that’s about the only explanation that makes sense to me. 18 WAR is good but not stupendous (like his hitting stats are) and possibly reflect what one might expect from an exceptional pitcher over a short period of time, say 5 years or so. During those 5 years, Ruth was the best lefty pitcher in the AL, and still has some AL pitching records standing, e.g. most shutouts in a season by a lefty, 9, tied with Ron Guidry, and longest complete game pitched in world series history, 14 innings in a 2-1 win over Brooklyn. What a remarkable baseball player he was …