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To: mishedlo who wrote (213725)	1/10/2003 3:29:37 PM
From: reaper	Respond to of 436258

he's not as valuable as you might think (over the course of his career, he was 13% worse than the average player with the stick) but his defense was just off the charts. over his CAREER, he had .93 more chances per game than the average major-league shortstop; during the height of his defensive prowess (1980-1988) he was generally better than 1.0 chances per game above the average SS. that is frankly INCREDIBLE (Omar Vizquel, generally regarded as a great SS, was usually about 0.5 chances better per game than average). think about what 1.0 more chances a game means for a second. that means once a game, or 162 times a year, when a league-average shortstop is watching a ball roll past him, Ozzie Smith is making a play on the ball (and 97% of the time throwing the guy out). that's 150 baserunners that the other team doesn't have 'cause Ozzie is at short. the St Louis pitching staff generally gave up about 2000 baserunners a year (hits and walks) so eliminating 150 extra baserunners is a lot. i have never seen ANYBODY with fielding stats like that. even Mazerowski was "only" .86 chances a game better than average (though he did turn the DP better than Ozzie). and even though Ozzie might not be as "valuable" as other big boppers who put up big offensive numbers, he's still an upper-eschelon guy 'cause he was the BEST defensive player ever. (fwiw, Mazerowski was only fractionally worse than Ozzie as a hitter and only fractionally worse as a defender. AND he hit the ONLY Game 7 walk-off jack in the history of baseball. and it took the Veterans Committee to get him into the Hall. and Ozzie got in on the first try. gotta love what ESPN does for guys) Cheers