No, Felix Millan’s best year was not 1975, even with 191 hits

We are about two weeks in to the change of Mets360 becoming a membership site. And it’s exceeded my expectations. We still have an active, civil and intelligent comments section – for which I am truly grateful. But a reminder just came along for one of the reasons why the change took place. A comment from a new user came in on an article from last year, one that’s still in the public domain.

What to do with the old articles is still something that hasn’t been settled in my mind. In one way, it’s good that they’re still there for new people to see, as maybe it will attract new subscribers. But on the other hand, it still leaves people who are stuck 40 or more years in the past, chiming in with the conventional wisdom of when they first started following the game.

The comment that came in said, among other things, that Felix Millan’s best year was 1975 because he had 191 hits that season. To believe that the most hits = the best season, you have to think that all hits are created equal, walks and HBP don’t matter and that defense and baserunning are irrelevant. It’s certainly possible that a season where a player had the most hits was also his best year. No one would doubt that 1996, when he had a career-best 172 hits, was the best season of Brady Anderson’s career. Of course, the 50 HR he hit that year had a little something to do with why it was so much better than the season he had 170 hits.

But in the particular case of Millan, the hits he accumulated in ’75 didn’t make up for other areas where he didn’t perform well, even just comparing to his own career. Whether you prefer bWAR or fWAR, there are five seasons in Millan’s career where his total contributions on a baseball field exceeded what he did in 1975.

Offense is really important. So, imagine how good you’d have to be in other areas to make up the difference in 41 hits, which is what Millan did in 1976, when he managed just 150 hits yet put up a better bWAR and fWAR than he did in ’75. In the bicentennial, Millan was an above-average fielder, compared to being below average the year before. And his baserunning was better, too.

In the 1970s, we didn’t have the tools that we needed to measure things like baserunning and defense. Some think we still don’t have the tools now to properly measure defense, although it’s more of a sample-size issue than how to properly account for what the player did in the field. A general rule of thumb is that it takes two seasons of defensive results to give you the reliability of one season’s worth of offensive results.

Maya Angelou said, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

It was okay in the late 1970s to think that 1975 was, without question, the best season of Millan’s career. But now we know better.

It’s important to distinguish between what anyone likes versus what is the best. People can enjoy the game anyway they like. My wife likes a game with a lot of offense and doesn’t care if it’s made with good hitting or lousy defense. She wants to see action, which of course many people do. If the poster had said he enjoyed Millan’s 1975 best because he got to see him get all of those hits – that would have been perfectly reasonable.

In the past, people could say outlandish things about baseball – and if they said it forcefully enough, or eloquently enough – they could be considered knowledgeable about the game. And then – for lack of a better phrase – the analytics revolution came along and when someone would say some pearl of wisdom like, “Baseball is 80% pitching,” – well, that could be easily refuted.

And no one likes to be told they’re wrong.

No one has a monopoly on truth. We’re all wrong at some point or other and the key is how do you react when you find out that your previously held belief was not true?

The guy who just commented on Millan was internet savvy enough to find an article written months ago at a small independent site. It’s not unreasonable to believe that at some point or other, the same person found Baseball-Reference or FanGraphs. If he spent any time exploring those sites, he could have easily found out that, no, 1975 was not Millan’s best year.

And if he didn’t find those sites, or if he found those sites and quickly left, or if he found those sites and found the information and rejected it – why would I want to have a discussion with him? The whole point of this is to engage with people who are smart and curious and passionate, because passion itself isn’t enough.

– Chris F. knows more about math and steroids than I do and has influenced me to look deeper into those topics. Without prodding from Chris, I never would have done the math to find out that Michael Conforto’s 2020 BABIP was more than three standard deviations from the 2019 BABIP mean.
– Gus loves Wilmer Flores yet isn’t afraid to criticize him. It’s a path I’m trying to take with my favorites, not to soft sell their weaknesses.
– Name challenges me on selective end points and now I try to be better about offering those and nothing else.

Hopefully, stuff we’ve written here has influenced you, challenged you and made you change the way you approach things. The site works best if it’s a two-way street. So, my question for you on this two-way street is this: Do you think it’s worth publishing the comment from the guy on Millan?