Ozzie Smith

Baseball Player Won-Loss Records
Home List of Articles

Ozzie Smith

Hall-of-Famers as Seen Through Player Won-Lost Records: Ozzie Smith

Ozzie Smith was elected to the Hall of Fame in his 1st year of eligibility, 2002, with 91.7% of the vote.

Five highlights of Ozzie Smith's career:

Ozzie Smith was named to fifteen All-Star teams and won thirteen Gold Gloves, the most by any shortstop in major-league history.

Smith was named MVP of the 1985 NLCS, batting .435/.500/.696 including a walk-off game-winning home run in Game 5.

Smith finished second in MVP voting in 1987. That season, Smith played his usual superlative defense while posting career highs in batting average (.303), on-base percentage (.392), slugging percentage (.383), hits (182), doubles (40), walks (89), runs scored (104), and RBI (75).

Smith appeared in the 1992 episode of The Simpsons, Homer at the Bat, in which Montgomery Burns brings in nine major-leaguers to play on the company softball team.

A statue of Ozzie Smith, showing him diving for a ground ball, was unveiled outside Busch Stadium in St. Louis in 2002.

The first two tables below present Ozzie Smith's career as measured by Player won-lost records, in and out of context.

Season	Team	Age	Games	pWins	pLosses	pWORL	pWOPA

Basic Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1978	SDN	23	159	20.9	21.8	2.3	0.3
1979	SDN	24	156	17.3	19.1	1.1	-0.7
1980	SDN	25	158	21.1	21.3	3.0	1.0
1981	SDN	26	110	13.1	15.5	-0.1	-1.5
1982	SLN	27	140	19.5	17.0	5.1	3.4
1983	SLN	28	159	20.1	17.9	4.7	2.9
1984	SLN	29	124	17.9	15.8	4.6	3.0
1985	SLN	30	158	22.5	18.3	7.0	5.1
1986	SLN	31	153	18.7	16.9	4.4	2.7
1987	SLN	32	158	22.9	17.5	8.1	6.2
1988	SLN	33	153	22.3	17.8	7.2	5.3
1989	SLN	34	155	20.6	19.0	4.4	2.5
1990	SLN	35	143	16.0	17.4	0.9	-0.6
1991	SLN	36	150	20.7	17.6	5.6	3.7
1992	SLN	37	132	18.5	16.7	4.2	2.5
1993	SLN	38	141	18.3	18.1	2.7	0.9
1994	SLN	39	98	10.8	12.5	0.0	-1.1
1995	SLN	40	44	4.8	5.6	-0.1	-0.6
1996	SLN	41	82	7.5	6.8	1.6	0.9
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			2,573	333.3	312.5	66.5	35.6
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			42	4.6	4.8	0.5	0.1
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			2,615	337.9	317.3	67.0	35.7

Season	Team	Age	Games	eWins	eLosses	eWORL	eWOPA

Expected Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1978	SDN	23	159	20.5	22.1	1.7	-0.3
1979	SDN	24	156	17.2	19.2	1.1	-0.6
1980	SDN	25	158	21.1	21.3	2.9	0.9
1981	SDN	26	110	13.7	15.0	0.9	-0.5
1982	SLN	27	140	18.8	17.7	3.8	2.1
1983	SLN	28	159	19.4	18.5	3.5	1.7
1984	SLN	29	124	17.2	16.5	3.2	1.6
1985	SLN	30	158	21.3	19.5	4.7	2.7
1986	SLN	31	153	18.3	17.3	3.6	1.9
1987	SLN	32	158	22.6	17.8	7.5	5.6
1988	SLN	33	153	21.9	18.2	6.4	4.5
1989	SLN	34	155	20.3	19.2	3.7	1.9
1990	SLN	35	143	16.8	16.6	2.5	0.9
1991	SLN	36	150	20.4	17.9	5.1	3.2
1992	SLN	37	132	18.2	16.9	3.7	2.0
1993	SLN	38	141	18.0	18.4	2.1	0.3
1994	SLN	39	98	11.3	12.1	0.8	-0.3
1995	SLN	40	44	4.7	5.7	-0.4	-0.9
1996	SLN	41	82	7.3	7.0	1.3	0.6
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			2,573	328.9	316.9	58.2	27.3
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			42	4.5	4.9	0.3	-0.2
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			2,615	333.4	321.8	58.5	27.1

Ozzie Smith won 13 Gold Gloves at shortstop - more than anybody else in major-league history - and was widely regarded as the best defensive shortstop not merely of his generation, but of all time. The development of better fielding statistics in recent years has done little or nothing to change that perception. Ozzie Smith was an extraordinary fielding shortstop.

But how does Ozzie Smith rank among the greatest fielders in major-league history regardless of position?

There are two challenges in answering this question. First, an average fielding shortstop is more valuable than an average fielding first baseman, because the former is harder to find than the latter. Second, as with baseball players in general, there is value in a player being somewhat below average, as long as that player is better than the alternative(s).

The solution to the first challenge is to look at positional averages, so that a first baseman who amasses a Player winning percentage exactly equal to the average winning percentage of all first basemen is equal in value to a shortstop who amasses a Player winning percentage exactly equal to the average winning percentage of all shortstops. The solution to the second challenge is to compare players against a baseline of replacement level instead of average. In my work, I calculate replacement level relative to positional average, so that using replacement level in my analysis solves both challenges.

In other words, one can measure a player's "position-neutral" fielding value by calculating his fielding wins above replacement level.

The next table, then, presents the top 25 players in career fielding wins over replacement level.

		Fielding Wins Top 25 Players
	Player	eWins	eLosses	Win Pct.	WORL_f
1	Ozzie Smith	116.6	102.0	0.533	25.0
2	Mel Ott	113.9	101.6	0.529	23.5
3	Brooks Robinson	93.6	79.8	0.540	22.4
4	Ichiro Suzuki	98.7	86.5	0.533	21.3
5	Al Kaline	98.7	87.2	0.531	20.9
6	Pee Wee Reese	90.7	78.8	0.535	20.8
7	Barry Bonds	118.8	109.2	0.521	20.8
8	Cal Ripken	113.3	103.7	0.522	20.0
9	Roberto Clemente	108.4	99.3	0.522	19.6
10	Carl Furillo	70.7	58.5	0.547	18.9
11	Lou Boudreau	75.6	64.3	0.540	18.5
12	Mark Belanger	78.8	68.4	0.535	17.6
13	Al Simmons	93.3	85.5	0.522	17.1
14	Rabbit Maranville	97.1	89.7	0.520	17.0
15	Willie Davis	89.0	80.8	0.524	16.6
16	Rickey Henderson	110.7	104.6	0.514	16.6
17	Andruw Jones	81.4	72.7	0.528	16.3
18	Jesse Barfield	62.1	51.6	0.546	15.9
19	Mike Schmidt	81.4	73.1	0.527	15.8
20	Luis Aparicio	113.2	108.6	0.510	15.7
21	Omar Vizquel	108.4	103.0	0.513	15.6
22	Adrian Beltre	84.7	77.1	0.523	15.5
23	Indian Bob Johnson	91.6	85.3	0.518	15.4
24	Buddy Bell	78.4	70.2	0.528	15.4
25	Amos Otis	76.9	68.7	0.528	15.3

And there you have it. Ozzie Smith was the most valuable defensive player in major-league history (at least since 1916).

Article last updated: March 25, 2020

All articles are written so that they pull data directly from the most recent version of the Player won-lost database. Hence, any numbers cited within these articles should automatically incorporate the most recent update to Player won-lost records. In some cases, however, the accompanying text may have been written based on previous versions of Player won-lost records. I apologize if this results in non-sensical text in any cases.

Home List of Articles