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2021 Non-Red Sox Thread
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Post by foreverred9 on May 7, 2021 0:40:50 GMT -5
Stan Musial probably should count as post-integration, he still had 93 fWAR from 1947 onwards compared to Albert's 87. Excluding him, I'd agree that Albert is the best 1B, and to be honest I'm not sure I would have said that definitively without looking at the data. It goes to show how great his first decade was. It's interesting to see how fWAR sorts these players. There's a very clear 1/2 and 3/4 then the rest start to cluster. 80 - Bagwell, Rose 72 - Carew, Thomas, Murray 69-70 - Cabrera, Palmeiro, Thome 66-67 - McCovey, McGwire, Killebrew 62-63 - Banks, Stargell, Torre www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=1b&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2021&season1=1947ADD: the person I would have debated you on would have been Frank Thomas, and I think there is still a debate given that offensively Frank was as good, if not slightly better, than Albert. It looks like the defense is what's driving the difference. For perspective, Frank Thomas has the 30th highest wOBA of all time among all players, 11th highest post-integration.
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Post by bluechip on May 7, 2021 0:42:17 GMT -5
I'd never really taken time to think about it in these terms, but Pujols is the best post-integration first baseman by a long-shot, right? Like Murray, McCovey, Bagwell, Thomas were all no-question Hall of Famers but also definitely a tier below him. Am I forgetting someone? Well Stan Musial played about a third of his games at first, but I don’t really think of him as a first baseman and his best years were primarily in the outfield. So I agree, Pujols is the best first baseman since Jimmie Foxx and Lou Gehrig.
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Post by foreverred9 on May 7, 2021 0:58:17 GMT -5
Shoot, my bad. I assumed the fangraphs position filter would have removed the OF games. Guess their position filter is junk, as that 93 WAR for Musial shows up in both the 1B and LF filters.
Also ignore my Frank Thomas comment as well...
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Post by redsoxfan2 on May 7, 2021 8:23:01 GMT -5
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manfred
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Post by manfred on May 7, 2021 8:42:41 GMT -5
Stan Musial probably should count as post-integration, he still had 93 fWAR from 1947 onwards compared to Albert's 87. Excluding him, I'd agree that Albert is the best 1B, and to be honest I'm not sure I would have said that definitively without looking at the data. It goes to show how great his first decade was. It's interesting to see how fWAR sorts these players. There's a very clear 1/2 and 3/4 then the rest start to cluster. 80 - Bagwell, Rose 72 - Carew, Thomas, Murray 69-70 - Cabrera, Palmeiro, Thome 66-67 - McCovey, McGwire, Killebrew 62-63 - Banks, Stargell, Torre www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=1b&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2021&season1=1947ADD: the person I would have debated you on would have been Frank Thomas, and I think there is still a debate given that offensively Frank was as good, if not slightly better, than Albert. It looks like the defense is what's driving the difference. For perspective, Frank Thomas has the 30th highest wOBA of all time among all players, 11th highest post-integration. This sort of cross-era WAR measurement sort of bugs me. Given that WAR is relative, there needs to be an adjustment by era. That is, if the replacement player is better in an era, then the 1 WAR a guy gets then is “better” than the one a guy in a worse era gets — if the idea is comping the players across time. There should he a WAR+ that measures people against their position historically... not season by season. But also... WAR is a stat that measures optimal play by current standards. So, in particular, walks are valued in a way they once were not. (Similarly, strikeouts are not devalued in a way they once were). So looking back at players who rarely struck out... but rarely walked... one can imagine that their bat control could gave had different results if they played today. And the other adjustment: expansion. Anyway, the long and short of it is that I don’t care what a guy like McGuire’s WAR is... not only was he a cheater, but he was a .247 hitter until age 29. Not in the pantheon.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on May 7, 2021 9:39:35 GMT -5
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the very fact that WAR is relative to era already provides the adjustment that you're talking about, no? It's how good a player was relative to a replacement-level player at the time he played. That's the very theory behind it - players get better (or in a short-term sample, perhaps worse) over time, but there's always going to be the concept of a replacement-level player, and by measuring how much better a given player is than that conceptual replacement-level player, we can compare across seasons and leagues. For example: A home run is always a home run. The concept is constant. But the way players in a given era accumulate them changes dramatically. Ruth's 714 is almost certainly always going to be the most impressive era-adjusted career home run number. And that's why it makes perfect sense that he's got 17.7 bWAR more than anyone else - he was so far and away better than anyone in his era he should have that level of video game career number. You're describing the concept of WAR. That's what it already does. Unless I'm misunderstanding you. If you're trying to do the "take Babe Ruth and put him in 2021 MLB and he'd stink" then yeah, probably, but you're now trying to measure a theoretical concept that can't be measured. You can only measure a player against his peers, but the concept of WAR is to measure them against a peer that we can then, over time, attempt to normalize relative to the state of the game. "Best" is not the same as "player who would perform the best in 2021 if you put him into a time machine in his prime and spit him out today and handed him a uniform." If you want the latter, there's no way to measure that realistically with any sort of meaningful precision. If you want the former, then WAR is a pretty good place to start. As for the part about a player playing differently in a different era, I get that, but at the same time, how can you measure an abstract concept like that? You can only guess. You're never going to be able to measure that. This is the reason the internet message board was created, of course.
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Post by James Dunne on May 7, 2021 9:50:25 GMT -5
Also, McGwire hit 583 homers. His WAR total, like his HR total, was built up over a few incredible seasons. Contrast that with guys with similar career value like Eddie Murray, Joey Votto, and Todd Helton who were much more consistent but never as dominant for a short time. WAR doesn't care what his batting average was in his 20's, just like it doesn't care that Dwight Evans' bat didn't break out when he was in his 30s.
By JAWS ranking (an average of career WAR and the seven best seasons of his career) McGwire ranks 17th of all time. That... feels almost exactly right to me? Short of Helton and Votto. Slightly above Hank Greenberg, who missed three seasons in his prime due to the war, and Harmon Killebrew, who was probably borderline statistically but someone who everyone had great memories of so he got into the Hall of Fame. Sort of like Vlad Guerrero or Kirby Puckett, WAR shows the value and then there's enough narrative to build context on top of that.
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Post by patford on May 7, 2021 10:02:53 GMT -5
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the very fact that WAR is relative to era already provides the adjustment that you're talking about, no? It's how good a player was relative to a replacement-level player at the time he played. That's the very theory behind it - players get better (or in a short-term sample, perhaps worse) over time, but there's always going to be the concept of a replacement-level player, and by measuring how much better a given player is than that conceptual replacement-level player, we can compare across seasons and leagues. For example: A home run is always a home run. The concept is constant. But the way players in a given era accumulate them changes dramatically. Ruth's 714 is almost certainly always going to be the most impressive era-adjusted career home run number. And that's why it makes perfect sense that he's got 17.7 bWAR more than anyone else - he was so far and away better than anyone in his era he should have that level of video game career number. You're describing the concept of WAR. That's what it already does. Unless I'm misunderstanding you. If you're trying to do the "take Babe Ruth and put him in 2021 MLB and he'd stink" then yeah, probably, but you're now trying to measure a theoretical concept that can't be measured. You can only measure a player against his peers, but the concept of WAR is to measure them against a peer that we can then, over time, attempt to normalize relative to the state of the game. "Best" is not the same as "player who would perform the best in 2021 if you put him into a time machine in his prime and spit him out today and handed him a uniform." If you want the latter, there's no way to measure that realistically with any sort of meaningful precision. If you want the former, then WAR is a pretty good place to start. As for the part about a player playing differently in a different era, I get that, but at the same time, how can you measure an abstract concept like that? You can only guess. You're never going to be able to measure that. This is the reason the internet message board was created, of course. Take Ruth and put him in today's game and he'd hit a 100 HR. I don't think baseball is really similar to the NBA or the NFL. There is no disputing how far Ruth hit the ball. There's also the fact that baseball careers tend to be long and there is a lot of overlap between eras and long time scouts who could talk about seeing Nolan Ryan and Bob Feller. I mean do people truly think Walter Johnson wasn't throwing extremely hard? I've thought about a fantasy baseball movie where somehow today's stars would go up against Ruth and the other stars from the past. It would open with the modern guys kind of snickering at the idea of the old Babe Ruth they know from the common photos and then the young Babe steps in and hits one 650 feet and the whole bench goes, "Well Damn."
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manfred
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Post by manfred on May 7, 2021 10:18:57 GMT -5
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the very fact that WAR is relative to era already provides the adjustment that you're talking about, no? It's how good a player was relative to a replacement-level player at the time he played. That's the very theory behind it - players get better (or in a short-term sample, perhaps worse) over time, but there's always going to be the concept of a replacement-level player, and by measuring how much better a given player is than that conceptual replacement-level player, we can compare across seasons and leagues. For example: A home run is always a home run. The concept is constant. But the way players in a given era accumulate them changes dramatically. Ruth's 714 is almost certainly always going to be the most impressive era-adjusted career home run number. And that's why it makes perfect sense that he's got 17.7 bWAR more than anyone else - he was so far and away better than anyone in his era he should have that level of video game career number. You're describing the concept of WAR. That's what it already does. Unless I'm misunderstanding you. If you're trying to do the "take Babe Ruth and put him in 2021 MLB and he'd stink" then yeah, probably, but you're now trying to measure a theoretical concept that can't be measured. You can only measure a player against his peers, but the concept of WAR is to measure them against a peer that we can then, over time, attempt to normalize relative to the state of the game. "Best" is not the same as "player who would perform the best in 2021 if you put him into a time machine in his prime and spit him out today and handed him a uniform." If you want the latter, there's no way to measure that realistically with any sort of meaningful precision. If you want the former, then WAR is a pretty good place to start. As for the part about a player playing differently in a different era, I get that, but at the same time, how can you measure an abstract concept like that? You can only guess. You're never going to be able to measure that. This is the reason the internet message board was created, of course. No, maybe I am misunderstanding how it works... so I’ll try to explain and accept if this is off. If, in a season, across the league you have say a bunch of shortstops who have .650 OPS, then a guy with a .680 is going to accumulate positive WAR. But if 3 seasons later, the average shortstop is .700, that same player, playing exactly as he was, would be negative (discounting defense for this experiment). Now, one way of looking it is “good” is measured only on context. That is, the player, playing exactly the same was good the first year but not the second. I get that. But when comparing historical figures, it feels wrong to say something like Williams was to 1951 (bWAR 7.2) what Ryan Braun was to 2011 (bWAR 7.7) — drugs notwithstanding. Again... I might be botching this... but Williams had an OPS of 1.019, but an OPS+ of 164. Braun had an OPS of .994, but an OPS+ of 166 (and I know this is everyone not just outfielders). I guess this could be read in one of two ways: first, pitching was better in Braun’s era, so his lower OPS was more impressive. Orrr.... the scale against which he was measured (his peers) were not as good, making lesser performance more valuable. I guess part of what I mean is that WAR doesn’t necessarily measure if a player is *good* — it measures if he is relatively valuable. The least bad player will accumulate the highest WAR. But this also leads to the relatively narrow range of numbers.... so Mookie’s 2018 is in spitting distance of Ruth’s 1926, when the former was a really great year and the latter is historically mind-boggling. It works, with very few exceptions, as basically a 1-10 scale for all players ever, when clearly there are season when *that year’s* ~7 is not as good as another year’s ~7.
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Post by incandenza on May 7, 2021 10:21:02 GMT -5
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the very fact that WAR is relative to era already provides the adjustment that you're talking about, no? It's how good a player was relative to a replacement-level player at the time he played. That's the very theory behind it - players get better (or in a short-term sample, perhaps worse) over time, but there's always going to be the concept of a replacement-level player, and by measuring how much better a given player is than that conceptual replacement-level player, we can compare across seasons and leagues. For example: A home run is always a home run. The concept is constant. But the way players in a given era accumulate them changes dramatically. Ruth's 714 is almost certainly always going to be the most impressive era-adjusted career home run number. And that's why it makes perfect sense that he's got 17.7 bWAR more than anyone else - he was so far and away better than anyone in his era he should have that level of video game career number. You're describing the concept of WAR. That's what it already does. Unless I'm misunderstanding you. If you're trying to do the "take Babe Ruth and put him in 2021 MLB and he'd stink" then yeah, probably, but you're now trying to measure a theoretical concept that can't be measured. You can only measure a player against his peers, but the concept of WAR is to measure them against a peer that we can then, over time, attempt to normalize relative to the state of the game. "Best" is not the same as "player who would perform the best in 2021 if you put him into a time machine in his prime and spit him out today and handed him a uniform." If you want the latter, there's no way to measure that realistically with any sort of meaningful precision. If you want the former, then WAR is a pretty good place to start. As for the part about a player playing differently in a different era, I get that, but at the same time, how can you measure an abstract concept like that? You can only guess. You're never going to be able to measure that. This is the reason the internet message board was created, of course. Take Ruth and put him in today's game and he'd hit a 100 HR. I don't think baseball is really similar to the NBA or the NFL. There is no disputing how far Ruth hit the ball. There's also the fact that baseball careers tend to be long and there is a lot of overlap between eras and long time scouts who could talk about seeing Nolan Ryan and Bob Feller. I mean do people truly think Walter Johnson wasn't throwing extremely hard? I've thought about a fantasy baseball movie where somehow today's stars would go up against Ruth and the other stars from the past. It would open with the modern guys kind of snickering at the idea of the old Babe Ruth they know from the common photos and then the young Babe steps in and hits one 650 feet and the whole bench goes, "Well Damn." Think about the talent pool he faced though. The white US population was about 95 million in 1920. Today's players are drawn from a pool of the whole US population of 330 million, plus Latin America, Japan, Korea... Babe Ruth never had to face his era's Pedro Martinez because his era's Pedro Martinez couldn't possibly have existed. (Though if he had he probably would have drilled Ruth in the ass.)
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Post by Chris Hatfield on May 7, 2021 10:21:31 GMT -5
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Post by James Dunne on May 7, 2021 10:22:47 GMT -5
Does it really feel so weird that Ryan Braun's MVP season was about in line with Ted Williams' 9th best season? There's an implication in your post like "WAR thinks Braun was better than Williams" that isn't there?
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manfred
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Post by manfred on May 7, 2021 10:26:01 GMT -5
Take Ruth and put him in today's game and he'd hit a 100 HR. I don't think baseball is really similar to the NBA or the NFL. There is no disputing how far Ruth hit the ball. There's also the fact that baseball careers tend to be long and there is a lot of overlap between eras and long time scouts who could talk about seeing Nolan Ryan and Bob Feller. I mean do people truly think Walter Johnson wasn't throwing extremely hard? I've thought about a fantasy baseball movie where somehow today's stars would go up against Ruth and the other stars from the past. It would open with the modern guys kind of snickering at the idea of the old Babe Ruth they know from the common photos and then the young Babe steps in and hits one 650 feet and the whole bench goes, "Well Damn." Think about the talent pool he faced though. The white US population was about 95 million in 1920. Today's players are drawn from a pool of the whole US population of 330 million, plus Latin America, Japan, Korea... Babe Ruth never had to face his era's Pedro Martinez because his era's Pedro Martinez couldn't possibly have existed. (Though if he had he probably would have drilled Ruth in the ass.) Agreed, but this way lies madness. Pedro didn’t take the train to cities, throw complete games most starts etc etc. My guess, and obviously it is only a guess (but it is fun to dream!) is players from ye olde would benefit more from being time-travelled to today then players today would being sent back then. Take JDM’s iPad away and put a fastball in his ear every 8th at bat (no body armor! No helmet!!), he’d have some real adjustments to make.
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manfred
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Post by manfred on May 7, 2021 10:29:37 GMT -5
Does it really feel so weird that Ryan Braun's MVP season was about in line with Ted Williams' 9th best season? There's an implication in your post like "WAR thinks Braun was better than Williams" that isn't there? WAR doesn’t think anything. But if one creates a list that says (or implies) best to worst and uses WAR as the measure, then Ryan Braun’s *season* would be listed ahead of Williams’. And I pulled those entirely arbitrarily (and didn’t look to see how much defense played a role).... so if the example is off putting, I can go back. But, yes, it *does* feel weird to say Braun’s MVP season was better than Williams’s 9th best season, when Braun could carry Ted’s jock. Add: I hope I’m being clear: my objection is narrow... it isn’t against WAR used in specific ways. It is just that using it to compare guys from different eras strikes me as a problem (so putting McGuire ahead of Ernie Banks, for example).
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Post by Chris Hatfield on May 7, 2021 10:34:04 GMT -5
Yeah, I think you aren't quite honed in on the concept. Let me try and respond to some of these in turn.
And in the scenario you describe, the same player 3 seasons later is below-average - in theory, if everyone is hitting better, he should too, right? That kind of jump in that short of a span strikes me as pretty significant and would have to be based on some kind of external thing that should apply to our theoretical shortstop as well, rather than random fluctuation of everyone else but him.
Why? This is a really weird way of putting it and a very strange example, and it only works rhetorically because you've picked a random Williams season and put it up against Bruan's best. Williams was great because 7.2 bWAR was a down season for him, whereas you're putting that against Braun's best. Williams, in the six seasons he played from 1941-1949 (because we don't have fighter pilot stats from that era) averaged 9.7 bWAR. Braun never sniffed that. I mean, in 1951 Williams only finished 13th in the MVP voting, whereas Braun won the MVP in 2011. It passes the sniff test, no?
In 1951, the AL hit .262/.342/.381. In 2011, the NL hit .253/.319/.391. I guess you were just assuming without looking that 2011 NL hitters were better?
I don't get this. It's the same thing, and I'm thinking as I respond that the problem is you might have incorrect assumptions about what the replacement-level player did over time.
You're ignoring defense. oWAR is 8.7 vs. 11.0 for those two seasons, which is closer to the split you'd expect.
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Post by James Dunne on May 7, 2021 10:42:53 GMT -5
Does it really feel so weird that Ryan Braun's MVP season was about in line with Ted Williams' 9th best season? There's an implication in your post like "WAR thinks Braun was better than Williams" that isn't there? WAR doesn’t think anything. But if one creates a list that says (or implies) best to worst and uses WAR as the measure, then Ryan Braun’s *season* would be listed ahead of Williams’. And I pulled those entirely arbitrarily (and didn’t look to see how much defense played a role).... so if the example is off putting, I can go back. But, yes, it *does* feel weird to say Braun’s MVP season was better than Williams’s 9th best season, when Braun could carry Ted’s jock. Add: I hope I’m being clear: my objection is narrow... it isn’t against WAR used in specific ways. It is just that using it to compare guys from different eras strikes me as a problem (so putting McGuire ahead of Ernie Banks, for example). B-Ref's WAR, which is far superior for career value than fangraphs, has Banks 5.5 WAR ahead of McGwire (so about 8.8% better for their careers). Banks is weird though, because he went from being a shortstop who was one of the best players alive in his 20s to a barely average first baseman at 31. He simply wasn't that good anymore after he moved off of shortstop, .258/.306/.448 with a 12.7 WAR in the last 10 years of his career. Banks' career had a more traditional arc peaking with the MVPs at 27 and 28, whereas McGwire had basically two peaks - he fell off in his late 20s, then went back to the pigeon-toed stance and, uhhh, got stronger. As far as Braun, he roided up and peaked as an MVP who was roughly as good as a third-tier Ted Williams season. Mike Greenwell had a 7.5 WAR season in 1988 where he stayed healthy and everything came together, and he never sniffed that again. It was basically as good as Henry Aaron's 10th best season. That stuff happens.
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manfred
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Post by manfred on May 7, 2021 10:56:57 GMT -5
And in the scenario you describe, the same player 3 seasons later is below-average - in theory, if everyone is hitting better, he should too, right? Why? This is a really weird way of putting it and a very strange example, and it only works rhetorically because you've picked a random Williams season and put it up against Bruan's best. Williams was great because 7.2 bWAR was a down season for him, whereas you're putting that against Braun's best. Williams, in the six seasons he played from 1941-1949 (because we don't have fighter pilot stats from that era) averaged 9.7 bWAR. Braun never sniffed that. I mean, in 1951 Williams only finished 13th in the MVP voting, whereas Braun won the MVP in 2011. It passes the sniff test, no? In 1951, the AL hit .262/.342/.381. In 2011, the NL hit .253/.319/.391. I guess you were just assuming without looking that 2011 NL hitters were better? I don't get this. It's the same thing, and I'm thinking as I respond that the problem is you might have incorrect assumptions about what the replacement-level player did over time. You're ignoring defense. oWAR is 8.7 vs. 11.0 for those two seasons, which is closer to the split you'd expect. Ok, I’m not taking great care in examples, so that might be part of the problem. But — last point — I don’t agree the least bad player *in a year* is the same as a good player *historically.* It might mean a “good” player in the present, which on one level is all that matters (I’d rather have Franchy now than Carl Yastrzemski now!). But it is less helpful in saying player x from this decade is as good/better than player y in that decade because he had higher WAR. Because the guy who is least bad now likely looks worse when the scale is not who happens to be at his position this year, but who has been in his position historically. Or, to return to my example. If a guy has his .670 OPS for a decade when the average is .650, he will collect a decent career WAR. But that doesn’t really help evaluate him if a few decades later the average is .700 and a different guy is at .690 and negative WAR. Would the former guy still be at .670 in this decade? Then his WAR is inflated (relative to negative WAR guy). Or can we assume he’d simply play up in an era when numbers are higher? But straight OPS to OPS, the negative WAR guy is actually better... he just happens to play in an an era when for some reason other guys are *even better* — but that factor doesn’t tell us much across the decades.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on May 7, 2021 11:37:20 GMT -5
Or, to return to my example. If a guy has his .670 OPS for a decade when the average is .650, he will collect a decent career WAR. But that doesn’t really help evaluate him if a few decades later the average is .700 and a different guy is at .690 and negative WAR. Would the former guy still be at .670 in this decade? Then his WAR is inflated (relative to negative WAR guy). Or can we assume he’d simply play up in an era when numbers are higher? But straight OPS to OPS, the negative WAR guy is actually better... he just happens to play in an an era when for some reason other guys are *even better* — but that factor doesn’t tell us much across the decades. Sure it does. I think you're conflating two different concepts: 1) How good a player is/value/measuring one player's career versus another's: WAR, particularly career WAR, is very useful for this. Straight comparison of OPS or some other statistic that is not adjusted to era/park/competition/etc. is going to be extremely poor for this. Your .690 hitter is indeed a worse baseball player in terms of how "good" or "valuable" he is than your .670 hitter. The former's WAR is not "inflated." It is adjusted to account for the era he played in, competition, park, etc. 2) Comparing a player's physical abilities to play the game of baseball versus another's: No statistic is going to help you with this. Measurables we don't possess (think Statcast) would help, but wouldn't be dispositive (Ruth crushing 88 regularly doesn't tell us he can't hit 95, but only that he didn't face 95). In the Braun/Williams example above, Braun's 2011 season was, in fact, better than Williams' 1951. 1951 AL hitters were better than 2011 NL hitters. That's the correct outcome. It in no way tells you what Ted Williams, put into a time machine and brought into 2011, would have hit. It doesn't pretend to tell you that because, again, no statistic can tell you that. Like, if Austin Brice got put in the time machine and went back to 1926 to face the Yankees, he's probably the best pitcher in the game. No statistic is going to help with that, but I just figure it's a fair assumption he's a much better pitcher than anything they were facing then. The 1928 1500m men's gold medal winner ran a 3:53.20. That wouldn't even qualify for the USATF meet in 2020. I mean, think about it - you're the one crowing about "but he was facing Texas and Detroit" in another thread. If that applies in a very small, current sample, why wouldn't you expand that concept when it's a sample size that matters?
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Post by redsoxfan2 on May 7, 2021 12:07:47 GMT -5
"I cheated and now people aren't nice to me." It's hard to be the victim and the criminal at the same time, stay classy Astros. Bonus points for telling Yankees fans that they hurt your feelings, I'm sure that will improve the situation. I heard Bostonians, New Yorkers and people in Philadelphia are notorious for backing off once they've learned your feelings have been hurt. Let fans have their fun. Can you imagine an NHL or NFL team doing this? I don't include NBA because I can very much imagine this.
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Post by patford on May 7, 2021 14:03:22 GMT -5
I totally don't buy that. Arguing the point is going nowhere as we'll never know. Taking care of bodies etc. is also open to question as there are now and have always been guys who were out of shape and playing well and sometimes great in MLB. Then you have the fact that many starting pitchers used to throw an ungodly number of innings without breaking down. Anyhow, like I said this could go round and round so I'm good with anyone not agreeing with you opinion.
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radiohix
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Post by radiohix on May 7, 2021 14:31:19 GMT -5
Reading all that stuff written about the Pujols debacle just makes grateful for David Ortiz! A bad bad MFer who left the game while being literally the best hitter in baseball (.315/.401/.620 for MLB leading .419 wOBA)
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Post by incandenza on May 7, 2021 14:48:01 GMT -5
Reading all that stuff written about the Pujols debacle just makes grateful for David Ortiz! A bad bad MFer who left the game while being literally the best hitter in baseball (.315/.401/.620 for MLB leading .419 wOBA) I am nothing but grateful for David Ortiz, but if he held on for another couple seasons in which he "declined" to a .370-.380 wOBA I wouldn't have minded.
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cdj
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Post by cdj on May 7, 2021 14:58:07 GMT -5
I think he would’ve kept going but his feet were cooked. Papi was truly one-of-a-kind
Pujols hasn’t had value in years, really hope he can somehow pop another 3 and get to an even 670. He will retire with more walks than strikeouts which is incredible given his prolific slugging ability
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Post by redsox04071318champs on May 7, 2021 15:07:50 GMT -5
Reading all that stuff written about the Pujols debacle just makes grateful for David Ortiz! A bad bad MFer who left the game while being literally the best hitter in baseball (.315/.401/.620 for MLB leading .419 wOBA) Keep in mind there was talk about releasing Big Papi when he was struggling mightily in 2009. He was brutal in April and May 2009 before fixing his swing (his 2008 wrist injury created a loop in his swing) and having a strong rest of the season. But then in 2010 he got off to another slow start and he was getting pinch-hit for as Lowell PH for Papi against lefties and that created a rift with Ortiz and Francona that never quite healed. Anyways, Ortiz figured things out again and finished up strong and then in 2011 after talking with Adrian Gonzalez he rediscovered LF and going the other way and he never had an issue offensively again. But there was a time when there was concern that Ortiz was cooked and they'd be faced with the unpleasant dilemna of possibly having to release him. The funny thing with Ortiz is that he aged gracefully after 2013 over the next two seasons as the power remained but his batting average declined to a respectable level, but then in his last season he terrorized pitchers with his .315 BA, 38 HR, 127 RBIs, 48 doubles, .601 SA and .420 OBP - all at age 40 during his final season. Unreal.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on May 7, 2021 15:43:58 GMT -5
I totally don't buy that. Arguing the point is going nowhere as we'll never know. Taking care of bodies etc. is also open to question as there are now and have always been guys who were out of shape and playing well and sometimes great in MLB. Then you have the fact that many starting pitchers used to throw an ungodly number of innings without breaking down. Anyhow, like I said this could go round and round so I'm good with anyone not agreeing with you opinion. I'm not saying I believe it or that I don't - I was throwing it out there. I've got no idea. Just throwing something I found out there, not trying to advance a point. But given the way we've seen the average velocity tick up even in the last 5 years though, I'm not sure why you're so dismissive in the other direction. That said, radar gun tech has improved over time as well, and typically has led to higher gun readings, so maybe that's overstated. Who knows?
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