Question for the GOAT guys
Goldenage
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in Sports Talk
If a guy scores 250 goals per year in the NHL but only plays 3 seasons due to death by car accident, and falls below Gretzky, Howe, and Ovie all time, who is hockeys greatest goal scorer ever ?
The guy who scored 250 per season, or the guys who averaged 50 per season ?
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Who is the greatest HR hitter ?
A guy who hits 80 HRs per season for 8 straight years but retires due to injury or Hank Aaron ?
Longevity has a lot to do with being the GOAT, 3 seasons is nothing compared to a guy who had years more service.
How about the guy who plays one game, scores 4 goals and then dies?
Or plays one shift, takes one shot, scores, and then gets hurt and never plays again?
GOAT?
It's a shame Bobby got injured so badly, so often. Some definite cheap shots were a part of it. The NHL still hasn't learned to do more to protect the highest skilled players from getting mugged. It's insanity, now I get to watch Ryan Reeves try to play hockey for the Wild, so other teams think twice about trying to kill Kaprizov (WOW, HE'S GOOD!). That just puts another, better player on the bench.
In my mind Orr was the most dominating player offensively AND defensively, to ever "lace them up", he just didn't play long enough to be considered the GOAT. IMO.
Lemieux is a similar story. Better all around than Gretzky, but too short of a career.
Orr was amazing!
I'm going with the guy who could score 250 goals for three seasons and the guy who cranked out 80HR's for eight seasons. Sometimes fate can be cruel and uncaring. I present Roberto Clemente and Thurmon Munson as evidence for that. Injury can be just as bad but tends to not be given the same consideration because it happens to almost all players in all sports at some time.
Bingo.
GOATs dominate their sports like no one else did. Whether 8 years or 18 years.
All right. I give. John Paciorek is far and away the GOAT.
No idea what your point is. I assume we're talking about Orr's single season point shares since that's the table you've used most often in the other thread. So Orr's top season, according to the data you've shown, is 9.5% better than the best non-Orr season. Your hypothetical baseball player is 9.6% better than Bonds' 73 HR season. Close enough to the same. But your baseball guy did it eight years in a row. Orr did it once, and Orr's third best season isn't even at a premium to Luongo's (using your chosen metric). Your hypothetical hockey plyer scored 172% more goals three years in a row than Gretzky's 92 goal season. I trust you're not going to suggest using any metric that Orr's three best seasons were 172% better than the guy in 4th place.
Look, no one denies Orr was great, but he did nothing in his short career that was so much better than anyone else has ever done that you can just ignore the effective length of his career.
Depends on how championships they win.
Joe has already extrapolated out this argument. it is ultimately a failing one. Look at greg jeffries statline in 1987: .500BA, .667 SLG 213 ops+ an all-time great season, right? it is according to the extrapolation of your logic. Jeffries had 6 at bats in 1987.
to put another way. I would imagine most general managers would rather draft the 50 goals for 17 seasons player than the 250 for 3 season player.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
I guess nobody wants the guy who only played one shift and scored on his only shot.
I just don't think you can get any better than that.🤔
Are you saying that you would accept an evaluation of stats over comparable time frames in order to provide an apples to apples comparison (at least a closer one)?
For example, say a player played 9 full seasons from 18 to 26, you would be willing to compare that to other players from 18/19 to 26/27? That would be fair?
@Goldenage said: If a guy scores 250 goals per year in the NHL but only plays 3 seasons due to death by car accident.
@craig44 said: I would imagine most general managers would rather draft the 50 goals for 17 seasons player than the 250 for 3 season player.
To make this decision a GM would need a crystal ball.
Greatest season is a far cry from greatest career
You would want a guy who was all world in every category for a few seasons as opposed to a solid 15 year career?
Idk I guess if said player won you championships over none for the Iong career guy I can see that point of view, championships don't auto GOAT status a player but it sure matters over a career being paid to help win championships
Reading your comment made me think of the Gronk-Tony Gonzalez debate that has been argued over the years. Gronk has played more than a few seasons but he's missed quite a bit of games due to injury/retirement and he's played roughly half as many regular season games as Gonzalez (270-143.)
Eric
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I find it very sad that some would hold Mario’s cancer, Gehrigs ALS, Clemente’s death, and Koufax and Orr’s injuries against them.
Injuries and disease are part of life.
I’ve been disabled for three years now.
Yet some here only favor those blessed with good health.
I find that sad.
Nothing personal but you holding Mario’s cancer against him is just plain wrong in my book.
But to each their own.
No. It's just that no one here credits them with "what might have been" accomplishments. No one has, that I've heard, ever said that if Clemente had played four more seasons he would have been better than Robinson and Aaron. The arguments for his or Gehrig's greatness don't rest solely on single season or rate stats over 1/3 to 1/2 of a career. Gehrig was the best first baseman in baseball history based on what he did, not based on what he might have done. No one considers Koufax one of the all-time best. No one says he was better than Randy Johnson you just couldn't see it because he got injured.
Despite Lemieux being 2nd all time in Goals per game, assists per game and points per game, it is rare to hear him named among the very best of all time. I mean even your idol Bowman only rates him third best forward.
You can't automatically dismiss players who had short careers (for whatever reason) but neither can you credit them with seasons they didn't have. So when you compare Orr to, say, Bourque, you can't just compare career counting stats (Bourque would win going away) or rate stats (Orr, but by a much tighter margin) but instead you have to do something for the extra ten (really thirteen) years Bourque played that Orr didn't.
One would have thought all this was obvious. It's the same reason one can't definitively say that "Three Finger" Brown was better than Koufax, but Bob Feller was.
Bourque, Bowman, I and others know the truth.
Others can’t reach our level of understanding. That’s fine. To each their own.
Aside from the Orr worship, that really is a good topic. It is the classic Peak vs Longevity debate. Its been dissected enough times though already. Its easy to get fooled though when you look at season averages of elite players who also played 20 years because their old man years brought down their peaks.
On the flip side, why does Tom Seaver LOSE credit for being great because he was able to be good for so long, and employed for so long??
Are you saying Tom Seaver would have been a better player if we kidnapped him after 1973 and his career ERA would forever sit at 2.38(better than KOUFAX!!!)?? Yes, that is exactly what you are saying.
Tom Seaver would not have been a better pitcher than Tom Seaver if he had a car accident after 1973 and his career ERA sat at 2.38 compared to the real Tom Seaver who went on to pitcher another 13 full time positive years and finished with a lifetime 2.86 ERA. Even though 2.38 is better than 2.86, it really isn't when some logic is applied here.
Your assumption that Koufax or Orr would continue to play at their peak level for another ten years is really ridiculous, even if they were healthy. Also, don't forget that players who do play a long time also play through injuries all those later years that hurt their percentages. Maybe they are a little tougher than the guys who couldn't play through them??
As for Orr, you keep saying he was the most dominant and that he was so much faster than everyone else on the ice. YOU also say that championships are what determines greatness.
Orr only has two championships. If he was as dominant as you say, as dominant as the faulty +- stat says, and untouchably faster than everyone else on the ice....shouldn't that have translated to more than two championships?
Yes but Orr and others have said and know the Bruins partied too much to be a dynasty.
My thoughts on Seaver are along the line of him being the greatest modern day pitcher. If not the best, certainly one of the best.
No one seems to see that Koufax was a lousy pitcher for 1/2 of his career. Yes his last few years were outstanding, but he did have a short career and half of it was BAD.
Orr's career was just to short to say he was better than my choice, Gordie Howe who played until he was 51 and was top 3 in points 22 times.
I saw a bit of Orr and he was unbelievable.
Championships are a team accomplishment and shouldn't factor in these comparisons imo.
A> @Goldenage said:
That didn't hurt Ruth, Mantle, and their teams. Even so, if that is your reason, then that is part of his skill set, so it stands to reason, if he was as dominant as you say, then two championships is quite lacking.
Other than that, I will say it again for the thousandth time, you cannot compare rate stats of a player who only played ten years to someone who plated 22. It doesn't work.
Also, ALL stats in football, basketball, and Hockey have a team orientation factor to them. There is simply no way around that fact. When people say "statistics lie" it is in this realm where that is true.
Baseball hitting is the only realm that can be isolated to the individual players' ability to arrive to a valid enough statistical conclusion. Of course, that is when using the correct stats....and this is when statistics "reveal the liars."
Baseball pitching is the second most valid realm.
Statistical measurements of baseball fielding are less valid than measuring players in football, basketball, and hockey with statistics. The pitcher is 90% of the defense. The pitcher is the commodity.
When you measurements such as RBI then you introduce the team element to the case. When you use championships to evaluate the individual baseball player then you lose all validity when measuring that individual player. It then becomes an evaluation of luck and the team.
I dont think anyone would hold it against them personally, but professionally it has to be figured into the equation. some players like Ryan, Howe, Clemens, Brady are, for some reason, are built physically for the long haul. others, like orr, puckett, mattingly and many others are not. whether it is luck of the genetic draw, lack of conditioning, or bad luck. short careers have to be considered, and go in the negative column when comparing players.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
this right here. 100% correct
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Perhaps Orr was the greatest thing on skates in the history of Hockey. at least up until the age of 26 or 27. then, he had no value. At all. you have to figure everything after that age in as a zero. other players: Gretzky, Lemieux, Howe, etc. all had significant value that Orr cannot match because he was injury prone.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
From 1950-1954 Gordie Howe led his league in PTS four times while also playing hard nosed defense, and they won FOUR titles in that stretch.
How is that any less dominant than Orr's prime??
Then Howe still played in the NHL at age 40, 41, 42, and 51 and combined for 269 PTS during those years, and a +- of 74 in those seasons, even though that stat is flawed and wasn't even kept during Howe's prime.
Goldenage agreed this would be a fair assessment. The stats below are not designed to argue the GOAT. The purpose is to show that the argument being made that Orr had no statistical equal in points per game as a defensemen and, particularly, was much further above the next defenseman than any other two players in a GOAT discussion.
example: "Wilt is right there behind Orr in per game numbers by position, except MJ scored as many points as Wilt per game, but Jabbar was well below Wilt.
Not as much as Coffey (#2) was behind Orr in points per game."
Again, this is not to argue Coffey was on the same level as Orr. This is strictly isolated to the comparison of Orr's PPG in his prime (9 seasons from age 18 to 26 with 621 games played and 870 points) to the next guy on the list, Coffey (9 seasons from age 19 to 27 with 653 games played and 849 points).
While there are many legitimate arguments for Orr as GOAT, if you're evaluating equivalent portions of their careers, the points per game argument is not a strong one. I've included two other guys in the graphs for comparison.
The first chart is the progression of their cumulative points per game through their first nine seasons. Technically, Gretzky "peaked" after his seventh season. I did swap out Mario's age 25 season (26 GP/45 pts) for his age 30 season (70 GP/151 pts) to make his stats look better. No one saw an increase beyond year 9.
I won't rehash it in full again here but Orr's rate stars are wildly skewed by his playing against really, really bad expansion teams. Against established teams, his numbers were far more mortal, including less than a point per game against Montreal & Chicago.
And length of careers absolutely matters. If it didn't, then Len Bias was the greatest NBA player ever.
You have to factor in the league scoring environment. For instance, mid 1990's basketball was a defensive era with less scoring compared to 1982 and other eras.
Same for other sports too, including Gretky's prime scoring years compared to Gordie Howe's where it wasn't as easy to score.
I have looked at that. I have compared the top five Howe seasons (5 Art Ross, 4 Harts) to Gretzky (5 Art Ross, 5 Harts). Howe averaged 19% more points over the 2nd leading scorer in those seasons, while Gretzky averaged 57% more points than the 2nd leading scorer (i.e., if the 2nd leading scorer had 100 points, Howe would have 119 and Gretzky 157).
All you can do is evaluate the relative. The game has evolved so much. Watch a bunch of games on YouTube from the 60's and 70's and you will see. Watch a 1960's Maple Leafs game, the Summit Series, 76 Canada Cup, 87 Canada Cup, and the 96 World Cup and today's game. You see the progression.
As a Flyers' fan, I watch game 6 from 74 every once in a while and either game 6 (better outcome) or game 7 from 87 and the change is more than you would expect over a 13 year period.
Over the last 25 years, the changes have been less dramatic - continued systems improvement, improvement in bottom six skill level, goaltender size and the emphasis on shot blocking. The previous 25 pretty much everything increased dramatically: athleticism (size, speed and skill), goaltender technique and equipment, systems and roster depth.
Edit: I would add that scoring evolved in the NHL. The introduction of the goalie mask probably made a big difference. Players slowly began to feel more comfortable shooting the puck high and with more force. Expansion opened the floodgates. Talent began to equalize with the growth of US talent along with the influx of Europeans. Coaching systems improved, then goaltender technique, equipment and size. The increasing size of players combined with systems like the trap began to snap things back in the other direction and the game has tightened up.
At least that's my opinion on things.
So Orr was great because the Bruins partied too much?
This is simply not true. It takes more effort to quantify defense as things like fielding average and gold gloves are effectively meaningless, but defense is very important. Otherwise guys like Mark Belanger would never have made the major leagues and no way would Brooks Robinson or Ozzie Smith have gotten 2500 games.
I mean Carney Lansford, Toby Harrah, and Darrell Evans are each way more than 10% better offensively than Brooks Robinson, but there is no doubt, I hope, who is the better player.
Scotty Bowman’s simple thesis on hockey.
His best players will :
Thus why he and Toe Blake invented the plus/minus.
Bobby Orr was THE GREATEST by a landslide statistically at Preventing and Producing.
Gordie was second.
You’ll be disappointed if you compare Orr’s per season plus minus to other greats. He’s a +0.9 per game. Gretzky is a + 0.35 per game.
Sorry Wayne. You didn’t dominate all three zones the way Bobby did.
From 1991 to 1999 Gretzky was a very bad hockey player in all three zones.
If you want to praise his point totals then you have to criticize his horrible defensive efforts.
Even compared in their prime Orr still wins. Even though
Worst goalies ever in the NHL from 1980-1985. Highest scoring phase in league history.
Gretzky played on a team that won a Cup without him in 1988 when they were much older. That’s how good that team was and how poor the league was.
Orr’s point shares in his prime blow away Gretzky. 3 points greater for both best seasons. See any top two goalies with a 3 point difference ?
Orr is and was untouchable
I love your passion for hockey
We just have to agree to disagree
Gretzky’s 3 best point share seasons are blown away by Orr’s 3 best.
Gretzky’s next two greatest seasons are also defeated by Orr.
Orr is easily the GOAT
what were Orr's PS for his age 31 season? how about 32? or 36? or 33?
all the other greats Orr is being compared to produced after age 30. Bobby stopped producing, for all intents and purposes, after age 27.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
No.
I compared Orr’s best PS seasons during his prime to Gretzky’s five best during his prime.
Orr is the clear winner in 1v1
2v2 3v3 4v4 and 5v5 best.
He actually blows him away in all five prime year seasons.
The vast majority of those defensive stars you see statistically are because they simply got more balls hit their way than their league mates did. Period. 90% of ground balls and fly balls are of the routine variety. It is just a matter of who gets more hit to them that will produce the 'best' fielding numbers.
Otherwise, all a team would have to do is sign the best defensive players at each position in the league(based on the stats), and their team league leading ERA was 3.40....you really think adding those defenders would bring the team ERA down to 2.19?
The pitcher is 90% of the defense. The pitcher is the commodity. Obviously you need players to field behind them. The positions can't be empty and the fielders do need to be capable of fielding that routine play.
However, there enough high school players across the country that can field routine MLB fly balls. Ground balls a little tougher, but still plenty who can.
It is much harder to find a pitcher that can consistently produce weak contact against MLB caliber hitters to produce those routine ground balls.
The pitcher is the commodity.
That still leaves 10% for the Belangers of the world to be better than their league mates, but nothing like those defensive numbers show there being such a great disparity. The Orioles pitching staff deserves the lions share of the credit for feeding Belanger routine ground balls of which every other MLB caliber shortstop would also field.
Even Bill Mazeroski's replacements were fielding just as good in his stead when he was out, and he is considered the 'greatest' defensive player every statistically. Mazeroski may still be the best ever fielding, but his advantage of 250 defensive runs over his leaguemates is nowhere near as valid as a hitter that puts up a difference of 250 hitting runs over his league mates.
Very informative hockey man there. Well said.
I defer to posts like this about hockey as you are more informed about it than I am.
@dallasactuary explained the pitfalls of that stat better than I can, so if he wants to explain that again, that would be great. However, there is an obvious team dependence to that stat, so while it does lend some evidence it does not drive the point home to the degree you are making it out to be.
Furthermore, the biggest drawback to that stat is that it was not used for players like Gordie Howe when they were in their prime. It is a complete unknown, so to use it as definitive as you are for proclaiming, "best ever" is not accurate.
Gordie Howe was 51 years old playing in the NHL and he had a +- of 9 in part time play that year.
My favorite stat was that in 1977-78 Gordie Howe at the age of 49 had a +- of 46 in the WHA ....in the following year in the WHA Wayne Gretzky had a +- of only 20.
There's 11 other players on the ice affecting your +/-.
Your team has the best goalie in the league (or worst) it makes you a better(or worse) player? No, it does not.
How about if you are the best player on the ice, stuck with a couple of average offensive but good defensive players and your line goes against the other teams top line game after game. You are going to look bad.
How about an average player (see Ryan Hartman) who gets put between two dynamic scorers, suddenly he's the BEST (according to +/-) player on the team. He is not.
+/- is an absolutely worthless number to use to compare players. In the above mentioned Howe/Gretzky example do you really think Howe at 49 was more than twice the player Gretzky was the following year?
The first thing I noticed when looking at +/- was a guy could go from+20 one year to -20 the next while playing the same number of games and scoring a similar number of points. Immediately I knew this was a bad stat. The more I looked at it, the worse it became.
In 1990-91 Marty McSorley was the best player in the NHL?
that is only 5 seasons. 5 seasons does not a career make. at least not one that can be from a player being considered for GOAT status.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
I agree with this 1000%.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
While I mostly agree with 1948's overall point, I do agree that the statement that the pitcher is 90% of the defense is simply not true. Pitching is certainly the majority of the defense, and I could probably be convinced that it's as much as 75% of it, but it's not 90%.
For reasons that I've gone through before, and which 1948 also addresses here - and this is 1948's larger point - the defensive statistics on bb-ref - WAR and its sub-categories - are also simply not true. Things that affect the number of putouts and assists include number of strikeouts, fly balls vs. ground balls, LHP vs. RHP, number of runners on base, and others. WAR, or Zone Runs, etc., don't account for these things, and can move around randomly from one season to the next. Great defensive ability also affects WAR, etc., but there is no way to know whether a high (or low) defensive WAR for any given player is reflecting great (or poor) defensive ability, or other things completely out of the defender's control.
Regarding NHL +/-, it's similar to MLB defensive stats in some ways. If a player is +40 or -40, then sure, there's a fair chance that the player is very good or very bad. But if one player is +10 and another is -10, that's extremely weak evidence that the first player is better than the second player. On a team with a terrible goalie, every player, if they play regularly, will be minus for the season. Put me in goal and Wayne Gretzky would be minus year in and year out. The one relatively useful way to use +/- is within a team within a season. If one Red Wing forward is +10 in 2007 and another Red Wing forward is -10 in 2007, that's evidence (still far from proof) that forward 1 is better than forward 2. Those two players had the same goalies and the same defensemen (for the most part), so the comparison is close to apples to apples. But, a plus or minus is not generally awarded on special teams; only short-handed goals result in +/-. So if one player plays on power play but not penalty kill, he can never receive a plus, but can receive a minus. A player who plays only on penalty kill but not on power play can receive only a plus, never a minus. Bottom line, to use +/- to compare a center in 1968 to a center in 2018 is probably useless, unless the gap between them is enormous. But if the +/- gap is enormous, surely the other stats already reflected the difference in their abilities.
I get the feeling as though you don't understand that GOAT discussions are that of opinion and have no subjectivity in them. Then you cherry pick stuff you like and ignore all counterarguments. Then you also throw in other opinions as facts for which there is no way to support them one way or another.
I get it that you were a child growing up in Boston when Orr came along. I also understand that there are very strong arguments for Orr as the GOAT. For anyone saying that Orr is the GOAT, I am not arguing they are wrong. But that is not what you are arguing. You are arguing that Orr is head and shoulders above everyone else and you and Scotty Bowman are the only ones with enough knowledge to see it and everyone else is stupid.
Different people have different criteria. The 1998 Hockey News book used quite a distinguished panel of experts and Gretzky came ahead of Orr despite all of those post age 31 seasons (and post Suter hit - note that Gretzky only started having "-" seasons in 91-92) where he had clearly lost a step and was probably slotted too high in the line-up for his age. He was still an overall "+" player, just not at even strength. Were they right? Maybe, maybe not. It is debatable. You seem to think it is not. (Also, you once again compare Gretzky's full career +/- per game to Orr rather than the equivalent time frame - that is arguably lazy and/or dishonest. ALL players slow down with age and are only bolstered by some outside impact, such as rapid talent dilution via expansion or a dramatic change in environment or rules).
Point shares may be the end all and be all of statistics. It may not. I haven't looked at it close enough to determine whether there are any biases in its calculation that would favor, say, the amount of time spent on the ice. I do know that the inputs that go into point shares change from era to era based upon new data that gets tracked. Consequently, the way that the point shares were calculated for Orr are a bit different than for Gretzky/Lemieux and different still for Crosby/McDavid. The goal is to have them pretty much equalized, but it is hard to know which inputs or changes have the most impact. FYI, for the same 9 year period reviewed above (i.e. full Orr seasons), Orr's cumulative point shares are 144.0 compared to Gretzky's 151.20 and through age 30 (Orr's entire career), they're 151.0 and 191.50, respectively.
I am NOT trying to change your mind. Just to acknowledge the opinion that Gretzky or Lemieux or Howe is the GOAT is legitimate.
With regard to fielding in baseball, I don't think there will ever be enough statistical data to come up with anything definitive.
1) One can only field balls that are hit to them; and
2) Not all balls hit to them are equal.
Say you have two shortstops. Player A may have a better arm and plays a bit deeper than Player B. Consequently, if the circumstances were IDENTICAL, Player A might get to a few more balls than Player B. Of course, there is nothing identical, so that perception would most likely be left up to the eye test.
Similarly, say both players are like Player A. Again, circumstances are not identical. A ball hit 10 feet to a player's right with an exit velocity of 85 mph is different than one at 105 mph. The first may get fielded while the 2nd goes through. How do you measure that?
Ironically, fielding percentages and Gold Gloves (when the writers aren't lazy and actually put some though into it) may be the best barometers. Fielding percentage takes all of the chances (assists and putouts) that a player was able to make successfully plus all the chances that were deemed playable in which they failed. The Gold Glove Award should then compensate for the eye test of whether Player A had better range and/or was able to complete more difficult plays.
Total chances may be an indication of range, but it may not be. There are games where a fielder, based upon circumstances, get a ton of chances and others where they could stare at their navel for nine innings.
All I can definitively say is I know when a guy sucks.