Actually, Joestalin should be buying up Tommy Bond rookies. Those would actually be a good buy
Winpitcher, I have looked at this stuff from every possible angle, as have others. You are contending it with ridiculous comments or statements that have no backing or merit. You have disregard facts, and the most logical outcomes.
O.K. Tommy Bond played vs. HIS competition, but when you measure vs. his peers, there are still way more pitchers from the 1800's who would be ranked higher than pitchers from 1970's-1980's. Those are all measured vs. their peers already in ERA+. Either the mothers milk is the answer, or the stiffness of the competition as I have laid out with FACTS of population and number of players used! You seem to be on the side of the mothers milk by your responses. Remember, they are all measured against their league aveage player and the 1880's pitchers STILL have a big ede over the 70's-80's pitchers.
Another experiment like the little league field home runs. Go to the local 10 team high school conference, measure the best players vs. the conference average. Now put the 4 ocal Junior High teams into the conference. See if the best high school players stats go up relative to the conference average with the new teams, as opposed to relative to the conference aveage before those new teams joined.
Johnny Jones will outdistance the conference average to a greater degree now because the talent pool was thinned. Johnny Jones's older brother Billy is mad now because his little brother broke his records, and was now 15% better than the average conference player compared to when BIlly played! That is OPS(breaking records) and OPS+ relative to average player.
O.K. Tommy Bond played vs. HIS competition, but when you measure vs. his peers, there are still way more pitchers from the 1800's who would be ranked higher than pitchers from 1970's-1980's
ranked higher? how so? they faced different batters!!
Winpitcher, facts like those used in baseball analysis provide the closest answer to the truth there is. That is what prevents somebody saying that Tommy Bonds was better than any pitcher today. That is what prevents somebody from saying Randy Ready would have hit 50 home runs in 1930. Do we know for sure if he would have? Well no. He may have, and may not have. But with a good study with strong evidence and such you can get pretty close to the truth.
Baseball actually lends itself VERY well to mathematical and statistical studies. There is STRONG, VERY STRONG conclusiosn to be made by all of these like studies. Everytime somebody doesn't agree with facts, or stats ask them why they think Rafael Palmeiro is better than Neifi Perez. They will answer with STATS, INCLUDING YOU!
That last line about stats gets the non stat believers every time. I always find it amusing how people, including WINPITCHER, has made comments like "YOU CAN"T ARGUE WITH THE NUMBERS", then when strong evidence is presented he says he doesn't believe in stat hogwash etc...
I'm not trying to win. I just love the two faces of human beings, and that is why I engage in these debates. One face says, "You can't argue with the numbers."...referring to their historcial and well known value and content. Then the other face says "I don't believe in this stat hogwash"...because it doesn't jive with their PERCEPTION despite overwhelming evidence.
It can't be both. If one doesn't belive in numbers and evidence, then players should be judged like ice skaters, on how pretty Kevin Maas's swing was compared to Piazza. I would take my son to a game and say see, Maas has a nice swing, Piazza doesn't look as pretty. My son would ask, why are all those numbers under HR for Piazza? What does .210 mean for Maas? I would say, "Oh son, those numbers can be manipulated any way you want. They don't mean much."
Again you twist....I beleive in stats....not the ones that you so eloqunetly try to ram down peoples throats. basic stats yes....stats of how many persons born in 1960 that drank moms milk from her left teet I dont.
you have your opinion i have mine....its no big deal
I just say that you can't compare what guys did 50 years ago to what they do now. YET ALL THE WHILE THE GAME HAS STAYED THE SAME! i have no idea how to get my point across to you.. no matter what I say you go off on another tangent.
Not sure how millions of more men spread over four less teams isn't strong. This isn't 50 years ago, it is a difference of 15 years in those eras, and guys have experienced both eras. Everything is all laid out from the population, to the leaderboards and the ease of dominating the game now. There is soo much to go into this that this is only the beginning.
The problem is that I am taking a strong method of evaluating players, OPS+, and expanding it to be even closer to the truth, and you aren't even onto the OPS+ step yet. You are still in the infancy of statistical baseball analysis, and that isn't an insult. There is a gap of stuff that I have covered already that most fans have not, nor even want to. I am taking an advanced measurement and advancing it further.
Some people would rather just say, Randy Ready would have hit 50 home runs in 1923, and leave it open. That isn't good enough. To some maybe. Of course the farther apart in years you get it gets tougher. But the stuff you are arguing against is very close in years, and there are reasons for the domination of the leaderboards fromt he seasons in this era, when just a scan 10-15 years ago, those boards couldn't be cracked, and many of the same players were in both periods!
The evidence is tough to dispute, and just by being in denial doesn't dispute it.
Or Maybe you are Carl Everrett....he belives so strongly in the bible that he believes that dinosaurs never existed(because it predates the creation of living things according to the bible etc..) and that the bones were put there by people. This is NOT a lie either! How can you argue against that?
If you want to get up to speed on the advanced measurements, then I will talk more about the more in depth ones. You can't build a house without the first floor.
are still in the infancy of statistical baseball analysis, and that isn't an insult.
i agree and I am cuz baseball is a simple game and why things happen or don't happen need not be explained (to me) in the in depth way you prefer.
i bet many of my answers were in agreement with yours yet were not expalined in a way that you would prefer.
in any event you have your opinions as to why things happen in baseball and I have mine.
no biggie
I do though find your posts most interesting and have said so on many occasions I just don't feel the need to delve into stats as strongly as you do.. in some cases your statistical anaylisis could be wrong. just as it could in many cases be right.
Not sure how millions of more men spread over four less teams isn't strong.
Jeese I thought that is what i was saying all along?
there are more people now then before that baseball chooses from...I think that is what I said.
originally this started when i stated that between 1900 and 1950 only white american males and cubans etc were chosen to play. I then went on and stated that today just about anyone can be chosen from anywhere. that then opened up statistical questions ranging from different ers's that allowed era's to overlap etc. my statemnet was a simple one and it rings true we choose from a wider pool today then we did 100 years ago. so if that is the case we must have better players. my statement did not take into account at the time training programs etc. that all came out later on. what randy ready would do in 1923 is of no consequence to what i was trying to say.
Ask yourself this....what if baseball added SIX TEAMS next year? What do you think would happen?
Do you think that Pedro would now have an easier time to outdistance the league ERA now that 30 extra starters are pressed into duty?
Would that make Pedro a better pitcher than from the previous season if he outdistnaced the league ERA by an extra 15% than his previous year? Does it matter that those 30 guys would be getting shelled often? Maybe one or two may emerge as good, but don't you think if they were good enough already that they would have beaten a guy out in Spring Training? Or advanced already through the minors?
What if baseball cut down to 20 teams? What do you think would happen?
Do you think Manny Ramirez would be able to dominate the league OPS as much as he does now??
Or do you think that since only the best hitters are left that he only gets to compete against the best of the best , TOP GUN so to speak, that he won't be able to distance himself from the average to such an extent as the previous year? Would that make him a LESSER player than the previous year??
Do you also think that since only the best pitchers are left that the plain OPS number would be very supressed because now there are no more fifth starters, and half the fourth starters are gone too? So no more easy guys to hit from. Does that make them a lesser player from a year ago when they got to pick on the scrubs??
Those are the basic scenarios that have already occured, and we see the results as you would expect.
How can you sit there and say the game has stayed the game over the last 50 years?
Yes, the basic rules have stayed the same, but tell me, how many pitching specialists were there in even say in 1975?
A reliever in the 70s and 80s worked anywhere from 2-3 innings, now you have your 7th innning guy, 8th inning guy, and closer. How is that not more pitchers?
What about league ERA? Why has that climbed steadily? Are you going to attribute it solely to the hitters getting better?
What about stolen bases? Why is that part of the game barely even touched any more?
If you are saying the game has stayed the same, well I don't know what baseball you are watching, because it's a vastly different animal than it was, even as soon as 15 years ago, let alone 50!
Doesn't it bother you a little when people over emphasize Ruth and they say "HE hit more homers than any single team did." They say it as if he would do the same thing in 1984. Yet in order to accomplish that he would have to hit close to 200 homers that year. Some people still say, well that is still measuring against his peers, and he outhit his peers to the degree of beating every team in home runs.
But logic dictates that something else is at work, and there is NO WAY that would happen in 1984, because he would need around 200 home runs. In this case, the style of hitting is at work AND the level of compeitition. There just weren't as many baseball playing age men around then as there were in 1984(which evened out the lesser amount of teams). But Then there were no minorities at all. Just think of Mike Schmidt.
What if 1981 occured over again, but this time every minority player got banned from baseball, and the available men available per team dropped by 12,000 per team? How much easier would it be for Schmidt with No Reggie, Murray, Rice, Winfield, etc...He wouldn't have to contend with those guys. Just look how much easier it would be for him to dominate! I take the analysis a step further than normal to figure stuff like that out.
As for this era, the problem was that the available baseball playing population was declining sharply and they chose to expand teams TWICE. Yes, there were more latin players, but African American drops equaled that out. So again, imagine Mike Schmidt. What if 1981 happened all over again and he, like Mark McGwire, got to experience four extra teams AND 10% of the league also got wiped out by a plague(that would equal out the difference in population). God, how much easier would it have been for him to just shine above his peers like McGwire.
This is just like the hypothetical example in the post above, but in reality.
Guys like Schmidt get shafted. Babe Ruth wasn't that much better. My brother always said that "the stars of any era could play in ANY era and be a star again." How true that is. Star players are born with this ability. The only problem is that the current method of analysis doesn't do a good job to show it, even the best methods. How do I know? Well, the current methods have the best players only residing from this era and pre war, and from common sense. It's like the rest of the players forgot how to play, and with "the more thing changes, the more they stay the same" it actually lends good to this because it allows for cross era comparisons to be done in baseball.
It would be one feat of irony if during the time that the most men were ever born(when they came of age), produced the absolute least amount of good players, considering that they also came from the time when baseball was played most often by children than in any other time period in history. Go to your local baseball field during the day tomorrow. Tell me how many kids are playing baseball. In the 60's-70's kids had to get up at breakfast to beat the locals to the field so they could play on it. SO these kids, from the largest ever population in the U.S., who played every day, all of a sudden can't produce as many great players as 1889? Common sense alone dictates this. The studies I have shown prove it as best as possible as it can be proven.
Axtell..........Forget it Im tired of you twisting everything I say to suit your needs.
Skin..great post, however your Ruth analogy: The people I know that know that Ruth out hit teams during when he played do not think that just cuz he did it them means he would do it now.
This whole thread has gone from tangent to tangent to tangent.
I stand behind my basic premise which was simply that since jackie Robinson mlb has chose from a pool that was larger, vastly larger then it did before jackie robinson.
please no more tangents.
My basic premise is simply what i stated above to a question regarding todays players, and pitchers.
no need to go into any other era or possible scenarios.
for good measure, and i stated this earlier, Andruw Jones is a perfect example of my reasoning. he is black and from Curaso <sp> for god sakes. how many players like him played in the big leagues pre 48? NONE
Thanks for the debate. I have learned alot from your posts.
Comments
Winpitcher, I have looked at this stuff from every possible angle, as have others. You are contending it with ridiculous comments or statements that have no backing or merit. You have disregard facts, and the most logical outcomes.
O.K. Tommy Bond played vs. HIS competition, but when you measure vs. his peers, there are still way more pitchers from the 1800's who would be ranked higher than pitchers from 1970's-1980's. Those are all measured vs. their peers already in ERA+. Either the mothers milk is the answer, or the stiffness of the competition as I have laid out with FACTS of population and number of players used! You seem to be on the side of the mothers milk by your responses. Remember, they are all measured against their league aveage player and the 1880's pitchers STILL have a big ede over the 70's-80's pitchers.
Another experiment like the little league field home runs. Go to the local 10 team high school conference, measure the best players vs. the conference average. Now put the 4 ocal Junior High teams into the conference. See if the best high school players stats go up relative to the conference average with the new teams, as opposed to relative to the conference aveage before those new teams joined.
Johnny Jones will outdistance the conference average to a greater degree now because the talent pool was thinned. Johnny Jones's older brother Billy is mad now because his little brother broke his records, and was now 15% better than the average conference player compared to when BIlly played! That is OPS(breaking records) and OPS+ relative to average player.
I'm not going to disagree with 2+2 equals four.
wow that is great to know!
O.K. Tommy Bond played vs. HIS competition, but when you measure vs. his peers, there are still way more pitchers from the 1800's who would be ranked higher than pitchers from 1970's-1980's
ranked higher? how so? they faced different batters!!
Baseball actually lends itself VERY well to mathematical and statistical studies. There is STRONG, VERY STRONG conclusiosn to be made by all of these like studies. Everytime somebody doesn't agree with facts, or stats ask them why they think Rafael Palmeiro is better than Neifi Perez. They will answer with STATS, INCLUDING YOU!
ok?
ciao
I'm not trying to win. I just love the two faces of human beings, and that is why I engage in these debates. One face says, "You can't argue with the numbers."...referring to their historcial and well known value and content. Then the other face says "I don't believe in this stat hogwash"...because it doesn't jive with their PERCEPTION despite overwhelming evidence.
It can't be both. If one doesn't belive in numbers and evidence, then players should be judged like ice skaters, on how pretty Kevin Maas's swing was compared to Piazza. I would take my son to a game and say see, Maas has a nice swing, Piazza doesn't look as pretty. My son would ask, why are all those numbers under HR for Piazza? What does .210 mean for Maas? I would say, "Oh son, those numbers can be manipulated any way you want. They don't mean much."
you have your opinion i have mine....its no big deal
I just say that you can't compare what guys did 50 years ago to what they do now. YET ALL THE WHILE THE GAME HAS STAYED THE SAME! i have no idea how to get my point across to you.. no matter what I say you go off on another tangent.
Sd
in your opinion! not in mine! is that so hard to digest? or do you have to win? if so you win!
SD
The problem is that I am taking a strong method of evaluating players, OPS+, and expanding it to be even closer to the truth, and you aren't even onto the OPS+ step yet. You are still in the infancy of statistical baseball analysis, and that isn't an insult. There is a gap of stuff that I have covered already that most fans have not, nor even want to. I am taking an advanced measurement and advancing it further.
Some people would rather just say, Randy Ready would have hit 50 home runs in 1923, and leave it open. That isn't good enough. To some maybe. Of course the farther apart in years you get it gets tougher. But the stuff you are arguing against is very close in years, and there are reasons for the domination of the leaderboards fromt he seasons in this era, when just a scan 10-15 years ago, those boards couldn't be cracked, and many of the same players were in both periods!
The evidence is tough to dispute, and just by being in denial doesn't dispute it.
Or Maybe you are Carl Everrett....he belives so strongly in the bible that he believes that dinosaurs never existed(because it predates the creation of living things according to the bible etc..) and that the bones were put there by people. This is NOT a lie either! How can you argue against that?
If you want to get up to speed on the advanced measurements, then I will talk more about the more in depth ones. You can't build a house without the first floor.
i agree and I am cuz baseball is a simple game and why things happen or don't happen need not be explained (to me) in the in depth way you prefer.
i bet many of my answers were in agreement with yours yet were not expalined in a way that you would prefer.
in any event you have your opinions as to why things happen in baseball and I have mine.
no biggie
I do though find your posts most interesting and have said so on many occasions I just don't feel the need to delve into stats as strongly as you do.. in some cases your statistical anaylisis could be wrong. just as it could in many cases be right.
Not sure how millions of more men spread over four less teams
isn't strong.
Jeese I thought that is what i was saying all along?
there are more people now then before that baseball chooses from...I think that is what I said.
originally this started when i stated that between 1900 and 1950 only white american males and cubans etc were chosen to play. I then went on and stated that today just about anyone can be chosen from anywhere. that then opened up statistical questions ranging from different ers's that allowed era's to overlap etc. my statemnet was a simple one and it rings true we choose from a wider pool today then we did 100 years ago. so if that is the case we must have better players. my statement did not take into account at the time training programs etc. that all came out later on. what randy ready would do in 1923 is of no consequence to what i was trying to say.
sd
Do you think that Pedro would now have an easier time to outdistance the league ERA now that 30 extra starters are pressed into duty?
Would that make Pedro a better pitcher than from the previous season if he outdistnaced the league ERA by an extra 15% than his previous year? Does it matter that those 30 guys would be getting shelled often? Maybe one or two may emerge as good, but don't you think if they were good enough already that they would have beaten a guy out in Spring Training? Or advanced already through the minors?
What if baseball cut down to 20 teams? What do you think would happen?
Do you think Manny Ramirez would be able to dominate the league OPS as much as he does now??
Or do you think that since only the best hitters are left that he only gets to compete against the best of the best , TOP GUN so to speak, that he won't be able to distance himself from the average to such an extent as the previous year? Would that make him a LESSER player than the previous year??
Do you also think that since only the best pitchers are left that the plain OPS number would be very supressed because now there are no more fifth starters, and half the fourth starters are gone too? So no more easy guys to hit from. Does that make them a lesser player from a year ago when they got to pick on the scrubs??
Those are the basic scenarios that have already occured, and we see the results as you would expect.
Yes, the basic rules have stayed the same, but tell me, how many pitching specialists were there in even say in 1975?
A reliever in the 70s and 80s worked anywhere from 2-3 innings, now you have your 7th innning guy, 8th inning guy, and closer. How is that not more pitchers?
What about league ERA? Why has that climbed steadily? Are you going to attribute it solely to the hitters getting better?
What about stolen bases? Why is that part of the game barely even touched any more?
If you are saying the game has stayed the same, well I don't know what baseball you are watching, because it's a vastly different animal than it was, even as soon as 15 years ago, let alone 50!
But logic dictates that something else is at work, and there is NO WAY that would happen in 1984, because he would need around 200 home runs. In this case, the style of hitting is at work AND the level of compeitition. There just weren't as many baseball playing age men around then as there were in 1984(which evened out the lesser amount of teams). But Then there were no minorities at all. Just think of Mike Schmidt.
What if 1981 occured over again, but this time every minority player got banned from baseball, and the available men available per team dropped by 12,000 per team? How much easier would it be for Schmidt with No Reggie, Murray, Rice, Winfield, etc...He wouldn't have to contend with those guys. Just look how much easier it would be for him to dominate! I take the analysis a step further than normal to figure stuff like that out.
As for this era, the problem was that the available baseball playing population was declining sharply and they chose to expand teams TWICE. Yes, there were more latin players, but African American drops equaled that out. So again, imagine Mike Schmidt. What if 1981 happened all over again and he, like Mark McGwire, got to experience four extra teams AND 10% of the league also got wiped out by a plague(that would equal out the difference in population). God, how much easier would it have been for him to just shine above his peers like McGwire.
This is just like the hypothetical example in the post above, but in reality.
Guys like Schmidt get shafted. Babe Ruth wasn't that much better. My brother always said that "the stars of any era could play in ANY era and be a star again." How true that is. Star players are born with this ability. The only problem is that the current method of analysis doesn't do a good job to show it, even the best methods. How do I know? Well, the current methods have the best players only residing from this era and pre war, and from common sense. It's like the rest of the players forgot how to play, and with "the more thing changes, the more they stay the same" it actually lends good to this because it allows for cross era comparisons to be done in baseball.
It would be one feat of irony if during the time that the most men were ever born(when they came of age), produced the absolute least amount of good players, considering that they also came from the time when baseball was played most often by children than in any other time period in history. Go to your local baseball field during the day tomorrow. Tell me how many kids are playing baseball. In the 60's-70's kids had to get up at breakfast to beat the locals to the field so they could play on it. SO these kids, from the largest ever population in the U.S., who played every day, all of a sudden can't produce as many great players as 1889? Common sense alone dictates this. The studies I have shown prove it as best as possible as it can be proven.
Skin..great post, however your Ruth analogy: The people I know that know that Ruth out hit teams during when he played do not think that just cuz he did it them means he would do it now.
This whole thread has gone from tangent to tangent to tangent.
I stand behind my basic premise which was simply that since jackie Robinson mlb has chose from a pool that was larger, vastly larger then it did before jackie robinson.
please no more tangents.
My basic premise is simply what i stated above to a question regarding todays players, and pitchers.
no need to go into any other era or possible scenarios.
for good measure, and i stated this earlier, Andruw Jones is a perfect example of my reasoning. he is black and from Curaso <sp> for god sakes. how many players like him played in the big leagues pre 48? NONE
Thanks for the debate. I have learned alot from your posts.
SD