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What makes a player "dominant"?
dallasactuary
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in Sports Talk
I’ve been thinking about how, when we get into debates about how good a player someone was, it is almost certain that at some point someone will say that a player was or was not great because he was or was not “dominant”. I’ve never been one to use the word – nor have I generally disagreed with those who do – for the simple reason that the word has no meaning. If I call a player “craptastic” and someone else calls him “dominant” we might both be right, or both be wrong, or who knows – because either word can mean anything the user wants it to mean.
So what does it mean to be dominant? That’s essentially the question I’m asking, but before you answer I’m going to post a novella on what I think it means and try to draw a line or lines that separate the dominant players from the others. And rest assured, neither Gene Tenace nor Ron Fairly is going to be dominant, even by my reckoning.
I’ll start with what I think is, or ought to be, a pretty uncontroversial definition of dominant: a player who was the best player in the major leagues for a period of ten years was a “dominant” player. {For this, and all other, purposes in this post “best”, “better than”, etc. are all determined by a player’s Win Shares. Win Shares take into account hitting, pitching, base running and fielding and while it is not a perfect system if you think you have a better system for comparing players then get it published and I will consider it. Until then, I’m using Win Shares.}
So I looked at the best player’s by decade:
1900’s: Honus Wagner
1910’s: Ty Cobb
1920’s: Babe Ruth
1930’s: (tie) Lou Gehrig, Mel Ott
1940’s: Ted Williams
1950’s: Mickey Mantle
1960’s: Hank Aaron
1970’s: Joe Morgan
1980’s: Rickey Henderson
1990’s: Barry Bonds
First, I think that is an absolutely argument-free list of dominant players; not that that’s all of the dominant players, but every player there was dominant by any reasonable definition. But, second, what about the players who were just as obviously dominant but who didn’t make the list? One big problem is that players’ careers don’t always match up nicely with our calendar: being the best player from 1910-1919 is no more impressive than being the best player from 1911-1920. And who was the best player from 1911-1920? Not Ty Cobb, but Tris Speaker – another surely dominant player. So I looked at every 10-year period from 1900 through 1999 and found some more players who were the best players for at least one 10-year period:
Tris Speaker
Stan Musial
Willie Mays
Pete Rose
Mike Schmidt
Those, too, are pretty obviously dominant players. But I found two more who are worth noting separately, although for different reasons:
1. Dick Allen was the best player in baseball from 1964-1973 – by a hair over Hank Aaron, but by a decent margin over anyone else. Love him or hate him, Dick Allen was – for 10 years – a truly great player and, maybe, a dominant one.
2. Stan Hack was the best player in baseball from 1937-1946. What this proves is (1) Stan Hack was a whole heck of a lot better than most people give him credit for, and (2) SOMEbody has to be the best player when all the greatest players go off to war. Hack missed about 100 games to the war, DiMaggio missed about 450. Joe would have EASILY been the best player in the majors over this 10-year period if he had played another 350 games.
So with Stan Hack providing a little speed bump to let us know we need to be at least a little careful, I think the list that this method came up with is an awfully good start at defining “dominance”. You may have noted that in covering 91 10-year periods I only came up with 18 names; as you might expect, some of these players were the winners for many 10-year periods. Ruth, for example, was the best player over every 10-year period from 1914-1923 through 1924-1933.
Why 10 years? Good question, and there is no perfect answer. I think whatever period we look at has to be long enough to really mean something, but 10 years is no more clearly correct than 9 years or 11 years. What if we looked at every 9-year and 11-year period – would that any names to our list of dominant players? As a matter of fact, it does:
Joe DiMaggio (1937-1947)
Walter Johnson (1911-1919)
Wade Boggs (1983-1991)
Ryne Sandberg (1984-1992)
Looking at 9 and 11 years adds something, but it doesn’t add much – every other winner of every other 9 or 11 year period was one of the 18 players already on the list. But the players who got added are still great players, and I don’t think they mess up the list of “dominant” payers.
If we expand further to 8-year and 12-year periods, nobody is added to the list. So, the 22 players already named have a clear claim to being “dominant” players in the sense that first occurs to me when I hear the word – they were the very best for a very long time.
Which leads us to the next logical questions – to be dominant does a player have to be the very best, and does he have to be “dominant” for a very long time? I won’t go through every possible combination but here, for example, are the players not already named who were the second-best players for a period of 10 years:
Nap Lajoie
Christy Mathewson
Eddie Collins
Rogers Hornsby
Paul Waner
Jimmie Foxx
Arky Vaughan
Lou Boudreau (war years, like Hack)
Vern Stephens (ditto)
Duke Snider
Eddie Mathews
George Brett
Gary Carter
Eddie Murray
Robin Yount
Will Clark
Craig Biggio
Frank Thomas
And here are the players (not already named) who were the best players for a period of five years:
Bill Nicholson (1941-1945)
Hal Newhouser (1944-1948)
Willie McCovey (1966-1970)
Carl Yastrzemski (1967-1971)
Ken Singleton (1975-1979)
Tim Raines (1983-1987)
While we still find nothing but great players when we back off from being the very best or from a very long period, the difference in the quality of player on the first lists and those on these lists is striking. Still, the idea that Jimmie Foxx or Carl Yastrzemski were dominant players isn’t strange, and maybe it’s worth considering that Ken Singleton and Carl Yastrzemski belong on the same lists, or Craig Biggio and George Brett.
Which brings us to what I think are the credentials of a “dominant” player. A player is dominant to the degree that he was the very best player and to the degree that he was the best player for a very long time. Norm Cash was one of the best players in the game for one season, but I think that ought to count for very little when defining “dominance”. Amos Otis was a solid, dependable player for his entire career; again, I think that ought to count for very little. For any given era, while there may be 50 great players and 20 Hall of Famers, there should be a smaller number of players who can be called dominant.
So who were the most dominant players of the 1900’s? I’ll be the first to admit that, even if you accept that my general approach is on the right track, there are any number of ways of combining all the data to get an answer. The way I combined them assumes that one player is more “dominant” than another if he is better than that player, better for a longer time, and that being the very best player is worth much more than being second-best, being second-best is worth much more than being third best, and so on.
Based on those criteria I boiled down all of the data to a single stat and ranked everybody. I also threw out the pitchers, because I don’t think this stat is all that meaningful for them. Here, then, are who I found to be the 50 most “dominant” players of the 1900’s and the stat showing their relative dominance:
Ruth 115
Cobb 110
Aaron 103
Musial 102
Speaker 100
Mantle 95
Gehrig 95
Williams 93
Rose 92
Mays 91
Ott 87
Henderson 82
Morgan 80
Wagner 75
Collins 72
Schmidt 71
Foxx 67
Brett 67
Hornsby 64
Boggs 62
DiMaggio 62
F. Robinson 61
Vaughan 61
Snider 61
Murray 61
Mathews 60
Lajoie 60
Yastrzemski 59
Raines 57
Singleton 57
Waner 56
Bonds 54
Berra 54
Hack 54
D. Walker 51
Allen 51
R. Jackson 50
Yount 50
Stephens 50
Crawford 49
G. Carter 49
Boudreau 48
Sandberg 48
Biggio 47
Heilmann 44
W. Clark 44
A. Simmons 43
Bench 43
Carew 42
Gehringer 40
Without commenting on every player’s score, I’ll note a few things that were interesting to me:
• Only 117 players have a score of 10 or higher.
• The highest scores of eligible players not in the HOF are 57 for Ken Singleton (tied for 29th highest), 54 for Stan Hack, 51 for Dixie Walker and Dick Allen, 50 for Vern Stephens, 44 for Will Clark, 36 for Ron Santo and 30 for Dale Murphy.
• Some surprisingly low scores for some consensus HOFers include 16 for Al Kaline, 18 for Willie Stargell and 29 for Harmon Killebrew.
• Gil Hodges, Jim Rice and George Sisler all have the same score – 6.
• Norm Cash scores 4 and Amos Otis scores 3.
• Dave Kingman scores 0.
I want to note that this list should not be confused with a list of the greatest players, even though there will necessarily be a great deal of overlap. That’s because there is nothing in the process that ever compares players across eras. Just as an example, Eddie Collins outscores Mike Schmidt here in large part because he played in an era where it was easier to be one of the best players than it was for Schmidt; that does not mean that he was better, just that he was a bit more dominant.
My own opinion, looking at that list, is that 60 is as good a line as any between players that should be called dominant and those that shouldn't. Every player above that line was the best or nearly the best player in the majors for virtually their entire career. Below that line it becomes less and less the case. That, and it avoids bestowing the honor of "dominant" on Stan Hack and Dixie Walker. But, on the other hand, that era was simply the easiest in which to be dominant and Hack and Walker were the best players who played through all or nearly all of that era; they were "dominant", even if they weren't as good as the players who dominated every other era.
I hope this was, for those who actually got this far, at least interesting; I do not expect that everyone or anyone will necessarily agree with my approach. If you have an opinion on a general rule that I’ve ignored that you think is part of being “dominant” I hope you’ll share it. If you’re interested in how a specific player scored or his highest place on my lists I hope you’ll ask.
So what does it mean to be dominant? That’s essentially the question I’m asking, but before you answer I’m going to post a novella on what I think it means and try to draw a line or lines that separate the dominant players from the others. And rest assured, neither Gene Tenace nor Ron Fairly is going to be dominant, even by my reckoning.
I’ll start with what I think is, or ought to be, a pretty uncontroversial definition of dominant: a player who was the best player in the major leagues for a period of ten years was a “dominant” player. {For this, and all other, purposes in this post “best”, “better than”, etc. are all determined by a player’s Win Shares. Win Shares take into account hitting, pitching, base running and fielding and while it is not a perfect system if you think you have a better system for comparing players then get it published and I will consider it. Until then, I’m using Win Shares.}
So I looked at the best player’s by decade:
1900’s: Honus Wagner
1910’s: Ty Cobb
1920’s: Babe Ruth
1930’s: (tie) Lou Gehrig, Mel Ott
1940’s: Ted Williams
1950’s: Mickey Mantle
1960’s: Hank Aaron
1970’s: Joe Morgan
1980’s: Rickey Henderson
1990’s: Barry Bonds
First, I think that is an absolutely argument-free list of dominant players; not that that’s all of the dominant players, but every player there was dominant by any reasonable definition. But, second, what about the players who were just as obviously dominant but who didn’t make the list? One big problem is that players’ careers don’t always match up nicely with our calendar: being the best player from 1910-1919 is no more impressive than being the best player from 1911-1920. And who was the best player from 1911-1920? Not Ty Cobb, but Tris Speaker – another surely dominant player. So I looked at every 10-year period from 1900 through 1999 and found some more players who were the best players for at least one 10-year period:
Tris Speaker
Stan Musial
Willie Mays
Pete Rose
Mike Schmidt
Those, too, are pretty obviously dominant players. But I found two more who are worth noting separately, although for different reasons:
1. Dick Allen was the best player in baseball from 1964-1973 – by a hair over Hank Aaron, but by a decent margin over anyone else. Love him or hate him, Dick Allen was – for 10 years – a truly great player and, maybe, a dominant one.
2. Stan Hack was the best player in baseball from 1937-1946. What this proves is (1) Stan Hack was a whole heck of a lot better than most people give him credit for, and (2) SOMEbody has to be the best player when all the greatest players go off to war. Hack missed about 100 games to the war, DiMaggio missed about 450. Joe would have EASILY been the best player in the majors over this 10-year period if he had played another 350 games.
So with Stan Hack providing a little speed bump to let us know we need to be at least a little careful, I think the list that this method came up with is an awfully good start at defining “dominance”. You may have noted that in covering 91 10-year periods I only came up with 18 names; as you might expect, some of these players were the winners for many 10-year periods. Ruth, for example, was the best player over every 10-year period from 1914-1923 through 1924-1933.
Why 10 years? Good question, and there is no perfect answer. I think whatever period we look at has to be long enough to really mean something, but 10 years is no more clearly correct than 9 years or 11 years. What if we looked at every 9-year and 11-year period – would that any names to our list of dominant players? As a matter of fact, it does:
Joe DiMaggio (1937-1947)
Walter Johnson (1911-1919)
Wade Boggs (1983-1991)
Ryne Sandberg (1984-1992)
Looking at 9 and 11 years adds something, but it doesn’t add much – every other winner of every other 9 or 11 year period was one of the 18 players already on the list. But the players who got added are still great players, and I don’t think they mess up the list of “dominant” payers.
If we expand further to 8-year and 12-year periods, nobody is added to the list. So, the 22 players already named have a clear claim to being “dominant” players in the sense that first occurs to me when I hear the word – they were the very best for a very long time.
Which leads us to the next logical questions – to be dominant does a player have to be the very best, and does he have to be “dominant” for a very long time? I won’t go through every possible combination but here, for example, are the players not already named who were the second-best players for a period of 10 years:
Nap Lajoie
Christy Mathewson
Eddie Collins
Rogers Hornsby
Paul Waner
Jimmie Foxx
Arky Vaughan
Lou Boudreau (war years, like Hack)
Vern Stephens (ditto)
Duke Snider
Eddie Mathews
George Brett
Gary Carter
Eddie Murray
Robin Yount
Will Clark
Craig Biggio
Frank Thomas
And here are the players (not already named) who were the best players for a period of five years:
Bill Nicholson (1941-1945)
Hal Newhouser (1944-1948)
Willie McCovey (1966-1970)
Carl Yastrzemski (1967-1971)
Ken Singleton (1975-1979)
Tim Raines (1983-1987)
While we still find nothing but great players when we back off from being the very best or from a very long period, the difference in the quality of player on the first lists and those on these lists is striking. Still, the idea that Jimmie Foxx or Carl Yastrzemski were dominant players isn’t strange, and maybe it’s worth considering that Ken Singleton and Carl Yastrzemski belong on the same lists, or Craig Biggio and George Brett.
Which brings us to what I think are the credentials of a “dominant” player. A player is dominant to the degree that he was the very best player and to the degree that he was the best player for a very long time. Norm Cash was one of the best players in the game for one season, but I think that ought to count for very little when defining “dominance”. Amos Otis was a solid, dependable player for his entire career; again, I think that ought to count for very little. For any given era, while there may be 50 great players and 20 Hall of Famers, there should be a smaller number of players who can be called dominant.
So who were the most dominant players of the 1900’s? I’ll be the first to admit that, even if you accept that my general approach is on the right track, there are any number of ways of combining all the data to get an answer. The way I combined them assumes that one player is more “dominant” than another if he is better than that player, better for a longer time, and that being the very best player is worth much more than being second-best, being second-best is worth much more than being third best, and so on.
Based on those criteria I boiled down all of the data to a single stat and ranked everybody. I also threw out the pitchers, because I don’t think this stat is all that meaningful for them. Here, then, are who I found to be the 50 most “dominant” players of the 1900’s and the stat showing their relative dominance:
Ruth 115
Cobb 110
Aaron 103
Musial 102
Speaker 100
Mantle 95
Gehrig 95
Williams 93
Rose 92
Mays 91
Ott 87
Henderson 82
Morgan 80
Wagner 75
Collins 72
Schmidt 71
Foxx 67
Brett 67
Hornsby 64
Boggs 62
DiMaggio 62
F. Robinson 61
Vaughan 61
Snider 61
Murray 61
Mathews 60
Lajoie 60
Yastrzemski 59
Raines 57
Singleton 57
Waner 56
Bonds 54
Berra 54
Hack 54
D. Walker 51
Allen 51
R. Jackson 50
Yount 50
Stephens 50
Crawford 49
G. Carter 49
Boudreau 48
Sandberg 48
Biggio 47
Heilmann 44
W. Clark 44
A. Simmons 43
Bench 43
Carew 42
Gehringer 40
Without commenting on every player’s score, I’ll note a few things that were interesting to me:
• Only 117 players have a score of 10 or higher.
• The highest scores of eligible players not in the HOF are 57 for Ken Singleton (tied for 29th highest), 54 for Stan Hack, 51 for Dixie Walker and Dick Allen, 50 for Vern Stephens, 44 for Will Clark, 36 for Ron Santo and 30 for Dale Murphy.
• Some surprisingly low scores for some consensus HOFers include 16 for Al Kaline, 18 for Willie Stargell and 29 for Harmon Killebrew.
• Gil Hodges, Jim Rice and George Sisler all have the same score – 6.
• Norm Cash scores 4 and Amos Otis scores 3.
• Dave Kingman scores 0.
I want to note that this list should not be confused with a list of the greatest players, even though there will necessarily be a great deal of overlap. That’s because there is nothing in the process that ever compares players across eras. Just as an example, Eddie Collins outscores Mike Schmidt here in large part because he played in an era where it was easier to be one of the best players than it was for Schmidt; that does not mean that he was better, just that he was a bit more dominant.
My own opinion, looking at that list, is that 60 is as good a line as any between players that should be called dominant and those that shouldn't. Every player above that line was the best or nearly the best player in the majors for virtually their entire career. Below that line it becomes less and less the case. That, and it avoids bestowing the honor of "dominant" on Stan Hack and Dixie Walker. But, on the other hand, that era was simply the easiest in which to be dominant and Hack and Walker were the best players who played through all or nearly all of that era; they were "dominant", even if they weren't as good as the players who dominated every other era.
I hope this was, for those who actually got this far, at least interesting; I do not expect that everyone or anyone will necessarily agree with my approach. If you have an opinion on a general rule that I’ve ignored that you think is part of being “dominant” I hope you’ll share it. If you’re interested in how a specific player scored or his highest place on my lists I hope you’ll ask.
This is for you @thisistheshow - Jim Rice was actually a pretty good player.
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Comments
Also curious why Duke Snider would not make the second tier as in the 1950's he had more HR's than anyone else for the decade.
Eddited: Very nice work
Gil Hodges had more the Snider.
Dallas great writeup.
<< <i>Also curious why Duke Snider would not make the second tier as in the 1950's he had more HR's than anyone else for the decade.
Gil Hodges had more the Snider. >>
Actually for the decade ('50's) Snider hit 326 hr's (The most of any player in that decade I believe) Hodges hit 238 hr's
I mentioned Campy because I believe he had a pretty immpressive #'s for a 3-5 year run as well
And I sincerely appreciate the Biggio honorable mention
also Rickey henderson was not the best of the 80's...
and as far as the 2000's, we know who that is : see below
Good to see Stan Hack and Richie Allen get a little ink. ( If Hack could have hit like Richie, or Richie fielded like Hack, Mike Schmidt would be the 2nd best 3B )
Dominant is a somewhat vague term, and may be thought of differently by different people. It may be defined by some other factors also, how big a margin above others, how consistent, how durable, how much all around ability, and so on. Win shares is probably a reasonable measure , however, allow me to give an example of another type.
Leauge leading stats, times one bettered/dominated all his peers in certain catagories. Not being among the leaders, but the actual best.
For this example I'll use one of Steve's favorite players, George Sisler.
13 different league leading major offensive stats in a 3 year peroid. BA, Runs created, Stolen bases , Etc. . Fielding is not always mentioned, so it's noteworthy to add that Sisler had a lifetime RF of OVER 3 full points above the league average for 1 Basemen. Offense , defense, speed, he had it all.
Three years is perhaps too short a time frame to be called dominant, does one need 5 years, 8.39 years, 14 years ?, it is of course part of one's personal idea of dominant. I am not disputing any of the original post's views, but merely offering a bit different possibility for being dominant.
Kind of surprised Ken Singleton was rated so high, knew he was pretty darn good, but would not have guessed he would be the highest rated guy not in the Hall.
Mattingly fares very poorly on my dominance scale, but then he only played 9 complete seasons and that's an enormous strike against him the way I defined dominance. But I think you may be misunderstanding what I'm doing. I didn't "put in" Tim Raines as the best player from 1983-1987 - Tim Raines WAS the best player from 1983-1987. Since Mattingly only played half of 1983 (and wasn't very good in that half) there are actually several players better than Mattingly over that span.
But Mattingly does represent the kind of player that I wondered if some of you consider "dominant". If we're talking about how "dominant" a player was, does a player who strung together five great years deserve that description? If so, does that mean that Ruth and Cobb, etc., need to be called "uber-dominant" or something else that distinguishes them from the Campanellas and Mattinglys?
My thinking is that Mattingly was a great player for a very short time and that the word "dominant" should be reserved for something bigger than that. Mattingly was the best player in the major leagues for a single 3-year span; this is also true of Bobby Murcer, and Murcer was better in his 3 years than Mattingly was in his. I think the world of Bobby Murcer and I think he's as underrated a player as you could name, but I think calling him - or Don Mattingly - "dominant" renders the word meaningless. Overall, Tim Raines was a far superior player to Mattingly and it doesn't strike me as at all odd that he would show up as a more dominant player.
And Rickey Henderson was actually the best player of the 1980's by a pretty comfortable margin; his competition either petered out before the end of the decade (Schmidt), or either started too late in the decade or took too long to establish themselves as everyday players to catch him (Raines, Ripken,Sandberg, Boggs,Mattingly). Actually, Henderson wins several 10-year spans over the course of his career.
I stand corrected, Snider did hit 326 Homers but Hodges hit 310 not 238.
For some reason I thought he had hit the most.
Steve
<< <i>Actually for the decade ('50's) Snider hit 326 hr's (The most of any player in that decade I believe) Hodges hit 238 hr's
I stand corrected, Snider did hit 326 Homers but Hodges hit 310 not 238.
For some reason I thought he had hit the most.
Steve >>
I stand corrected as well.
Many fans view dominance in a shorter period...3-5 years. Three to five years is enough to water out any one year wonders or blips, but also short enough to capture players that truly did shine while at the top of their game, but for whatever reason were not able to sustain that dominance to meet your listed criteria.
You suggested Uber dominance, and some suggested levels of dominance. I think to take care of both of them, and to recognize guys who did shine for only a few years, I would like to see you try this...
Run a dominance factor the way you did above, BUT do it for every THREE YEAR span, but also add the second and third most dominant in that stretch. By adding the second most or third most, it adds a little more depth to your study.
For example, what if a player were the second most dominant a bunch of times, but never the first? I think it is pretty safe to say that being the second or third....or even the fifth most dominant player in the league is very impressive. And when you think about it, being the first most dominant isn't much different than the third.
Do a sample of the following graph for me. I'm curious to see how it shakes out in WinShares, and what kind of picture it paints.
YEARS......BEST.......2nd Best........3rd BEST.........
'78-'80
'79-'81
'80'-82
'81-'83
'82-'84
'83'-85
'84-'86
'85-'87
'86-'88
'87-'89
'88-'90
'89-'91
I ran a similar chart(with the leaders only) in situational Batter Runs. I can't find it though, but I did hitting only as a good contrast to an all inclusive type deal, as often time position adjusments and defensive adjustments mess it up.
I for one am curious, I love the '50 's era more than anyother, sorry for keep mentioning it.
<< <i>Dallas if you run Skin's idea of 3-5 years with your method I would think it would bring up Snider, Campy and Mathews right up there with the best. >>
And I know Biggio will be up there
yep, he was the THE MOST dominant 2nd baseman on the WHOLE Houston Team! :0 )
Schmidt Brett Singleton
Schmidt Brett Dawson
Schmidt R. Henderson Yount
Schmidt Yount R. Henderson
Yount Schmidt Murphy
Ripken Raines Murphy
Raines Boggs Mattingly
Raines Boggs Mattingly
Boggs Puckett Raines
W. Clark Boggs Yount
W. Clark R. Henderson Ba. Bonds
W. Clark Sandberg Ba. Bonds
And let me clarify how I did my rankings, since I didn't provide many details in the original post. I do consider who was second-best, third-best, etc. all the way down to 20th-best; it's just that because I weight each spot lower and lower as I go, coming in 20th essentially rounds to zero. In fact, coming in tenth essentially rounds to zero, too. But coming in second, especially if a player does so many times, counts for quite a bit. Also, I did not go down as low as three-year periods, but I did go as low as five-year periods; my final ranking is essentially a weighted average of a player's scores on periods between five years and ten years, with the 10-year periods counting for the most and the five-year periods counting the least. What I can do is go down to three year periods and eliminate the biased weighting - or even bias the weights toward the shorter periods rather than the longer periods. What do you think makes the most sense?
By the way, Snider and Mathews, perhaps more than any other players, earned their high spots on the list with a multitude of second and third place finishes without any first place finishes. Biggio, too, gets almost all of his points by virtue of being the second-best player in the majors (behind Bonds) for most of the 1990's - although he does earn one first (1995-1999) because Bonds missed a big chunk of 1999, apparently to have his feet lengthened and his head inflated.
jaxxr, in principle I agree with what you're saying but then the question becomes which stats do we look at and how do we weight them? In the end, if "dominance" means nothing more than accumulating more HR and RBI than anyone else, then we hardly need to think about it - we can just look up HR and RBI leaders. But if it also includes runs scored, and BA, and 2B and 3B, etc., then which stat counts the most, which the least and which not at all? Also, the correlation between league leaders and little-bitty ballparks is rather high, and I don't want to just crown all the Red Sox and St. Louis Browns as dominant and tell the Astros and Giants that they need not apply. In short, I already know that the casual fan considers the HR and RBI leaders to be dominant and nothing I say is going to change their opinion; what I was more interested in was who we OUGHT to consider dominant. If there were an easy, fair way to introduce league leaders into the equation I'd be willing to do that, but I don't think that there is.
I didn't realize your original list took into account other placed rankings, and was as detailed. I like the way you incorporated all that.
One thing you could do if you are really interested, is do the exact same thing with other good measurements.
You can do it with baseball prospectus WARP1 as well as others. I hate to suggest TPR as their defensive measurements and positional measuremnts are quite poor.
I would also balance it with a more comprehensive hitting stat like situational batter runs, as that will give more detail on the true contribution of the player at the bat, being that is the most valid area of measurement. For instance, the '83-'85 ranking has Tim Raines as being second most...but look what the situation BR says about that...
Compare the WinShare top three to Murray in that time span '83'-85. Here are the situational batter AND baserunning runs for the them....
Murray 172
Raines 128
Murphy 125
Ripken 93
I noticed winshares has Raines second in that span, and Murray somewhere below third(murphy third). I can't see defense overcoming that large a gap between a LF and a 1B. Murray was among the best defensively at 1B, and Raines good in LF. Left field isn't any harder to play than 1B, contrary to what some sabermatricians like to think(as evidenced by their position adjustments).
Ripken was first, and that is primarily because his SS status. The difficulties of SS is greater than a 1B, and should be given the due credit...though sabermatricians give it too much credit and fans too litttle. THe truth is somewhere in the middle.
Regardless of where the truth lies, a list like the above will get rid of the subjective positional adjustments. The WinShares list will contrast it well with all the positional adjustments.
THat is one of the errors in WinShares, as it doesn't take all the situations into account.
Unfortunately, the situational batter runs would take an immense amount of time to get all the rankings.
<< <i>Unfortunately, the situational batter runs would take an immense amount of time to get all the rankings. >>
Indeed. And I'm already too embarrassed to admit how much time this WinShares analysis took me.
With regard to the '83-'85 period, the actual rankings are a virtual tie from Ripken in first down to Murray in 6th. I'm not surprised that Murray shows up first on the batting runs list (without considering defense) but I am surprised by how much he is in first. But you are correct, Win Shares takes account of situational performance only on a very high level - BA with RISP, that sort of thing - and does not look at every at bat individually. I think part of the reason is that the data needed to do that doesn't exist equally across eras and the primary purpose of Win Shares was to facilitate cross-era comparisons.
Still, your point is well taken. I think Win Shares is probably the best single source for something like this, but it definitely could be improved by the introduction of more data (and immense amounts of time). I do think it's worth noting that, even if Win Shares is cheating Murray in at least the '83-'85 period, he did still end up tied with Frank Robinson, Arky Vaughan and Duke Snider on my final list and I'd be surprised if he could move up very much further than that even with perfect data.
I think the WinShares list you put together was very informative, so whatever time it took, it was good hobby time.
Yes, the earlier era's don't have access to the situational stats, and it really doesn't do any good to the type of comparisons you were doing.
As for Murray showing up so highly in first in that time period...that is in comparison only to those three guys. He is still the MLB leader, but Schmidt and Brett are probably closer than the others are on that list(just an estimate from what I ahve seen as I didn't add it up).
I think that your list is worth looking at....a good learning source for the novice guys...and a tidy wrapped package for the more advanced analysts.
It would be really interesting to see how the 2000's came out. I mean, obviously Bonds would be #1, probably very closely followed by Pujols. But after that, I'd really like to see the top tier. I am curious about the formula for WinShares... if someone could elaborate on it I'd appreciate it. The problem that I've seen with many statistical combination methods of assessing a baseball player's greatness is that it is weighted a bit too much towards power-driven stats (HR/SLG/RBI, etc). While those are certainly very important, over-weighting in that direction tends to leave out what I would consider some dominant or semi-dominant players who simply don't didn't hit a lot of HR's. Guys like Brock, Raines and Henderson come to mind... as well as Ichiro in this decade. For many people, I understand that "dominant" means a guys who can come up at any time and blast it out of the ballpark. To me, I also highly consider various other aspects, such as speed, fielding and clutch hitting. These aspects can also change a game (spectacular defense) or cause a team to play completely differently (super speed). I remember back in the 80's when Rickey got on... everyone in the park knew he was going, yet the still very rarely threw him out. While Ichiro will never steal 100 in a season, if you watch how teams play him on defense, it's clear that his speed severely influences how they play defensively. I mean, when a guy can continually beat out routine groundballs to the infielders, you better beleive there gonna be nervous every time he comes up and be prone to be making more errors.
Anyway, defense is also very important in determining the all-time greats. Trouble is, fielding in general was pretty horrible in the early part of the 20th century, so I'm not sure how you can effectively factor in defense (RF & Ffd Pct) and not penalize guys like Hornsby, etc too excesively.
Anyway, great discussion here!
All-time favorite athletes:
Steve Sax, Steve Garvey, Larry Bird, Jerry Rice, Joe Montana, Andre Agassi, Karch Kiraly, Wayne Gretzky, Ichiro Suzuki, Andres Galarraga, Greg Maddux.
"Make the world a better place... punch both A-Rods in the face (Alex Rodriguez and Andy Roddick)!"
Ruth
Speaker
Wagner
Cobb
Aaron
Musial
Mays
Mantle
Gehrig
Schmidt
Williams
Ott
Hornsby
Barry Bonds
Rose
Morgan
Henderson
Collins
DiMaggio
Foxx
Boggs
Mathews
F. Robinson
Vaughan
Snider
Raines
Lajoie
Biggio
Brett
Singleton
Yount
Yastrzemski
Waner
Murray
Berra
Allen
W. Clark
Carew
Thomas
Sandberg
Bench
J. Robinson
McCovey
D. Walker
R. Jackson
Stephens
Crawford
Heilmann
Santo
Boudreau
Leaving the top 50: A. Simmons, G. Carter, Gehringer, Hack
Joining the top 50: F. Thomas, J. Robinson, McCovey, Santo
I think those additions and subtractions improve the list a LOT.
Also moving way up: Wagner (14th to 3rd), Bonds (32nd to 14th), Biggio (44th to 28th), Carew (49th to 38th)
Others moving way up: Mize, Keller, Murcer, Parker, F. Howard, Dawson, Mattingly, H. Wilson, Berger
Also moving way down: Rose (9th to 15th), Brett (18th to 29th), Murray (25th to 34th), Dixie Walker (35th to 44th)
Others moving way down: Clemente, B. Williams, Killebrew, Minoso, Elliott, Averill, McGriff, Sewell, Perez, Kaline
Again, I think all of those names indicate that the list is improving: players whose value lay largely in being very, very good but not the very best for a long time (Kaline, Perez, Clemente, etc.) are moved down the list, while players whose value lies largely in a peak where they were among the very best (Mattingly, Murcer, etc.) are moved up the list.
Finally, I was really uncomfortable with how low Honus Wagner was on the original list and his third place spot on the revised list tells me this is definitely the better list.
Among the group at the bottom of the list, Jim Rice separates himself from Sisler and Hodges and even passes Kaline and a few other HOFers. Gil Hodges gets passed by Sal Bando, Johnny Callison, Cesar Cedeno and a host of others.
Dave Kingman still scores zero.