@keets said:
I think it's safe to say that the type of players being discussed transcend time.
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Tread lightly
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Walker Proof Digital Album Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
@DIMEMAN said:
Do you REALLY think Ruth could play with todays faster, stronger athletes! I don't think he could. And he would not fair as well against todays picthers.....no way.
Just so I'm clear about what it is that you're saying, a couple questions:
Mark Trumbo led MLB with 47 homers last year. Are you saying that Babe Ruth was not as good as Mark Trumbo, and could not have led the league in HR?
DJ LeMahieu led MLB with a .348 batting average last year. Are you saying that Babe Ruth was not as good as DJ LeMahieu, and could not have led the league in BA?
You are either arguing a point that everyone already agrees with - that Ruth couldn't beat everyone else by as much today as he did when he played - or you are arguing that Mark Trumbo and DJ LeMahieu are better baseball players than Babe Ruth. I can't tell so please clear it up - which is it?
This is for you @thisistheshow - Jim Rice was actually a pretty good player.
@Skin2 said:
In the modern age of baseball, Ruth could be anything from Chris Davis to David Ortiz, or better....but he wouldn't be "Babe Ruth."
If you believe Ruth can be at least reasonably compared to Mantle, as you stated earlier, are you saying by extension then that Mantle might equate to Chris Davis if he were playing today?
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
@Skin2 said:
In the modern age of baseball, Ruth could be anything from Chris Davis to David Ortiz, or better....but he wouldn't be "Babe Ruth."
If you believe Ruth can be at least reasonably compared to Mantle, as you stated earlier, are you saying by extension then that Mantle might equate to Chris Davis if he were playing today?
No, I am referring to the "mights" in this case, and how a player "might" carry over if transplanted to another era. There are more wild swings and guesses in that regard.
In the Mantle/Ruth case it was more geared toward how each were measured vs their peers with metrics, and their specific physical tools...while looking at the pitfalls of those vs peers metrics because of the circumstances that allowed Ruth to outdistance his peers.
But looking at the two players, their competition and style of play, and their physical attributes, I would say with 100% certainty that Mantle's baseball playing ability would easily carry over to modern baseball much more so than Ruth's.
Just looking at the weight of the bats that Ruth swung, between 38-42 ounces or more, and how he was able to swing such a heavy bat and destroy pitchers to that degree....doesn't say a whole lot about how good those pitchers were...and shows that there are far more concerns on what could carry over for Ruth. So yes, in Ruths case, anything from Chris Davis to David Ortiz, or maybe better.
He wouldn't be outhomering teams, so unless you believe he would hit 254 home runs in a season, then you already agree with me.
Really quick and dirty "study" that I won't describe in great detail. The point has been made, and is obviously correct, that the way Babe Ruth towered over his peers was in part a reflection of Ruth's towering greatness and in part a reflection of his less than towering competition. We can debate the correct proportion of those two, but we can never possibly know with any certainty at all. And when we look at Mantle, who towered over his peers to a lesser degree than Ruth did, we are faced with the same question: how much of that is Mantle's towering greatness and how much is his less than towering competition?
Left unsaid with any specificity, but certainly implied, is that a comparison can be made between baseball in the 20's to baseball in the 50's and some sort of adjustment can be derived and applied. That's certainly reasonable, and since Bill James did it and he's smarter than me about such things, I accept it.
So far, I don't think I've said anything that anyone could disagree with. But, and here's where the study I did finally comes in, is it that straightforward? The thought crossed my mind that the AL, when Mantle played, wasn't just a little worse than the NL, it was a whole lot worse. How much? You could define that a million ways, but what I did was find the top 20 hitters in MLB from 1955-1964 (Mantle's most dominant 10-year stretch) and determined to what degree those players were in the AL or NL (some were in both). I weighted the results by how good they were and got this:
Among the top 20 hitters, the ones in the NL were 85% better than the ones in the AL, and this includes Mantle being in the AL and being the best hitter of all. Of the top 20 hitters from that era, only two from the AL are in the HOF for their hitting - Mantle and Kaline. From the NL there are Mays, Aaron, Mathews, Robinson, Banks, Cepeda, Clemente, Snider and Musial.
Which got me thinking, how much more impressive is it to dominate the AL of the mid-50's to the mid-60's than it is to dominate the AL in the 1920's? Yes, "baseball" got a lot more competitive in between those eras, but the vast majority of that improvement was on display in the NL, not the AL. Yes, Ruth's league leaders, and his margins, would come way down if he played today, but Mantle's would have gone way down if he simply played in the NL instead of the AL. His OPS+ would have been considerably lower, too, since that is adjusted by league. Beating Kaline, Colavito, Sievers, Maris and Minoso is hard, but beating Mays, Aaron, Robinson, Mathews and Banks is a whole lot harder. On a related note, the pitching in the NL was about 25% better than the pitching in the AL, using the same method of measurement. Hitting against Bunning and Wynn is hard; hitting against Spahn, Drysdale, Roberts, Koufax, Marichal and Gibson is a lot harder.
Again, simple study that I won't pretend proves anything, but something more to think about. And that is true whenever you're comparing players across eras - there is always something more to think about.
This is for you @thisistheshow - Jim Rice was actually a pretty good player.
I've been generous in giving Ruth's competition as much credit as I have. There is a good chance that the best teams in this year's Cape Cod league could finish .500 in MLB in 1921.
Skin, if the competition in MLB was that inferior during that era, where would you place a player like Ty Cobb? If you're going to downgrade Ruth because of the era he played in and the level of his competition, what hierarchy would you establish for Cobb's contemporaries?
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
Dallas, if it is true that of the top 20 hitters in the 50's, that 18 of them were in the NL, then that doesn't mean that outweighs numbers 46-80 being better in the AL.
Also, I find it funny how that awful talent in the AL was able to beat the Yankees 60+ times a year(similar to that of the best NL team), yet the yankees dominated whatever NL team they faced in the World Series.
@grote15 said:
Skin, if the competition in MLB was that inferior during that era, where would you place a player like Ty Cobb? If you're going to downgrade Ruth because of the era he played in and the level of his competition, what hierarchy would you establish for Cobb's contemporaries?
Worse. Cap Anson's even worse. Jim Creightons worse. If the Pilgrims played, then that is the bottom. Speaking of which, had the Pilgrims had a league, I would imagine some guys batting .600 in those leagues . Then when the Native Americans took a liking to the league and they began to join, and when new immigrants took a liking to the league as well, and when the population flourished and society had more leisure time to spend learning the craft of a sport, that the years of the .600 hitters would gradually go by the wayside. Sound familiar?? It should to Ty Cobb
So in your estimation none of these currently elite platers from the 1930s or earlier should be ranked as high as they are presently on the all time lists. That Pete Rose was better, even clearly better than Ty Cobb? Just curious on how you reconcile comparisons like those.
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
@Skin2 said:
Dallas, Mantle is being compare to the NL hitters too in any peers comparison. He is not being compared to AL only....if your study even has merit.
Depends on what you mean, and who's doing the comparison. My second point was just that OPS+ is league-specific. My first point was that leading a league - in anything - when your competition is relatively weak is very much easier than leading a league where the competition is much stronger. And no, Mantle was not being compared to Mays and Aaron when deciding who led the AL in anything. Whatever adjustment is correct for normalizing baseball in 1925 to baseball in 1955, the correct adjustment for normalizing the AL in 1925 to the AL in 1955 is lower. I won't claim to know how much lower, but I know it's lower. Mantle's AL was a pale shadow of Mays' NL.
@Skin2 said:
I've been generous in giving Ruth's competition as much credit as I have. There is a good chance that the best teams in this year's Cape Cod league could finish .500 in MLB in 1921.
Here you're following the same dangerous path as Dimeman. At the end of this path is the conclusion that precisely none of the best players of all time played before WWII. I've seen you criticize many other lists for being too heavily weighted to one particular era, so I know that you think that conclusion is nonsense. And I don't know what you mean by a "good" chance, but the chance that a modern Cape Cod team could finish .500 in the 1921 AL is significantly less than 1%. Let's just call it zero.
People keep speculating about how Ruth would have done today or in the 50's. But the reverse must necessarily be equally valid, so I'll ask you how you think Mantle would have done if he had played when Ruth did. Ruth had an OBP of .474 and SLG of .690: what is your best guess what Mantle's numbers would have been? And how would a Cape Cod team have fared in the AL in 1955?
This is for you @thisistheshow - Jim Rice was actually a pretty good player.
I don't think the gap between the Mantle era and now is as big as the gap between the Ruth era and Mantle era. Mantle would do fine now while Ruth's numbers would go way down. Ruth would not fair as well against todays pitchers or 50-60's pitchers as he did pitchers of his era.
And yes I think Rose is a better hitter than Cobb.
The word you are looking for is "fare," not "fair." Fair means something entirely different from fare.
And, no, Rose was not better than Cobb.
I also find it rather disingenuous to assume that Ruth would not have been that much more athletic or conditioned had he played in the modern era~we keep thinking of him as a hot-dog-eating pudgy guy (when in fact for most of his career that depiction was absolutely false), but had he played during an era when advanced training facilities and equipment were available, he would likely have been a different player from the one we remember. If we're going to downgrade Ruth because of the era in which he played, we need to also provide him with all the enhancements of the modern era (weight training, etc), if we are going to make a fair comparison between him and players from the present day.
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
Babe Ruth and his peers had a much larger strike zone to protect, it actually went from the letters to the knees. all the "high heat" that today's batters can't resist(and usually can't hit) were in the strike zone back in the Babe's day. those are balls today. also, the way today's batters crowd the plate and take the outside corner away from pitchers is silly, and a pitcher who comes inside risks an ejection or at least a field brawl.
don't even get me started on how the base paths are distorted today. the players of yesteryear played a more courageous form of the American Pass-Time.
@DIMEMAN said:
I don't think the gap between the Mantle era and now is as big as the gap between the Ruth era and Mantle era. Mantle would do fine now while Ruth's numbers would go way down. Ruth would not fair as well against todays pitchers or 50-60's pitchers as he did pitchers of his era.
And yes I think Rose is a better hitter than Cobb.
You can think that baseball changed more in 30 years than it did in the following 65 years all you want, it's a free country. But surely you can't expect anyone else to believe it merely because you think it.
Part of the problem is this talk about "Ruth's era" and "Mantle's era" as if they are distinct points that can be measured. In what year or years did baseball change so dramatically that you think the difference in "eras" is so enormous?
I mean, check out Ted Williams stats and tell me where over the course of a full-time productive career from 1939 to 1958 baseball got tremendously more competitive. For example, Williams peak OPS+ - the point at which he was furthest above his peers - was in 1941 (OPS+=235). His next most dominant season (OPS+=233) came in 1957. For Ted Williams, at least, baseball didn't change much during the 1940's or early 50's.
Now consider Jimmie Foxx. In the three year period ending in 1940, his OPS+ was 173; in the three year period beginning in 1930, his OPS+ was 171. For Jimmie Foxx, at least, baseball didn't change much during the 1930's, and you can use Mel Ott instead and reach the same conclusion. And then you can use Ruth, Gehrig and Hornsby (or a bunch of others) to demonstrate that, for those players at least, baseball didn't change much during the 1920's.
Yes, if you look at everyone in the majors there is a distinct trend of increasingly better players over time. That trend neither started when Ruth retired nor ended when Mantle started; it's always been there and it still is there, with some twists and turns related to expansion along the way. And it's a slooooooowwwww trend. You want to make the case that Mantle was a little bit better than Ruth, go for it; a reasonable case can be made. You want to make the case that Rose was a better hitter than Cobb, go for it, but only if you enjoy humiliating yourself because there's no reasonable case to be made.
I have seen zero evidence to support the belief that Ruth would not be the greatest player in MLB were he playing today. Zero. I strongly suspect that he would lead the majors in home runs about as often today as he did then, with similar absolute numbers. If you've got evidence - not feelings - that points otherwise, please share it.
This is for you @thisistheshow - Jim Rice was actually a pretty good player.
Part of the problem is this talk about "Ruth's era" and "Mantle's era" as if they are distinct points that can be measured. In what year or years did baseball change so dramatically that you think the difference in "eras" is so enormous?
one clearly definable point was what, 1969??? that was the year when the pitchers mound was lowered and the advantage began to shift toward the hitters. all this talk about eras can be ridiculous since nothing has been constant, but that ONE DEFINABLE CHANGE WHICH WAS WRITTEN INTO THE RULES could be a good discussion point.
what would happen today if the pitchers had an additional five inches of height to throw from?? we can get a good idea of what would happen if we look at statistics from 1968 and 1969, then move forward/backward for a comparison. that single change clearly affected the game in dramatic fashion. neither Ruth nor Mantle were affected by the change, but if brings an interesting perspective to the discussion of those two great players with the players of today.
@keets said:
one clearly definable point was what, 1969??? that was the year when the pitchers mound was lowered and the advantage began to shift toward the hitters. all this talk about eras can be ridiculous since nothing has been constant, but that ONE DEFINABLE CHANGE WHICH WAS WRITTEN INTO THE RULES could be a good discussion point.
Yes and no. The raw stats certainly changed as a result of that rule change, but we shouldn't be measuring how good a hitter is by his raw stats, else we don't realize why Chili Davis was every bit as good a player as Jim Rice. From Babe Ruth through Gehrig, Ott, Foxx, Williams, Mantle, Mays and so on to today we measure how good a hitter is by his OPS+ and other metrics that take into account the context in which the hitter played. We can add on to that a guess regarding how the relative level of competition varies between eras and leagues, and it's this guess that is, in my opinion, vastly overstating the difference between "Ruth's era" and "Mantle's era" 25 years later; a gap bridged by Foxx and Williams who provide evidence that nothing dramatic happened during those years.
I think a big part of the disconnect is that some people are thinking of "Ruth's era" as a couple of years in the early 20's when Ruth hit more than twice as many homers as anyone else, which he did in 1920 and 1921. For the next 10 years, though, he led 4 times, once by only three, tied for the lead twice and didn't lead four times; in other words, he had serious competition. The other part of the disconnect is that Ruth is being defined solely by the home runs he hit, ignoring the fact that he did everything extremely well and would have been among the all-time greats had he hit half as many homers.
This is for you @thisistheshow - Jim Rice was actually a pretty good player.
don't misunderstand me, I'm not arguing about Ruth or Mantle's era, you asked for a distinct point in time when things changed dramatically and I provided it. you can agree or not, but the data is real and undeniable.
@keets said:
don't misunderstand me, I'm not arguing about Ruth or Mantle's era, you asked for a distinct point in time when things changed dramatically and I provided it. you can agree or not, but the data is real and undeniable.
I know, but what I'm asking for is a distinct point in time between the "Ruth era" and the "Mantle era" when things changed dramatically. Since my disagreement isn't with you it's not your responsibility to answer that question, but since nobody else answered it I just used your post to basically ask it again.
What you identified is the end of the second deadball era. Hitters who had their peaks in the 1960's - Richie Allen, Santo, Yaz, Oliva, Fregosi - are generally among the most underrated hitters in history.
This is for you @thisistheshow - Jim Rice was actually a pretty good player.
Comments
Nothing is safe in the Dime Zone
Tread lightly
mark
Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
Just so I'm clear about what it is that you're saying, a couple questions:
Mark Trumbo led MLB with 47 homers last year. Are you saying that Babe Ruth was not as good as Mark Trumbo, and could not have led the league in HR?
DJ LeMahieu led MLB with a .348 batting average last year. Are you saying that Babe Ruth was not as good as DJ LeMahieu, and could not have led the league in BA?
You are either arguing a point that everyone already agrees with - that Ruth couldn't beat everyone else by as much today as he did when he played - or you are arguing that Mark Trumbo and DJ LeMahieu are better baseball players than Babe Ruth. I can't tell so please clear it up - which is it?
In the modern age of baseball, Ruth could be anything from Chris Davis to David Ortiz, or better....but he wouldn't be "Babe Ruth."
If you believe Ruth can be at least reasonably compared to Mantle, as you stated earlier, are you saying by extension then that Mantle might equate to Chris Davis if he were playing today?
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
No, I am referring to the "mights" in this case, and how a player "might" carry over if transplanted to another era. There are more wild swings and guesses in that regard.
In the Mantle/Ruth case it was more geared toward how each were measured vs their peers with metrics, and their specific physical tools...while looking at the pitfalls of those vs peers metrics because of the circumstances that allowed Ruth to outdistance his peers.
But looking at the two players, their competition and style of play, and their physical attributes, I would say with 100% certainty that Mantle's baseball playing ability would easily carry over to modern baseball much more so than Ruth's.
Just looking at the weight of the bats that Ruth swung, between 38-42 ounces or more, and how he was able to swing such a heavy bat and destroy pitchers to that degree....doesn't say a whole lot about how good those pitchers were...and shows that there are far more concerns on what could carry over for Ruth. So yes, in Ruths case, anything from Chris Davis to David Ortiz, or maybe better.
He wouldn't be outhomering teams, so unless you believe he would hit 254 home runs in a season, then you already agree with me.
Really quick and dirty "study" that I won't describe in great detail. The point has been made, and is obviously correct, that the way Babe Ruth towered over his peers was in part a reflection of Ruth's towering greatness and in part a reflection of his less than towering competition. We can debate the correct proportion of those two, but we can never possibly know with any certainty at all. And when we look at Mantle, who towered over his peers to a lesser degree than Ruth did, we are faced with the same question: how much of that is Mantle's towering greatness and how much is his less than towering competition?
Left unsaid with any specificity, but certainly implied, is that a comparison can be made between baseball in the 20's to baseball in the 50's and some sort of adjustment can be derived and applied. That's certainly reasonable, and since Bill James did it and he's smarter than me about such things, I accept it.
So far, I don't think I've said anything that anyone could disagree with. But, and here's where the study I did finally comes in, is it that straightforward? The thought crossed my mind that the AL, when Mantle played, wasn't just a little worse than the NL, it was a whole lot worse. How much? You could define that a million ways, but what I did was find the top 20 hitters in MLB from 1955-1964 (Mantle's most dominant 10-year stretch) and determined to what degree those players were in the AL or NL (some were in both). I weighted the results by how good they were and got this:
Among the top 20 hitters, the ones in the NL were 85% better than the ones in the AL, and this includes Mantle being in the AL and being the best hitter of all. Of the top 20 hitters from that era, only two from the AL are in the HOF for their hitting - Mantle and Kaline. From the NL there are Mays, Aaron, Mathews, Robinson, Banks, Cepeda, Clemente, Snider and Musial.
Which got me thinking, how much more impressive is it to dominate the AL of the mid-50's to the mid-60's than it is to dominate the AL in the 1920's? Yes, "baseball" got a lot more competitive in between those eras, but the vast majority of that improvement was on display in the NL, not the AL. Yes, Ruth's league leaders, and his margins, would come way down if he played today, but Mantle's would have gone way down if he simply played in the NL instead of the AL. His OPS+ would have been considerably lower, too, since that is adjusted by league. Beating Kaline, Colavito, Sievers, Maris and Minoso is hard, but beating Mays, Aaron, Robinson, Mathews and Banks is a whole lot harder. On a related note, the pitching in the NL was about 25% better than the pitching in the AL, using the same method of measurement. Hitting against Bunning and Wynn is hard; hitting against Spahn, Drysdale, Roberts, Koufax, Marichal and Gibson is a lot harder.
Again, simple study that I won't pretend proves anything, but something more to think about. And that is true whenever you're comparing players across eras - there is always something more to think about.
Dallas, Mantle is being compare to the NL hitters too in any peers comparison. He is not being compared to AL only....if your study even has merit.
I've been generous in giving Ruth's competition as much credit as I have. There is a good chance that the best teams in this year's Cape Cod league could finish .500 in MLB in 1921.
Skin, if the competition in MLB was that inferior during that era, where would you place a player like Ty Cobb? If you're going to downgrade Ruth because of the era he played in and the level of his competition, what hierarchy would you establish for Cobb's contemporaries?
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
Dallas, if it is true that of the top 20 hitters in the 50's, that 18 of them were in the NL, then that doesn't mean that outweighs numbers 46-80 being better in the AL.
Also, I find it funny how that awful talent in the AL was able to beat the Yankees 60+ times a year(similar to that of the best NL team), yet the yankees dominated whatever NL team they faced in the World Series.
Worse. Cap Anson's even worse. Jim Creightons worse. If the Pilgrims played, then that is the bottom. Speaking of which, had the Pilgrims had a league, I would imagine some guys batting .600 in those leagues
. Then when the Native Americans took a liking to the league and they began to join, and when new immigrants took a liking to the league as well, and when the population flourished and society had more leisure time to spend learning the craft of a sport, that the years of the .600 hitters would gradually go by the wayside. Sound familiar?? It should to Ty Cobb 
So in your estimation none of these currently elite platers from the 1930s or earlier should be ranked as high as they are presently on the all time lists. That Pete Rose was better, even clearly better than Ty Cobb? Just curious on how you reconcile comparisons like those.
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
Depends on what you mean, and who's doing the comparison. My second point was just that OPS+ is league-specific. My first point was that leading a league - in anything - when your competition is relatively weak is very much easier than leading a league where the competition is much stronger. And no, Mantle was not being compared to Mays and Aaron when deciding who led the AL in anything. Whatever adjustment is correct for normalizing baseball in 1925 to baseball in 1955, the correct adjustment for normalizing the AL in 1925 to the AL in 1955 is lower. I won't claim to know how much lower, but I know it's lower. Mantle's AL was a pale shadow of Mays' NL.
Here you're following the same dangerous path as Dimeman. At the end of this path is the conclusion that precisely none of the best players of all time played before WWII. I've seen you criticize many other lists for being too heavily weighted to one particular era, so I know that you think that conclusion is nonsense. And I don't know what you mean by a "good" chance, but the chance that a modern Cape Cod team could finish .500 in the 1921 AL is significantly less than 1%. Let's just call it zero.
People keep speculating about how Ruth would have done today or in the 50's. But the reverse must necessarily be equally valid, so I'll ask you how you think Mantle would have done if he had played when Ruth did. Ruth had an OBP of .474 and SLG of .690: what is your best guess what Mantle's numbers would have been? And how would a Cape Cod team have fared in the AL in 1955?
I don't think the gap between the Mantle era and now is as big as the gap between the Ruth era and Mantle era. Mantle would do fine now while Ruth's numbers would go way down. Ruth would not fair as well against todays pitchers or 50-60's pitchers as he did pitchers of his era.
And yes I think Rose is a better hitter than Cobb.
The word you are looking for is "fare," not "fair." Fair means something entirely different from fare.
And, no, Rose was not better than Cobb.
I also find it rather disingenuous to assume that Ruth would not have been that much more athletic or conditioned had he played in the modern era~we keep thinking of him as a hot-dog-eating pudgy guy (when in fact for most of his career that depiction was absolutely false), but had he played during an era when advanced training facilities and equipment were available, he would likely have been a different player from the one we remember. If we're going to downgrade Ruth because of the era in which he played, we need to also provide him with all the enhancements of the modern era (weight training, etc), if we are going to make a fair comparison between him and players from the present day.
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
Babe Ruth and his peers had a much larger strike zone to protect, it actually went from the letters to the knees. all the "high heat" that today's batters can't resist(and usually can't hit) were in the strike zone back in the Babe's day. those are balls today. also, the way today's batters crowd the plate and take the outside corner away from pitchers is silly, and a pitcher who comes inside risks an ejection or at least a field brawl.
don't even get me started on how the base paths are distorted today. the players of yesteryear played a more courageous form of the American Pass-Time.
You can think that baseball changed more in 30 years than it did in the following 65 years all you want, it's a free country. But surely you can't expect anyone else to believe it merely because you think it.
Part of the problem is this talk about "Ruth's era" and "Mantle's era" as if they are distinct points that can be measured. In what year or years did baseball change so dramatically that you think the difference in "eras" is so enormous?
I mean, check out Ted Williams stats and tell me where over the course of a full-time productive career from 1939 to 1958 baseball got tremendously more competitive. For example, Williams peak OPS+ - the point at which he was furthest above his peers - was in 1941 (OPS+=235). His next most dominant season (OPS+=233) came in 1957. For Ted Williams, at least, baseball didn't change much during the 1940's or early 50's.
Now consider Jimmie Foxx. In the three year period ending in 1940, his OPS+ was 173; in the three year period beginning in 1930, his OPS+ was 171. For Jimmie Foxx, at least, baseball didn't change much during the 1930's, and you can use Mel Ott instead and reach the same conclusion. And then you can use Ruth, Gehrig and Hornsby (or a bunch of others) to demonstrate that, for those players at least, baseball didn't change much during the 1920's.
Yes, if you look at everyone in the majors there is a distinct trend of increasingly better players over time. That trend neither started when Ruth retired nor ended when Mantle started; it's always been there and it still is there, with some twists and turns related to expansion along the way. And it's a slooooooowwwww trend. You want to make the case that Mantle was a little bit better than Ruth, go for it; a reasonable case can be made. You want to make the case that Rose was a better hitter than Cobb, go for it, but only if you enjoy humiliating yourself because there's no reasonable case to be made.
I have seen zero evidence to support the belief that Ruth would not be the greatest player in MLB were he playing today. Zero. I strongly suspect that he would lead the majors in home runs about as often today as he did then, with similar absolute numbers. If you've got evidence - not feelings - that points otherwise, please share it.
Part of the problem is this talk about "Ruth's era" and "Mantle's era" as if they are distinct points that can be measured. In what year or years did baseball change so dramatically that you think the difference in "eras" is so enormous?
one clearly definable point was what, 1969??? that was the year when the pitchers mound was lowered and the advantage began to shift toward the hitters. all this talk about eras can be ridiculous since nothing has been constant, but that ONE DEFINABLE CHANGE WHICH WAS WRITTEN INTO THE RULES could be a good discussion point.
what would happen today if the pitchers had an additional five inches of height to throw from?? we can get a good idea of what would happen if we look at statistics from 1968 and 1969, then move forward/backward for a comparison. that single change clearly affected the game in dramatic fashion. neither Ruth nor Mantle were affected by the change, but if brings an interesting perspective to the discussion of those two great players with the players of today.
Yes and no. The raw stats certainly changed as a result of that rule change, but we shouldn't be measuring how good a hitter is by his raw stats, else we don't realize why Chili Davis was every bit as good a player as Jim Rice. From Babe Ruth through Gehrig, Ott, Foxx, Williams, Mantle, Mays and so on to today we measure how good a hitter is by his OPS+ and other metrics that take into account the context in which the hitter played. We can add on to that a guess regarding how the relative level of competition varies between eras and leagues, and it's this guess that is, in my opinion, vastly overstating the difference between "Ruth's era" and "Mantle's era" 25 years later; a gap bridged by Foxx and Williams who provide evidence that nothing dramatic happened during those years.
I think a big part of the disconnect is that some people are thinking of "Ruth's era" as a couple of years in the early 20's when Ruth hit more than twice as many homers as anyone else, which he did in 1920 and 1921. For the next 10 years, though, he led 4 times, once by only three, tied for the lead twice and didn't lead four times; in other words, he had serious competition. The other part of the disconnect is that Ruth is being defined solely by the home runs he hit, ignoring the fact that he did everything extremely well and would have been among the all-time greats had he hit half as many homers.
don't misunderstand me, I'm not arguing about Ruth or Mantle's era, you asked for a distinct point in time when things changed dramatically and I provided it. you can agree or not, but the data is real and undeniable.
I know, but what I'm asking for is a distinct point in time between the "Ruth era" and the "Mantle era" when things changed dramatically. Since my disagreement isn't with you it's not your responsibility to answer that question, but since nobody else answered it I just used your post to basically ask it again.
What you identified is the end of the second deadball era. Hitters who had their peaks in the 1960's - Richie Allen, Santo, Yaz, Oliva, Fregosi - are generally among the most underrated hitters in history.