Who was better? Lou Brock or Rod Carew
garnettstyle
Posts: 2,143 ✭✭✭✭
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Discuss.
IT CAN'T BE A TRUE PLAYOFF UNLESS THE BIG TEN CHAMPIONS ARE INCLUDED
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garnettstyle
Posts: 2,143 ✭✭✭✭
garnettstyle
Posts: 2,143 ✭✭✭✭
Comments
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......
Also, that one extra season that you have to take away from Carew that makes them equal isn't his first or last season, it's 1977, his best season. Brock never had a season nearly that good, but his best lines up with Carew's second best, and so on, pretty evenly. So yes, Carew is one season better than Brock, but it's one great season.
Brock's best OPS+ was 146. That would be the fifth-best for Carew - sixth-best if you include an injury-shortened season.
You are correct. Brock was a stud at what OPS+ doesn't measure, though.
He was hardly ever injured, so he played an average of 5 more games per season.
Making the standard estimate that a runner needs to steal two bases for every time he's caught stealing, Brock was +324 (SB - 2*CS) and Carew was -21.
Brock ground into 114 DPs and Carew ground into 216.
Again, I'm not saying Brock was better than Carew because he wasn't, but he was very, very good and better than most people give him credit for.
Brock was a beast during the post-season. A 391 batting average has to be one of the best ever.
IT CAN'T BE A TRUE PLAYOFF UNLESS THE BIG TEN CHAMPIONS ARE INCLUDED
Experience the World through Numismatics...it's more than you can imagine.
Bill Freehan was a poor mans Johnny Bench.
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......
I was a wee lad in 68. One of my first lasting memories was Freehan's block on home plate on Brock off of the arm of Willie Horton in the WS. Magic
Bill Freehan was a poor mans Johnny Bench.
mark
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
I know what you mean, but that feels like it sells Freehan short. Freehan was a great catcher in his own right. Let's say he was an upper middle class man's Johnny Bench and leave Tom Haller for the poor man.
Either Freehan or Ted Simmons is the best catcher not in the HOF. Both of them probably deserve to be.
I know what you mean, but that feels like it sells Freehan short. Freehan was a great catcher in his own right. Let's say he was an upper middle class man's Johnny Bench and leave Tom Haller for the poor man.
Either Freehan or Ted Simmons is the best catcher not in the HOF. Both of them probably deserve to be.
Simmons was terrific, though he probably played several seasons longer than he should have.
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.
Just kidding, I already know the answer. Lots of Yankee fans driving up the prices.
IT CAN'T BE A TRUE PLAYOFF UNLESS THE BIG TEN CHAMPIONS ARE INCLUDED
I know what you mean, but that feels like it sells Freehan short. Freehan was a great catcher in his own right. Let's say he was an upper middle class man's Johnny Bench and leave Tom Haller for the poor man.
Either Freehan or Ted Simmons is the best catcher not in the HOF. Both of them probably deserve to be.
Yes Freehan was great. Just lived in Bench's shadow.
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......
"....
O.J. Simpson, not a Jew
But guess who is? Hall of famer Rod Carew- he converted
...."
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Rod Carew was the best pure hitter I ever saw play, uncanny bat control and a sweet, sweet swing. it is difficult to make the comparison with todays players when everything is so different: smaller strike zone, pitcher can't throw inside, PED's, etc. etc. etc. I would love to see ANY team try to shift on Carew, he would eat them alive!!
No reason to shift for Carew unless it would be to the left field side, he hit a lot to left field and bunted down the third base line for a lot of hits. Mauer hits in a similar manner and is defended more that way.
RIP Mom- 1932-2012
this is confusing because the reason not to shift on him was because of his bat control, as I said.
No reason to shift for Carew
this is confusing because the reason not to shift on him was because of his bat control, as I said.
Generally speaking a shift is put on against pull hitters. I remember they used to do it against Killebrew, he seldom hit the ball to right field.
Teams shifted on Ted Williams, who also had great bat control, but he refused to "push" the ball to left field.
Carew did have great bat control, but there would be no reason to shift because a shift is designed to take away a hitters favorite area. Carew didn't have a favorite area, he hit to all fields.
Carew seems quite a bit better than Brock. How about two players with the exact same OPS+, Carew and Tony Oliva?
Carew, and Brock, were better than Oliva.
Oliva played, essentially, an 11 year career. In those 11 years, his OPS+ was 132. In Carew's best 11 seasons his OPS+ was 142. So, for 11 years Carew was about 8% better. Then Carew played for six more seasons (throwing out his partial years as I did for Oliva) with an OPS+ of 109. The gap between them is large. (line up their OPS+ from best to worst and compare - Carew wins each and every season)
All of the above is premised on the assumption that OPS+ is all you need to measure a player's worth. For Carew and Oliva, it's actually close enough and the analysis holds up fine. Not so with Carew and Brock, since OPS+ misses a huge amount of Brock's value - endurance, stolen bases and double play avoidance. There's a clear gap between Carew and Brock - a gap almost exactly the same size as Carew' 1977 season - but the gap from Brock down to Oliva is clear, too. Oliva's 11-year OPS+ of 132 is 15 points better than Brock's 11-year OPS+ of 117. But if you adjust that 15 point gap for Brock's additional SB and Oliva's additional GIDP you get a gap of 2 or 3 points. Now consider that Oliva averaged 144 games in those 11 seasons and Brock averaged 156 and I think Brock is already ahead. But when you consider that Brock played well for several more seasons beyond that, then I'm sure he's ahead.
Too bad Tony had such bad knees, from 1964-1971 he was fantastic! A true 5 tool player. If you use Oliva's first 8 full seasons, before his bad knee injury, he was at 141. He could hardly run after that. It was sad watching him play after 1971.
Comparing Carew and Oliva was silly.
Too bad Tony had such bad knees, from 1964-1971 he was fantastic! A true 5 tool player. If you use Oliva's first 8 full seasons, before his bad knee injury, he was at 141. He could hardly run after that. It was sad watching him play after 1971.
An 8-year stretch of 141 by an outfielder is certainly very good. Not as good as an 8 year stretch of 138 by a catcher - something neither Johnny Bench nor Yogi Berra ever did - but still very good. But then, not being as good as Gene Tenace describes virtually every player not in the HOF, and a good 20% of those who are.
Carew is the greatest of all time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_players_from_Panama