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For example, Jeter and Wagner have nearly identical On Base Percentages. But Wagner lead the league 4 times in OBP. Jeter never has.
Wagner 6 times lead the league in Slugging Percentage. Jeter never has.
Wagner won 8 batting titles. Jeter has never won a batting title.
Derek Jeter's career OPS+ (which measures On Base Percentage + Slugging Percentage divided by the league average) is 119. Meaning that Jeter has been 19% better than the average hitter over his career. Wagner's career OPS+ was 150. Wagner was 50% better than than the average player.
The game WAS a lot different in Wagner's day. A replacement level player in Wagner's time was surely less of a player than in Jeter's. The average player in Wagner's time was also worse than in Jeter's. But there is no other logical way to compare players across eras than to compare them to the players that they played against.
Jeter is a no-doubt Hall of Famer, but Wagner dominated his peers to a much greater degree than Jeter did
Is this for real? The caliber of todays player has gotten much better. There are ALOT more teams and players in the league as well. So how is this a realistic comparison? Apples:Oranges
I've always considered Honus Wagner one of the 5 or 10 greatest players of all time. Playing in the deadball era, he averaged 5 home runs per season but still topped 100 RBIs 9 times, leading the league 5 times. He also won 8 batting titles and 5 stolen bases titles. He played mostly in an 8-team league with 22 games against each of the other 7. This guaranteed that he would face the league's most dominating pitchers on a regular basis. Jeter is not in Wagner's class. But who is?
Is this for real? The caliber of todays player has gotten much better. There are ALOT more teams and players in the league as well. So how is this a realistic comparison? Apples:Oranges
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Originally Posted by filihok
Quote:
The game WAS a lot different in Wagner's day. A replacement level player in Wagner's time was surely less of a player than in Jeter's. The average player in Wagner's time was also worse than in Jeter's. But there is no other logical way to compare players across eras than to compare them to the players that they played against.
Can you think of a better way to compare them other than by relating them to their peers?
Wagner was more better than his peers than Jeter was/is
Can you think of a better way to compare them other than by relating them to their peers?
Wagner was more better than his peers than Jeter was/is
Lancet has a point, as a database expands, it becomes more and more difficult to find outlying extremes.
If you were looking for the tallest person in a group of 100 that averaged 5' 8", that person might be 6'4" tall and would tower over the majority of the group. If you expand the elligibles to 300 people, also averaging 5'8", the odds are that you will have at least three people who are 6' 4".
If from the first group of 100 you formed a basketball team, your 6'4" guy would have a massive height advantage over his teammates. A team formed from the 300 sample group would have three 6' 4" guys and probably a couple of 6' 2" guys as well. Being 6' 4" no longer makes you such a standout.
And if the situation was one where the 300 sample group averaged 5' 11" instead of 5' 8", your comparatives to the original group of 100 become less accurate and meaningful.
Consequently, I do not place much stock in evaluation systems which determine the best of all time , by identifying how much better one player was than his contemporaries. Babe Ruth may have been 20 % better than the average player of his generation, while Albert Pujols is only 12 % better than the average player of his time, but all that is really telling us is that in Babe Ruth's era, there were fewer outstanding players than there are today.
I suspect that if you took ten players from today's game who are all 10 percent or higher better than the average player, and transported them to Babe Ruth's era, they would all become 20 percent or higher better than the average player. Or if Babe Ruth was time warped to 2010, he would not remain 20 percent better than the average player, he might not even remain the best player.
In every sport where precise metrics may be kept, such as track and field, modern athletes are vastly superior to the ones from earlier ages. Today there are a couple of dozen women track runners who can beat the world record men's times from the 1920 and 1930's. Modern athletes are bigger, stronger and faster than the ones from the past. Is is silly to think that baseball has somehow or other been an exception and that the Babe Ruth era teams would match up well with the teams we are watching today.
I suspect that if you took ten players from today's game who are all 10 percent or higher better than the average player, and transported them to Babe Ruth's era, they would all become 20 percent or higher better than the average player. Or if Babe Ruth was time warped to 2010, he would not remain 20 percent better than the average player, he might not even remain the best player.
Agreed, plus, I'd bet that the differences were much greater than that.
In your time warp scenario, it depends at what point in the players' life we time warp. If we take Ruth from just prior to his 1927 season and transport him to 2011 we're going to get a different Ruth than if we take Ruth from his birth and allow him access to today's training and nutritional advances
So, until we can time warp comparing to peers is the best tool that we have.
If we take Ruth from just prior to his 1927 season and transport him to 2011 we're going to get a different Ruth than if we take Ruth from his birth and allow him access to today's training and nutritional advances
.
I'm not so certain. If Ruth's personality remained intact through the time transportation, then he would probably be a guy like John Kruk...talented, but disinclined to work very hard at getting better. A Ruth with access to modern training and nutrition would still need to take advantage of those modern aids instead of devoting all his free time to overeating, drinking and whoring around. The Ruth I've read about seems likely to spend more time hanging around Burger King and Hooters than the gym.
Can you think of a better way to compare them other than by relating them to their peers?
Wagner was more better than his peers than Jeter was/is
Back then there were less stars. Nowadays alot more specialists which can make it more difficult than a guy pitching 10 or 11 innings a game which would obviously make him a little tired. More better? Come on fili, you're making this too easy! You have to be able to speak the english language properly for me to take this argument seriously.
Unfortunately taking a player from years ago and comparing him to a modern day guy is pretty impossible to do. We'd just be guessing and there's no science behind that. We can only compare players from similiar times if we want to be accurate.
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