Frankel

[miff]

\"Bill Spillane had him -1 going first to third on early parchment sheets\"


Frank D,

Ruth,baseball legend for sure, greatness personified during his era.Bill S did not tell you that surfaces were much faster back then, so Ruth was much slower than his numbers!

I\'ll take over 5% winners for wide Mikey...errrr I mean Rosario!


Mike

[TGAB]

Yes, Frank in my prime, I could patrol left field okay. By the way I did see and do remember Koufax in his prime and he was dominant, the best I ever saw. But it took five years to tame that feral left arm. Juan Marichal and Bob Gibson were in/on the upper echelon as well. For anyone really interested in this stuff, Bill James has written two historical abstracts, the second an update 15 or 20 years or so later, that among other things tries to rate the best players from the different generations. He developed statistics which more accurately gauged performance and also used statistical techniques to determine more clearly assets and their relative value and to rid measurements of bias (home field adjustments, dead ball, live ball era adjustments, etc).

Much like Andy Beyer popularized speed figures and introduced them to new generations so did Bill James popularize sabermetric tools to get an insightful, fact-based assessment of baseball players, their talents and the teams on which they played, taking into account where and when they played.

But both had their primogenitors. E.W. Donaldson among others was writing handicapping books in the 1930s looking at some of the factors we focus on here--the effect of weight, ground loss, wind and its influence. And while I\'m not as knowledgeable about the history of baseball stats, certainly there are contemporaries of Bill James not as well known, but adding insight into how to value baseball players and performance. Pete Palmer and John Thorn are just a couple.

[FrankD.]

Alan,

I barely remember Koufax, I was 8 when he retired and wasn\'t a full fledged baseball junkie until age 10. I\'ve read much about him and there is no disputing his complete and total dominance from 63-66. No pitcher ever had 4 consecutive years like that; not even close. The only hitter to approach that type of dominance in consecutive years were DiMaggio\'s first 7 in the bigs before the war; staggering!!!!

I\'m familiar with James first book and tend to read in spurts of subjects so maybe this thread will make for some baseball reads on Tuesdays; after I do Wednesday\'s numbers!!!!

See you soon my friend along with the rest of the Carolina BBQ cast aways.

Frank D.

[MO]

Bullsh!t!!! I saw Seaver beat Gibson 1-0 at Shea. Today\'s ballplayers are glorified triple A players and could not hold a candle to Gibson, Seaver, Ryan, Kofax, Drysdale, Marichal - and those were the guys off the top of my head. Sh!t, Don Cardwell could blow half of these losers away............ I (my parents)  paid 5 bucks to see Seaver vs. Gibson. Top that!!

[jimbo66]

All these posts make me wonder if it would be possible to have a  separate TG Board or at least a sub-section of this one.

It is hard for us younger guys to comment on this subject.  You have to realize not everybody is as old at TGJB, Frank D. and Miff....

[plasticman]

Mo, its the DEPTH of the league that you have to consider.

If you put Justin Verlander in a time machine and sent him back to 1972, do you think those hitters would make him look bad? Sal Bando led the World Champion A\'s with 77 RBIs. In Context, Nick Swisher, who\'s the 5th or 6th best hitter on the Yankees, will easily have 100 RBIs by the end of the season. Much better hitters in today\'s game for sure.

[Edgorman]

Koufax, Seaver, Gibson, Marichal would pitch shutouts ten years from now.  And if you want to see an ATHLETE who could excel in any era, watch film of Mickey.  No training, many drinks and too many injuries.  I miss watching him play.

[moosepalm]

I would rather bet an entire card at a Japanese track using nothing but information written in Japanese than make cross-generational comparisons of athletes.  You start with a different universe (racially, geographically, etc.) from which you draw participants.  You have evolutionary changes in athletes\' physiology.  There are supplements, legal and otherwise.  There are all kinds of training and developmental programs which didn\'t exist in previous eras.  Some of these work in favor of one side, some work in favor of the other.  I can\'t level the playing field.  It\'s hard enough to determine who\'s the greatest in a given time frame.  No small achievement in such a designation.

[sekrah]

MO Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Bullsh!t!!! I saw Seaver beat Gibson 1-0 at Shea.
> Today\'s ballplayers are glorified triple A players
> and could not hold a candle to Gibson, Seaver,
> Ryan, Kofax, Drysdale, Marichal - and those were
> the guys off the top of my head. Sh!t, Don
> Cardwell could blow half of these losers
> away............ I (my parents)  paid 5 bucks to
> see Seaver vs. Gibson. Top that!!


Now this is BS that goes the opposite direction of miff.

Please, that post is absurd.

[miff]

Sek,

What makes you think that Ruth could hit much faster pitches than he ever saw, 2 seam, 4 seam, sliders and all the other \"new\" pitches which have evolved over the last 75 years? Never disputing the incomparable talent of Ruth back then, just wondering if his skill set would be capable of playing todays game.

Just not as certain as you that he would he able to.


Mike

[HP]

Plastic wrote - \"Sal Bando led the World Champion A\'s with 77 RBIs. In Context, Nick Swisher, who\'s the 5th or 6th best hitter on the Yankees, will easily have 100 RBIs by the end of the season.\"

Sal Bando played real baseball.  Nick Swisher plays DH baseball, which sucks.  Big difference right there, in addition to the HUGE improvement of games going on for four hours.  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.  

HP

[P-Dub]

HP Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Plastic wrote - \"Sal Bando led the World Champion
> A\'s with 77 RBIs. In Context, Nick Swisher, who\'s
> the 5th or 6th best hitter on the Yankees, will
> easily have 100 RBIs by the end of the season.\"
>
> Sal Bando played real baseball.  Nick Swisher
> plays DH baseball, which sucks.  Big difference
> right there, in addition to the HUGE improvement
> of games going on for four hours.
> Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.  
>
> HP

The strike zone has shrunk considerably also. If the strike zone was called properly, mainly the high strike, these guys would have entirely different numbers.

[sekrah]

miff Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Sek,
>
> What makes you think that Ruth could hit much
> faster pitches than he ever saw, 2 seam, 4 seam,
> sliders and all the other \"new\" pitches which have
> evolved over the last 75 years? Never disputing
> the incomparable talent of Ruth back then, just
> wondering if his skill set would be capable of
> playing todays game.
>
> Just not as certain as you that he would he able
> to.
>
>
> Mike


miff.  He had the strength to swing a bat as hard as today\'s guys.   Your argument has shifted from whether he was athletic/strong enoughto now whether he has the skill.  Do you really think hand-eye coordination has evolved that much in the human species in 90 years?   Researcher at WUSTL (Washington University at St. Louis) did some motor skills tests on Albert Pujols, in a similar experiment that was conducted by Columbia University on Babe Ruth in 1921.  Here is the article on it:  http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/7535.aspx.

Both Ruth and Pujols participated in a number of standard psychological lab tests, such as pegboard and finger tapping exercises, designed to gauge motor skills and cognitive performance.

..

Asked to depress a tapper with his index finger as many times as possible in 10 seconds, Pujols scored in the 99th percentile, a score almost identical to one earned by Ruth on a similar test of movement speed and endurance.

Ruth definently wouldn\'t hit 714 home runs if he started his career today, because the depth of pitching is far greater than it was then, but he would still be a very formidable power hitter capable of hitting 30-35 HRs a year, with a 15 year career netting him 450 +/- home runs.

Saying he would struggle to reach the Mendoza Line (.200) is outrageous IMO.

[plasticman]

\"real baseball\"?

Im not following.

[HP]

Using a designated hitter is not real baseball.  I looked it up and Bando may actually have played in the DH time since it started in 1973.  I didn\'t think they ruined baseball that long ago but that is indeed the year.  

Up until 1973, both leagues played real baseball with real strategy.  The game invented by Doubleday and played with great joy for decades.  The pitcher hits.  Involves real strategy.  Baseball is not \"hittingtheball.\"  It\'s baseball.  Involves more than hitting.  

After 1973 the American League started playing \"DH ball\" which is not real baseball and makes cross-generational comparisons even more impossible.  

HP