Posted by tomhanrahan on 7/12/2020 7:38:00 PM (view original):
my argument for Wagner is simple.

Pick a modern SS (Cal, Yount, Jeter, Ozzie) who you might say with timelining better.

The difference between Wagner and modern SS xxx is GREATER than comparing Ruth to Rickey Henderson or Frank Robinson. So unless you wish to kick Ruth-Cobb-etc all off your alltime team, and only have post-1947 players... WAGNER.

Not at all clear that this point holds.

Let's take WAR just as an example. Not my favorite stat, but just to show how by one widely used metric (which does not assume ANY inherent performance improvement over time) your Ruth analogy doesn't hold.

Wagner: 130.8
Ripken 95.9
Wagner's absolute advantage = 34.9
Wagner's relative advantage = 36%

Ruth: 182.5
Rickey Henderson: 111.2
Ruth's absolute advantage = 71.3
Ruth's relative advantage = 64.1%

Ruth's advantage over Henderson is far far greater than Wagner's advantage over Ripken. (Had I used Frank Robinson the numbers would be even more in Ruth's favor...)

Posted by rob_frazer on 7/12/2020 8:43:00 PM (view original):
“You can have your Cobbs, your Lajoies, your Chases, your Bakers, but I'll take Wagner as my pick of the greatest,” [John] McGraw said. "He is not only a marvelous mechanical player, but he has the quickest baseball brain I have ever observed.”

"I name Wagner first on my list, not only because he was a great batting champion and base-runner, and also baseball's foremost shortstop - but because Honus could have been first at any other position, with the possible exception of pitcher. In all my career, I never saw such a versatile player." - John McGraw in The Sporting News (December 6, 1955)

" . . . there is no one who has ever played the game that I would be more anxious to have on a baseball team." - Bill James

Cherry picking quotes is not particularly persuasive. McGraw was obviously a great manager. It's not clear why his opinion on the subject matters more than any of dozens of other people from his era, not to mention thousands of other people who are very knowledgeable about the game. His inclusion of Frank Baker and (ridiculously) Hal Chase in the first sentence greatly diminishes any point he was trying to make.

Posted by contrarian23 on 7/12/2020 9:16:00 PM (view original):

Posted by tomhanrahan on 7/12/2020 7:38:00 PM (view original):
my argument for Wagner is simple.

Pick a modern SS (Cal, Yount, Jeter, Ozzie) who you might say with timelining better.

The difference between Wagner and modern SS xxx is GREATER than comparing Ruth to Rickey Henderson or Frank Robinson. So unless you wish to kick Ruth-Cobb-etc all off your alltime team, and only have post-1947 players... WAGNER.

Not at all clear that this point holds.

Let's take WAR just as an example. Not my favorite stat, but just to show how by one widely used metric (which does not assume ANY inherent performance improvement over time) your Ruth analogy doesn't hold.

Wagner: 130.8
Ripken 95.9
Wagner's absolute advantage = 34.9
Wagner's relative advantage = 36%

Ruth: 182.5
Rickey Henderson: 111.2
Ruth's absolute advantage = 71.3
Ruth's relative advantage = 64.1%

Ruth's advantage over Henderson is far far greater than Wagner's advantage over Ripken. (Had I used Frank Robinson the numbers would be even more in Ruth's favor...)

Interesting analysis. I offer 2 thoughts - which, by the way, I had 2 idols as a kid - Cal Ripken and Rickey Henderson. All-time greats.

1. WAR does not factor in SB. There is something to be said for the pressure that Rickey put on the opposing pitcher.
2. Cal re-defined what a SS is, and he impacted the game forever.

This is like arguing about whether my house is nicer than yours. All our houses are nice, let's admire them for the greatness that they are instead of arguing about whose is better. They're all great.

- Wagner did not play MLB until he was 23... likely lack of good scouting in the 1890s.
- Wagner was mis-cast as a OF and 3B for his early career, lowering his value. Whereas Earl Weaver rightly saw Cal as a shortstop when others thought he belonged at third.
- in Wagner's early years, MLB schedule was only 140 games, obviously cutting his stats like WAR.
- Wagner was the best position player in his league 11 times. Cal 3 times.

Perhaps I over-drew the analogy with Henderson. Using Mays or Aaron or Bonds makes it more clear; how many people would leave Ruth off of their all-MLB team and put those three ahead of him?

contrarian23, with whom I differ only cautiously whenever that happens, makes important points here.

But..I think asking, who was the greater General, Colin Powell or Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great or Napoleon? is a question about how well that general handled what was available at the time and then is about, I think, making an educated guess about how well they would have done under changed circumstances.

To say, Powell calls in an air strike and wipes the floor with the entire armies of the other three, is to assume that Napoleon, Caesar and Alexander would not have been able, given the same time and training, to figure out what to do with air assaults. That is either saying, there are no comparisons possible, which means none of us should be playing on this website, or "there is only progress" - a viewpoint I am skeptical about. Throw some low HR screwball or spitball pitchers from the early years of baseball at today's MLB hitters and a 27-strikeout perfect game is not impossible, and of course we have to ask how well today's HR hitters would have done in some of the 19th century ballparks that had 600 ft. center fields. My guess is they hit .198 with a lot of fly outs.

Shakespeare, were he alive today, would have gone straight to Hollywood and would have dominated there, Aeschylus too. I have little doubt of that.

Beethoven would have composed different music, appropriate to the times, but it would have better than pretty much anyone else's.

The Negro League is issue is more serious: there have been no .400 hitters since 1941 - that is, Williams hit .400, then everybody good, or nearly everybody, went to the army, they came out, baseball was desegregated the next year and there have been no .400 hitters since. Pretty sure the .400 hitter was a phenomenon of segregated baseball, that is of too many second-rate pitchers and fielders, later replaced by the real thing when baseball integrated.

Wagner would have lost some points on his career BA no doubt, all the others too, playing against competition that had been excluded when he played - let's remember that he was an opponent of segregation and a socialist and member of the IWW, so saying that is no slur on his own record. Lou Gehrig and Walter Johnson also both made statements against segregation at times.

But I digress. Wagner with the same training, diet etc. as Derek Jeter, that is what we want to know. Napoleon with an air force. Shakespeare with a $100 million budget and special effects. Beethoven, ah heck Beethoven was so advanced they had to build larger concert halls to fit his music in and the musicians even rebelled, saying they couldn't understand what they had to play. He told them they didn't have to understand. That this music was for the future. He would have had no problem with Duke Ellington composing right alongside him is my bet. He supported the French Revolution after all. Beethoven would have been fine. Here is a piece I had published about him a while back:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/04/12/why-we-need-beethoven-in-2018-more-than-ever/

Posted by tomhanrahan on 7/13/2020 5:09:00 AM (view original):
- Wagner did not play MLB until he was 23... likely lack of good scouting in the 1890s.
- Wagner was mis-cast as a OF and 3B for his early career, lowering his value. Whereas Earl Weaver rightly saw Cal as a shortstop when others thought he belonged at third.
- in Wagner's early years, MLB schedule was only 140 games, obviously cutting his stats like WAR.
- Wagner was the best position player in his league 11 times. Cal 3 times.

Perhaps I over-drew the analogy with Henderson. Using Mays or Aaron or Bonds makes it more clear; how many people would leave Ruth off of their all-MLB team and put those three ahead of him?

I would, in fact, put Mays, Aaron, and Bonds on my all time OF over Ruth. But that's just me.

(To an earlier post, WAR absolutely includes SB. Whoever said it doesn't is just mistaken.)

One more time, since this seems to keep getting lost - I agree that Wagner was the greatest SS ever. My caution is that I don't think this is a slam dunk conclusion. And it is entirely dependent on what assumptions you make about how much the game has changed, and how well players would adapt to those changes if we could somehow get them to travel through time. Those are questions without anything close to definitive answers and to pretend that we have them is pure folly.

My esteemed friend italyprof is (as always) eloquent on this issue. And I appreciate his point that the questions persist in both directions on the timeline. I agree that there are thousands of questions we cannot answer and can only make educated guesses about. And I think the layers go very very deep, and go well beyond baseball. If Wagner is born 100 years later, the economy of Western Pennsylvania is completely different. What happens to him and his family? Maybe he stars on the gridiron, and in the post-industrial suburbs of Pittsburgh the siren song of playing for Pitt becomes impossible to ignore and so he becomes Tony Dorsett rather than Honus Wagner. What is his education like? What career opportunities are available to him? He was clearly very intelligent - maybe he goes to college and becomes an engineer or doctor or pursues another profession - or maybe he just spends somewhat less time developing his baseball skills compared to other pursuits that are available to him.

On the question of whether history's geniuses - in any field - would necessarily be geniuses in another time and place, well, I'm skeptical.

Beyond my personal (unprovable) belief that baseball has gotten incrementally better, consistently, over time, I am faced with the problem that even if the overall quality of players has not improved, the circumstances of the game and of society and of life have changed a lot in a century. I don't think we can just say "X was great and proved himself creative and resourceful and resilient in his own era, so we can assume he would have adapted well and proceeded along the same arc with the same relative success in another era." I mean, you CAN say that if you want...but I think it's woefully incomplete and really is nothing more than complete supposition about what we think MIGHT happen IF we could architect the person's life the way we would want to.

{Side note that is eerily relevant to this discussion but probably only funny if you have spent time in management consulting: In some cases we can't even make educated guess and we have to make "WAGNERs." When I was a young consultant one of my mentors was putting together an analysis and had to make assumptions about some data we were missing (pre-Google days when information was not easy to come by). His footnote said simply: WAGNER. Which stood for Wild *** Guess, Not Easily Refuted.}

Good discussion folks. Thanks.

Posted by contrarian23 on 7/13/2020 12:19:00 PM (view original):

Posted by tomhanrahan on 7/13/2020 5:09:00 AM (view original):
- Wagner did not play MLB until he was 23... likely lack of good scouting in the 1890s.
- Wagner was mis-cast as a OF and 3B for his early career, lowering his value. Whereas Earl Weaver rightly saw Cal as a shortstop when others thought he belonged at third.
- in Wagner's early years, MLB schedule was only 140 games, obviously cutting his stats like WAR.
- Wagner was the best position player in his league 11 times. Cal 3 times.

Perhaps I over-drew the analogy with Henderson. Using Mays or Aaron or Bonds makes it more clear; how many people would leave Ruth off of their all-MLB team and put those three ahead of him?

I would, in fact, put Mays, Aaron, and Bonds on my all time OF over Ruth. But that's just me.

(To an earlier post, WAR absolutely includes SB. Whoever said it doesn't is just mistaken.)

One more time, since this seems to keep getting lost - I agree that Wagner was the greatest SS ever. My caution is that I don't think this is a slam dunk conclusion. And it is entirely dependent on what assumptions you make about how much the game has changed, and how well players would adapt to those changes if we could somehow get them to travel through time. Those are questions without anything close to definitive answers and to pretend that we have them is pure folly.

I agree it is not quite slam dunk mainly for the issue you raise of whether Pop Lloyd was better, which we can't know, but there is a real possibility of that being true.

While A-Rod's HRs and Jeter's hit totals, and Ozzie's defense mean Wagner was not qualitatively better, I think there is a strong case that he was better, as you argue.

As for Mays, Aaron and Bonds - I think there is a good chance Bonds was headed to being in that company when he unfortunately in turning to steroids made it impossible to know how good he really was going to still be at that point in his career.

I think the case for Mays and Aaron being better is very good IF we exclude pitching. Add in Ruth's pitching career and I think he is still ahead. But I agree that we are all in the same ballpark at that point, and my call for Ruth based on pitching is a judgment call, not a given.

But I still go:

Ruth
Mays
Wagner
Aaron
Mantle

But then I have to think. And of course here I am not including Oscar Charleston or Josh Gibson who may easily have been better than Ruth and Mays.

Posted by contrarian23 on 7/13/2020 12:37:00 PM (view original):
My esteemed friend italyprof is (as always) eloquent on this issue. And I appreciate his point that the questions persist in both directions on the timeline. I agree that there are thousands of questions we cannot answer and can only make educated guesses about. And I think the layers go very very deep, and go well beyond baseball. If Wagner is born 100 years later, the economy of Western Pennsylvania is completely different. What happens to him and his family? Maybe he stars on the gridiron, and in the post-industrial suburbs of Pittsburgh the siren song of playing for Pitt becomes impossible to ignore and so he becomes Tony Dorsett rather than Honus Wagner. What is his education like? What career opportunities are available to him? He was clearly very intelligent - maybe he goes to college and becomes an engineer or doctor or pursues another profession - or maybe he just spends somewhat less time developing his baseball skills compared to other pursuits that are available to him.

On the question of whether history's geniuses - in any field - would necessarily be geniuses in another time and place, well, I'm skeptical.

Beyond my personal (unprovable) belief that baseball has gotten incrementally better, consistently, over time, I am faced with the problem that even if the overall quality of players has not improved, the circumstances of the game and of society and of life have changed a lot in a century. I don't think we can just say "X was great and proved himself creative and resourceful and resilient in his own era, so we can assume he would have adapted well and proceeded along the same arc with the same relative success in another era." I mean, you CAN say that if you want...but I think it's woefully incomplete and really is nothing more than complete supposition about what we think MIGHT happen IF we could architect the person's life the way we would want to.

{Side note that is eerily relevant to this discussion but probably only funny if you have spent time in management consulting: In some cases we can't even make educated guess and we have to make "WAGNERs." When I was a young consultant one of my mentors was putting together an analysis and had to make assumptions about some data we were missing (pre-Google days when information was not easy to come by). His footnote said simply: WAGNER. Which stood for Wild *** Guess, Not Easily Refuted.}

Good discussion folks. Thanks.

It is, of course, difficult to know - I don't believe in a great man or genius theory of history. Just that people who were already talented in a given field, if presumed to be in that field with the same training as others at their level would still perform under the new circumstances more or less as they did.

If only we had an example of someone who had proven themselves a capable person in their field, a leader of people perhaps, capable of organizing a mass organization and movement under terrible obstacles and circumstances that no one would ever have wished for . Someone who then is out of the picture, perhaps decades later in an entirely changed world also proved able to be a leader, a capable administrator, someone who could adapt to new circumstances and in a wholly new context establish themselves as proving just as capable as they had previously shown themselves to be.

Nelson Mandela

Posted by d_rock97 on 7/13/2020 12:27:00 PM (view original):
I think people vastly overestimate how much segregation affected baseball. People really acting like a couple of NgL pitchers will suddenly drop Ruth’s OPS+ under 200. Or that Ty Cobb no longer bats .400 multiple times. Cobb could’ve batted .300 in the 1950s, give me Cobb over any of these new age hitters.

Oh I don't think so at. If anything we underestimate.

No one thinks Ruth's OPS would drop under .200, but oh absolutely I doubt anyone hits .400, and I'd bet we'd have quite a few other players to add in our "greatest players of all time" discussion

How do you leave both Cobb and Hornsby out of that Top 5 discussion?

I am a huge Henry Aaron fan, both on and off the field, but he does not belong on that list. One season above .328, one .400 on base. He stands just above Pujols stat wise, and both played a few years too many...

Posted by chargingryno on 7/13/2020 11:17:00 PM (view original):

Posted by d_rock97 on 7/13/2020 12:27:00 PM (view original):
I think people vastly overestimate how much segregation affected baseball. People really acting like a couple of NgL pitchers will suddenly drop Ruth’s OPS+ under 200. Or that Ty Cobb no longer bats .400 multiple times. Cobb could’ve batted .300 in the 1950s, give me Cobb over any of these new age hitters.

Oh I don't think so at. If anything we underestimate.

No one thinks Ruth's OPS would drop under .200, but oh absolutely I doubt anyone hits .400, and I'd bet we'd have quite a few other players to add in our "greatest players of all time" discussion

I agree.

Posted by DoctorKz on 7/13/2020 11:54:00 PM (view original):
How do you leave both Cobb and Hornsby out of that Top 5 discussion?

I am a huge Henry Aaron fan, both on and off the field, but he does not belong on that list. One season above .328, one .400 on base. He stands just above Pujols stat wise, and both played a few years too many...

I think you are not adjusting for time period.

Cobb is certainly top 10 despite everything and what we may think of him.

Hornsby, however, is almost certainly over-rated due to the inflation of batting and slugging stats in his time. See Bill James' historical abstract on this.

Aaron played in an era when offensive stats instead were deflated. Pujols the opposite. Pujols was certainly a great player. Aaron has always been under-rated, even when he played. The best thing I ever saw about Aaron was in the same James book I just mentioned. An artcle comparing Carl Yastrzemski and Billy Williams: he wrote that their best season were what Henry Aaron did every year. It's pretty close to true if you look at Aaron's performance.

I think all the OBP stats for players up to the 1980s or 90s are lower than they would be today, because a) OBP was actually discouraged by hitting coaches and teams. You were encouraged to take initiative and try and hit the ball; b) the offensive stats were deflated and so pitchers were less careful about throwing the ball in the strike zone, leading to fewer walks. Ted Wiliams and Mickey Mantle are so great in part because of this: they were outlyers, huge OBPs despite the overall trend. I somewhere posted a long analysis here of OBP stats over the past century, will try to find it.

Quote post by italyprof on 7/13/2020 12:06:00 PM:

contrarian23, with whom I differ only cautiously whenever that happens

You Prof are a smart man. I only differ with him when he is clearly wrong. Um, it has happened. Once, anyway, maybe twice, OK, once. But it has happened. I mean it has...