All-time career hits list Topic

Posted by italyprof on 4/6/2014 9:09:00 PM (view original):
He is tied with DAvid Ortiz for career OBP, ahead of Mike Schmidt, Nap Lajoie, Barry Larkin, Alvin Dark, Al Simmons, Duke Snider, Carl Yastrzemski, Chuck Klein, Dick Allen, Gavvy Cravath, Mike Piazza, Eddie Mathews, Pete Rose (!), Harmon Killebrew, Hank Aaron and Pete Runnells to name a few. 

OPS is kind of a silly composite stat since it will either reflect high OBP or High SLG and so his being behind sluggers whom he has a better OBP than in OPS just means that comparing him, or Pete Rose to Babe Ruth or Hank Aaron for slugging percentage is sort of ridiculous. 

But over their careers, for total bases in a good season and for LIFETIME OBP Derek Jeter was a better bet to have at the plate than Pete f...ing Rose ! 


This is massively oversimplified, and you're definitely smart enough to know it.  Whether you are knowingly skewing the stats because you want to defend Jeter, or whether your obvious love of him is blinding you to reality, is perhaps an open question.

Jeter's career OBP is .381.  The league OBP over that career is .338.  Rose's career OBP was .375; league OBP, .331.  So really, who's a better bet to have at the plate, at least in terms of getting on base, which is the only thing you really discuss in this post?  I think it's pretty clearly Rose, in spite of the fact that he accumulated almost exactly 25% of his stats after his 40th birthday, while Jeter has yet to even reach that milestone.  Even without considering the fact that through the seasons BEFORE he turned 40 his career OBP was .380, relative to a league OBP of .331.

In fact, if you calculate an OBP+, most of the guys you listed pass Jeter.  You can't ignore era, and you know that.  Except when it's convenient for you to do so, apparently.
4/7/2014 5:11 PM
Again, the numbers for league averages for the steroid era are NOT like other league averages in which it was conditions for ALL batters that are reflected in the average. The OBP league average in the 1990s and early 2000s is higher because a significant number of sluggers were taking steroids, producing more offensively AND also being walked more often as a result. 

This is not like the 20s and 30s when the ball was wound more tightly for everyone, good hitters and bad alike. 
4/7/2014 7:52 PM
Though it is also worth pointing out that one other factor, the prevention of real competition by segregation pre-1950s (1947, but the real overall effect of integration was not felt until there was a critical mass of black players), means that the stats for the best players before that era, including many ahead of Jeter - who let's recall would have been considered "black" by the racist categorizations of the time (one drop of black blood etc.) due to his African-American father - and so prevented from playing at all in the ML before 1947 - are also inflated. So Jeter again, like all post-1947 players is better historically than his number indicated EVEN after being adjusted for things like eras-league averages. 
4/7/2014 7:56 PM
The following year, his rookie year (and he did win ROY in 1996) Derek Jeter .314 10 home runs and a .370 OBP. 

In 1999 Jeter hit .349 24 HR and an OBP of .438 - and came in 6th in the MVP voting. Ivan Rodriguez won it that year. Really? Derek Jeter was not as valuable in 1999 as Larkin in '95 or Ivan Rodriguez in '99? 


Someone else you failed to mention deserved the MVP in '99.  You know, the guy that some people, from a certain city,  left off the ballot?
4/7/2014 8:06 PM
Posted by italyprof on 4/7/2014 7:56:00 PM (view original):
Though it is also worth pointing out that one other factor, the prevention of real competition by segregation pre-1950s (1947, but the real overall effect of integration was not felt until there was a critical mass of black players), means that the stats for the best players before that era, including many ahead of Jeter - who let's recall would have been considered "black" by the racist categorizations of the time (one drop of black blood etc.) due to his African-American father - and so prevented from playing at all in the ML before 1947 - are also inflated. So Jeter again, like all post-1947 players is better historically than his number indicated EVEN after being adjusted for things like eras-league averages. 
Again, you're OBVIOUSLY grasping at straws to try to prove your point.  Pete Rose didn't play during the segregation era.  You're just trying to throw arguments against the wall and see what sticks.  I've never seen this from you before, and it's incredibly disappointing.

Segregation era arguments are stupid anyway.  The proportion of all male people in the United States between the ages of 20 and 40 playing Major League Baseball right now is several times smaller than the proportion of white male people in the United States between the ages of 20 and 40 playing Major League Baseball at any point prior to 1947.  But realistically, that has very little to do with racial integration and everything to do with internationalizing the game and general population growth.  At the end of the day, there are far too many factors to consider when determining relative talent eras beyond saying something like "during WW2 the talent in MLB was substantially lower than at any other time in the modern history of the game."  If you want to have any kind of intelligent discussion at all, you have to just treat people relative to their peers.  And Jeter was good relative to his peers, probably better than Rose on a per PA basis, but not at getting on base.

And what makes you so sure that Jeter isn't one of those guys getting an advantage from PEDs?  There is virtually nobody I would just assume was clean.  There are guys I would like to believe were clean.  Jeter I have no idea about.  His ability to stay healthy was, at the very least, a little bit suspicious.  I'm not saying he used, and I'm not saying he didn't.  I'm saying you don't know.  So again, you can't make an argument that because of PEDs, some guys stats should be considered more impressive relative to anyone else from any era.  Because you don't know which guys they are.  You just have to take everybody relative to his peers and compare him to other guys relative to their peers.  It's really the only way to do it, because anything else is pure conjecture.

The reality is that you made a stupid argument about OBP, ignoring league averages, and now you can't back off of it because it's your primary defense of Jeter as an elite player.  He wasn't an elite player.  He was a very good player, and a well-deserving Hall of Famer.  But he was never nearly as good as Yankees fans wanted to believe he was. At least not during the regular season.  And since he wasn't, you have to grasp at straws and then pure air trying to put together arguments that don't even begin to hold water, because for some reason it's important for so many people for Derek Jeter to be a historically great player.  I don't get it.  You guys won titles as a team, be happy about that.
4/7/2014 9:18 PM
You won't see me deifying Cal Ripken.  Or assuring anybody that he never used PEDs.
4/7/2014 9:19 PM
<<
In 1999 Jeter hit .349 24 HR and an OBP of .438 - and came in 6th in the MVP voting. Ivan Rodriguez won it that year. Really? Derek Jeter was not as valuable in 1999 as Larkin in '95 or Ivan Rodriguez in '99? >>

Pudge caught 141 games in 1999, and threw out 41/75 base runners...55%, when the league CS was 33%. 332/256/586   dWar of 2.7, -.2 for Jeter, .1 for Nomar....

I think it fair to say that I-Rod's defense is what tipped the scales his way in 1999.

4/8/2014 3:53 AM
Well, obviously nobody arguing for Jeter as a historically elite ballplayer is going to bring up the topic of defense...
4/8/2014 3:59 AM
dahsdebater, first, I have not been personal in this whole exchange, so I am not sure why you are being so. 

That aside, ALL of the questions debated have been raised by crazystengel who first brought up Total Bases, so I replied to that AFTER going to look it up and being surprised to find what I did. Then crazystengel (one of the very best people on this site by the way and someone for whom I have great respect) brought up OBP and OPS, so I went and looked THOSE up. I did not bring any of these arguments up nor try to skew facts - I did not know the facts and when crazystengel raised them I went to baseball-reference to see the lists of all-time career leaders and merely posted what was on their site. Nothing else. 

I never argued that Jeter could throw out runners from behind home plate better than Ivan Rodriguez could by the way :-).

There are some players about whom no one has raised the question of PEDs, perhaps mistakenly, but I am still innocent until proven guilty (though a head bigger than your dinner table is proof) sort of person.

Meanwhile, I think this is the single that boogerlips was referring to: 

http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/67701318/v31896883/balnyy-jeter-rips-a-double-off-the-wall/?c_id=nyy
4/8/2014 5:23 AM
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From 1990 to the mid-2000s, nine teams moved into more homer-friendly parks - and that doesn't include teams like the Dodgers, that reduced their foul territory significantly.  So easily a third of the games were being played in more hitter-friendly parks.  I'd opine that had a much bigger effect - and one across the board - on hitting numbers than steroids.

And how many hitters were using 'roids? For the sake of argument, let's say there are 900 players in MLB.  How many juiced at any given time, 100?  How many of those were pitchers?  And how many were players just trying to rehab and get back in the action, get to the level at which they would have been playing anyway barring injury?  I think the steroid impact is grossly overrated.
4/12/2014 12:11 AM
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