Granted, but isn’t a grown man hitting a baseball pretty meaningless in and of itself?
Barry Bonds cracked his 756th home run. (yawn) And I’m going to make my 1,000th post. Believe me, my post will be more meaningful than some chump hitting a baseball.
Yes, there is just one Hank Arrons but that fact remains he played against different players and circumstances, so for his era he was the best,but as an example; If a skater performed at a different time.like Sonjia Henie today’s skaters may have beaten her record then, but now she would have to do triple axels etc. Who knows how many home runs Aarons would have made against todays picthers,who knows what would have happened if Aarons had less time at bat(or more),what if the side was retired because the batter ahead of him struck out and retired the side. Chance plays a lot in any sport.
I do not dispute Aarons record I just can’t see comparing the past with the present.
Monavis
I may be wrong, for I am an ignorant Brit and only reading this thread because there are precious few Dope threads about real sport, but I believe the “only one Hank Aaron” line was because of your inadvertent pluralisation of his name. 
No, its quite meaningful to me, and to millions of others.
If it means nothing to you, that’s fine - I’m sure you have pursuits and passions I care nothing about - but why are you posting to a thread that concerns a topic you care nothing about?
If your intent as a sabermetrician is to determine how valuable the player was, it doesn’t matter if Bonds took steroids and Carlos Delgado didn’t, or that KEn Caminiti took steroids and Alex Rodriguez didn’t; the results on the field are what caused their teams to win and lose ballgames. Bonds’s value as a ballplayer is enormous, and generally measurable.
When you adjust the stats of, say, Honus Wagner to account for the fact that teams in his day didn’t score a lot of runs, you’re not adjusting to the physical conditions of the day, you’re just adjusting for the statistical differences - the fact that there were very few home runs, few double plays, and a huge number of errors.
It’s not as easy to figure out as some would have you believe (for instance, a player with excellent speed may have been more valuable in 1911 than he would be today, since errors were far more common and a player with speed can get on base via the error more, but it’s extremely hard to find reliable data) and how you do the figuring kind of depends on what question you’re asking. But if you want to know “How valuable was Bonds?” it doesn’t matter if he took roids and Shawn Green didn’t. Like it or not… and I don’t like it, but there you go… steroids probaqbly made Bonds more valuable. From what we are now hearing, amphetamines may have made Henry Aaron more valuable, though I doubt the effect was more than a small fraction as large as Bonds’s 'roids.
I am reminded of Joe DiMaggio. No, wait, I’ll get back to the point. Joe, as you probably know, played his entire career in a stadium uniquely awful for right handed power hitters, and he lost a LOT of home runs as a result… I can’t remember the exact number but he hit something like 75 fewer homers at home than on the road, an immense loss. I’ve seen people try to argue that DiMAggio was more valuable than he appears because of this, and they’re just hopelessly wrong; if EVERYONE lost 33% of their home run power in Yankee Stadium then of course DiMaggio should be suitable credited, but they didn’t; it was more like 3%. DiMaggio was uniquely, unusually harmed by Yankee Stadium because he was a righthanded pull hitter. It may not be fair to poor Joe, but it’s reality; he had a weakness than reduced his value in that context and that’s just the bare facts of the matter.
So it is for Bonds. It may be unfair that he stuck around longer than her should have and hit a bunch more home runs, but they didn’t catch him in 1999,m so the fact is it did happen and it did help the Giants will ball games, so it’s a real increase in his value. You might think it’s wrong, and someone might argue that if he’s officially caught as a cheater he shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame, and they can argue that Aaron was a greater home run hitter and all those arguments are perfectly valid to put forth. But it doesn’t affect the issue of how much Bonds helped his team. I mean, since 2001 the guy has basically been a one man offense.
If, on the other hand, you wanted to figure out how good Bonds would have done in the 1950s and 1960s without steroids… there’s just no way to know for sure. For all we know he might have hit 450 homers, or maybe he would have hit 950 homers because the competition wasn’t as good. It’s impossible to say. Baseball Prospectus, in their book “Behind the Numbers,” did a sort-of study on this (the performance effect of steroids) that I found laughably short of evidence and long on arbitrary assumptions; anyway, BP has a pretty heavy bias on a lot of issues and steroids is one of them.
I tend to disagree with this analysis. I don’t disagree that RBI is a poor general indicator of how valuable a player is at all, in fact I have long felt that RBI is unfairly factored in heavily when it comes to MVP voting. However, the importance of a record is how important the public perceives it to be, not how important it actually is. The all-time hits record was hyped pretty immensely when Pete Rose started to get within realistic distance of beating Ty Cobb’s long-standing record. People still know that Pete Rose is the all time hit king, in general. I’m not sure how much of that is related to Pete Rose’s significant media presence (often related to him in a negative way) and how much of it is general respect for the all-time hits record.
But anyway, everyone knows that being the all-time leader in hits doesn’t make you any better than the guy a few hits below you. Hell, Pete Rose is one of the most arrogant assholes out there and even he stated quite clearly that he didn’t surpass Ty Cobb as a player–all he did was get more hits than him, and Rose himself admitted he also got more outs and had more ABs than anyone in baseball history.
For that matter, the all-time Home Runs record isn’t necessarily indicative of being better than the people you surpass on that list, either. It’s worth noting that when Barry Bonds surpassed Babe Ruth at 715, he already had taken more ABs than Ruth did to get to 714, so Babe Ruth was still more of a threat to generate a home run in an individual at bat than Bonds was/is. Just because someone can stick around for years doesn’t necessarily mean they are better than any other given player. Sandy Koufax is one of the best pitchers to have ever played the game, but his career was relatively short. Does that make him better or worse than a guy who has been hurling for a long time like John Smoltz or Greg Maddux or et cetera? In general I think most people consider Sandy Koufax better than pitchers who are “marginal” Hall of Famers like John Smoltz (not that I think Smoltz isn’t good, but I think statistically he has just barely earned his spot in the Hall if/when he gets in) but a lot probably consider Roger Clemens and Greg Maddux to be superior pitchers to Koufax. I would probably agree, and part of that is the fact that Maddux and Clemens had longer careers and remained competitive throughout them, even at his currently high ERA of 4.00, Clemens is still doing better than league average–now I doubt that is much consolation to Clemens, but a lot of guys struggle to do better than average at pitching at the Major League level and Clemens is doing it at well over 40. So to a degree, when comparing “counting statistics” as opposed to ratio ones or other types of metrics, you have to factor in the fact that while longevity can make for a more impressive career to a degree it is a balancing act. Who is the better player, someone who has great offensive production for 20 seasons or someone who surpasses some of that player’s numbers but takes 24 seasons to do it. (As a total aside, I don’t think Barry isn’t great, he is one of the best ballplayers ever. I do think he is a Hall of Famer without any home run records, I also think that without outside help he never would have set any of the home run records, but he would have probably still retired with 580-650 home runs and be remembered as one of the best of all time. He doesn’t look good only because he was able to stick it out into his 40s, his percentages have always been good too.)
For that matter, take a look at Cy Young, he had incredible longevity and has the Major League Wins record–note that Wins is probably the single worst baseball metric to have widespread public notoriety, and it is extremely team-dependent. You can pitch a great game and still pick up an L. But wins is very important to baseball fans and even most baseball writers (although many are starting to move away from this statistic.) Cy Young certainly wasn’t even considered the best pitcher of his era (Walter Johnson was); even though Cy was capable of hurling for many years and got himself an unbreakable record in the process.
I’m starting to ramble, but my point basically is that a record’s general importance isn’t related to how “legit” the statistic in question is nor is it related to how significantly “team influenced” the statistic in question is. It’s not even necessarily related to how important the statistic itself is perceived to be. Saves, RBI, batting average, wins, are all statistics which are highly touted. I tend to agree that none of them are a great indicator of a player’s value to a team, however that is beside the point. All of them are, in general, considered by the average fan as an “important” statistic. Yet not that many people know who holds the record for most career RBIs or most career Saves.
It’s basically related to one thing, and that is how important the public perceives it to be. Most people know Pete Rose is the all time hits king, if anyone were to approach that record, it would be big news and followed extensively. Most people know that Joe DiMaggio has the record for the longest hitting streak–it’s questionable how significant such a streak really is. The same year that Joe had his hitting streak, Ted Williams hit .406 and in every measurable way was a better ballplayer than Joe DiMaggio–but DiMaggio won the MVP award. Sure, Joe hit in more consecutive games, but Ted had a higher batting average that year and more hits in general, and I believe he even hit safely in more games than Joe that year (although this is just based on a vague memory of an article I read, so I could be totally wrong) he just didn’t have the good luck to do that in 56 consecutive games.
Runs scored as a record correlates very well with a list of “best baseball players of all time”, it is a team dependent statistic but it also is a catch-all statistic which good players will influence in various ways–by being very good at hitting, very good at getting on base, very good at running the basepaths and et cetera. Ricky Henderson didn’t set this record by being on top-quality teams his whole career (he was on some good teams, though), he set it in large part because of his superb base stealing ability in combination with a pretty decent on base percentage as well as the fact he was typically the leadoff man so was often followed by guys who had a good chance to drive him into home.
Runs scored isn’t necessarily a great indicator of a player’s total offensive value, with that I agree, but again, my only point with my post was that the only thing that really impacts how important a record is is the degree to which the public views the record as being important. The public already demonstrates that it thinks worthless stats are very important, or that it is especially interested in some records which aren’t necessarily very significant–while Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak was impressive, I don’t think it was as impressive as Ted Williams batting .406 in that same season.
They also rely on the weather, atmospheric conditions, the skill of the pitcher, and the dimensions of the ballpark. Home Runs also aren’t really a “catch-all” statistic, there are examples of people with good home run power who aren’t in the same league as players with less home run power. Most people don’t think Mark McGwire or Rafael Palmeiro nearly equal Ted Williams as a ballplayer, but they both have more career home runs than Ted.
True, which has nothing to do with how much the public will respect a given statistic. Note how important people consider the number of wins a pitcher gets in a season. More and more some of the “in the know” baseball writers are moving away from this and going to a better, more scientific analysis of pitching ability; but wins are still highly valued by the media.
In terms of baseball what is most important is winning the game; the team with the most runs wins. So, the most valuable thing a player can do when he comes to the plate is to create a run. A home run is one run in itself plus up to three additional runs based on how many runners are already on base. A triple which sends three people home is more valuable than a solo home run.
A home run is the most valuable hit that a player can produce, but it isn’t strictly speaking the most valuable thing a player can do, the most valuable thing a player can do is create four runs as a batter–which can only happen with a home run (be it in the park or otherwise) so while the most valuable offensive contribution possible is directly dependent on getting a home run, home runs aren’t always more valuable than triples or doubles in the context of individual baseball games (in the context of statistics HRs are of course weighted heavier), factors outside of the batter’s control can inflate or deflate the importance of various types of hits.
Nice analysis, but it unfortunately doesn’t really “matter.” We’re talking about the importance of a record not a legitimate analysis of how good a given player is versus another player. The public widely perceives many players who really aren’t better than X to be better than X. Ricky Henderson is a prime example of how spectacle is more important than anything else, Ricky Henderson put people in the seats (as Barry does, for better or worse) that is why he will be remembered. No normal fan cares enough to know what % of steals Ricky needed to make successfully to not take runs away from his team, they just know they liked seeing him grab bags.
Yes. We get it. You’re better than us because you don’t like baseball.
Wow, RickJay and Martin, I have learned a ton about baseball in the last 10 mintues reading this thread, and I watch a lot of of Cubs games.
Forgive me for being off topic from Barry Bonds, I have a question for you about RBIs. I completely get what you are saying that the # of RBIs in itself is not a “good” statistic, but I’ve been impressed this year with Aramis Ramirez’s ability to get hits with men on base. If I recall correctly, his batting average in that situation is in the 400s, and therefore obviously much better than his batting average without men on base. This way of looking at the “value” of a hitter seems to me to be much more significant than straight RBIs, so why do you think that fans focus so much on how many RBIs a player has? Is it just because this is an easier stat to understand/keep track of?
My view of this situation:
Barry Bonds has used anabolic steroids, without question. From what I know about their use, Mr Bonds likely has testes roughly the size of Thompson seedless grapes. He probably last got it up roughly the last time the Pirates had a winning team. He will probably die of some anabolic related problem, similar to Lyle Alzado. Many fans (a majority?) despise the man.
I think he has given an awful lot to the game.
Right, i agree with all that. I may not have worded my question very well. I understand that all we seek to do when adjusting for the era when someone played is to determine their relative value on the field, not to make value judgments about how their performance came about, etc. So, we can measure Bonds’ performance and his contribution completely independently of the the steroids questions.
My point, i guess, was more about whether the era-adjusted valuations will be as acceptable to people for the “steroid era” as they are for other eras (the dead ball era, etc.), because some players took unique advantage of steroids and others didn’t. Then again, maybe this is a moot point, because some baseball fans seem unwilling to pay any heed to sabermetric analysis already, so the era-adjusted figures for the steroid era will not affect them any more than any other statistical adjustments.
Yeah, it’s that question of “how well he would have done” that i guess i was really getting at.
To take your Joe DiMaggio example, we can probably arrive at a pretty good estimate of how Joe would have done in a ballpark that wasn’t so unfriendly to his style of hitting. We can make a decent estimate of how well Sandy Koufax might have pitched in the 1980s. But we can never, as you say, make such an estimate of how someone like Bonds might have done without steroids. While all the “what if?” questions can only be answered inexactly, this particular one will be harder to deal with than most.
I’m actually in the middle of Baseball Between the Numbers right now, and haven’t gotten to the steroids chapter yet. I’ll keep an eye out for it.
Well, based on #985 I doubt it
The ability to hit in clutch situations is largely pure random chance. Study after study has shown there’s no predictive trend; a player who scorches in the clutch one year is just as likely to fall off the next, even if his overall numbers are the same. After all, if Aramis Ramirez could, on purpose, hit .400 in clutch situations, why is he not always hitting .400?
Let’s have a look at Ramirez’s clutch performance. Ramirez is betting .316 with 16 homers and 69 RBI. With runners in scoring positionm he’s batting .333 in 105 at bats - a difference of about two hits over what he usually does. On the other hand, in extra innings he’s 0 for 7 so I’m not convinced he’s really very clutch.
Now, if a player were to go a whole season and legitimately perform really well in clutch situations, he deserves credit for that. That’s happened; Paul Molitor legitimately hit much better in critical situations in 1993, and Mike Schmidt legitimately hit very badly in clutch situations in 1982. It has actual, tangible value. Just don’t bet a lot of money on him repeating the performance, because it was probably just luck.
[QUOTE=mhendo]
To take your Joe DiMaggio example, we can probably arrive at a pretty good estimate of how Joe would have done in a ballpark that wasn’t so unfriendly to his style of hitting. We can make a decent estimate of how well Sandy Koufax might have pitched in the 1980s. But we can never, as you say, make such an estimate of how someone like Bonds might have done without steroids. .
Bill James makes calculations like this all the time. All you would need to know is when Bonds first started taking them and then make comparisons of his record up to that point to the records of similar players. As great as Bonds is, there must be (I am assuming) players with similar records for that period of time. I would submit that the results of such a comparison would be as accurate as those in the other two examples you mention.
I get it now, RickJay…I should have thought of that. Ramirez is definitely streaky where clutch hitting is concerned. It’s been helpful the last month or so, but I can’t say I’ve noticed it over his career. I was under the impression that there were certain guys, though, who are just “good clutch hitters.”
Case in point Barry Bonds post season record 1990-1992 with Pittsburgh
included batting averages of .167, .148 and .261.
Well, i think we might be arguing at cross purposes here, because while i sort of agree with you, i also think that stats like RBI have gained such prominence because many fans still believe that they provide an accurate measure of a player’s ability. Remember, your first line in your earlier post was:
I think that’s only partly true. While their cultural and emotional meaning might be assigned by the fans, these records also have a much more concrete meaning, in terms of how much each statistic actually demonstrates the value of a player to his team. For some records, there is a high correlation between numerical value and cultural value; for others, not so much.
If a pitcher has an ERA of 4.87 and a WHIP of 1.62, but manages a 22-win season behind an offense that averages 6.7 runs per game, then some fans might assign his number of wins a high value, but that doesn’t mean that he is a good pitcher, or that the wins number is in any way an objective measure of his ability.
I agree with all of that, but i’m not sure why you’re making that argument to me, because i never said that simple longevity was a good measure of a player’s ability, and i certainly don’t believe that it is.
For example, 3000 hits is seen by many folks as an automatic entree into the HoF, but i don’t buy that. Craig Biggio’s numbers just don’t add up to HoF level, in my opinion, and the fact that he stuck around long enough to get 3000 hits doesn’t change that. His career EqA is .286 and his career OPS+ is 113. A better than average player? Sure. A HoFer? I think not.
As for comparing Bonds with Ruth, you’re right that Ruth took a shorter time to get to 714. But i don’t know too many people who are making the unequivocal argument that Bonds is a better player than Babe Ruth was. I’m certainly not arguing that. If you’re going to make an argument that simple longevity isn’t necessarily the mark of a better player, you probably shouldn’t compare 2 of the best 5 players ever to walk onto the baseball diamond.
Sure, but there are two points to be made here.
First, i think you dismiss too readily the fact that some statistics are objectively better than others at measuring a player’s performance. And while i think that the public can reasonably be excused for not always appreciating the difference, i think we should ask a lot more from baseball analysts and journalists. It’s unbelievable how many so-called analysts writing in newspapers and appearing on ESPN (i’m looking at you, John Kruk) continue to assert without reservation that wins should be the prime determinant in deciding the Cy Young award winners.
Second, and more importantly for this discussion, the home run is actually one area where fan perception of the importance of the record, and the actual importance of the statistic, have some strong correlations.
Which brings me to my next argument…
But this is precisely the sort of analysis that confuses the things a batter can control with the things he can’t. You’ve already said that you believe that RBI is an overrated statistic, but your whole argument in the above two paragraphs is essentially a brief for the importance of RBI.
Also, your definition of “creating a run” is fatally flawed. While a home run with no-one on base will score fewer runs than a triple with the bases loaded, this is in no way a measure of the relative value of home runs and triples. A batter, as you obviously understand, cannot affect the situation he finds himself in at the plate. He has no influence over how many men are on base. All he can do is try to get the best possible outcome from his plate appearance. And, in every case, given the situation he happens to be in at the time, the best possible outcome is a home run. Period.
If a player hits a triple with bases loaded, and three men score, the hitter has not created three runs. He has batted in three runs, but part of the credit for creating those three runs must go to the men who got on base ahead of him. It’s the same, for that matter, for a batter who hits a Grand Slam home run. He gets full credit for his own run, but only partial credit for the three runs that score in front of him.
I don’t really want to argue over this, because i think you’re right. A lot of fans have probably never even heard of the “break even” factor in base stealing.
But i do want to address one issue that appears to emerge in your post, and it’s the issue of baseball fans who also pay attention to the stats. A common argument over the past few years, made most often by those who refuse to accept much of the newer statistical analysis in baseball, is that “stat geeks” are killing the game by focusing on numbers alone, and ignoring all the fun things that make baseball great. These arguments tend to draw a strict dichotomy between “baseball fans,” on the one hand, and “stat geeks,” on the other.
Your argument about Henderson, and about the fun of seeing him grab bags, seems to do the same thing, and i want to make clear that it’s a false distinction. Just because i happen to have read an article about the value of base stealing, and about the fact that Henderson’s stolen bases didn’t actually add many wins for his team, does not mean that i’m immune to the excitement of a stolen base. I love watching Brian Roberts or Corey Patterson successfully steal a bag for my hapless Orioles.
Stat people love the little, unquantifiable things in baseball just as much as non-stat people do. They just happen to overlay this love with another layer of interest. So, while i love to see stolen bases and bunts and other stuff like that, my reading of sabermetric analysis also causes me to get annoyed when the Orioles lay down a sacrifice bunt early in the game in a situation where the team’s run expectancy would have been greater if the hitter had swung the bat. An interest in sabermetrics does not come at the expense of being a “baseball fan”; it enhances the experience.
That’s true, and i guess you could probably arrive at a pretty fair estimate by doing that.
I just couldn’t disagree more; you’re picking and choosing a bit here.
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OPS undervalues Biggio, since his OPS is a bit OBP-heavy, and
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A .284 EQA is exceptional, over the career as long as Biggio’s, for a player who has largely played second base and catcher. Biggio’s value as a defensive player is enormous; he’d be a marginal hitter for a Hall of Fame outfielder, but as a second baseman (and a very good one) with a good dose of catcher, he’s well above HoF standard. He’s as good an offensive player as Roberto Alomar in a substantially longer career; basically, if Roberto Alomar had played another three full seasons as a catcher and hot to his career norms, that’s Craig Biggio, and Roberto Alomar’s a Hall of Famer as far as I’m concerned. He’s essnetially what Charlie Gehringer would have been… if Gerhringer had played another three seasons, that is, as an average player. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense to say “Biggio was a Hall of Famer three years ago but he held on and played average ballfor three years so now he’s not.”
All comparable players to Craig Biggio are Hall of Famers or should be.
You know, i just looked at some comparable players, and i think you’re right. I’m still not convinced that OPS undervalues him, but there are some no-argument HoFers who have a similar career OPS+, including Cal Ripken.
I’m also not sure his games behind the plate should figure very greatly, considering they comprise only about 15% of his games. But i definitely agree that his hitting numbers are more impressive from a 2B than from an outfielder.
I still have a tendency to forget fielding position when calculating player contributions. Consider my argument (largely) retracted.
Is this a woosh? For one thing, the steroids your husband are taking are not the same kind of steroids that Bonds was taking (catabolic steroids, as with your husband, act as anti-inflammatories. Anabolic steroids, as with Bonds, are muscle builders.
Secondly, the steroids aren’t what changed Bonds’ bone structure (I’m assuming those rumors are true). It was the Human Growth Hormone. Different animal altogether.