The key problem with the Tigers is that Illich just doesn’t care about them. He obviously cares about the Red Wings, and is willing to spend a ton of money to make sure that they have alot of good players, but the Tigers can plod along at the back of the pack for all he cares.
Absolutely. This is one of the most important and overlooked factors in comparing stats from different eras, both individual and team. Essentially, the spread between the best and the worst players was a lot greater. (This is because sports careers were not as widely aspired to as today, as well as the lack of black and international players - somewhat offset by the smaller number of teams. We’ve discussed this in the race threads). So most of the unattainable sports records, both for pitching and hitting were set in the past eras.
Baseball, as most sports, is essentially a zero-sum game in terms of offensive and defensive stats. To the extent that guys are driving enormous amounts of runs, pitchers’ ERAs should be high and vice versa. However, it is true that at the same time as guys like Cobb were batting .367 for their careers and guys were routinely hitting .400, other guys like Walter Johnson were compiling lifetime ERAs in the low 2s. The reason is because there were also an enormous amount of guys compiling extremely low batting averages and other guys compiling extremely high ERAs. Of course those are not the players being remembered today. So we get a skewed picture of Cobb and Wagner getting their lifetime stats off Johnson and Matthewson, but that’s not how it really worked at the time.
And the same goes at the team level. Even if the talent was distributed as evenly as it is today, the greater variation of player talent would produce greater disparities at the team level. IOW, if you took the best 25 players in the league today, and stacked them up against the 25 worst players, the difference would not be nearly as great as if you did the same 85 years ago. So the effect of one team getting a disproportionately large or small percentage of star players was a lot greater in previous eras.
But I don’t agree with you about the strikeout issue. There are different methods of achieving success as a pitcher. The strikeout method is a common one. But there’s no reason to assume an arbitrary amount of strikeouts that are necessary for success.
The last legitimate star to come up through the system was probably Travis Fryman, and he was the first since Howard Johnson, who was probably the best one since the core of the 84 team.
I don’t think Ilitch cares more about the Red Wings than he does the Tigers. He spends more on the Wings, relative to hockey’s smaller capacity, because they are at the peak. It’s the wise thing to do. He’s not lacked spending on the Tigers, it’s just been spent on the wrong people. When he first bought the team he made Cecil the highest paid player in the league. He spent on Free Agents and in 1994 they had the highest payroll in the league. He offered Juan Gonzalez $140 million. They overpaid for Palmer and Easley. That’s not the action of someone who’s afraid to spend money.
These problems go further beyond Ilitch. The system was very bad for so long. That made Ilitch’s moves all the more critical and when they didn’t work out it makes it look a lot worse for him.
John Smoltz came from the Tigers’ farm system.
Here here as to Beaneball being overrated. The Red Sox have tried to do the Sabermetrics thing as well. Their hitting has been great (although that offense was in place before this year), but their attempts to apply it to their bullpen have been a staggering failure.
Smoltz admitted that if he’d have stayed in the Tiger system he probably would be coaching high school baseball right now at Lansing. He said he learned everything over in the Braves system, which is probably correct, given the severe lack of talent to come out of the Tiger system in teh 1980s.
I don’t blame the boston bullpen on sabermetrics, I blame it on poor bullpen pitchers. That may sound obvious but it’s not. I think closers are vastly overrated, especially considering the money they make.
I find your reasoning faulty on a number of levels.
Among them:
- Lack of black/international players.
There was a black major league system set up and it existed and thrived for a number of years. The problem is that record keeping for the league was shoddy at best.
- You are nuts if you think that talent is distributed more evenly today then it was in the past, plain and simple. Because of expansion and a desperate need for pitching, a pitcher with an ERA of 3.5+ will not only get a huge contract, he’ll have teams stabbing each other in the back trying to sign him. Fifty years ago, he’d have had to go out and get a real job.
Expansion has led to the following: AAA players who really have no business being in the majors, being in the show nonetheless. Doesn’t matter if they strike out 120+ times a year, or if their ERA is over 4.00, there is a need for them. You didn’t have that in the pre-expansion days because you only had the best of the best, the cream of the crop in the majors.
So the cream of the crop was playing for the 1935 Braves? The 1916 As?
No, I think that’s just wrong.
It’s been evident for a while that as baseball has matured (better coaching and developmental analysis) the extremes are tending to gravitate towards the mean. Even if a player in 1920 and 1990 had the same ability the latter players numbers would be worse because he’s facing better coached and prepared competition.
And the basic theory that expansion has led to worse players being in the majors really doesn’t take into account both the demolition of the color barrier (adding at least 40 million possible players to the pool) and the importation of players from ourside the USA into the talent pool (some ungodly number) AND the more than doubling in population of the United States over the last century (adding at least another 50-60 Million people).
Toss in increased weight, reflex and flexibility training and we’re looking at the greatest ballplayers there have ever been (as a cohort) on the field today.
Wrong. For example, here are the team [ulr=“http://www.baseball1.com/statistics/team/tmp-1930.html”]pitching statistics from 1930**.
The lowest team ERA in the majors was 3.96. Everyone else had above 4.00. These days, the “watered down majors” have 8 teams better than that. And no team has an ERA as bad as the 1930 Phillies - 6.71.
Back then, you didn’t have that many blacks playing. You didn’t have the Latin players. You didn’t have Asia. Plus, they had a higher mound and more players that couldn’t hit a home run to save their life. It was a lot easier to be a good pitcher back then.
Just thought I’d add that Detroit made the “100 losses before September” mark, so still in the running with the 62 Mets.
If I were their publicist, I’d start an advertising campaign–“A date with history! Be there!”
Rod Kanehl,'62 Met, said yesterday that the entire Tiger front office should be fired. “We didn’t have a farm system. No hundred years of history. The only people we had were rejects. At least we had an excuse.” As I post this the White Sox went ahead in the 8th,2-1. the Tiger announcer just said," they’re pulling some thunder off the bench. Higginson will pinch hit. " A drizzle maybe.
There’s nothing nuts about it. It’s absolutely true. There aren’t as many consistently awful teams now as there used to be.
This has ALWAYS BEEN TRUE, and anyone who says otherwise is ignorant of baseball history.
Fifty years ago, when YOU claim that pitchers with 3.50 ERAs had to look for jobs, the average ERA was 4.60 - about the same as it is today.
As you yourself point out, expansion has not resulted in a shortage of talent; the size of the expansion of the major leagues has been more than accounted for by the expansion of the talent base - a larger population, black players, better scouting, more information flow, mining of Latin American talent, better sports medicine and training, and now Asian players. Every statistical indicator of the spread of talent suggests there is more talent now than ever. There is no objective, rational reason to suggest that the talent in baseball today is anything less than the best it has ever been.
You didn’t have that in the pre-expansion days because you only had the best of the best, the cream of the crop in the majors. **
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