With seasons being longer and having more games, is it really fair to compare the player stats of today to the player stats of yesteryear? Shouldn’t the length of time or number of games that it takes for a player to break a record factor into the equation? Babe Ruth’s record has been broken, but did they do it in the same amount of time? Hank Aaron’s record is about to be broken, but will it actually be in the same number of seasons, games, or times at bat?
Well, for the raw counting stats like 755 it’s all a matter of longevity so I think that’s fair.
There’s an argument to be made about the longer length-of-season but in all honesty while everyone celebrates Ruth it’s not like anyone ever mentioned that he wasn’t playing a 136 game season. That only popped up with Maris and such and I figure it’s pointless. A season is a season and that’s it.
On the other hand, if you really want to join us in the seam-head circles you can learn about normalizing seasons for era, park, weather and such effects to try to generate true comparisons. But be careful taking the blue pill…once you learn the joy of it you can’t go back.
Fair or not, that’s how it’s done. They tried in 1961 to factor in the length of seasons, but it became a joke. Nowadays, they don’t even differentiate between the 19th century and 20th (and 21st) century, as they did in my youth.
People do sometimes talk about At Bat/Home Run, which factors in games played, but it looks like Mark McGwire beats out Ruth for that, with Bonds third and Aaron a distant 36th. Some people even derided Aaron when he passed Ruth because he had more at bats.
It’s even worse than that: ballparks have changed drastically over the years, pitches have come in and out of style, day baseball vs night baseball, integration and influxes of players from other countries etc. etc. etc. In my view it’s worth celebrating when records get broken, but when you get down to it, it’s just a number (whatever it is, home runs, hits, strikeouts, etc.) as you couldn’t possibly compensate for all the differences.
To answer your question directly, Barry Bonds will actually have played quite a bit less than Hank Aaron, assuming he breaks the record this year. Hanks Aaron played 3298 games; Bonds has played 2929 and has had about 1500 fewer plate appearances. Babe Ruth, however, played just 2505 games and had far fewer plate appearances than Bonds.
But as to that, so what? Player stats from era to era are never perfectly comparable; Babe Ruth played a slightly shorter schedule and hit more homers per game, but he was also spared having to face black pitchers, so how do you balance those things? Records are usually set in times and places conducive to that particular accomplishment.
A record is a record. If and when Bonds hits his 756th home run all that means is that he will have hit more regular season home runs than anyone else. It doesn’t mean his 756 home runs are precisely comparable to Hank Aaron’s 755 home runs, or Babe Ruth’s 714. It’s a statement of fact, nothing else.
I looked in my copy of “The Sports Encyclopedia:Baseball”, and the length of seasons hasn’t really changed since 1920. During the first two decades of the 20th century, full seasons could have as few as 136 games. The number of games stablizied in the early 1920’s at 150-155 games, with the official number set at 154 in 1926. Another factor you have to consider is what statistic you use to measure a season. To take Maris’ season of 1961 as an example, he seemed to have a real advantage by playing 10 more games than Ruth in 1927. But Maris had only six more plate appearences than Ruth.
Babe Ruth faced only seven opposing teams per season in his day (outside of the World Series). If he played today he would face more than twice that many. This point theoretically works to Ruth’s credit, since it means he faced a more “concentrated” talent pool. Batting statistics shoot up when new teams are added to the league. Roger Maris hit his 61 home runs in a season when the American League had just expanded by 20%.
As mentioned above, Babe Ruth never faced a black pitcher in the major leagues. He only faced white Americans (with the possible exception of a few Cubans and light skinned Hispanic players). Today, a guy like Bonds has to face the best pitchers on the planet, be they from Central America, the Carribean, Japan, Taiwan, Canada, or Australia.
The variables are so numerous that any weighted comparison is bound to fail. It is best to just ignore the outside factors and just look at the raw numbers.
Moved to Cafe Society, which is generally the forum for sports.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Exactly. Ruth faced talent drawn from a population of about 90 million (that is, the US population in 1920 minus blacks). Bonds faces talent drawn from a population of over 600 million, including the US and other countries in which baseball is at least moderately popular.
It’s fair to compare them – it’s not fair to equate them. You can compare Bonds to Aaron to Ruth to Dan Brouthers, as part of what’s implied in “comparing” is to account for the differences between them. What you can’t do, as has been pointed out already, is assume that a home run in 1886 and a home run in 1921 and a home run in 1966 and a home run in 2001 are equivalent. Autres temps, autres moeurs.
Yes, but population totals may not indicate level of competition. We don’t know how many black players were good enough to compete in the major leagues in 1920. I’m pretty sure no Japanese players could have done so. Look at soccer. The overwhelming population advantage of the US, with millions playing the game at school level, does not make the US national team favorites to win the World Cup.
Of course any weighted comparison that attempts to achieve perfection is bound to fail, but I have to disagree that that means you have to punt on considering the differences. It’s not “best” to ignore them and look at the raw numbers – in fact, that’s about the most misleading thing you can do. It leads to all sorts of absurd conclusions, such as that Rance Mulliniks was a better hitter than Buck Ewing, because Mulliniks had 73 career HR in 16 seasons vs only 71 for Buck Ewing in 18 seasons (and yes, I was a little surprised to see that Mulliniks’ career lasted that long too).
No adjustments for ballparks, era, season length, competitive strength, etc. are ever going to allow for a perfect, ideal comparison between achievements from different eras, but making those adjustments gets us a lot closer to understanding the relative quality of those achievements than just throwing up your hands and saying it’s too hard. It’s easier to make those adjustments in baseball than in any other sport because of the very large sample size compared with other sports (150-160 games per season instead of half that for hockey and basketball, and only 16 or so in football), because of the relative uniformity of baseball rules for the last century, because the discrete, episodic nature of gameplay in baseball allows for a more precise accounting of game events than in other sports, and because of the tradition dating back 150 years of producing and publishing detailed statistical accounts of every game.
Well, I agree with you regarding the comparisons of the rank and file players, or even the vast majority of players over the eras, but the OP mentioned records and season length, etc. I don’t think that a discussion of “who holds the MLB record for most home runs in a (game-season-career?)” or even “Who was the best home run hitter in MLB history?” should be burdened by comparative analysis. I do agree that Dante Bichette is not to be ranked with guys who have similar stats like Tony Oliva or Fred Lynn.
Yes, it’s fair. No, it’s not fair. Or something in-between. And so the debate continues, just as baseball fans and stats junkies want it to, on and on, forever and ever, amen.
And again, I agree with half and disagree with half of your statement. “Who holds the MLB record for most home runs in a (game-season-career)” is an objective fact about which there’s no reason to debate. That I agree with. “Who was the best home run hitter in MLB history” begins immediately becoming subjective if “best home run hitter” is not understood as synonymous with “player who hit the most home runs in their career”. Once you start offering alternative definitions for “best home run hitter” you inevitably are in the realm of comparative analysis.
Perhaps the OP should have asked whether it’s fair to compare “records”, instead of whether it’s fair to compare “stats”. My answer to both would be yes, but in the first case there’s no need to incorporate adjustments to account for differences in era, etc., while in the second case there is.
I think that’s backwards - a pitcher of limited abilities has a better chance to fool a batter before they get used to each other. Nowadays, with interdivisional and interleague play, a hitter will see a lot of pitchers just once or twice a season.
Do batting statistics shoot up overall, or is it just a matter of good players - hitters and pitchers alike - feasting off the influx of bad ones?
For instance, between 1960 and 1961, the AL’s runs per game increased from 4.39 to 4.53, but that was a lower-than-average change between consecutive years during the period of the 1950s and 1960s, so it’s not a change that needs an explanation.
I’m sure if a player of today faced the same 28 pitchers (7x4) over and over, his stats would dramatically rise. Not to mention the West Coast swings, time zones/jet lag, the “left handed specialist” who comes in to face one batter, closers, etc, etc, etc.
The population has expanded drastically, but it’s far from obvious to me that many more people are playing baseball today than were a few decades ago. Indeed, I suspect that far FEWER kids are playing baseball now than in the 1950s.
Well yeah, but, people are still just people. Once you get into the millions I suspect that the marginal differences in the superior athlete wash out pretty quickly. That is to say, if you took the best baseball players of the 90 million, gave them all of today’s training, nutrition, etc., and then have them play the best players of the 600 million, with the same training, nutrition, etc., I’m guessing that the games would be pretty evenly matched. YMMV.