And the Nats are 2-0 after just one day. Enjoy it while it lasts, folks.
Can someone familiar with WAR explain why Willie Mays (~160) is so much higher than Mickey Mantle (~110)? I don’t think there is a question that Mays was the better player, but that seems like a big gap for 2 pantheon center fielders. Is it mainly defense?
Partly defense (Mays 18.2 career WAR, Mantle -9.6) but mostly longevity, health and an insane peak. They were equals in their finest seasons, but here’s a simple stat that partly explains Mays: Willie had 13 seasons of 7+ WAR, Mickey had 5 such seasons.
Also, Mays had 2500+ more plate appearances than Mantle. For their careers, Mays averaged 8.4 WAR/162 and Mantle 7.4 WAR/162.
Thanks!
@BlankSlate answered it really well, but I would ask you: you agree Mays was the better player, but how much better? That is, if you could swap out Mantle for Mays in your hypothetical team, how many more wins would you have?
The states indicate that answer is just about 1 win per 162 games.
OK, so Mays is one win better per season than Mantle - that feels about right to me, honestly (as someone who never saw them play but has read a lot about them and digested their stats).
Mays played over 3000 games, Mantle played 2400. So for games they both played you could call that about 15 seasons. So that’s 15 WAR right there (Mays was 1 win better for each of those 15 years, on average).
But now you also have to consider those extra 600 games - that’s over 3.5 seasons. If we think Mays is worth 8.4 WAR per season that’s another 30 WAR.
And there you have it - 15 WAR better over season they both played and 30 WAR for the seasons he played that Mantle didn’t = 45 WAR better career.
I guess I wasn’t think of WAR as being cumulative. Ignorance fought.
WAR is usually calculated on a seasonal basis. A player’s “career WAR” score is a cumulative number, adding each of his single-season WAR scores together.
They were almost dead-even thru 1962, with a slight edge to the Mick as it turns out (90 to 87); I’d consider Mantle’s 56 & 57 seasons a bit more impressive than Mays’ top seasons. But as MM then struggled with injuries, WM just kept on keeping on for almost a decade.
Note: when a veteran player sees his walk rate shoot through the roof at an advanced age (Mays 1971), bet on him regressing the next year as he likely was trying to work the count to compensate for a slowing bat. Eventually the pitchers will figure out that he can’t get around on their good stuff and will start challenging him.
Mantle will always be one of the great what ifs. He shredded his knee on a sprinkler head it Yankee Stadium his rookie year. There is speculation as to what he actually did but at the very least it was a full ACL tear without a reconstruction. As good as he was if he never tore his knee up or if he played during a time with modern surgery techniques who knows what he could have done.
At the start of his career he was possibly the fastest to ever play the game. Mays was also quite fast and a better base runner.
The other big if is that Yanks GM passed on Willie because he was rascist. There would have been 1 season where the OF would have been Mantle, DiMaggio and Mays.
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Mays played significantly longer
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In his peak, he hardly missed any games. Mays had 13 seasons in which he played 150 or more games. Mantle had just four. That adds up.
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Mantle at his very greatest was Mays’s equal. Absolutely a fact. But his peak wasn’t very long, because of injuries, which explains all these points. Mays sustained his peak over a RIDICULOUS period of time, ludicrously so. Going by WAR Mays had SIX seasons with more than 10 WAR, which is fucking insane, I don’t know how else to put it. He had seven more seasons above 7, and 7 is MVP level.
Hardly anyone has had 10-WAR seasons five times, that’s nuts. Hank Aaron had zero. Mike Schmidt had none. Albert Pujols had none. Frank Robinson had none. 10-WAr seasons are are, like, super rare, and when a player has them they’re legendary; Brewers fans still speak with reverence about Robin Yount’s 1982. Many franchises have never had a player do that. Mays rolled out there and did it regularly. Mays and Mantle reached levels of elite greatness even most no-doubt-about-it Hall of Famers never do, but Mays kept doing it over and over.
After the 121 loss disaster, my goal was to get under a hundred losses last season. They came close, losing 101 games. My hope this year is that we can get it down to 90 losses. With the right additions and good performances, I think it is doable.
Plexiglass Principle. Bad teams get better. It’s hard not to, when you’re over 100 losses; almost any change will improve a team t hat bad.
True, but conversely, it’s like losing weight. When one is carrying a ton, it’s a lot easier to lose, say, 20 pounds, then it is when one is only 25 pounds overweight.
Max Scherzer is returning to the Blue Jays for 1 year, $3 million.
Was kind of hoping the Tigers would have signed him to go along with the Verlander signing.
I’m still mad that Cards continue to ignore him, since he’s from St Louis
On a bit of a down note, former MLB pitcher Dan Serafini was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the 2021 murders of his wife’s parents during a robbery.
Serafini played 11 seasons with the Cubs, Pirates, Reds, Padres, and Rockies.
ETA: Also, longtime umpire Bruce Froeming died at 86. He spent 37 years as an umpire, calling the second-highest number of games in history, with 5163.
If he actually pitches regularly he’ll be paid vastly more; there’s like $10-12 million in potential bonuses based in innings pitched.
This is a depth move of course; he’s not in the rotation unless someone gets hurt.
Aw, I remember Froemming…he had a very distinctive and enthusiastic strike call, which involved him half jumping to his right and gesturing emphatically. You could always tell when he was behind the plate.