Should we adjust baseball stats for era?

Great Debates
21

The number of teams has not “increased drastically” as compared to the population. The number of teams has increased by 87.5 percent from 1960, from 16 to 30. The effective recruiting base is MANY times higher than it was then, now that black players have been completely integrated into the game, college programs are stronger than ever, Carribean and South American players are so numerous, and Asian players are entering the game. Furthermore, prior to WWII it was quite common for some of the major league caliber WHITE players to play in the powerful minor leagues, such as the PCL, rather than the majors; I don’t think anyone seriously doubts there was dozens of players in the minors better than the clowns who played for the Phillies.

I want you to think of the major leagues today. Now imagine the talent level we would have in the major leagues if you threw out all of the following players:

Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Miguel Tejada, Pedro Martinez, Ichiro Suzuki, Kazahiro Sasaki, Carlos Delgado, Manny Ramirez, Ugueth Urbina, Alfonso Soriano, Carlos Beltran, Vladimir Guerrero, Andruw Jones, Albert Pujols, Odalis Perez, Jose Mesa, Livan Hernandez, Bobby Abreu, Jimmy Rollins, Hideo Nomo…

… And at LEAST 150 other players who are black or from countries that weren’t even scouted 50 years ago. The World Champion Anaheim Angels would not have Garret Anderson, Ben Molina, Ramon Ortiz, or Francisco Rodriguez. The N.L. champs would lack Bonds, Reggie Sanders, Kenny Lofton, Hernandez, Tsuyoshi Shinjo, Feliz Rodriguez, and others. You would obviously be stripping the majors of a huge amount of talent.

That is essentially what the major leagues WERE in 1946.

This is entirely consistent with the same figures from previous Major League seasons with extremely high scoring. How watered down was talent in the National League in 1930?

This demonstrates a misunderstanding of the changes in Major League roster rules and strategies over the years. First off, specialization DOESN’T prove a lack of talent; it simply shows a different strategic approach. The practice of platooning went in and out of fashion in baseball at various times from 1900 to 1960, but I don’t see any connection between platooning and talent level.

Secondly, the simple truth is that in the early part of this century, teams didn’t carry as many players as they do today. They couldn’t afford it, and it wasn’t the fashion to do so, and there was no union demanding a guaranteed number of jobs per team. I’m not convinced this means there’s less talent today.

I am quite amazed anyone would make this assertion, since it is so obviously false.

The increase in strikeouts is very clearly a result of the current emphasis on hitting home runs. Players are striking out more because it is advantageous now to try to hit home runs all the time; although they strike out more, the resulting number of homers more than makes up for it. Players can hit more home runs now because all the conditions and rules of baseball are favouring this strategy; the batters’ box is no longer enforced as a rule, pitchers are not allowed to brush back hitters, weight and strength training has made players vastly stronger than they used to be, and the use of whip-handled bats is widespread. Consequently, it benefits hitters to move towards an uppercut, power-hitting style of baseball. It’s worth it to strike out more if you can hit substantially more homers, and you can do that now. If you changed the conditions that are making this possible - for instance, insituting minimum bat diameters or enforcing the batters’ box - you would see more contact hitters, since that strategy would become more valuable.

22

On the contrary, the specialization indicates the spread of talent lesser not greater. If I have nine good players and sixteen scrubs, I’m going to play those nine and the rest will sit on the bench. If I’m willing to pinch-hit, platoon, switch relief pitchers, etc. it indicates that I have confidence that the guys on the bench are almost as good as the guys in the game, enough so that it’s worth it to look for the righty/lefty advantage or whatever. That’s why you don’t pinch-hit for Babe Ruth; even if the pitcher is a lefty, even if he’s tired, he’s still better than anyone else. If on the other hand, you have Aaron on the bench…

Having said that, as RickJay pointed out the specialization is about strategy, not about talent. FWIW, I’d rather see teams obligated to carry fewer players to keep the endless shuttling of releif pitchers. It’s boring.

Yep, that’s why you have to measure people by their era. You might be interested to know that fielding is the biggest area of new research in baseball analysis. Bill James, who just got hired by the Red Sox, came out with a new method that made some waves.

Essentially, he takes team statistics and determines how good a TEAM is defensively be looking at what percentage of the balls put into play are converted into outs (ie, take away strikeouts and home runs). That gives you a very good idea of how good the team is defensively. He then has a method for assigning how much of that is due to individual players that I find a bit less persuasive. But there is fascinating research being done on this.

23

Meant to say STOP the endless shuttling of relief pichers…

24

One last thought on my side of the deterioration of talent side: I heard and read about ten years ago that the average Major League fastball had lost 2 mph per decade since the start of the century. No site, sorry, and I haven’t heard this conjecture recently, so I leave it to you guys to do with it what you will.

Back to the original OP, what are we prepared to do about this comparison conundrum? Do we assume Nap LaJoie could have hit 20 bombs a year if he wanted to (and had a hard, white ball to aim at?) Do we assume Christy Mathewson would have an ERA around four if he had to face modern hitters in Coors Field? Do we assume Sammy Sosa, were he born white, would have settled for singles and stolen bases back in the day?

25

One thing about statheads that bothers me is that when analyzing a player’s worth they look only at offensive stats rather than defensive stats. This makes the stats only relevant if you are playing fantasy baseball rather than trying to evaluate players during different eras. There are a few positions that offensive numbers are just a bonus–catcher and shortstop. These positions needs to have a defensive stat included to really correctly analyze the greatness of the player. I give Ozzie Smith as an example of a great shortstop, but you can only say that if you also include his defensive abilities with his offensive abilities.

Another stat that needs to be included when determining a players worth is how he did with runners on vs. with bases empty. In other words was he a good clutch hitter.

But I consider the three greatest indicators of a players greatness: was he fun to watch, did he put fans in the seats, and did he help his team win. Yes all of those are subjective, but baseball needs some subjectiveness to it to keep the love of the game alive.

26

You can’t have forgotten Dave Kingman, who struck out almost exactly once per game (1816 SO, 1941 G, 0.9356 SO/G), hit .236 for his career, and averaged 130 games/season for fifteen years from 1972 to 1987 (exactly thirty years ago until exactly fifteen years ago). Kingman’s a something of a special case, I’ll grant, but then so’s Hernandez.

As a shortstop with an OPS of .834 (2002), Jose Hernandez would have had an everyday job in just about any era you’d care to name. Phil Rizzuto is a Hall of Fame shortstop (well, he’s in the Hall of Fame anyway). Only once in his career did he post an OPS of over .800, and he wasn’t even close in any other seasons; his career figure is .706.

Swinging simply to make contact made a certain amount of sense in the first two decades of the last century, and progressively less sense with each subsequent year. Given the higher number of errors in those days, the odds of something positive (i.e., the batter reaching base safely, other runners advancing) happening merely because the ball was put in play were much higher. Given that there was little chance of a subsequent batter hitting a home run, the value of that was much higher. Nowadays, if you hit the ball at somebody, there’s a virtual certaintly you’re going to be out, so you’re better off trying to work the count for something you can drive. One byproduct of that is higher strikeout totals.

27

Treviathan, comments appreciated.

I was never much good at team sports, to tell the truth, but I was ok on ones where only I was involved.

My experience in team sports suggested that the guy with the big ego – who was placed in position where it was highly likely he’d fail or succeed in a big way – was the one who was most likely to rack up the stats.

All the other guys – supporting the same goal – were relegated to “support”.

But more to the central point, how someone performs one season doesn’t say ahything about their potential to develop. There are skills that need to be learned. The stats don’t reflect that. They’re a little like stock market statistics: they only appreciate immediate results.

28

It occurs to me that while I’ve rambled on a good bit, I haven’t really addressed the OP directly.

We don’t adjust the stats to account for differences in era or playing conditions; the primary counter stats (AB, H, 2B, 3B, HR, BB, SO, S, CS, GIDP for hitters and W-L, SV, K, BB, IP for pitchers) and the simple rate stats derived from them (BA, OBP, SLG for hitters, ERA for pitchers) are what they are: an objective record of what a player actually did.

Where adjustments come into play is in statistical analysis of player performance, when we’re trying to learn something about the relative value of a player’s performance compared with other players. Even comparing players from the same year, we’re all aware of certain factors that may skew a player’s ability to rack up certain stats, such as the characteristics of their home ballpark. At a certain level, we may not care – 40 HRs is 40 HRs whether you hit most of them at Coors Field or Dodger Stadium. But if we’re trying to compare two players and determine which was or will be more valuable, our appraisal will be more accurate, more reflective of the “true” value of each player, if these factors are considered, and normalizing stats by adjusting them based on a “park factor” is one handy, readily comprehensible way to do that. The result of that process, however, is not really a statistic, it’s an analysis based on statistics.

Comparing players across eras is much more difficult, because of all the additional factors that may be involved: different rules, different strategies prevailing, different ballparks, different playing conditions, different equipment, different mix of day/night games, different travel conditions, and a host of others. The farther apart they are in time, the more difficult such comparisons are. Directly comparing players in this way is not only difficult, but of dubious validity, particularly if the intention is to try to figure out what Honus Wagner’s stats would be if he were playing today, and then to compare that to Alex Rodriguez – there’s no way to know what Wagner’s stats would be, because he’d approach the game differently, and his managers would be using different strategies, etc.

What is possible, and probably more useful, is to compare players to other players of their time (either overall or on particular stats), to characterize the difference between the player and their contemporaries, and then to compare the degree of difference for the players from different eras. What you’re then comparing is the relative level of excellence of each player within their own context.

29

That’s ludicrous, quite frankly.

Some would, but I think you’ve missed the point, really. Comparing players to eras means you compare their relative VALUE - you don’t guess what they would have done in specific categories if they’d played in some other time. The important thing in considering Mathewson is not what he might have done if in an imaginary universe he had pitched in 1996; the important thing is using the evidence to determine how valuable he was to the Giants.

Mathewson had a career ERA of 2.13. That’s just a number; unless you compare it to his peers it tells you nothing. Is 2.13 good or bad? I’m not the slightest bit interested in what his career ERA might have been today; all I want to know is, what was the ERA of everyone else in the league? Well, it was about 2.90, so that tells me that Mathewson’s ERA was about 36% better than anyone else’s - pretty damned great, actually. That’s much better than, say, Bob Gibson, who was 27% better than the average pitcher. On the other hand, it’s not as good as Lefty Grove.

The funny thing is that I’ve always found the people who complain about “Statheads” are every bit as obsessed with stats; they’re just obsessed with the numbers, rather than what they mean. Is Christy Mathewson (career 2.13 ERA, 373 wins) a greater pitcher than Lefty Grove (3.06 ERA, 300 wins)? If you’re hung up on the numbers you’d say Mathewson was. But statheads AREN’T hung up on the numbers - they’re interested in how good the player was, and use the numbers as evidence. Most “Statheads” would tell you Grove was greater - the ERA number might be different, but if you consider what the league ERA was when Grove pitched, it’s obvious Grove helped his team win as much, if not more, than Mathewson did.

Then deb2world says:

Who does this? I can’t think of any serious baseball analyst who doesn’t try to account for defense.

Most analysis is on offense because

  1. It’s easier to measure, and
  2. The differences between players at the same position in offense are much bigger than at defense. After all, if you suck at playing shortstop, you ain’t going to be playing it in the major leagues - if you can hit they’ll move you somewhere else and if you can’t hit you’re out of the league. Most players at any given position, and especially at the important positions, are reasonably good at it.

Any measurement of defense ever done suggests that the difference in defensive value between plays at the same position isn’t nearly as great as the difference in offense, for the reason that bad defensive player usually don’t play the important positions. There are exceptions - Ozzie Smith’s defense was absurdly great, as valuable as having an All-Star hitter in your lineup.

30

As already explained, this is verifiably false

Mountains HAVE been written about this, and one of the things that’s been proven repeatedly is that clutch hitting stats are not reliable indicators of ability. That is, the guy who hits well in the late innings this year is not likely to do it again next year. In 99% of the cases, it’s not much more meaningful *for purposes of evaluating ability *than saying “he hits .350 on Tuesdays” or “he’s 3-5 on his wife’s birthday.”

It is, of course relevant that player X has had 3 game-winning hits this week. But this does not prove that player X therefore has a special talent for performing in the clutch; for that to hold he’d have to do that over a longer period of time. And believe it or not, nobody really does.

The first two are, and I fully agree that on a “love of the game” level, they’re what counts. The last, though, is very much quantifiable, and that’s what most discussion is about.

My favorite players of all time are Darren Daulton, a guy who really only had three or four good years, and Richie Ashburn, a hall of famer but way behind his contemporaries Mays and Snider.
I am able to go into great detail about why I love them, and still be objective about their relative skills.

31

Given that players today are verifiably faster and stronger, while radar guns didn’t exist till the 70s, this sounds like someone telling us they walked uphill in the snow to school.

In all likelihood, yes. But as rackensack has pointed out, that isn’t really the point. Mo Vaughn would probably have been useless in the dead-ball era; he wouldn’t have hit many homers, and his slowness and defensive issues would have been major negatives. In today’s game, the big, slow slugger is useful.

In contrast, Ichiro, as good as he is now, would have been even more valuable then, in a period where his weaknesses (no power, no walks) wouldn’t have been seen as problems, and his strengths (contact hitting, speed, arm) were more valued than they are now.

32

After racking my brain and checking with my many coaching friends, I have had it confirmed that it was Jim Kaat who suggested that the average fastball is losing velocity. As one who pitched in four different decades, I would think he has a certain amount of perspective on the subject, although I don’t deny that there is no real proof of his claim. It is conceivable that he was seeing the past through rose-coloured glasses. However, he has at least a little support: from Nolan Ryan’s Pitcher’s Bible:

I do not think it is a coincidence that Roger Clemens and Randy Johnson have maintained their velocity by modeling their preparation and practice on Ryan’s example.

BTW, rickjay, whether they have solid evidence to back them up or not, I would not refer to Nolan Ryan and Jim Kaat as “ludicrous.”

deb2world: I absolutely agree that the “celebrity” of a player is a factor in evaluating a player, but only to a point. As we all know, New York players get more pub than guys in the mid-west, simply because there is more media there. But I think we have to be especially careful to be honest about the source and validity of the excitement–if I only listened to what Fergie Oliver had to say for years covering Jays games, I’d be telling you that Dave Stieb was the greatest pitcher of all time and Lloyd Moseby was at least as good as Willie Mays. But I do tend to trust what my eyes tell me, so I agree that’s a component.

furt: Where might I get more detail on Bill James’ new defensive theory? I don’t always agree with the guy, but he always has something interesting to say.

33

That would make the average fastball in 1900 about 110 mph. Yeah, right.

34

Another cite re: the declining fastball, also from Nolan Ryan’s Pitcher’s Bible:

Now, admittedly, this book is 11 years old now, and in that time I have actually seen a change in the approach to training young pitchers at the high school level. Kids are once again being taught to work on their fastball, although in game situations they still throw 40-50 percent breaking balls. Given that, it is conceivable that the decline in velocity has stopped, or even slightly reversed recently. But I have trouble doubting the evidence of people trained to recognize such trends.

Do I think Cy Young was throwing 100? No. I have never heard anyone tell me when this decreasing velocity trend began. If we guess it began with expansion in the early 60s, and assume it has since leveled off, I could be persuaded that Cy threw 95.

35

**Dread Pirate Jimbo **,

Check out Win Shares, James’s new system that incorporates defense in evaluating players.

36

Thanks, eponymous. Looks like I have some reading to do. :slight_smile:

37

Jimbo, it’s interesting that Ryan threw so hard and threw so hard when he was in his 40s, but I just don’t see how this goes to show anything you’re claiming:

  1. Ryan was a pitcher of the 70’s. He’s not an old-timer. The great majority of his career took place in an era of 24 to 28 teams. And despite all that power, it’s not like he was the greatest pitcher of his time - he wasn’t as good as Tom Seaver or Steve Carlon. Just how does Nolan Ryan demonstrate anything?

  2. Ryan is the EXCEPTION. He was the exception then. Sure, there’s damned few players around today like Nolan Ryan… but there were damned few players like Nolan Ryan back in 1973. It’s not as if Nolan Ryan is typical of old-timers. Most pitchers in Ryan’s day threw far less hard and blew their arms out in their early 30s, just like pitchers today. He was just as unusual in 1973 as Pedro Martinez is now.

  3. You can claim all day that pitchers today don’t throw as hard, but I don’t see the evidence. There have always been ballplayers claiming things were better in the old days - ballplayers were saying that since forty years before Nolan Ryan was BORN.

The claim that “pitchers today just don’t have the fastball/don’t know how to pitch/aren’t as tough” is a claim they made about NOLAN RYAN’S generation. And it’s a claim they made in the 1950s, the 1940s, the 1930s, and so on, all the way back to the days of Pete Browning.

38

I will hedge.

I do not think that the fastest pitchers threw harder at anytime in the past; i.e. the fastest pitchers in the majors today are right around 100 mph, and I know that since the invention of the radar gun in the late 60s / early 70s, nobody’s gone much faster than guys do now. I can’t think of any reason to suppose that the upper limits of the human body have changed much since whenever the “golden age of fastballs” was.

And FWIW, I respect Ryan, but think Kaat’s exactly the kind of guy who likes to tell “in my day …” stories.

As to endurance, I agree with Ryan that there are some pitchers who would be capable of his kind of workload (300+ innings a year) provided they put in the effort and weren’t protected. The problem is that some guy’s bodies can’t do that, and in asking them to try, you risk slagging their arm permanently. That was the pattern for most of baseball history: as long as you’re good, you’ll pitch as much as you can, until you can’t. Some guys pitched for 20 years; a lot blew their arms out for good at 26.

Put it this way: suppose the Dodgers had “overprotected” Sandy Koufax and held him to, say, 35 starts. Don’t you think his career might have lasted longer?
Now, where I will hedge is this: the average major-league fastball might be a bit slower, because Dr. Coleman is right, there were more fastball pitchers then.

Before the 60’s or so, most pitchers had 3 pitches, if that: heater, curve, straight change. That was it, and for the great majority of them, the fastball was their best pitch. Today, you see sliders, sinkers, splitters, knuckle curves, etc. because, as he points out

i.e., they find off-speed piches more effective at getting guys out. He’s a kinesologist, and interested in arm motion and speed and ligaments, etc, which is fine; but the pitcher’s goal is not to throw hard, it’s to get guys out. And if pitcher have more strategies of doing that now, and have found more success with smarts and change of speed and breaking balls instead of just raring back and firing, that sounds to me like it would make pitching today at least as good if not better than it was “way back when.”

39

furt: I appreciate the conceit you made. Allow me to return the favour. I believe the science of pitching has exploded in the last 10-15 years. I believe pitchers go to the mound armed with far more information, as well as a far better understanding of how to get the most out of their physical gifts. And as I noted above, I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if the average fastball is no longer in decline as a result. I also agree that Ryan was (and probably still is) a freak, capable of staying near the peak of his abilities long after most athletes would have worn out. I don’t believe everyone in the good ol’ days had his endurance, although I think some did. And I do believe there are probably a few guys out there right now who could run up 300 innings a year, if they had ever been encouraged to develop that particular skill. The fact is, we have no way of really knowing, which brings us back to square one, discussing the best way to evaluate a player’s contribution in an historical context.

RickJay: All I am doing is reporting what I heard and from whom I heard it. If you are confident enough in your beliefs to refute the claims of two Major League pitchers who combined for over 600 wins in four decades each, you are more sure of yourself than I. However, as I personally know pro scouts who can tell me how fast a kid is throwing without having to look at the radar gun, I am willing to give these guys the benefit of the doubt, because they have seen far more pitches from far more pitchers than you or I will ever see.

40

Sorry, but this is some sort of logical fallacy – the fallacious appeal to authority, perhaps, or hearsay.

In other words, could I have some water with that one? It ain’t goin down so easily.