Should we adjust baseball stats for era?

Great Debates
41

Jimbo, my previous post concerning the fallacy of your argument about loss of velocity in today’s pitchers as compared to yesterday’s was not meant to be harsh, I hope it didn’t come across that way. I’d simply like to see some hard evidence for such a suggestion. I have a hard time believing that the human eye and ear can read the velocity of a pitched ball as precisely as can a radar gun. I don’t doubt that scouts know when a pitcher throws hard – there’s the sound of the ball in the mitt, and how far behind the ball the hitter’s bat is etc – but without the gun, I doubt that the most experienced scout would be able to say more than, “He’s in the 90’s”, or “the mid-90’s”, or “the high 90’s”. Each of which are guesses, and certainly not a valid support for a statement that the average fastball is two miles per hour slower than it was x number of years ago.

Enough from me about that – your question was addressed quite well by RickJay and furt. In fact, I’ve been following this thread (it is about baseball, after all, how could I not?) and all of your questions have been addressed knowledgeably. Which is good. And you, like me, seem hungry for baseball knowledge. And that’s good – because there’re all kinds there for the learning. It’s a deep, intricate and subtle game that only a mind as wide as Shakespeare’s might ever be able grasp utterly and completely.

42

fatwater: No offence taken. I can’t offer you concrete evidence of this ability, except to say that I coach with the local Texas Rangers scout and he is consistently (ie. 90% or better) within 1 mph of the results we get on the gun during player evaluations.
[hijack]There aren’t any pro prospects in Alberta right now, according to my source. Calgary Babe Ruth Baseball did, however place another half dozen kids in US college baseball programs this year[/hijack]
I concede that I also have never seen hard numbers to back up the claim, but if enough experts on a particular subject say the same thing, I can’t help but at least consider it. I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree.

Here’s something I will throw into the mix as a general observation: people sure do have strong opinions on matters of interest in the baseball universe. I think this is a big part of the problem when it comes to evaluating and comparing players. I, for example, connot separate a player’s offensive ability from his defensive skills. As a result, I always lose in fantasy pools, but was a consistent winner back in the days when my buddies and I obsessed over Pursue The Pennant and Diamond Mind Baseball. I have never been terribly impressed with the George Bell, Frank Thomas, Reggie Jackson type of slugger who is, at best, a liability in the field. Instead, my all-time lineup consists primarily of five-tool guys (and Ozzie Smith, who I consider a three-tool player). I also know people who look only at measurable stats when looking at players, with no consideration of context, reputation, or what their own eyes tell them.

43

My brother recently made a point I liked on this question.

Any record that gets broken these days, unless the player crosses home plate, rolls up his sleeve and gives a vial of blood for performance-enhancing drug testing, should have an asterisk next to it.

Take a look at Barry Bonds’, Mark McGwire’s and Sammy Sosa’s bodies, in their early years in the major leagues. Then look at them at the time they were shattering long-standing records.

Then, give me a farging break.

44

A couple of quick points on the “bigger, stronger, better athletes” idea:

John Kruk once told a woman who upbraided him for being so fat that he wasn’t an athlete, he was a baseball player. While athletic ability can be important in baseball, there are many great ballplayers who don’t look much like great athletes. Kent Hrbek, Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Yogi Berra, Kirby Puckett all come to mind.

Of course, Jim Thorpe, probably the greatest male athlete of the 20th century, was only a so-so baseball player.

Where strengthspeed/etc. does come into play, we have quite a lot of evidence in the last year suggesting that some of the current players did not come by that prowess naturally. Personally, I strongly suspect Bonds of being on the juice. What does that do to his humbers of the last two years or so? For me, it means that I would toss them out if I were proven correct in my doubts.

Finally, it has been noted that the competition of other sports partly mitigates the larger pool of bodies for baseball. Ruth would have been in baseball, but foxx might have been a pro linebacker, Frisch might have been a tailback, etc. Baseball, boxing, tennis, and golf were about the only pro sports where you could make a living for a long time. Now, people can get rich off of skateboarding!

45

Please excuse me if I repeat what someone has already said, I am at work right now and do not have the chance to read every post, but I very much wanted to throw my opinion out there.*

It seems as though the older fans of baseball (or the fans of older baseball) just cannot admit that the modern players might just be better players. What if Barry Bonds was to face Cy Young when he was in his prime? Maybe he would hit 90 homeruns a year. What if Babe Ruth was to face Randy Johnson or Pedro Martinez? He might not even make it out of single A. Adjusting stats is just a bad idea. A stat is a stat, period. You cannot put in the record books that someone had X amount of strikeouts from a mound that was Y high, and another person had X amount of strikeouts from a mound that was Z high. Forget it. Maybe a simple answer would be track stats on a two era system, maybe pre-1950 and post 1950. But you would just have to keep doing that year after year and everyone would still only be intrested in the “all time” record.

46

I can tell you one thing with absolute certainty. If bonds had stood and watched one of his home runs against anyone like Gibson, Maglie, Grove, etc., he would have been beaned the next time he came up. He might have been beaned the next ten times he came up. If he had to face them in their time instead of his own, he wouldn’t have been allowed body armor; he might not have had on a helmet.

I suggest that, if he survived, he might not quite hit 90 homeruns a season.

47

Dread Pirate Jimbo writes:

I don’t know about Jackson and Thomas, but being a Blue Jays fan and having watched Bell for most of his career, I can tell you thatt you couldn’t be more right. He was a terribly overrated player. He wasn’t BAD, but his MVP Award was one of the worst award choices in the history of major league baseball.

I hate fantasy pools for that very reason. The points given for statistical accomplishments are largely arbitrary, and any kind of league where Ozzie Smith isn’t valuable is not a league I want any part of. Far more fun are computer simulation leagues using games like OOTP4 where you actually have to worry about not having Ivan Ironhands in the field.

Barry Bonds does not strike me as being a wimp, and Bob Gibson pitched against some pretty tough customers. I suspect Bonds would hold his own against the pitchers of any generation, just as I suspect Gibson would be an ace at any point in major league history.

I am personally of the opinion that it is idiotic to ban body armor, just as it would be idiotic to have the NFL ban helmets or have the NHL ban goalie masks. If you want players to move off the plate, ENFORCE THE BATTER’S BOX!!! Having players beaned is terribly dangerous and adds absolutely nothing to the game. I would much rather see Barry Bonds hit 73 homers in a season than watch men like Dickie Thon and Tony Conigliaro have their careers ruined by beanballs, or have guys lose whole seasons with broken hands and elbows, and I can’t imagine why anyone would want that.

It amazes me that people forget that it was just fifteen years ago that everyone was complaining about how many batters were getting hit by pitches, and how beanball wars were breaking out, and why wasn’t baseball doing something about this? Now they’ve done something about it and every complains about it. I remember Dickie Thon. I like the way it is now.

Don’t achieve what you aren’t doing with the rules by having players get injured. Baseball is not football, thank God.

48

I’m not so sure that would be idiotic. Rugby and Aussie Rules are played without helmets. They manage fine.

49

I have no trouble believing that an experienced scout today is able to achieve that level of accuracy, or at least something close to it. But scouts today have the radar gun to calibrate their observations against. Prior to the advent of the radar gun, there wasn’t any way to objectively validate the scout’s guesses about velocity, and so they generally didn’t worry about exactly how fast a pitcher was throwing. They were able to consistently distinguish between pitchers as to who was throwing harder, which is all they were really trying to do.

Think of it this way – it’d be fairly straightforward to develop the ability to reliably distinguish the heavier of two objects by weighing them in your hands. Until you have a scale that’s marked with consitent graduations, however, you aren’t able to put an objective number to those weighings. After you’ve been using the scale for a while to provide validation and quantification of your observations, however, you’ll probably be able to estimate the weight of an object fairly closely.

To say therefore that a scout today is able to accurately estimate a pitcher’s speed without using the gun is not the same thing as suggesting that scouts, other players, and sportswriters of fifty or eighty or a hundred years ago cold do so with equal accuracy. They couldn’t, because they had no objective standard to calibrate their observations against.

Therefore, we don’t know, and will never know, how fast either the typical or the best pitchers threw prior to the 1970s. But as furt points out, the real point isn’t who throws the hardest, but who gets batters out.

50

What no one’s ever explained to my satisfaction (hell, no one’s ever explained it to me at all) is how, physically, steroid use is supposed to allow Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, et al. to do what nobody else has been able to do: have the eye, the plate discipline (particularly Bonds), and the timing to hit all those home runs. Sure, once you make contact, extra strength and bat speed may allow you to hit more balls farther, but having the strength to do that has never really been the problem – having the eye and the timing to make solid contact in the first place is the hard part.

Argue the opposite case and you have to explain why there isn’t a steady stream of ex-NFL linemen becoming DHs in MLB.

51

“Timing” and bat speed are two sides of the same coin, aren’t they?

Yes, absolutely, Bonds already had an amazing eye and timing. Without timing and “the eye” for it, no player can compensate with just brute strength. But lesser players may also have an eye and timing that allows them to recognize a hittable pitch at the same point in its path to the plate that Bonds does. They just can’t catch up to it, or if they can, they are flailing, sacrificing precision in order to get around. My point is, how could increasing a player’s strength not enhance his ability to take advantage of his eye and timing? As I recall, Caminitti said he felt like Superman when he was juiced, how everything he tried seemed fluid and easy.

You take a solid, OK ballplayer and give him steroids, he can become an MVP (Caminitti). Give a player who already has HOF credentials some extra juice, what can happen? Who knows–73 homers maybe?

52

Excellent point, Bob. I’ve heard Jim Rome rant on this very subject a number of times. I tend to agree. The juice in and of itself will not make you a better ballplayer. But it would certainly enhance the abilities of someone already capable of playing at that level. I fear that if the 'roids scandal really does blow wide open in the next year or so, a lot of recent stats are going to wind up with asterisks, if not removed entirely à la Ben Johnson’s 100m mark.

53

I would suggest that, regardless of their ability to put a precise number on their observations, they would be able to identify trends, be they upward or downward.

That said, I have already conceded that I suspect the decling fastball theory only pertains to the expansion era and the increase in breaking balls thrown. And most of that period has featured radar guns.

But I think we’ve flogged that horse enough. Riddle me this: they both had the reputation for being the hardest throwers of their respective generations, so who was the better pitcher, Nolan Ryan or Walter Johnson?

54

Look, Ben Johnson was fast before he took steroids. But the roids obviously gave him extra advantages. Sure, steroids won’t make someone who can’t hit into a good hitter. But one of the things that steroids and similar drugs do is allow players to work out for longer; this helps them to perfect their swing/eye/etc. It also helps to prevent the natural effects of aging, allowing someone to exceed his previous best home run total by almost 50% after he has reached the age of 35. In McGwire’s case, the drugs which he admitted using helped him to not have some of the injuries that often plagued him before and after his biggest seasons.

55

That’s fine, but

A) The number of home runs being hit has been at historic levels even discounting the use of steroids.

Since 1994, ballplayers have been hitting truly astounding number of home runs, and it’s quite obvious that a lot of players who are among the big boppers are NOT 'roiding up. I’ve never heard anyone suggest Alex Rodriguez did roids, and he doesn’t look like he does, but he’s led the AL in homers twice now. Shawn Green is not a roid monster. Many, many players are hitting 30, 40, even 50 homers who do not appear and have never been accused of being on steroids.

There are many forces in baseball that have resulted in a huge number of home runs being hit. It’s not just Sammy Sosa and Big Mac, it’s everyone, and the huge totals you see now are exactly proportional to what the best home runs hitters have always hit.

In 1996, the AVERAGE team hit 175 home runs; last year, 167. When Mike Schmidt hit 48 homers in 1980, the average NL team hit… 104. Schmidt’s personal total was 46% of what the average team hit; McGwire’s 70 homers was only 43% of what the average team hit in 1998. Relative to his league, McGwire’s home run total did not actually have any more impact than Schmidt’s 1980 output. (It’s also worth noting that Schmidt led his league in homers by 13; McGwire, by 4.) It is not inconceivable to think that Schmidt would have hit 60-70 homers in his best seasons had his peak been around 1996, rather than 1980.

Some of the contributing factors include:

  1. Non-enforcement of the batter’s box
  2. More hitter-friendly parks
  3. Weight training
  4. Whip-handled bats
  5. Non-call of high strikes

I don’t think most people remember this, but until 20 years ago, baseball players did not lift weights. Today, almost all ballplayers do strength training; in 1975 it was actively DISCOURAGED. Very few players pumped serious iron. Even without steroids, ballplayers are far, far stronger now; we are looking, for the first time in baseball history, at a major leagues where all players train by lifting weights. Imagine that impact that just that one change can have on home run hitting. Weight training has a huge impact on your strength, and we now have almost 100% of players doing weight training where 30 years ago we had almost none. Why is it a surprise more homers are being hit?

Mark McGwire hit 49 home runs as a ROOKIE, which is the rookie record by a huge margin. Even discounting steroid use, he is much, much bigger and stronger than any other major power hitter in baseball history; even as a rookie, he was bigger than Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Mantle, or Mike Schmidt. Guys like Mays, Aaron, and Robinson weren’t even in his zip code in size or strength. We’re seeing players now who are naturally far bigger than almost ANY of the great power hitters prior to 1985. The only comparable players in terms of size I can think of are Frank Howard and Dave Kingman, both of whom hit a lot of homers considering they couldn’t hit a beachball with a whiffle bat two pitches out of three, and played in far worse times for hitters. I have no doubt whatsoever Howard would have pushed 60-65 homers had he played today, rather than in the late 60s.

I don’t doubt McGwire’s 'roid use helped him recover from the injuries that plagued him and nearly ended his career, but I’m doubtful it made that big a difference in his homer output. Even without steroids he is and was the perfect candidate to hit 60+ home runs; a hitter of historically impressive strength and size, with a tremendous batting eye, a natural home run hitter, playing in the most profilic home run era in baseball history.

56

I agree we’ve flogged enough.

Short answer to your question: Walter Johnson.

Longer answer: Walter Johnson’s career W-L record was 417-279, for .599 winning percentage. His K/BB ratio was 2.57. ERA was 2.17 compared to a league average 3.17.

Nolan Ryan’s career W-L was 324-292, for a .526 winning percentage. His K/BB ratio was 2.04. ERA was 3.19 compared to a league average 3.57.

Walter Johnson was the better pitcher.

*Thanks, RickJay and Bucky for your patient exposition on the steroid stigma.

57

RickJay said
“It’s not just Sammy Sosa and Big Mac, it’s everyone, and the huge totals you see now are exactly proportional to what the best home runs hitters have always hit.”

This is, of course, not true. Ruth outhomered several TEAMS many times in his career. He beat the old home run mark, set by himself, by almost 100% in 1920. He was so far ahead of what others hit that it was unwordly.

What Bonds and Mac have done recently is also out of proportion in that they are doing it in what should be the downside of their careers. More than anything else, this is what first made me suspect the roid usage.

It is, of course, true that home runs are being hit a record number snow, largely for the reasons RickJay discussed. This is an additional reason to be LESS impressed with the high numbers.
BTW, a new book, “Levelling the field,” claims that Ruth would have hit 94 home runs in his best season if playing under modern conditions.

58

I confess I was sort of assuming we understood we were talking about the period of baseball history in which home runs were an accepted strategy, as opposed to the transition years of Babe Ruth. But it’s fair to say Ruth is an exception to the rule. Now, are you saying Babe Ruth took steroids?

If not, then it’s kind of strange to say McGwire’s and Sosa’s home run totals must obviously have been steroid-enchanced when the only player in major league history whose homer totals were genuinely out of whack, Babe Ruth, did not take steroids.

  1. McGwire is more out of whack than Bonds. Bonds’s 73-homer season was a fluke even for Barry Bonds; his career high otherwise is 49. 2001 was, to be honest, a total fluke season., homer-wise. His 46 homers in 1993, when he was 28, is more impressive in context than the 46 he hit this year. McGwire, on the other hand, had consecutive years of 52, 58, 70, and 65; his peak is not out of whack.

  2. Not necessarily. Again, we are looking at McGwire and Bonds in the context of the greatest splurge of home run hitting in major league history. When those two men STARTED their careers, the major league were much less friendly to home run hitters.

There are other examples of players having their offensive or statistical peaks late in thier careers as a result of the conditions of the game changing. Hank Aaron has his best run of home run totals in his late 30s.

  1. Sure, it’s still unusual. But McGwire and Bonds are exceptions - Sosa hit his 66 homers when he was 28, and most players are still peaking at 27-28 or so. To demonstrate an example the other way, Jose Canseco, who we all know took 'roids, won his MVP Award when he was 23.

Absolutely. I mean, records are records, but it would be unreasonable to suggest that Sammy Sosa is truly a more impressive home run hitter than, say, Mike Schmidt. Sosa, for all his homers, has led his league only twice. Schmidt led his eight times. Who, really, is a better home run hitter? I’d take Schmidt.

Had Hank Aaron begun his career in 1987, it is quite possible he might have hit 850 home runs.

If you do straight extrapolation you might come up with such a number. It is however, quite unlikely. Ruth hit so many more homers than anyone else in large part because he was the only one TRYING. Just because everyone else is trying today does not mean he’d try twice as hard.

59

Re: Babe Ruth. All I have to say is most dominant player ever. Hands down. No contest. Can you imagine what he would’ve been like if he hadn’t abused himself so much?

60

OK, you all seem to want to gloss over the point, so I’ll put it in your face again.

Take a look at Barry Bonds’, Mark McGwire’s, and Sammy Sosa’s bodies when they were rookies. Then look at them again at the time they were destroying records that had stood for decades.

Then give me some mealy-mouthed tripe about better nutrition and conditioning these days. To explain how adult human beings seemingly doubled in size. And, keep in mind that these particular adults were athletic enough to make it to the big leagues. So I don’t imagine they weren’t conditioning their bodies well prior to making it.