As RTFirefly points out, overall athleticism is much more than simple weight training; athletic performance in every sport that admits of objective measurement of performance has increased steadily over the last hundred years. I believe Bill James made a pretty good case, a dozen years ago in his Historical Baseball Abstract, for the proposition that the average level of play (both in terms of skill and of athletic ability) is higher while the outstanding players have remained roughly comparable; in other words, that the gap between the run of the mill average player and the superstars is narrower today than it was in the early days of the game, which feels right to me and can be supported by some of the statistical analyses available. For the specifics, I’ll have to review my sources once I’m home tonight.
In any case, my support for the contention that the best players of the 1900-1960 era would still be stars today ought to be evident in my list of players I’d consider to be contenders for the title of greatest ever; most (Mays being the main exception) are of that era.
Smith was a decent hitter for a shortstop with gusts up to great - he should have been the MVP in 1987 - but you cannot underestimate his defence. Over the course of his career, Smith made some 2,000 more plays than an average defensive shortstop would have made. In 1980, Smith made 230 more plays than average; he made 150 more plays than the average SS in at least seven other years. NO shortstop approaches his level of defensive excellence. Compared to Ozzie, Omar Vizquel was an amateur.
If Smith was legitimately 2,000 plays better than anyone else - well, that’s 2,000 baserunners that he took away from the opposition. So, basically, he’s equal to an average defensive shortstop with 2,000 more singles as a hitter, which would make Smith a career .470 hitter. That’s probably extreme, since some of those extra plays are illusions of context, but even if you cut it in half we’re talking about a guy who was saving an AVERAGE of 40 runs a year with his glove. Maybe more. I mean, that man could play some baseball, folks.
I disagree. Really strongly.
Mike Schmidt won ten Gold Gloves. He was the greatest defensive third baseman in the history of the National League. Total Baseball rates Schmidt as the greatest defensive player who has ever played ANY position, which I think is kinda nuts but the guy had an amazing glove. His defensive statistics, for whatever value you want to place on that, are just as good as Brooks Robinson’s. I don’t know that Schmidt was as good as Robinson, but if he wasn’t it was incredibly close, and the difference in hitting is just colossal.
My God, how did I forget him? As an interesting side note, Musial has received more support in MVP voting than any other player, ever.
I also left off Mickey Mantle. I’m not happy keeping six outfielders but you could replace anyone except Ruth and Mays with Musial or Mantle and I’d be happy. At his peak, Mantle was better than Mays, too.
I think Brock’s a brutal choice over Mickey Mantle, but let me make a more interesting observation; if you have a need for speed, why would you choose Brock over Rickey Henderson? Or, for that matter, Ty Cobb? Heck, I might prefer Tim Raines.
I’m glad to see you didn’t pick Joe DiMaggio, a great player but maybe the most overrated of all time.
I have to admit some personal bias in this choice. I grew up in St Louis, and Brock is a legendary Cardinal which is why I took him over Henderson. I know Mantle is a better outfielder than Brock, but Mantle played on bad knees for almost his entire career. I have power with Aaron and Williams, I wanted a bat with some base-stealing notoriety. I tossed Cal Ripken Jr in there for a second infielder, but he could be tossed out for another outfielder, who would definitely be Mantle.
As for the absence of Ty Cobb, um . . . damn. Ooops.
What you say about the growth in professional opportunities in other sports is all quite true. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the talent pool has shrunk for baseball. Until a little over fifty years ago, a large number of the most talented and athletic baseball players in the Americas were artificially excluded from the talent pool for major league baseball. Even after Robinson, Doby, et al., blacks remained underrepresented in baseball until at least the 1960s. Also, as other posters have mentioned, as baseball faced increased competition from other sports for the best athletes, it expanded its efforts to scout and sign players from outside the U.S., a process that continues to this day. Until Hideo Nomo, Masanori Murakami was the only Asian player to play in the majors (yes, I know about Atlee Hammaker). Now, we have at least a short dozen Japanese and Korean players, and will soon have Taiwanese players. Add in the Australians, and you’ve got probably two dozen players who are either in the majors or soon will be who’re from the other side of the International Date Line. There’re a lot more where they came from. As of Opening Day this year, nearly a quarter of all major leaguers were born outside the 50 U.S. states (though the total of 198 includes 12 Canadians, who’ve always been part of the talent pool for MLB). While the majors have always drawn to some degree from Latin America, the color barrier and difficulties in travel and communication kept baseball from fully exploiting this source of players until well into the second half of the century. Thus, as baseball lost many white kids from the United States to other sports, they’ve been replaced by a dramatic expansion in the ethnic groups and geographical areas from which it draws.
Even without the expansion of the pool of talent, I’d contend that the average ballplayer today is more athletic than the average player of the twenties and thirties. Weight training is part of it. So is the likelihood that a player today will have spent a significant amount of time participating in organized sports with well-defined and scientifically based training programs to improve speed, flexibility, reaction time, etc., instead of in working in a mill or on the farm (beneficial as those may have been in building strength). Obviously pure athleticism isn’t a substitute for baseball skills, but a player will go a lot farther with both than with only the skills, and it’s likely that the athletic player will be able to develop his skills farther.
Which is why I qualified my remarks by saying that if you allowed me to draw from the Negro Leagues as well as the majors, I would put a team of old-timers up against modern players.
True, but this is offset by the fact that the number of major league teams has increased by far more than 25% since the days of the old timers. How many major league teams were there in, say, 1920? The old timers were competing for a much smaller number of total roster spots, meaning that those who made it were the absolute cream of the crop. Moreover, since the talent level was not diluted by modern-day league expansion, the old-time hitters would have been going up against top-notch pitchers night after night (and vice-versa).
I haven’t even mentioned the indifference to baseball in modern black communities. Where a black kid in olden days might have aspired to be like Josh Gibson or Satchel Paige, black kids today want to “be like Mike” and play basketball, for the most part.
True, but this is offset by the fact that the number of major league teams has increased by far more than 25% since the days of the old timers. How many major league teams were there in, say, 1920? The old timers were competing for a much smaller number of total roster spots, meaning that those who made it were the absolute cream of the crop. Moreover, since the talent level was not diluted by modern-day league expansion, the old-time hitters would have been going up against top-notch pitchers night after night.
There were 16 major league teams in 1920; there are 30 now.
That said, there are a few other reasons to believe talent has not been diluted:
Scouting and development is much, much better now than it was then. In 1920 it would not have been uncommon for a talented minor leaguer or amateur to go unnoticed, or never be given a meaningful tryout. Today that simply would not happen; NO prospects are missed.
To boot, the minor league system as it exists today was not fully developed until the 1940s-1950s, as a vertical “Farm” system developing and feeding players to the majors. Prior to WWII the minor league system was relatively disorganized and entirely independent, so if the Yankees wanted the star pitcher from the Butte Surfers, well, maybe they’d get him and maybe they wouldn’t. Or maybe they’d never know about him.
Players are healthier now, so talented players are likely to be available to play more games. Poor conditioning in the old days didn’t just reduce athletic ability; it shortened careers. Injuries were not easily recovered from if they were diagnosed at all. Alcoholism was RAMPANT in the early days of baseball, much worse than cocaine was in the 1970s and 1980s.
Kerry Wood is back and pitching for the Cubs after suffering an injury that would have ended his career flat in 1935. Tommy John had his elbow reconstructed in a manner impossible in 1950, and other pitchers have had this “Tommy John surgery.” How many players from 1901 to 1950 were lost to injuries and illnesses
Not true. Rusty Staub also did this. Rafael Furcal came damn close as he turned 20 and then hit a homer a few days later. Damn . . .
I don’t think there is a greatest player of all time. Ruth didn’t have an average as high as Cobb’s . . . he hasn’t won as many games as Sutton or Drysdale or Johnson . . . when you get down to it, there isn’t any one player who did everything better than everyone else.
Catcher: My first inclination would be to go with Berra and Bill Dickey, despite my dislike for the Yankees in general. But I don’t know if I want to commit to two lefties at catcher. That means Bench makes his way on as the right-hand hitting catcher with the best mix of productivity and defense, and I’m afraid that I’m going to go against the grain and pick Dickey for my other slot; he was very nearly as productive as Berra in his day, and was better defensively – and after all, Berra did credit him with “learning me his experience”. Scales tipped in Dickey’s favor by being from Arkansas (yes, he was born in Louisiana, but he was from Arkansas). Waiting in Triple-A: Gabby Hartnett. Top prospect: Mike Piazza, the only catcher to match Dickey’s .362 average for a season (come back when you’ve caught a hundred games a year for thirteen years straight like Bench and Dickey).
First Base: Lou Gehrig and . . . well, why don’t we leave it at that for now. There’s several guys who could fit at either OF or 1B, in the unlikely event the Iron Horse can’t go to the post.
Second Base: Nap Lajoie was very nearly the hitter Hornsby was and a damn sight better fielder – so much better, that any advantage Hornsby had at the plate was more than offset by Lajoie’s defense.
Third Base: Mike Schmidt with no reservation whatever. As much as love Brooksie (another Arkansawyer), Schmidt was probably as good or better defensively day in and day out, though not as amazing in short stretches (like the 1970 Series) as Brooks. At the plate they weren’t even in the same universe.
Shortstop: Honus Wagner in a landslide as the first choice. He has the added advantage of being able to play anywhere in the infield in a pinch. I think Ozzie Smith makes an admirable backup, especially since by the middle of his career you could send him up to the plate as a PH from either side if you wanted a fast guy who was likely to get on base, and he’s one of the very few SS in the history of the game who might have been a better fielder than Wagner.
Right Field: Ruth
Center Field: Mays
Left Field: Against my emotional inclination, I’ll go with Ted Williams.
Reserve OF: Cobb, Aaron, and Tris Speaker. Only thing that worries me is having four lefties and two righties in the outfield corps, but that’s not a bad situation.
Other reserves: Jackie Robinson gives us a ton of positional flexibility without sacrificing a thing offensively compared with the other options. The only thing he didn’t have was a long career. I’m going to throw in Musial even though we already have enough outfielders and we don’t really need a backup at 1B. My wildcard is Eddie Mathews as a backup at third (otherwise, we have nobody behind Schmidt).
I’m going to have to fill out the pitching staff when I get home – sorry to split this into two parts.
OK, now for the pitching staff. I’m not inclined to break them down into specific roles, with one obvious exception, though you can more or less assume that I’ve listed them in order of preference.
RHP: Walter Johnson
RHP: Christy Mathewson
RHP: Pete Alexander
LHP: Lefty Grove
RHP: Tom Seaver
LHP: Warren Spahn
RHP: Bob Gibson
RHP: Roger Clemens
LHP: Hal Newhouser
LHP: Hoyt Wilhelm
Guys I regret not having room for: Rickey Henderson and Barry Bonds, despite not thinking much of the way either conducts himself (didn’t keep me from including Cobb), Hornsby (ditto), Mantle, Eddie Collins, Frank Robinson, Mel Ott, Joe Morgan, and Jimmie Foxx.
Decent choice. Somehow, I overlooked both Wade Boggs and Brett as potential 3B choices (bias toward NL players, no doubt). From a subjective point of view, I’d lean toward Brett, going purely by the numbers I’d have to give Boggs the nod. Since it’s my team, Brett it is.
OK, the case is made in chapter 7 (“The Good Old Days are Now”) of John Thorn and Pete Palmer’s seminal 1984 book The Hidden Game of Baseball, not in James’ Historical Baseball Abstract (couldn’t put my hands on the James book this evening, so there may be a discussion there as well). While I can’t do justice to 27 pages of Thorn and Palmer in a few lines, they use a variety of statistical analyses, combined with anecdotal evidence, to make the same point I tried to earlier: that the superstars of any era would probably be stars or superstars in any other era, but that the gap in ability between the best and the average has consistently narrowed with the passing of time. The more I think about it, the more I’m sure Bill James has also treated this subject and come to similar conclusions. I realize I’ve provided little more evidence than an appeal to authority, but my time for compiling and sieving the data has been limited.
On a purely anecdotal level, consider the frequency with which players switched from pitcher to position player after reaching the majors, and try to imagine that happening today. Besides Ruth, there was Smokey Joe Wood, and IIRC a couple of others who made the switch from successful major league pitchers to successful major league position players. Ruth was an exceptional case, but Wood, though productive as an OF, wasn’t a superstar there; it wasn’t a case of his being more valuable out there than pitching. Wood switched once his arm was gone; after racking up a 116-57 record with a 2.03 career ERA, he played another five years as an outfielder, hitting .296 and .297 in his two seasons as a regular (1918 and 1922), and .366 in limited time in 1921. To put it in today’s terms, imagine Pedro Martinez (the active pitcher today who’s probably closest to Wood in longevity so far, record, etc.) spending the next two years trying to recover from a completely dead arm, and finding that impossible, coming back and hitting like Greg Colbrunn for another five years. For that to happen, not only would Martinez have to be a far better hitter than he is, but the level of players available who might otherwise take that roster spot would have to be low enough for him to get the chance to do so.
I’ll keep working on pulling together the quantitative evidence.
Nah. I don’t buy that either. If that were so, the stats of old would show Ty Cobb hitting .400, and everyone else in the league down around .235. I don’t buy the argument that the talent gap was any greater then than it is now.
As far as you other argument, about pitchers becoming position players, I could imagine a Tom Glavine successfully pulling that off. That guy is just an athlete. IIRC, he was a first-round NHL pick. He is used by Bobby Cox as a pinch hitter with some frequency, and I can easily imagine that if he were working on his hitting with the same intensity as his pitching, he could make the crossover.
As far as picking an all-time team, I’d like to point out that y’all are focusing on Hall of Fame players with long and successful careers. Fair enough, but let me throw out the name of a pitcher who burned brightly for a little while and then flamed out: J.R. Richard. For a few years in the 70’s, that guy was absolutely dominant. He never compiled the great career stats, because his career was cut short by a stroke, but I sure wouldn’t mind having J.R. Richard in his prime on my squad. You might make a similar argument about the brief flowering of Fernando Valenzuela.
So are y’all picking based on career stats, or are you picking the guy you would want on your team in his prime (however short that prime may have been)?
Bill James addresses this in “The Politics of Glory,” which is now being published as “Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame?” in the chapter entitled “Timelines.”
Which isn’t far from the case. Take 1911: Cobb hits .420, league average is .278. 1912? Cobb .409, league .265. A difference of .140 or so, rather than the .165 you posit as being preposterous, but the difference is of the same order. Or go back to the VORP metric I mentioned before. As I pointed out then, the league leader has, averaging all major league seasons from 1876 forward, averaged 77.31 runs per season above the notional “replacement player”. Of all the times that the league leader by this measure has had a value of greater than 100 runs above RP, 55% occurred in the twenties, thirties, and fourties. It’s only happened 7 times in the fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties, after happening thirteen times in the 1920s alone.
Taking the average league-leading VORP by decade, we find:
The numbers suggest that there was a more uniform level of ability in the first two decades, followed by a couple of decades in which the greatest players (Ruth and Hornsby, most notably) far outstripped the abilities of their contemporaries, then a gradual narrowing of the gap until it stabilized in 60s, 70s, and 80s, followed by another widening in the nineties (primarily due to Barry Bonds’ 1992 and 1993 seasons, along with Ripken’s 1991 and Rickey Henderson’s 1990). VORP is probably as close to measuring the thing we’re arguing about as any metric I know of, and it confirms my contention.
I’m sure that he could manage it, but not instantaneously, in the way that Wood did. After taking a full year off in 1916 to attempt to heal his arm, he tried pitching again in 1917, but appeared in only 27 games. In 1918, he hit .296 and led the Indians in HR and RBI (on a team that included Tris Speaker). Obviously, Lee Fohl (the Indians’ manager) believed going into the season that Wood was a better ballplayer than anyone else he could get in a trade or buy from the minors. That to me is the critical point – there weren’t enough major league quality outfielders to go around. These days, as good as Glavine is with the bat and as fine an athlete as he is, neither Cox nor any other major league manager is going to stick him in left field as a starter if he’s suddenly unable to pitch. There’s way too many guys who’re capable of playing left field and hitting .280 to .300 at the major league level, given regular playing time, for Glavine to get a chance without a couple of years in the minors to hone his skills.
I’m very consciously considering longevity in my selections. Part of the definition of true greatness for me is the ability to maintain a high level of performance over a large number of years. Makes more difference with pitchers, as you suggest by your examples. I might have found room for Dizzy Dean and Sandy Koufax on my list had I not placed as much emphasis on longevity.
Not so obvious. It could have been a money-saving decision. If they already had Wood under contract, why waste that money? Why go out and hire another player? Fohl could have been handcuffed by a tightwad owner.
rackensack: You have got to include Greg Maddux in your rotation. A case can be made for Maddux as the greatest pitcher ever, given his remarkable Relative ERA. That is, his ERA compared to the league-average ERA has been staggeringly low most seasons, especially considering the offensive explosion of the mid-to-late 1990s. I think the boys at Baseball Prospectus had an article about this recently.
If I had to pick an all-time starting rotation, it’d be Walter Johnson, Grove, Maddux, Paige, and…hmm. Either Mathewson, Gibson, Randy Johnson, or Pedro Martinez.
The Indians finished second in 1918; it’s possible that at the time they were pinching every penny, having purchased Wood and Speaker from Boston over the previous few years, but it doesn’t seem likely. They finished third in 1917, second in 1919, and went to the Series in 1920 – not the record of a team, then or now, that doesn’t spend money on players. Besides, unlike today, if they wanted to save money all they had to do was release Wood, or trade him for someone cheaper – once you were released, you no longer got paid. No doubt Wood wasn’t pulling down the same salary he could have commanded as a pitcher after going 34-5, 1.91 in 1912, but he definitely would have been more expensive than any number of outfielders in the minors at the time.
Well, I don’t have to. As indicated above, longevity is very much a part of the overall equation for me. Greatness is measured in how much a particular player has done to help his team win games over his entire career. Maddux is certainly in the top 20 by that standard already. Another couple of years pitching the way he’s done for the last ten (or anything close to it) and he’ll probably bump Clemens from my list. If we start whittling down the time over which a player is expected to be outstanding, however, pretty soon we’ve got an all-time team made up of guys like Denny McClain, Mark Fidrych, Dizzy Trout, Pete Reiser, Snuffy Stirnweiss, etc. Being an Atlanta fan since the mid-eighties, I’m certainly aware of Maddux’s abilities; I’m just not quite ready to enshrine him among the ten best ever. Soon, though.
