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Old Forum Index » Other Stuff » Sports Talk » Who's the best all-around baseball player, post 1980's?
FuriousGiorge
September 08, 2008 at 04:51PM View BBCode
Mays was clearly a better defender. Mays was close to Bonds as a hitter, at least compared to his era and park. Mays lost almost two full years to the Korean War.
dirtdevil
you now who else plays professional baseball? every single player ever to particiate in the minor leagues. i hope we're not going to be includig them too? your argument about bonds is defensible. your argument about barnes (and hutson for that matter) is not. drop it.
September 08, 2008 at 04:54PM View BBCode
Originally posted by happy
Barnes played for the National association of professional baseball players. Look, its obvious barnes isnt even close to the best baseball player despite dominating his era. Just like Hutson...
you now who else plays professional baseball? every single player ever to particiate in the minor leagues. i hope we're not going to be includig them too? your argument about bonds is defensible. your argument about barnes (and hutson for that matter) is not. drop it.
tm4559
willie mays. equals. completely awesome.
barry bonds. equals. cheating freak.
September 08, 2008 at 05:03PM View BBCode
Originally posted by FuriousGiorge
Mays was clearly a better defender. Mays was close to Bonds as a hitter, at least compared to his era and park. Mays lost almost two full years to the Korean War.
willie mays. equals. completely awesome.
barry bonds. equals. cheating freak.
FuriousGiorge
September 08, 2008 at 05:05PM View BBCode
Obviously. I mean, taking the discussion out of the vacuum of "don't mention steroids!" absolutely destroys Bonds' place in this discussion. But I was just trying to play with the rules that Happy created.
dirtdevil
September 08, 2008 at 05:06PM View BBCode
it's a bit simplistic for me. by any standard, bonds was one of the best players ever before he started with the cheating. i do think mays was the better player, but it's certainly a legitimate argument to support bonds.
dirtdevil
you're right of course, i should have said 3. since that alone ties him for the most all-time however, i think the valdity of the point stands.
September 08, 2008 at 05:09PM View BBCode
Originally posted by whiskybear
Originally posted by dirtdevil
i think 5 mvp awards, and a projection of 4 years of similar pre-roids stats gets him into the discussion of top 2 or 3. he would certainly have played those years either way, and if you through out his actual stats you sort of have to give him credit for some kind of projection based on his previous ones. to me, that's always been the real tragedy of bonds. he could have been the best all-time without the junk.
Where did you come up with five MVP awards? He won seven -- three as a clean power/speed freak and four more as a roided-up Godzilla.
you're right of course, i should have said 3. since that alone ties him for the most all-time however, i think the valdity of the point stands.
happy
as for mays vs Bonds...
Career:
Mays Warp-3 : 220.1
Bonds Warp-3: 236.4
Peak:
Mays best player (1 point for being the only best player, 1/2 for one of the two best players, 1/3rd for tied with 2 others, etc): 5 and 5/6ths
Bonds best player: 11 and 1/6th (and if you take out pitchers and only look at hitters, you can add another 1 and 1/6th points. I personally wouldnt do that, but maybe someone would for some reason)
September 08, 2008 at 07:19PM View BBCode
I just thinik that the steroids thing is unquantifiable. He could have hit a home run every single at bat and still been considered to not be the best ever because of the steroids thing. In other words, its not that its not a good argument, its that its an argument that is more boring than the Eli thing.as for mays vs Bonds...
Career:
Mays Warp-3 : 220.1
Bonds Warp-3: 236.4
Peak:
Mays best player (1 point for being the only best player, 1/2 for one of the two best players, 1/3rd for tied with 2 others, etc): 5 and 5/6ths
Bonds best player: 11 and 1/6th (and if you take out pitchers and only look at hitters, you can add another 1 and 1/6th points. I personally wouldnt do that, but maybe someone would for some reason)
barterer2002
I like to give a player a decade before including them in the conversation. Frank Thomas was a complete monster his first 10 years. If he'd kept that up he's be near the top of the list, he didn't. I'm not saying that Pujols won't I'm saying I like a decade's perspective before I start ranking him.
Clearly Biggio is more underrated that I realized.
September 08, 2008 at 07:45PM View BBCode
Originally posted by tm4559
why do we (or bryan, at any rate) hate albert of the cardinals? just hasn't played enough yet? has kind of put up the best first seven seasons since, i don't know. lou gehrig or somebody?
I like to give a player a decade before including them in the conversation. Frank Thomas was a complete monster his first 10 years. If he'd kept that up he's be near the top of the list, he didn't. I'm not saying that Pujols won't I'm saying I like a decade's perspective before I start ranking him.
Clearly Biggio is more underrated that I realized.
happy
September 08, 2008 at 07:48PM View BBCode
He has been the best player in the league for 4 years. If he retired today id probably put him above biggio.
happy
Pujols is 89.6 but with a singificantly higher peak.
I guess if he retired today maybe not, but he is projected to pass Biggio in Warp-3 in 3 years, so he will have had a better career in 2 years.
September 08, 2008 at 07:50PM View BBCode
Biggio career warp-3 is 123.0Pujols is 89.6 but with a singificantly higher peak.
I guess if he retired today maybe not, but he is projected to pass Biggio in Warp-3 in 3 years, so he will have had a better career in 2 years.
FuriousGiorge
September 08, 2008 at 09:23PM View BBCode
Are you, like, having WARP-3's baby or something?
FuriousGiorge
Mays missed the bulk of the 1952 and 1953 seasons while he was serving in Korea. In 1952 he totaled 2.3 WARP-3 in 144 plate appearances, and in 1954, back from Korea and putting in a full season again, he totaled 14.2. He wouldn't be under 11 again until 1967, when he was 36 years old. So, give him an extra 8 for 1952 and 10 for 1953 (let's say, that seems reasonable if not conservative). Now he's at 238 for his career and has passed Bonds. So, even by the very narrow rules of your game, where we ignore steroids and use only WARP-3 and the notoriously poor fielding statistics that it includes, Mays wins. And, therefore, I win.
[Edited on 9-8-2008 by FuriousGiorge]
September 08, 2008 at 09:41PM View BBCode
Leaning on a single statistic for your analysis seems a little simplistic. But here, I'll play the game your way.Mays missed the bulk of the 1952 and 1953 seasons while he was serving in Korea. In 1952 he totaled 2.3 WARP-3 in 144 plate appearances, and in 1954, back from Korea and putting in a full season again, he totaled 14.2. He wouldn't be under 11 again until 1967, when he was 36 years old. So, give him an extra 8 for 1952 and 10 for 1953 (let's say, that seems reasonable if not conservative). Now he's at 238 for his career and has passed Bonds. So, even by the very narrow rules of your game, where we ignore steroids and use only WARP-3 and the notoriously poor fielding statistics that it includes, Mays wins. And, therefore, I win.
[Edited on 9-8-2008 by FuriousGiorge]
happy
Career and peak are both important. a slim margin of career value is far overshadowed by the 14 years of bonds dominance. even giving Mays "best player" for those two seasons, he still has a lower peak.
I dont think Bonds is unquestionably the second best player, and id put Mays at a close 3rd. Maybe Mays is 2nd if defense is in fact not weighed enough. For that matter, maybe Bonds is ahead of ruth (due to the better defense). Or maybe Mays is ahead of ruth. (although i highly doubt either are even close to ruth). Maybe he was given too much defensive value and there is a bigger gap than is shown, who knows.
Ruth's WARP-3 was 227.8, but that doesnt take into account his pitching value.
[Edited on 9-8-2008 by happy]
September 08, 2008 at 09:57PM View BBCode
Calling WARP-3 a single statistic is kind of faulty. Considering that WARP-3 itself relies on a ton of statistics, although its only a single number, its a single number that is the combination of a ton of numbers. So the only way to argue this is to say that it does not properly weigh some of the statistics. Ill agree that defense may or may not be properly weighed, and although i agree that defensive stats are notoriously poor, they are only notoriously poor in comparison to other baseball stats, they are still a lot stronger than weak antecdotal evidence. But of course since Mays's defense is the very top of the top, its going to mess up the stats.Career and peak are both important. a slim margin of career value is far overshadowed by the 14 years of bonds dominance. even giving Mays "best player" for those two seasons, he still has a lower peak.
I dont think Bonds is unquestionably the second best player, and id put Mays at a close 3rd. Maybe Mays is 2nd if defense is in fact not weighed enough. For that matter, maybe Bonds is ahead of ruth (due to the better defense). Or maybe Mays is ahead of ruth. (although i highly doubt either are even close to ruth). Maybe he was given too much defensive value and there is a bigger gap than is shown, who knows.
Ruth's WARP-3 was 227.8, but that doesnt take into account his pitching value.
[Edited on 9-8-2008 by happy]
FuriousGiorge
September 08, 2008 at 10:02PM View BBCode
In any case, there's still a very large elephant taking up an entire corner of the room, and the fact that you won't acknowledge it in your analysis makes this whole thing an elitist (one might even go far as to say "uppity") academic endeavor.
FuriousGiorge
September 08, 2008 at 10:17PM View BBCode
Better than JR Ewing, not quite as good as Bobby Ewing.
whiskybear
[Edited on 9-8-2008 by whiskybear]
September 08, 2008 at 10:19PM View BBCode
I'll see your Bobby Ewing and raise you one Joseph E. McEwing.[Edited on 9-8-2008 by whiskybear]
happy
do you really want a steroid argument? really?
im not going to do that, find someone else.
September 09, 2008 at 12:13AM View BBCode
Originally posted by FuriousGiorge
In any case, there's still a very large elephant taking up an entire corner of the room, and the fact that you won't acknowledge it in your analysis makes this whole thing an elitist (one might even go far as to say "uppity") academic endeavor.
do you really want a steroid argument? really?
im not going to do that, find someone else.
FuriousGiorge
September 09, 2008 at 01:29AM View BBCode
If you don't talk about steroids when discussing Bonds' place in baseball history, you're having a Fantasy Land argument.
dirtdevil
this is a fair point, certainly. but each era has it's own boogeyman issue. ruth played only against white players, for instance. to dismiss bonds' steroid years completley is as pointless as pretending that they didn't exist, in my opinion. the question is to what level they define his entire career, and how that should affect (or not) his legacy. i don't think there's any question he was a first ballot hofer before the steroids. the question is does that steroid use then diminish what he had previously accomplished? but that's probably a debate for a different time.
i think at the end of the day, mays was the better player than a pre-steroid bonds. but that doesn't mean that saying bonds is a top-2 player all-time isn't a perfectly valid opinion. and let's face it for happy, a perfectly valid opinion is a huge improvement over the usual. :saint:
September 09, 2008 at 03:34AM View BBCode
Originally posted by FuriousGiorge
If you don't talk about steroids when discussing Bonds' place in baseball history, you're having a Fantasy Land argument.
this is a fair point, certainly. but each era has it's own boogeyman issue. ruth played only against white players, for instance. to dismiss bonds' steroid years completley is as pointless as pretending that they didn't exist, in my opinion. the question is to what level they define his entire career, and how that should affect (or not) his legacy. i don't think there's any question he was a first ballot hofer before the steroids. the question is does that steroid use then diminish what he had previously accomplished? but that's probably a debate for a different time.
i think at the end of the day, mays was the better player than a pre-steroid bonds. but that doesn't mean that saying bonds is a top-2 player all-time isn't a perfectly valid opinion. and let's face it for happy, a perfectly valid opinion is a huge improvement over the usual. :saint:
happy
September 09, 2008 at 05:23AM View BBCode
thats... what i would have said had i gotten into the steroid argument.