Who Was Greatest Baseball Player Ever?
Ruth or Bonds?
From the New York Times’ news section:
… The poor Bambino isn’t even second. That spot belongs to Roger Clemens, who pitched for both the Boston Red Sox and the Yankees. He is followed by Bonds’s godfather, Willie Mays (both men are generally associated with the San Francisco Giants, though they played for other teams as well). Ruth ranks fourth, followed by Hank Aaron of the Milwaukee, and later Atlanta, Braves. Mickey Mantle, who won seven World Series rings while wearing Yankee pinstripes, falls to 23rd.
The researchers attempt to figure out the impact of a larger pool of baseball players.
The Era Adjusted Wins Above Replacement by averaging Baseball Reference WAR and FanGraphs WAR and adjusting by era:
For instance, white Southerners seldom reached major league baseball before Ty “The Georgia Peach” Cobb in 1905.
Since then, there has been a huge expansion in population in the U.S. South and West.
On the other hand, it’s by no means clear that the vast expansion in Mexican Americans in recent decades has done much for big league talent.
A huge fraction of the most talented baseball players in recent times have been partly black Dominicans, such as Albert Pujols, Adrian Beltré, Pedro Martínez, Manny Ramirez, Robinson Canó, Juan Marichal, Vladimir Guerrero, José Ramírez, and David Ortiz.
Baseball purists may object, noting that Bonds and Clemens are among several high-profile major league players accused of using steroids during the 1990s. (This likely explains why neither player is enshrined in Cooperstown, the sport’s Hall of Fame in upstate New York.)
My solution for this is that Bonds and Clemens should issue complete statements of when they used PEDs. If, as alleged by Bonds’ ex-girlfriend, he only started experimenting with PEDs in 1999, his 14th season, he’d obviously be deserving of his induction into the Hall of Fame based on just his spectacular first 13 seasons (1986-1998).
On the other hand, was Barry Bonds better than his godfather Willie Mays before Bonds got all ‘roided out in the early 2000s?
Tough question.
Mays’ career had a weird trajectory, in part due to missing most of his age 21-22 seasons to the military, then being awesome at age 23-24, then being merely really good from 25-29, then awesome again from 30-35, then fading after that. I’ve never seen a really good explanation for why Willie was better in his early 30s than his late 20s.
Bonds, in comparison, was increasingly good from 22-25, then awesome from 26-29, then really good from 30-34, injured at 35, then great at 36, then absurdly off the charts from 37-40. From age 22 to 34, Bonds’ career looks like that of a traditional inner circle Hall of Famer.
All right, it seems plausible that Barry Bonds was, without PEDs, the best position player of his generation. But after 1998 he got tired of lesser talents like Sosa and McGwire getting all the glory from juicing so he started cheating and turned out to be incredibly good at juicing.
But statistics tell their own story. Daniel J. Eck, a statistician at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who led the new study and has been working on the model for about a decade, noted that because so many other players took performance-enhancing drugs, or PEDs, any improvement from banned chemicals is reflected in players’ achievement models for those years. “I’m OK with a PED-laden person being number one, over, say, a person who played before baseball was integrated,” Dr. Eck said. In other words, despite Bonds’s steroid use, he put up more outlandishly impressive numbers, in era-adjusted terms, than Ruth.
The problem with that is that PEDs use tends to be a zero or one proposition. Assume that Bonds was not doping through 1998. Then his relative performance was extraordinary compared to all the dopers. On the other hand, it he were doping after that, how good was he compared to the non-dopers?
Well, it depends on how many dopers there were vs. non-dopers.
My impression is that baseball players were not as quick to take up new drugs as some other athletes, such as Olympic field athletes. Ballplayers are pretty traditionalist and lazy. But still …
Needless to say, trying to calculate the size of the baseball talent pool in an entire society, not just those who ended up in Major League Baseball, requires an enormous amount of historical data, as well as many carefully considered assumptions. But several experts in baseball statistics, or sabermetrics, said the new ranking methodology, devised by statisticians at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and published recently in the Annals of Applied Statistics, was a home run.
The researchers try to figure out figure out how big the expansion in baseball talent has been over the last 150 years.
The researchers point out that Ruth caused a glitch in the matrix:
Babe Ruth’s dominance is in part due to his talent, but is also in part to him exercising a superior batting strategy that had not existed before. Therefore, Ruth’s “vs his peers” stats are slightly distorted, and his era-adjusted stats will also be distorted as a result. Ruth’s era-adjusted stats reflect the combination of his talent and his competitive advantage. This competitive advantage does not exist in other contexts. Our method will therefore overestimate Ruth’s era-adjusted home run hitting and his era-adjusted WAR [Wins Above Replacement] since our method does not yet disentangle talent and competitive circumstance. The problem of the Babe Ruth anomaly confounds all era-adjustment techniques. We imagine that Ruth’s era-adjusted OBP [On Base Percentage] is also overestimated by our method. The Babe Ruth anomaly challenges all other era-adjustment techniques, and is especially challenging for anyone making interpretations based solely on raw or league adjusted “+” stats and WAR.
Then again, maybe Ruth should get extra credit for revolutionizing professional sports in the Western world?
Excelling through fundamentally changing the way the game is played is a reasonable definition of greatness.
“Then again, maybe Ruth should get extra credit for revolutionizing professional sports in the Western world?”
Uh, that part. Ruth single handedly changed the entire sport, making it more offensive
Babe Ruth’s dominance is in part due to his talent, but is also in part to him exercising a superior batting strategy that had not existed before.”
Translation: therefore Ruth is going to be penalized for not only being nearly a full standard deviation better than his peers, (and since PEDs were non-existent in MLB during his career), therefore it is automatically unfair that Ruth figured out how to exercise a superior batting strategy, EVEN THOUGH anyone could have employed the same strategy. The writers do not directly state what this batting strategy is—video footage of Ruth shows that he is standing in the batters box like everyone else, and swinging the bat like every other hitter, then as now.
“I’m OK with a PED-laden person being number one, over, say, a person who played before baseball was integrated,” Dr. Eck said. “
And here we have the actual nub of what’s going on. This is intentional bias, reverse discrimination. Because it’s so “obvious” that weighed vs which other, PEDs are by far the lesser cardinal sin than playing pre-1947, when you can’t trust those stats at all, because racism, racism, and racism.
"In other words, despite Bonds’s steroid use, he put up more outlandishly impressive numbers, in era-adjusted terms, than Ruth."
No he did not. The HR stat, as an offensive weapon, which also changed the entire configuration of modern ballparks, (e.g. OF’s power alleys began being pulled in so as to capitalize on more HR’s hit), these things are directly traced to a single individual, namely, Babe Ruth. The HR was well entrenched by the time Bonds started playing in MLB. The HR stat was not even a major thing during the first five yrs of Ruth's career--starting in 1918-1919, at the tail end of the Dead Ball Era, when he began hitting HR's in larger amounts than fans and writers alike were accustomed to seeing.
FACT: It was more outlandishly impressive that Ruth in 1920 hit 54 HR's (which outhomered entire teams' HR totals in MLB at the time) than it was for Bonds to hit 73 in 2001, when McGwire had already hit 70 in 1998, just three years previously.
When Babe Ruth hit 60 HRS in 1927, he broke his own record of 59 HRs in 1921. When Ruth hit 54 HRs in 1920, he broke the then record of 28 HRS, in other words Ruth’s first single season HR record nearly doubled the total of the prior record holder.
Bonds on the other hand, surpassed McGwire by 3 HRs. Not very impressive, especially as both were taking PEDS.
During the 1920’s, during his peak years, Ruth out homered entire teams’ total HRs hit for the season. For Bonds to equal that order of magnitude, he would’ve had to have hit 150 + HRs in a single season.
“Bonds, in comparison, was increasingly good from 22-25” Uh, actually, not really upon closer examination. Good, enough would be a more accurate designation
“From age 22 to 34, Bonds’ career looks like that of a traditional inner circle Hall of Famer.”
Depends where the circle is drawn. With Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx, Musial, Williams, even Mantle? Not by a long shot.
With Ernie Banks, Griffey Jr, Frank Robinson? Yes, along those lines, but definitely not inner circle (if that implies the greatest to have ever played the game, period, not at that level).
“I’ve never seen a really good explanation for why Willie was better in his early 30s than his late 20s.”
Really? I took for granted when studying Willie’s basic stats years ago, that a late part of it was moving from the Polo Grounds to first Seals Stadium for three seasons and then Candlestick in 1961, when he was 30. Different ballpark configurations, particularly the OFs and how much ground a CFer has to cover is a major reason for why a player like Willie had some off years—he was adjusting to a new ballpark in a new city, and a minor league calibre one at that. Once Candlestick became SF’s permanent park, he adjusted quite well.
It’s also a reason why Hank Aaron had a late career HR surge—Atlanta’s ballpark was more conducive to HRs than Milwaukee County Stadium.
But the modern ballparks all had their OF fences shortened compared to the Dead Ball Era as a reaction to one man’s HR prowess, and that’s Babe Ruth.
I also notice that Walter Johnson was shamefully left off the top ten list of greatest ever to have played the game. 417 career W’s, 2.12 ERA, 3, 508 career SO, when no P posted 3,000 career strikeouts for nearly half a century after Walter retired, and he’s left off the top ten list of all time greatest players?
Also Bert Blyleven (no Cy Young Awards, no 300 W’s era 3.32) is ahead of Tom Seaver (3 Cy Young Awards, 2.86 career ERA, 311 career W’s)? What the f is that unless it’s a typo.
And Warren Spahn’s not in the top 20? 363 career W’s, 3.09 ERA, most seasons with 20 W’s second only to Cy Young. Spahn won the Cy Young Award in 1957, back when it was one award for two leagues (not given to best AL/NL pitchers as today). Bert Blyleven is better than Warren Spahn? When he wasn’t even considered the best pitcher in a given season? Seriously?
So by this metric, Bert Blyleven is greater than both Walter Johnson and Tom Seaver (and Blyleven and Seaver’s careers overlapped, so they definitely can be compared to one another). Oh, and also he’s greater than Tris Speaker (one of the few OF-ers who can be compared to today. Speaker has 3,000+ H’s, career BA 345 all time doubles record, but he’s not as great as Bert Blyleven—the greatest pitcher people don’t think about or immediately recall, because “obviously” all time great players slip under people’s radars all the time.
Oh, and Lou Gehrig isn’t in the top 20 greatest players list either, so Blyleven is “obviously” greater than Lou Gehrig.
So basically we’re told to believe that Bert Blyleven is a far greater all time player than Lou Gehrig, Tris Speaker, Walter Johnson, Tom Seaver, Warren Spahn—all players who were praised and lauded during their lifetimes, while Bert slipped under the radar for the most part (wasn’t a first ballot HOF, for example)
Per Bonds achievements, A reasonable question would be, Steve, what is Bonds’ career WAR 1986-2000, and then what is his WAR from just for the seasons 2001-2004? And, does his WAR from 1986-1998 truly make him among the greatest ever to have played in MLB?
HOF, absolutely. But the greatest of the greatest ever to have played in the 20th century?
That designation, belongs and always will belong, to Babe Ruth, the one single individual who literally changed the way MLB offense is played, directly impacted offensive strategies, and, directly impacted the way modern ballparks are constructed (OF's with shorter fences, shorter power alleys, and shorter distances from home plate). One person did that, and that's Babe Ruth.
By traditional WAR, Babe Ruth is listed at 183.1, the highest in MLB history.