(And just who is...) The Greatest Baseball Player of All-Time?

[homer]

Speaking of Bonds....what makes his case all the more tragic is that he probably would have been top 5 player of all time if he had never touched steroids.

[topper09er]

Bonds would have been the only 500 HR 500 SB guy and it would have been really interesting to evaluate him, especailly next to Ted Williams and Musial in LF. When you have not only your best seasons, but the best seasons of all-time, from ages 36-39, something is up.

[wisconsinfan47]

Oscar Charleston at least deserves a mention...

[mletto157]

Until Ruth, i don't think the HR was really valued as much as it is today.

 

It's just so hard for me to comprehend this line of thinking. I guess I'm at least relatively young on this board... but doesn't it come across as common sense that the best thing you can do as a hitter is hit a homerun? I mean, you score, everyone on base scores, etc... how could that possibly not be valued? I just don't understand this...

[greeg35]

Just theorizing as I was not quite alive at that time; but maybe they used this line of thinking:

if you can do a lesser something enough more times than you could do a greater something that trying for the greater something would not be worth your while, then you do the lesser something as often as possible.

Hopefully your brain hasn't deflated.

[nsimps]

It was mentioned before, but I'll say it again in regards to judging players. The parks before the 30s were HUGE. Take a look at the all-time leaders for triples and you'll see that most of them are pre-1930. Homeruns were rare back then because most of them were of the in-the-park fashion.

[Diskono]

Until Ruth, i don't think the HR was really valued as much as it is today.

 

It's just so hard for me to comprehend this line of thinking. I guess I'm at least relatively young on this board... but doesn't it come across as common sense that the best thing you can do as a hitter is hit a homerun? I mean, you score, everyone on base scores, etc... how could that possibly not be valued? I just don't understand this...

In Europe, a lot of soccer fans value their team playing "attractive football" as much as they value winning. I don't understand it myself, but there are plenty of people out there who would prefer to see their team lose with lots of clean forward passes on the ground, rather than win by punting the ball 80 yards in the air, hoping to hit an on-side forward near the goal on every possession. Park effects aside, there may have been similar thinking.

 

edit: actually, that type of thinking is probably still around today to some extent, judging by how often I hear fans complain about how the Brewers try to hit home runs too much.

[Hofbraunhaus]

Jeff Suppan. I would have to go with Ruth for all the reasons already mentioned.

[GAME05]

http://upload.wikimedia.o.../MLB_HR_and_SB_rates.png

i'll post this as a picture instead of link when i have a better chance, but this is a good depiction of how hitting philosophy has changed through the years.

i think a lot of the aesthetic philosophy stemmed from the fact that the HR hitter just didn't exist before Ruth. when the top guy on your team is hitting all of seven per season, you're not going to strategize for it or plan for it or develop it in your younger players. thusly, you're not going to value it as much. it's not coincidence that after Ruth had a few years in the league that every other star started hitting HRs, too.

[topper09er]

it's not coincidence that after Ruth had a few years in the league that every other star started hitting HRs, too.

It did not happen because they were copying Ruth, it was because the live ball era started. The main change was that they started replacing the ball as soon as it was altered in any way, previous they would use less than 5 balls per game. This happened because of the only death during a game when Indians SS Ray Chapman was hit in the head by a pitch from Carl Mays and spectators claimed he did not even try to get out of the way because he could not see the ball because it was twilight and the ball was grey. They also outlayed the spitball then players started hitting dingers.

 

 

[Baldkin]

They made a huge change to the ball right around 1918 or 1919 (And they've changed it about 4 times since then). That was the main reason for the HR spike. Ruth was still great, but you went from hitting a ball of yarn with cowhide around it to a solid core, tightly wound similar to now baseball.

[wallus]

Are we undervaluing current players due to relief pitchers, specialists and defensive shifts?

[DuWayne Steurer]

The ball was changed in 1920. That's generally considered the beginning of the 'live ball' era.

 

The NL OPS in 1920 was .679.

 

In 1921, it was .736 (dispelling the notion that 'the average player was Craig Counsell during Ruth's era), with a lowest league OPS of .724 during the decade. The NL OPS this year? .727. Hmmm............

 

This all culminated with the NL OPS-ing *808*! during the 1930 season, with the AL OPS-ing a *measly* .772.

 

It's widely accepted that the ball was doctored in 1930 to boost sagging attendance (Hack Wilson's 56 HR 191 RBI campaign, every Cardinals starter hit at least .303!) and in 1931 they went back to the 'regular' ball to get offense back in line, but we never saw a complete drop of offensive production to the dead ball era levels again.

 

A few other points, more antecdotal evidence than anything though.

 

Most players, (as someone else pointed out) didn't go for homeruns, because hitting them with a dead ball in HUGE parks was near impossible. When a HR happened, it was an accident, plain and simple. Making long fly outs was a bad way to play station to station baseball, so that's why most guys didn't try to hit homeruns like Ruth did.

 

Now here again, is heresay, but I read a newspaper article about Ty Cobb once upon a when, where shortly into the 1925 season, a reporter asked him about Babe Ruth, the new fascination with the longball, and how it was changing the game of baseball. Cobb said "hitting homeruns isn't anything special, any fat*** can hit a homerun, it takes real hitting TALENT to hit .400, and I'll prove it" Supposedly, he went on to hit 5 homeruns in the next 2 days, and then only hit 7 more the rest of the year. Baseball Reference's home run log definitely bears this out, as his HR log shows he hit 3 bombs on May 5th, and two more on the 6th. It doesn't prove he was trying to hit them for some show or vendetta, but at least the information is able to be backed up.

 

Again, the stadiums were monstrous, several of them would be the biggest parks in play today, even putting pitchers parks like PETCO and such to shame for the depth.

 

Ruth changed the fundamental way that the game was played. I can see why some people would make an argument that Ruth today wouldn't be as good as Pujols, or Pujols back in the day would have been better than Ruth. Neither can be proven right or wrong, and that's what makes these debates all the more fun.

[Ennder]

Ruth changed the fundamental way that the game was played. I can see why some people would make an argument that Ruth today wouldn't be as good as Pujols, or Pujols back in the day would have been better than Ruth. Neither can be proven right or wrong, and that's what makes these debates all the more fun.

This kind of argument has a ton of merit, just looking at OPS+ doesn't, I guess that was my point. Didn't want to quote the entire thing so just quoted the end.

[splitterpfj]

To me, there are three possible choices...Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, and Babe Ruth.

 

Since no one will ever fully convince the whole world they are right, since I believe him to be the correct choice to begin with, and since I am a Brewers fan of the current era...I'll take the pitcher.

 

Walter Johnson