Ichiro

[sveumrules]

Stache, what value do you place on defense & baserunning? By all measures Ichiro is an all time great in both categories. Gary Sheffield has a 140 career OPS+ but I take Ichiro ahead of him all day because he more than makes up for the OPS differential by providing elite positive value on the bases & in the field.

 

Or think of Prince Fielder. In 2007 he hit 50 bombs and had a wRC+ of 153. But once his negative baserunning & fielding were accounted for he tallied 4.7 fWAR. Ichiro had a pretty typical season with a bunch of singles only good for a 122 wRC+ but with the positive value he provided on the bases & in the field he ended up with 6.1 fWAR. The same concepts apply in the historical context as well.

 

& yes, I was taking top 50 players to mean top 50 position players. Though I counted only 41 position players on your list & 8 more in your subsequent post so maybe you're saving 50 for Mr. Suzuki after all?

[The stache]

I place a very high value on defense, and value, though not as high, on base stealing. If a great player is a base stealer, too, that enhances their value.

 

How is Ichiro an all-time great defender? He has a 4.4 career dWAR, and those metrics are configured from observation during the sabermetric era. This isn't some player from 40 years ago, where they're having to rely on outdated stats, and incomplete records, to formulate it. Ichiro has had one season above a 2.0 dWAR--2004.

 

And no matter how good his fielding is, which is debatable, it doesn't make up for a decade and a half of dinking the ball around with your bat. Again, not to impugn him as a pure hitter, but there are too damned many .300 career hitters with high career OPS statistics. Ichiro isn't one of 'em. That's why he's not one of the top 50 players of all-time.

 

How and the heck can you put Shoeless Joe Jackson, the man with the third highest batting average in history, in the third tier? He hit .356 with a 170 career OPS +.

 

And Hank Greenberg in your third tier....????I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous. Greenberg is one of the greatest power hitters in history. He had a career OPS over 1.000! And no Johnny Mize. He didn't even make your list. He's a vastly superior player to Ichiro, too.

 

And, no, I'm sorry, but Ichiro's stealing one base every five games, and playing solid defense in no way makes up for his absolute dearth in power.

 

Why do you think Ichiro, with defense, base stealing, and hitting all considered, has a career WAR of 59.9, while Greenberg, with all of the same considered, has a career WAR of 57.5? By the way, that extra 2.4 wins Ichiro has been worth over Greenberg....came by way of his playing an extra 1,046 games. They have virtually identical career batting averages; in fact, they're right next to each other on the all-time leader board. Ichiro at .3139, and Greenberg at .3135. You're going to try and tell me that 500 stolen bases in roughly 2,450 games, and above average defense compensates for Greenberg's massive power production? His career 162 game averages: .313 AVG, 122 runs, 189 hits, 44 doubles, 8 triples, 38 home runs, 148 RBI, and a slash line of .412 OBP/.602 SLG/1.014 OPS. Ichiro could have had a jet pack with him in the outfield, using it to fly in the air and catch balls headed for the seats, and he still wouldn't have been more valuable that Greenberg.

 

Stache, what value do you place on defense & baserunning? By all measures Ichiro is an all time great in both categories. Gary Sheffield has a 140 career OPS+ but I take Ichiro ahead of him all day because he more than makes up for the OPS differential by providing elite positive value on the bases & in the field.

 

Or think of Prince Fielder. In 2007 he hit 50 bombs and had a wRC+ of 153. But once his negative baserunning & fielding were accounted for he tallied 4.7 fWAR. Ichiro had a pretty typical season with a bunch of singles only good for a 122 wRC+ but with the positive value he provided on the bases & in the field he ended up with 6.1 fWAR. The same concepts apply in the historical context as well.

 

& yes, I was taking top 50 players to mean top 50 position players. Though I counted only 41 position players on your list & 8 more in your subsequent post so maybe you're saving 50 for Mr. Suzuki after all?

[The stache]

Yeah, right. I was saving room for Ichiro.

 

Ichiro still isn't one of the top 50 position players of all-time, either. If he'd had halfway decent power production (and by that, I mean doubles and triples), he probably would have made it. But getting 24 doubles in 762 plate appearances is pathetic.

 

 

& yes, I was taking top 50 players to mean top 50 position players. Though I counted only 41 position players on your list & 8 more in your subsequent post so maybe you're saving 50 for Mr. Suzuki after all?

[DuWayne Steurer]

I get that you're very impassioned about this argument, and I don't want to diminish anyone's statements, but referring to other people's arguments or opinions as "ridiculous" isn't how we want to comport ourselves here.

 

Just a friendly reminder.

[Fear The Chorizo]

Since MLB rosters basically were limited to whites only through practically the 1st half of its existence, I have a hard time comparing stats from that era to today's game considering over 1/2 of this year's all star game roster wouldn't have been allowed on the field if it were 1940.

 

There have been so many different eras in baseball, there really isn't much of a point in debating "best 50 or so MLB players of all time". I think a more accurate measure would be breaking up MLB history in 25-year increments and identifying 1st, 2nd, 3rd team rosters.

[torts]

Is this a discussion of the 50 greatest Major League players in history, or the 50 greatest baseball players?

 

Because, if it's strictly Major League, then 1.) Josh Gibson doesn't belong in the discussion, no matter how great he was in the Negro Leagues, and 2.) Ichiro's accomplishments in Japan are, again, irrelevant because they didn't happen while he was in the Major Leagues.

 

If it's greatest baseball players of all-time, then I'd put Josh Gibson on my list of 60 better than Ichiro. And, if Josh Gibson is on there, then Satchel Paige sure as heck better be on there, too, and he was better than Ichiro ever was.

 

And since "greatest baseball player of all-time" would be all inclusive, better start including players like Cuba's Omar Linares, and Japan's Sadaharu Oh. And both these guys make the list ahead of Ichiro, and there are more. Then we start looking at players like Oscar Charleston, Cool Papa Bell, Smokey Joe Williams, and Leon Day. Hell, better include Monte Irvin, too. 'Cause even though Negro League statistics are far from complete, the game records they do have from the Negro Leagues show Irvin was a career .954 OPS hitter.

 

So, however we do this, Ichiro doesn't crack the top 50 list, especially when we don't exclude pitchers.

 

If you want to say that Ichiro is one of the 50 best pure hitters in MLB history, you wouldn't get an argument from me, guys. There is evidence to support that. But "best player" is all inclusive. And in baseball, nothing is more important to scoring than hitting for power. A player that hits for power and average trumps all.

 

I sometimes have a really hard time wrapping my mind around how many just outright great players there have been in the 100+ year history of this sport, globally. I think your last paragraph is my exact thought on Ichiro, so I amend my previous comments of him being one of the greatest pure hitters in Baseball history!

[torts]

For reference:

 

Carew, age 27-39: 7,566 PA's, 61.0 bWAR, 5.7 bWAR/600 PA's, .336/.407/.440/.847 (OPS+ 137)

Gwynn, age 27-39: 7,390 PA's, 46.8 bWAR, 4.6 bWAR/600 PA's, .343/.393/.470/.863 (OPS+ 135)

Ichiro: age 27-39: 9,279 PA's, 58.6 bWAR, 4.6 bWAR/600 PA's, .319/.361/.414/.775 (OPS+ 111)

 

I'm quite rusty on any changes to these metrics (if there are any) over the past five or so years. But, this would seem to illustrate that (i) on a per-plate appearance basis, Gwynn and Carew were far more valuable at the plate than Ichiro and (ii) Ichiro provided a huge amount of value to his team by staying healthy and getting an absurd amount of PA's. He appeared in an average of 159 games in this time span, much of which we remember as the leadoff man in Seattle. Ichiro also gains somewhere around 10-15 bWAR on Gwynn due to defense; but given that Gwynn was before my time and I don't put too much confidence in the defensive metrics from back then, perhaps you can argue that's an overstatement.

 

Hypothetically speaking, given that Ichiro was a mid .900's OPS'er in Japan since he turned 20, it's probably not unreasonable to estimate that had he been in the US, he could have tacked on another 30 career WAR if he made the majors at say, 21 years old. That would put him solidly in the top 20 outfielders and well within the top 50 batters of all time, if that's your measuring stick.

 

Also, anyone who is using his longevity and ability to get more PA's a year as a detractor... isn't that part of being a great athlete? The ability to avoid injuries? What if Carew and Gywnn got those extra 2,000 PA's over those years? Can we say that their numbers would have remained as they did, instead of going down? (thats dumb for me to say about Gywnn because he was insane, and he'd probably still have hit .330 had he not missed most of the last 2 years of his career; just playing devils advocate and all). Like, if Ichiro was mashing the ball, and then missed 5 months of the season, his stats would be "skewed" in a sense because of that.

[homer]

Yeah, right. I was saving room for Ichiro.

 

Ichiro still isn't one of the top 50 position players of all-time, either. If he'd had halfway decent power production (and by that, I mean doubles and triples), he probably would have made it. But getting 24 doubles in 762 plate appearances is pathetic.

 

 

& yes, I was taking top 50 players to mean top 50 position players. Though I counted only 41 position players on your list & 8 more in your subsequent post so maybe you're saving 50 for Mr. Suzuki after all?

 

 

I dunno - going 36 for 47 on stolen base attempts sort of mitigates that to a degree.

[sveumrules]

I place a very high value on defense, and value, though not as high, on base stealing. If a great player is a base stealer, too, that enhances their value.

 

There is more to baserunning than just stolen base frequency/success, though. Ichiro has taken 622 chances (506 SB/116 CS) to affect the game via stolen base in his MLB career. But he's been on base over 3,500 times with a chance to impact the game, by going first to third on a single or first to home on a double or second to home on a single or third to home on a fly ball & he does so with historic success, especially compared with slow footed slugger types. There is also avoidance of double plays, another area where Ichiro is an all time great.

 

How is Ichiro an all-time great defender?

 

I'd have him as the 2nd best defensive RFer of all time behind Clemente. His arm is the stuff of legend and he's never lacked for range by either the eye test or metrics. He also won ten straight gold gloves, for whatever that is worth.

 

How and the heck can you put Shoeless Joe Jackson, the man with the third highest batting average in history, in the third tier? He hit .356 with a 170 career OPS +.

 

And Hank Greenberg in your third tier....????I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous.

 

For me there is a pretty good argument for anyone in my 30-75 range to fall into the last 20 or so spots of the top 50. I'd have probably have Ichiro in the 40-50 range & Greenberg/Shoeless in the 51-55 range, so it's really a marginal difference either way but for me I give the slight edge to Ichiro for having a longer MLB (& professional) career than either player and for not being a bat only player as neither Greenberg or Shoeless provided significant positive value on the bases or in the field.

 

If you were scouting Ichiro's career you're looking at an 80 hitter, runner, fielder and thrower with 40 power. And he maximized those tools over a 17 year professional peak in the most competitive league he was allowed to play in at any given time. For me that's enough to be a top 50 position player of all time, if it's not enough for you I understand and take no umbrage with that opinion.

[Funketown]

I would love to see somebody put in the work (perhaps it's already been done) to compile a proper database of statistics from Japan, the Negro Leagues, and Cuba. For me, that's where the discussion gets really interesting. With Japan, in recent years, I think there are perhaps enough observations of players going from MLB/AAA to Japan and vice versa to create some fairly crude comps. For the Negro Leagues, it would be tough. I think I recall that there were exhibitions between teams of white MLB players against Negro League teams (Wiki gives Josh Gibson a 21/56 (.375) batting line), but I'd guess data there is very sparse, and it doesn't seem there are too many who went from the Negro Leagues to MLB like Robinson. There were quite few US-based players who spent time playing in Cuba (Gibson included) before the revolution, but Cuban baseball has been pretty isolated for the past 50 years now.

 

Without crunching the numbers, you'd have to imagine the Negro Leagues had at least 3-5 guys who could make a strong case for the all-time top 50 (to me, Gibson and Paige are both in), and a few in Japan, and perhaps a couple in Cuba. That would be a fun discussion, though we're getting off course, and I don't have the time to dig into that data!

 

Actually, looks like Baseball Reference does have better Negro League data than they used to: http://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.cgi?id=paige-001ler

[The stache]

You know what? I'm about to the point where I don't even want to bother with this anymore. I give up. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

 

I've already demonstrated that WAR considers everything you've mentioned--base running (not just stealing), hitting, fielding... and when the totality of Ichiro's career is considered alongside the totality of Greenberg's career, WAR finds that they contributed nearly an identical number of wins to their teams.

 

But Ichiro played 1,047 more games! Can't you get that?

 

Ichiro has had 9,544 at bats in his career. If Greenberg had the same number of at bats, he'd have 2,992 hits, 697 doubles, 608 home runs, and 2,341 RBI. And actually, those figures are a little low, because he was forced to give up four years of his prime to serve in World War II, age 30-34. By the way, Ichiro was 30 years old when he hit .372. What do you think Greenberg would have done? In 1940, his last season before going off to join the Army, he hit .340, scored 129 runs, had 195 hits, 50 doubles, 8 triples, 41 home runs, 150 RBI, 93 walks, 75 strikeouts, and a slash line of .433/.670/1.103. He was the American League MVP in 1940. At the time, he already had the second highest single season home run total in history when he hit 58 home runs in 1938.

 

Hitting for average and tremendous power >>>>>> hitting for average, no power, stealing bases, and playing very good defense.

 

And....it.....is.....not.....even.....close.

 

Greenberg had an 80 hit tool. He had 80 power.

 

In all of Major League Baseball, between 1934 and 1940--even seasons--only Jimmie Foxx had more home runs (278) than Greenberg's 235. And that's only because Greenberg broke his wrist in a collision in early April. He only got 46 at bats.

 

Nobody in Major League Baseball drove in more runs than Greenberg between 1934 and 1940. His 916 RBI beats out Foxx's 914, even though Foxx played in 107 more games.

 

Look at his extra base hit totals:

1934 (age 23): 63 doubles, 7 triples, 26 home runs. 96 extra base hits

1935: 46 doubles, 16 triples, 36 home runs. 98 extra base hits.

1937: 49 doubles, 14 triples, 40 home runs. 103 extra base hits.

1938: 23 doubles, 4 triples, 58 home runs. 85 extra base hits.

1939: 42 doubles, 7 triples, 33 home runs. 82 extra base hits.

1940: 50 doubles, 8 triples, 41 home runs. 99 extra base hits.

 

You talk about Ichiro's 10 seasons in a row with 200 hits. How about Greenberg's six season in a row with a 1.000 + OPS? That is an accomplishment. You can't merely play "pretty good", get a lot of at bats, and reach a 1.000 OPS. His career OPS is 1.017. That's the sixth best in Major League history.

 

Look at this list:

 

Career OPS leaders:

1. Babe Ruth, 1.1636

2. Ted Williams, 1.1155

3. Lou Gehrig, 1.0798

4. Barry Bonds, 1.0512

5. Jimmie Foxx, 1.0376

6. Hank Greenberg, 1.0169

7. Rogers Hornsby, 1.0103

8. Manny Ramirez, .9960

9. Mark McGwire, .9823

10. Mickey Mantle, .9773

11. Joe DiMaggio, .9771

12. Stan Musial, .9757

 

When you're on an all-time list, and only Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig, Barry Bonds and Jimmie Foxx are ahead of you, you are an immortal player.

 

There is no discussion. Period. Saying that Ichiro is a better player than Hank Greenberg is indefensible.

 

I'm done.

 

I place a very high value on defense, and value, though not as high, on base stealing. If a great player is a base stealer, too, that enhances their value.

 

There is more to baserunning than just stolen base frequency/success, though. Ichiro has taken 622 chances (506 SB/116 CS) to affect the game via stolen base in his MLB career. But he's been on base over 3,500 times with a chance to impact the game, by going first to third on a single or first to home on a double or second to home on a single or third to home on a fly ball & he does so with historic success, especially compared with slow footed slugger types. There is also avoidance of double plays, another area where Ichiro is an all time great.

 

How is Ichiro an all-time great defender?

 

I'd have him as the 2nd best defensive RFer of all time behind Clemente. His arm is the stuff of legend and he's never lacked for range by either the eye test or metrics. He also won ten straight gold gloves, for whatever that is worth.

 

How and the heck can you put Shoeless Joe Jackson, the man with the third highest batting average in history, in the third tier? He hit .356 with a 170 career OPS +.

 

And Hank Greenberg in your third tier....????I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous.

 

For me there is a pretty good argument for anyone in my 30-75 range to fall into the last 20 or so spots of the top 50. I'd have probably have Ichiro in the 40-50 range & Greenberg/Shoeless in the 51-55 range, so it's really a marginal difference either way but for me I give the slight edge to Ichiro for having a longer MLB (& professional) career than either player and for not being a bat only player as neither Greenberg or Shoeless provided significant positive value on the bases or in the field.

 

If you were scouting Ichiro's career you're looking at an 80 hitter, runner, fielder and thrower with 40 power. And he maximized those tools over a 17 year professional peak in the most competitive league he was allowed to play in at any given time. For me that's enough to be a top 50 position player of all time, if it's not enough for you I understand and take no umbrage with that opinion.

[homer]

Isn't there a way to post all of that without the condescension?

[dacbrewers]

Ichiro faced much better pitching than Greenberg, so there's really know way of knowing who was better.

[jerichoholicninja]

Ichiro faced much better pitching than Greenberg, so there's really know way of knowing who was better.

 

It's impossible to compare players from different eras of MLB history. Despite being the same game there is so much that has changed there is no way statisticians can account for different quality of equipment (bats, balls, gloves), size of ballparks, lack of racial diversity, changes in rules for pitching, changes in use of pitchers, conditioning and training of athletes, scheduling and travel, medical advancements, etc. And any stats involving defense (other than fielding percentage) are completely useless prior to the 21st century. Players can only statistically be compared to their generational peers. Most everything else is merely personal opinion.

[sveumrules]

All the OPS number prove is that Greenberg (on a per plate appearance basis) was a better hitter than Ichiro, a point I'll readily concede. They do not prove he was a better player. Mark McGwire is on that same OPS list, would you consider him a better baseball player than Ichiro?

 

But Ichiro played 1,047 more games! Can't you get that?

 

I do get that. Ichiro is one of the most durable players in baseball history and that is another reason why I rate him so highly on my list.