Happy 81st Birthday Willie Mays

[Acid Joe]

Wow who would have thought an old Negro would cause this kind of pissing match

 

[Archie]

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/WAR_career.shtml

if you figure that Teddy ball game would have gotten a good 10 Wins Above Replacement during his 3 years at war, he gets pretty near the top of the list. Interesting how 4 of the top 5 guys all played exactly 22 years.

No doubt steroids increased hitter's numbers in that era. But its just one of many variables going every which way, that makes comparing eras vs eras difficult.

guys like Joltin Joe and Ted Williams had the advantage of playing in an era where you were going to see 4-6 ab's from the same pitcher every game. That is huge, now in the era of specialization in bullpens you don't see many hitters seeing the same pitcher 4 times.

but at the same time, those guys until 1968 were dealing with pitchers off a higher mound.

why did it take till 1968 for pitchers to dominate so much? I'd say it coincided with the proliferation of amphetamines with players, which helped pitchers performance more IMO.

and let's not forget. Babe Ruth swung a 52 ounce bat

 

[Tron]

Wow who would have thought an old Negro would cause this kind of pissing match

He's Willie Mays

You live in Canada

He wins

 

[FairWarning]

You had bigger stadiums in the 60's Archie. LA, SF, California, Minn, Houston, NYM were all pitchers parks that were not around in the 50's. Speed was a much bigger part of the game in the 60's vs the 50's.

 

[MonkeyF0cker]

Okay. So I pulled FIP from Fangraphs for the following pitchers:

Steroid Users:

Roger Clemens
Andy Pettite
Jason Grimsley
Kevin Brown

Non-Steroid Users:

Bob Gibson
Nolan Ryan
Greg Maddux (presumably)

Here is a regression of their year-to-year FIP...

 

[MonkeyF0cker]

Interestingly enough, pitchers in the steroid era expected a level or higher FIP year-to-year.

Gibson and Ryan had negatively sloped FIP's.

(Huge) Advantage batters in the steroid era.

 

[MonkeyF0cker]

I also pulled Koufax. His slope was hugely negative, but the limited length of his career extended the regression line too far to compare to these guys.

 

[Archie]

I wouldn't be surprised at all to hear Nolan used more than a few substances.....


good luck on finding the willie mays video Mr. Monkey!~

 

[fiveteamer]

Okay. So I pulled FIP from Fangraphs for the following pitchers:

Steroid Users:

Roger Clemens
Andy Pettite
Jason Grimsley
Kevin Brown

Non-Steroid Users:

Bob Gibson
Nolan Ryan
Greg Maddux (presumably)

Here is a regression of their year-to-year FIP...

View attachment 1448

Was there a more juiced up major leaguer than Roger during his two years with the Blue Jays? Obviously Bonds but he is the Magneto of juicers.

 

[MonkeyF0cker]

I wouldn't be surprised at all to hear Nolan used more than a few substances.....


good luck on finding the willie mays video Mr. Monkey!~

Doesn't matter. It didn't help them much other than to recover from injury.

Pitchers in that era were typically accused of tampering (scuffing, spitting, etc.) with baseballs rather than their body anyway.

That's far more of an advantage than steroids for pitchers.

 

[Tron]

One of the Giles brothers was HUGH

He had muscles in his hair

 

[fiveteamer]

David Segui

 

[Tron]

Could it be argued that Bonds faced tougher pitching than Wiliams?

One example would be teams bringing in a LHP in the 6th/7th inning to face Bonds. That was not common in Williams' era.

I'm still searching for defensive stats that would show Bonds' edge defensively.

 

[Archie]

from Bonds's baseballreference page.....

fock him though, the fucker couldn't throw out sid bream at the plate from 250 feet away

Average Fielding WAR† s c a p y
1988 NL 4.7 (9th)
1990 NL 6.3 (2nd)
1991 NL 5.3 (2nd)
1992 NL 7.8 (1st)
1993 NL 8.5 (1st)
1994 NL 5.1 (2nd)
1995 NL 5.8 (4th)
1996 NL 7.8 (1st)
1997 NL 6.3 (4th)
1998 NL 6.6 (3rd)
2000 NL 6.8 (1st)
2001 NL 11.9 (1st)
2002 NL 11.0 (1st)
2003 NL 8.1 (1st)
2004 NL 10.7 (1st)
Career 133.5 (3rd)

 

[fiveteamer]

“ Line drive and a base hit! Justice has scored the tying run, Bream to the plate, and he is... SAFE! Safe at the plate! The Braves go to the World Series! ”

 

[Archie]

 

[fiveteamer]

Holy cow. I just realized that Skip Caray died... in 2008.

 

[Tron]

Noticed something interesting when comparing Bonds and WIlliams by era.

League BA during careers
Williams: .277
Bonds: .263

Leagues OBP
Williams: .356
Bonds: .333

Leagues SLUG
Williams: .409
Bonds: .410

Almost identical slugging percentages for their leagues, with much lower OBP for Bonds'.

Not really making a point, just a discrepancy I thought was interesting.

League OBP was above .360 six times in Williams' career. Highest it ever was in Bonds' was .344.


When you compare them to the leagues they played in, the seemingly gigantic gap in William's OBP lead is much slimmer.

Williams' OBP was 1.35x higher than the league for his career.
Bonds' was 1.33x higher than the league for his career.

As for power:

Williams' ISO was 2.19x higher than the league average.
Bonds' ISO was 2.10x higher than the league average.

And then there's OPS+, which has Williams at 190 and Bonds at 182.

Really close between the two of them, across the board. Biggest gap is due to BA. But Bonds almost dominated his era as an offensive player to as great an extent as Williams.

Williams was almost certainly the best hitter of all time. But I'm not sure the gap is so huge between him and Bonds that I'm willing to overlook defense and baserunner, where Bonds is the clear winner.