Sure, some, but I cannot possibly forget about the banning of the spitball. This was a rule change that flipped the game on its head. I’m guessing it had something to do with Johnson’s drop.

“Are you in the camp that thinks that Babe Ruth would be a 4A player in today’s game?”

Yes, or at least he wouldn’t be posting anything near a 200 OPS+. He could have been average, he could have been good, or he could have been a wash out. But to assume he’d dominate the game in anything close to the same fashion that he did would be ridiculous.

“If you’re just going to say “it was a different game,” then why even have era-adjusted stats like WARP3?”

Well they are nice, but they cannot possibly account every factor, particularly when you are talking about 90 years of baseball. Yes, a guy throwing almost 400 innings, in a league where replacement level is basically to the point of a common softball player, is going to have a huge advantage in WARP3 over a guy throwing 200-250 innings where replacement level is so much closer to MLB quality.

Even if you want to penalize the Big Train for pitching in the Dead Ball Era and knock something off of his WARP3, he’d still probably beat Pedro in peak value, and he obliterates him in career value. He was also a decent hitter for his career, don’t forget.

If you’re just going to say “it was a different game,” then why even have era-adjusted stats like WARP3? Are you in the camp that thinks that Babe Ruth would be a 4A player in today’s game?

Second, I don’t know how we can ignore the spitball factor here, among all the other differences. Yes, it was still over hand pitching, but that is about where the similarity ends. The ball was different, the rules where different, the mound was different, the quality of the batter was different….it was a different game.

And look at how well Johnson pitched after the spitball was banned. In 1918 (the year before the ban) he threw 326 innings at an ERA+ of 214. He never threw more than 280 innings after the ban, nor reached above an ERA+ of 149. Also, is it any surprise that in 1922 the two guys over 300 innings (Faber 352, Shocker 348) were allowed to throw spitballs still, while the 3rd best was a non-spitballer at *just* 299.2 innings. Yes I know cherry picking, but if you look through the leader boards in IP after 1920, you’d see about 1/2 of the players going over, or close to, 300 innings where still allowed to throw the spitball. And you’d also see the leaders dropping in IP from pre-1920 to post-1920.

So comparing counting stats, even ones as good as WARP3, between a modern pitcher (particularly a pitcher who’s peak was in the “steroid” era) to that of one in the dead ball era is a bit unfair.

What really brought home the concept of Dodgers Stadium as a pitcher’s park to me wasn’t pitching stats but actually the batting stats of Willie Davis. Bill James once translated Willie Davis’s rather pedestrian (seeming) offensive stats to a run neutral environment and they were suddenly transformed into HOF numbers.