Best PURE Hitters
Posted: October 17th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 136 Comments »
Well … there were a few people who were not too crazy about my ten greatest hitters list. You come to expect a little bit of anger whenever you put together a list. However, in this case the anger came from rather unexpected sources. They came from:
– Very angry Tony Gwynn fans.
– Very angry Pete Rose fans.
– Very angry anti-Barry Bonds fans. Actually, yeah, that was expected.
I suppose those weren’t the people I expected to hear from. I mean, hey, I sort of figured everyone here knows how I feel about Pete Rose as a player. And I’ve long been a huge fan of Tony Gwynn. But I don’t see how anyone could make a legitimate argument for either one of them as one of the 10 best hitters ever — in my mind it seems pretty clear they just did not hit with enough power and didn’t get on base enough to be in that argument.
And then it occurred to me that what these folks craved — what it seems so many people craved — was a list of the 10 best PURE hitters. But what’s the difference between “pure” hitter and “great” hitter? Hard to say. I can remember from a very young age hearing announcers talk about how someone is a “pure hitter.”
Best I can tell, a pure hitter is someone who:
1. Has a high batting average.
2. Doesn’t strike out much.
3. Has a remarkable ability, game after game, year after year, to hit the ball hard.
4. Has something extra, something subjective, something sort of artistic about them. You know art when you see it, right? You often would hear Tony Gwynn called an artist when he was a player. And you would never hear that about Frank Thomas. The fact that Frank Thomas was a better hitter — 30 more points of on-base percentage, 100 points of slugging percentage, almost 400 more home runs, 200 more times on base, 100 more runs scored, 550 more RBIs — doesn’t change the image. Gwynn was the guy who didn’t strike out, who waved the bat like a magician, who hit line drives to all fields, who won batting titles. Something “pure hitter” about all that — sort of the way there is something “pure” about the way Fred Couples swings a golf club. Couples have not had a career nearly as good as, say, a non-artist as Vijay Singh. But Couples belongs high on a certain kind of list.
So, yeah, I put together a little “pure hitter” formula that considers hits, batting average, consistency, longevity and the ability to avoid strikeouts. And I threw a little subjectivity in there. I think this list will make more sense to those Tony Gwynn and Pete Rose fans — and not only because they are prominent on the list.
I should add: This list is only from 1947 on. Two reasons for that, one being the obvious one.
1. Obvious: There’s no way I could tell you that Rogers Hornsby was a better pure hitter than Buck Leonard, that Mel Ott was a better a pure hitter than Turkey Stearnes, that Ty Cobb was a better pure hitter than Josh Gibson.
I know there are people who think that we talk TOO MUCH about segregation in baseball, but when it comes to lists and discussions like this I think we actually talk about it way too little. Many of the best players of the 1950s and 1960s (all-time greats, really) would have played in the Negro Leagues 10 or 20 years earlier. When you see all the the names, it’s pretty staggering: Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, Frank Robinson, Roberto Clemente, Bob Gibson, Juan Marichal, Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Orlando Cepeda, Willie McCovey, Willie Stargell, Lou Brock, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez, Billy Williams, Larry Doby, Monte Irvin — these are all Hall of Famers. And then you throw in Maury Willis and Don Newcombe and Dick Allen and Elston Howard and Jimmy Wynn and Vada Pinson and Minnie Minoso…
… Right there you have 25 greats or near greats, all making their debut in the big leagues in about an 18-year period, 1947-64. And there are more, of course. It’s a staggering assortment of talent. So we can only imagine how much talent was in the Negro Leagues in the 18-year period from 1930-47.
2. The pure hitters from before integration are already well known to baseball fans — Cobb, Speaker, Sisler, Gehringer, Hornsby, Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Waner, Simmons, on and on. They have been written about plenty already. But what remains unknown — what simply cannot be known, in my opinion — is how well those men would hit in today’s game. It’s fun to talk about, of course. But for a list like this, it just kind of clouds things. If you want to incorporate those guys into the discussion, feel free. You would have to put Cobb, Speaker, Hornsby and DiMaggio on the list for sure.
For this list, I started in 1947 — and every player with 5,000 at-bats and a lifetime .290 average was eligible.
10. Roberto Clemente
Summary: Career .317 average in pitchers era. He struck out twice as much as he walked, but famously could hit a line drive on any pitch at any time.
– From 1961 to 1972, Clemente hit .331, which was by far the best average over that time period. Only five players hit .300 in the 1960s (min. 4,000 plate appearances) — Clemente, Rose, Aaron, Robinson, Mays. Clemente, of course, led the way. Of the five, only Robinson had a .400 on-base percentage (or anything even close). Clemente only walked 428 times in 6,231 plate appearances in the 1960s, which is staggering enough. It’s even more staggering when you realize that 132 of those were intentional. Clemente came to the plate to hit.
9. Paul Molitor
Summary: .306 career average, one batting title, had 3,319 career hits.
– Molitor was a great old hitter, of course. This made him difficult for me to appreciate for a while. From age 20-29, he hit .291, he was injury plagued, and he had the drug issue. Because of this, my picture of Paul Molitor was as a pretty good player, but nothing special: Sort of a rich man’s Jim Gantner. That wasn’t really fair — he was a markedly better than Gantner even when he was young. He had very good years in 1979 and 1982. But it was the image in my mind.
And then at age 30, blammo, the guy hits .353, punches up a 161 OPS+, leads the league in doubles, steals 45 bases, wow. From 30-39, he hit .320 with power. He walked more than he struck out. He was a great hitter. But you know how once you get an image in your mind, it’s hard to shake it — especially because Molitor was almost exclusively a DH in his later years. So I remember being absolutely stunned when I first realized that Molitor was going to get 3,000 hits. It is true that we don’t always appreciate players in their time. I think Jim Thome, Barry Larkin and Gary Sheffield are three guys who were a lot better than many people seemed to realize during their primes.
8. George Brett
Summary: .305 batting average, batting titles in three decades, last great run at .400.
– In 1980, George Brett hit .469 with runners in scoring position. He hit .425 when the score was within a run either way. He hit .534 when there was a man on third base. I know these are tiny sample sizes, but that’s not my point: You know how seriously baseball people take such numbers.
Brett was intentionally walked 16 times all year.
That’s it. He didn’t even lead the league in intentional walks — Ben Oglvie did. Now you tell me: How many intentional walks would THAT George Brett get in 2009? Albert Pujols, as a reference point, was walked 44 times this year. The stigma of the intentional walk is mostly gone. So let’s say that in 2009, Brett would have been given 20 more free passes. Let’s say 30 more. Heck, it could be 40 more when you think that for much of that year he had a struggling Darrell Porter and a young Willie Mays Aikens hitting behind him. What would those extra walks have done for Brett? Would that have helped or hurt Brett’s chances to hit .400? Discuss amongst yourselves.
7. Ted Williams
Summary: There goes the greatest hitter who ever lived.
– Teddy Ballgame would have been much higher on the list, of course, except I’m starting in 1947 — and he only barely made the 5,000 at-bat cutoff after 1947. If you were doing a historic list of greatest pure hitters EVER, Williams and Cobb probably would be where you start.
Here’s a fun Williams’ stat for you: Take away Williams’ last three seasons — and he walked 1,796 times and struck out 592. That would be a better than 3-to-1 walk-to-strikeout.
6. Hank Aaron
Summary: Quickest wrists going — he hit .314 or better every year but one from 1955 to 1965.
– From 1955-74 — so that’s 20 seasons — Hank Aaron never hit fewer than 20 homers and never hit 50 homers. He batted .300 14 times, never struck out 100 times, led the league in doubles four times, runs three times, RBIs four times, slugging percentage three times, batting average twice, hits twice and sac flies once. See this is the thing about Aaron: He was a great hitter. He is best known for breaking Ruth’s record, and that’s good because it was an amazing achievement, especially when you consider the circumstances of his home run chase. But more than that, he was a great hitter with those remarkable wrists and the ability, year after year after year, to hit baseballs hard.
5. Pete Rose
Summary: “Tell Derek Jeter the first 3,000 hits are easy.”
– I just talked about how Hank Aaron is best known for the home run record and and in a weird way the rest of his game under-appreciated because of that. I think the same is true for Rose and the hit record. On the one hand, the hit record is his proudest achievement, the one that keeps him in the history books. He calls himself “The Hit King,” and nobody would argue the point.
Thing is — and I’ll admit that I might be the only person in the world who sees it this way — the hit record in some ways diminishes just how good a player Pete Rose was. Pete played until he was 45 years old so he could get the record, and he was not a particularly good player the last seven years of his career. I think that’s the Rose people remember — the chunky Rose who hit .274 and slugged .333 from 1980-86. Obviously, he did win the World Series in 1980, and that helped solidify him in the minds of many as a true “winner,” but if he had retired after the 1979 season, these would have been his career achievements
.312 batting average, 3,372 hits, more than 1,700 runs scored, 126 OPS+, a rookie of the year award, an MVP, three batting titles, four times led league in runs scored, three times in doubles, six times in hits, a couple of Gold Gloves. That’s an absolute slam dunk Hall of Famer — probably 98 or 99 percent of the vote — and that’s the Pete Rose that people saw play in the 1960s and 1970s. That right there is one of the purest hitters in baseball history.
But then he faded to the finish line. And then, of course, we know what happened. Rose got the hit record, and it’s a remarkable achievement. I suspect that record could stand for a long, long time. But in a weird way, he might have lost something with that hit record too.
4. Rod Carew
Summary: Seven batting titles, a .328 career average, the first guy I ever heard called a magician with the bat.
– Carew was famous for having a slightly different batting stance for every pitcher. And I love that the Minnesota Twins signed Tony Oliva as an amateur free agent in 1961 and Carew as an amateur free agent in 1964 — somebody up there was doing some scouting.
From 1969-83, Carew hit .300 every year. He hit .338 for the entirety of the 15 seasons.
3. Wade Boggs
Summary: Five batting titles, including four in a row, a .328 lifetime average, chicken.
– A player is a fool, obviously, if he does not take advantage of every gift he is given. Wade Boggs hit .369 in more than 3000 at-bats at at Fenway Park. In his career he hit .354 at home, .302 on the road. In his five batting title years, he hit .397, .418, .357, .411 and .382 at Fenway Park. It would not be right to say that Boggs was a Fenway Park creation, but there seems no doubt that he used it to his full advantage.
So what does that say about Boggs? This is one of the tricky parts of context. How much differently would we view Boggs if he had signed with, say, the Oakland A’s (he hit .241/.338/.304 in 393 plate appearances in Oakland)? Would he have adjusted his game to the park? Would he have won those batting titles anyway because he had such a great eye, and because great players adapt to their environment? Or would we have an entirely different view of Wade Boggs?*
*I’ve asked before what Dave Kingman’s career would have been like had he been with the Boston Red Sox. No way to know, of course, but worth noting again that Kingman hit long fly balls to left field, that was his entire game. And in 18 starts at Fenway Park, he hit 13 home runs.
2. Stan Musial
Summary: From 1947 on — The Man he hit .326, six batting titles, led league in doubles six times and triples four times.
– If you include his pre-1947 years … well, we’re not including those. But if you do, he’s a Top 5 pure hitter, I think. Here’s a great stat for you: In 1943, Musial had 701 plate appearances and struck out 18 times. EIGHTEEN TIMES. I realize the competition level was a bit down, but 18 times … that’s a bad week for Ryan Howard.
1. Tony Gwynn
Summary: Eight batting titles, hit .300 every year from 1983 to 2001.
– Could Gwynn have hit .400 in 1994 had the strike not come along? I think it’s certainly possible. He was absolutely at the top of his game — from 1993-1997 he hit .368 in almost 2,500 at-bats. He won the next three batting titles. He hardly every struck out . He was hitting the ball hard — he had a .568 slugging percentage when the season was shut down, the highest of his career.
Two amazing things about that season:
A. In 110 games, Gwynn hit into TWENTY double plays. Only 12 men have hit into 30-plus double plays — Gwynn had a real shot at it*. How about a guy who hits .400 and hits into 30 double plays?
*Interesting: Of the 12 men who hit into 30-plus double plays, six are in the Hall of Fame. There’s Jim Rice, of course, who did it three times. Then there’s Cal Ripken, Dave Winfield, Bobby Doerr, Ernie Lombardi and Carl Yastrzemski. When Ivan Rodriguez goes into to the Hall, that will make seven.
B. He finished SEVENTH in the MVP voting that year. I’m not a batting average guy, I think we all know that, but how about a guy who hit .394 finishing seventh in the MVP voting? To be fair, the Padres were terrible, and Jeff Bagwell was having one of the most remarkable seasons ever, and there was a strike which mucked up everything. But I mean … .394. Doesn’t that get you ahead of Moises Alou?
Addendum: I should add the next few: 11. Richie Ashburn; 12. Ichiro Suzuki; 13. Nellie Fox; 14. Albert Pujols; 15. Willie Mays; 16. Todd Helton; 17. Al Oliver; 18. Al Kaline; 19. Vlad Guerrero; 20. Derek Jeter; 21. Don Mattingly; 22. Mark Grace; 23. George Kell; 24. Yaz; 25. Kirby Puckett; 26. Bill Buckner; 27. Harvey Kuenn; 28. Barry Bonds; 29. Roberto Alomar; 30. Bill Madlock.
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Circle me Ichiro prease!!!
“Tell Derek Jeter the first 3,000 hits are easy.”
That says a lot more about Rose too, than at first glance. And not in a good way.
Circle me, a game fixer.
Evidently Paul Molitor goes on the Todd Helton list of guys who’s career numbers suggest steroid use, but who never see the possibility addressed by the press.
Joe – Your the best -which makes this post more lame in its acquiesence. You and Baseball reference have taught me to re-evaluate hitting. Why go back to the lameness that is “pure hitting”? Just because a few people can’t handle the truth. The truth is Joe we need you on that wall! Stay strong with OBP and slugging and OPS+.
Question – I would like to know what stat takes into account the overall stats of the era – i.e. Clemente and F. Robinson relative to other hitters in 60’s. Thanks – Chubs
How about Joe Jackson?
“How about Joe Jackson?”
Did you post just to remind us how few people actually read the article they reply to?
Anyway, I agree that this was unnecessary. People know who the high BA guys are. This just fuels the “but he hit only .250″ crowd in their arguments against actual value.
The thing about Ichiro that you can’t tell from seeing him occasionally is that his hitting is entirely contextual. If he were stuck in the 5 hole and told he would spend the season there, he’d hit .280/30/driving in a high percentage of any Mariners who could manage to sneak on base.
Glad to see Musial finish so high even without benefit of his whole career. Stan was The Man, alright.
You’re right-wrong list.
Now where is that SI, all time list???
And the answer to Ichiro is????
I know he was never the caliber of player as the guys who made the list, but when I think of guys whose swings look like works of art, the first name that popped into my head was John Olerud.
The “pure hitter” thing is just B.S. , it’s what people used to say about certain hitters to try to win arguments and prove points when the facts didn’t back up their conclusions.
I used to have the same bar argument with one of my friends about Tony Gwynn and Frank Thomas and he would always play the “pure hitter” card.
He would usually say something like, “yeah Frank Thomas may have .30 more on base and .100 more slugging than Frank Thomas but Gwynn’s the better “Pure Hitter”
Tony Gwynn’s career ops+ is 132. Pretty damn good but it’s about 131st all time. you know who else has a career ops+ of 132: Rico Carty, Rocky Colavito, Jim Edmonds, Bobby Abreu and Ken Singleton.
You can’t quantify a statement like “Pure Hitter” because it doesn’t really mean anything.
Were Bill Madlock or Al Oliver or Rico Carty great “pure hitters”?? How about Ralph Garr, or Keith Hernandez or Hal McCrae. I could go on an on because there aren’t really any boundaries.
I though Will Clark was the best hitter I ever saw. The best pure hitter, so what.
Ok so.. nice list. Here’s a few thoughts it pulled up into my head..
I just noticed earlier this week that Molitor has the highest number of hits by anyone from 1969 – 2009…that’s ANYONE, since the mound & strike zone changes changed the game. More than anyone in that period. Ph yeah, and he has 504 steals. Amazing eh? I’m not surprised you put him in this list. The next closest to his 3,319 is Eddie Murray with 3,255 and after that nobody’s above 3,184 (Ripken)…so really only one hitter is even within 100 hits of the Molitor-cycle. Did I forget to mention that Ripken & Murray had more PA’s than Pauly?
Oh, and do you realize only 2 others have more doubles than Molitor since ‘69?
Rose… you got me thinking now Joe. If Rose retired in ‘79 or even ‘80 (goes out a winner after the Series), he’d have gotten into the Hall of Fame in the mid-80’s. So let’s assume he still gets in trouble in 1989 for gambling as a manager… what does baseball do? Can someone be kicked out of Cooperstown? Would they just kick him out of the gme but keep him in as a player since he didn’t apparently gamble as a player? My brain’s baking on that right now.
Watching the championship Blue Jays teams of the early 90s, Paul Molitor and John Olerud were a great “pure” hitting 3 and 5 spot combination sandwiching …..Joe Carter. It always struck me that Joe Carter probably had the highest percentage of his RBIs being sac flies or groundouts. Joe, can you run that stat? Anywhoo, in terms of an artistic swing, John Olerud has to be near the top of any list ala Els, Couples. Paul Molitor’s swing, on the other hand, always seemed stripped down to only the essential elements (Nick Faldo?).
Leaving Aaron out of your SI Top 10 was a joke. Putting him 6th on this list is a joke.
Leaving DiMaggio OFF that list was also a joke. Seriously, he was so much better as a hitter than Mantle. Imagine if Joe D had played his home games in Fenway instead of Yankee Stadium?
Paul Molitor became a much better hitter when he stopped having to play the field, and stayed healthy. Just like Boggs, he took advantage of his situation. And really, do you want to see some pitchers hitting .125, or guys like Molitor, Edgar Martinez, etc?
The DH is GREAT for the game. Pitchers should be banned from hitting entirely.
Slick, Todd Helton is on the Wade Boggs list of guys whose numbers are greatly inflated by their home ball park, not steroids. Jeff Bagwell is a guy who should be on the Steroid list, but I never hear him being mentioned.
Pete Rose did not start playing poorly until 1982 but the Phillies still played him in every game. In 1981, he led the league in hits* and punched this up: .325/.391/.390. He was also 10th in the MVP vote.
*As far as I can tell, he is oldest ever to do this but Molitor led the league in hits at 39.
I don’t think that a list like this is unnecessary. We all know that there are multiple ways to contribute value at the plate through different combinations of power, patience, and ability to make consistent contact- it’s informative to see which players derived HoF value with a particular combination that best fits the connotation of “pure hitter.” The title is amorphous, but Joe got about as close as anyone in getting at what people mean.
And Tony Gwynn is definitely the best answer, he wasn’t patient or powerful but he got a lot of value out of his ability to hit line drives. If only he could have kept his speed and defense longer.
Now we need a Sporcle quiz for this list just like there is for the 1st one.
http://www.sporcle.com/games/notsodirtypop/20greatesthitters
Vlad at 20? Methinks that’s too low. Vlad AB’s have always been phenomenally exciting, and boy, what a peak he had. He surely had the best plate coverage I’ve ever seen and could hit any pitch hard.
I always thought that “pure hitter” was a term affixed by people who didn’t want to acknowledge that HR and BB were worth something.
“The thing about Ichiro that you can’t tell from seeing him occasionally is that his hitting is entirely contextual. If he were stuck in the 5 hole and told he would spend the season there, he’d hit .280/30/driving in a high percentage of any Mariners who could manage to sneak on base.”
And here is one of the worst statements a person can ever give.
Let us think about what this would entail. Taking his 2009 line of .352/.385/.465/.850 (for a .369 wOBA), lets figure out approximately what that line would look like. To get to a .280 BA, he would have 46 fewer hits. Then we have the 30 HR, a 19 HR increase from what he produced. His new line is .280/.317/.482/.799 with a .337 wOBA. He just lost so much value that its not even funny.
Now, people wont like to see how dramatically less value he would be if he hit in this way, so I will do this for arguments sake. Let’s say he managed to take 46 more walks in their place instead, allowing him to keep that OBP the same. (46 is probably high-side estimate. It would put him in the top-15 in the AL this season. But we will give him the benefit of the doubt here for the Ichiro Fans argument sake). His new Batting Line would be .280/.385/.482/.867, a whopping 17 points of OPS added. You can see, that is still only marginally better then his actual line, despite the fact we added a whole 19 HR to his total.
(Note. It is impossible to guess how many of the new BB would be IBB, or how many fewer ROE he would have from the fewer BIPs. That being the case, we cant really give a true wOBA line here. If a combination of removed BB due to IBB and removed ROE is in the 13 range though (logical estimate) then you are looking at a wOBA in the .372 range – and remember, it was .369 to begin with)
So even if Ichiro did hit for more power at the expense of his singles, his line wouldn’t be that different then it is now. That is because singles count towards SLG just the same. And if his BB totals didn’t increase as much as his hit total decreased, he could end up being less value to his team.
Overall, “Ichiro could hit 30 HR if he wanted to” points to a situation where he stays the same to loses value – making it one of the stupidest arguments on his behalf that you could ever make. “He could be just as good, to even worse then he is now if he wanted to”. Huh?
What about Edgar Martinez? So much of a pure hitter he couldn’t even field.
@slick, #3
While I agree on Molitor. I’m not sure I’d say Helton’s career suggests steroid use. Helton’s career path is fairly standard: he had decent power coming up (25 homers his rookie year, 35 the next), then he peaked at 27 with 49 in the typical “prime” year. He fell back to the 30s for the next few seasons, then back issues cost him playing time and power, and he’s now more of a 10-20 HR a year player. He’s been a fairly consistent Avg and OBP player throughout his career, and his doubles numbers have been automatic.
I don’t see what about his numbers (http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/heltoto01.shtml) suggests steroid use at all. Putting up the numbers he did at Coors Field in the early 2000s, just before the humidor, right as he should have been peaking according to the standard career arc is hardly surprising, in retrospect.
Just because a player hit lots of homeruns around 2000 doesn’t mean they were juicing, and Helton in particular – based on his personality, based on the kinds of injuries he’s had (and the way he has recovered), based on surrounding circumstances, and based on the fact that he’s been almost exactly the same weight his entire career) – is a tough sell to me. Sure, give me Galarraga or Bichette or Burks or maybe even Walker, but accusing Helton of juicing is about as much a stretch as anyone in the bigs.
I have a feeling Boggs would’ve been able to adapt anywhere he went. The guy just knew how to hit.
Here’s what people were saying about Boggs when he was a minor leaguer (from the 1982 Street & Smith’s Baseball Preview Guide):
“Wade Boggs: What is it about Wade Boggs? All he does is slap out all those base hits, yet he continues to wear a Triple-A label. He’s been a first baseman, outfielder, and third baseman. He was nipped by less than a point for the IL batting crown two years ago, but in 1981 won it by .0006 points, hitting .353 for Pawtucket, where he drove in 60 bases. Surely he ought to find a niche with some club, even as a pinch-hitter, although he isn’t laden with home run power.”
I don’t think there was ever a time that Wade Boggs couldn’t hit, and that almost definitely would’ve carried over into the Bigs, no matter where he landed.
I know everyone is going to nitpick, but I can’t help myself…
I know he doesn’t have the high batting average, but in my 29 years, I have never heard anyone described as breathlessly and often with regard to the art and perfection of his swing as Ken Griffey jr.
Also, if Albert Pujols is not a pure hitter, well then I don’t know what that is. He should be much higher.
Unrelated, and I only bring it up because it was a hot topic here earlier in the year:
I don’t know how anyone could watch this ALCS and not acknowledge that Mark Teixiera plays a tremendous first base.
Good call on Edgar Martinez. I know he’s not top-20 pure hitter territory, but John Olerud possessed one of the most elegant swings you’ll ever see.
Actually I think you can quantify who is a “pure hitter” and here’s how I would suggest doing it:
BABIP + Percentage of PAs on which the ball was put in play; Rank all players with a minimum of 5000 PAs and you’ve got your list of pure hitters.
You can debate the value of being a pure hitter. I just think it’s a fun exercise.
For pure artistry with the bat Ichiro is the greatest pure hitter I’ve seen. He’s been a big star for a decade and yet I think he’s underappreciated. His legend will grow when he’s gone.
As a Mariners fan, I am biased but I just love an Ichiro at bat. Every aspect of it, from the weird stretching to the 50-odd infield hits every year. I mean, I recognise that he is not the best player around, but there are very few who I would rather watch hit.
So, like 20-game losers, it takes a pretty good player to hit into 30 double plays in a season.
Reminds me of this fact: Babe Ruth in ‘24 and Jimmie Foxx in ‘33 led their league in both batting average and striking out. Best at hitting the ball, and best at not hitting it…
I just played around with Wade Boggs’ stats on bb-ref for a while to see what it would’ve been like if he’d been on the A’s instead of the Red Sox. (I’ve got him signing with the Yankees and Rays anyway.)
Hypothetical Oakland Boggs gets exactly 2900 hits, with a slash line of .315/.404/.424 on his career. He wins 2 batting titles, in 1983 and 1985. He gets all kind of extra mystique for being on the World Series winning 1989 A’s. (Maybe they’d have won another series or two replacing Carney Lansford with Boggs as well.) Maybe he’s considered in the Harold Baines sort of category, though, where he’s considered a very good but not great hitter. Probably gets in the Hall on the second or third ballot.
What was it about Fenway that Boggs, Rice, Lynn, Yaz, etc. were able to exploit for huge numbers? Boggs hit lefty so it seems as though he would not have been able to simply bang doubles off the monster every time up.
Edgar Martinez, the most unappreciated pure hitter baseball has ever known continues to be unappreciated.
He’s as pure as they come.
@Ryan – Plus, hypothetical Boggs buffs up and hits 36 HR in 1990.
@LAprGuy, that’s a good point. A hypothetical Oakland A’s Wade Boggs would have probably hit ~30 homers a year until his career ended after bone chips appeared in both his elbows sometime around ‘93. For some reason, Baseball Reference’s stats translation doesn’t adjust for that.
Joe, this list is downright silly. Seriously…Pujols is a .334 hitter. Vladdy’s at .321. And they terrorize baseballs. And they’re not better pure hitters than, say, Pete Rose? C’mon. Other than a few guys, you’re penalizing people with above-average power as not being “pure.”
Paul Molitor struck out 10% of his PA. 122 OPS+ .306 BA. .448 SLG.
Tony Gwynn struck out in 4% of his PA. 131 OPS+ .338 BA. .459 SLG.
George Brett struck out in 8% of his PA. 135 OPS+. .305 BA. .487 SLG.
Now 2 people who missed the top 10:
Vlad has struck out 11% of his PA. 145 OPS+ .321 BA. .568 SLG!!!!
And he’s a poor man’s Pujols. 9% SO of PA. 172 OPS+!!! .334 BA!!! .628 SLG!!!!!!
Your formula–to end up with a guy who slugged .459 to #1–was waaaaaay to heavily weighted on the “not striking out” criteria.
Molitor ahead of Pujols? Even Gwynn over Pujols…call me crazy, but if you told Gwynn he could slug 170 pts higher if he struck out another 5% of the time, I’m guessing he’d have made that trade–he’s a smart guy. This is one crazy list. Crazier than Tim McCarver is right now in the 12th inning…and that’s schmidthouse rat crazy.
And that’s without even considering Ted Williams. 191 OPS+.344 BA. .634 SLG. Struck out 7% of the time.
Okay, I gotta run. A-Rod is up with the bases loaded and I’m putting my laptop down before I smash it to pieces if he wins the game right now.
okay, the world order is returned, a-rod choked.
just to clarify, i know teddy ballgame was on your list. i meant that putting him behind gwynn–or anyone–was nutso. i mean, you’ve got the G.H.O.A.T. as your “seventh” best pure hitter….as Moe would say, “Whaaaaat?”
ah, re-read your post…you only considered part of ted’s career. considering a fraction of ted makes this list even stranger.
always interesting, though–no doubt about that.
What a miserable douchebag Joe Buck is. All the supposedly unfair criticism that was heaped on him is deserved. All he wants to say is how the game tonight was over 5 hours and it ended on a mistake. I was rooting for the Angels and am saying this. If this guy hates Baseball so much then he should not be announcing it, let alone games as big as the ALCS. Joe Buck nepotism gone amok. Fox dumbs down every event they cover. I can’t wait to watch that intelligence insulting robot on their NFL coverage tomorrow afternoon. Time to fire Joe Buck…………goal….
great stuff, but i resent that remark about moises alou, the 1994 world series MVP for the world champion montreal expos. he had a great 162 games that year.
@37 Amen.
I’m pretty amused that Bill Buckner is ahead of Barry Bonds in Joe’s metric. Still, while obviously this is a complete BS ranking measuring nothing in particular, it does do a decent job of capturing the collection of traits people talk about when they talk about “pure hitters,” so good on that I suppose.
I’m with Terry [#18] in that I’ve always assumed “pure hitters” were simply guys who hit for a high average (while predominantly hitting singles and notably not hitting HRs) and rarely struck out. That seems to be the most common usage of the term insofar as I’ve heard it said, anyway.
As for Ichiro, I think we’ll someday see if all the “he could hit 30 homers if he wanted to” talk is justified. As a guy who relies so much on speed for base hits, well, those wheels ain’t gonna last forever and he’s getting up there in years. If he loses a step, that’s a whole lot of Ichiro hits he’d lose out on each year as a bunch of infield hits become groundouts.
I think the Helton steroid question is a fair one to ask. A former Rockies broadcaster accused him of using, and while Helton was livid at the accusation, after it was made, his power numbers dropped precipitously. I’m not saying he used, but there have been suspicions, and you really can’t be surprised at anyone using in this day and age.
Also, while he’s clearly not part of this particular discussion due to the era in which he played, this seems as good a time as any to remind people of the contact-hitting prowess of Joe Sewell. 114 Ks in over 7,000 career at-bats, including the following seasons:
1925: 608 AB, four Ks
1929: 672 AB, four Ks
1932: 503 AB, three Ks
1933: 524 AB, four Ks
He retired after 1933, and was never a particularly great hitter, but wow.
And before I get raked for it, yes I know striking out isn’t the cardinal sin so many announcers and casual fans seem to believe it to be, but still, those numbers are just insane.
“Your formula–to end up with a guy who slugged .459 to #1–was waaaaaay to heavily weighted on the “not striking out” criteria. ”
Which is ironic considering it makes no sense what so ever. An out is an out. And considering Gwynn was mentioned for his extreme amount of DPs, maybe a few more K’s would have been a good thing. Yes a “Pure” hitter would probably have fewer K’s, but to heavily count them turns it into a contact contest, which leads to the following.
The whole “pure hitter” thing has been kind of lost in this questionable calculation/ranking. A “Pure hitter” should be someone who had a fantastic swing, making “pure” contact. But the inclusion of someone like Ichiro means we are including “Slap Hitters”, which just doesn’t jive with the “Pure” aspect.
Being that this is basically a way to count high BA and low K total, all the slap hitters not only make it into the equation, but also get huge preferential treatment because of their “make contact and use my speed to see what happens” style.
Joe, anyway to tell us where guys like Juan Pierre and Lance Johnson ranked? (and who they are surrounded by)
I would think the best way to evaluate pure hitters would be strikeout rate, which is easy enough, and Line Drive %, but I have a feeling LD% doesn’t go back much before 2000 if that far.
I would think Ichiro has to be on your list, and you can bump Molitor off of it. 6099 ABs, .333 career BA, at least 206 hits every year of his career (including leading the league 6 out of 9 years!), strikes out at a rate of 10.2 ABs per K.
I think “pure hitters” are alluring to some people because these guys can hit a ball thrown by a major league pitcher. That’s hard to do. Most players can’t do it very well, much less most people. Taking a walk? Well, a blind guy could do that. NL pitchers, most of whom, for some reason, swing a bat like my grandmother, walk fairly often. The IsoD of pitchers in the NL this year was .041. But they only batted .138. Thus it’s hard for some people to see a walk, or a lot of walks, and say, “Now that’s a great hitter.” It’s more likely people blame the pitcher.
Great list, Joe. Great lists, actually. Lots to think about here. And I especially appreciate the notes about integration, with which I couldn’t agree more.
It’s interesting for me to see Clemente so high on this particular list. I read the terrific biography, which I enjoyed, but I still think he’s a bit overrated as a ballplayer. You comments clarified things for me quite a bit.
Here’s the thing — I think it’s MUCH more interesting to watch players like Ichiro or Gwynn put the ball into play than watch Mark Reynolds or Dave Kingman strike out, walk, or homer. It’s not even close. But if I were trying to win games (instead of create a more interesting version of the sport), Kingman’s strikeouts wouldn’t bother me so much.
If were trying to fix what’s boring about baseball, I’d amend the rules and equipment (bat-handle thickness comes to mind), I’d tweak things to help Ichiro, not Ryan Howard. Fewer strike outs, fewer walks, more singles, more stolen bases.
… not sure how this fits in, but if I were made the unquestioned dictator of baseball tomorrow, the first thing I’d do is make all mound visits illegal. Every. Last. One. Of. Them.
Couple of thoughts:
1. calling someone a “pure” something usually indicates one or more weaknesses in other areas. (For example, the best “pure” passer in NFL history might be Dan Marino…who couldn’t run to save his life. “pure” shooters in basketball usually don’t pass or defend very well.)
2. Paul Molitor does sit atop one important list in baseball history: hairiest forearms. He and Gary Gaetti could hide a wristwatch in the thatch.
> Taking a walk? Well, a blind guy could do that.
Yeah? But some batters are blinder than others, is that it?
How do you explain that some batters walk 100+ times a year, and others walk 20 or 30 times?
You’d think this would even out over a few years, wouldn’t you? Mantle becomes Alfredo Griffin (who walked all of 4 times in 140 games in 1984, although he did average more than that: 28 BB per 162 games), and Griffin becomes Mantle (who averaged 117 per 162 games)?
But no. Griffin remained true to his Griffin-ness his entire career (max 40 BB in his first full season, next best 35, next best under 30), and Mantle kept on being Mantle (over 100 walks nine times [and remember he had a few injury-shortened seasons], including his last two years, when his BA was down to .245 and .237 and HR down to 22 and 18, hardly the threat he’d formerly been), and never the twain* did meet.
*Sorry for the long sentence. “The twain” meaning Griffin-ness and Mantle-ness.
Of course I could have picked less extreme examples — or more extreme ones, even without using Bonds.
Anyway, I think it’s pretty darn conclusive that “taking walks” is much more a function of the batter and his strike-zone judgment than of the pitcher’s wildness (over the course of a season or a career, that is; not necessarily in any one specific game, where it *could* be the pitcher’s fault).
> Paul Molitor does sit atop one important list in baseball history: hairiest forearms. He and Gary Gaetti could hide a wristwatch in the thatch.
Too bad they never played together in the same infield: they coulda pulled the hidden-ball trick quite easily.
Babe Ruth as Yesterday Was Better…than anyone or anytime…
Look who’s back…
The problem with many baseball stats & lists are that they are compromised by the variability of the ball parks that the player plays in. No other sport has such a HUGE factor mostly ignored when evaluating a player’s abilities. There are hundreds of examples of players benefiting from their home parks their entire careers. I will use one of my favorite players as exhibit A. George Brett. Does anyone think that he wouldn’t have at least 100 more home runs if he had played 81 games a year for his career in old Yankee Stadium and that short RF porch? Granted, he might lose some of the doubles but which gets more weight when people put their lists together, doubles or HR’s? The guy was one of the best clutch hitters ever. He has more hits than any other 3rd baseman in the history of the game. 3 batting titles in 3 different decades & an MVP (should have had 2 – robbed by Donny Baseball & the eastcoast-biased media in 1985). He played toward the end of an era when the game was still mostly pure & unblemished by dilution/expansion, juiced balls & juiced players. I write this not make a case that Brett should be higher on the list or that he should be there at all. The point is this. Except for only the most elite of players, for example players on the mount rushmore of hitters, the rest of these lists & rankings are pure speculation. In other words, perhaps the list should be the 4 best hitter of all time. Because after you get past Ruth, Williams, Musial & Aaron (not necessarily in that order), the rest is simply a debate on the era’s & the ballparks.
robbed by Donny Baseball & the eastcoast-biased media in 1985
This has been debunked time and time again. Mattingly’s 145 RBIs were 21 more than the runner-up, and the most in the AL since Al Rosen’s 145 in 1953. MVP voters love RBIs. Since Mattingly’s MVP in 1985 the only NY player to win has been A-Rod, despite the many playoff appearances by the Yankees (plus a few by the Mets).
18 times in 701 plate appearances? That is a stunning fact I did not know. Wow.
@53/ NY apologist.
No question that statistically his year was better (but not by a huge margin). But like it or not, had Mattingly been on the Royals that year & Brett been on the Yanks and the Yanks had gone to the playoffs (winning the WS) you can bet Brett would have been MVP.
Who was more valuable to their team? Alas the eternal question revolving around the MVP. Best player or most valuable to their team.
Let me ask you another point. When the Yanks win the WS this year, will it be satisfying knowing that everyone outside of NY will have looked at this team as the best team money can buy? Does it bother anyone in NY that it took ZERO skill & simply money to put this group together? $486MM spent in the offseason on 3 players? Hey, I applaud ownership in spending money to win. I only WISH that owners like Glass with the Royals would follow suit to some degree. But honestly, shouldn’t it bother the baseball purist that the game has de-evolved to the lowest common denominator?
Just asking….
I think it is laughable that baseball continues to pontificate that people like Rose can’t enter the HOF because of the specter of ‘fixing’ that surrounds gambling but the ENTIRE sport is fixed only allowing those that spend astronomical sums of money each year to win the WS. Yes, yes, Tampa Bay, Colorado & Marlins. 3 teams out of 120 playoff teams since 1995 is certainly a proof of parity. Fact is that for the past 15 seasons, only 3 teams with a payroll of less than league average has made the WS & only 1 has won it. Yet the purity of the game is paramount?
Phil Gaskill @48. I’m not saying that consistently getting 100 walks a year doesn’t take skill. It takes tremendous skill. But, as an example, Eddie Yost is 11th all time in walks, but has never sniffed the Hall of Fame. If you were 11th all time in hits, that would give you around 3300, or a one-way ticket to the HoF. 11th in HRs would give you around 570. It’s just that, I believe, some fans and sportswriters aren’t all that impressed with walks. I think it’s because anyone can walk if someone throws 4 bad pitches. To wit, pitchers in the NL walk fairly commonly. I believe everyone believes if a pitcher walks, the guy pitching screwed up. I’m not saying it’s the correct way to view things, I’m just saying that people probably have this point of view.
Helton’s been accused of using steroids Paul…give it a read
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2018289
YWB @ 50:
Ah, you’ve convinced, converted/perverted—correctamundo, Yesterday Was Better! I offer to you A Tribute…the reason? YWB, twas truly pleasin’, thus an ode ala mode to yesteryear supere…Eeyore-like, when owners kept the cash like Fort Knox, spurring the Black Sox. But then free agency came and after the Flood this lame game’s not the same–just keep drinking, Auntie Mame–it’s all just fame and radical roidical shame. The only reverable logic is reverse-temporal logarithmic, for (FORE!) today’s jacks of lumber pale versus old time lumber-Jack’s log-rolling (eye-rolling, my audience? as I roll along uncaring, a troll anonymously daring…are tempers flaring?)
THAT IS WHAT YOUR POSTS ARE LIKE. THEY ARE NOT ENJOYABLE TO READ. THEY MAKE NO SENSE. AND ANYONE CAN WRITE LIKE YOU DO. IT’S HARDER TO WRITE LOGICAL, EMPIRICALLY SUPPORTED ARGUMENTS. TRY IT.
Read the entry–Babe Ruth’s not eligible. And Babe Ruth is Yesterday? Try again, whippersnapper–try Dave Orr…112 RBI in 1885, back when that really meant something since there were twenty-seven bases to run around and four games per season. Now THAT’S yesterday. Duh, ya big dummy.
the problem with concepts like the “pure hitter” is not just that they’re hopelessly fuzzy, but that the fuzziness is in the interest of moralizing–I mean, the word “pure” should give it away, right?–people who use this concept seriously have a moralistic idea of how hitting “ought” to be approached (hit line drives, don’t strike out), and they rank hitters on that basis.
the existence of the term “pure hitting” means you’re never forced to say things like “I loved all of Al Oliver’s lines drives and hard one-hop dp grounders, even if a mix of strikeouts and towering flies just over the wall would have produced much more offensive value!”
I’d be happy with a version of baseball that rewarded consistent hard line drive contact more than it does. I’d love to see home run totals cut WAY down, to levels where every team had a couple 50 sb guys, and all the other stylistic changes that would stem from that reduction in power. but that ain’t the version we’re playing.
[whoops! missed my last paragraph]
The concept of the “pure hitter” is pure NOSTALGIA, for a time when [x] didn’t adulterate the game. “In a better world,” muses the melancholy admirer of pure hitters, “guys like Tony Gwynn would be truly appreciated, instead of–” I sympathize. But let’s try to think clearly.
@55: I’m not clear what your criteria are exactly, but this from you:
“Tampa Bay, Colorado & Marlins. 3 teams out of 120 playoff teams since 1995 is certainly a proof of parity.”
. . . has some arithmetic errors. If we’re counting each team-year in our 120 playoff teams (and we obviously are), then here’s the complete list for just those three franchises:
1995 Colorado
1997 Florida
2003 Florida
2007 Colorado
2008 Tampa Bay
2009 Colorado
It doesn’t change your overall point very much, but at least the math is more accurate this way.
P.S.: What *were* your criteria for making this list? There’ve been a few other playoff teams (since ‘95) that I might include if I knew the rules. Teams that didn’t spend “astronomical” amounts of money, compared to the Yankees and Red Sox? If that’s the rule, I’d like to add a few more team-seasons to the list.
Late to the party obviously, but Puckett could have been a pretty solid addition to this list. Led league in hits 4x, 1 batting title, fastest to 2000 hits in 100 years etc etc
Re: segregation
The most staggering thing about the post-1947 years is how long segregation carried on in the American League.
Joe makes a list of the great black HOFers of the 50’s and 60’s
” Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, Frank Robinson, Roberto Clemente, Bob Gibson, Juan Marichal, Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Orlando Cepeda, Willie McCovey, Willie Stargell, Lou Brock, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez, Billy Williams, Larry Doby, Monte Irvin — these are all Hall of Famers.”
EVERY SINGLE ONE of those guys was a National Leaguer, except Larry Doby. Ratio of NL to AL: 17 to 1
It’s shocking. It also calls into question the true greatness of someone like Mickey Mantle…he played his entire career against sub-standard competition.
There’s a reason that the NL won 22 of 23 All-Star games during these years!
Maybe it was only 19 0f 20 straight All-Star games that the NL won.
That’s still total dominance.
Babe Ruth? Tony Gwynn? Ichiro? Albert Pujols? All pansies!
60 feet, 6 inches my ass. Try hitting a ball from only 50 feet away!
- Dan Brouthers, the true “greatest of all time”
BTW, if you dont know who Dan Brouthers is – look him up!
170 OPS+ (tied with Joe Jackson for 8th highest) from a line of a .342/.423/.519/.942 over the 1879-1896 seasons. This is a time where the pitcher was only about 50 feet away, there was no real limit on the height of the mound and a walk consisted of watching anything from 5 to 9 balls!
Mark Daniel @45: Taking a walk? Well, a blind guy could do that.
To which Phil Gaskell @48 responds: …Anyway, I think it’s pretty darn conclusive that “taking walks” is much more a function of the batter and his strike-zone judgment than of the pitcher’s wildness…
First, Phil’s correct to challenge Mark’s assertion; a blind guy would strike out a whole bunch, and that’s even if he never took the bat off his shoulder.
What people sometimes don’t understand about walks, and this is where I’m going to challenge Phil a bit, is that while the walk is not so much a function of the hitter’s selectivity or judgment as it is the hitter’s overall ability, period. I mean, it is to the extent that good hitters who walk a lot won’t chase Miguel Olivo pitches (i.e., in the dirt and a foot outside). But the bottom line is that a Tony Pena Jr is not going to walk a bunch no matter what because pitchers have absolutely zero fear of throwing him strikes. With a hitter like that, you don’t try and nibble the corners; you give him the ol’ “come on” hand gesture and dare him to hurt you, then throw strikes. When a TPJ walks, it is because the pitcher’s just not on the plate.
On the other hand, even if Barry Bonds didn’t draw an insane number of intentional walks, he’d still have walked an insane number of times… because pitchers didn’t want to throw him strikes. You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, you don’t pull the mask off the ol’ Lone Ranger, and you don’t throw Barry meatballs.
I bet that if you took a major league pitcher and told him to just warm up and throw strikes with the batter’s box empty, and tracked about 100 pitches with PitchFX, about 90 of them would be strikes unless he just doesn’t have it together that day. It’s the presence of the batter and the recognition of that batter’s abilities which cause the pitcher to deviate from the simple task of humming one right down the pipe.
So while the walk is indeed primarily a function of the hitter, it generally happens because of how pitchers approach the hitter in question.
Walk totals for hitters need to be viewed alongside their other metrics to truly understand the story that’s being told. Unfortunately, I’m at a loss as to how exactly one would go about statistically separating the wheat from the chaff on this topic (otherwise, I’d offer up an idea). Some sort of “walk expectancy” would be a good place to start, but I suspect determining such a thing to begin with would require comprehensive study rivaling that which went into figuring out linear weights and runs created.
@67,
Good point. I agree. To a point.
But there are still plenty of hitters who most people would say are just as good as certain other hitters, but the “certain other hitters” walk a lot more than the first group.
Even though the pitchers are putatively just as scared of the first group as of the second.
A good example in point is playing in the ALCS for the team that’s down 2-0 at the moment. (That’s not a jibe or anything, just a hint as to who I might be talking about.) Lifetime 60 walks per 162 games. That might be good numbers for a .240-hitting powerless 2nd baseman or whatever, but it is more like obscenely low numbers for one of the best hitters of his era.
Also, JoeyO @19:
That deconstruction of the “if he decided to he could” argument? Absolutely brilliant stuff, sir.
/cap tip
(And yes, I realize our last conversation ended up with us calling each other idiots, so allow me to stress that I am being sincere here.)
Of course, I find myself wondering if there has ever been an “if he decided to he could” statement made by anyone which would result in a measurable and significant improvement offensively over what the player’s been doing all along.
(Well, that is, a statement which is actually within the realm of reason and not some ludicrous pipe dream. I mean, I could say “I bet Juan Castillo could knock 20 points off his BA and hit 40 HR,” which probably would be a significant improvement in OPS… but I’d also get laughed off the interwebz.)
Bill James, believe it or not, might have had the best one ever, talking about how Amos Otis always seemed to hit just under .300, with just under 20 HR, and how Otis could easily have been a .300 hitter (at the cost of some XBH) or could have consistently hit 20 HR (but probably lowering his average a good bit). Naturally, Bill opined that .290/18 was probably a better deal overall than .310/14 or .270/22 would have been.
Phil:
…a hint as to who I might be talking about…
Yeah, but with Vlady, you’re cherry-picking an extreme case; hell, his primary hitting attribute is well-known and referred to ad nauseum. “He may be the best bad-ball hitter ever.”
I mean, really, when you’re talking about the kind of hitter they are, Vlad IS Miguel Olivo. It’s just that Vlad’s actually really good at making contact when swinging at complete crap, and very good at actually driving the ball when he does so. Miggy, not so much…
Jon,
Okay, so change my example to Miggy Olivo. Makes no never-mind to me.
Plus, he is actually a much better example, probably for both of us: all of 21 BB per 162 games played. He’s a somewhat dangerous batter, but not so dangerous that the pitchers are afraid to throw him the occasional strike.
Where is Piazza?
Over 400 home runs.
Batted over .300
Greatest hitting catcher ever.
Better ops+ than most of those guys.
His K/BB was pretty good.
Other way power.
Line drives.
Etc.
stpat/#55 – Your rant has nothing whatsoever to do with the 1985 MVP vote. Do you even understand how the voting works? Two writers from each AL city gets a vote. Since everyone outside of NY (i.e. 93% of the voters) hates the Yankees how exactly does the NY bias work? RBIs win MVPs. Like Morneau in 2006, despite Jeter’s much higher VORP.
stpat> No question that statistically his year was better (but not by a huge margin).
I never said Mattingly had the better year. I completely agree that Brett had the better year. But voters love RBIs, cf. Morneau 2006 and many other examples.
But like it or not, had Mattingly been on the Royals that year & Brett been on the Yanks and the Yanks had gone to the playoffs (winning the WS) you can bet Brett would have been MVP.
The voting takes place before the post-season, so this point is irrelevant.
Big Dan,
Along these lines, the best basketball player of all time was Cuathémac (went by “C-Mac”), this Aztec warrior that absolutely DOMINATED tlachi…the guy was unstoppable, killer first step. And we’re not talking about the modern game with nickel and dime fouls, we’re talking about TLACHI here. You familiar with him? Probably not, because he got his head chopped off two games into the season when his team lost.
Different game, my friend, different game.
Phil [#61]:
stpat’s point was that only three of 120 playoff teams made the WORLD SERIES when their payroll was below league average, so your additions to the list don’t fit his criteria. The ‘95 and ‘09 Rockies didn’t advance all the way to the series, and beyond that, the ‘95 Rockies had a relatively high payroll (9th in MLB, highest in their division).
The ‘97 Marlins, meanwhile, had the fifth highest payroll in MLB, second in their division only to Atlanta (who won the division with Florida taking the wild card).
Which brings me to a personal pet peeve: a lot of people laud the Marlins for winning two World Series while being known as a low-payroll team. In reality, the ‘97 version had more in common with recent Yankees teams than with recent Florida teams. To give them credit for small-marketing their way to the ‘97 title is akin to saying the small-market A’s managed to overcome their low payroll to win in ‘89 when they had the fifth highest payroll in the league.
Mind you, in 1989, the A’s payroll was under $18 million, less than $10 million more than the lowest-salaried team, which is a far cry from the Yankees, who opened ‘09 with a salary more than $65 million more than the SECOND place team (almost $165 million more than the ‘09 Marlins).
In regard to blind people drawing walks:
I think we are all in agreement that occasionally a pitcher will screw up and walk even a blind guy, but most of the time its on the hitter to draw a walk. This is definitely a skill that hitters have, and it helps to be a power hitter because pitchers will be afraid to throw strikes. However, I think even average hitters can improve their walk numbers by hitting foul balls. Fouls are an extremely important aspect of drawing walks. You get two strikes against yourself and you have to protect the plate, so you just foul off everything until A. you get a pitch you can hit well, or B. you get walked. Occasionally C. you strike out. This is what Youkilis does. I swear the dude hits 4 or 5 fouls every AB. He’s talented, but he forces pitchers to throw so many pitches that its no wonder he eventually gets walked or hits a double off a mistake pitch. I would love to see some numbers on foul balls hit by some well-known walkers vs foul balls hit by hackers who never walk, but show potential. I suspect this would be one of the major differences between Youkilis and some blind dude, or Jeff *Francoer. This drives up pitch counts, increases your **likilhood of walking, and increases the liklihood of getting a pitch you can hit, which will drive up your AVG and other hitting stats. But primarily i think it increases walks.
*I have no idea how to spell Frankie’s name.
** I have no idea how to spell this word
And then at age 30, blammo, the guy hits .353, punches up a 161 OPS+, leads the league in doubles, steals 45 bases, wow. From 30-39, he hit .320 with power. He walked more than he struck out. He was a great hitter.
This is completely unfair to Molitor, and I’m not speculating about his career so much as making a comment on the way we view accomplishments, but if his career started five years later, wouldn’t everybody be talking about at least the high likelihood that he was taking PEDs?
@Garrett Hawk.
A hitter’s competition is the opposing pitcher, mainly. Notice that on that list of great black NL ballplayers that Mantle didn’t have to face are no pitchers whatsoever. So it made no difference to his hitting prowess because he would have faced white pitchers in either league.
Vladdy the best “bad-ball” hitter ever? How does one measure that? Yogi Berra used to have that reputation–maybe he still should.
Where would Chipper Jones belong on this list? Seems to me like he’s close to the top-30.
@79
Actually, there are two HOF pitchers on that list: Bob Gibson and Juan Marichal. Ironically, Mantle actually faced both pitchers, in the ‘62 and the ‘64 World Series.
He faced Marichal twice, and both times, Marichal struck him out.
Mantle against Gibson in the ‘64 series:
Game 2: 0-3, with a walk and 2 strike-outs.
Game 5:0-3, with a walk and 2 strike-outs
Game 7: 1-4, with a strike-out and a long homer (well, he WAS Mickey freaking Mantle)
Still, that’s 1-for-10 against Gibson, with 5 K’s, with everything on the line. Gibson was the Series MVP, but that’s kind of my whole point.
Small sample size? Sure. Still, these are World Series games, so nobody doubts the importance of each at bat, and the Mick went 1-12 against the non-white pitchers.
Anyway, I don’t mean to denigrate Mantle, one of my all-time favorite players. But it’s clear that he was facing inferior competition, because the AL owners, for reasons of either blatant racism or outright stupidity, simply refused to sign and develop non-white players to the extent that the NL did. And there were a whole lot of other pitchers in the NL who were men of color, besides, Gibby and Marichal.
It also goes into fielding, baserunning, and an all-around higher level of play. Willie Mays is gonna catch that screamer to the gap, while the slow-footed white guy in the Al lets it fall for a double. And on the league leaderboards, Mick could stand alone, while in the NL, the top tier was always crowded with guys like Aaron and Clemente and Mays and Banks and Frank Robinson.
There is zero doubt in my mind that Mantle, as great as he was, faced inferior competition.
Can’t we call this the “stupid announcers’ list of great hitters”, and get it over with? This list reads like something Joe Morgan would argue:
“sure, Thomas had better numbers, but was he really better than Gwynn? Gwynn didn’t strike out, and he just knew how to play the game…blah, blah, blah”.
Tony Gwynn was a very good to great baseball player, but all this list does is reinforce that there is a huge divide between old school and new school in terms of judging value.
It’s also possible that Molitor was a better hitter at that age because he had stopped taking other kinds of drugs….
#78
That isn’t unfair to Molitor. The fact is steroids were used long before 1998, cant say on what scale. But if the NFL was using them, and Olympians, why is it so crazy to think that more than 1 or 2 baseball players were using? Because we dont know who, when, how much or just how much it helped, we should give up the steroid debate.
Here’s a list of guys we’d convict by todays standards:
Nolan Ryan, Andre Dawson, Dale Murphy, Mike Scott, John Tudor,
Even more impressive about Wade Boggs, is that he put up those numbers while drunk the whole time. No joke. http://www.drunkjaysfans.com/2007/05/have-wade-boggs-weekend.html
Old Flattop –
Yes, everyone outside of NY hates the Yankees, but baseball writers are generally not from the city they write for. Also most of them are lazy and since the east coast media gets most of the hype an average Yankee will sound like a superstar to someone who really doesn’t to their research. They hold petty grudges and vote for the name, not for the numbers.
Voting is done before the post season, but the point is valid. If Brett was playing for the Yankees that year and they made it to the playoffs the voting wouldn’t even have been close. There IS an east coast (specifically northeast) bias in the media. There is no question about it.
Re. #85:
“Here’s a list of guys we’d convict by todays standards:
Nolan Ryan, Andre Dawson, Dale Murphy, Mike Scott, John Tudor,”
Mike Scott might have been on steroids, but he was DEFINITELY doctoring the ball.
Gregg’s right. Canseco has claimed he used in the minors, hasn’t he? So, we can trace their use as far back as the early-to-mid-1980s, at the very least.
I actually wonder why there hasn’t been more speculation about Rickey. Not saying he did or didn’t, but he had some pretty outstanding seasons once he was past the typical baseball-playing prime (especially after hooking up with the Bash Brothers) and played until he was 82. He’d be a prime suspect today.
I’m sure at some point, word will get out that someone in the Hall juiced, whether it’s someone who’s already in or a player who will be inducted in the coming years who no one suspected. It’ll be interesting to see what that does to voting, and whether the BBWAA will then stop moralizing and go back to simply voting in the best players (roughly speaking – of course, they’ve had some notable misses by both electing undeserving players and omitting deserving ones).
After all, the Hall of Fame is supposed to look at baseball history. How complete a museum can it be without a lot of the best players?
Already, there’s no Pete Rose, and as it stands now, it will be without inner-circle guys like Bonds, Clemens and A-Rod, plus second-tier guys like Sosa, McGwire, Palmeiro, Manny, Sheffield… Depending on how much evidence voters need to consider someone persona non grata, Piazza, Pudge Rodriguez and others won’t make it, either.
@76 Justin,
My apologies to all. I misunderstood the question.
RE: Hank Aaron…
Hank fascinates me as a person and ballplayer. Checking Baseball Reference, HA won the MVP only once. I get that the award doesn’t always get it right, but in 60s it’s hard to tell what’s going on here. Dick Groat (‘60 and 2nd in ‘63??). Can anyone shed some light on what went into MVP voting in the early 60s? Racism? Writers not seeing many games other than home town teams? etc..
@89 Justin
“I’m sure at some point, word will get out that someone in the Hall juiced, whether it’s someone who’s already in or a player who will be inducted in the coming years who no one suspected.”
First documented use of a PED was the infamous “Monkey Juice” used by HOFer Pud Galvin back in the 1880/90s.
But more specifically, “Greenies” and “Black Beauties” are PEDs that were huge in baseball. Amphetamines date back to the 1800s with more widespread uses in the 20s and tablet forms such as “greenies” becoming widespread in the 30s/40s. With regards to players, Hank Aaron has admitted to taking amphetamine tablets on at least one or two occasions, while there is strong suspicion for players like Mays (“Red Juice”), Mantle (the injection infection), Willie Stargell and many others as well. Mike Schmidt admitted a couple seasons ago that he used the drug. The HOF is definitely not PED-free.
.
RE: Molitor
He was busted for cocaine use, which could be considered a type of PED. Positive effects which could be used for performance benefit would be similar to those of amphetamines. Of course, prolonged use or excess has the possibility of destroy a career just the same, but the initial benefits would be there and there are players with long, successful careers while using. Probably most notably, the Dodger powerhouses of the 70s and 80s were full of cocaine users. Cocaine use in conjunction with harder PEDs also have a strong connection in 80s/90s A’s clubhouses.
@91:
Groat ‘60 is easy: he led the majors in batting average (.325), and his team won the pennant (and the WS, but the voters didn’t know that yet). His other numbers are atrocious, but he had that good BA (26 2B, 2 HR, 39 BB, slash line 325/371/394).
I know, RBI usually takes the cake, but around that period several “inspirational” or whatever middle-infielder types won the MVP (Fox in ‘59, Wills in ‘62, Versalles in ‘65). For their grittiness or clutchiness or whatever; not for their OPS+.
And, at least for my three examples, it wasn’t racism, ‘cuz Wills is black (or at least partially, dunno), and Versalles is Latino.
@92, not to mention the Dave Parker Pirates in your last sentence or two.
#11 Devon
You’re right about Rose being done in the early 80’s.
I think if you look at it objectively he was done after the 1979 season. He had hitting stats that were pretty awful for a first basemen and he was a terrible defensive first basemen on top of that.
I think the only way he had a half-way decent ‘81 was because of the strike that gave him a two month break.
Here’s his ops+ 1980-1986:
1980-ops+94
1981-ops+119 (his ‘81 season is overrated, a poor fielding firstbaseman with a .390 slugging percentage is a joke, and the only way he could have maintained that 119 ops+ was to have a 2 month lay=off.
1982-ops+90
1983-ops+69 (Think if the Phillies just had a league average first base man that year, they may have won the world series.
1984=ops+99
1985-ops+99
1986-ops+61
He probably cost his teams at least 2 division titles during that run.
Re: Paul Molitor “And then at age 30, blammo…”
Yes, “blammo,” he stopped playing the field. The “blammo” at age 30 for Molitor is the DH rule, period.
I appreciate that Molitor had some respectable numbers prior to turning 30, but after age 30 he was Edgar Martinez, only not quite as good.
Paul Molitor is a first ballot sure thing HOFer, and Edgar Martinez is not? Because Molitor made the big leagues at 20 and played 9 years as a decent position player who was always injured?
Joey O #92 has it right – there has always, always, been PED use. And certainly almost universally since 1940. It’s an absurdity to talk about steroids as if they’re the kind of something that only applies to a few recent or relatively recent players.
And, the oh-so-holy backup argument that, well, players circa 1995 were playing Russian Roulette with their bodies and so out they go – imagine what the hell was in Pud Galvin’s “Monkey Juice”. You can’t tell me that a player making millions per year plus 100 years of science isn’t approaching it a little more safely compared to any time in the past.
Of course the second part, health, is true – but it’s irrelevant to the topic of comparing eras.
what’s with all the bitching? If Joe decided to rank the Top 10 throwing arms of all time, would you guys complain that he’s caving in to people who only care about throwing arms at the expense of guys who are all around great fielders?
It’s a fun list. I’m the first to acknowledge that most of these guys can’t hold a candle to low average, high OBP, high power guys, but there’s something fun about “pure hitters.” Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that hits are way more exciting to watch than walks?
I recall Bill James (I’m pretty sure it was Bill James, back in the old Baseball Abstract 80s) who analyzed a theoretical Williams for DiMaggio trade. His analysis: whoever plays in Fenway, wins.
Look at the great Red Sox hitters. Williams, LHB. Yaz, LHB. Rice, RHB. Lynn, LHB. Boggs, LHB. Ortiz, LHB. Fenway has always helped lefties a lot. The theory being that with normal straight away (non-pull) hitter, you get more power to your pull field. Well, in Fenway, more power to right field is still a homer, but a lot of warning track outs to left field become doubles. Whereas a dead pull hitter (Rice) in Fenway converts many outs into doubles, and loses a bit on the rare balls he hit to right.
As for the list, not even a smidgeon of love for Pedro Guerrero? Remember, he did almost all his damage (before ruining his knee and going from great to mediocre) in what was then about the worst hitter’s park in baseball, and even with those five years of decline he batted .300 for his career, OPS+ of 137.
And that’s the problem with the list. I think a pure hitter with power is more pure than a pure hitter without power. I mean, that suggests that Steve Garvey is a better pure hitter than Dwight Evans, maybe even that Nomar is better than ARod. Purity has almost no meaning. Or, rather, it means whatever you want it to mean.
As a computer game designer, everything has to be defined in terms of numbers. Computers ONLY think in terms of numbers. I had one lead designer who drove the programmers crazy insisting on using words like “Very” and “Somewhat” without providing any kind of scale. The programmers revolted and made me write all the design documents because I could say, “On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 is Completely, 9 is Extremely, 8 is Very, 7 is Quite, 6 is Moderately, 5 is Somewhat, etc.” But what does pure mean?
I think pure means that you wanted to give Tony Gwynn a list he could be atop. But doing that (and eliminating Hornsby, Cobb, etc.) disserves Frank Thomas or Mike Piazza, either one of which I’d want hitting for me in almost every situation except, perhaps, tie ball game, late innings, two outs, runner on third. Then and only then does Batting Average overwhelm all other stats. Love Gwynn. Love others more. Don’t love pure.
Hits are more exciting than intentional walks. But would I rather see Andre Ethier work a walk to drive in the winning run, or Casey Blake work a walk to move the tying run into scoring position, than see Tony Gwynn single? The single is one pitch. The walk could be several calls, needing umpire confirmation. And the potential of the home run, even if it isn’t hit, such as long fouls. I’m not sold that singles are always more exciting.
@91
Thanks Phil. Yeah, I figured “gritiness” or whatever one calls it counted for a lot back then. BA seemed to rule the MVP conversation back then. Also figured race probably wasn’t the driving force behind MVP votes. Just striking to see some of the production other players had vs. the gritty types in these years.
There IS an east coast (specifically northeast) bias in the media. There is no question about it.
I completely agree that the media cover the NE teams to a biased degree, wrt ESPN Sunday nights and whatever. But I don’t see this spilling over into MVP voting. AL East players have won 3 MVPs this century despite the overall dominance of that division. And I’m not cherrypicking the years. Please draw the line wherever you like to prove your point.
Yes, everyone outside of NY hates the Yankees, but baseball writers are generally not from the city they write for.
So there is this evil spawn of NY writers dispersing themselves throughout the country the vote NY players as MVPs? Have you ever actually met a NYer? There are no New Yorkers moving to wherever USA so that they can vote for a Yankee for MVP.
@#76 Justin, thanks for clarification. I hear too many voices of influence like Jayson Stark that tend to be reasonable but continue to ignore the inequities in the game. As long as they focus on half-truths & incomplete data, they perpetuate the farce that is MLB & enable snake-oil salesmen like Bud Selig & David Glass. Just to be clear, the Royals are a poorly ran organization & their situation is mostly of their own design. The owner is an imbecile that should have never been allowed to buy a MLB team. Until the Royals draft & develop their own players on a consistent basis, they don’t get to cry ’small-market blues.’ However, the game is still VERY broken when teams like MN & CLEV have to sell off the players that developed in order to survive. Any evidence to the fact can be viewed in watching 4 big market & highly unappealing teams (NYY, LAA, PP, & LAD) use players they bought off (sorry, ‘traded’ for) of other teams to smack each other around for an ESPN/Network TV dream matchup of the Yanks & the Phillies.
@#87 Tampa Mike, thanks for the acknowledgment. I was not attempting to argue that the eastcoast biased media always go for the east coast team/players. Simply that when it’s close, the voters will defer to the player on the Yanks, Red Sox, Mets, Phils, or other east coast media darling team over the mundane midwest (TX/ KC/Minn/Col) or unknown west coast (Sea/Oak/SD) team. 1985 was simply an example. Nothing more. I think any sane person realizes there is a bias.
But really, I’m still waiting for an answer to the real question: When the Yanks win the WS this year, will anyone outside of NY and Bristol Connecticut care or acknowledge it as something that took actual skill to accomplish?
When the Yanks win the WS this year, will anyone outside of NY and Bristol Connecticut care or acknowledge it as something that took actual skill to accomplish?
Oh, Whine on, shine on, harvest moon
Up in the sky;
I ain’t had no lovin’
Since January, April, June or July.
Snow time ain’t no time to stay
Outdoors and spoon;
So whine on, whine on, harvest moon,
For me and my gal.
@105
Another NY’er with no answers. Not surprising.
JoeyO [#92]: I should have been clearer in my comments – obviously the Hall is littered with guys who used various uppers – there are plenty of stories documenting the days when bowls full of greenies and other such pills were decked out in plain sight locker rooms and players popped them like M&Ms.
I was speaking specifically about the more recent oh-so-scandalous steroid usage (and I plead guilty to ignorance on Pud Galvin – I had heard a bit about it, but always wrongly dismissed the stories as innuendo.)
In my experience, when people talk about PEDs in baseball, they’re talking about the modern steroid era. Amphetamines have, until recently, always been given a wink and a nod. Hell, I’m sure the guys who voted Galvin in probably thought “that crazy guy drank monkey testosterone!” if they considered that element of his candidacy at all.
A player who gets nailed for modern steroid usage is quickly discredited and THOSE are the guys the voters seem to be targeting. I’m curious to see the wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth when word leaks that a Hall of Famer injected winstrol or dura-decabolin. How indignant will the voters be? Will some of the old-timey Hall of Famers stand firm on their “if a steroid user gets elected, I want my plaque removed” stances?
104, I have no answer per se to your petulant question, but I do have to question your main premise, which I have put asterisks around:
> When the Yanks win the WS this year, will anyone outside of NY and Bristol Connecticut care or acknowledge it as *something that took actual skill to accomplish*?
You don’t think it’s going to take actual skill to beat the Angels and the Dodgers-or-Phillies? Please explain how the Yankees are to accomplish that without having the benefit of any “actual skill”?
Please define “actual skill” for me. I must be pritty iggerant about sich thangs.
Also, I happen to know that there are *plenty* of Yankee fans outside of New York and Bristol comma Connecticut. Just sayin’.
I meant to add a parenthetical, which would have changed the first sentence of my third paragraph to:
You don’t think it’s going to take actual skill to beat the Angels and the Dodgers-or-Phillies (assuming it actually happens in the first place)?
I wish just one time Derek Jeter would look into the camera and say the following to Peter Edward :
“I am sure that when I am 44 years old, I will have a manager with enough sense to not let me get 500 plate appearances as a 1B with a .319 SLG%. So, yeah, those last 1256 hits probably will be hard to get”
I don’t why Mattingly won in 1985, whether it was a NY bias or the RBIs (frankly, the RBI thing definitely went into giving it to Mattingly over his more deserving teammate, you know, the guy Mattingly was driving in all the time).
But what I do know is that if George B. played for the Yankees or the Red Sox, put up the numbers he did .335/.436/.585, 30 HR, 112 RBIs AND he had the last week of the season that he had to put his team in the playoffs , he would have been the MVP. Not only that, but they would be still be talking about it today as one of the greatest, most clutch weeks ever.
On September 29, 1985, the Royals were 86-69, 1 game back of the Angels. They had 7 games left, 4 with the Angels and 3 with the A’s.
On the 30th, the Royals won 3 to 1 over the Angels, Brett went 1 for 3, with a HR and 2 RBIs. He tied the game at 1 in the 4th with a HR and gave the Royals a 3-1 lead in the 8th with a SF.
On 10/1, the Royals lost 4-2, putting them 1 back again. Brett went 1 for 3 with a BB and an RBI.
On 10/2, the Royals won 4-0, putting them back into a tie for first. Brett was 3 for 4 with a HR, 2B and 3 RBIs. He gave them a 3-0 lead in the bottom of the first with a 3 run inside the park HR.
On 10/3, the Royals won 4-1, putting them up on the Angels by one game. Brett was 1 for 3, with 2 runs, a HR and an RBI. He walked in front of White’s HR in the first and then capped the Royals scoring with a solo HR in the 5th.
On 10/4, the Royals beat the A’s 4-2 to maintain a game lead. Brett was 2 for 4 with a HR and 2 RBIs. His single in the bottom of the 4th gave them a 3-0 lead, then after the A’s pulled to 3-2 in the top of the 7th, he led off the Bottom of the 7th with an inside the park HR to cap the scoring.
On 10/5, the Royals beat the A’s 5-4 in 10 innings to clinch the division. Brett was 1 for 3 with another HR, 2 runs scored, 2 RBIs and 2 walks. In the bottom of the 6th, Royals down 4-0, he hit a 2 run HR to pull them to 4-2. In the bottom of the 7th he walked in the middle of a run rally and scored the tying run. They walked him again in the 9th.
On 10/6, after 6 days of GODhood (he was 9 for 20 with 7 runs, 11 RBIs, 4 Walks and 5 HRs (incidentally a HR in all 5 of the Royals wins during that time) and probably more tellingly, because it shows how great he was while being surrounded by an otherwise pedestrian lineup, he either scored or drove in a ridiculous 13 out of the 22 runs the Royals scored in that 6 game stretch), George rested.
Now, really if Yaz or Lynn or Reggie or Jeter or ARod had a stretch like that in the last week of the season, put on top of a really great year, would there have been any doubt about the MVP that year??
@ Brent,
Nice work on the history lesson. Again, my point wasn’t really about Brett being robbed to begin with (see original post). However, you made the argument (much better than I) that Brett would have been the toast of the baseball world back in ‘85 if he hadn’t been on a midwestern team (& that was back when the Royals were relevant). Kudos.
@ 108 Phil
“I have no answer per se to your petulant question, but I do have to question your main premise,Please explain how the Yankees are to accomplish that without having the benefit of any “actual skill”? Please define “actual skill” for me. I must be pritty iggerant about sich thangs.”
You seem to be “pritty iggerant” about several things. You misread my original post regarding the number of playoff teams that went to the ‘World Series’ with a payroll of less than league average, until someone else pointed out your error. Now I’m “petulant” for pointing out an obvious question that no Yankee fan can answer. I will rephrase the questions since you are having trouble comprehending in the original format.
Will anyone (non-Yankee fans) care when the Yankees finally accomplish what they have tried & failed at for the last 10 years – purchasing a World Series ring?
The “skill” I refer to is the ability to put together a team by means of drafting & developing talent. Yes sometimes that means trading said talent for better pieces that provide immediate results. However, the latter does not apply to this Yankee team. Nearly all of their position players & most importantly, starting pitching were bought through free agency and not traded for. Therefore, the only “skill” Cashman needed was the intellect of a 10 year old baseball card collector & a $220MM wallet at his disposal in order to assemble the current roster of superstars.
Get it Phil?
“In my experience, when people talk about PEDs in baseball, they’re talking about the modern steroid era. Amphetamines have, until recently, always been given a wink and a nod. Hell, I’m sure the guys who voted Galvin in probably thought “that crazy guy drank monkey testosterone!” if they considered that element of his candidacy at all.”
Which is unfortunate. But it is the reason I provided a more in depth use of PEDs. See, PED might be the new buzz-word term, but they have always been around and ignored. You mention Amphetamines as being given a wink and a nod until recently. The same holds true with steroids as well. And both are a PED just the same, while both were banned about the same time. To frown on one while accepting the other is hypocritical from the start.
Steroids themselves have been around since the 30s. Only recently did anyone bother to care. And I imagine half the players inducted into the HOF, who played from about 1940 till recently, dont know if they ever took steroids. Today we are much more worried about what things are actually called or classified as, and what ingredients are in the items we personally take. (We have to, harsher rules and a long history of things not always being perceived) The story goes that the Mantle injection infection came when he was sent to a Dr. Feelgood type by Mel Allen. It’s rumored to have contained a mixture featuring both steroids and speed. Do you think Mantle ensured he knew every ingredient in the injection? And if he did, would he have understand what those ingredients actually were, or that maybe they shouldn’t be taken? After all, the 1963 Chargers had no real idea of what their coaches were giving them, and that 40 years down the road it would be considered to be the evilest of all evils. How many of those little Pink Pills were floating around baseball from the early 60’s till now? Or more importantly, does everyone know what the pills they did take actually were?
The players who are critical of those caught using steroids recently are doing so not knowing for sure if they are guilty as well. The writers and fans critical of players caught today are ignoring 50 years of relaxed attitudes where steroids could have, and almost certainly were, taken without care. And everyone would be ignoring the fact that “cheating” has been around since day one.
I understand your real interest being the reaction by the critical if one of their own was found to be guilty. But I think it is more important to realize they are all likely guilty in some form or another; be it from consuming or being injected with something they didn’t completely understand, to their ignoring those around them doing those things – while still acting shocked by the players or recent years. They are being hypocritical from the start, so does it really matter how they act if one of them is found to be guilty? Everytime one of them comes out and speaks against steroids in baseball, I lose respect for them.
Oh, one more thing…
One of the arguments about Steroid users is “they are against the law”. Well, let’s think about this aspect for a minute.
Babe Ruth played from 1914-1935
Babe Ruth was a notorious drinker.
Prohibition in the US was between 1919 and 1933.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out Babe Ruth was breaking the law. So why doesn’t he carry the same stigma?
St. Pat,
1. I already apologized for having misunderstood your point. I don’t normally misunderstand people. Either (a) I was having a bad day, or (b) your point was confusingly worded, or (c) a little bit of both.
2. Care to tell me which of the following were free-agent signings (from other major league teams by the Yankees)?
Andy Pettitte
Joba Chamberlain
Mariano Rivera
Phil Coke
Phil Hughes
Brian Bruney
Alfredo Aceves
David Robertson
Jonathan Albaladejo
Chad Gaudin
Mark Melancon
Jorge Posada
Francisco Cervelli
Robinson Cano
Derek Jeter
Alex Rodriguez
Melky Cabrera
Brett Gardner
Nick Swisher
Hideki Matsui
Jerry Hairston, Jr.
Eric Hinske
So, by my count, only two (not quite “nearly all”) position players (plus the DH) were free-agent signings. Yes, a couple of starting pitchers were, but still only a couple.
> Get it Phil?
I don’t think this kind of gratuitous insult has any place in this kind of a discussion, especially since your math seems a little off.
I think we’re basically coming at this from the same angle, though you’re obviously being more comprehensive and I’m being a little too vague about it…
I’m not saying cheating hasn’t been around since forever, and I’m also not trying to denigrate the “modern” steroid user any more than any previous type of cheater.
What I’m saying is that a lot of people do just that – the majority of BBWAA voters have made their opinions clear in the McGwire vote, and some existing HoFers have expressed their preposterous “if you let those guys in, I want out” views.
Like it or not (and I don’t like it, either) guys who used steroids over the past 10-20 years are scorned more than any of the previous brand of cheater. There isn’t exactly a big push to ensure that amphetamine users or others who used dubious substances of any other sort be booted out of the Hall.
I guess what I’m getting at is this: when someone in the Hall of Fame is shown to have been a steroid user during the “steroid era,” will it finally put an end the hypocrisy and to the moralizing? Because I would very much like to see that.
Phil Gaskill [#115]: Granted, many of the Yankees’ core players came from their system, but a lot of people make it seem like money’s not the big reason they have those guys at this point.
For a lot of teams, if they had developed the same core, their front office would have had to decide which one or two of Jeter, Mo, Posada and Pettitte they could afford to keep.
They could (and probably would) have opted for Jeter and Mo, but they also could have offered to retain Bernie Williams, which would have obviously hurt the current team by making it harder to retain one of the other guys.
Of course, this is all assuming those players didn’t want to test free agency. If Jeter comes up through the Milwaukee system, there’s NO WAY he gets $19 mil a year. And if he’s offered, say $10 mil a year, maybe he wants to test free agency and see what the big payroll teams will throw his way. The Yankees didn’t have to worry about that because they’ve always been able to pay well above market value to retain all of their players.
So yeah, great player development with a major assist to Steinbrenner’s bank account.
The Yanks would be much less formidable if they could afford one (or, as is the case with most teams, zero) of Sabathia, Teix, A-Rod, Jeter or Burnett plus (maybe) two or three of Matsui, Damon, Rivera, Posada.
> The Yanks would be much less formidable if they could afford one (or, as is the case with most teams, zero) of Sabathia, Teix, A-Rod, Jeter or Burnett plus (maybe) two or three of Matsui, Damon, Rivera, Posada.
Yeah, you almost wonder how they *ever* lose a game. . . .
“I guess what I’m getting at is this: when someone in the Hall of Fame is shown to have been a steroid user during the “steroid era,” will it finally put an end the hypocrisy and to the moralizing? Because I would very much like to see that.”
Yeah, I know what your saying. And I probably should have been clearer myself, or carried the last paragraph a bit farther.
The answer is almost certainly no. Until all those players are able to come to grips with the fact they are all guilty of similar things to varying degrees, it will continue to be a divide. Until fans come to grips with almost everyone being guilty, they will still vilify those pointed at as being guilty of what they perceive to be the biggest offense. And until sport writers can no longer make a living off those fans perceptions, they will continue to add fuel to the fire. This will likely stay this way forever to some degree, and will be a main focus until a bigger scandal takes its place.
Realistically, the only way it probably ever gets eased is if MLB itself comes out and takes a hard stand saying something to the extent of “Steroid users should be treated no different then players who took Amphetamines or any other non-prescribed or regulated and MLB approved, chemically altering supplement under the pretense of physical or mental betterment.” If the MLB was to ensure all pre-punishable offences should be treated equal, then the players, writers and fans would have no ground to hold everyone on anything less then an equal standard. Under Selig, this will of course never happen unless Congress forces it.
Lineup
Jeter
Damon (Signed as FA 12/05)
Teixeira (Signed as FA 12/08)
Rodriguez (Signed as FA 12/07)
Matsui (Signed as FA 12/02)
Posada / Molina (Posada: Signed as FA 12/07, Molina Signed as FA 12/07)
Cano (Signed as FA 1/01)
Swisher
Cabrera (Signed as FA 11/01)
Rotation
Sabathia (Signed as FA 12/08)
Burnett (Signed as FA 12/08)
Pettitte (Signed as FA 1/09)
Chamberlin
Wang (Signed as FA 5/00)
Rivera (Signed as FA 12/07)
Of the main roster (lineup/starters/closer), only 3 players were not FA signings. Some are considered “resigning” of a FA, but they were all free agents just the same.
Those three players being Jeter (who was bought out of his last arbitration case with an astonishing 10/189 contract), Swisher (who was basically bought off the White Sox, who weren’t going to pay his 21+ MM owed) and Joba (who was really bought on draft day when the Yankees became the only team willing to meet his huge bonus demands).
For a moment I thought your next few was the list of people with the most double plays…
Thanks JoeyO & Justin.
JoeyO nails the lineup.
As usual, Yankee apologists provide half-truths when defending how their team has contributed to the demise of the game. Observation of tonight’s Yankee ALCS lineup (which is really the only applicable group that should be looked at) is a who’s who of not just FA’s but the HIGHEST paid FA in baseball. Phil, perhaps we got off on the wrong foot. While I’m certainly not above criticism, my numbers are pretty right on. Again, I fail to understand what is “confusingly worded” about the original comment since it seemed to be understood by most others on this forum:
“Tampa Bay, Colorado & Marlins. 3 teams out of 120 playoff teams since 1995 is certainly proof of parity. Fact is that for the past 15 seasons, only 3 teams with a payroll of less than league average have made the WS & only 1 has won it.”
Look, I’ve got a (famous) picture of Gehrig & Ruth in my living room. I’m a fan of the game. I’m saddened & angered by what has become of the game I grew up watching in the 70’s & 80’s and that may have led to what you deem to be a ‘petulant’ question for those that support the Yankee’s & how they’ve operated over the last 10-15 years. I think it is a legitimate question. I acknowledge the Yanks are doing what is allowed by the system & I applaud (as I’ve said before) any owner willing to spend money to put a winner on the field. However, what the Steinbrenner’s & a few others are doing is creating a schism that cannot be overcome using baseball acumen but rather only by money. The endgame is the destruction of franchises with historically strong fan bases that simply have lost all hope of being anything more than fodder for the 6 or 8 big market teams.
And so-called ‘fans’ that overlook these facts are simpletons that probably would not be fans of their respective teams if those teams weren’t winning on a consistent basis. This is not directed at anyone in particular but rather a general statement.
“is a who’s who of not just FA’s but the HIGHEST paid FA in baseball”
(Based on AAV, or Average Annual Value)
Teixeira – (Highest paid First Baseman)
Jeter – (Highest paid Short Stop)
Rodriguez – (Highest paid Third Baseman)
Posada – (Highest paid Catcher)
Sabathia – (Highest paid Starter)
Rivera – (Highest paid Reliever)
That is of 9 possible (C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, 1xOF, DH, 1xSP, CL). Their having 6 of the 9 of course meaning 67% of the positions filled by the highest paid player at said position.
(the other 3 highest paid positions belong to: DH – Hafner, 2B – Utley and OF – Manny)
Other Top-10’s:
Cano – (3rd highest paid Second Baseman)
Damon – (Tied- 9th highest paid Outfielder)
Matsui – (Tied- 9th highest paid Outfielder, or 3rd highest paid DH)
Burnett – (6th Highest paid Starter)
Oh, and of the playoff teams still in it, the Phillies only have 4 (Howard, Lidge, Utley and Rollins); as do the Dodgers (Schmidt, Furcal, Manny and the Andrew Jones contract they are still paying). While the Angels have just Fuentes, Hunter and Vladimir ranking.
And really, if you add those up the Phillies, Dodgers and Angels have 11 top-10 at their position guys verses the Yankees with 10 on their own. And of course, the Yankees pay more for their 10 then the 11 on the other 3 clubs combined. Honestly, it’s rather pitiful if you think about it. I mean, I know they are the Yankees – but it is more then a little out of control here…
JoeyO,
It would be nice if writers like Joe P and Jayson Stark would bring the facts that you so astutely make, into focus in a major forum (not a blog) like SI or ESPN. I like Joe but I wish he would use his powers for (the greater) good from time to time.
This is part of the problem with Joe when I followed his columns at the Star. He always had valid criticisms of the Royals’ individual players or front office moves but never really went after the root cause of the problem, ie. David Glass. He never seemed to put 2 & 2 together to realize that perhaps Moore & Baird made the moves that they made (going after c-level/backup FA) because Glass was unwilling to compromise and admit that he would have to overpay for real major league talent due to his poor stewardship over the past 15 years. Joe, like so many others, gave Glass the ’small-market’ out without him having earned that excuse by putting the money into the minors to cultivate the talent necessary to compete like the Twins & A’s. Glass doesn’t get a pass just because he ‘found God’ so to speak and started spending money 2 1/2 years ago. Fact, the Royals payroll was $70MM this year. Highest ever for the Royals but what does it mean exactly? In 1994 (15 years ago) the Royals payroll was $47MM. So over the past 15 years Glass has raised the payroll a whopping $23MM or $1.54MM per year. Hardly keeping up with the cost of doing business in the 21st century of baseball economics. Yet Joe said nothing of this during his tenure with the Star. Glass is the architect of the Royals’ demise just as Bud Selig & the owners are of major league baseball. And the media, just like during the steroid era are accomplices after the fact by their inattention to the greed & corruption of the owners. When the Yanks win, they will all fall over themselves to write the puff piece stories of Derek Jeter getting his 5th ring or A-Rod shaking the choke-monkey off & getting his first ring or Rivera getting, perhaps, his last ring. It will be swoon time at ESPN & SI but when the dust settles, all the rest of the baseball fandom will be left with the realization that baseball has reached a low point in its history.
Joe & his peers need to wake up and write the real story of this post season. It’s not too late to save this sport for ALL fans.
After reading about “pure hitting” on this site of all places, I’m half expecting Joe to post a list of guys with the best intangibles.
Felix@126
Re: Joe’s list
#1–Duane Kuiper.
#18,748–Yuni Betancourt.
JoeyO @120,
Here’s my revision of your revision of my list. Remember, my list explicitly said something about “signed as free agents from another major league team.”
- Jeter, drafted, has always been a Yankee.
- Damon (Signed as FA 12/05), yep, and I didn’t claim otherwise.
- Teixeira (Signed as FA 12/08), ditto as Damon.
- Rodriguez (Signed as FA 12/07), nope, acquired in trade for Alfonso Soriano. Was signed as a free agent *from* the Yankees *to* the Yankees in 12/07: I explicitly didn’t count this kind of re-signing in my list: it is *not* a free-agent *acquisition.*
- Matsui (Signed as FA 12/02), nope, was signed from Japan. There are no Major League teams in Japan, by MLB’s own self-definition.
- Posada / Molina (Posada: Signed as FA 12/07, Molina Signed as FA 12/07), nope, Posada doesn’t qualify just as A-Rod doesn’t. Always been a Yankee. You’re right on Molina, and I never claimed otherwise.
- Cano (Signed as FA 1/01), nope, he was signed as an *amateur* free agent, not from another ML team. Has always been a Yankee.
- Swisher, acquired in trade for Wilson Betemit, perhaps the biggest steal since Babe Ruth. . . .
- Cabrera (Signed as FA 11/01), nope, amateur free agent like Cano, has always been a Yankee.
Rotation
- Sabathia (Signed as FA 12/08), sure.
- Burnett (Signed as FA 12/08), ay-yup.
- Pettitte (Signed as FA 1/09), has been granted FA twice since coming back to the Yanks in ‘06 from Houston, and re-signed both times. (I guess he likes one-year contracts.) BUT I do have to admit I’d totally forgotten he’d been away for a while and came back to the Yanks as a FA, so I was wrong about him. But the ‘09 FA signing doesn’t count by my explicitly stated “rules” for this particular list.
- Chamberlain, drafted, always been a Yankee.
- Wang (Signed as FA 5/00), amateur FA, doesn’t count.
- Rivera (Signed as FA 12/07), by the Yankees from the Yankees (i.e., another re-signing). He has always been a Yankee.
I did mention quite a few other key players in my list who you didn’t keep in your list. Okay, maybe *some* of my list consisted of less-than-totally-crucial players, but I think you omitted some who *are* totally crucial, like Phil Hughes, Brett Gardner, David Robertson, Chad Gaudin, just for some examples.
“Here’s my revision of your revision of my list. Remember, my list explicitly said something about “signed as free agents from another major league team.”’
It was never a revision of your list. It was a separate list, detailing the most important pieces of any team – the ones which generally make up (I believe) 90-95% of a teams overall payroll. And my list was completely free from illogical stipulations which would provide an inaccurate or skewed account of the situation.
Remember, the original sentence was:
“Nearly all of their position players & most importantly, starting pitching were bought through free agency and not traded for”
And that is what I was really responding to.
.
To that, I provided those key players of any team. That being the 10 position players (1B, 2B, 3B, SS, LF, CF, DH, 2-C) and 6 pitchers (5 starters and closer) which, on the Yankees, made up 5548 of their 6447 PA (86% of PA) and 898.1 of their 1450 IP (62% of IP) – or 74% of the Yankees overall playing time. According to FanGraphs, that group of 16 also provided a total of 75.8 WAR in 2009. The other 29 players combined for a mere 5 WAR. So the 16 players I accounted for provided 93.8% of the WAR for this seasons Yankees – that being the case, of course, because they are the key players.
Now of those 16 players, only 3 were acquired or retained through means other then free agency. The other 13 were all under no contract at one point or another and able to sign with any team willing to pay them. Plus there is the strong argument for each of the remaining 3 obtained through means other then free agency to be considered “bought” just the same – as originally stipulated in the sentence I was replying to.
All of it adds up to the very real fact that at least 81% of the Yankees key players were paid for through free agency, and that number of “bought” players could vary all the way up to 100% depending on how a person individually feels on the three remaining cases. (Pretty hard to argue against Joba being bought out of the draft, and it is no secret that the WhiteSox handed over Swisher for next to nothing because the Yankees were willing to pay his contract. Then, no other team would/could have given Jeter such an outrageous contract that was, at the time, the second highest ever contract ever – 19 million above the third (Manny in Boston) and 68 million above the 4th (Hampton in Colorado). But those three, technically, are open to interpretation so it can only be said 81–100% of the Yankees key players were bought)
Okay, I give up. In my terms/on my conditions, I think I’m right; in your terms/on your conditions, you’re right. I have no problem with that.
Shake?
Who cares if the Yankees spend lots of money. They have a luxury tax so the more money they spend, the more money for other teams to spend. Blame the owners who aren’t spending their luxury tax money.
Plus having the Yankees do well is good for the game, as it generates more interest, more ticket sales, higher ratings, etc, all things that give the other teams more money.
Seriously? We’re counting A-Rod as a non-free agent because he was originally acquired through a trade?
Oh, to be young and a Yankee fan. Oh, to be deluded about the mercenaries on my team.
There’s no difference between re-signing your own free agent and signing one away from another team? I always sorta thought there was. (And yes, I realize that “your own” and “away from another team” aren’t exactly literally 100% true, but it’s the way it seems to feel at times.)
I’m not necessarily a Yankee fan; I certainly wouldn’t have to be one to say what I’ve said above (i.e., if I *was* a Yankee fan, what I’ve said above wasn’t from the *standpoint* of being a fan of *any* team).
And I’m not deluded about the mercenaries on *ANY* team, thankyouverymuch, and furthermore please name me one team that doesn’t have any: in fact, name me one team that doesn’t have 25.
“They have a luxury tax so the more money they spend, the more money for other teams to spend. Blame the owners who aren’t spending their luxury tax money.”
You dont seriously believe that, do you? Revenue sharing, as it exists, is basically like Nordstroms jacking up their prices 500% then having a storewide 10% off sale. Or like the Gas Company charging you an extra 100 dollars on your bill, then sending you a 5 dollar check in the mail. Teams that spend 150+ million on payroll are scooping up most of the top talent and usually overpaying for the players they pay – this means the cost of everyone else is also inflated, putting teams which cant afford poor contracts in the first place into a situation where they must make a huge mistake on a likely second-tier player just to get someone formable to fill a hole and make a run. Apologists like to point to signings such as Zito or the first A-Rod deal, but they neglect to mention that those astronomical deals were offered so the respective teams could sign a player out from under the NY (and other huge spending) clubs.
Anyway, as far as the teams spending revenue money, how do you know they don’t? Its always interesting when people point to a teams payroll and say something like “they only spent so&so amount this year”. Do these people somehow think front offices, coaches, scouting, international scouting, player development and countless other aspects don’t cost the teams money? The Marlins for instance take their money and reinvest it into scouting and development – a plan which has worked quite well for them. The Royals blew a huge chunk (if not all) of their revenue sharing on contracts like Meche and Guillen (in 2007, David Glass was actually criticized by the other GMs for spending his share on FA guys like Meche, Riske and Dotel). Other teams have used the cash to take risks on high-cost DPs or international signings they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to. I wont tell you that every penny of revenue sharing has gone into a clubs, but I will tell you it is spent much, much, much, much more then some people try to make it seem.
And that is really where the difference between huge spenders and average teams come in – scouting and development. Teams like the RedSox and Yankees can pour money into both the big league and minor league systems. Other teams cant. Take for instance the Cubs – they look like a big spender based off their high salary ranking, but they spend a relatively small amount on other aspects. Now when MacPhail was in charge, he did. But since Hendry took over, very little has been spent in these areas.
“There’s no difference between re-signing your own free agent and signing one away from another team? I always sorta thought there was.”
And you cant really believe that, can you? When a players contract is up, he is no longer property of any team and becomes a FA. At that point he can negotiate with any team, including his previous employer. Even if he eventually signs a new deal with his old club, it doesn’t remove the fact he was unemployed for a period of time. And when a team hires an unemployed player, past contract with them or not, they are signing a free agent.
Here is a quote from the day Rivera received his 3/45 offer from the Yankees:
“Yesterday marked the first day that other teams could extend offers to Rivera, although it is unknown whether any clubs did so. Rivera’s agent, Fernando Cuza, did not return a phone call seeking comment.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/2007/11/14/2007-11-14_yankees_give_mariano_rivera_3year_45m_of.html
As you can tell, anyone was open to signing Rivera – he was unemployed, a true Free Agent in every possible meaning of the word. The Yankees of course came in with the offer he couldn’t refuse, and he signed to pitch for them once again. But that doesn’t remove the fact that it was definitely a free agent signing – there is no getting around that.
Now, an “extension” would eliminate the FA process, but an extension has to be done prior to the player being a Free Agent. Derek Jeter was technically “extended” because he had a years worth of control left when his 10 year deal was inked. That is why I didn’t list him as a Free Agent signing.
Also, not to nit-pick or anything, but to this:
“in fact, name me one team that doesn’t have 25”
Not a single team has 25 hired guns – teams only have 25 players on their normal roster, and I guarantee that at least one team-drafted or traded for player is on the staff of every big league club.
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