Ty Cobb discussion

[Bill Burgess]

Looks to me as if those who you rank over Ty are all longevity guys. Perhaps your system gives better credit to their declines. That is possible, but they also did not rise as high in their peaks. Except Ruth/Bonds.

It also takes no note of essential intangibles in winning games. Do you feel that a stat system should assist & guide evaluations or actually decide matters.

Bill

[westsidegrounds]

Peak value, and ONLY peak value! sez I

In terms of "The Greatest Player Ever" peak value AND career value are equally important. There are too many players that had had high peak AND career values. How can a player be considered the greatest if other players had higher "career value"? I believe that Cobb's poor performace after age 32 disqualifies him as being considered "The Greatest Player Ever".

Well that just doesn't make any sense at all.

Let's take "my" ideal Ty Cobb, accumulating 150 Black Ink points over say 10 seasons, and "your" ideal Ty Cobb,spreading those 150 BI points evenly over say 20 years. Are you saying your Cobb, chugging along at a (still respectable) avg. of 7.5 BI points a year is more valuable - "better" - than the one who's piling up 15 points a year?

Or are you saying "yeah, 150 isn't bad, but I'm marking him down for not keeping it up for another 10 years & getting 300 points."

Baseball is only played one season at a time. There's been teams that had the best W/L in baseball over a period of X years, with no World Championships or even pennants in some cases to show for it - would you rather your team was like that, or would you rather see your team win a WS?

[leecemark]

--I think the argument is not that spreading your achievements over 20 years is better than 15. The argument is that to be the best you need a monster peak, as good as or at least in the ball park with Cobb's, and you need to remain an elite player for a long time.

[Bill Burgess]

Adam,

"I believe that Cobb's poor performace after age 32 disqualifies him as being considered "The Greatest Player Ever".

I have posted 4 posts to address your concerns as to Ty's "poor" decline phase. I wonder if I have covered the material well enough to alleviate your concerns?

Yes, Ty dominated his era from the age of 20-32, and was only a top 5 player from the age of 32-41. I tried to show in my post 14 that he didn't fall apart quite as much as the cynics would have us believe, just couldn't dominate his younger rivals after 32.

But I'd think that a fair-minded judge would be hard pressed to name too many 1920's players who exceeded Ty's productivity. I could nominate Ruth, Hornsby, Heilmann, Sisler initially. Collins, Speaker, Wheat were about par with Ty, and there was a bunch who arrived by '27. But for the entire decade? Who can you name who was better overall than Ty, by the numbers?

So, do you still maintain your premise, that Cobb's "decline" eliminates him from the "Best Ever" category? Did my post 14 have any mitigating influence on your assessments of Ty's decline? Wagner also faltered in his level after 1909. He had 8 seasons as an aging superstar, where he was a good top 5 player but less than the super dominator of old. Wouldn't you say? BTW - Is Honus your "Best Ever" player of choice?

Ty trails only Babe in "Black Ink", 161-150, but leads all players in "Grey Ink", 417. Ruth has 340 grey Ink. So Ty leads the world in combined "Ink".

Bill Burgess

[csh19792001]

Many many changes since then.

Six players ahead of Cobb now:

Babe Ruth (364 Wins)
Willie Mays (298 Wins)
Ted Williams (296 Wins)
Hank Aaron (295.3 Wins)
Barry Bonds (294.7 Wins)
Stan Musial (286 Wins)
Ty Cobb (278 Wins)

Bonds? We know how he "earned" his place on this list, and the requisite records he garnered. Just like Ben Johnson, whose gold medals were stripped by a (thankfully) more scrupulous and vigilant Olympic Committee, Bonds' records are bogus. Since his rate stats wouldn't be even close had he not hooked up with BALCO (see his pre 2001 career figures), his place on this alltime list is predicated completely on steroids.

If Ted Williams ends up ahead of Cobb in terms of overall player value, the system must be weighted way too heavily towards only what happens in the batter's box. You want to make the case he was a better hitter, I can certainly see that- but not a greater/more valuable player. No career value metric I know of would concur, either- not WARP3 (even with a steep timeline adjustment Cobb comes out way ahead). Same with Win Shares and TPR.

I can see a strong case for Mays or Ruth being the greatest ever, but not anybody else on that list. Nobody else was besides those three was as brillant, had as much impact, or was as great for as long- and I think almost everyone here would agree with me in that assessment.

[csh19792001]

Baseball is only played one season at a time. There's been teams that had the best W/L in baseball over a period of X years, with no World Championships or even pennants in some cases to show for it - would you rather your team was like that, or would you rather see your team win a WS?

So Ted Williams and Barry Bonds (even with his roids) must never have been that valuable? The problem with the "single season" premise is that it is used against certain players, and not others. And looking at team championships is completely unfair.

Win Shares, TRP, WARP3- you name it- Bonds (of late) has had three of the most valuable (statistical) seasons in baseball history, and even with THREE rounds of playoffs and the wildcard (instead of 2 teams out of 16 making the World Series and the rest going home), his teams haven't won a ring in a 20 year big league career. We can blame Bonds for being a cheat, but can we blame him for the quality of the teams behind him? I don't think one can hold the championships measure against Bonds, Williams, or Cobb.

[SABR Matt]

Prior to the 2001 season Barry Bonds had scored 206.35 Wins Created by PCA. Had his career ended right there he'd be ahead of Nap LaJoie and Pete Rose and right behind Jimmy Foxx, Al Kaline and Rogers Hornsby in 20th place all time.

But without steroids it is not fair to assume his career would have simply stopped. He was still a great player in 1999 and 2000...had he continued into a normal decline he probably would have scored another 25-40 wins in the ensuing 4 years and retired right about now.

add even 25 wins to his total and he'd have 231 wins by PCA which would rank him immediately behind Lou Gehrig in 13th place all time.

Claiming Bonds achieved nothing worthy of merit without steroids is a flat out LIE and anyone who says so displays sweeping ignorance.

[csh19792001]

Well that just doesn't make any sense at all.

Let's take "my" ideal Ty Cobb, accumulating 150 Black Ink points over say 10 seasons, and "your" ideal Ty Cobb,spreading those 150 BI points evenly over say 20 years. Are you saying your Cobb, chugging along at a (still respectable) avg. of 7.5 BI points a year is more valuable - "better" - than the one who's piling up 15 points a year?

Westside-
As to the "black ink" means of discrediting Cobb as an old player... On page 739 of his New Historical Baseball Abstract, Bill James states that Ty Cobb was the second greatest old center fielder in baseball history (age 33 or later), behind only Willie Mays. I'll remind everyone that the "ink tests" are HIS creation.

The point is that one does not necessarily have to lead the league in some arbitrarily chosen statistics to be a great (and very valuable) player. I don't have to tell you about Tris Speaker's resume (almost universally regarded as one of top three CFers ever, and arguably the greatest fielding CF ever)- but how great is his black ink score, playing in the shadow of Cobb for over a decade? How about Eddie Collins, regarded by many as the greatest second baseman ever (same shadow)? Speaker ends up ranked 46th alltime in this stat, Collins 110th. Were both players NOT great/outstanding from 1909-19? Obviously they were, but you would never know it judging from black ink.

Black ink is clearly mostly a function of luck; not so much personal greatness-but how great the stars are around you. Rafael Palmeiro has 551 homeruns and almost 2000 runs created over the course of his career. He hit 39 or more homeruns every year from 1995 to 2003- and never led once. Raffy's black ink score, despite his outstanding offensive value, ranks 263rd alltime, for his career. Does 263rd alltime for Palmeiro seem at all accurate of his value at the plate?

Bonds, with 703 homeruns, has led the league in homeruns ONCE in 19 years- put this down to chance and bad luck. And despite the 4 years of complete other wordly numbers, somehow he's only managed to climb to 12th alltime in black ink.

And aren't the ink tests entirely arbitrary, anyway?

Four Points for home runs, runs batted in or batting average
Three Points for runs scored, hits or slugging percentage
Two Points for doubles, walks or stolen bases
One Point for games, at bats or triples

Seems like this is just the trifling pet statistic of somebody (Bill James) who wanted to create a hodgepodge stat just for the fun of it one day, to see who came out ahead. I don't see the validity here at all. I really doubt James intended this as a system to rank players by, as people have tried to do. If James intended it as such, I would think the rankings it yielded would demonstate a modicum of external consistency (overall) with Win Shares- but it doesn't; the results are all over the place.

There are a ton of problems with Black Ink.. just a few notables here:

-RBI and runs are largely team dependent, and position in the lineup dependent.

-Why are at bats worth one point? Omar Moreno gets extra credit there, despite making more outs than anyone in history over a few seasons, obviously being detrimental to the success of his teams.

-Why are triples worth LESS than doubles? Why are walks worth MORE than triples? Why are stolen bases worth more than triples? Why the hell are games played worth the same as triples?

-Where is leading in OBP here- it isn't worth anything?

Most importantly- this amalgam doesn't incorporate fielding, and only part of baserunning (steals). So it truly skews the reality of how great players were by drastically overrepresenting one part of the game. Willie Mays ends up 20th alltime in black ink, behind (most notably) Ross Barnes, Chuck Klein, and Pete Rose.

Clearly not a valid or reliable measure of value, ergo, it has no place in a discussion of overall player value.

[SABR Matt]

One other thing of note here...I'm a sabermetrician...it is not my place to make subjective judgments about the players and monkey with the rankings and ratings...I report what actually happened on the field...like it or not, Barry Bonds produced some truly incredible value from 2001-2004...and more importantly...a lot of his improvmenet came from a sudden increase in his walk rate...and while a lot of those walks are intentional (and PCA gives a hitter less credit for being intentionally walked than for walking on his own), steroids can't give you a better batting eye...steroids can't make you strike ou less...steroids can't even raise your batting average...all they do is keep you healthier in the short term, make it easier to recover from minor injuries, and give you a little more strength.

[leecemark]

--James never intended the ink tests to be used in rating players. The system is weighted toward the stats Hall of fame voters have traditionally favored. It was part of a system to see who was likely to make the Hall not who was deserving. That is true of the Hall Standards and Monitors as well.

[csh19792001]

Add even 25 wins to his total and he'd have 231 wins by PCA which would rank him immediately behind Lou Gehrig in 13th place all time.

Claiming Bonds achieved nothing worthy of merit without steroids is a flat out LIE and anyone who says so displays sweeping ignorance.

Actually, I'll agree Bonds was the best player during the 90's, and had put together an outstanding career- but would he be top 5 in career evaluation metrics without the last 4 MONSTER years? Obviously not. We beat this to death months ago, and I'll post the links to the threads if you'd like, but you don't need them.

Why? Because we agree.

Mark (leecemark), myself, and many others have relegated Bonds to where he rightfully belongs amongst the alltime eschelon. Namely, between 10th and 15th alltime, (not coincidentally, where PCA would rank him). Subjunctively speaking, this is the only fair evaluation. And it should be noted that this is in spite of the fact that Mark was one of the biggest Bonds supporters through this whole sad and embarrassing saga.

[SABR Matt]

By the way...my ranking of Ted Williams ahead of Cobb is partially because Williams was a SIGNIFICANTLY better hitter...not just slightly so...he was WAY more productive than Cobb...in fact he was the most talented hitter in baseball history...more talented even than Ruth.

And partly because Ty Cobb was not the genius fielder in center that people have in the past led me to believe...he was slightly above average for his position...Ted Williams was pretty weak in the field...but...this system of mine give more weight to fielding than any other...ANY other...I'm actually out pretty far on a limb claiming fielding as worth as much as I believe it to be...at least in the eyes of other sabermetricians. Which means I don't think my rankings are because "I focus too heavily on what goes on at the plate"...I think previous systems have focused not nearly enough on what goes on in great seasons...PCA is the first analytical tool to introduce a supermargin...the first system to credit players for having great peak seasons. Ty Cobb did clear the supermargin a number of times obviously, but Ted Williams completely DESTROYED the supermargin on several occasions...it says something about how strongly I favor peak performance that Williams got hwere he got in my rankings while missing 5 seasons to war.

[SABR Matt]

If you wish to rank Bonds between 10th and 15th...you're free to do so...I report the facts and nothing but the facts...Bonds won 88.1 games for the Giants in the last four seasons...how he did so is not my concern.

[leecemark]

--Matt, you have Williams that high without giving him any credit for years lost to military service?

[csh19792001]

One other thing of note here...I'm a sabermetrician...it is not my place to make subjective judgments about the players and monkey with the rankings and ratings...I report what actually happened on the field...

If steroids were not a serious threat to the validity and credibility of records and integrity of the games played, then no drug policies would be in place in any professional sports.

I understand your position, but understand that most of us cannot (and will not) turn a blind eye and deaf ear to everything that goes on in the world, which entails taking the numbers completely out of the context which allowed them to happen. Illegal performance enhancing drugs is one such context/circumstance.