Cal Ripken's Legacy

[DrungoHazewood]

Adam Jones says hi. I think Nolan Ryan was throwing plenty hard. This started when you said that one of the greatest players of all time would be lucky to be average today. If you cannot admit that that was an absurd statement, then I give up.

I stand by my original comment about Wagner. He played in a league that probably wasn't the equivalent of AAA today.

[CA-ORIOLE]

I have no idea what you are talking about. Is your technique to confuse? Call them what you will..

You have no idea what you're talking about, so that's not surprising.

There are no more quality players available today then there was in say the 70's for MLB to chose from and thus should not be used as a reason to support a conclusion that players are better today.

Yeah, I'll go with my own observation, the observations of nearly everyone else and the analysis of a lot of really smart guys that say you're wrong.

I will go as far as saying that baseball players were trained better 30 years ago. In the art of playing baseball for sure. If you want to talk weight training ect. We'll there is equipment that was not available years ago, so I cannot argue that point.

Yeah, ML baseball has chosen to completely waste technology and information for 30-40 years now.

It's been a a pleasure. Please have the last word.

[NJ BIRD FAN]

I stand by my original comment about Wagner. He played in a league that probably wasn't the equivalent of AAA today.

As did Ty Cobb,Tris Speaker ect. So Cobb is like a Felix Pie in your book?

[DrungoHazewood]

As did Ty Cobb,Tris Speaker ect. So Cobb is like a Felix Pie in your book?

You can be as hyperbolic as you like but you can't change the fact that Wagner, Cobb, and Speaker played before drafts and farm systems and modern scouting and video and data and relief pitching and minorities... the idea that you could pluck them out of 1911 and insert them into today and have them be stars is laughable.

[weams]

You can be as hyperbolic as you like but you can't change the fact that Wagner, Cobb, and Speaker played before drafts and farm systems and modern scouting and video and data and relief pitching and minorities... the idea that you could pluck them out of 1911 and insert them into today and have them be stars is laughable.

Actually, Felix Pie's skill set would have played perfectly in 1922.

[NJ BIRD FAN]

You can be as hyperbolic as you like but you can't change the fact that Wagner, Cobb, and Speaker played before drafts and farm systems and modern scouting and video and data and relief pitching and minorities... the idea that you could pluck them out of 1911 and insert them into today and have them be stars is laughable.

The whole argument is laughable, as no one will ever know if Cobb, Ruth or Gibson would be a star, good, average or AAA player today. Have a good weekend sir.

[DrungoHazewood]

The whole argument is laughable, as no one will ever know if Cobb, Ruth or Gibson would be a star, good, average or AAA player today. Have a good weekend sir.

I'll say one more thing and then I'll quit. Bill James has often written that one of the biggest things that opened his eyes after starting to work on the inside with the Red Sox front office is just how fast the game changes. Things that were standard practice in 2004 are obsolete today. Every team is constantly innovating to try to beat the other 29 teams. It is like an engineering or manufacturing organization that has instituted constant process improvement as a way of life. Training and data analysis and equipment and techniques and strategies are subject to continuous optimization and applied to players, teams... everything.

The players, the human beings... they aren't radically different. But how they prepare and live and understand couldn't be much more different. Wagner learned baseball from guys who played when pitching was underhand from 45' and he didn't own a glove until he was grown up and was lucky he didn't die from typhoid at 13. Manny Machado has the benefit of a modern multi-billion dollar refined infrastructure to care and feed him.

[waroriole]

I know this is kind of a side to the whole discussion, but when discussing what player is better I like to assume that the older players would have the modern advantages. If you just take Babe Ruth as is from 1927, and drop him in MLB today, he's probably not very good. But, if he grows up with all the advantages that guys around him have, I have little doubt that he's still one of the best ever.

I would hope that is NJ Bird's point. Otherwise, I'm not at all sure what he's getting at.

[weams]

Recently I saw a graphic on the internet that showed the winning times for running the 100m from the 1896 Olympics through the 2012 Olympics. The winning time went from a little more than 12 seconds to around 9.7 seconds. Likewise, other Olympic running distances including the marathon and the mile (1500m) have gotten considerably faster over the history of the Olympics. I believe it's safe to conclude that athletes generally run faster today than 80-120 years ago.

To accept the above argument would suggest that baseball players of 2012 run faster than baseball players of 1920.

Let's set as a condition of this discussion that the skills of baseball (hitting, catching, throwing) are unchanged between 2012 and 1920 with the only difference being that the 2012 players run faster. If this were true, then you'd expect that something that is significantly dependent on running speed, like the infield hit, would be a modern phenomena and something that has increased as players have become faster.

But baseball history shows that the infield hit has always been a significant part of the game. Therefore, other baseball skills had to be of a lower quality in 1920 in order to compensate for the slower running speed. Perhaps if you could put the Molina brothers in a time machine to 1920, they might be considered speedy.

So by this reasoning, I expect that players in 1920 threw the ball slower and covered less ground fielding. And perhaps by extension you can assume that players couldn't hit the ball as far either.

An internet blog theory

[crawjo]

I don't think baseball is the equivalent of track, where you can just objectively measure the improvement over time. Hitting is about timing and pitching is about upsetting timing, and I think that smart and gifted players could be successful in many different eras. The numbers wouldn't be the same, but I think if you put Wagner in the big leagues today, the Wagner of his prime, he'd do fine.

[weams]

A good craftsman never blames his tools. But I bet it was easier to get a hit when the defenders were wearing these.

[waroriole]

A good craftsman never blames his tools. But I bet it was easier to get a hit when the defenders were wearing these.

That would be why people don't hit .400 anymore.

[weams]

That would be why people don't hit .400 anymore.

Might be a reason.

[CA-ORIOLE]

Might be a reason.

Wee Willie Keeler would laugh at the shift.

[OFFNY]

Adam Jones says hi. I think Nolan Ryan was throwing plenty hard. This started when you said that one of the greatest players of all time would be lucky to be average today. If you cannot admit that that was an absurd statement, then I give up.

Yes, he was.

I believe that J.R. Richard threw even harder than Ryan did before his tragic stroke.