Anderson vs. Jones

[DrungoHazewood]

16 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

Fair enough, yet IIRC their WARs have been about the same.

I guess it wasn't clearly defined in the OP, but are we talking about having one of these guys at their peak for a whole season or two?  Or their career.           

It matters because Jones has had a normal career arc while Anderson had this crazy bifurcated thing where he was Joey Rickard for five years then was Willie Mays for a year then he was like Paul Molitor or something for a while.

[Emory Eagle]

Perhaps less relevant to the quantitative analysis, but there's no question Brady had (still has) superior sideburns.  Of course, even Brady's pale in comparison to Eddie Murray's mutton chops. Would love to see Jones go for that look.

[Ohfan67]

3 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Adam had the advantage of not having almost 1300 PAs of a .619 OPS to start his career.  At the age of 27 Brady hit .230 with 2 homers and 12 steals.  By the age Anderson established himself as a good major leaguer Jones had appeared in multiple AS games, had MVP votes, had almost 4000 PAs as a good MLB CFer.

Unfortunately the Hangout doesn't have a syringe emoji. 

 

Edit: In retrospect, this joke sounds far meaner than I meant it. I have a knack for this, unfortunately. 

[Ohfan67]

46 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

Fair enough, yet IIRC their WARs have been about the same.

I guess it wasn't clearly defined in the OP, but are we talking about having one of these guys at their peak for a whole season or two?  Or their career.           

I think it's fun to consider both options. 

[Moose Milligan]

5 minutes ago, Ohfan67 said:

Unfortunately the Hangout doesn't have a syringe emoji. 

That's not really fair to Brady. If he juiced for the year he popped off for 50 homers, he should have kept doing it.  IIRC, he went right back to a mid 20 homer season the next year.  

[Frobby]

8 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

That's not really fair to Brady. If he juiced for the year he popped off for 50 homers, he should have kept doing it.  IIRC, he went right back to a mid 20 homer season the next year.  

Yes, and it was a contract year, so he would have had every incentive to have another big HR season.   

We’ll never really know.

[Finisher]

.362 OBP versus .317.

[Ohfan67]

1 hour ago, Moose Milligan said:

That's not really fair to Brady. If he juiced for the year he popped off for 50 homers, he should have kept doing it.  IIRC, he went right back to a mid 20 homer season the next year.  

You don't get what I'm saying. I'm suggesting that he juiced from 1991/1992 until late in his career. I'm not specifically referencing the 50 homer year. He blossomed from a guy with a .650ish OPS in 1,600 at bats to an all start at age 28 and then sustained performance well into his 30's. It could have been all Brady, but given what we now know about the '90's I strongly suspect that he was using PED's. I think the 50 homers was what it was...a freak outlier, but an outlier that occurred in the steroid era.  I do not mean this post or my others to be an assault on Brady. I was and am a fan. I HOPE he didn't use PED's. But we know enough about the number of players who were using during that time frame and the effects of using for some on peak performance and extended playing time to make Brady's career very, very suspicious. I don't think he's a bad person or anything like that. I'm just admitting to myself that his career arc is very, very suspicious and sharing that with you. Still a fan. I loved his play in LF, loved his on base skills, etc. But the 90's were what they were. In the 90's and first decade of 2000's I was holier than thou and very judgmental about PED's. I've mellowed and realized it just was what it was. If I had been a MLB player trying to make it and 80% of the clubhouse was using and some were showing huge improvement because of it, then I probably would have done it. I didn't think that way ten or 15 or more years ago, but I'm a little more realistic now. He was still a fun ball player and I loved screaming my brains out for him at Camden Yards. If he did use, then I don't think any less of him today. I would have years ago out of sanctimonious immaturity/some need to make baseball holier or something, but not now.

 

p.s. But the PED does create difficulty for all of these comparisons. That was definitely a live ball era, but OPS+ and other scaled stats help remove some of that variation. 

[DrungoHazewood]

17 hours ago, Moose Milligan said:

That's not really fair to Brady. If he juiced for the year he popped off for 50 homers, he should have kept doing it.  IIRC, he went right back to a mid 20 homer season the next year.  

That's one of the enduring mysteries of Oriole baseball.  Did he or didn't he, and if he did why did he stop?  Frobby's contract year thesis has some merit.

Maybe one day he'll write a tell-all book that will satisfy our curiosities before ending up in the electronic version of the 2/$5 bin three weeks later.

[DrungoHazewood]

16 hours ago, Finisher said:

.362 OBP versus .317.

Rick Dempsey had a higher OBP than Luis Aparicio.

[DrungoHazewood]

16 hours ago, Ohfan67 said:

You don't get what I'm saying. I'm suggesting that he juiced from 1991/1992 until late in his career. I'm not specifically referencing the 50 homer year. He blossomed from a guy with a .650ish OPS in 1,600 at bats to an all start at age 28 and then sustained performance well into his 30's. It could have been all Brady, but given what we now know about the '90's I strongly suspect that he was using PED's. I think the 50 homers was what it was...a freak outlier, but an outlier that occurred in the steroid era.  I do not mean this post or my others to be an assault on Brady. I was and am a fan. I HOPE he didn't use PED's. But we know enough about the number of players who were using during that time frame and the effects of using for some on peak performance and extended playing time to make Brady's career very, very suspicious. I don't think he's a bad person or anything like that. I'm just admitting to myself that his career arc is very, very suspicious and sharing that with you. Still a fan. I loved his play in LF, loved his on base skills, etc. But the 90's were what they were. In the 90's and first decade of 2000's I was holier than thou and very judgmental about PED's. I've mellowed and realized it just was what it was. If I had been a MLB player trying to make it and 80% of the clubhouse was using and some were showing huge improvement because of it, then I probably would have done it. I didn't think that way ten or 15 or more years ago, but I'm a little more realistic now. He was still a fun ball player and I loved screaming my brains out for him at Camden Yards. If he did use, then I don't think any less of him today. I would have years ago out of sanctimonious immaturity/some need to make baseball holier or something, but not now.

 

p.s. But the PED does create difficulty for all of these comparisons. That was definitely a live ball era, but OPS+ and other scaled stats help remove some of that variation. 

I think you have to consider the idea that anyone from circa 1955 to today used or is using some kind of PED that is now illegal by either the law or by baseball rules.  But also know that unless someone admits or fails a test that we just don't know, and certainly don't have anything beyond pretty wild speculation what the impact of those drugs were/are on any individual. 

I think it's entirely possible that Raffy was set up and PEDs had no impact on his career besides the end-stage implosion from the scandal.  But I'm also open to the idea that he would have been Pete O'Brien without drugs.

[Ohfan67]

7 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I think you have to consider the idea that anyone from circa 1955 to today used or is using some kind of PED that is now illegal by either the law or by baseball rules.  But also know that unless someone admits or fails a test that we just don't know, and certainly don't have anything beyond pretty wild speculation what the impact of those drugs were/are on any individual. 

I think it's entirely possible that Raffy was set up and PEDs had no impact on his career besides the end-stage implosion from the scandal.  But I'm also open to the idea that he would have been Pete O'Brien without drugs.

There’s overwhelming evidence that what happened in the 90s in baseball was unprecedented and not comparable to what happened  in 1955. I’m pretty confident that Mickey Mantle didn’t have a personal team of biochemists working for him. 

[Ohfan67]

Btw I apologize for derailing this fun thread. I think Jones versus Anderson is a very fun topic. I didn’t mean to turn this into the 14,000,000th OH argument about PEDs. I kind of meant to do the opposite and just say Brady played in a “live ball” era that was what it was. 

[DrungoHazewood]

16 minutes ago, Ohfan67 said:

There’s overwhelming evidence that what happened in the 90s in baseball was unprecedented and not comparable to what happened  in 1955. I’m pretty confident that Mickey Mantle didn’t have a personal team of biochemists working for him. 

Sure.  But Tom House, Bill Lee, etc have said there were people who'd take anything they were given in that era.  It's plausible that half a gallon of 1963 horse steroids might have outsized effects in the context of 160 pound Ray Oyler shortstops and most people not taking anything.

[Ohfan67]

55 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Sure.  But Tom House, Bill Lee, etc have said there were people who'd take anything they were given in that era.  It's plausible that half a gallon of 1963 horse steroids might have outsized effects in the context of 160 pound Ray Oyler shortstops and most people not taking anything.

What are we disagreeing about? The quality, safety, sophistication of programs to use them, etc, and the evalability of those things in the 90s was obviously unmatched to that point.