Earlier this week, I was bemoaning the dearth of history and sabermetric articles posted lately. Well, seeing how I have keys, I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't seek out and post some myself. I realize that this stuff is suited better for the offseason, but it's the type of material that keeps me coming here.

Very well done, DSG. Stick Ruth at the top of that list, and it's a great candidate for the 11 best hitters in history.

I like the list to some extent. I like some of his regression from part one. I don't know about the chosen statistic on which to rely, but maybe I just don't understand it. Does measuring SLG matter more? I think we see a larger effect on SLG (or purpotedly) from "bigger and stronger" players, rather than OBA.

Just a thought - I'd like to see Part 1 done with a different metric.

Navin, wOBA is not OBA at all.

Weighted On-Base Average

I'm a little surprised that Ruth doesn't make the list. Did I miss a point where he's disqualified?

Other than that, the numbers pass the smell test. 20 year careers should be possible if the players at the end of the career are 5-10% better than at the beginning, but not 30% as some adjustments put it.

I was a little surprised that periods known for dramatically different quality don't show much of a distinction on the graph. The NL vs AL in the '50s and '60s, for example, or both leagues during WWII. I'm also a little surprised that everything looks like such a smooth exponential, since a systematic year-to-year bias will give you an exponential.

Nate Silver on BP unfiltered questions David's use of regression - that it is too strong and is understating the league changes.

He doesn't provide any facts, just that some of the conclusions (union league only 10% weaker than NL, WWII only 5% weaker) don't seem right to him.

I react the same way when told that Honus Wagner playing today would be a replacement level hitter, I just don't buy it.

But Nate brings up an interesting point. DSG, if you read this could you give us some details on how you did the regression?

Just a thought - I'd like to see Part 1 done with a different metric.

The metric used is just linear weights runs scaled to look like an on-base average. There's very little real difference in the hitting metrics, I can almost certainly assure you that with this large a sample of players you could use RC/G or OPS+, and the conslusions would be the same.

You know what's dumb? Me. Well, I knew that (wOBA) once upon a time, then I read it wrong and can't remember why it sounds familiar but wrong. Old age is hell.

AROM, how's the bevent skills? I have an idea.

I'm a little surprised that Ruth doesn't make the list. Did I miss a point where he's disqualified?

Something to do with David's code and removing pitchers from his hitters. I don't understand why he didn't take the time to add Ruth back in for his top 10 hitters list though. I mean, its not like there's anyone else you have to do that for, and it is Babe Ruth.

AROM, how's the bevent skills? I have an idea.

Below replacement level. One thing I'd like to learn but have not had the time for. Blame work and the family.

On second glance, I notice that the nadir of play during WWII regressed league quality all the way back to... the 1936 season. Now, WWII is very hard because there was so much turnover, but from reading contemporary accounts, I believe the change was much larger than that.

I react the same way when told that Honus Wagner playing today would be a replacement level hitter, I just don't buy it.

It's funny - I have the opposite reaction. From an intuitive perspective, it seems very unlikely to me that Honus Wagner would be a major league caliber player today.

Of course, that's not what's being measured here exactly, so looking past the surface, it's not shocking that the stars of days gone by fare reasonably well.

It's an interesting overview. I think a close look at the methods used to come up with this conclusion would create an interesting discussion, as well, but this was nice to read.

It's funny - I have the opposite reaction. From an intuitive perspective, it seems very unlikely to me that Honus Wagner would be a major league caliber player today.

I recommend the Wagner section of the 2nd edition of the Historical Baseball Abstract. If not the best, its one of his very best player comments in that book - the opposite of his famous one-word on Jeff Bagwell.

Wagner was big and strong enough (5'11, 200) to fit in with modern day ballplayers, roughly the same size as Gary Sheffield. He was fast enough to be the best defender at his position, even though the typical ss back then was closer to 5'7, 150. His arm was as strong as any infielder in the game today, which we have evidence of in long toss contests.

Size, speed, strength. What about Wagner would not be major league caliber? As far as I know there's no reason why players today have any better or worse reaction/coordination than players of the past, and Wagner was cleary the best among his contemporaries.

I think the deadball era really hurts Wagner's record. It prevented him from dominating his competition the way he would have had he played in the 20's or so. What I mean is that while Wagner might have hit 7 homers per year, his contemporaries hit 3, probably inside the parkers. But if he had played with the live ball, he might have hit 25-30, but the 150 lb. shortstops are still only going to hit 3.

One more thing to look at in asking what oldtimers would hit today:

Are we talking about time travel or cloning?

Time travel: Go back to 1906, kidnap Wagner, and drop him off in PNC park
Cloning: Find Wagner DNA, clone him in 1980, raise him during the Reagan-Bush-Clinton years, and see how he hits today.

With a guy like Johnny Evers, I don't think you could time travel him at 125 pounds and get a ballplayer. But with cloning, me might grow up to be Craig Counsell or David Eckstein.

With Wagner, it doesn't matter. Get him to PNC, bench Jack Wilson, and bat him 3rd.

It's funny - I have the opposite reaction. From an intuitive perspective, it seems very unlikely to me that Honus Wagner would be a major league caliber player today.

what's really funny is that everyone seems to have an "intuitive" response that's different.

personally I think that quality of play has risen over time, not as much Davenport or Silver think it has- Gassko's overall numbers look about right- but he looks way off when looking at specific instances such as WWII- 50% of MLbers and 75% of minor leaguers were in the military- there was just no way the decline in quality was only 5%.

Honus Wagner was, for 10+ years, the best player in baseball, the most (or second most) popular sport in a country with a population of 80,000,000. [A man who was also by all reports ahead of his time with respect to training and conditioning) To say that he would not be even MLB caliber today seems a bit absurd.

What's more: a competition curve that would render Wagner a mediocre AAA player in 2007 is so steep that almost no one should be able to have a 20 year career and mid 30 perfomrmance peaks should be rarer than they are.

personally I think that quality of play has risen over time, not as much Davenport or Silver think it has- Gassko's overall numbers look about right- but he looks way off when looking at specific instances such as WWII- 50% of MLbers and 75% of minor leaguers were in the military- there was just no way the decline in quality was only 5%.

That's my take, too. I think he's got the general trendline just about right, but I suspect that there's been more short-term variation around it than he indicates.

Time travel: Go back to 1906, kidnap Wagner, and drop him off in PNC park
Cloning: Find Wagner DNA, clone him in 1980, raise him during the Reagan-Bush-Clinton years, and see how he hits today.

Hey! Great idea!

This is really interesting. I agree with JPWF13 and Steve that the results here seem about right in general. Two minor quibbles:

1. I'm not convinced that his way of addressing the age-v-competition issue really addresses it. That said, I certainly don't have a better idea; it's one of those issues where you tend to end up having to assume your answer, and at least he addressed it.

2. The differences between the two leagues look smaller than I would have expected. Maybe it's the scale of the graphs, but my sense, both intuitively and from having looked at this a little bit several years ago (not very successfully, so take this for what it's worth), was that, for example, the difference between the AL and NL in the 1950s was vast. I'm not sure why his method would work across time but not across leagues - if anything it should work better across leagues, because the age issue becomes less relevant - but those numbers just don't "feel" as right to me. Although, again, it could just be the scale of the graphs making the leagues look closer than they actually were.

But this is really, really interesting work and very nicely done.

On second glance, I notice that the nadir of play during WWII regressed league quality all the way back to... the 1936 season. Now, WWII is very hard because there was so much turnover, but from reading contemporary accounts, I believe the change was much larger than that.

The weird thing I see about that is how quality of play moved up right after the war. It had been rising up steadily at a certain rate every year. Based on where it's at in 1941 and how it's going up, it looks like it should reach 90% around the early 1950s. Not only does league qulity falter during the war, but it looks like it takes a few years after the war to catch up to where it had been in 1941. And then, despite integration, the pace doesn't rise up. If you trace the line from 1941-onward, you'll constantly be ahead of where it ends up, not just from 1942-5.

Honus Wagner was, for 10+ years, the best player in baseball, the most (or second most) popular sport in a country with a population of 80,000,000. [A man who was also by all reports ahead of his time with respect to training and conditioning) To say that he would not be even MLB caliber today seems a bit absurd.

Then there's a question of how league wide changes in quality affect individuals. There's a theory that the best players can't really take as much advantage from watered down competition as others. (put Barry Bonds circa 2004 in a league only half as good, and there's no way he doubles his OBP of .609).

personally I think that quality of play has risen over time, not as much Davenport or Silver think it has- Gassko's overall numbers look about right- but he looks way off when looking at specific instances such as WWII- 50% of MLbers and 75% of minor leaguers were in the military- there was just no way the decline in quality was only 5%.

Thought. The method he uses compares performance in Y1 to performance in Y2. How large of a sample size is there from year to year during the WWII years? Also, which players really had performance outliers over that time, due to the war effect? The last is an honest question. Newhouser occurs to me. Who else?

Then there's a question of how league wide changes in quality affect individuals. There's a theory that the best players can't really take as much advantage from watered down competition as others. (put Barry Bonds circa 2004 in a league only half as good, and there's no way he doubles his OBP of .609).

This is a good point. Baseball statistics aren't really linear - they're only approximately linear locally. Over just a few years this probably isn't a big deal, but over 100 years it could matter a lot.

"Not only does league qulity falter during the war, but it looks like it takes a few years after the war to catch up to where it had been in 1941. And then, despite integration, the pace doesn't rise up. If you trace the line from 1941-onward, you'll constantly be ahead of where it ends up, not just from 1942-5."

I think this part makes a lot of sense. The war put a pretty severe hit on the 18-25 population of the country. Not just the deaths, but he maimings, and the lack of development time. Then in the early 50s you have the rise of the NFL, NBA and Korea, not to mention that the 18 year olds of 1942-45 would now be in their primes (but a not insignificant % of them are dead or maimed). It doesn't surprise me at all that it took MLB awhile to catch up to 1941, even with integration.

Honus Wagner was, for 10+ years, the best player in baseball, the most (or second most) popular sport in a country with a population of 80,000,000. [A man who was also by all reports ahead of his time with respect to training and conditioning) To say that he would not be even MLB caliber today seems a bit absurd.

The fastest male swimmers in the world fifty years ago would lose badly in a high school girls swim meet today. In a 200M race for instance, they would get beaten by 25 seconds+ (20%).

Now baseball is not swimming, so I don't think Wagner would be 20% worse than high school girls at baseball, but in every sport where we have objective measures of human performance, people have gotten better by leaps and bounds. Baseball is more skill oriented than other sports (as opposed to sheet athleticism), so the curve is likely smaller, but it is still there. If we're doing the time travel game, and Wagner is being teleported from 1900 to play in today's game, I'd bet against him being an above replacement level talent in the majors. I wouldn't be surprised if he were unable to play college ball.

Just a guess of course.

What's more: a competition curve that would render Wagner a mediocre AAA player in 2007 is so steep that almost no one should be able to have a 20 year career and mid 30 perfomrmance peaks should be rarer than they are.

Players' skills are not constant throughout their careers. It is possible, and indeed likely, that the players who have 20 year careers improve their skillsets as time goes on. They adapt to the changing environments, take advantage of superior nutrition and training, in addition to simply honing their skills.

How much of that increase is due to improvements in coaching and technique (things Wagner would have access to if you teleported him) and how much is do to nutrition and 'survival of the fittest', if you will?

And as you said, baseball isn't swimming or running a race. That's why big fat guys like Cecil Fielder are among those that are good at it. If anything the game demanded speed much more in Wagner's day than it does now.

what's really funny is that everyone seems to have an "intuitive" response that's different.

Gassko's overall numbers look about right- but he looks way off when looking at specific instances such as WWII- 50% of MLbers and 75% of minor leaguers were in the military- there was just no way the decline in quality was only 5%.

Like many in this thread, I agree with both of these points. They really serve to illustrate why Silver's response is unfair.

First, Silver's "c'mon-guys-use-your-common-sense" argument doesn't work all that well when our intutions about league quality are so different. On top of that, I'm not sure I can "intuit" whether massive instutitional changes or historical events would lead to a 5% decline in the quality of play or a 15% decline.

Second, Silver's argument that since Gassko is wrong about the specifics he must be wrong about the whole is pretty unfair. Gassko's using regression! It seems likely that, as a result, his graphs might understate specific changes in league quality. But considering that Gassko was attempting to answer questions about longterm trends and not year to year variation, trying to invalidate the entire study on the basis of some putatively wacky y-t-y results strikes me as pretty cheap.

To me it seems as if the issues really are ones that Silver didn't address. 1) Is regression appropriate? 2) If so, was Gassko's methodology appropriate in applying regression? Silver seems to concede that regression is appropriate, though he sort of buries it. There's no way really of knowing whether Gassko's methodology was appropriate.

How much of that increase is due to improvements in coaching and technique (things Wagner would have access to if you teleported him) and how much is do to nutrition and 'survival of the fittest', if you will?

Again, purely speculatively, but if we teleport Wagner and give him say, six months, to acclimate himself, I think he's likely to be at least a good major league player. The nutrition element is probably going to be a smaller one in his case, since as pointed out, he took very good care of himself already. On the other hand, he didn't have the benefit of coming up against other top talent, so his skills have probably still not been honed as much as they would have been if he'd come up today, so I don't think he'd be a star.

We're way far afield from where I can speak with any degree of confidence of course.

Players' skills are not constant throughout their careers. It is possible, and indeed likely, that the players who have 20 year careers improve their skillsets as time goes on. They adapt to the changing environments, take advantage of superior nutrition and training, in addition to simply honing their skills.

And because players are taking continuing advantage of "the changing environments, superior nutrition and training, etc." over time, the technique being used here - comparing the same player to different leagues over time - will answer the question of how Honus Wagner would do had he been born in, say, 1980, as opposed to the question of how 1908 Honus Wagner would do if he were teleported to 2007.

And because players are taking continuing advantage of "the changing environments, superior nutrition and training, etc." over time, the technique being used here - comparing the same player to different leagues over time - will answer the question of how Honus Wagner would do had he been born in, say, 1980, as opposed to the question of how 1908 Honus Wagner would do if he were teleported to 2007.

Well, it will certainly help to get at that question a whole lot more than it will at the "teleported directly to 2007" question. It's just a different question - probably a more interesting one.

There's a theory that the best players can't really take as much advantage from watered down competition as others. (put Barry Bonds circa 2004 in a league only half as good, and there's no way he doubles his OBP of .609).

Yes, that's one problem. I have tried to describe before that the bounds of baseball performance are asymptotic, not linear.

If we're doing the time travel game, and Wagner is being teleported from 1900 to play in today's game, I'd bet against him being an above replacement level talent in the majors. I wouldn't be surprised if he were unable to play college ball.

I strongly disagree. Perhaps it's just a matter of how we define "teleported," because so much of what constitutes "quality of play" isn't just the innate skill of the players, but is also their conditioning, childhood illnesses and nutrition, gloves, bats, field quality, and so on.

Subject Wagner's DNA clone to a modern childhood, modern nutrition, conditioning, and so on, and he'd be one hell of a major league star.

The war put a pretty severe hit on the 18-25 population of the country. Not just the deaths, but he maimings, and the lack of development time. Then in the early 50s you have the rise of the NFL, NBA and Korea, not to mention that the 18 year olds of 1942-45 would now be in their primes (but a not insignificant % of them are dead or maimed).

We've discussed this before, Joe, but you vastly overestimate the impact of WWII military service on US males, and especially on US baseball-playing males. The US in WWII suffered fractional casualty rates compared with every other major combatant; only a small fraction of US military personnel were killed or maimed in the war.

As an illustration: of all the MLB players drafted into WWII military service, only two were killed (both highly marginal MLers, Elmer Gedeon and Harry O'Neill). Only two others that I know of suffered debilitating injuries (Cecil Travis and Lou Brissie), and both of them were able to come back and play major league ball. There is no reason to assume that minor league/college players suffered a signficantly higher casualty rate.

In short the impact of WWII casualties on the post-war quality of play in MLB was nothing approaching significant.

I'm glad this thread has legs. It's the first time in ages that I read the collective Primer pulse correctly.

The war put a pretty severe hit on the 18-25 population of the country. Not just the deaths, but he maimings, and the lack of development time.

While it's well known that guys like DiMaggio spent most of the war playing for service teams, does anyone here know how many prospects had a chance to play for those teams? I have the impression that it was mainly name guys who played but I may very well be mistaken.

and the lack of development time.

Steve,
I think you are underestimating this portion. We are missing a half-generation of 18-22 yo that didn't develop baseball skills during that period to be ready to play in 1946.

While it's well known that guys like DiMaggio spent most of the war playing for service teams, does anyone here know how many prospects had a chance to play for those teams? I have the impression that it was mainly name guys who played but I may very well be mistaken.

While obviously the big-name stars were often exploited by their units as little more than pro-ballplayers-being-paid-service-wages, it wasn't just the big names.

It's important to bear in mind the vast size and nature of the US war effort. Only a small proportion of the enlistees in any of the branches other than the Marines ever say any combat at all. The vast majority spent the war in support, supply, and training capacities. A high proportion never left the states at all (such as my Dad, who spent the war fighting the Battle of San Diego for the Navy).

Unlike today's US military, which has outsourced a ton of administrative, menial, and logistical support work to contractors, virtually every job required by the US military in WWII was performed by US military personnel. And in a high proportion of those jobs, there was a lot of down time, a lot of hurry-up-and-wait, and as a general rule the life was very dreary and dull.

As a result units found ways to pass the hours and make things as fun as they could. Among the things they did was form teams and play ball. And there is every reason to believe that a guy who had professional ballplaying experience would have been highly valued for that skill by his unit, would have been a minor celebrity in that regard, and would have played a lot of baseball.

My father-in-law spent the war in the South Pacific (on a ship doing support, logistics, and supply work, he never saw a minute of combat), and he played a lot of baseball (he had been and would remain a semi-pro player), and he watched a lot of baseball as well, in every port they docked. He said most of the games were well-attended, and hotly competitive.

The notion that all or most pro ballplayers who served in WWII never played ball during that time, or never played reasonably competitive ball, just isn't right. While service-time ball certainly wasn't equivalent to playing minor league or college ball, it did present the opportunity to maintain/develop baseball skills for many servicemen.

Subject Wagner's DNA clone to a modern childhood, modern nutrition, conditioning, and so on, and he'd be one hell of a major league star.

I grant that - I think you are correct that is a matter of different definitions of "teleported". I meant it that we literally take the 1908 version of Wagner, and don't give him any of the modern advantages.

I think if you transport a 17-yo Wagner here, he's a superstar. I cannot overemphasize the importance of the raw skill to hit a baseball. Wagner had it. He'd have been a star - give him a modern glove, and he's a monster defensively.

I meant it that we literally take the 1908 version of Wagner, and don't give him any of the modern advantages.

OK, but I don't think that makes much sense. Obviously a 1908 Wagner, wearing heavy wool flannel in the heat of summer, wearing leather-soled clodhopper shoes and a rudimentary glove, and swinging a 44-ounce war club, would struggle against modern major leaguers. And it's hugely problematic to try and separate those sort of "external" conditions of an era from the "internal" conditions of training, conditioning, and nutrition; in the real world, all of it combines to create "quality of play."

I think if you transport a 17-yo Wagner here, he's a superstar. I cannot overemphasize the importance of the raw skill to hit a baseball.

Not a chance in the world. Look, Wagner had a career OPS+ of 150, meaning he was 50% better at creating runs than the average player of his time. Using Gassko's table (the latest, conservative, estimate), we see that the average hitter then was only about 60% as good at creating runs as the average hitter of today (20% worse in terms of wOBA). 1.5 X .6 = 90% of today's league average. Maybe he's a little better than that, but it's absurd to think he'd tower over today's players the way he did in his time. You say he had the "raw skill to hit a baseball", but it was a baseball thrown by much less talented pitchers, and fielded by slower and less talented fielders.

And yes, 5-11 200lbs. "fits in" today. But that's the point: he's about average weight now, but was 25 pounds heavier than his average opponent then.

Wagner would have to learn how to hit new pitches like the split finger, but he did hit as well as Julio Franco when Franco was a rookie and they were in the league together.

Help me read the chart. Doesn't it say that today's player is 5% better than those in 1990?

And I think the avg player is closer to 0.7 or 0.75 for Wagner.

And yes, 5-11 200lbs. "fits in" today. But that's the point: he's about average weight now, but was 25 pounds heavier than his average opponent then.

Not if he was transported to the modern era at age 17, but if he'd been born and raised through childhood in the modern era, with access to modern nutrition and medicine, he'd have grown up to be quite a bit bigger than 5-11, 200 lbs. US males are significantly taller and bigger than they were 100 years ago, which has nothing to do with evolution and everything to do with nutrition and wellness.

Wagner would be a big guy even by today's standards, probably 6-1, 210 or 220, chiseled. He'd be an awesome specimen, just as he was then.

You say he had the "raw skill to hit a baseball", but it was a baseball thrown by much less talented pitchers, and fielded by slower and less talented fielders.

It was also a baseball designed not to go nearly as far, thrown by pitchers who were throwing legal spitballs, that was scuffed and worn from use.

The handicaps that Wagner suffered under were different than the ones that modern hitters have to deal with, but they were very real.

It was also a baseball designed not to go nearly as far, thrown by pitchers who were throwing legal spitballs, that was scuffed and worn from use.

The handicaps that Wagner suffered under were different than the ones that modern hitters have to deal with, but they were very real.

Quite true.

The baseball Wagner hit wasn't only often a spitball, scuffed and worn, but was grass-stained dark green, and/or intentionally discolored dark brown by the pitcher, spitting coffee or tobacco juice on it.

Among the things easy to do in Wagner's era, hitting the baseball squarely surely wasn't one of them.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again - people are missing some of the reasons why is is possible that players from the early days of baseball, even if given all of the advantages of a modern player, aren't likely to be as good as modern players.

Lets say you have watch a local high school league from any random part of the country. Some of the players will be better than others. A few might dominate. What is the likelihood that the best players in this high school league will be hall of famers? Very slim. Not nothing, but very slim. This despite the fact that the best players in this high school league would look very impressive to an observer who doesn't watch major league games very often.

In my opinion, baseball in the 1870's was like a high school league today. First of all, as I understand it, teams were formed by having some tryouts by local people interested in playing - similar to how high school teams are formed. Most people, even if they had the talent, either didn't live close enough or weren't really interested in being a professional athlete. IMO, the charts vastly overrate the level of play at that time - I think it is unlikely, but not impossible, that anyone playing in the 1870's would be good enough to play in the major leagues today.

Things advanced quickly so that by the time Honus Wagner was playing, teams were drawing from a larger population, I believe scouts were first coming into play at this time. I think the best players from his era may well have been good enough to be major leaguers, but just because someone dominated in 1907 doesn't mean they would dominate in 2007, even putting aside nutrition, training, etc.

In the modern game, teams are very, very efficient about finding the best talent from around the country, developing them in minor league systems that further seperate out the best players, so that the players who finally make it are literally one in a million type of talents. Its been this way for some time now, so I don't think there have been any great leaps forward for some time, but in my opinion, the big changes that led to substantial increases in talent levels are modern scouting, the draft, the development of the minor leagues, the financial incentives to pursuing professional sports, and, of course, integration.

In short, I think the graphs underestimate the differences in quality of play from early days to the modern game.

Wagner would have to learn how to hit new pitches like the split finger, but he did hit as well as Julio Franco when Franco was a rookie and they were in the league together.

So far, this is the best post of 2007.

It's amazing how jokes about how old Julio Franco is never get old themselves. Please don't ever retire, Julio.

First of all, as I understand it, teams were formed by having some tryouts by local people interested in playing

Not at the professional level, by any means. By the 1870s the National Association and National League were in operation, and they bought and sold players on a nearly national basis. And underneath them was a broad network of smaller time and semi-pro teams and leagues. The better players were known far beyond their local towns, and the competition for top talent existed regionally, if not nationally.

Things advanced quickly so that by the time Honus Wagner was playing, teams were drawing from a larger population, I believe scouts were first coming into play at this time.

Scouts were coming into play long before Wagner's era. Certainly their methodologies and communication modes were hugely primitive compared to those of later eras, but baseball had been mushrooming in popularity and revenue growth since the 1860s, and where there is money seeking talent, there are talent seekers.

Not a chance in the world. Look, Wagner had a career OPS+ of 150, meaning he was 50% better at creating runs than the average player of his time. Using Gassko's table (the latest, conservative, estimate), we see that the average hitter then was only about 60% as good at creating runs as the average hitter of today (20% worse in terms of wOBA). 1.5 X .6 = 90% of today's league average. Maybe he's a little better than that, but it's absurd to think he'd tower over today's players the way he did in his time. You say he had the "raw skill to hit a baseball", but it was a baseball thrown by much less talented pitchers, and fielded by slower and less talented fielders.

Disagree entirely. I'll go back to what I said in post #20: the best hitters aren't going to be able to take full advantage of the decline in league quality the further back you go. An overall league quality drop of 20% doesn't mean that all players across the board are 20% lower themselves. No matter how good you are, most swings will be misses or go for outs. That's the nature of the beast. Hitting: it's always difficult. Neifi Perez's OPS will go up by 100% before Bonds's goes up by 50%. Thus the best player of the game's first 50 years is not, in fact, worse than the 200th best player currently out there.

By the 1870s the National Association and National League were in operation, and they bought and sold players on a nearly national basis. And underneath them was a broad network of smaller time and semi-pro teams and leagues.

Wildly overstated. Back when I first starting following the HoM I looked this up -- found every player with significant playing time in 2-3 different early years in the 1870s & 1880s. Man, it was only a national basis if the South won the war and Burr's conspiracy succeeded taking the West. Charley Jones was the only southerner (OK, maybe there was 1 other, but I don't think so). Cap Anson was about as far west as it went (Iowa). It was definately much better than high school, but it wasn't nearly as good as what you let on. That didn't happen until the twentieth century. They recruited from the NE quadrant, and the very very best from outside it trickled in. Even then, the further west or south you went, the less likely that even the very very best made it.

They recruited from the NE quadrant, and the very very best from outside it trickled in. Even then, the further west or south you went, the less likely that even the very very best made it.

I'll accept that I overstated it, and you're far more of the authority on this than me. But Iowa was effectively the West in terms of population; outside of San Francisco, Seattle, and one or two other outposts, what we know now as the Western states remained sparsely populated, at least by English speakers.

My point is that professional teams and leagues recruited from a pool far broader than just their locality.

But Iowa was effectively the West in terms of population; outside of San Francisco, Seattle, and one or two other outposts, what we know now as the Western states remained sparsely populated, at least by English speakers.

(stops and thinks). Yeah, given that players of the 1870s/80s would've been born around 1850/60, yeah. Even still, those living out west were underrepresented. California & Oregon were states. Utah had the population enough to be a state (that whole pesky polygamy thing kept it out for a while). And Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska should've had a higher population than they did in MLB. Heck, from memory half of the NA came from either NY or PA.

Not a chance in the world. Look, Wagner had a career OPS+ of 150, meaning he was 50% better at creating runs than the average player of his time. Using Gassko's table (the latest, conservative, estimate), we see that the average hitter then was only about 60% as good at creating runs as the average hitter of today (20% worse in terms of wOBA). 1.5 X .6 = 90% of today's league average. Maybe he's a little better than that, but it's absurd to think he'd tower over today's players the way he did in his time. You say he had the "raw skill to hit a baseball", but it was a baseball thrown by much less talented pitchers, and fielded by slower and less talented fielders.

***

This is wrong. Eyeballing the chart, it looks to me like the early 20th century is at 80% of today's player. That would be a 20 point correction in OPS+ (I'm not sure we can apply these adjustments to OPS+, by the way, but let's say we can). So Wagner goes from a 150 OPS+ to 130. That's still spectacular for a good defensive shortstop.

I find this discussion fascinating and I like the teleportation/cloning distinction that AROM makes in #15.

The specific question "what would a 2007 Honus Wagner [whether teleported or cloned] be like?" is of course only a surrogate for a bunch of other questions. At least as interesting are questions like

--Would a journeyman contemporary of Wagner's, like Kitty Bransfield, be able to make a 2007 MLB roster? (Presumably with a different nickname.)

--Would So Taguchi, transported to a 1907 where the color line was unknown, be a fourth outfielder, a regular, or a superstar?

--Would Albert Pujols, transported to that 1907, hit .331, .466, .662, or what?

The one argument I only half-identify with is bibigon's in #24: the argument, rephrased, is that Jesse Owens wouldn't win a 2007 NCAA title with his 1936 Olympic times, so the level of competition in all sports must be way, way up. Mathematically this is intuitively compelling, but as many posters have said here, something isn't right about that; humans have not evolved or even phenotypically grown so much that an exceptional athlete like Owens (or Honus Wagner), dropped onto 2000s playing surfaces and given 2000s shoes and a week to practice, wouldn't still be an exceptional athlete.

This is wrong. Eyeballing the chart, it looks to me like the early 20th century is at 80% of today's player. That would be a 20 point correction in OPS+ (I'm not sure we can apply these adjustments to OPS+, by the way, but let's say we can). So Wagner goes from a 150 OPS+ to 130. That's still spectacular for a good defensive shortstop.

OK, now I'm confused. I thought you were tracking wOBA, which would mean an average hitter in Wagner's time would post a wOBA 80% as high as today's average -- around .250. Such hitters would create roughly 40% fewer runs per game. Similarly, in your article Bonds starts out 82% as valuable as Cobb in raw RAR (1109 vs. 1358), but when you make the historical adjustment Bonds ends up 24% more valuable than Cobb (1376 vs. 1104) -- so roughly a 40% swing. Can you tell us exactly what you're doing and what these numbers mean?

And, if what you're saying is that the average hitter in Wagner's day would be an 80 OPS+ today, that still makes Wagner a 120 today not a 130 (OPS+ is a ratio), a good player but not a superstar. (And I see no reason to think he'd be a great defender by current standards.)

* * *

There's a theory that the best players can't really take as much advantage from watered down competition as others. (put Barry Bonds circa 2004 in a league only half as good, and there's no way he doubles his OBP of .609).

I don't know what this means. First of all, you don't have to double OBP to be twice as good: a team with a .500 OBP would create more than twice as many runs as a team with a .300 OBP. And why would great players benefit any less than other players from facing weaker competition?

And why would great players benefit any less than other players from facing weaker competition?

Asymptotes

OK, now I'm confused. I thought you were tracking wOBA, which would mean an average hitter in Wagner's time would post a wOBA 80% as high as today's average -- around .250. Such hitters would create roughly 40% fewer runs per game. Similarly, in your article Bonds starts out 82% as valuable as Cobb in raw RAR (1109 vs. 1358), but when you make the historical adjustment Bonds ends up 24% more valuable than Cobb (1376 vs. 1104) -- so roughly a 40% swing. Can you tell us exactly what you're doing and what these numbers mean?

And, if what you're saying is that the average hitter in Wagner's day would be an 80 OPS+ today, that still makes Wagner a 120 today not a 130 (OPS+ is a ratio), a good player but not a superstar. (And I see no reason to think he'd be a great defender by current standards.)

***

Average wOBA is .316, putting the average player in Wagner's time at .253. That's an adjustment of around 38 runs per 162 games, which is what I apply to all players. So if Wagner is +88 runs above average in 1908, his league neutral rating, he would be about +53 runs league neutral, since he played 151 games.

Asymptotes

So your theory is that if Pujols played in an A league this year, he'd post an OPS+ only slightly higher than he posts against NL competition? That's the kind of difference in competition we're talking about here. Look, I'm sure there is some upper limit -- perhaps Pujols would "only" hit .600/.800/1.000 against HS players -- but in the ranges we're talking about this can't be more than a trivial factor.

* *

Average wOBA is .316, putting the average player in Wagner's time at .253. That's an adjustment of around 38 runs per 162 games, which is what I apply to all players. So if Wagner is +88 runs above average in 1908, his league neutral rating, he would be about +53 runs league neutral, since he played 151 games.

OK, so you're saying an average Wagner-era player would create 45 runs in a full season today, right? Over his career, Wagner produced runs at a 50% higher level than his peers, or about 40 extra runs per season (according to Bball-Ref). So on a percentage basis we'd expect Wagner to create 68 runs per season (45 * 1.5), or on an additive basis we'd say 85 runs -- in other words, somewhere between lousy and average. Right? (1908 was of course his 205 OPS+ season, not typical even for Wagner).

The last is an honest question. Newhouser occurs to me. Who else?

Stars who played through the war:

Native American Bob Johnson, Stan Hack, Vern Stephens, Rudy York, Doc Cramer, Hal Newhouser, Dizzy Trout, Bucky Walters, Rick Ferrell, Joe Kuhel, Harlond Clift, George Case, Mike Krevich, Dutch Leonard the Twoth, George McQuinn, Frankie Crosetti, Paul Waner (1 AB in 1945 though), Frankie Hayes, Lou Boudreau, Jeff Heath, Allie Reynolds, Mel Harder, Wally Moses, Thorton Lee, Pete Fox, Joe Cronin (token appearance in 1945), Bobo Newsom, Phil Cavarretta, Swish Nicholson, Paul Derringer, Claude Passeau, Marty Marion, Johnny Hopp, Max Lanier, Mort Cooper, Augie Galan, Mickey Owen, Dixie Walker, Curt Davis, Al Lopez, Bob Elliott, Rip Sewell, Ernie Lombardid, Mel Ott, Billy Jurges, Joe Medwick, Jim Tobin, Bill Lee, Frank McCormick, Gee Walker, Vern Kennedy, Vince DiMaggio, Whit Wyatt.

Many others played through 1944, including Bobby Doerr and Stan Musial among others.

Link to a breakdown of MLB players by state, region, and by year.

Here you go.

Link to a breakdown of MLB players by state, region, and by year.

Here you go.

Cool! I'd love to see that expressed graphically or in a map.

Part 3 is up.

So your theory is that if Pujols played in an A league this year, he'd post an OPS+ only slightly higher than he posts against NL competition? That's the kind of difference in competition we're talking about here. Look, I'm sure there is some upper limit -- perhaps Pujols would "only" hit .600/.800/1.000 against HS players -- but in the ranges we're talking about this can't be more than a trivial factor.

No, my theory applies to MLB, not HS, but there are those for HS. No one in HS hits 1.000 - not evn Albert Pujols. Nice strawman though.

I don't think the difference in competition is correct if it says Honus Wagner couldn't make it out of A-ball.