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1. Pasta-diving Jeter (jmac66) Posted: February 09, 2010 at 01:08 PM (#3456679)but: print the legend, etc etc
but: find the stat that proves your point, etc etc
Sometimes I think people forget what a great hitter Mays was, focusing instead on his magnificent all-round play. But the guy averaged a 167 OPS+ during his peak from '54 to '65. That's a 12 year stretch. Pujols, by comparison, has maintained a 172 OPS+ over his nine-year career. I'm willing to bet that after Pujols' 12th year there will be very little difference between his OPS+ and Mays'. Pujols' traditional offensive numbers might look better, because of the offensive era in which he's played, but Mays was every bit the hitter Pujols is.
Yes, I'm willing to agree that the overall level of competition is greater today, and certainly most of those guys played in an era when black players were banned or not yet fully integrated into the game. I think it's just worth remembering that as dominant as Albert has been, he's not quite at the level of relative dominance displayed by the guys I mentioned.
That's true. What I meant to say is that there isn't another great who was so disadvantaged by his home park as Dimaggio. Ott benefited as much from the radically short rightfield fence at the Polo Grounds as Dimaggio suffered because of "Death Valley" in left/center at Yankee Stadium. The only other great hitter I see with a home/road split approaching 60/40 is Frank Thomas, who hit 312 of his 521 at home. What was up with that?
But Dimaggio did adjust to his park, and even more than Mays did to his. I would guarantee you that Dimaggio hit far more HRs to right than Mays did, for the simple reason that Yankee Stadium was 457 ft. in the left/center power alley and 461 to dead center. The only leftfield HRs Dimaggio was likely to hit were where he really pulled the ball, because the left field fence at old Yankee Stadium jutted out sharply from 301 down the line to 457 in the power alley. Candlestick had a left/center power alley of 365 starting in 1961. I don' care how windy it was, I'd rather be a righthanded hitter taking aim at a 365 ft power alley than a 457 ft power alley.
You would be wrong. There is no data for Dimaggio, but there is for Mays from 1954 on. In those years he hit 89 HR to right, 13 to right center, and 85 HRs for which location is unknown. If those 85 were in the same ratio as his others, that would imply another 14. It's safe to say he hit well over 100 HR, and probably ~ 120 to right or right center. There's no way Dimaggio hit over 1/3 of his career HR to the opposite field. Hell, he hit only 148 total in Yankee stadium.
Dimaggio was a better hitter than Mays, as great as Mays was. They had roughly equivalent career OPS+, but Dimaggio's home/road stats (and indeed all righthanded hitting stats in the old Yankee Stadium) confirm that had he played in a more neutral ballpark Dimaggio's career OPS+ would have been well over 160.
He was traded to the Mets in mid-May 1972. So he played 12 seasons and a month or so at Candlestick.
Tell me, Misirlou, how many HR's do you think Dimaggio hit between the left/center power alley and center field in Yankee Stadium? The answer is ZERO. All of Dimaggio's HR's in Yankee Stadium were either pulled hard to left or hit to rightfield. By contrast, a quick review of Mays' home run log reveals that the vast majority of his HRs at Candlestick were hit to leftfield and left/center. Mays may have adjusted after his first few years in SF, but he didn't make the adjustment Dimaggio had to make. Not even close.
Thus from 1961 forward, wind notwithstanding, Candlestick played as an average-to-pretty good HR park. It was never a particularly good hitters' park overall, because the enormous foul territory killed batting averages, and the cold weather was far more conducive to pitching effectiveness than hitting.
Thus playing in Candlestick didn't hurt Mays's career HR totals much (losing nearly two full years to military service hurt that a lot more), but it undoubtedly cost him several points of BA.
a bigger difference is the 2 years he missed while in the army
EDIT: coke to Treder
I think it's fair to say that at their peaks, Dimaggio may have been a slightly better hitter than Mays, adjusting for the park* and war** factors, and even counter-adjusting for the better level of competition in Mays's era. But Dimaggio would have possibly*** been an even better hitter if he'd been able to adjust his swing to a more inside-out pattern.
And of course if Dimaggio had played on into his 40's his rate stats would have gone down considerably; they were already heading sharply in that direction at 36. There's little question that Mays had the more valuable career.
*With park factors being neutralized, the only significant rate difference between Dimaggio and Williams as batters was Williams' far superior batting eye, as reflected in his walk totals. That's still a big plus, but the gap other than that is way, way lower than it might seem looking just at the raw numbers. Put Dimaggio in Fenway Park for 77 games a year and you'd seen an entirely different career profile.
**Mays lost two years to the draft, but at that point he wasn't yet "Willie Mays." Dimaggio lost three years right in the heart (ages 28-30) of his career.
***of course there's also the law of unintended consequences, so we can't say this for sure
Except that (a) Dimaggio was always an extreme pull hitter; (b) he had LOTS of power; and (c) between the 301 LF foul line and the 402 distance to the visitors' bullpen, there was still plenty of fence for Dimaggio to reach.
Of course he didn't hit that many home runs at Yankee Stadium in the first place, but I'd bet a fair amount of money that the vast majority of his dingers there were to the left of Death Valley, and not to right field. In fact, has anyone here even heard of an opposite field Dimaggio home run? Obviously he hit some, but I can't recall any specifics.
During the day, particularly in the summertime, there could be very little wind in the early afternoon hours, and it could sometimes get downright hot. With those cozy 365-foot power alleys, Candlestick could play as a little bandbox in the early afternoon innings.
By about 3:00, of course, the wind would almost always begin to kick up, and the temperature begin to drop. It was the swirling winds that made the place such a nightmare for outfielders. The wind would generally howl like mad until the sun went down.
At night, in the early innings the combination of wind and cool temperatures made the place nearly intolerable. And after dark, even as the wind died down the damp coldness made the ball dead and hitters' hands numb; it was a rotten place to hit.
I have camped above the timber line in snow. I have walked across frozen bays of the Baltic Sea. I have climbed to the summit of Mt. Shasta, using an ice axe, with crampons on my boots to get traction in the ice.
But I have never been colder than sitting in the stands of Candlestick Park during night games.
There's nothing inconsistent between that data, and the Winds of Candlestick blowing back a bunch of would-be homers. Without the wind, the home/road gap might simply have been greater.
Obviously I never saw DiMaggio play, but every description of him I've read calls him a dead pull hitter. I've never heard of DiMaggio inside-outing a ball to right field. I'm sure he must have done it once in a while, but I'm exceedingly skeptical of the claim that he did so on a regular basis.
I saw Mays play a lot, and the claim that he intentionally hit the ball to right field is far overblown. Mays wasn't a dead pull hitter, but the vast majority of balls he hit hard went to left field or left center, and occasionally to center or right center.
Uhhh. "Clearly?" Let's call it a tie.
True enough on a raw basis. However, when one factors in quality of competition -- the NL of Mays's era was a significantly better league than the AL of DiMaggio's, almost entirely due to the big impact of integration -- the picture gets cloudier.
Statistically that's true, but the reason I'd say "slightly better" rather than "clearly better" was because of the better competition in Mays's era. But I do think that many people look at the unadjusted raw numbers and tend to underrate Dimaggio. I'd strongly recommend that those people read Allen Barra's piece that compared him to Williams after park adjustments.
EDIT: coke to Steve as soon as the snow disappears and I can get to a store.
The overall level of play definitely improved with integration and as the game moved into the '60s. But when Dimaggio played the AL was clearly the superior league, whereas when Willie played the leagues were roughly equivalent (with the AL winning a slight majority of the World Series during Willie's era of '51 to '73). Dimaggio, although past his prime, was still a great hitter in the late '40s (a 160 OPS+ between '47 and '50, and because integration proceeded so slowly in the '50s we can assume that the level of play in the '50s wasn't that much better than in the late '40s.
P.S. I'm not sure why so many insist the NL was the better league in the '50s and '60s. One would think that would be reflected in the WS outcomes, but it isn't. And please, don't bring up the all-star games - it's an exhibition game.
Yo, I was supposed to be on a plane to your fair city today ... needless to say that flight got cancelled.
But I have never been colder than sitting in the stands of Candlestick Park during night games.
Well-put, Steve. Let me add that I grew up in the Great Lakes snow belt. I only had two years of night games in Candlestick. It felt like 15.
1936 1121937 122
1938 116
1939 131
1940 104
1941 112
1942 118
1946 111
1947 105
1948 108
1949 110
1950 104
1951 108
That's an average ERA+ of 112
By what evidence?
when Willie played the leagues were roughly equivalent (with the AL winning a slight majority of the World Series during Willie's era of '51 to '73).
I hesitate to bring this up again, after that thread of a few days ago, but: there have been many studies on this issue, and they are in firm agreement that as nearly as we can tell, the NL was far superior to the AL in quality of play from about the mid-1950s to at least the mid-1970s. In fact the difference in quality of play between the leagues in that period was as great as it's ever been in history, greater than the difference by which the AL has enjoyed an advantage over the past several years.
Sean Smith has conducted extensive research on this issue comparing the performance of players changing leagues. In my article in the 2010 Hardball Times Annual, I combine that research with my own on the performance of farm systems. Obviously until we had interleague play, we have to rely on indirect evidence, but the indirect evidence we have is fairly compelling.
Yes, that's a very good piece. Amazingly, Dimaggio had a higher road batting average than Williams and nearly as good a slugging percentage. Williams of course retains a large advantage in on-base percentage, and on that basis must be considered the better hitter even after adjusting for park factors. But the difference between Dimaggio and Williams was significantly less than most believe. And needless to say, even being mentioned in the same breath with Ted Williams as a hitter is about the greatest compliment a hitter can receive.
I wonder if Morty Causa has an opinion on this. And whether or not he can work in a few references to screwball comedies and child pornography into his answer.
The NL during the 50s and 60s (basically the whole of Mays career) was superior to the AL, players went from NL to AL and their #s improved, went from Al to NL and they declined.
During Dimaggio's time the leagues were pretty equal, the AL was not superior as you claim.
Of course the WS outcomes were being skewed because the weaker league happened to have the best team much of the time, and being a Yankee fanboy you should know that.
Even the more prolific opposite field HR hitters don't do it on a "regular basis." Based on the data available, only one non switch hitter in the Retrosheet era has hit more than 50% his HRs to the opposite field --- Roberto Clemente (54%). Plus, quite a few of Clemente's HRs aren't included because of lacking data, so he might not have even been over 50%. Clemente is also an extreme outlier --- 30% is considered a very prolific opposite field HR hitter.
Well-put, Steve. Let me add that I grew up in the Great Lakes snow belt. I only had two years of night games in Candlestick. It felt like 15.
one of the better lines in Einstein's "Willie's Time" was when Joe Garagiola was making his first visit to Candlestick as an announcer and was freezing his ass off in the pressbox when someone asked him if he wanted some coffee and Garagiola said "Forget the coffee--get a priest!"
This isn't right.
Yeah, I was gonna say. DiMaggio played in a strongly competitively-unbalanced league, in which he was able to hit against chronically ghastly pitching staffs in at least 2/7 of his PAs, while rarely facing the best staff in the league because it was usually his own.
Why is that amazing, Williams played in Fenway, and DiMaggio in Yankee Stadium
Reggie Jackson had a higher road batting average than Yaz
As I said, we don't have data for Dimaggio, but we do for some other Yankee righthanders just after DiMaggio's time:
Moose Skowron 52/211 to the opposite field
Hank Bauer - 5/103 for which we have data
Elston Howard - 36/167
There's a second- or third-hand line in Summer of '49 where DiMaggio refers to sliced opposite field fly ball HRs as "piss homers." So yeah, I'd say he hit a few out to right, but wasn't exactly proud of it.
That's an average ERA+ of 112
Of course, those guys didn't have to pitch to DiMaggio.
It's easy to quantify this. Even assuming the average Yankee staff during Dimaggio's time was 15% better than the rest of the league (which on average it was not), Dimaggio would have played only 14.28% of his games against Yankee pitchers if he were on another team. The product of 14.28% and 15% is a shade over 2%. It's a rounding error.
As for Best Dressed Chicken in Town's comment that "This isn't right", it is indeed correct. Dimaggio's road OPS was approx. 8% greater than his home OPS. Look it up.
He's not arguing about the raw OPS difference. He's disputing your rescaling of Dimaggio's OPS+ by a straight multiplication of 1.08. To my understanding, an 8% difference in OPS does not scale directly to an 8% difference in OPS+.
If one ignores the fact that 28% of Williams' plate appearances came after the age that DiMaggio had retired. In a substantially lower offensive context. (The league hit around .254/.328/.386 between 1956 and 1960. That change in context chops his raw numbers a fair amount.) And as noted in #33 against stronger opposition and in a conext that counts DiMaggio's stats in Boston and Williams' stats in New York but not vice-versa.
Your absolutely right, of course. I think most fans, however, would be surprised to learn this. Just like they'd be surprised to learn that Jim Rice hit .277 on the road and slugged .459. Hell, Reggie outslugged Rice on the road by 40 points!
Amen to that. I took a friend from NY to a game once on a Monday where it had been nice and warm in San Jose during the day. The previous day we had gone to an A's game that was quite warm. As we drove up he told me that everybody was just soft complaining about the weather, and I was just laughing at his as I could see the fog pouring over the hills. When he opened his car door in the parking lot and started to step out the wind caught it and slammed it in his face while blowing his hat off and out across the parking lot. I think his Mets cap is still floating in the bay.
To steal someone else's quote about McGwire, Reggie was the hitter that Rice's supporters think Rice was.
That's true - it generally scales to about 1.5 times as much difference in OPS+ because OPS+ is based not on dividing a player's OPS by the league OPS, but by dividing the on-base and slugging averages individually and adding the two (and then adjusting for park factor). However, the approximately 12% increase in Dimaggio's OPS+ would have been applicable to only half his games - the half he played in a theoretical neutral Yankee Stadium. But again, none of this accounts for the fact that Yankee Stadium was uniquely tough on righthanded hitters.
8% is the correct adjustment to make.
That may be because it was about 260 down the right field line, or just 60' longer than my 12-year old's little league field.
I believe Ott had a far higher batting average on the road though, Ernie Banks OTOH hit 57% of his homers at home and hit .290/.349/.538 at home and just .258/.311/.461 on the road
checking, Ott... can't get his splits now for some reason
They don't have 'em at B-R because splits only go back to '54.
Mel Ott:
ab h db tp hr bb r rbi ba oba sa
Home 4578 1360 182 21 323 949 953 945 .297 .421 .558
Road 4878 1516 306 51 188 759 906 916 .311 .407 .510
Quoting Clay: The difference of the Polo Grounds is that 100 singles, 120 doubles and 30 triples turn into 135 home runs and 200 walks. Yes, that's a net gain. But if you simply pro-rated the road stats to his total career PA...
You're looking at a man with 3000 hits, a career .300+ BA, .400+ OBA, .500+ SA, 600 doubles, 350-400 HR, close to 5000 TB, 1800+ R and RBI, 1500 walks...
clearly Hall quality, across the board. The Polo grounds did affect the perception: "great home run hitter", instead of the more accurate "great line-drive hitter." Not quite as great, but still great.
Very true.
.315/.391/.546 at home
League average for Joe D's career was .276/.354/.405
421/606 = an OPS+ of 169
391/546 = and OPS+ of 145
except they don't
Yankee Stadium was a pitcher's park, you can't use BBREF's league average on splits- Joe' D's league average is based upon league adjusted for Yankee Stadium... It's average PF for Joe D's tenure was about 98.5
Adjusting for that I'm coming up with a road OPS+ of around 166/167 whihc is about 1.08 time shis overall OPS+ of 155
which is uncomfortably close to Tommy in CT's estimate...
You know, I think Joe D really was disproportionately impacted by Yankee Stadium - meaning on another team in another park, he would have put up an OPS+ around 162 (still have to adjust for those Yankee pitchers and playing 1/8 of his games in Yankee Stadium).
Naah, don't think so, it looks more likely that he stubbornly stuck to one approach, in any event he pretty clearly didn't adjust to his home park.
I would agree as well. During the mid-70's I attended 35-40 Giants' games at Candlestick; the day games were more or less tolerable, especially if you made an effort to stay in the sun and migrated to the RF corner as the game progressed. Night games would make you think you were watching the Packers in Green Bay, only with fewer people in attendance.
Thanks for the stats and calculations. Your calculation of road OPS+ is very good, as is your qualification about the fact that the league averages are affected by Yankee Stadium. One note, however: if Dimaggio had played for any other team in the league, he would have played only 1/14 of his games at Yankee Stadium (each team played every other team 22 times in an 8 team, 154 game schedule, and only half of those 22 games were played at the other teams ballpark.
And I would still suggest that the impact of not having to face Yankee pitchers was very, very small. During Dimaggio's career the Yanks' staff on average had a 112 ERA+. Dimaggio, had he played for another team, would have faced Yankee pitching only 1/7 of the time. A 12% difference multiplied by 1/7 is less than 2%. Still, it suggests that any adjustment to Dimaggio's OPS+ should be discounted slightly to reflect the effect of not having to face Yankee pitching.
Um, no.
Do the math. Had Dimaggio been on another team he would have been facing the Yankee pitching staff only 14.28% of the time, and the Yankee staff was only 12% better than the average AL staff during that time. That's less than a 2% effect.
This is really not complex. If you have a different view, let us know. On the other hand, if you decide to stick with your "um, no", then we can dismiss your objection, can't we?
ummmmm--no
Add this to the effect of removing 1/7 of his PAs against a pitching staff 12% worse than the average AL staff and this analysis would be accurate. And understand that 2% compounded over a decade-and-a-half career is the furthest thing from a "rounding error."
This is really not complex. If you have a different view, let us know. On the other hand, if you decide to stick with your "um, no", then we can dismiss your objection, can't we?
This is rich coming from the guy who's asserted that "when Dimaggio played the AL was clearly the superior league."
If one ignores the fact that 28% of Williams' plate appearances came after the age that DiMaggio had retired.
I was talking about rate stats alone. Nobody questions that Williams had a more valuable career, or that when you talk walks into account, that he was a more valuable hitter even with the park adjustments.
In a substantially lower offensive context. (The league hit around .254/.328/.386 between 1956 and 1960. That change in context chops his raw numbers a fair amount.)
The offensive numbers may have gone down overall, but that also may well have to do with the relative decline of the American League after Dimaggio's retirement. During their common years the two leagues were roughly equal, but in the last years of Williams' career, the AL took a veritable nosedive.
And as noted in #33 against stronger opposition and in a conext that counts DiMaggio's stats in Boston and Williams' stats in New York but not vice-versa.
That's a valid point, but it doesn't add all that much to the difference. Enough to keep Williams clearly ahead, but not nearly enough to negate the overall park adjustment.
--------------------
As I said, we don't have data for Dimaggio, but we do for some other Yankee righthanders just after DiMaggio's time:
Moose Skowron 52/211 to the opposite field
Hank Bauer - 5/103 for which we have data
Elston Howard - 36/167
Remember, though, that of Skowron's 211 home runs, only 60 were in Yankee Stadium. I'd bet anything that his proportion of opposite field home runs was much higher at home. Same with Howard, who hit only 53 of his 167 homers in Yankee Stadium, in a career that was almost spent entirely with the Yankees. Skowron had a Jeteresque inside-out swing and Howard had an extreme closed stance and consistently drove balls up the middle and to the opposite field. The only other Yankee righthander who went the other way more than most was Mantle, who hit to all fields from both sides of the plate, with some of his most memorable RH home runs going to right center.
I agree. That said, the Spapir Metrics thing, while inspired, was a little forced.
Again.
Understood. Extend DiMaggio's career 5 years and his rate stats will get quite a bit worse. He was done. That matters in comparing their rate stats.
Why would offensive context be a function of league quality? Pitcher's count in league quality too. Most simply, look at 1956. Runs per game up 5% in the AL and down 7% in the NL.
Understood. Extend DiMaggio's career 5 years and his rate stats will get quite a bit worse. He was done. That matters in comparing their rate stats.
No argument. One of the many ways that Williams was superior to Dimaggio was his longevity. His stats slipped somewhat compared to his pre-war numbers, but a fair number of his best slugging years were in the 50's.
The offensive numbers may have gone down overall, but that also may well have to do with the relative decline of the American League after Dimaggio's retirement. During their common years the two leagues were roughly equal, but in the last years of Williams' career, the AL took a veritable nosedive.
Why would offensive context be a function of league quality? Pitcher's count in league quality too. Most simply, look at 1956. Runs per game up 5% in the AL and down 7% in the NL.
In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. And in the AL of the 50's, which had a significantly smaller share of the overall ML talent than it had had in previous decades, it was relatively easy for a superstar like Williams to stand out.
1. Which staff was 12% worse than league average? Why would you assume that Dimaggio's hypothetical at bats would come against this non-existent staff rather than a league average staff? You have to assume that when Dimaggio wasn't batting against Yankee pitchers he was batting against the average non-Yankee pitcher in this league, just like every other non-Yankee batter. Your methodology here is fatally flawed.
2. The <2% would not compound. It would remain the same over his career, no matter how long. Again, your belief that this would compound is simply incorrect.
Again, this is completely unfounded. The AL won more World Series than the NL during Mays' career. If, as some have suggested, this was a function of the AL sending a dominant team to the Series each year while the rest of the AL was inferior, then the AL teams in the Series each year would be expected to have had significantly higher winning percentages than their NL counterparts. However, the AL representatives averaged only three more wins per year than their NL counterparts. That's the difference between a .617 winning percentage and a .600 winning percentage. It's not significant.
This argument is typically invoked in the context of arguing that the Yankees were a disproportionately dominant team in the AL in the '50s and '60s and that's the only reason the AL won more World Series from '51 to '73. But of the 12 World Series in which the Yankees participated from '51 to '73, they had a better record than their NL counterpart in only six of those seasons. Again, the theory of NL superiority fails because the Yankees were no more dominant on average in the AL each year than their NL counterpart had been in the NL regular season.
The alleged data supporting NL superiority in the '50s, 60's and '70s is laughably shoddy and anecdotal. For every Frank Robinson who went to the AL and had a great year I'll show you a Jim Bunning, who was merely average his last two years in the AL and then went to the NL and averaged a 140 ERA+ over four years, a performance which put him in the Hall of Fame. For every Dick Allen who went to the AL and improved his performance I'll show you a Reggie Smith, who had a 129 OPS+ in eight years in the AL and then spent the last nine years of his career in the NL and compiled a 145 OPS+.
And then there's the case of Gaylord Perry. Perry was a very good NL pitcher who went to the AL in '72 and promptly won a CY Young. But after he spent six years in the AL, the last 3 of which he was barely a .500 pitcher and received ZERO Cy Young votes, he went back to the NL and promptly won a Cy Young award for the Padres. Now which league was better?
We don't need this kind of shoddy, anecdotal evidence. We have a best four of seven every year between the best teams in each league, and the AL won more of them during the Willie Mays era than the NL teams, even though the AL teams were no more dominant in their league, on average, than the NL teams that went to the WS.
But if you want to match players, start matching AL and NL Hall of Famers who were in their primes during the 50's. Examine the All-Star rosters, and never mind that the NL won most of those games, just start adding up the names of the best players you see and see which league has the cream of the crop once you drop below Williams and Mantle and Berra. No serious person would try to claim anything but a big NL advantage there.
Those Yankees pennant winners were all very good teams, but once they got past 1953 the NL held them to a standstill in the World Series between 1955 and 1960. And when the Yanks didn't make it to the Series in 1954 and 1959, a 111 win Indians team got swept by a 97 win Giants team (after having also lost the bulk of games to them in Spring Training), and a 94 win White Sox team got beaten by a Dodgers' team that had needed two extra playoff games even to make it to 88 wins. This doesn't speak well to any overall AL league strength in the last 7 years of Williams' career, which was the period I was talking about to to begin with, the years after Dimaggio retired..
Really, you just have to laugh at these kinds of outrageous claims. Here's a commenter arguing that there was huge disparity between the two leagues in the '50s and that the NL was the superior league. And yet there were four straight series between '55 and 58 where the series went the full 7 games, and the representative from each league had roughly the same record each year (cumulatively, the Yankees won 62% of their games in the regular season between '55 and '58 while the NL representative in the Series won 61% of their regular seasons games). So in the face of overwhelming evidence that the two leagues were very evenly matched over these four years - two WS victories for each league, each series going the full 7, the teams having roughly the same record each year (which means that neither league was sending a team that was relatively more dominant in its league) - there are still those who insist on the basis of nothing at all that the NL was vastly better than the AL.
We have interleague play now and can test these kinds of theories. After 8 years of basic parity between the two leagues from '97 to '04, the AL has opened up a significant advantage over the last five years, winning nearly 57% of interleague games. Over the same five year period the AL has won approximately 58% of all World Series games. The World Series seems to closely approximate over this five year period the relative strength of the two leagues. And yet proponents of the "NL was far better in the '50s" theory want us to believe that even though the NL was allegedly far better, it could only play the AL even in the World Series between '55 and '58 and win only four of the 10 World Series played in the '50s.
They have no proof, no data to support their claims, and apparently no compunction about propounding completely baseless theories.
No problem ignoring them - they are exhibition games, for God's sake! Like pre-season games played in Florida!
What about a Yankee team that didn't even win 100 games beating the 105 win Dodgers team in '53, and needing only six games to do it? You can't base analysis on a single World Series, or by cherrypicking them. But a decades worth of data is pretty compelling, and over the course of the '50s the AL won more World Series, more World Series games, and half of the time the AL team had fewer regular season wins than the NL representative. How could the NL be vastly superior if AL representatives in the Series, who were no more dominant in their league than their NL counterparts, won a majority of the World Series in the decade and a majority of the World Series games?
Let's test this method with the World Series teams. How about the '56 Series? The Yanks had four HOFers - Berra, Mantle and Ford, and a 40 year old Enos Slaughter. The Dodgers had five HOFers - Campanella, Snider, Reese, Robinson and Drysdale, and another guy - Hodges - who missed the Hall by a hair. But the Yankees won the '56 Series.
How about the '58 Series? The Yanks still have their big three of Berra, Mantle and Ford, although Berra is definitely past his prime at this point. The Braves, however, have Aaron, Mathews, Spahn and Schoendeinst - and the first three are all squarely in their prime. But the Yanks win again.
Your method of just counting great players doesn't seem to work too well. How many HOFers do you think the '98 Yankees had?
Doesn't it seem like you just had this conversation . . . .
Isn't it pretty clear where your analysis goes wrong here, Jolly Old?
Because a league as a whole, by definition, has to league average. If you remove a team which is 12% above league average, it has to be replaced by a team which is 12% below league average, and vice versa. DiMaggio, as a Yankee, was facing a league with a 12% above league average pitching staff removed. You did only half the equation, adding 1/7 of a 12% above average team without accounting for the fact that the real DiMaggio was facing, in effect, a 12% below league average team 1/7 of the time.
Andy, you don't want to have this conversation with Tommy in CT. He's either very obtuse or a very clever joke.
Yeah, I kind of hope I learned my lesson with Madman Morty a few days ago. The irony here is that until Tommy started in with his Mortylike riffs about league strength that make about as much sense as Wall Street deregulation, I was mostly agreeing with him about Dimaggio. But after his last few posts I can see where he's headed with this, and AFAIC he and Morty can go swap stories about how demented the rest of us are.
The fallacy of this argument can be easily demonstrated. Misirlou, can we agree that what we are trying to measure is Dimaggio's performance against a league in which he had to face Yankee pitching (which was on average 12% better than league average)? Can we agree that this is the same as measuring his performance against a league in which the superior Yankee pitching was distributed evenly throughout the league such that the resulting hypothetical Yankee team was average and all other AL teams were average, each with a hypothetical ERA+ of 100? If so, how much would the pitching Dimaggio faced have improved? The answer is each of the seven other teams in the league would have improved on average by 1/7 of 12%, correct?
I loved Katherine Hepburn and Haley Joel Osment in "The Pedophilia Story."
This is apparently picked-over territory, but what's the point of "dropping below" Williams and Mantle and Berra? OK, we throw out three AL HOFers. What then? Do we throw out three NL HOFers, and then compare? That's an interesting study, one supposes, of league "depth," but I can't begin to see how the exercise serves as a measure of quality.
Yeah, I kind of hope I learned my lesson with Madman Morty a few days ago. The irony here is that until Tommy started in with his Mortylike riffs about league strength that make about as much sense as Wall Street deregulation, I was mostly agreeing with him about Dimaggio. But after his last few posts I can see where he's headed with this, and AFAIC he and Morty can go swap stories about how demented the rest of us are.
And again with the "let's vote him off the island" material ... Is it really that difficult to understand that the question "Was the National League better than the American League for well over a decade in the 50s and 60s?" is going to be subject to differing interpretations and conclusions? It isn't a factual question decipherable through only one exalted method.
DiMaggio's last year was 1951, not 1953. The Yankees won the World Series in 1952 and 1953 -- as you know in the marrow of your bones.
The World Series results are a wash, in whatever post-integration time period you wish to pick.(**) NL superiority in them, if it exists at all, was marginal. Their evidentiary weight in proving the notion you're trying to show -- a difficult one to prove -- is effectively zero.
(**) We can see why the focus in the "Morty" thread was 1954-64 -- that's the best era to cherrypick as it ignores the Yankee victories in 1949-53, all post-1947 years. It still puzzles how "Willie Mays" becoming "WILLIE MAYS" in 1954 somehow defines an era, but Mickey Mantle becoming "MICKEY MANTLE" in whatever year you want to pick between 1952-55 doesn't.
This is apparently picked-over territory, but what's the point of "dropping below" Williams and Mantle and Berra? OK, we throw out three AL HOFers. What then? Do we throw out three NL HOFers, and then compare?
I didn't mean to ignore Williams / Mantle / Berra, but once you get below those three (themselves countered with Mays / Musial / Aaron), you quickly find little or nothing in the AL to match the best in the National.
That's an interesting study, one supposes, of league "depth," but I can't begin to see how the exercise serves as a measure of quality.
Why is "depth" in quotation marks? And why wouldn't league depth matter? The point of such a comparison of the top players is that once you got below the Yankees, the quality of the AL dropped markedly, whereas there was far more competitive balance (and top drawer talent) within the rest of the NL.
Yeah, I kind of hope I learned my lesson with Madman Morty a few days ago. The irony here is that until Tommy started in with his Mortylike riffs about league strength that make about as much sense as Wall Street deregulation, I was mostly agreeing with him about Dimaggio. But after his last few posts I can see where he's headed with this, and AFAIC he and Morty can go swap stories about how demented the rest of us are.
And again with the "let's vote him off the island" material ... Is it really that difficult to understand that the question "Was the National League better than the American League for well over a decade in the 50s and 60s?" is going to be subject to differing interpretations and conclusions? It isn't a factual question decipherable through only one exalted method.
Let's get to the point: What's your explanation for the facts that have been outlined, in this thread and the one before it, that show that from 1954 through 1960 (or 1964, take your pick) the National League (a) had a near monopoly of the African American talent, (b) a big edge in A-level HoFers in their primes, (c) consistently beat the non-Yankee American League teams at every opportunity, and (d) held the Yankees themselves to a standstill in the World Series? And please try to limit yourself to that time frame; I'm not trying to argue for NL superiority before or after that.
Morty ignored these points and countered them with personal insults; Tommy ignores them and changes the time frame; and you act as if the problem lies solely in some sort of BTF version of political correctness. Maybe the next time you might want to state your actual opinion on the subject at hand, and back it up with "exalted methods" of your own, instead of limiting yourself to the role of Miss Manners.
This was about comparing Williams to Dimaggio. Williams was in the service for most of 1952 and 1953, so the real time frame for the Dimaggioless Williams career begins in 1954.
The World Series results are a wash, in whatever post-integration time period you wish to pick.(**) NL superiority in them, if it exists at all, was marginal. Their evidentiary weight in proving the notion you're trying to show -- a difficult one to prove -- is effectively zero.
That's relevant only if you think that my point is that the Yankees were inherently inferior to the NL's best teams, rather than being right up there in the mix with them---which is what they essentially were after 1953. The problem is that the National League had more than one team that was at that level in most years, whereas once the Yankees were out of the mix (as in 1954 and 1959) the Emperor all of a sudden was stripped of his clothes. One first rate team does not make a league.
(**) We can see why the focus in the "Morty" thread was 1954-64 -- that's the best era to cherrypick as it ignores the Yankee victories in 1949-53, all post-1947 years.
It's also the era when the earlier NL efforts at integration began to bear real fruit. You keep acting as if I were arguing for NL superiority before that, but I'm not. But relative league strengths do change, and did.
I'd have to see the list of A-level HOFers and non-white players that everyone's relying on (we all know the very best players, but that isn't enough), but there probably was a small window from 54-59 where the relative pace of integration made the NL stronger. The AL had two serious stragglers -- Tigers and Red Sox; the NL had one non-serious straggler -- Phillies -- with a decades-long history of suckitude under any method of procuring talent. Once old man Briggs moved on, the Tigers quickly integrated and by 1961 were probably better than the NL champion.(**) The Senators, with their racist owner, had collected a very nice talent base by 1960, including significant non-white talent. The original claim was 1954-64, which is far too long a time period. The idea that one league is superior is very tough to prove and the evidence isn't there for me.
Spring training games and all-star games, at the end of the day, really aren't that convincing. From time to time, I've used 2006 as a textbook example of the silliness of the playoff system. That was the year the Tigers swept the Cardinals in the regular season, and went 15-3 overall against the Cardinals' division. You wonder then what the point of the World Series was, but few people really buy the argument. If actual games don't "really" mean anything when measured against the World Series, you can see why people might think significantly less of spring training games and all-star games.
Tommy ignores them and changes the time frame; and you act as if the problem lies solely in some sort of BTF version of political correctness.
The time frame moves on your "side" on this one much more than on the other "side." Since it's your "side's" theory, it's more incumbent on you to be precise about the time frame. People with a real zest for the idea argue that the "superiority" continued well into the 1970s -- an absurd claim.
Tommy made some very valid points. If the AL was so weak, why weren't the Yankees walking into World Series with significantly more wins than their opponents?
(**) One of the players they got was, of course, Bill Bruton, who showed no real improvement upon arriving in the AL.
Where's the beef behind this claim? What was the fruit that blossomed in 1954 that wasn't there before? How did it compare to AL fruit of a similar nature? We can say without hesitation that the Yankee efforts to sign and develop great players bore fruit right around then -- Mickey Mantle.
This is the leg upon which the superiority claim fundamentally rests. Which isn't to say it doesn't have weight, but readers should be open-eyed about how important the 1954 and 1959 World Series results are to the debate.
I have no dog whatsoever in the Daig/T. Ballgame debate, but of course this is right. You don't bump up the rest of the league to Yankee level, you distribute the Yankee advantage throughout the league.
Stay safe and warm. Small sample size, but something is seriously weird about our climate now. 40 inches plus of snow, two blizzards in DC half a week apart in Februrary.
Two World Series results are not important to the debate at all in judging which league was better. The NL won two of the last five World Series in an era where we know for certain - because of interleague play - that the AL has a significant edge.
The arguments to the effect that the NL had a more even distribution of quality teams is also insupportable. If this were the case, one would expect to see relatively more NL teams with good records than AL teams, as the Yankees dominated to such an extent that none of the other teams in the AL even managed to stay close. But if you look at the top six teams in the major leagues each year (as measured by the their regular season records) there are three teams in each league among the top six every year except '50, '53 and '55, when there were four AL teams among the top six.
If the competition in the AL aside from the Yankees was relatively weaker than in the NL, you'd expect to see the Yankees winning the pennant by larger margins than their NL counterparts. However, the margins between the pennant winner and second place team in each league in the '50s were almost exactly the same, with the AL pennant winner winning the pennant by just .5 games more than their NL pennant winning counterpart.
As for the argument that the NL pennant winners managed to play the Yankees to a standstill in the '50s, this is really only true for the '55 to '58 World Series (the Yankees obviously dominated from '49 to '53, with only the '52 Series going the full 7 games). And even the evidence of the '55 to '58 World Series is suspect, because Mantle was not healthy for either of the two World Series the Yankees lost, in '55 and '57. In '55 Mantle played with a torn hamstring muscle and appeared in only three of the seven games, and one of the games was a pinch-hit appearance. In the '57 World Series Mantle batted in only five of the seven games (and pinch ran in another) and wasn't healthy for any of them after having missed the last five games of the regular season with torn ligaments in his shoulder. Moose Skowron, the Yanks 2nd best hitter in '57 also missed the end of the regular season and had only 4 at bats in the Series.
Give the Yanks a healthy Mantle in '55 and '57 and the Yanks might have won all those 4 World Series. Sure, that's speculation, but the argument that the NL pennant winners in the late '50s were as good as the Yankees is severely undermined because the best player in the world was never healthy for the Yanks in the '55 and '57 World Series.
P.S. Please, lets not debate who the best ballplayer in the world was from 1955 to 1958. It was Mickey Mantle, and it wasn't even really close. I love Mays, but he had a 165 OPS+ from '55 to '58. Mantle was at his peak, however, and averaged an astounding 200 OPS+ from '55 to '58. Mays was great, and was the better defensive centerfielder, but it couldn't begin to make up for the huge offensive disparity between Mantle and Mays. Look at Win Shares, if you must - Mantle was by far the best player from '55 to '58.
Before my first night game at Candlestick, I'd been warned repeatedly about the weather. So I wisely followed everyone's advice, and for a night game in mid-July I wore jeans, a heavy sweatshirt, and a moderately heavy jacket. I had to leave by the 5th inning.
EDIT: I should also point out that I made it through an entire Bears game at Soldier field in december.
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