Otherwise, to suggest that a 9-time MVP from 25 years ago could somehow be outclassed by "quite a few" players today is unfounded.

Oh, I agree, but then I think Honus Wagner was the greatest SS of all time. But you see the argument that Jesse Owens would be lapped by a bunch of high-school girls all the time.

For some reason (and that probably has to do with the abundance of stats available), this doesn't stop baseball fans. They make the comparison all the time, even going back to Honus Wagner and earlier.

Baseball Prospectus (I think) came up with some timeline adjustment that concluded Wagner would be Neifi Perez in today's game. That, to me, reeks as BS. Wagner's physical ability is well documented. He was large for his time and would look right at home among today's shortstops, at 5'11 and 200 pounds (same height and 10 more pounds than Gary Sheffield). He is documented as having won some long-toss competitions, throwing the ball far enough that he almost had to have been capable of hitting 90 on a radar gun. He was one of the earliest players to work out with weights. If he's big and strong enough, and throws well enough, is he going to fall back behind modern players for lack of hitting skill/hand-eye coordination?

I don't think so, that seems to be the aspect of play least likely to have changed.

Under the time travel scenarios, I have two answers for a guy like HOF Johnny Evers, who was 125 pounds:

1. Pluck him out of 1906 and into spring training, and there's no way he can play modern baseball.
2. Have born in 1980 and grow up in modern times, and maybe he develops into a Craig Counsell/David Eckstein type.

With Wagner it does not matter. Pull 1910 Wagner 99 years into the future and give him a tryout with the current Pirates right now. By tonight, he will be starting in the big league lineup, and batting 3rd.

He is documented as having won some long-toss competitions, throwing the ball far enough that he almost had to have been capable of hitting 90 on a radar gun.

Is this why you asked the physics question earlier? FWIW, no one's run the bases faster than Evar Swanson and that was 70 years ago. But I think that part of that is because no one does field days anymore.

That 98 WAR is without credit for Baltimore. A quick check shows that Grove was injured his 1st year of MLB, it's not all adjusting to the higher level.

But in Baltimore, he walked 180 batters one year. I cannot believe that major league batters would have been less patient with him. He would have had value, but I don't think there's any way he'd be a great pitcher until he found his control.

He's very comparable to Randy Johnson and Sandy Koufax, struggling with control for a few years before finding it and becoming dominant.

Tango has the burden of proof to show Randy Johnson was better by coming up with plausible adjustments due to level of competition.

I have the identical burden of proof that Dan has, since we are arguing about Step B. In no way can you go from Step A to Step C and pretend that Step B doesn't matter, or that it is up to me to prove that it matters more.

When it's as close as it is between how much each player outclassed his competition, the choice is easy. Babe Ruth and Ted Williams are much harder cases to argue, because the margin of error is enough to keep them in the discussion.

***

I posted this on my blog, and I'll repeat it here:

This is the average weight of pitchers, by decade (weighted by IP):

decade avgWeight
1870 140
1880 147
1890 159
1900 167

1910 180
1920 179
1930 184
1940 186
1950 188

1960 194
1970 195
1980 198
1990 200
2000 199

Through the 1900s, pitchers were very very small.

A jump occurred from 1908 (weight of 172) and 1910 (weight of 179).

From the 1910s through the 1950s, they were on the small-side by today’s standards.

Starting in the 1960s, pitchers started getting bigger.

With Wagner it does not matter. Pull 1910 Wagner 99 years into the future and give him a tryout with the current Pirates right now. By tonight, he will be starting in the big league lineup, and batting 3rd.

Concur. If Ruth played today, he might not have the 207 career OPS+, due to better overall play, but I'm pretty sure he'd still be the best hitter in baseball.

Is this why you asked the physics question earlier? FWIW, no one's run the bases faster than Evar Swanson and that was 70 years ago.

Not for Wagner specifically, but anyone who has been documented making long throws. It would give us proof against extreme timeliners who think that Walter Johnson was throwing in the mid 80's, and since he was talked about being so fast, everyone else would have to be under that.

I wonder if anyone tried timing Willie Wilson when he was hitting inside the park homers on a regular basis.

Concur. If Ruth played today, he might not have the 207 career OPS+, due to better overall play, but I'm pretty sure he'd still be the best hitter in baseball.

I'm not sure he'd be the best, but he'd be up there. It would be a great battle between him and his former teammate, Albert Pujols.

I'm not sure he'd be the best, but he'd be up there. It would be a great battle between him and his former teammate, Albert Pujols.

I've seen research suggesting that Ruth hit the longest average HRs of all time, by a lot. The only one to come close was roid-years Bonds.

I think he was just ridiculously strong. There is zero reason that strength wouldn't translate 1:1.

Albert could probably hang with Hornsby, but I still think Babe would be the man. Especially if someone could get him to go easy on the booze and hot dogs. Actually, Babe might be the biggest beneficiary of the modern game. The 7 PM start time gives you way fewer hours to party, and makes it much harder to still be hung over for the game.

Several years ago I showed how you can do timeline adjustments, and then conclude that Babe Ruth would be an average hitter today.

I then made the smallest of tiniest of changes to my assumption, and then I came out that Ruth would be the equal of today's best hitters (this was pre-Bonds, pre-Pujols).

It was at that point that I figured that to make the timeline adjustment is a fool's errand (though I continue to live on a hill). The only way to do this is to include a margin of error. So, if I were to say that Ruth would be a "140" RC+ today, I'd have to say that to mean he'd be a 140 +/- 25. You can just as well argue that he'd be a bit above average to the better than the best hitter in baseball.

This is what I mean when I talk about someone who easily outclasses his competition as Ruth, Gretzky, and Bobby Orr did.

For Grove, he outclassed his competition a bit more than RJ. If RJ allows 73% of his peers runs, then I think it's easy enough to say that Grove (who allowed 68%) would have allowed 85% +/- 10%. You could argue for 75%, but you could also argue for 95%. It's a big margin for error.

Which makes me puzzled why you state unequivocally that Johnson was better than Grove.

Why are you puzzled? Using Rally's WAR, Grove's WAR per 9 IP is very close to RJs. Therefore, it's easy to make the call.

Ruth is so far above his peers that it would be a tougher call to say that Pujols was the better hitter.

Very close means better without question now?

Rally has Grove at 98 WAR in 3940 IP, or +.224 wins per game above replacement. He has RJ as 92 WAR in 4039 IP, or +.205 wins per game.

If we add .410 as the replacement level (for each), that makes Grove as .634 win% and RJ as .615 win%. If you make the replacement level for Grove as .330, then he comes in at .554 win%.

See? It depends how good his peers were. Given that Grove and RJ are relatively close, that's why I made the call I did.

Ruth v Pujols would be much tougher.

I don’t think it’s particularly close

Grove's WAR per 9 IP is very close to RJs

Very close means better without question now?

Perhaps I am not making myself clear. RJ compared to his peers was very close to Grove compared to his own peers.

And since I think it's an easy call to say that RJ's peers were much better than Grove's peers, then it's an easy call to say that RJ was better than Grove (based on the "plucking" timeline).

The only argument I can come up with for Johnson over Grove is quality of competition due to integration, etc.

Well, there is the thing about Mack sitting him vs. the Yankees a lot. When you don't have to face the best and 2nd best offenses (the A's themselves being one of them) in the league much, it might skew the stats a bit.

* * * * *

If I had to resurrect one old time ballplayer, it absolutely would be the Dutchman. He would have rivaled the Babe as a slugger, if born 20 years later, run like the wind and have his gun of an arm. He likely would be like Bo Jackson playing short, without the boneheaded plays.

If I had to resurrect one old time ballplayer, it absolutely would be the Dutchman. He would have rivaled the Babe as a slugger, if born 20 years later, run like the wind and have his gun of an arm. He likely would be like Bo Jackson playing short, without the boneheaded plays.

He'd probably be my pick at SS for an all-time team. The only one close is ARod, IMHO.

I think Ruth, Wagner, and Hornsby would be top-10 all time players, regardless of when they played.

FWIW, the guys over at the HOM prefer Grove, but I think they are trying to answer a slightly different question than Tom is.

Grove in comparison can be seen here and here.. Grove's mechanics look much more modern in comparison.

The first of those links is to the Johnson clip.

That 98 WAR [for Grove] is without credit for Baltimore

as Spahn's 94 is without credit for his Grand Tour of Europe with the 9th Armored.

And as Randy's 92 is without credit for his Barnum & Bailey years.

But which Grove are you putting on the mound tonight? The Grove who was born in 1900 and whose body was a product of those conditions, or a Grove who was born in, say, 1980 with the same genes, but whose body is a product of these conditions? It matters how one answers that.

I believe that people have in mind the Grove who was born in 1900 and whose body was a product of those conditions. Now, they don't usually say this expressly, but it seems to be what they have in mind, and it's this implicit claim which, IMO, drives the debate.

Isn't it implicit in most of the "Grove was the greatest" arguments that if he'd been transported to the 21st century, his innate talent would have been been challenged by the better competition, and made him into a better pitcher, one whose natural skills would have enabled him to step up and compete against the vastly improved overall talent pool of today?

I believe that people have in mind the Grove who was born in 1900 and whose body was a product of those conditions. Now, they don't usually say this expressly, but it seems to be what they have in mind, and it's this implicit claim which, IMO, drives the debate.

Well, I'd say the "implicitness" here, and the fact that you're only able to "believe" that this is what people have in mind instead of knowing it, is a problem. If we're not clear about which assumption we're making, it renders whatever conclusion we draw nearly impossible to assess, since the two Groves born 80 years apart would certainly perform with different degrees of effectiveness in this hypothetical ballgame.

Until someone actually invents time travel, I don't think anything can be implicit. It sure seems everyone here has a different idea of what it means to compare players.

Isn't it implicit in most of the "Grove was the greatest" arguments that if he'd been transported to the 21st century, his innate talent would have been been challenged by the better competition, and made him into a better pitcher, one whose natural skills would have enabled him to step up and compete against the vastly improved overall talent pool of today?

I don't know. Therefore one of the things I'm arguing for is explicit articulation of assumptions and speculations, rather than leaving them implicit (and therefore likely unexamined).

Very close means better without question now?

I think he's saying that it's "very close" WITHOUT the adjustment. Therefore, when you make said adjustment, whatever the adjustment is, it must put Unit ahead.

It's like on your MVP ballot, you have one player who is at +40 runs and another player is at +35. Close call. Then you find out that the first player is a DH and the second player is a catcher. Now it's an easy call.

Edit: Oops, left to get lunch and didn't refresh the page. Sorry for redundancy.

One thing that I think is important, and usually shows up in these discussions at some point (I hope I didn't miss it) is that a much higher percentage of the US population played baseball 100 years ago. Town teams and all that. When everyone plays baseball, you are going to get better players. First, you aren't losing top athletes to football/basketball/etc. And secondly, you have a larger population to choose from to begin with. Why are so many more good baseball players from the south than from the north? They get to play more baseball during the year. When EVERYONE grows up playing baseball, you will get better baseball players (otherwise, China and India should dominate the winter Olympics, based on population alone).

This is one of many factors obviously, but it certainly is an important mitigator of the population difference between then and now. And I imagine there will never really be a good way to determine the real answer to this discussion. Which is why it is so interesting and fun to debate!

So, based on the Tango type analysis, Babe Ruth would be no better than Adam Dunn?

Edit OK - I see he has revised his initial position that Ruth was mediocre. At any rate, it seems that his analysis is a classic case of the arrogance of the modern.

No, he clearly stated that in the case of someone like Ruth, who was miles ahead of his competition, it's much harder to tell.

Well, I'd say the "implicitness" here, and the fact that you're only able to "believe" that this is what people have in mind instead of knowing it, is a problem. If we're not clear about which assumption we're making, it renders whatever conclusion we draw nearly impossible to assess, since the two Groves born 80 years apart would certainly perform with different degrees of effectiveness in this hypothetical ballgame.

I agree that the assumptions need to be express. I wanted to set them out bluntly so people could agree or disagree.

I'm waiting for a Grove supporter to come along and say "no, I meant something different" (perhaps what Andy suggested). But when someone says that Grove had an ERA+ of 148, while Tom Seaver's was "only" 127, and therefore Grove was better, it seems pretty clear that the only way to give meaning to this (beyond the trite observation of the indisputable fact of the two numbers) is that the actual, historical Grove could walk into the NL of 1966 and outperform Seaver.

it seems pretty clear that the only way to give meaning to this (beyond the trite observation of the indisputable fact of the two numbers) is that the actual, historical Grove could walk into the NL of 1966 and outperform Seaver.

But the "actual historical Grove" would be 66 years old, and would suck.

We clearly don't mean that. It's not at all clear to me that we mean the 25-year old Grove transported in a time machine to 1966 vs. a Lefty Grove clone born in 1941.

Again, does the "actual historical Grove" get to use modern equipment? Would an "actual historical Koufax" pitching today get the 20+ in Dodger Stadium mound?

I agree with those calling for explicit assumptions. IMHO I would compare based on the two players born into the same context. Your choice of context will also affect who you think is better, e.g. no way Pedro could stay healthy as a SP in the 60's and 70's, but that's as close to a level playing field as we can imagine.

So, I guess I'm a Grove supporter saying something different. I believe a hypothecial Lefty Grove, born the same year as Randy Johnson, would have been a better pitcher. Likewise a hypothetical Babe Ruth or Honus Wagner, or Rogers Hornsby born in 1985 would be dominant players today.

the only way to give meaning to this (beyond the trite observation of the indisputable fact of the two numbers) is that the actual, historical Grove could walk into the NL of 1966 and outperform Seaver.

That is most certainly not the only way to give meaning to the statement. Could be that Seaver + (all advantages of being born 45 years later) > Grove. But in the same circumstances, Grove > Seaver.

Both interpretations are equally impossible to actually verify.

is that the actual, historical Grove could walk into the NL of 1966 and outperform Seaver.

Well since Seaver was not in the NL of 1966, it's a pretty good bet

My use of the word "only" was overstated. I still think it's what most people have in mind, but I'm willing to be corrected; like Steve, I think it's important to make set out all the qualifiers.

Well since Seaver was not in the NL of 1966, it's a pretty good bet

Oops.

But when someone says that Grove had an ERA+ of 148, while Tom Seaver's was "only" 127, and therefore Grove was better, it seems pretty clear that the only way to give meaning to this (beyond the trite observation of the indisputable fact of the two numbers) is that the actual, historical Grove could walk into the NL of 1966 and outperform Seaver.

I'm not sure comparing the numbers is 'trite.' Part of the reason to have the numbers in the first place is for comparison, isn't it?

I'm not sure comparing the numbers is 'trite.' Part of the reason to have the numbers in the first place is for comparison, isn't it?

It's trite in the sense of pointless in this particular context.* There can't be any argument to the effect that 148 is worse than 127. But all that does is tell us by how much each exceeded his contemporaries; if that's all someone means by "better", s/he should say so and we can all agree and move on (except in borderline cases where the margin of error is important).

My assumption has always been that those arguing that Grove is "better" have something more in mind.

*I agree that developing the metrics of ERA+, etc. in the first place was entirely pointy. Before that, the arguments could get confused because the numbers weren't necessarily the right ones for comparison. Now that we do have good metrics, at least for certain aspects of the game, the problem is solved to that extent.

Since I'm the one who apparently started all this, let me try to lay out my thoughts.

My impression from reading Marc's original article is that he was weighting a bunch of different values that all measured dominance over competition. I followed along with that thought. My goal was to highlight some of the past work at Beyond the Box Score that most of our readers probably hadn't seen before, not to do any deep analysis.

I don't really know what I mean by "best".

I tend to think that using timelining without really understanding how it works leads to the extremely unfulfilling conclusion that the best players of today are the best players ever - perhaps excepting someone like Gretzky or Ruth, and maybe some others. It may very well be the proper answer, but it's not that interesting a question to me.

I prefer to take the wishy-washy approach of considering all the factors, much like Marc originally did, and subjectively choosing the best from a personal amalgam of a lot of data. Maybe I've heard too much nostalgia about the greatness of Grove, but without a lot of in-depth study, I feel like Grove's peak is slightly better than Johnson's (relative to competition), although both are amazing. So that, along with his time in Baltimore, which may not have been as good as I thought, pushed him over the top.

But, as I mentioned before, my "conclusion" was pretty much a throwaway line in an article intended to introduce people to Marc's work, so I didn't put a whole lot of thought into it, nor defend it very much.

On the overall topic of timelining, I'd love to see it applied, but it's hard to tease out exactly how different factors interact. I agree that the error bars would be quite large. And even if we could figure all that out, a timeline effect almost certainly couldn't be applied linearly to every player. So I doubt we'd be able to use it to resolve any of these fun debates anyway. Doesn't mean we should stop trying, or stop having the debates though.

And I imagine there will never really be a good way to determine the real answer to this discussion. Which is why it is so interesting and fun to debate!

Concur. These can sometimes turn into my favorite discussions here.