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Hall of Merit— A Look at Baseball's All-Time Best
Monday, February 27, 2012
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What would those conditions be that only helped Josh Gibson to the exclusion of everyone else in the Negro Leagues? Batting during the day? I can think of several disadvantages to being a Negro League catcher versus playing 1B that would have hurt his production compared to Buck Leonard.
Ichiro played for Orix in the Pacific league 1992-2000
Matsui played 1993- 2002 for Yomiuri in the Central league
You need to look at their league/park environments not their raw OPS, for all I know one was playing in the equivalent of the 1976 Astrodome and another in 2000 Coors.
Our hands are already up in the air. At least halfway. Whether you choose to see that or not is up to you.
And I'm using "sure" or "certain" not to mean "100% sure," but, rather, "as sure as a real MLE."
No, it cannot be done. Not without the data points. Which never existed.
The best you can do is an "MLE." You can never produce an MLE.
Back of the envelope? Piazza. I hardly think that's an insult. It's the best-hitting catcher the major leagues ever produced, in 150 years of trying.
Actually, I think Matsui was expected to hit for more power, based on what we knew at the time.
Ichiro's game translated better to the majors than Matsui's did.
I think part of the reason we have such a good read on Japan-to-MLB now is because of the last 10 years, with Matsui/Ichiro/etc coming over.
If you don't think that some of that is being in an era uniquely suited to Mike Piazza then you're fooling yourself also.
Absolutely. I didn't have a clue what to expect when Ichiro came over. Because he was the first significant position player. Now we have enough examples to be reasonably certain about what they can do. Not quite as certain as with an MLB free agent, but more certain than for a prospect up from AAA.
I would have made this argument myself a few days ago, but I'm less sure of it now. Gibson was better than Irvin but not by as much as I thought. In the Negro League he was Irvin with more power. Without any ballpark adjustment. Playing in the Mexican league, for the same team in back to back years, they were essentially equals.
The Negro League difference could be greater if the league strength had declined with WWII. I don't think it's a huge difference though, while MLB certainly declined during the war the effects were not obvious at the player level. We didn't see Stan Musial hit .400 or anything like that.
My range is 140-175. If I had to guess a number, I'd say 150.
That assume he had to play a 154 G schedule, caught full time, and had a normal decline (didn't die at 34).
I think it would be really, really hard to hit any better than that while catching.
And this is a question, not an observation or statement of fact. We know that the game stories from the era in both NeL and AL/NL were less objective and more fanciful than those of today -- see, for example, tales of 600' homers and runners so fast that their own line drives hit them as they slid into second. My question is whether the box scores were treated as pure fact or part of the story.
Along those lines, take Gibson's alleged equivalent career OPS+ of 170-180, and compare that against the field of best-hitting catcher seasons ever in the majors.
Doing a search for best OPS+ seasons of catchers who played/caught at least 120 major league games since 1901, we get:
Rk Player OPS+ G Year Age PA
1 Mike Piazza 185 152 1997 28 633
2 Javy Lopez 169 129 2003 32 495
3 Mike Piazza 166 148 1996 27 631
4 Johnny Bench 166 147 1972 24 653
5 Chris Hoiles 162 126 1993 28 503
6 Carlton Fisk 162 131 1972 24 514
7 Roy Campanella 159 143 1951 29 562
8 Mickey Cochrane 157 130 1933 30 542
9 Darren Daulton 156 145 1992 30 585
10 Mike Piazza 155 136 2000 31 545
11 Roy Campanella 154 144 1953 31 590
12 Jorge Posada 153 144 2007 35 589
13 Mike Piazza 152 151 1998 29 626
14 Dick Dietz 152 148 1970 28 612
15 Roy Campanella 152 123 1955 33 522
16 Ernie Lombardi 152 129 1938 30 529
17 Mike Piazza 151 149 1993 24 602
18 Rick Wilkins 150 136 1993 26 500
19 Mike Stanley 150 130 1993 30 491
20 Art Wilson 150 137 1914 28 530
So we're supposed to believe that Gibson was a 170-180 OPS+ player for his career, when basically one catcher ever hit that well for an entire season: Piazza, who did it once. And Javy Lopez, if we include his 169 OPS+ as being close enough.
How many individual catcher seasons have there been in major league history? There were 677 qualifying seasons above. And people don't feel the need to come back to reality when projecting that Gibson's career would have been at the level of the greatest-hitting catcher season ever in the majors, put up by the greatest-hitting catcher ever in the majors?
It strains belief.
I have one, they clearly aren't. Sometimes walks are omitted. Other times games have different box scores in different newspapers.
So does Babe Ruth
So you're holding up Ruth as your example.
Someone who wasn't catching, and who quite simply decided to play a different game from the one everyone else was playing.
It wasn't just that Ruth was better than everyone else; it's that he made a conscious decision to do it differently from everyone else.
And Gibson is supposed to be 170-180?
I mean, maybe. It's certainly possible. But likely? I don't know.
Years 1942-1946: 361/456/653 - either a very slight boost from WW3 diluted game, or else the league decline is hiding age related decline.
Ages 23-34 (to match Piazza): 373/463/682, MLE (based on Irvin) of 305/404/608 (163 OPS+).
Career Leaders in OPS+
Rank Player (yrs, age) Adjusted OPS+ Bats
1. Babe Ruth+ (22) 206 L
2. Ted Williams+ (19) 190 L
3. Barry Bonds (22) 181 L
4. Lou Gehrig+ (17) 178 L
5. Rogers Hornsby+ (23) 175 R
6. Mickey Mantle+ (18) 172 B
7. Dan Brouthers+ (19) 170 L
Albert Pujols (11, 31) 170 R
9. Shoeless Joe Jackson (13) 169 L
10. Ty Cobb+ (24) 168 L
11. Jimmie Foxx+ (20) 163 R
12. Pete Browning (13) 162 R
Mark McGwire (16) 162 R
Dave Orr (8) 162 R
15. Stan Musial+ (22) 159 L
16. Hank Greenberg+ (13) 158 R
Johnny Mize+ (15) 158 L
18. Tris Speaker+ (22) 157 L
19. Dick Allen (15) 156 R
Frank Thomas (19) 156 R
21. Hank Aaron+ (23) 155 R
Joe DiMaggio+ (13) 155 R
Willie Mays+ (22) 155 R
Mel Ott+ (22) 155 L
25. Manny Ramirez (19, 39) 154 R
Frank Robinson+ (21) 154 R
27. Roger Connor+ (18) 153 L
28. Ed Delahanty+ (16) 152 R
Charlie Keller (13) 152 L
30. Gavvy Cravath (11) 151 R
31. Charley Jones (12) 150 R
Nap Lajoie+ (21) 150 R
Honus Wagner+ (21) 150 R
Just to clarify for me:
are you saying his MLE numbers for the majors is higher than his Negro League numbers in the Shades of Glory book?
Couple of questions for you,
1) Piazza's OPS+ was 152, where would you guess that ranks on the list?
2)Barry Bonds, what would you guess his OPS+ was? He ended at 181 for his career.
OPS+ through age 34, Lively Ball Era
Yeah, I think we need to have more to go on before we conclude that a hitter is in the top 4-8 ever by OPS+.
And since we don't have more, we _do_ need to "throw our hands up" to a degree.
Rank Player (yrs, age) Adjusted OPS+ Bats
1. Babe Ruth+ (22) 206 L
2. Ted Williams+ (19) 190 L
3. Barry Bonds (22) 181 L
4. Lou Gehrig+ (17) 178 L
5. Rogers Hornsby+ (23) 175 R
6. Mickey Mantle+ (18) 172 B
7. Dan Brouthers+ (19) 170 L
Albert Pujols (11, 31) 170 R
9. Shoeless Joe Jackson (13) 169 L
10. Ty Cobb+ (24) 168 L
You should also note the scarcity of RH hitters. Pujols will almost certainly fall off that list as he experiences his decline phase.
I have a second question, how did you factor in the Polo Grounds, which was a tremendous home run booster while Irvin played there? It was fairly neutral overall because it killed doubles, but yeah, it would have been cool to see what Gibson could do in a park that was plus 135 to 164 in homer increases for a RH batter in the late 40's and early 50's.
Seamhead Polo Grounds Park Factors
I'm pretty sure I have a copy of that Shades of Glory book, but I'm not sure where exactly. I currently own more books than I have room for well ordered filing.
Say maximum human hitting ability is 100, but everyone gets a 10 point penalty when the platoon advantage is against them. A maxed out lefty will be observed at 97, the same skills as a RHB will be observed at 93.
Both Hornsby and Ruth have fairly small platoon splits, but if Hornsby had the platoon advantage often as Ruth did (~71% of the time as opposed to the 24%) he'd have probably put up a career OPS+ more like 183.
Pujols would gain about 5 points of BA, 10 points of OBP and 19 points of SLG if he had the platoon advantage 71% of the time (all other things staying the same)
Say maximum human hitting ability is 100, but everyone gets a 10 point penalty when the platoon advantage is against them. A maxed out lefty will be observed at 97, the same skills as a RHB will be observed at 93.
Right.
The point is it makes it less likely Gibson would've posted a 175 OPS+ since only one RHB, ever, has done so.
His OPS+ would fall to 163 (458/551). For Bonds he drops from 181 to 173 (430/588). Ruth had a pretty small platoon split so it would only move him a few points.
Bonds would be at 185 if he only had to face lefties 20% of the time like Ted.
Sure. I'm just saying it wouldn't be shocking if the greatest RHB in NeL history didn't correspond to >170 OPS+ in MLB.
Exactly one RHB in MLB history has bested a 170 career OPS+.
I find it very odd that some people think it virtually inconceivable that Gibson was "only" as good as Foxx or Aaron or Mays.
Strawman alert.
Looking back on this thread, I see opinions that it is inconceivable that Gibson was around 135 (lower than Piazza). Some that suggest it is likely he was better than Mays/Aaron/Foxx. I don't see anything resembling what you are suggesting.
Also note that Foxx played from ages 19-34, then the war came along and he had one season after the war at age 37. It is plausible that Josh Gibson was Jimmie Foxx at the plate plus an average catcher. I've always used a mix of Mize and Foxx as my doppleganger for Gibson's bat. Foxx also came up as a catcher. THAT'S the difference between what would have been Gibson's career in the majors and his career in the Negro Leagues. He never would have stayed at catcher in the majors. The Negro Leagues tended to put their best players up the middle (P, C, SS, CF) presumably due to scarcity. Hank Aaron probably would have stayed at 2B or he would have played CF a much larger portion of his career.
Somebody said there was only a 5% chance that Piazza was a better hitter than Gibson.
Given that Piazza was a 153 OPS+ through age 34, 142 career, that implies that the mean estimate for Gibson's MLB ability has to be way higher than 150.
I do. Looking back on this thread, what we find is that people think it inconceivable that Gibson was "only" a 150 OPS+ hitter. Which is not that far below Aaron (155), Mays (155), or Robinson (154). (It is far below Foxx, 163.)
Quoting now this exchange between DL and John Murphy:
Are we to believe that DL and John find it inconceivable that Gibson is 150 OPS+, but perfectly conceivable that he is 154 OPS+?
Yeah, 160 OPS+ is significantly higher than Piazza's 142 OPS+. That's what I've been using for my statement that there is a 5% chance Piazza was better. Look at comment #28.
I find it unlikely that 150 OPS+ is Josh Gibson's median projection. That would give him a range of 130-170. 140-180 is much more plausible.
As Snapper has pointed out, you've got Piazza playing through his decline phase, while Gibson wasn't even alive after age 35. So at a minimum you've got to cut Piazza off after age 35, which gives Piazza a 148 OPS+.
Now people will point out that Gibson played from ages 18-22 - but would Gibson have been in the majors that early?
Also, I don't know what Piazza's MLEs were, but he ripped up AA/AAA at age 23 in the TL/PCL. That has to count for something.
He also had a very good year at Bakersfield at age 22 - but it's probably not worth much; A+ level as a 22 year old.
Agreed.
I find 130-170 more plausible. I do agree that 140-180 is conceivable (though I have a hard time getting to that top end). It's at least more reasonable than 170-180.
Foxx (164), Aaron (155), and Mays (163) average out to about 160 when looking at stats through age 34. Mike Piazza is irrelevant to the statement I objected to. I stand by the statement that nobody here considers 160 to be inconceivably low. DL from MN is one of the guys on this thread with a higher Gibson estimate, and from post 139, 160 is his midpoint!
Foxx was.
Well if 160 is the consensus midpoint (too high for my taste - I find it remarkably unlikely Gibson would be the best RH hitter ever, while catching 140 Gs) then the chance that Piazza was better is way more than 5%. If the 2 SD range is 140-180, then you're talking a SD of ~10 pts.
If you take Piazza as a ~150 OPS+ hitter to (compare both with no decline phase) he's got ~16% chance of being better than Gibson.
Sigh.
Let me try this again. My point was if Gibson was "only" a 150 OPS+, then you have to move every other NeL hitter down that much lower. Again, does anybody really believe Gibson and Charleston were the only great hitters in almost 70 years of NeL play? To me, that's a ridiculous assumption.
I don't think you have to do that. For one thing, you could assume that Gibson would not hit as well while catching 140 games for 15+ years. It really is a significant point to me that Gibson's position is C. If he was a 1B or corner OF I'd have an easier time accepting the conclusions here.
He was likely catching 100+ games a year, especially when he played winter ball. There were only 30-50 league games a year but he was playing more baseball games than that. He was one of the biggest barnstorming draws and people were going to be upset if they didn't see Josh Gibson play.
But what we can do, and which I've already done, is compare them from ages 23-34.
Now I don't trust an MLE based off one comp and neither should you, so the starting point of 148 career can be substituted with whatever you think is best. But what I do know is that by excluding his stats before age 23, Gibson is 15 points better than his overall numbers.
So why wouldn't he play 1B? Ruth primarily played 1B when barnstorming.
Yes. His workload was probably as great as any MLB catcher. Nobody has been able to answer the question previously asked in this thread of how much he catched and how much he might have played other positions. But every source writing about Gibson talks about him as a catcher, with varying opinions on his catching ability. I doubt this would be the case if he were catching 50 games a year and playing left field for another 100 - wouldn't people comment about his outfielding if that were true?
By the end of his career it is reported that his knees were in bad shape and he had trouble squatting down. That sounds more like a player who had a huge workload at the position, like Johnny Bench, than a part time catcher.
No you don't.
There's zero reason these things should translate linearly. There might have been 10 guys who would've posted 140-160 OPS+, but no one who would've been >170. Since MLB has only produced 7 >170 OPS+ hitters in ~130 years, it's not at all hard to believe that the NeL didn't produce any.
Gibson most likely would have worn down if he had to play 140 full Gs at C, against top competition, like Yogi did in his prime. It's insane to believe that Gibson was catching 9 innings during barnstorming tours. That would've been the height of stupidity. If you put him at 1B, not only do you save wear and tear, but the fans can see him better (closer to stands, no mask) and he can interact with the fans. Ruth pitched or played 1B when barnstorming.
Also, other guys might have stepped up their relative performance with a regular schedule against top competition. It's like some hitters are bothered more by switching back and forth from good pitching to poor.
Because he would have caught all the league games.
Guys didn't play their regular positions in barnstorming games.
The fatigue from the barnstorming games is going to show up in his numbers for league games.
Gibson did move to LF during some of the East-West AS games but he always caught a few innings. I would imagine that would be the case in barnstorming games - announce Josh Gibson as the starting catcher, then move him to the OF later.
Should we give Ruth an adjustment then too?
During the majority of his Yankee career they scheduled barnstorming games on every travel day and off day. They'd stop and play a game in Pittsburgh on the trip from NY to Cle or Chi.
Plus he barnstormed nearly every fall/winter.
Everyone hates Bonds and Clemens? And steroids.
Gibson didn't get his numbers adjusted up due to barnstorming. It's Ray who is adjusting them down as if Gibson was only playing 50 games a year. And yes, Babe Ruth was awesome.
All I'm saying is that Gibson's workload was likely lighter than if he had been catching 140 MLB games p.a., like Yogi.
The point is how hard it would be to maintain a 160-170 OPS+ production rate while taking the abuse of a MLB regular catcher. Being RH and a C makes it virtually impossible in my mind.
Now if you want to say Josh Gibson the 1B was a 160-170 OPS+ hitter, that's a better argument.
Piazza is truly unusual. A genuine late blooming great player. Gibson? He was a big-time hitter quite young. But raw as hell as a catcher. No way of knowing how it would have played out.
The Tigers held Rudy York (a very talented hitter, but no Gibson) until he was 23 (and seem to have converted him to catcher in the majors in an attempt to find a position for him)
Joe Torre (again no Gibson, particularly as a young hitter) was in the majors at 20. And wasn't a polished defensive player.
The best comp I can find is Carlos Delgado. The Blue Jays held him back at least a year and moved him off catcher. But they were in a position to be patient, and as good as Delgado was, Gibson was better when he was even younger.
I think it highly likely that Gibson would have hit the majors very young as a "catcher and" and (given what we know of his work ethic) become an adequate catcher. Any smart organization is going to see the advantage that a hitter like Gibson at catcher would give them.
It is also possible that some teams wouldn't have given him the time to work through his rough stretches (see the Royals with Sweeney)
It's possible that he could have lost a year to what you might call Dick Stuart syndrome. No, not a bad glove. Stuart was placed in a league he was way too good for and hit 66 home runs. The Pirates didn't know what to make of this, so they pretty much ignored it. They had no frame of reference to judge how good the year was. Stuart often said that hitting 66 home runs cost him at least a year of his career.
I agree with this. I also think high gas prices suck, and that chocolate chip cookies taste good.
Exactly, and you want him at a corner position so he can ham it up with fans between ABs.
Also, very short seasons makes a high standard deviation in stats likely -- particularly when the competition is of uneven strength. It's highly likely that there's a lot less signal in Gibson's superiority over his peers than you guys have assumed -- particularly as some pretty massive park (or strength of opposition) illusions could be in play.
Why are you comparing him to Yogi? You should be comparing him to his contemporaries Dickey and Cochrane instead. Also, how many people ding the latter two OPS+ points because their workload wasn't up to Gary Carter levels? Few and far between is the answer.
Because they'd want his bat in the lineup as much as possible.
Doesn't really fit with Gibson's personality. Plus, Buck Leonard was at 1B on many of those teams. They were kind of a package.
I don't think there's a lot of controversy there. We've got a complete picture of their performance records, they all played in the majors, and there was no need to calculate MLEs from partial and never-existing data points.
The above arguments are all era/league/timeline adjustments. There might be disagreement, but that's unlikely to generate fierce debate.
I also think Gibson strikes a cord with people who want so badly to correct for the despicable misjustices of that era that they are prone to overcompensating for it, going beyond what we can reasonably glean from the available data to overstate the case.
Homestead played in Griffith Stadium
Exactly.
That's quite a leap to disparage people's intent. This is a league strength disagreement, not a moral crusade.
So you think there's a 60 point swing in his likely hitting level instead of a 40 point swing (120-180 OPS+ instead of 140-180)?
I don't think that's a disparagement, in any way, shape, or form. I understand the sentiment.
But that's a different issue from what we can objectively discern about Gibson's playing ability.
Ron, if Gibson was, i.e., 70% better than the average NeL hitter, he's still going to be 70% better no matter what. If you reduce his numbers, then every other NeL player's numbers would be reduced accordingly. Which means there would only be two hitters that would be considered great by ML standards if Gibson was only a 140-something OPS+ hitter (if you want to bring up catching fatigue, use Charleston instead - same results).
I think the 2 SD range is probably 130-170.
I don't appreciate being called a liar.
No.
Someone elses skills may have translated differently. Or he may have had favorable park/opposition mix.
...and we're back to this crap again.
You do know that can be flipped around, right? Don't you think that would be just as unfair?
John, you've restated this three times, but you haven't responded to the point that's being made.
Snapper made it earlier, in a different form: Who was the best hitter of the 70s and 80s? Mike Schmidt. And his OPS+ was only 147. Not 170-180. There's no reason to think that the best hitter in any given era will be 170 OPS+.
And I don't appreciate being dishonestly accused of calling someone a liar.
I never called you a liar. At most, I said some people (I didn't even say you) are biased by the circumstances. Similar to how a mother views her son in a different light from others. I didn't say it was dishonest.
"Back" to it? This is the first time I mentioned it.
I was asked why Williams/Bonds and Clemens/Johnson didn't create such a stir. I answered. But let's forget about that aspect of this, since it's making us veer off course of what has been an otherwise very interesting discussion.
Ray:
For two confidence intervals that close, that overlap each other by 75%, this argument is getting way too contentious. Especially the psycho-analytical bs.
Split the difference and Gibson's range is 135-175.
There's roughly no chance that this isn't a problem with Negro League MLEs. There's the further issue that park factors are relative. Sure we have a reasonable notion of how Washington played in Gibson's time (a tough HR park, but overall generally a mild pitcher's park)
Even then, compare how it affected scoring in 1934 (mild hitter's park) and 1935 (big time pitcher's park). While it's unlikely to have massively inflated Gibson's stats, there has to be some chance that some of the other elite hitters were playing in tougher offensive conditions.
I actually am fine with that, if we think of it in terms of something like Nate's percentile projections for PECOTA, where there's a larger chance that he ends up in the middle of that range than he ends up at either end.
You said I'm manipulating data (lying) due to some kind of white guilt.
Well, I doubt Babe Ruth would have been as good a hitter as Ted Williams had he started his career at least 25 years later, but I don't play all of these statistical gymnastics when comparing the Bambino to other great hitters. Ruth dominated his contemporaries like no other player did and deserves credit for that. I don't care how he would hit in other contexts when I'm figuring out his historical greatness. The same goes for Gibson.
I absolutely did not. But let's drop this part of the discussion. If it helps, I will confirm that I take you and John absolutely at your word that you are looking at this objectively.
Except that's not what I'm doing, Ron. I'm taking the two best hitters in NeL history to use as a comparison, not from any single generation of hitters.
But isn't the real history of the Negro "Major Leagues" only from about 1920 to 1950? Not much more than a generation.
First of all, I was defending myself against this "white guilt" charge. I have no regrets regarding anything I have said in that matter. I haven't questioned anybody's personal motivations here and I don't like it when it's done here to me or anybody else.
Secondly, if I have been condescending or hostile, it has been in response to something posted here and not because I initiated it myself. Thousands of posts here will clearly show I am not a confrontational guy, but I don't take attitude very well.
When we talk about the Negro Leagues here, we're talking about the 70 years or so of African-American baseball, Snapper. There were Negro baseball teams before 1920, but they weren't as organized as they later became.
Right, but given that the stats from even the most organized period are fragmentary, you're not really talking about black ballplayers from 1890 or 1910. It's basically 1920-50 that we're talking about as the time-frame for all the "Negro League" greats.
Fine by me, Ray.
FWIW, we passed over a few HOF players from the NeL because the stats didn't suggest any real greatness from them. Many of us here also don't think Satchel Paige is as great as he's normally thought to have been, either.
Statistics from 1890-1910 are indeed not as complete as in later years, but they're not non-existent either. It was much tougher to analyze those players, though, and we had to use more caution for those years.
Really?
I'd think the ability to pitch to a 125 ERA+ in MLB at ages 41-46 would be an indicator of a pretty premier talent.
Isn't elite RP pretty much the floor to Paige's talent?
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