STAN AND THE MEN: In honor of 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Stan Musial's 90th birthday yesterday, St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Derrick Goold lists baseball's ten greatest living former players: Aaron, Berra, Bonds, Henderson, Koufax, Mays, Musial, Robinson, Seaver, Schmidt.
[My list: replace Seaver with Clemens, Robinson with Maddux, and I'd hear argument on Pedro or Unit over Koufax. Indeed, Koufax's presence on the list at all depends on what attributes you're incorporating within Greatness as a preliminary matter.]
Replace Bonds with Thomas, but I'm torn on replacing Robinson with Maddux; both great, but you might be right on that one.
ReplyDelete?
ReplyDeleteReplace Seaver? REPLACE SEAVER??????!!!?!??!?!?
ReplyDeleteTake Seaver's career. Add 43 wins, 1000 strikeouts and a 15 point spread in ERA+ in about the same number of innings. That's Clemens.
ReplyDeleteSeaver's in #11-15, but I'm hard-pressed to make the case for him over Clemens.
<span>Replace Bonds with Thomas</span>
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<span>What's the argument for Thomas over Bonds? I mean, aside from that one.</span>
I would replace Koufax before Seaver. And I'm not sure how you have Berra and not Bench - they're so close that they should either be both in or out.
ReplyDeleteMy list: Aaron, Bonds, Clemens, Henderson, Maddux, Mays, Morgan, Musial, Seaver, Schmidt.
That was me. Mondays.
ReplyDeleteHard-pressed to make the case for Seaver over Clemens? How about this: Seaver compiled his stats without using banned performance-enhancing drugs. For the same reason, I'd leave Bonds off the list.
ReplyDeleteThere's no question that Bonds was a great player and Clemens was a great pitcher before they starting taking steroids. But would they have been Top Ten great? Maybe, maybe not. The shame is that we never had a chance to find out.
I think you'd be hard pressed to find a more dominant hitter in the 1990's and the early 2000's than Thomas; Bonds doesn't even enter into the argument, for obvious reasons.
ReplyDeleteSeaver also didn't have to pitch against batters using PEDs. Or, except at the end of his career, against designated hitters. That said, obviously, one can legitimately decide to leave PED users off the list, in which case I agree with Devin that there's now room for Joe Morgan, though I too don't know how to settle Bench v Berra.
ReplyDeleteI just don't see the point of making lists of the greatest players, living players, modern players, etc., without including the person whose on-field performance was greater than any player in the modern era, and arguably greater than anybody in any era. If you leave him off the list, the omission becomes the most significant thing about the list.
ReplyDeleteA case study in how baseball-- the most histroical of sports (or at least the one in which history is most prescient)-- ruined itself.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that nobody wants to take active issue with Yogi and his .348 OBP... I know he's iconic and everything -- and unquestionably a tremendous, historically significant, baseball player -- but I'm thinking he's easily the most replaceable player on that list.
ReplyDeleteI'm also wondering if the inherent truth of Nolan Ryan's overratedness has made him underrated in some circles. I'm *probably* not replacing Seaver (or Clemens or Maddux) with him, but still...
-Daniel
You can't leave PED users off the list until you (a) identify the users; and (b) identify the PEDs. Do amphetamines count, so we're going to get rid of all of the players from the '20s to the '70s? How about Andro, which was a PED but which also was clearly not banned? Does it have to be against the rules of baseball for the PED to be counted against the player? Should a player who used Andro be eligible for these lists, but a player who used a banned stimulant of less established efficacy be ineligible? What if it's not against the rules, but it's against the law, like (arguably) HGH? And how much do we need to know about how much a substance helped? Do we have to know how much it helped? We have a good idea of how steroids help, but not how much. We don't have a very good idea of how much amphetamines helped, or whether they did. Do we presume that they didn't help, but hold a nagging fear that maybe they did? What about cocaine? Perhaps a little bit of cocaine would have helped, but a lot of cocaine definitely did not. So should we say that chonic cocaine users are OK for the Hall, but recreational coke users are banned? Or are they all banned because cocaine was illegal? As is marijuana, but that obviously doesn't help at all. Except maybe it does for people who have anxiety disorders, so maybe marijuana should be a disqualifier on a case-by-case basis. Hey, what about medicines that are necessary for legitimate purposes, but that have measurable related athletic benefits, like albuterol (for asthma) and erethropoeitin (for diabetes)? Should people who use those drugs for a real condition be included or excluded from these lists? And come to think of it, if a doctor thinks that steroids will help a person recover from a surgery, should lawfully-and rationally-prescribed steroids be a disqualifier?
ReplyDeleteOnce we figure out the answers to all of these questions, I imagine it will be really easy just to ask everybody who has ever played the game, living or dead, to identify every substance that they took that might have benefited their performance.
erythropoeitin? I don't know how to spell that one.
ReplyDeleteWe can remove Bonds from HoF consideration if that's the penalty for doping. But if we do, it's time to go Zachary Taylor on the entire dead population of Cooperstown to see who was taking what, when and purge the roles.
ReplyDeleteLet Timmy Smoke!
ReplyDeleteOops. See below. Isaac said this better and more completely. But that's only because he knows what he's talking about.
ReplyDeleteI think the list was too OF/1B heavy already. I think balance requires Berra or Bench, and possibly Morgan and Ripken as well.
ReplyDeleteJust because it is hard to draw lines doesn't mean they shouldn't be drawn. In an ideal world, with perfect information, we could make perfect decisions. But just because we can't identify every user of every drug that might have aided in performance, we shouldn't have to accept obviously inflated numbers of known cheaters. And just because we can't perfectly correlate performance enhancement to drug of choice doesn't mean we have to disregard the pretty clear correlation between steroid use and home runs when we evaluate guys who hit lots of home runs. I don't know where the lines should be drawn, but I don't think anyone is particularly unjustified in excluding guys who are "known" users any more than I think someone would be wrong to just compare every person to the era in which he played and ignore the PED issue entirely.
ReplyDeleteThank goodness the particulars of the Hall of Fame voting process (huge pool of voters, supermajority required, 5 year waiting period, 15 years on the ballot) are conveniently designed to deal with such a messy scenario. It is going to be an interesting decade of votes.
You know, I've said this before, but I don't really care why a guy throws 100mph or hits a ball 550 feet. I only care that he does. I don't get why being a freak of nature is a fair advantage but being a freak of science is not. That actually seems backward to me.
ReplyDeleteI'd putt Maddux over Seaver, assuming we're talking about Greg and not Mike.
ReplyDeleteBonds is a Hall of Famer without steroids; Clemens isn't. Bonds even had a shot at cracking the top 10 without steroids. He stays on the list. My own take is he'd get in the Hall but for the legal troubles. That'll keep Rose and Clemens out, even if they never get convicted (and likely McGwire and Palmeiro, as well) but not A-Rod who did own up to using PED's.
Speaking of living legends who are the subject of scandal, does Pete Rose make the list 10 years ago? It's a testament to the Sabermetric revolution that the hit king gets overlooked, even to the point where his own teammate and fellow idiot (for different reasons) Joe Morgan is not a crazy suggestion.
I'd straight up replace Berra with Bench, largely on the strength of Bench's defense.
I'd say Clemens and Bonds were in the same boat pre-roids. Assuming Clemens started when he left Boston he was 192-111 with 2500+ Ks and a career WHIP of 1.158 and ERA+ of 145 (those latter two stats were both better before he left Boston than after). He also already had 3 Cy Young Awards (a number exceeded only by Carlton at that time) and an MVP (and only one pitcher has ever won two of them). He also was the only guy to ever strike out 20 batters in a 9 inning game and he had done it twice. He almost certainly would have been in the Hall of Fame if he retired at the end of 1996 or if he merely played out the twilight of his career as nature intended.
ReplyDeleteRE: Nolan Ryan
ReplyDeleteI think "staying healthy for an incredible length of time" is just as valuable as some of the other more publicly prized skills we talk about when we talk about pitchers. So many promising young pitchers have been dashed on the rocks of "arm stiffness" and "shoulder soreness" that I think seeing a player go for 27 is just incredible. At his best he was certainly Hall of Fame level (ERA+ of 195 in 1981 - Age 34, ERA+ of 142 in 1987 - Age 40), and his 3.19 ERA- while 24 points below the HOF average (crude stat, etc)- is really more indicative of his steadiness. He never put up an ERA higher than 4.00 in a full season.
That said, I understand the argument for the other side. He's essentially a very high level accumulator who was freakishly healthy, and he played his career during one of the worst offensive eras in the modern age.
10 years ago, Ted Williams was still alive -- so there goes one slot. Not sure who else died in the past decade of relevance for this.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Bob Feller probably is worth looking into for a slot here. As for Rose, he's always going to be resented for prolonging his career that long. Also, didn't hit for power at all.
Henderson and Bonds were both active 10 years ago, so that opens two slots (more if your list includes Pedro, Maddux, Clemens and/or Johnson in place of Seaver, Robinson, and/or Koufax).
ReplyDeleteNow I say this from a non-politics standpoint, but when I clicked on the list of Presidential Medal of Freedom winners, I noticed that a President is one of the winners, and doesn't that kind of seem like the fix is in?
ReplyDeleteLike how prestigious is it for a PRESIDENT to be nominated for a PRESIDENTIAL Medal? Or is that just something they all get?
And if it isn't something they all get, how pissed are you if you are the President that doesn't get the Presidential medal? Because seriously, if it is in your name/title, how do you not win it/get it/be awarded it?
Since JFK revived the medal, all but Nixon and Clinton have received it, but it'd be rude to give it to Clinton before GHWB. That said, NO POLITICS RULE.
ReplyDeletePoor Nixon. That is all I have to say. It is like being the one kid in class who didn't get invited to his classmates birthday.
ReplyDeleteI think the point is, if we know they used a BANNED substance then leave 'em off the list. People do all sorts of things to enhance their performance that are not banned and we could argue about whether those things are right or wrong or effective till the cows come home. But that's not my issue. People like Bonds purposefully broke the rules and cheated so I say they don't deserve to be called great.
ReplyDeleteThe kiddo, our resident baseball fanatic, says his ten are: Aaron, Bench (over Berra because of fielding), Bob Feller, Ken Griffey Jr., Henderson ("not just a speedster, hit a load of homers too"), Maddux, Mays, Morgan, Musial, Schmidt. (And if this was ten greatest living players, not former players, he'd have Pujols instead of Maddux.)
ReplyDeleteRe Feller, he says he was both a win pitcher and a strikeout pitcher, and he says strikeouts are [is?] the most underrated and yet overrated stat in baseball, like Dan said about Nolan Ryan, because strikeouts blow away hitters and make them more scared of the pitcher, and also take away the chance of errors. So many people say strikeouts are overrated, that it becomes underrated.
I say, "That sounds good, honey."
Actually, he says, he wants to take out Bench and add Eddie Murray.
ReplyDeleteI love Griffey dearly for all of those years he gave me in Seattle, and I will support his HOF candidacy without reservation, but he is just not 10 Greatest Living material. Likewise Eddie Murray, except without the hometown angle. Now Randy Johnson, that guy was a monster.
ReplyDeleteCareer .199 Batting Average Against vs. Left-Handed Batters. Over 22 years, that is just mind-boggling.
ReplyDeleteYou are raising your kid right, Genevieve.
ReplyDeleteMaddux!
I think for Eddie Murray, the kiddo was thinking that all positions should be on the list (he'd been talking about how it could be a list of a team made up of the great living former players), and he said Eddie Murray was probably the great living former first baseman.
ReplyDeleteThe kiddo added Eddie Murray after <span>he'd been talking about how it could be a list of a full team made up of the great living former players, and he said Eddie Murray was probably the great living former first baseman. Of course, he took out a catcher to do it . . . </span>
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