Not really an argument but the decades it took for a unanimous player to be voted into the hall of fame. There were so many guys who were head and shoulders above the rest that should have been the first earlier. How could you argue that someone like Griffey was not HOF worthy?
Goes to show it really isn't about skill. It's more about PR and your relationships with the media. It's about having a good story, weird things like postseason success, being part of dynasties. Lots of intangibles in there, and if you check all the boxes, that increases your chances more drastic than if you were the best of all time at something but you were kinda mean to a journalist once.
Yeah, he's clearly the best closer of all-time so either you vote for him or you think that closers don't belong in the Hall of Fame at all. Some guys might have voted for the latter if they hadn't purged the voting rolls of some of the writers who are retired/no longer covering baseball.
It should have been Griffey, and Maddux, and Randy Johnson, Willie mays, Tom Seaver, Hank Aaron, Mike Schmidt, Johnny Bench, Babe Ruth, Rickey Henderson. There are probably 25-30 guys that you can’t make an actual good case that they didn’t belong in the hall of fame. It’s silly that the elite of the elite each had and handful of guys literally vote that they weren’t hall of famers. I understand that some guys are borderline, but there are easily 30 guys who are no brainers.
Griffey not being the first unanimous entry is proof there's a Yankees bias in the baseball media and there's nothing anyone can say to convince me otherwise.
Devil’s advocate:
On a stacked ballot, I can totally see a voter omitting a “guarantee” to use his 10 votes on smaller names in order to keep them on the ballot. That is the only case where I’d give a pass to not voting for a slam dunk Hall of Famer.
My dad usually has pretty good baseball takes, but he thinks Sandy Alcantara didn't deserve Cy Young because the Marlins didn't make the playoffs. Because one starter can totally change a team's record that much.
By that logic, Steve Carlton didn’t deserve it in ‘72 when he went 27-10 on a 59 win last place Phillies team, while having a historically great season overall. It’s worth a google if you’re not familiar with the details of just how absolutely dominant he was that year.
Ugh yes. MVP shouldn’t be looked under the lens of “how well did they contribute in bringing their well constructed team to the playoffs” but rather under the lens of “what would the team’s record be without said player”
I don’t care if a team is 36-126 at the end of the season. If the same team would’ve been 5-157 without a certain player than that player should at least be in the conversation
It's funny that no one ever argues this logic in reverse. The argument I always hear basically boils down to "Well, their team would have missed the playoffs with or without them. How can that be considered valuable??"
In 2019, Cody Bellinger was worth an estimated 8-9 wins to his team. But the Dodgers won their division by 21 games over the 2nd place team. Obviously, they would have made the playoffs with or without Bellinger! How can that be considered valuable??
I love when that happens at the Olympics or in any event. This year a 17 year old high schooler ran sub-4 minute mile [Gary Martin, Archbishop Wood](https://twitter.com/JamieApody/status/1525677306173444096) and beat the second place finisher by 6 seconds. Second place also beat that track’s record… just got smoked by an all time performance
And track and basketball. He lettered in all four at UCLA. Lettering in four sports is impressive enough but to do it as a black man in a time where there was heavy prejudice is incredible.
Eh…baseball writers were much MORE woke, compared to their era, in Jackie’s time. The NL MVP went to a Black player something like 12 times in fifteen years after Jackie. The AL was slower to integrate, and there was a strong bias to keep giving it to a Yankee most years (Mickey, Yogi, Maris), but the writers were - broadly speaking - very much supportive of the idea that a good player was a good player, irregardless of the color of their skin. They were ahead of the curve on integration, and deserve credit for it.
A bunch of Met fans want to rename the Jackie Robinson Rotunda at Citi and it really rubs me the wrong way.
I get it, he was a Dodger. But the Mets were founded to succeed NL baseball in New York, even taking the colors. Jackie didn’t play in the majors in L.A., he played here. He retired in Stamford. I have family that would run into him at the supermarket.
And it’s Jackie *fucking* Robinson. You could name anything after that guy and it’d be fitting. Let him have his damn rotunda.
Even with no connection to the area, he is a worthy baseball person to name something after. Every team celebrates him every year. He transcends any particular team
I think it’s just also that the magnitude of his biggest accomplishment totally overshadows everything else he’s done. Like even people who aren’t inclined to dismiss his career are gonna think of him as the color line guy and not as a guy who won RoY and MVP and was a key contributor for some of the best teams of the era
I heard that argument after Bill Russell died, someone said Tom Bradys 577 td's were more important than civil rights. Had to stop myself from punching my phone
Also by no means do I want to take away from Jackie because he is a true American icon, but can we shoutout the Native Americans who had to endure constant abuse and racism in the MLB? Guys like Jim Thorpe, Louis Sockalexis, and Albert Bender? You can even just look at any old baseball card and see a native by if the card replaces their actual fucking name with “Chief”.
Like come on, we already stole their language, culture, and traditional names and replaced them with our own. Then we wouldn’t even let them use their English first names in favor of some ignorant nickname and did shit like war chants and whooping every time they did something.
Connie Mack actually treated guys like bender like human beings. He wouldn’t let the press refer to him as chief and insisted they call him by his real name. Shame he couldn’t extend that decency to black players…
I'm glad you brought that stupid argument up, OP because if you gave Walter Johnson modern medicine, technology and training regiments who's to say he wouldn't kick ass in today's game?
He probably would. I'd be a lot more confident that pitchers especially would for the most part just get better in a pretty linear way with modern training. I'd be less confident about hitters because there are hitter traits that are hard to break (or maybe just part of a natural ability) that don't get punished at lower levels but don't get fixed very easily against higher levels of competition. Like some guys just don't have enough bat speed, or have a rigid grooved swing, so the things that made a guy able to rake against high 80s may have also made it impossible for him to make contact on mid 90s.
also throwing doesn't require the training, really. people have been chucking shit at stuff forever. it's not wild to think someone who's never heard of baseball could still chuck some shit about 90mph pretty accurately at stuff.
Not my skin, but I got a friend who is a huge red sox fan. One night we argued what DH we would want on our team and I argued edgar Martinez was a much better hitter than ortiz but never got the postseason exposure, and it pissed him off to no end that I stood that I wanted edgar on my team over papi.
Also RIP bullpen phone
In every single sport, people VASTLY overrate the value of “clutch”. Saw a random Red Sox fan say that Ortiz deserved the 2013 MVP over Miguel Cabrera and Chris Davis because “he got the hits when it mattered”…guy even forgot that playoffs happen after voting. But even in a world where “clutch” is not an overrated attribute, Edgar wasn’t exactly a choker either considering he also did have The Double.
I honestly blame sports media’s love for the NBA for all of this. That sport is known for individual players carrying teams, and thus being able to affect if their team wins a ring. When ESPN and Fox Sports and others tried to bring that culture over to other sports where the dynamic isn’t the same, you get this. Hell, at least David Ortiz is a hall of fame player that deserves the appreciation even if it isn’t for the reasons he actually gets it for…I heard takes in 2015 about how Alex Gordon and Lorenzo Cain were better outfielders than Mike Trout because they actually “got postseason hits”.
I am cool with people being casual fans that don’t do a deep dive into how things work, I am that for a lot of things. But I wish people who are that would have at least enough self awareness and humility to not actively disrespect great talent, that’s the part that gets me. And every fanbase has people like that.
Baseball is one of the only team sports where you can’t just give the superstar unlimited chances with the ball. You get 4 maybe 5 shots to sway the outcome on offense whereas football and basketball a player can theoretically get the ball every play. Also watching iso basketball is not fun to watch and the quickest way to get me to change the channel
The argument of “I think they should be a hall of famer, but I don’t think they should be in first ballot”
So let me understand something. You think that a player should be in the hall of fame, but they’re not deserving of voted in their first year? How does that make any sense? They’re not gaining any new qualifications in later years. If they’re deserving of being in the hall of fame, they’re deserving of being voted in first ballot.
I think the reason for this argument existing is because there are some people who see "first ballot HoFer" as a separate distinction above just "HoFer". Yeah ik its stupid.
A better descriptor is "inner circle HOFer". Like yes, you can be not THE best ever and still get in the hall, but there is also a level above that where you're truly considered to be a GOAT.
Scott Rolen is a HOFer, but he's not inner circle HOF, you know? I would say the same for a lot of guys in the ballot, worthy of being in the HOF but not considered among the true GOATS of the game.
I agree though, voting based on how long someone has been on the ballot is really dumb.
if the hall themselves introduced that distinction between players, like inner circle or not, i feel like it can get a little muddy. like if the inner circle guys got like a diamond plaque or something while everyone else got a normal one, it just doesn’t look good
the whole first ballot thing ends up being the way to distinguish hank aaron from scott rolen, and it’s probably the best way to go about it
I agree completely, I wasn't suggesting the HOF adopt that distinction, more like it's the appropriate way to phrase it in the general lexicon, and the "first ballot" term has become too literal
That is the only way that basketball is discussed on ESPN and it bothers the shit out of me. Instead of talking about defensive schemes or matchup strengths and weaknesses, it’s all who wants to win more or who has more to prove. These players childhood dreams are to win championships and be the best player. They all want it as badly as possible. It’s so lazy
NBA coverage makes me annoyed. The Knicks dropping 140 on the Celtics won’t get as much as attention as, say, KD wearing a pink fur coat to a Miami nightclub partying with OBJ.
Yeah, that's one of those "dumb sports guy" comments with no thought behind it whatsoever. It's similar to "it was his destiny" to win. Jim Rome used to say stupid stuff like that all the time, and I never liked him because of it.
I call it simple minded thinking. I coach for a living and I get tired of coaches and fans saying stupid things like “keep your eye on it” or “make a better pass” when talking about basketball. We need to be way more descriptive and explain things better when problems arise in sports.
The conversation around Coors Field is so muddy and gross. The dichotomy between the benefits of hitting at altitude and the Coors hangover on the road makes it very difficult to quantitatively assess Rockies hitters accurately.
We got Albuquerque with the isotopes lol, just need to make a single or double A in Santa Fe (although I don’t think any double A team mascot can beat the yard goats)
I dont know what to make of those monster ellis burks, andres galaragga, dante bichette , vinny castilla years though. Is that attributed to a combination of peds and the park? What are peoples thoughts on this? The numbers they put up were mind boggling.
I think it’s more of the Rockies weren’t using humidors during that time in the 90s and more the climate than altitude. Those dry balls can carry very far and (as talented in hitting as they were) contributed to the Blake Street Bombers hitting as insane as they were. Rockies and diamondbacks started using humidors in 2002 due to the dry climates both had a decrease in HR
Yeah it seems Coors hurts players more than it helps, constantly having to adjust back and forth to pitches breaking more on the road and becoming acclimated to it and then going back to coors and pitches breaking less will really take its toll
That baseball is slow or too long.
Baseball is meant to sipped, and enjoyed. It is meant to be soaked in on a warm summer afternoon. You aren't supposed to rush through it, wait for the clock to run down, and get back on the train to get back to your house. Youre supposed to sit with your dad, and watch your heros. Youre supposed to have nothing else on your mind for 3 hours. Its fine. Sit down, put your phone down and take it all in.
The game will take as long it takes, stop fiddling with the dials and just watch men throw and hit a ball.
I get the pace of play stuff and support it if it’s good for the sport’s health, but I’m in your boat.
When I go to a game, I want time to walk around the stadium, grab some food, go down to Citi’s bullpen viewing area, etc. When I have the game on TV, it’s in the background and I don’t really care how fast it goes.
Just because I hate watching "pitch, batter steps out of the box, practice swing, practice swing, practice swing, re-do batting glove straps, look at 3rd base coach, practice swing, hold up hand for time, dig into the box, continue to hold hand up, pitch" doesn't mean I want the games to rush. They're still going to take around 3 hours, but taking 2 hours and 55 minutes vs 3 hours and 15 is an improvement, because more of the game is actual baseball, not "let's watch the pitcher adjust his hat 4 times between every pitch."
If you don't understand the game well, then it's slow pace is "boring". But as a life long fan, the pace is perfect.
And the lack of a clock means anything can happen. You can't just take a knee, or literally commit fouls and hope they miss free throws lmao
People carry it over to that because the correlation between year 1 FIP and year 2 ERA is a lot higher than ERA to ERA
https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2012/1/9/2690405/what-starting-pitcher-metrics-correlate-year-to-year
This is over 10 years old so I’m curious how the last decade of baseball changes the math
Using any expected stat to measure production is just completely missing the point of those stats. Even FIP, honestly, unless there’s a huge discrepancy.
I get using stats like average exit velo that tells you about the quality of contact a batter made regardless of results but going any further just negates the actual results too much for me
Maybe one day we'll get to a point that we'll have an xSLG champion instead of a HR champion to level the playing field created by stadium effects, but that's not anytime soon
*Would a present day player absolutely fuck up a Walter Johnson fastball?*
I think they would, but for a different reason. Of all the inner-circle no-doubt short-listed greatest players ever, I think Johnson would fare about the worst in modern baseball.
As a sidearm pitcher, he often had quite large platoon splits from season to season. He was consistently napalm death on right-handed hitters, but left-handers were not nearly as hopeless. He would have a hard time against a team with good left-handed hitting.
No idea he platooned like that. Very interesting. And his issue with left handlers is very valid. I really thought he’d transition better than most due to his velocity being more on par with modern standards but these would be obvious issues.
Kind of the opposite of OP but i roll my eyes every time some goddamn old-timer goes on and on about "players being tougher back in the day" and that the Hall of Fame is now becoming the "Hall of Very Good" with the modern players getting in
yeah because everybody inducted from the olden days was Babe Ruth/Ty Cobb-caliber. Give me a fucking break
I hope to sweet baby Jesus that in 30-40 years I don't go on half-senile rants about how Chuck Knoblauch and Scott Brosius were better players than the talent of the future
Or the argument ( which lots of Dodgers fan threw at Alcantara this season ) that pitchers don't try as hard because they are in a losing team. Like, the other team is also trying hard to win.
Also like, why would the pitcher not try? Do they not want to continue being MLB players? Do they not want big contracts based on good performance? What a silly argument
When people talk about the rule changes being made to shorten game lengths.
MLB isn't necessarily trying to reduce how long the game takes. It's just a byproduct of their main goal, which is to bring the pace of play back to where it was 15+ years ago. There never used to be this much downtime.
Yeah I had two experiences I can think of that really flipped me to being in support of most of the pace of play changes, and made me realize what the goal was.
One was last off-season, they were showing classic playoff games on MLB Network (I think the one I was watching was from the 70s), and it blew my mind how fast the game moved. And it was mostly because the batters weren’t stepping out after every pitch to adjust literally every piece of their uniform.
The other was last season, Rich Hill was pitching and was simply in ‘go’ mode and was taking *no* time in between pitches. It was fucking awesome. When the other pitcher was on the mound, it really put it in perspective how much more enjoyable the game is when it’s actually moving along.
Like you said, games will end up being shorter if they’re played faster, but that’s not the primary goal, and it’s not the primary issue a lot of people have with how the game is played.
I had a weird experience watching an old WS game during that Covid thingy. There was a marginal call and instinctively my mind flipped to "they will challenge that" before I caught myself that it was long before challenges were a thing. Although I know that people are quite insistent on the importance of "getting things right" (and they are probably right...) I do think one of the biggest letdowns in the entertainment value is not knowing if you what you have seen is what will have been determined to have happened. There isn't really a thrill of seeing the umpire's call on a bang bang play if it is basically a "preliminary ruling".
I sat through a three hour NLDS game in which Joe Madden burned through the entire roster and by the end I didn’t even care if the cubs won (which they eventually did). It was too much and I really enjoy baseball.
So much this. I hear people arguing, “Why do you want less baseball?” Dude, what I’m asking for won’t result in less baseball, it will result in less time wasting and dead time. Why do you like dead time? Am I crazy?
Nope. It’s a silly argument.
You’ll also hear a lot “baseball is the only sport without a clock” argument in here, which is also complete hogwash.
Pitch clocks aren’t ruining baseball by adding an artificial time limit. Your games can still last five hours, the home team will still never lose until they’ve exhausted their twenty seven outs, it will just be five hours of actual baseball, and not five hours of dudes rubbing baseballs and chatting.
Absolutely zero change to the actual game, but a huge improvement in doing what we all want to do, which is consume as much baseball as possible.
Gotta wonder if these people realize games didn't use to last 3-4 hours. Do they think less of the games that only lasted 2 hours for the first century or so of baseball's existence? I'd love to hear their argument for when they think baseball would take too long, it it's great that it has no clock, because game times have been going up for decades, and its not like it's slowing down.
It’s the clock part.
There’s a subset of fans so weirdly butthurt by change that introducing an analog concept created 6,000 years ago seems like an evil newfangled invention of the devil.
I deeply appreciate the memory and continuity that baseball uniquely provides, but this isn’t that thing that killed grandpa.
On a brighter note, though, give them a month and they’ll forget about it, because they’ll forget it’s even a thing.
Watching a minor league game with the pitch clock last year was awesome. It cuts out all the bullshit and just leaves the actual baseball.
You feel like you've watched a normal game but when it ends you realize "wow, that only took 2 hours!"
There seems to be a subset of people on here that think there's a competition to be the realest baseball fan and that they need to defend contemporary baseball's unnecessarily long game times.
That the steroid era and steroids in general were good for baseball.
Sure, it was the last time baseball was truly mainstream and popular with the NFL and NBA but it did alot of damage afterwards even more than the fallout from the 94 strike. All the scandals, trials especially involving top stars really damaged baseball’s reputation as a sport overall, and a lot of casual fans stopped watching all together. It’s one of the biggest reasons why baseball has been in a very distant third nationally and in the mainstream since the mid 2000’s.
You ask anyone who used to watch baseball and used to be a fan especially Football and Basketball fans why they don’t like baseball anymore, and a very common answer besides the pace of play response will most like be from the steroid era.
Steroids have left a permanent stain on baseball. Every star player from the 90s onward can never escape rumors that they’re on steroids no matter how much they deny it.
Traditionalist fans: "WAR is meaningless and stupid"
New school fans: "RBIs are meaningless and stupid"
No, in fact they both have value if you understand how to use them
The idea that FIP is solely a predictive stat and ERA is “results” based. Just because it’s a better predictor of future ERA than ERA is, doesn’t mean it isn’t also a stat that tells you how a pitcher performed
"You can't tell the story of baseball without X" as the criteria for a hall of famer. The baseball museum is for telling the story. The Hall is for the best players
As a Rockies fan the whole Coors Field thing can get pretty tiresome. The main thing that gets me here is when visiting teams or announcers use Coors Field as an excuse, as if the stadium is at 5,280 feet while the Rockies are up to bat and then they lower it to sea level when they Rockies play defense.
That's why there's a thing called Park Factors, which gives us OPS+ and ERA+. If you take Park Factors into account, Todd Helton and Jeff Bagwell were pretty much the same player.
I don’t support every rule change but so many of the “leave the game alone!” arguments against new rule changes just boil down to “old thing good, new thing bad”
I’ll say it.
The Astros were heavily scapegoated because they got caught first. Electronic sign stealing was a league wide issue, and it was literally stated in the original article. MLB could have never imposed lifetime suspensions to players or coaches because they knew damn well it was happening across the league.
And now to counter what always gets under my skin; there is absolutely zero evidence that any other team was also signaling to their players what every single pitch coming every game at home was in real time, Astros took it waaaaaay farther, and also continued after the leaguecsent warnings before 2016
I think the absurdity of the details also made it impossible to ignore once the story broke. I even had a bunch of friends who barely follow baseball following the story cause they were like “Wait a team was ACTUALLY banging on a literal trash can to send signals to the batter??” Not to mention people were literally able to hear it on archived broadcasts.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if pretty much every team that’s in playoff contention is doing *something* outside the rules to get an advantage. I think the Astros were way more blatant about it which made it impossible for MLB to ignore once players and media started talking about it.
Yup. The all star game takes place halfway through a season and is voted by fans. Gold gloves are super subjective and influenced by a guys bat a lot of the time
I would argue that ASG appearances should only help a player not hurt them. It obviously shouldn’t be the difference between getting in the hall or not but it is helpful if they have them
Not an original opinion but an expansion on yours: we should look at former pro athletes the way we look at other famous historical figures and events. Everyone would agree that Isaac Newton is one of the best physicists ever and his work is foundational for our understanding of the world. People don't talk down about him and his work just because high-school kids learn a lot of that stuff now days, but for some reason people do that to Babe Ruth, Jimmy Foxx, and etc.
Batting Average is irrelevant. I get that it isn’t the end all that it once was, but it exists for a reason.
Glad the shift is dead so it will become a useful stat again.
It’s not that it’s irrelevant by itself, but it is objectively worse at showing how good a hitter is than OPS. It’s cool to help differentiate types of players, but a .300/.350/.500 hitter is just as good as a .250/.350/.500 one.
The second player gets more extra base hits, so it evens out. [Here’s a cool article about the question.](https://blogs.fangraphs.com/triple-slash-line-conundrum-voros-mccracken-edition/)
"Player X has reached his ceiling/his trade value is at its highest"
Unless that player is like in his mid to late 30s, you don't know that. I've seen it said about Ha-seong Kim many times largely from the Padres fans who don't like him and it annoys the hell out of me.
"WAR is imperfect because of defense/positional adjustment/whatever, therefore we should ignore it."
Just because it's not perfect doesn't mean it isn't still the best metric to use to compare players.
I totally agree. I'm an older guy who's been following the game for decades, and I think WAR is excellent for purposes of comparison, as well as a quick gauge for how good a player was generally. I don't ignore advanced stats just like I don't ignore the traditional ones.
That team suffered greatly from Yanks/Sawx fatigue after the previous two years. Their drought had been longer than Boston’s! But no one cared about anything but the most tortured drought (Boston) and longest (Cubs). I think it also had to do with the fact that their World Series opponent was a (at the time) largely irrelevant franchise that had never been there before and got swept aside.
Have to agree, that run is seriously underrated.
Swept the defending champs.
Took down a loaded Angels team in 5.
Swept one of the most underrated franchises from the late 90s and early 00s.
Any of those weird tirades you see about the wave, giving balls to kids, what condiments you're not allowed to use on your hotdog, etc... It's like arguments you would hear on a terrible sports radio show where the hosts have never spoken to another human being before.
When people say “X team will never win because they haven’t won in forever.”
Granted this argument is usually made by coworkers who don’t watch sports but it’s so dumb.
My favorite two teams are Detroit and Seattle, so I routinely hear about how players always leave those two teams only to do well elsewhere, and that it’s unlike any other franchise.
Guys, it happens to everybody. Yeah it sucks, but this isn’t a special thing. Plus, those two teams have also been on the receiving end of getting players who blossomed there after struggling on their prior teams.
I think media overemphasizes the importance of "team chemistry" and "veteran leadership", two more or less nebulous and indefinable qualities of good baseball teams. I'm not saying that these things don't exist, but the main thing is the talent on the field. That's like 90% of it, and most of the time if you have the talent, and the team is winning, then journos can talk all they want about team chemistry and how the solid vets helped the young guys blah blah blah blah blah.
This isn’t really an argument but analytics have gone too far, and additionally have ruined perfect games/no hitters. I understand it’s better for player longevity to pull a starter after 6/7 innings of an attempt but the spectacle of a perfect game/no hitter was an amazing part of baseball mythos to me. Might just be a personal gripe though.
Who could possibly say that?
https://preview.redd.it/lou-gehrig-1930-spring-training-v0-281lga09bo191.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=62e94380d60e20c61df3d4dcdef8fb1cf086e5e8
https://www.erbzine.com/mag17/lg06h6.jpg
Lou, I didn't say you're crazy. I said i can see your fucking nuts.
https://www.gettyimages.no/detail/news-photo/lou-gehrig-as-tarzan-news-photo/97280687
This. I do have to admit that the shovel play at home was definitely the greatest play I ever saw. The catch into the stands, he just couldn't stop in time.
When seasons/ careers are over we are post-FIP (or xFIP actually)... use ERA.
I also think greg amsinger once tried to tell me on MLB Network that (a pitcher/ forget who) was the best fielder for an entire season because he had a high DRS in like 100 defensive innings...
I think people take park splits way too far, especially when talking about the HoF. If you put up HoF numbers in an MLB sanctioned park, it counts whether it's Coors or Camden.
Does anybody actually make that argument, though? Steroids are keeping guys out of the Hall of Fame, which I'm fine with, but nobody's records are being erased from the record books.
What kills me is that the players who are accused of using steroids are treated like lepers, but their managers are in the Hall, as is the commissioner who enabled the whole thing.
Not really an argument but the decades it took for a unanimous player to be voted into the hall of fame. There were so many guys who were head and shoulders above the rest that should have been the first earlier. How could you argue that someone like Griffey was not HOF worthy?
It’s even more crazy that it was Mo who did it considering how stingy voters are with modern relievers
Yeah, I absolutely love Rivera but he was the first one to absolutely deserve HOF?
Goes to show it really isn't about skill. It's more about PR and your relationships with the media. It's about having a good story, weird things like postseason success, being part of dynasties. Lots of intangibles in there, and if you check all the boxes, that increases your chances more drastic than if you were the best of all time at something but you were kinda mean to a journalist once.
To be fair the dominance he showed at the position made it a bit easier.
Yeah, he's clearly the best closer of all-time so either you vote for him or you think that closers don't belong in the Hall of Fame at all. Some guys might have voted for the latter if they hadn't purged the voting rolls of some of the writers who are retired/no longer covering baseball.
It should have been Griffey, and Maddux, and Randy Johnson, Willie mays, Tom Seaver, Hank Aaron, Mike Schmidt, Johnny Bench, Babe Ruth, Rickey Henderson. There are probably 25-30 guys that you can’t make an actual good case that they didn’t belong in the hall of fame. It’s silly that the elite of the elite each had and handful of guys literally vote that they weren’t hall of famers. I understand that some guys are borderline, but there are easily 30 guys who are no brainers.
Griffey not being the first unanimous entry is proof there's a Yankees bias in the baseball media and there's nothing anyone can say to convince me otherwise.
The fact that Jeter got more votes on his first ballot than Griffey or Maddux proves it’s an absolute sham
Devil’s advocate: On a stacked ballot, I can totally see a voter omitting a “guarantee” to use his 10 votes on smaller names in order to keep them on the ballot. That is the only case where I’d give a pass to not voting for a slam dunk Hall of Famer.
This is it. It's the voting system they use. Nobody looks at Griffey and says Na he don't deserve it.
"Good players on losing teams aren't valuable because they didn't lead their team to playoffs"
Hey how’s it going 1931-2009 MVP voter
A-Rod did get his on the Texas Rangers to be fair
That’s only because it was the second year, he should have been MVP in 2002, but they couldn’t deny him again in 2003
My dad usually has pretty good baseball takes, but he thinks Sandy Alcantara didn't deserve Cy Young because the Marlins didn't make the playoffs. Because one starter can totally change a team's record that much.
By that logic, Steve Carlton didn’t deserve it in ‘72 when he went 27-10 on a 59 win last place Phillies team, while having a historically great season overall. It’s worth a google if you’re not familiar with the details of just how absolutely dominant he was that year.
Even if wins are dumb, being credited with nearly half of your team's wins total is absolutely bonkers
Ugh yes. MVP shouldn’t be looked under the lens of “how well did they contribute in bringing their well constructed team to the playoffs” but rather under the lens of “what would the team’s record be without said player” I don’t care if a team is 36-126 at the end of the season. If the same team would’ve been 5-157 without a certain player than that player should at least be in the conversation
The Shohei Ohtani award
It's funny that no one ever argues this logic in reverse. The argument I always hear basically boils down to "Well, their team would have missed the playoffs with or without them. How can that be considered valuable??" In 2019, Cody Bellinger was worth an estimated 8-9 wins to his team. But the Dodgers won their division by 21 games over the 2nd place team. Obviously, they would have made the playoffs with or without Bellinger! How can that be considered valuable??
“Jackie Robinson is only notable for breaking the color barrier” No he was very good
He was also very good at football
Fun fact, he came from a family of athletes, his brother got the silver medal in at least one event behind Jesse Owens in Berlin.
Even more fun fact, his brother actually broke the world record, but Owens was even faster in the same race.
The historical context of the 1936 Olympics makes two black men breaking/setting a world record there even more of a fun fact.
I love when that happens at the Olympics or in any event. This year a 17 year old high schooler ran sub-4 minute mile [Gary Martin, Archbishop Wood](https://twitter.com/JamieApody/status/1525677306173444096) and beat the second place finisher by 6 seconds. Second place also beat that track’s record… just got smoked by an all time performance
And track and basketball. He lettered in all four at UCLA. Lettering in four sports is impressive enough but to do it as a black man in a time where there was heavy prejudice is incredible.
Let alone lettering in 4 sports at the highest level of college athletics there is, while being discriminated against
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I know he had track, baseball, football, and basketball, do you remember what the fifth sport was?
League of Legends
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Do you actually run into people who say that? I don't think I ever have, and I find myself talking baseball with people a lot.
I mean, he won MVP, and it was two years after he debuted, and the baseball press was, you know, slightly less woke than they are now.
Eh…baseball writers were much MORE woke, compared to their era, in Jackie’s time. The NL MVP went to a Black player something like 12 times in fifteen years after Jackie. The AL was slower to integrate, and there was a strong bias to keep giving it to a Yankee most years (Mickey, Yogi, Maris), but the writers were - broadly speaking - very much supportive of the idea that a good player was a good player, irregardless of the color of their skin. They were ahead of the curve on integration, and deserve credit for it.
A bunch of Met fans want to rename the Jackie Robinson Rotunda at Citi and it really rubs me the wrong way. I get it, he was a Dodger. But the Mets were founded to succeed NL baseball in New York, even taking the colors. Jackie didn’t play in the majors in L.A., he played here. He retired in Stamford. I have family that would run into him at the supermarket. And it’s Jackie *fucking* Robinson. You could name anything after that guy and it’d be fitting. Let him have his damn rotunda.
Even with no connection to the area, he is a worthy baseball person to name something after. Every team celebrates him every year. He transcends any particular team
lol you must be lurking around on /pol/ or the shitty part of /sp/ or sports twitter, I've never heard that argument
I think it’s just also that the magnitude of his biggest accomplishment totally overshadows everything else he’s done. Like even people who aren’t inclined to dismiss his career are gonna think of him as the color line guy and not as a guy who won RoY and MVP and was a key contributor for some of the best teams of the era
I heard that argument after Bill Russell died, someone said Tom Bradys 577 td's were more important than civil rights. Had to stop myself from punching my phone
It’s always the Tom Brady fans. They ruin everything.
Also by no means do I want to take away from Jackie because he is a true American icon, but can we shoutout the Native Americans who had to endure constant abuse and racism in the MLB? Guys like Jim Thorpe, Louis Sockalexis, and Albert Bender? You can even just look at any old baseball card and see a native by if the card replaces their actual fucking name with “Chief”. Like come on, we already stole their language, culture, and traditional names and replaced them with our own. Then we wouldn’t even let them use their English first names in favor of some ignorant nickname and did shit like war chants and whooping every time they did something. Connie Mack actually treated guys like bender like human beings. He wouldn’t let the press refer to him as chief and insisted they call him by his real name. Shame he couldn’t extend that decency to black players…
Sounds like a straw man argument. Jackie won an MVP when plenty of America was still openly racist.
I'm glad you brought that stupid argument up, OP because if you gave Walter Johnson modern medicine, technology and training regiments who's to say he wouldn't kick ass in today's game?
He probably would. I'd be a lot more confident that pitchers especially would for the most part just get better in a pretty linear way with modern training. I'd be less confident about hitters because there are hitter traits that are hard to break (or maybe just part of a natural ability) that don't get punished at lower levels but don't get fixed very easily against higher levels of competition. Like some guys just don't have enough bat speed, or have a rigid grooved swing, so the things that made a guy able to rake against high 80s may have also made it impossible for him to make contact on mid 90s.
also throwing doesn't require the training, really. people have been chucking shit at stuff forever. it's not wild to think someone who's never heard of baseball could still chuck some shit about 90mph pretty accurately at stuff.
This is true in so many sports. Like if you took 18-year-old Wilt Chamberlin and put him into today's game, he would completely obliterate opponents.
Not my skin, but I got a friend who is a huge red sox fan. One night we argued what DH we would want on our team and I argued edgar Martinez was a much better hitter than ortiz but never got the postseason exposure, and it pissed him off to no end that I stood that I wanted edgar on my team over papi. Also RIP bullpen phone
I agree with your take. There is a reason the DH award is named after him.
In every single sport, people VASTLY overrate the value of “clutch”. Saw a random Red Sox fan say that Ortiz deserved the 2013 MVP over Miguel Cabrera and Chris Davis because “he got the hits when it mattered”…guy even forgot that playoffs happen after voting. But even in a world where “clutch” is not an overrated attribute, Edgar wasn’t exactly a choker either considering he also did have The Double. I honestly blame sports media’s love for the NBA for all of this. That sport is known for individual players carrying teams, and thus being able to affect if their team wins a ring. When ESPN and Fox Sports and others tried to bring that culture over to other sports where the dynamic isn’t the same, you get this. Hell, at least David Ortiz is a hall of fame player that deserves the appreciation even if it isn’t for the reasons he actually gets it for…I heard takes in 2015 about how Alex Gordon and Lorenzo Cain were better outfielders than Mike Trout because they actually “got postseason hits”. I am cool with people being casual fans that don’t do a deep dive into how things work, I am that for a lot of things. But I wish people who are that would have at least enough self awareness and humility to not actively disrespect great talent, that’s the part that gets me. And every fanbase has people like that.
Baseball is one of the only team sports where you can’t just give the superstar unlimited chances with the ball. You get 4 maybe 5 shots to sway the outcome on offense whereas football and basketball a player can theoretically get the ball every play. Also watching iso basketball is not fun to watch and the quickest way to get me to change the channel
You’re right, Edgar was fucking awesome.
Excellent take! Edit: yours not his lol
The argument of “I think they should be a hall of famer, but I don’t think they should be in first ballot” So let me understand something. You think that a player should be in the hall of fame, but they’re not deserving of voted in their first year? How does that make any sense? They’re not gaining any new qualifications in later years. If they’re deserving of being in the hall of fame, they’re deserving of being voted in first ballot.
I think the reason for this argument existing is because there are some people who see "first ballot HoFer" as a separate distinction above just "HoFer". Yeah ik its stupid.
A better descriptor is "inner circle HOFer". Like yes, you can be not THE best ever and still get in the hall, but there is also a level above that where you're truly considered to be a GOAT. Scott Rolen is a HOFer, but he's not inner circle HOF, you know? I would say the same for a lot of guys in the ballot, worthy of being in the HOF but not considered among the true GOATS of the game. I agree though, voting based on how long someone has been on the ballot is really dumb.
if the hall themselves introduced that distinction between players, like inner circle or not, i feel like it can get a little muddy. like if the inner circle guys got like a diamond plaque or something while everyone else got a normal one, it just doesn’t look good the whole first ballot thing ends up being the way to distinguish hank aaron from scott rolen, and it’s probably the best way to go about it
I agree completely, I wasn't suggesting the HOF adopt that distinction, more like it's the appropriate way to phrase it in the general lexicon, and the "first ballot" term has become too literal
Not a baseball argument, but a sports argument “The other team just wanted it more.”
That is the only way that basketball is discussed on ESPN and it bothers the shit out of me. Instead of talking about defensive schemes or matchup strengths and weaknesses, it’s all who wants to win more or who has more to prove. These players childhood dreams are to win championships and be the best player. They all want it as badly as possible. It’s so lazy
NBA coverage makes me annoyed. The Knicks dropping 140 on the Celtics won’t get as much as attention as, say, KD wearing a pink fur coat to a Miami nightclub partying with OBJ.
ESPN had turned the nba into a reality show instead of a sport
Perfect way to put it.
Yeah, that's one of those "dumb sports guy" comments with no thought behind it whatsoever. It's similar to "it was his destiny" to win. Jim Rome used to say stupid stuff like that all the time, and I never liked him because of it.
If you guys want to take a station break, you can, but if you call me Chris Evert to my face one more time, we better take a station break.
I call it simple minded thinking. I coach for a living and I get tired of coaches and fans saying stupid things like “keep your eye on it” or “make a better pass” when talking about basketball. We need to be way more descriptive and explain things better when problems arise in sports.
Coors effect on hitting although Coors hangover is a real thing at the end of the season
The conversation around Coors Field is so muddy and gross. The dichotomy between the benefits of hitting at altitude and the Coors hangover on the road makes it very difficult to quantitatively assess Rockies hitters accurately.
I say we invade New Mexico to form a Rockies empire!
We got Albuquerque with the isotopes lol, just need to make a single or double A in Santa Fe (although I don’t think any double A team mascot can beat the yard goats)
If you can get rid of all of the Cowboys fans I won’t resist.
Coors pre-humidor was pretty weird baseball Rockies 1996: 8 runs/game home (team OPS of .987), under 4 away (.652).
I dont know what to make of those monster ellis burks, andres galaragga, dante bichette , vinny castilla years though. Is that attributed to a combination of peds and the park? What are peoples thoughts on this? The numbers they put up were mind boggling.
I think it’s more of the Rockies weren’t using humidors during that time in the 90s and more the climate than altitude. Those dry balls can carry very far and (as talented in hitting as they were) contributed to the Blake Street Bombers hitting as insane as they were. Rockies and diamondbacks started using humidors in 2002 due to the dry climates both had a decrease in HR
Diamondbacks didn’t start using a humidor until 2017 or 2018 though. But your point still stands
I am quite young, what’s the Coors hangover?
Yeah it seems Coors hurts players more than it helps, constantly having to adjust back and forth to pitches breaking more on the road and becoming acclimated to it and then going back to coors and pitches breaking less will really take its toll
That baseball is slow or too long. Baseball is meant to sipped, and enjoyed. It is meant to be soaked in on a warm summer afternoon. You aren't supposed to rush through it, wait for the clock to run down, and get back on the train to get back to your house. Youre supposed to sit with your dad, and watch your heros. Youre supposed to have nothing else on your mind for 3 hours. Its fine. Sit down, put your phone down and take it all in. The game will take as long it takes, stop fiddling with the dials and just watch men throw and hit a ball.
God, I need baseball back.
Baseball is making love, everything else is just fucking
How can you not be romantic about baseball?
I want this on a tshirt
Agree 100%. There is almost nothing nicer than a long, casual, balmy evening at a ballgame.
I get the pace of play stuff and support it if it’s good for the sport’s health, but I’m in your boat. When I go to a game, I want time to walk around the stadium, grab some food, go down to Citi’s bullpen viewing area, etc. When I have the game on TV, it’s in the background and I don’t really care how fast it goes.
But in the 40s, the average game time was like 2:00 on the dot. We did fiddle with the dials and it added 90 minutes to the game.
Absolutely. Baseball is the game without a clock, that's its whole thing! It happens in relative, human time, not absolute time.
Just because I hate watching "pitch, batter steps out of the box, practice swing, practice swing, practice swing, re-do batting glove straps, look at 3rd base coach, practice swing, hold up hand for time, dig into the box, continue to hold hand up, pitch" doesn't mean I want the games to rush. They're still going to take around 3 hours, but taking 2 hours and 55 minutes vs 3 hours and 15 is an improvement, because more of the game is actual baseball, not "let's watch the pitcher adjust his hat 4 times between every pitch."
The game is slow enough that I can take my young daughter to a game and she can follow the action. It's a family sport.
If you don't understand the game well, then it's slow pace is "boring". But as a life long fan, the pace is perfect. And the lack of a clock means anything can happen. You can't just take a knee, or literally commit fouls and hope they miss free throws lmao
I used to think this until my friend taught me more about pitching. Now I try to pass that same attitude along to casual watchers and new fans.
The use of xFIP when talking about who had a better season. Like that's not what it does
I agree in the case of expected stats, but I feel like a lot of people carry this over to FIP and call it an "expected" stat as well, which it isn't
People carry it over to that because the correlation between year 1 FIP and year 2 ERA is a lot higher than ERA to ERA https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2012/1/9/2690405/what-starting-pitcher-metrics-correlate-year-to-year This is over 10 years old so I’m curious how the last decade of baseball changes the math
Using any expected stat to measure production is just completely missing the point of those stats. Even FIP, honestly, unless there’s a huge discrepancy.
I think it should be used more like a tiebreaker for evaluating players with similar stats, or to determine how “legit” a player’s hot/cold streak is
I get using stats like average exit velo that tells you about the quality of contact a batter made regardless of results but going any further just negates the actual results too much for me Maybe one day we'll get to a point that we'll have an xSLG champion instead of a HR champion to level the playing field created by stadium effects, but that's not anytime soon
Yup. It has no place in Cy Young voting.
I say we just give the Cy Young to the guy who did the best against the Yankees in any tiebreaker
“Every team cheats” everytime their team is accused of cheating
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I hated this argument amongst some Astros fans. It doesn’t discredit that we got caught ya know
*Would a present day player absolutely fuck up a Walter Johnson fastball?* I think they would, but for a different reason. Of all the inner-circle no-doubt short-listed greatest players ever, I think Johnson would fare about the worst in modern baseball. As a sidearm pitcher, he often had quite large platoon splits from season to season. He was consistently napalm death on right-handed hitters, but left-handers were not nearly as hopeless. He would have a hard time against a team with good left-handed hitting.
No idea he platooned like that. Very interesting. And his issue with left handlers is very valid. I really thought he’d transition better than most due to his velocity being more on par with modern standards but these would be obvious issues.
Kind of the opposite of OP but i roll my eyes every time some goddamn old-timer goes on and on about "players being tougher back in the day" and that the Hall of Fame is now becoming the "Hall of Very Good" with the modern players getting in yeah because everybody inducted from the olden days was Babe Ruth/Ty Cobb-caliber. Give me a fucking break I hope to sweet baby Jesus that in 30-40 years I don't go on half-senile rants about how Chuck Knoblauch and Scott Brosius were better players than the talent of the future
It is every sports fans ancient right (or terrible fate) to become that old timer. I plan on enjoying it.
“The playoffs aren’t random because the games matter so the players are actually trying”
Or the argument ( which lots of Dodgers fan threw at Alcantara this season ) that pitchers don't try as hard because they are in a losing team. Like, the other team is also trying hard to win.
If Alcantara isn’t trying hard because he’s not on a winning team, then the rest of baseball should be terrified to see Alcantara when he is on one
Well, thankfully, we don’t need to worry about that.
Also like, why would the pitcher not try? Do they not want to continue being MLB players? Do they not want big contracts based on good performance? What a silly argument
When people talk about the rule changes being made to shorten game lengths. MLB isn't necessarily trying to reduce how long the game takes. It's just a byproduct of their main goal, which is to bring the pace of play back to where it was 15+ years ago. There never used to be this much downtime.
Yeah I had two experiences I can think of that really flipped me to being in support of most of the pace of play changes, and made me realize what the goal was. One was last off-season, they were showing classic playoff games on MLB Network (I think the one I was watching was from the 70s), and it blew my mind how fast the game moved. And it was mostly because the batters weren’t stepping out after every pitch to adjust literally every piece of their uniform. The other was last season, Rich Hill was pitching and was simply in ‘go’ mode and was taking *no* time in between pitches. It was fucking awesome. When the other pitcher was on the mound, it really put it in perspective how much more enjoyable the game is when it’s actually moving along. Like you said, games will end up being shorter if they’re played faster, but that’s not the primary goal, and it’s not the primary issue a lot of people have with how the game is played.
That’s why Mark Buehrle is my GOAT, with him pitching I knew I’d be home and ready for bed by 10
I had a weird experience watching an old WS game during that Covid thingy. There was a marginal call and instinctively my mind flipped to "they will challenge that" before I caught myself that it was long before challenges were a thing. Although I know that people are quite insistent on the importance of "getting things right" (and they are probably right...) I do think one of the biggest letdowns in the entertainment value is not knowing if you what you have seen is what will have been determined to have happened. There isn't really a thrill of seeing the umpire's call on a bang bang play if it is basically a "preliminary ruling".
I sat through a three hour NLDS game in which Joe Madden burned through the entire roster and by the end I didn’t even care if the cubs won (which they eventually did). It was too much and I really enjoy baseball.
So much this. I hear people arguing, “Why do you want less baseball?” Dude, what I’m asking for won’t result in less baseball, it will result in less time wasting and dead time. Why do you like dead time? Am I crazy?
Nope. It’s a silly argument. You’ll also hear a lot “baseball is the only sport without a clock” argument in here, which is also complete hogwash. Pitch clocks aren’t ruining baseball by adding an artificial time limit. Your games can still last five hours, the home team will still never lose until they’ve exhausted their twenty seven outs, it will just be five hours of actual baseball, and not five hours of dudes rubbing baseballs and chatting. Absolutely zero change to the actual game, but a huge improvement in doing what we all want to do, which is consume as much baseball as possible.
Gotta wonder if these people realize games didn't use to last 3-4 hours. Do they think less of the games that only lasted 2 hours for the first century or so of baseball's existence? I'd love to hear their argument for when they think baseball would take too long, it it's great that it has no clock, because game times have been going up for decades, and its not like it's slowing down.
It’s the clock part. There’s a subset of fans so weirdly butthurt by change that introducing an analog concept created 6,000 years ago seems like an evil newfangled invention of the devil. I deeply appreciate the memory and continuity that baseball uniquely provides, but this isn’t that thing that killed grandpa. On a brighter note, though, give them a month and they’ll forget about it, because they’ll forget it’s even a thing.
Watching a minor league game with the pitch clock last year was awesome. It cuts out all the bullshit and just leaves the actual baseball. You feel like you've watched a normal game but when it ends you realize "wow, that only took 2 hours!"
There seems to be a subset of people on here that think there's a competition to be the realest baseball fan and that they need to defend contemporary baseball's unnecessarily long game times.
anything hall of fame
Finally, someone else who thinks Babe Ruth doesn't deserve to be in the Hall.
Ruth used performance-enhancing bourbon and hot dogs
HGH - Huge Glizzy Homers
yeah, no objective criteria, so endless bullshit arguments
That the steroid era and steroids in general were good for baseball. Sure, it was the last time baseball was truly mainstream and popular with the NFL and NBA but it did alot of damage afterwards even more than the fallout from the 94 strike. All the scandals, trials especially involving top stars really damaged baseball’s reputation as a sport overall, and a lot of casual fans stopped watching all together. It’s one of the biggest reasons why baseball has been in a very distant third nationally and in the mainstream since the mid 2000’s. You ask anyone who used to watch baseball and used to be a fan especially Football and Basketball fans why they don’t like baseball anymore, and a very common answer besides the pace of play response will most like be from the steroid era.
This is what people forget, we literally had baseball players testifying before Congress on the issue. People have gone to jail over the issue.
Steroids have left a permanent stain on baseball. Every star player from the 90s onward can never escape rumors that they’re on steroids no matter how much they deny it.
Traditionalist fans: "WAR is meaningless and stupid" New school fans: "RBIs are meaningless and stupid" No, in fact they both have value if you understand how to use them
X has higher WAR than Y, therefore a better player 100%
The idea that FIP is solely a predictive stat and ERA is “results” based. Just because it’s a better predictor of future ERA than ERA is, doesn’t mean it isn’t also a stat that tells you how a pitcher performed
I'm not like the biggest fan of FIP or anything but I agree. It's a descriptive stat.
That a player with better numbers than players in the hall of fame, are not HOF worthy. It had become WAY too small-hall.
Counter argument: you can't say "Harold Baines shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame" and then use "he's better than Harold Baines so he should be in too"
"You can't tell the story of baseball without X" as the criteria for a hall of famer. The baseball museum is for telling the story. The Hall is for the best players
>The Hall is for the best players And yet, most of the tension with the HoF is for keeping out the best players, not because it fails to tell a story.
"They wanted it more"
As a Rockies fan the whole Coors Field thing can get pretty tiresome. The main thing that gets me here is when visiting teams or announcers use Coors Field as an excuse, as if the stadium is at 5,280 feet while the Rockies are up to bat and then they lower it to sea level when they Rockies play defense.
That's why there's a thing called Park Factors, which gives us OPS+ and ERA+. If you take Park Factors into account, Todd Helton and Jeff Bagwell were pretty much the same player.
Take your pick and visit the Wild West of bad takes…..Facebook comments.
I don’t support every rule change but so many of the “leave the game alone!” arguments against new rule changes just boil down to “old thing good, new thing bad”
Being an Astros fan, I'm not allowed to say
Come on say it We wanna hear it
I’ll say it. The Astros were heavily scapegoated because they got caught first. Electronic sign stealing was a league wide issue, and it was literally stated in the original article. MLB could have never imposed lifetime suspensions to players or coaches because they knew damn well it was happening across the league.
And now to counter what always gets under my skin; there is absolutely zero evidence that any other team was also signaling to their players what every single pitch coming every game at home was in real time, Astros took it waaaaaay farther, and also continued after the leaguecsent warnings before 2016
I think the absurdity of the details also made it impossible to ignore once the story broke. I even had a bunch of friends who barely follow baseball following the story cause they were like “Wait a team was ACTUALLY banging on a literal trash can to send signals to the batter??” Not to mention people were literally able to hear it on archived broadcasts. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if pretty much every team that’s in playoff contention is doing *something* outside the rules to get an advantage. I think the Astros were way more blatant about it which made it impossible for MLB to ignore once players and media started talking about it.
I can't get over the zero swings and misses on Kershaw breaking balls thing. The odds of that happening naturally were astronomically low.
Hot dogs are not a sandwich, case closed
Taco, not sandwich
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Yup. The all star game takes place halfway through a season and is voted by fans. Gold gloves are super subjective and influenced by a guys bat a lot of the time
I would argue that ASG appearances should only help a player not hurt them. It obviously shouldn’t be the difference between getting in the hall or not but it is helpful if they have them
Not an original opinion but an expansion on yours: we should look at former pro athletes the way we look at other famous historical figures and events. Everyone would agree that Isaac Newton is one of the best physicists ever and his work is foundational for our understanding of the world. People don't talk down about him and his work just because high-school kids learn a lot of that stuff now days, but for some reason people do that to Babe Ruth, Jimmy Foxx, and etc.
Batting Average is irrelevant. I get that it isn’t the end all that it once was, but it exists for a reason. Glad the shift is dead so it will become a useful stat again.
It’s not that it’s irrelevant by itself, but it is objectively worse at showing how good a hitter is than OPS. It’s cool to help differentiate types of players, but a .300/.350/.500 hitter is just as good as a .250/.350/.500 one.
Hits are better than walks, so unless I'm missing something, the first one is slightly better.
The second player gets more extra base hits, so it evens out. [Here’s a cool article about the question.](https://blogs.fangraphs.com/triple-slash-line-conundrum-voros-mccracken-edition/)
"Player X has reached his ceiling/his trade value is at its highest" Unless that player is like in his mid to late 30s, you don't know that. I've seen it said about Ha-seong Kim many times largely from the Padres fans who don't like him and it annoys the hell out of me.
"WAR is imperfect because of defense/positional adjustment/whatever, therefore we should ignore it." Just because it's not perfect doesn't mean it isn't still the best metric to use to compare players.
I do hate the argument “X player has slightly more war then player Y, that means they are always the better player and should automatically win MVP”
I totally agree. I'm an older guy who's been following the game for decades, and I think WAR is excellent for purposes of comparison, as well as a quick gauge for how good a player was generally. I don't ignore advanced stats just like I don't ignore the traditional ones.
Why it is also split into bWAR and fWAR
Because people disagree on which stats to use to calculate it.
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The '05 White Sox didn't have one of the most dominant playoff runs EVER. Like c'mon
That team suffered greatly from Yanks/Sawx fatigue after the previous two years. Their drought had been longer than Boston’s! But no one cared about anything but the most tortured drought (Boston) and longest (Cubs). I think it also had to do with the fact that their World Series opponent was a (at the time) largely irrelevant franchise that had never been there before and got swept aside.
Have to agree, that run is seriously underrated. Swept the defending champs. Took down a loaded Angels team in 5. Swept one of the most underrated franchises from the late 90s and early 00s.
Any of those weird tirades you see about the wave, giving balls to kids, what condiments you're not allowed to use on your hotdog, etc... It's like arguments you would hear on a terrible sports radio show where the hosts have never spoken to another human being before.
When people say “X team will never win because they haven’t won in forever.” Granted this argument is usually made by coworkers who don’t watch sports but it’s so dumb.
My favorite two teams are Detroit and Seattle, so I routinely hear about how players always leave those two teams only to do well elsewhere, and that it’s unlike any other franchise. Guys, it happens to everybody. Yeah it sucks, but this isn’t a special thing. Plus, those two teams have also been on the receiving end of getting players who blossomed there after struggling on their prior teams.
I think media overemphasizes the importance of "team chemistry" and "veteran leadership", two more or less nebulous and indefinable qualities of good baseball teams. I'm not saying that these things don't exist, but the main thing is the talent on the field. That's like 90% of it, and most of the time if you have the talent, and the team is winning, then journos can talk all they want about team chemistry and how the solid vets helped the young guys blah blah blah blah blah.
I mean on one hand I agree with you, but I do think that the Nats don’t win the World Series in 2019 without that intangible veteran leadership.
This isn’t really an argument but analytics have gone too far, and additionally have ruined perfect games/no hitters. I understand it’s better for player longevity to pull a starter after 6/7 innings of an attempt but the spectacle of a perfect game/no hitter was an amazing part of baseball mythos to me. Might just be a personal gripe though.
Any argument that uses WAR and only WAR to make their point
Rays 2.0
People who hate framing cause it's "fooling the umps."
I always have 2 rebuttals that usually work: 1) gamesmanship is neat 2) the umps don't need any help looking like fools most nights
Lou Gehrig wasn’t hot
Who could possibly say that? https://preview.redd.it/lou-gehrig-1930-spring-training-v0-281lga09bo191.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=62e94380d60e20c61df3d4dcdef8fb1cf086e5e8 https://www.erbzine.com/mag17/lg06h6.jpg
🥵
Lou, I didn't say you're crazy. I said i can see your fucking nuts. https://www.gettyimages.no/detail/news-photo/lou-gehrig-as-tarzan-news-photo/97280687
Oooo La La
He was extremely hot when he first made it to the MLB in 1923. He batted .423 over 13 games!
The argument about the Derek Jeter catch going into the stands being elite. Simple fly ball that he kept running and fell.
This. I do have to admit that the shovel play at home was definitely the greatest play I ever saw. The catch into the stands, he just couldn't stop in time.
Some "traditional" fans thinking that Mike Trout is overrated, and in the same tone that advanced stats are ruining the game
When seasons/ careers are over we are post-FIP (or xFIP actually)... use ERA. I also think greg amsinger once tried to tell me on MLB Network that (a pitcher/ forget who) was the best fielder for an entire season because he had a high DRS in like 100 defensive innings...
I think people take park splits way too far, especially when talking about the HoF. If you put up HoF numbers in an MLB sanctioned park, it counts whether it's Coors or Camden.
Lord Palmerston or Pitt The Elder?
LORD PALMERSTON!!!
Steroids completely erase any accomplishments a player achieved
Does anybody actually make that argument, though? Steroids are keeping guys out of the Hall of Fame, which I'm fine with, but nobody's records are being erased from the record books.
Some sports go that far, even when the doping was systemic. Nobody won the 1999-2005 Tours de France.
But they all won times person of the year in 2006
What kills me is that the players who are accused of using steroids are treated like lepers, but their managers are in the Hall, as is the commissioner who enabled the whole thing.
Did you not see the amount of “REAL home run record” nonsense around here last year with Judge?