Tango on Baseball Archives

MLB Timeline - Best players by position (January 14, 2004)

Nice presentation...
--posted by TangoTiger at 11:16 AM EDT

Posted 11:32 a.m., January 14, 2004 (#1) - studes (homepage)
Wow. That is a nice presentation. It looks like output from Excel, which blows me away.

Of course, it would also be nice if they explained their rankings. But it is a good chart for what it does.

Posted 1:03 p.m., January 14, 2004 (#2) - ColinM
Yeah, nice looking list.

I've done stuff like this before just for fun, though never made it look so good. It's a good way to pass the time on a bus or train. So who would you guys change? Looking just at first base, going back to the mid 70's (far as I want to go without looking at the data), I'd change it to:

giambi 2000-2003 (Helton wouldn't be a bad choice though)
mcgwire or bagwell 1996-1999 (Bagwell really was just as good)
thomas 91-95
clark 88-90
mattingly 85-87
murray 82-84
hernandez 79-81 (way better than Eddie in 79-80, just as good in 81)
carew 76-78

Posted 2:40 p.m., January 14, 2004 (#3) - Homer Summa
Nice presentation. I would have liked to see more analysis, but still a fun chart.

Posted 3:00 p.m., January 14, 2004 (#4) - Yaz
I can't believe that Tim Salmon was the best RF in baseball for five years. How about Tony Gwynn instead?

Posted 4:11 p.m., January 14, 2004 (#5) - Rally Monkey
Its about time Salmon got his due. I like the presentation, but one problem: Albert Pujols as third baseman.

Games played at 3rd:
2001: 55
2002: 41
2003: 0

He's more like the second best LF in baseball. Rolen, perhaps?

Posted 6:29 p.m., January 14, 2004 (#6) - Bill
Rolen, then Chavez, then I don't know. Glaus maybe? Lowell? Aside from the top 2 third base has been horrible for consistency these past few years.

It's really a wonderful chart aside from Pujols.

Posted 7:39 p.m., January 14, 2004 (#7) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
This is a nice presentation, like others have said, and unusually good for something coming out of Pravda. Having said that, I cannot see why one would say Willie Mays was a better player than Mickey Mantle from 1958 to 1962.

Posted 7:45 p.m., January 14, 2004 (#8) - Gary Geiger Counter
I like it. I'm not sure if I agree with all the picks, but it's a good starting point for a discussion.

Posted 1:41 p.m., January 15, 2004 (#9) - Xanadu Moo(e-mail)
Hi, guys. I'm the one who put the chart together. I welcome any feedback. You're right, Geiger Counter, it is a starting point. It is a work in progress, but hopefully it's in good enough shape to give a decent perspective on the history at each position.

Sorry about the Pujols gaffe. This was a rough draft, and I didn't check all my positions as thoroughly as I could have. I knew 3B was his main position in his rookie year.

I will be updating the chart in a couple weeks after going back and researching a little further.

Yeah, I kept thinking there must be someone other than Salmon to go there. And it's also interesting that Ramirez and Belle were mostly in LF in their best seasons, so they're the unlucky recipients of the Bonds consolation prize.

Mays-Mantle from '58-'62? I'll expound on that later on. Actually I did give Mantle '58, and started Mays at '59.

Yes, it was made in Excel. I only had to tweak the location for the logo, and I was set. I run extensive macros for my fantasy league's results through Excel, and it's quite powerful with calculations, as well as reorganizing the data.

Maybe I'll add some analysis to it as well. Five kids, though. You know how that goes...

Posted 2:05 p.m., January 15, 2004 (#10) - mommy
Why the gaps between eras? i understand maybe there's transition periods between the great players at one position, but some of those blank spots are 3 or 4 years long. surely someone should be in there, even if he doesn't seem like a great player, but just happened to be better than anyone else at his position for those seasons.

Posted 5:29 p.m., January 15, 2004 (#11) - Bill
He specifically mentions that a player must be the best for a three year period.

[an error occurred while processing this directive] Posted 1:39 p.m., January 16, 2004 (#13) - fracas
Tony Gwynn is shown as the best RF from 82-87, when he didn't play a full season (or even 100 games) until 1984. I'd say he was the best from 84-89 (sorry, Darryl Strawberry).

Posted 3:17 p.m., January 16, 2004 (#14) - ColinM
Wihtout Gwynn from '82 then it might make sense to have Dave Parker replace the end of Reggie's reign, say 75-80 (maybe Winfield in 79-80) and give 81-85 to Dwight Evans. I wouldn't start Gwynn until '86.

Posted 12:06 p.m., January 19, 2004 (#15) - Matt
Very interesting list.

Man, I wish the Dodgers hadn't gotten rid of John Wetteland (for Eric Davis). And Pedro Martinez (for Delino).

Posted 1:07 a.m., January 23, 2004 (#16) - Sam M
What about starting pitchers? There are definitely more gaps, but here's a proposed order, beginning in 1901:

1901-03: Cy Young
1904: No one
1905-11: Christy Mathewson
1912-14: Walter Johnson
1915-17: Pete Alexander
1918-19: Johnson
1920: No one
1921-22: Red Faber (I'm serious)
1923-27: No one
1928-33: Lefty Grove
1933-36: Carl Hubbell/Dizzy Dean (kept trading off -- either them jointly, or no one)
1937-43: No one
1944-46: Hal Newhouser
1947-54: No one
1955-56: Don Newcombe
1957-62: No one
1963-66: Sandy Koufax
1967-68: No one, maybe Bob Gibson
1969-73: Tom Seaver
1974-77: No one
1978-79: Ron Guidry
1980-83: No one
1984-85: Dwight Gooden
1986-91: No one -- Clemens, if anyone, but he never really had two straight seasons where I'd say he was the best pitcher in baseball (until later)
1992-95: Greg Maddux
1996: No one
1997-98: Roger Clemens
1999-2002: Pedro Martinez
2003: No one

Thoughts???

Posted 1:24 a.m., January 23, 2004 (#17) - Sam M
Oh, and about Piazza v. Posada (# 12) -- come on. Bias in favor of your team's players all well and good, but let's not get silly about it. There is no way in the world that Posada was a greater player than Piazza in any season prior to 2003.

Posted 1:36 p.m., January 23, 2004 (#18) - ColinM
Sam,

I like the list but I don't see why there needs to be gaps. I mean someone had to be the best (true talent) pitcher in any given year, even if they didn't end up with the best results for that particular season. Take '96 for example. Smoltz, Brown and Hentgen were all clearly above their heads and Clemens and Pedro hadn't begun their great runs yet. But what about Maddux? Even though he had a bit of a down year, his peripherals were still excellent. And he went right back up to a dominating level the next year. I feel pretty comfortable saying he was still the best pitcher in the game in '96.

My nominees for the last couple of decades:
01-02 Randy Johnson
99-00 Pedro Martinez
97-98 Roger Clemens
92-96 Greg Maddux
86-91 Roger Clemens
84-85 Dwight Gooden
83 Dave Stieb
80-82 Steve Carlton

Posted 2:42 p.m., January 23, 2004 (#19) - Sam M
Colin,

I was trying to generally respect the paradigm of the original chart, which was that a player had to be the best for a number of years to be included. The chart itself had several such gaps at almost every position. I adjusted the criteria to two, rather than three, years of being The Best -- for Clemens, Gooden, and a couple of others. Certainly, you could begin to fill some of the gaps in the way you suggest; I like extending Maddux a year more than I do filling in with Stieb.

Posted 2:55 p.m., January 23, 2004 (#20) - J Cross (homepage)
Off topic:

Can we get AED (Andy Dolphin, I believe) back here discuss this (homepage) and details about his simluation game?

An interesting exerpt:

What I didn't mention, since it was just in passing, is that fully half of clutch hitting effects are because power hitters try too hard to be heros and hurt their teams. (They have more home runs per hit in clutch situations, but so many fewer hits as to be a net negative.)

I don't know about you guys but I hadn't heard such a thing before.

Posted 3:41 p.m., January 23, 2004 (#21) - AED
I indeed made an examination of clutch hitting tendencies from Retrosheet data and found a high statistical significance (~99%) that individual batters hit differently in clutch and non-clutch situations. About half the variance in player clutch performance can be explained by a correlation between clutch performance slugging average, the rest is mostly 'clutch ability'. I wrote up the details for a different site, which wasn't interested on the grounds that there was nothing new.

The sim game isn't as detailed as Diamond Mind, but is accurate enough that one can apply EqA, ERC, DIPS ERA, and similar calculations. (I've never mentioned it around here because it's a for-pay site and I don't want to sound like I'm trying to get free advertising.)

Posted 3:49 p.m., January 23, 2004 (#22) - J Cross
Wow. That's certainly new to me. If the write up isn't published somewhere else why don't you publish it here or with baseball prospectus? How big an effect is this?

Posted 3:55 p.m., January 23, 2004 (#23) - tangotiger
AED, feel free to send me that article, and I'd be glad to post it here (or put a link to your site, if you post it there).

I can't believe that the "clutch ability" would be more than 1 SD = 2 runs, and I would guess that 1 SD = 1 run. I'd be interested to see that, for sure.

Posted 4:40 p.m., January 23, 2004 (#24) - AED
Clutch differences are responsible for a standard deviation of approximately 7.5 points of OBP in clutch situations for the players in my sample. The inherent distribution of abilities of the same set of players in overall OBP is about 22 points. So it's definitely not a huge factor -- you don't turn 0.250 hitters into 0.400 hitters -- but is large enough to be measured. I don't recall the average leverage, but one S.D. change in one player should translate into about 1/4 or 1/5 of a win over 162 games.

Posted 5:08 p.m., January 23, 2004 (#25) - ColinM
So if I understand this right, then the difference between a really good and a really bad clutch hitter might be as much as 1 win? That sounds like a pretty big finding to me.

Back to (sort of) the original topic, who would be better than Stieb for '83? It was a pretty weak group but someone has to be the best. If you were God and could replay the 83 season a million times, some pitcher would end up the most valuable overall and I'm guessing it would be Stieb. I think you could make a case for Valenzuela or Quisenberry or Morris too.

Posted 5:51 p.m., January 23, 2004 (#26) - AED
Yes, the difference between a 2 S.D. "clutch player" and a 2 S.D. "choker" is about one win per season. The problem is in coming up with a way to know who is clutch and who isn't. Aside from the correlation with slugging I didn't find any simple way of measuring it. (Due to random noise, one needs about 2200 PAs in clutch situations to measure a player's clutch OBP to an accuracy of 10 points.)

I'll try to find my old writeup on this and post it.

Posted 7:46 p.m., January 23, 2004 (#27) - Sam M
Yes, someone has to be the best pitcher of 1983. But I think the premise of the chart was that the guy who performed the best in a single season would not necessarily be considered the best player in baseball at that position. Seaver didn't pitch the best ball in 1972, not with that season Carlton had. But he still was considered the "best pitcher in the game" in the more general sense. Thus, just because Stieb had the best season in 1983, or because Mike Boddicker did, or whomever, doesn't mean that he was considered the best pitcher in the game. It just means he had the best season.

It follows, then, that there could be a moment in time -- a season or more -- when there just is no consensus pick, no one regarded as The Best.

I do think Stieb had the best AL season in 82, and may have had the best one in 1983. But I think Steve Rogers, not Stieb, had the best season in the majors in 1982. But if you want to say Stieb was best in 82-83, I'd say: maybe. I just don't feel any great need to slot him in there for the sake of filling the gap. If he really was The Best, OK. But if there's a gap, that's OK, too.

Posted 8:29 p.m., January 23, 2004 (#28) - ColinM
Sam,

I'm not calling Stieb the best pitcher in 1983 because I think he had the best season. I actually think he didn't. I'm looking at a five year span from 81-85, trying to gauge his actual level of ability in '83, and saying that I think at that particular season in time, Stieb was the best pitcher in baseball from a true talent point of view. Carlton had declined from his late career peak, and Gooden didn't come along until the next year. So for one season, Stieb was the best pitcher that MLB had.

There's really no right or wrong eay to do this. But I think that just because it isn't so clear cut who is the "best" for a moment in time, doesn't mean that somebody isn't. It's just harder to seperate them from the rest.

Agreed about Rogers in '82 and Seaver-Carlton in '72.

Posted 8:57 p.m., January 23, 2004 (#29) - ColinM
And just for the hell of it,

Best Player in Baseball
1991-2004 Barry Bonds
1989-1990 Rickey Henderson
1985-1988 Wade Boggs
1983-1984 Cal Ripken
1977-1982 Mike Schmidt
1973-1976 Joe Morgan
1970-1972 Johnny Bench
1967-1969 Carl Yastrzemski
1959-1966 Willie Mays
1956-1958 Mickey Mantle
1954-1955 Willie Mays
1949-1953 Jackie Robinson
1948 Stan Musial
1941-1947 Ted Williams
1936-1941 Joe DiMaggio
1934-1935 Lou Gehrig
1932-1933 Jimmie Foxx
1930-1931 Lou Gehrig
1918-1929 Babe Ruth
1909-1917 Ty Cobb
1900-1908 Honus Wagner

Posted 11:44 p.m., January 23, 2004 (#30) - Sam M
Got your point now. Two things. First, it'd be interesting to see how you'd fill the gaps in Moo's original chart, at positions other than starting pitcher.

Second, since I had gaps well before the 80s, here's how I'd fill them, if that's how we want to do it:

1904: Joe McGinnity -- for a moment before Mathewson and after Young.
1920: Alexander
1923-27: Probably Dazzy Vance
1937-38: Lefty Gomez
1939-41: Bob Feller (you could make an argument for Bucky Walters in 39-40)
1942-43: Mort Cooper
1947-49: Warren Spahn
1950-54: Robin Roberts
1957: Spahn
1958-61: Whitey Ford
1962: Bob Gibson (or maybe Ford another year)
1974: Tom Seaver
1975-77: Jim Palmer

Posted 5:14 p.m., January 24, 2004 (#31) - Al S
I remember watching the A's play back when Vida Blue was the man (not Catfish) -- I guess you could argue that he didn't dominate for three years in a row, but he was the guy you wanted out there to win. And what about Bruce Sutter? He was the only closer that I ever considered an automatic back then.

Posted 5:54 p.m., January 24, 2004 (#32) - Sam M
As great as Blue was in 1971 -- and he was spectacular -- he wasn't the best pitcher in baseball that year; Seaver was (notwithstanding the NL Cy Young vote for Jenkins). Seaver's ERA+ was better, 193-183. Granted, Blue pitched about 30 more innings, so it's close. But even if you think Blue edged him out that one year, looked at more broadly, Seaver was certainly regarded as the top pitcher in the early 70s, having established consistent excellence prior to 1971 and maintaining it more consistently than Blue thereafter.

The better argument for Blue is probably around 75-76, when he had probably his best back-to-back seasons. But I don't think you'd rank him ahead of Palmer at that point.

Posted 7:45 p.m., January 26, 2004 (#33) - Charles Saeger(e-mail)
XM: I took a closer look at M-M, and I do see from 1959-1961 Mantle's XR over 61% league park adjusted is only about 12 runs better than Mays's. One could go either way, with defense and MVP votes and team performance making things muddled.

Posted 2:16 p.m., January 29, 2004 (#34) - Steve
Probably too late to this for anyone to notice, but according to B-R.com Honus Wagner did not play shortstop until 1901 and was not a full time shortstop until 1903...