topper09er

Here is the list of CFers in their first 12 seasons, by OPS+ 1) 182 Ty Cobb 2) 176 Mickey Mantle 3) 166 Tris Speaker 4) 160 Willie Mays 5) 158 Joe DiMaggio 6) 147 Ken Griffey 7) 144 Hack Wilson 8) 143 Duke Snider 9) 139 Edd Roush 10) 137 Larry Doby 11) 137 Jim Edmonds 12) 134 Fred Lynn 13) 133 Earl Averill 14) 133 Bernie Williams 15) 128 Cesar Cedeno 16) 126 Ginger Beaumont 17) 125 Earle Combs 18) 124 Kirby Puckett 19) 124 Rick Monday 20) 124 Roy Thomas And thats not even including HOFers Billy Hamilton and Hugh Duffy, whose first 12 years were in the 1890s so I didn't count them. And among the entire list, Williams was by far the worst defensive player. Also, nice shoutout for Ginger Beaumont, from Rochester, WI.

But you can't in one post discredit postseason stats, claiming that being able to record them is a matter of luck, and in another post, point to some postseason stats and then use those to advance your case. I am not citing his putrid world series performance to advance my case, but actually to discredit your case. You want to give him all this credit for postseason play, when it really mattered, yet he was horrible in the world series. I'm trying to show that you are really giving him credit for merely existing in the postseason without any standard for his performance. None of his postseason numbers are very impressive on a per game basis, he just compiled because he had a lot of chances. Someone had to play CF for the 1990s Yankees, and whoever that was would get a lot of postseason chances. I just think you are weighing his postseason way, way too much. You make it sound like you would elect basically any player with 30 WAR who played on a few world series winning teams in their career. He did it at a tough defensive position, playing every day, hitting in significant spots in the lineup. Now you are giving him credit for playing CF when he was literally the worst CFer of all-time. That is like saying Yuni Betancourt deserves credit for playing a tough defensive position, when actually his play at this important position hurt his team. He also only played 150+ games twice in his entire career. He got the hits in the most important games of those seasons while others didn't. How do you know, so no one else in the league or on the Yankees played well in September, or if they did it was only because they weren't in the high pressure situations of Williams and would have surely choked? Remember, Williams choked in the World Series. Also, in his career his September OPS was .822, lower than his career average. So he did not play his best in the most important games. Again, I dont care how Williams ranked among his peers in the 1990s, especially when you concede there are 2 slam dunk choices ahead of him, Griffey and Edmonds. He should be compared to all CFers. Another problem is his last 4 seasons, where he complied counting stats while accumulating 0.4 WAR, 0.1 WAR/season. Not very good. If you disregard these compiling years he finished with: Year Tm G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS OPS+ TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB 1991-2002 NYY 1537 6873 5958 1066 1833 353 52 226 998 138 80 827 927 .308 .392 .498 .890 133 2968 153 31 9 48 78The rate stats look nice but < 7000 PAs is not very good for the HOF.

"My point on Bernie is that being in the postseason isn't a neutral. It's a good thing. You get extra credit for that." Its your opinion that he should get extra credit, it is not a fact. Many people ignore the postseason because they feel any single player did not do anything to get those chances so you basically giving someone credit for being lucky. If you think the HOF should be full of the all-time greats and guys who were lucky enough to be parts of dynasties I guess that is your opinion. Its not mine at all.

Williams in the world series: .208/.319/.358 in 141 PAs. Ouch. Also, I don't care if there were better CFs in the AL during his career, this is the HOF, not the 1990s AL all-star team. But since you asked, Griffey Lofton Edmonds Puckett Beltran A Jones Mike Cameron And this group that is pretty comparable Devon White Lenny Dykstra Brett Butler Steve Finley

He did not win 4 World Series, this isn't tennis. He was on 4 WS winning teams. Its not that being on the Yankees made that much easier, it made it possible. Unless you suggesting you could have put Bernie Williams on any team and they would have won the world series. He's a lot like Derek Jeter, vastly overrated especially on defense. Jeter is a HOF player but people pretend like he is the greatest SS of all-time (when coincidentally a real contender for the best SS of all-time plays right next to him). Also Andy Pettitte, who is the same pitcher as Chuck Finley, except he has a lot of wins because he was on the Yankees mostly. Williams is a solid player who is not HOF material. He played a horrible defensive CF, actually the worst defensive CF of all-time. His most similar players is a nice list, but none of them are in the HOF or have strong cases Bobby Abreu (909) Paul O'Neill (905) Bob Johnson (892) Bobby Bonilla (884) Will Clark (881) Ellis Burks (871) Magglio Ordonez (865) Reggie Smith (864) Edgar Martinez (860) Garret Anderson (860) Williams had 47 WAR (average bb-ref and FG), he not in the same league as Billy Williams (64 WAR), Kirby Puckett was a special case due to a shortened career and Enos Slaughter does not belong either or is borderline at least, and he is better than Williams anyways. Earle Combs accumulated about the same amount of value as Williams in 3000 less PAs, and he is also a horrible selection due to being on another Yankee dynasty. Hopefully the HOF will stop making the same mistakes by electing guys lucky enough to be lesser contributors on winning teams.

The reason they don't do this is because it would say an average player provides 0 wins to a team, which is not correct. You can easily find this value on your own however, at least on bb-ref. They break out all the components of WAR, and each one is compared to average. Only in the final step do they convert from runs above average to runs above replacement, and then convert from runs above replacement to wins above replacement. Looking at Yount 1982: Year Age Tm Lg PA Rbat Rbaser Rroe Rdp Rfield Rpos Rrep RAR WAR oRAR oWAR dWAR 1982 26 MIL AL 704 65 8 3 -1 8 9 20 112 11.5 104 10.7 0.8Offense = Runs above average (RAA) from batting (Rbat) + RAA from baserunning (Rbaser) + RAA from reaching on errors (Rroe) + RAA on doubleplayed grounded into (Rdp) + RAA from position (Rpos). Defense = RAA from fielding (Rfield) Rrep = runs above a replacement player (a function of playing time and league strength). WAR is a counting stat also remember. If you total all columns except for Rrep you will get the RAA for the player, in this case 92. Converting from runs to wins is a function of the scoring environment in the park and era of the player. You can easily back calculate it using the RAR and WAR, for Yount '82 = 112/11.5 = 9.74 runs/win. so 92 runs above average / 9.74 runs/win = ~ 9.5 Wins above average. This is, by the way, a historically huge season, especially for a SS. It is says Yount alone could transform and average team (81 wins) to a 90 win team.

Is everyone ignoring Bagwell for steroid reasons, I haven't really thought of him as obviously using? He is the best player on the ballot by far. I would vote for Bagwell, Larkin, Raines, McGwire and Palmeiro because I don't care about the juice. It will be interesting to see how much support the totally undeserving Bernie Williams gets due to being a "winner" on the Yankees.

Braun won!! Yes, Hank Aaron only won 1 MVP. This will look good for HOF voting years down the road.

Why write 1,000 words when I can just post a picture that says it all?And the Words Above Replacement for 1 picture is 1000, so I have to agree with dlk9s. Keep em coming

This is great for us, now we will always play the weaker AL Central and the NL East will always have to play the AL East, meaning it is easier for a central team to win a wild card slot.

The hardest part of managing is getting your guys to play their hardest at all times, like how La Russa convinced the Cards they were in it when they were 10 games out of the wild card in August. The easy part is knowing that you should not start Mark freaking Kotsay in CF in the National League freaking Championship Series.

There is no good reason major league pitchers should have to hit There is no good reason major league pitchers should not have to hit, unless you want to increase offense. It is part of the game, you play offense and defense. Or look at it the other way, why should a guy be allowed to hit if he can't play the field? It was and is a gimmick to increase attendance, a dumb move by the owners to put butts in the seats. Just like nowadays you cant play defense in the NFL. Why? to increase offense. It ruins the game for real dedicated fans who are more interested in the on field play than who the players are dating, and makes it for fun for casual fans who care about dingers and TDs....when their favorite team is good that is. Now we can't get rid of the DH because of a union that represents people with an average salary of $3.3 MM per year, obviously a very necessary union that is needed to fight for the poor mistreated MLB players. Yes the DH adds a very small amount of strategy to the game (I can't stress enough how little it really adds) but it also adds a lot of injuries and an unfair playing field. I assume you meant the DH takes away strategy? But I think your terminology of "very small amount" is pretty objective. Having the pitchers bat causes you to handle defense differently (pitch around the 8th hitter or not), offense differently (bunt or not with the pitcher, pinch hit or not for him), who to double switch for if the pitcher spot is coming up, and it allows you to use more bench players. I think overall it affects the strategy more often than just every 9 ABs if you include these other factors.

Weeks does not have the arm to play SS, he throws everything sidearm which usually gets the job done at 2B but wont at SS. Also, people are too theoretical with these position changes, in reality guys get used to their spots and they aren't going to randomly switch unless they start playing very poorly there or the team adds a major player. Weeks is going to play 2B next year and Hart is going to play RF.

Wow, what if first Miami stole Lebron James from Cleveland and then Pujols from St Louis?

Wow, what if first Miami stole Lebron James from Cleveland and then Pujols from St Louis?

Wow, what if first Miami stole Lebron James from Cleveland and then Pujols from St Louis?

I said this before, Braun will make some horrible stupid throws but will also make great throws sometimes, like here. I cannot recall one excellent throw to the plate from Hart, ever. Infact, Hart only has 2 assists at home in his entire career!

As it turns out I also want to play in the major leagues in 2012

Imagine what Pujols could do with the combination of Wrigley Field on a warm, windy day and Dale Sveum's pitcher scouting reports, maybe the first 5 HR. Twice a week.

I dont think I can ever recall Hart making an excellent throw to the plate in the air...ever. Braun will do that from time to time, but Braun will also throw a blooper 30 feet over the cut off man that ends up half way down the line from time to time also. According to UZR they both have a similarly bad arm, Braun with -15.5 runs in 5250.1 innings in the OF (-2.95 ArmRuns/1000 inn), and Hart with -18.8 runs in 6272.2 OF innings (-3.00 ArmRuns/1000 inn).

Bill is not horrible, he forced to stay eternally positive about the Brewers. BA is good for a play-by-play guy but he still cant judge a fly ball to save his life, anything hit to where the outfielders are standing is "well hit" because his voice went up off the bat thinking the ball was long gone. I for one am sick of Provus laughing too much every time Uek ever says anything.

Interesting possible result from this, who will manage the all-star game? It could very well be the NL runner up RRR. Stolen from here: http://www.mlbtraderumors...ny-la-russa-retires.html Wikipedia has a list of some unusual circumstances, and how they were handled. The right to manage the All-Star team goes to the manager, not the team, so (for example) when Dusty Baker managed the Giants to the World Series, and then went to the Cubs, Baker still managed the NL. Similarly, when Dick Williams resigned from the A's in 73, and became Angels manager for '74, he managed the AL. In 1979, Bob Lemon managed the AL team after being fired from the Yankees in the offseason, but in 1982, when Lemon was again fired (midseason), Billy Martin, manager of the AL runner-up A's, managed the team. After 1964, both managers left their teams and went to the opposite league. Johnny Keane left the Cardinals to manage the Yankees, Yogi Berra left the Yankees to manage the Mets. Rather than manage either the league they left or the one they joined, MLB chose the managers of the second-place teams, Al Lopez of the White Sox and Gene Mauch of the Phillies (who actually were tied with the Reds, but the Reds' manager in 1964, Fred Hutchinson, had died in the off-season, so they selected Mauch without any further discussion.) Also, in the first All-Star game, before it was expected to be an annual thing, they chose not the previous WS winners, but the two men regarded as the most venerable managers in the game: Connie Mack and John McGraw, who actually came out of retirement to manage that game. All this is by way of saying that it's up to MLB, and then Tony LaRussa. If they're willing, and he's interested, LaRussa may be permitted to come out of retirement on a one-game only basis, and manage the All-Star Team. If they do not permit it, or LaRussa is disinclined to do so, Ron Roenicke will likely manage the team in LaRussa's stead.

Here are all the FA SS Clint Barmes (33) Yuniesky Betancourt (30) - $6MM club option with a $2MM buyout Orlando Cabrera (37) Jamey Carroll (37) Ronny Cedeno (29) - $3MM club option with a $200K buyout Craig Counsell (41) Rafael Furcal (34) - $12MM club option with a $1.3MM buyout Alex Gonzalez (34) Jerry Hairston Jr. (36) Cesar Izturis (32) John McDonald (37) Nick Punto (34) Edgar Renteria (35) Jose Reyes (29) Jimmy Rollins (33) Ramon Santiago (32) Marco Scutaro (36) - $6MM club option/$3MM player option with a $1.5MM buyout Jack Wilson (34) We will not get Reyes or Rollins, and besides those 2 I see a list of guys who suck. It would be nice to retain JHJ as a bench guy and maybe if we tell him he will platoon with Green at 3B he will stay. I would be OK I guess with Barmes because of his D, but he will be 33. Also, it was weird that the Astros refused to trade him last season, maybe they plan on resigning him and think they will keep him? If not I have idea why he wasn't traded this August. That doesn't leave much, I also don't want Furcal plus I think StL will keep him. I think we will go the trade route, a few teams with several SS: White Sox: Alexei Ramirez, will be 30 and Eduardo Escobar, who looks like Alicedes' long lost twin (all glove no bat) will be 23 and just played the entire year in AAA. Mets: If they keep Reyes Ruben Tejada may be expendable with Justin Turner at 2B. Orioles: long shot to trade back for Hardy, there may be bad blood and he was just signed to a 3 year deal, but they do have young guys behind him that could fill in.

Yes that included an extra inning performance, what I would like to see is Marcum go 5, KRod pitch the 6th and Axford pitch 7-8-9. But I cannot see any scenario that RRR would bring in Axford before the 9th inning, which is frustrating because he is the best pitcher on the team.