Tiger337

I don't think a team should fail to put a competitive team on the field for five years, collect draft picks and do little else to improve the team. It's OK for a team to have a down year or two, but being crappy for five years is a failure. I think that happens because owners want to save money during down years and they try to convince everyone it's a good thing.

I don't always agree with the saber community. I pride myself in being half saber and half old man who hates the modern game.

Jeter belongs near the end of the list. Ripken should have been ahead of him. I think the saber community is more right about Jeter than the media.

Somebody gets unlucky and somebody else gets lucky in a lottery. Nobody gets screwed because no team deserves the number one pick. I don't like seeing a team get rewarded for finishing last. An eight team lottery seems fair to me.

Expanding post-season is the worst idea ever...Well, other than putting a runner at second base in extra innings. It cheapens the regular season and makes the post-season even less meaningful than it already is. I hate that they are trying to mold baseball into a generic sports no different than any other.

I am in favor of a draft lottery with every non-playoff teams or eight teams is OK too. A three team lottery is silly. I don't think there is any need for a lottery after the first round as it beomes a crap shoot after that anway.

Looking at the numbers again, it is amazing how consistently bad Jeter was defensivly even early in his career. That doesn't mean he was a bad fielder. It just means that he was worse than the best fielders in the game. Perhaps, he played out of position his entire career.

The funny thing is I liked Jeter early in his career. He reminded me of Alan Trammell. Then they started building him up to be a baseball god and it turned me off. Then he began to buy into the hype, stayed at shortstop for way too long and became one of the worst defensive shortstops ever.

He was #28.

A good article by one of my favorite writers (no paywall) https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/02/opinion/tara-westover-educated-student-debt.html

This is a good article on evaluation of Negro League players. One of the main points is that both the White and Negro Leagues were very watered down prior to integration. If Blacks had been allowed to play in the majors, you would be replacing the bottom third of players with substantially better players. So, you can't trust the white major league numbers either. The conditions would have very diferent. The author makes a point about head to head match-ups between Black and White teams as well. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/33194902/top-100-mlb-players-all-oscar-charleston-best-baseball-player-all-why-important-try-find-out

I probably wouldn't rank Berra that high, but I think catchers tend to be underrated. it's really hard to rank them since so much of what they do can not be measured. I don't usually like to give players a lot of points for post-season play but he was an important piece of ten world champions and he did well in post-season. So, he gets a little boost for that. More importantly, he was a good hitter for a catcher and had a good reputation as a defender. I think he's still too high, but his ranking is less egregious than Jeter.

Numbers 26-50. Jeter #28. The real overrated shortstop. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/33145627/top-100-mlb-players-all-nos-50-26

In ranking the greatest players of all time, I look at value, both long-term and short-term. Ripken had both. According to WAR, he was the best player in the league three times. He wasn't the best hitter in the league those years, but shortstops almost never are unless you're Wagner or Rodriguez. He was a very good hitter those years and could also field. I am not seeing where he is over rated, at least not on the list that was posted. Ripken is not Wagner or Rodriguez. He is Jeter with a glove. He is Trammell with durability.

I think yes, but there may also be some voters in undecided states who won't vote in a popular vote election if candidates are not campaigning in their state.

They are inflated because the worst Negro League teams were worse than the worst white teams. If someone was a top five player in a Negro League, his statistics would be better than a top five player in a white league in the same time period. However, I think the top five player in the Negro League would be as good as the top five player in the white league.

Yes, making America great again is a negative viewpoint as it suggests that America is not already great.

Is that what your ancestors did? Spread disease and commit crimes?

Every president wants to make America great. At least that's what they say. America is already great for those who become presidents and that is their main concern.

As long as you continue to look the other way when capitalists employ them, it shouldn't be a problem.

I think Ripken was legitimately one of the all-time great shortstops. Durability and strong fielding counts a lot at shortstop. He is probably #3 behind Wagner and Rodriguez. You could maybe move Vaughn ahead of him. I might move Ripken a little higher on the top 100 list, but I don't think he is grossly over or under rated here. Gehringer is under rated because he was quiet and there are no interesting stories about him.

I don't understand what you mean. Charleston and Gibson were better than Gehringer based on the data. You can't really compare stats like that, but based on the measures, they were better. Ty Cobb is a different story.

Did ESPN do their top 50 yet? Jeter will probably be top 5.

The available data online are from actual league play, so it wouldn't be watered down by weaker barnstorming opponents. It is true that there was a smaller pool since there were fewer Blacks than Whites, but there is also a larger pool now compared to pre-integration. I think it's highly probable that the best Negro League players were as good as the best white players. If you look at the performance in the three decades after integration, half of the top 40 hitters by WAR were black players. I think it's safe to say that the superstars of the Negro Leagues would also have been superstars in the White leagues. You are right that you can't rank them precisely, but you can't really do that with different eras either. Another thing is that the Black teams fared very well in head to head games versus white teams. You can say those were just exhibition games, but White MLB teams dominated White minor league teams at the same time. I think they would have liked to dominate the black teams too, but they couldn't. Yeah, there is still a lot of guess work, but the more I look at it, the more I think it's possible to come up with a reasonable ranking.

I don't know if that's that much more difficult than ranking between eras.