Albert vs the other legacy legends

[Docwaukee]

btw.  it's not like the ball was taking steroids.  

[Lou]

5 minutes ago, Dochalo said:

btw.  it's not like the ball was taking steroids.  

Not even John Kruk's?

[JustATroutFan]

Not every player during the steroid era was taking steroids. Sure, you have guys like Bonds (wanted fame), Clemens, A-Rod, Canseco, Manny, McGwire, Ortiz, Sosa, and Gagne juicing it up. But there were guys with no proof of steroid use like Maddux, The Big Unit, Glavine, Lofton, Jeter, Griffey Jr., and Ripken Jr. Obviously, there are different reasons for players taking steroids. Already stated the reason for Bonds. Manny? Could be because he was hanging out with the wrong people/organization. He didn't look like he was on the roids with the Indians. Dude was skinny back during his Tribe years.  A-Rod admitted that he used steroids because of the pressure of living up to the big contract that the Rangers handed out to him before the 2001 regular season. Before steroids, A-Rod was an excellent all-around player like Bonds. 

[Docwaukee]

42 minutes ago, JustATroutFan said:

Not every player during the steroid era was taking steroids. Sure, you have guys like Bonds (wanted fame), Clemens, Canseco, Manny, McGwire, Ortiz, Sosa, and Gagne juicing it up. But there were guys with no proof of steroid use like Maddux, The Big Unit, Glavine, Lofton, Jeter, Griffey Jr., and Ripken Jr. 

how did this help Albert?  

[Inside Pitch]

33 minutes ago, Dochalo said:

how did this help Albert?  

Its simple really. 

An automobile is like a frog, only because of pollution it tends to hibernate in the summer but then the winter solstice happens and radio stations transmit in AM only which of course leads to rain and sometimes a bird will sing it's mating call but in the end a river flows and then tadpoles happen but if a fishermen comes along well then he rides a motorcycle.

Any questions?

[WicketMaiden]

20 minutes ago, Inside Pitch said:

Its simple really. 

An automobile is like a frog, only because of pollution it tends to hibernate in the summer but then the winter solstice happens and radio stations transmit in AM only which of course leads to rain and sometimes a bird will sing it's mating call but in the end a river flows and then tadpoles happen but if a fishermen comes along well then he rides a motorcycle.

Any questions?

Yes. Just one.

If I turn my radio down, will it rain less? Thanks.

[ten ocho recon scout]

1 hour ago, JustATroutFan said:

Not every player during the steroid era was taking steroids. Sure, you have guys like Bonds (wanted fame), Clemens, A-Rod, Canseco, Manny, McGwire, Ortiz, Sosa, and Gagne juicing it up. But there were guys with no proof of steroid use like Maddux, The Big Unit, Glavine, Lofton, Jeter, Griffey Jr., and Ripken Jr. Obviously, there are different reasons for players taking steroids. Already stated the reason for Bonds. Manny? Could be because he was hanging out with the wrong people/organization. He didn't look like he was on the roids with the Indians. Dude was skinny back during his Tribe years.  A-Rod admitted that he used steroids because of the pressure of living up to the big contract that the Rangers handed out to him before the 2001 regular season. Before steroids, A-Rod was an excellent all-around player like Bonds. 

Arod was using back in high school....

 

I wouldnt trust his version of when he started

[Lou]

15 minutes ago, ten ocho recon scout said:

Arod was using back in high school....

 

I wouldnt trust his version of when he started

I wouldn't trust Bonds either. 

[JustATroutFan]

8 minutes ago, Lou said:

I wouldn't trust Bonds either. 

Bonds got caught cheating in high school when he used a corked bat. There's also a baseball card of himself that he signed where he wrote "Say No To Drugs". The irony. 

[Tank]

7 hours ago, Inside Pitch said:

Its simple really. 

An automobile is like a frog, only because of pollution it tends to hibernate in the summer but then the winter solstice happens and radio stations transmit in AM only which of course leads to rain and sometimes a bird will sing it's mating call but in the end a river flows and then tadpoles happen but if a fishermen comes along well then he rides a motorcycle.

Any questions?

You know, we’ve known each other for over 20 years, and I’ve come to greatly respect you. But how you could (purposely) leave out the painfully obvious connection between Frosted Flakes and the electric car? It has me scratching my head. I’m not sure how I can trust your analysis anymore if you’re going to make simple but critical mistakes like this. 
 

Time to tighten things up, dude.

[WicketMaiden]

4 hours ago, Tank said:

You know, we’ve known each other for over 20 years, and I’ve come to greatly respect you. But how you could (purposely) leave out the painfully obvious connection between Frosted Flakes and the electric car? It has me scratching my head. I’m not sure how I can trust your analysis anymore if you’re going to make simple but critical mistakes like this. 
 

Time to tighten things up, dude.

That's just the tip of the iceberg @Tank, he also didn't stipulate whether the bird that is singing is an African or a European Swallow. What gives?

[T.G.]

17 hours ago, Lou said:

Not even John Kruk's?

This deserves some love. 

[ten ocho recon scout]

31 minutes ago, True Grich said:

This deserves some love. 

The post or Kruks ball?

[JustATroutFan]

1 hour ago, ten ocho recon scout said:

The post or Kruks ball?

Great thread! 

[Stax]

I do not believe Albert should be inducted into the HOF in the first ballot. Albert was a replacement level player during his Angels tenure. I do not know what kind of value you give Albert for him mentoring Mike Trout

[Puget Sound Angel]

Albert going into the HOF is comparable to Ken Griffey Jr getting in. Both will be enshrined for the first 10 years of their career not the second decade.

[Angelsjunky]

People often use factors of specific eras to either inflate or undermine players. For instance, the old saw that past greats didn't have to face Latino and Black players. While this is obviously true, for one, it is tricky to penalize players for not doing something they couldn't do. Furthermore, we don't know how they would have adjusted to the contemporary era. They would be different people, with different upbringings, training regimes, etc.

But more importantly, 'm not sure that notion is anything more than a common misconception, or at least an exaggeration. But is it actually true? 

We can approach this question in a variety of ways, such as looking at historic players and see how they adjusted to the deeper field. Ted Williams, for instance, did not decline (at all) once black players started entering the majors. You'd probably find similar cases throughout history; baseball talent finds a way to adjust and evolve, at least with the truly great players.

Now the baseball of the 50s--while deeper than it had been in 1946 and before--was still not the 21st century. But as far as I know, you didn't see a huge change in statistics during these eras of change. Players who were good in 1946 were still good in the 50s, aside from usual age-related decline. 

Here's an interesting chart that shows the ethnicity of baseball, from 1946-2016:

Basically it rose steeply from 1947 to around 1970, then plateaued and rose a bit more in the 90s but has remained relatively consistent since.

Actually, the period between Black players entering the league (1947) and the last year before expansion (1960) could be argued to be the most "talent-dense" era in baseball history. You had a wider pool of players, but the same number of teams, so--in theory, at least--you could say that the average major leaguer of that era was more talented than before (or after), at least relative to the available pool of players. Meaning, all of the white players had to compete for jobs with players from the Negro leagues and more and more Latino players, but with the same number of teams - until 1961.

This changed somewhat when the majors expanded, but baseball adjusted with more and more players coming from other countries. As a general trend, the two correlate: a larger pool of available players and more teams to accommodate them, except for those first 14 years (1947-60). 

Overall, I do think that baseball translates reasonably well across eras, at least compared to other sports. In tennis, Rod Laver is considered by some to be the greatest player of all time, at least before Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic came along. The problem, though, is that Laver was 5'8" with a more finesse-based game that simply wouldn't translate as well in the power era of 1980s and beyond. Sure, he would have played differently and I'm sure would have still been really good, but his size limits his upside. This doesn't diminish his dominance during his era, but I mention it to point out that in a game like tennis, body size is a factor in terms of how the game has changed in a way that it isn't--or isn't as much--in baseball.

Probably the biggest shift in the way the game was played in baseball history occurred with the end of the "Dead Ball" era in 1919-20ish. But even then, Dead Ball greats like Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker remained great, and even hit a few more home runs (although never developed the power swing like Rogers Hornsby did; Hornsby went from hitting 5-9 HR a year in 1916-20, to 21 in 1921 and then 42 in 1922).

Babe Ruth's best offensive season, according to wRC+, was 1920 when he hit .376/.533/.849 with a 239 wRC+. Would he have hit that today? Probably not, or at least not that triple-slash, but it isn't like we haven't had truly incredible hitting seasons throughout history. There have only been 32 player seasons with a 200 wRC+ or better (not counting Soto in 2020 or Trout this year), by a relatively small number of players: 10 times by Ruth, 6 times by Williams, 4 times by Bonds, twice by Cobb, Hornsby and Mantle each; and once each by Bagwell, Thomas, McGwire, Musial, Gehrig, and Dunlap. 

The last time someone came close was Bryce Harper in 2015 with 197, which happens to be Ruth's career average. Before him, you have Bonds four crazy seasons (2001-04) and then a handful of players in the 90s, two of whom did so in the strike-shortened 1994 season (Bagwell and Thomas). Before that you have to go all the way back to Mantle and Williams in 57.

Or if we look at WAR, Ruth has that crazy 15.0 WAR season and then three more of 13.0 or higher. Bonds 2002 (12.7) is fifth highest. In the "integration era" (1947-present), only Bonds, Williams, Mantle, Yaz, Musial, and Morgan have had WAR seasons of 11 or better.

Meaning, it may be that we shouldn't look at Ruth's 15 WAR season and say, "That is 50% better than Trout's 10 WAR seasons." It may be that it is more accurately to consider anything 10 or better to be of similar value, that the difference between 10 and 12 WAR has more to do with era-specific outlying factors that WAR doesn't adjust for. The same might be true of wRC+, with anything above 180 or 190 being comparable.

Meaning, I do think that stats have equalized somewhat, with fewer outlier seasons. But it may not only be equalization as much as it is fluctuation, in the ongoing tug-of-war between pitchers and hitters. But all of that should be accounted--at least somewhat--with context-neutral stats.

The bottom line: I think we can compare great players across eras with a reasonable degree of confidence, for reasons stated above. As long as we focus on neutralized statistics like WAR, OPS+ or wRC+.

 

 

[ten ocho recon scout]

34 minutes ago, Puget Sound Angel said:

Albert going into the HOF is comparable to Ken Griffey Jr getting in. Both will be enshrined for the first 10 years of their career not the second decade.

Good comp. Never even thought of that.

[Stax]

52 minutes ago, Puget Sound Angel said:

Albert going into the HOF is comparable to Ken Griffey Jr getting in. Both will be enshrined for the first 10 years of their career not the second decade.

The second decade of Ken Griffey Jr. was marred with injuries. Albert's second decade was playing at replacement level and supplementing to his career numbers as a Cardinal.

[ten ocho recon scout]

25 minutes ago, Stax said:

The second decade of Ken Griffey Jr. was marred with injuries. Albert's second decade was playing at replacement level and supplementing to his career numbers as a Cardinal.

Its still mindblowing to compare his two careers. Completely different player from one team to the next

Bill james made a comment recently how pujols is like the only guy w a .300 average so late in his career whos retiring below .300

[Angelsjunky]

40 minutes ago, Stax said:

The second decade of Ken Griffey Jr. was marred with injuries. Albert's second decade was playing at replacement level and supplementing to his career numbers as a Cardinal.

It was a little bit more than "marred with injuries." I mean, I'm not saying that his rapid decline wasn't largely because of injuries--it was--but I think it is more a matter that it accelerated and steepened it. 

And Albert had his own injuries that impacted his last ten years. That's just the nature of a player's 30s. It is rare that a player will go deep into his 30s without some sort of nagging injuries to deal with.

[JustATroutFan]

19 minutes ago, ten ocho recon scout said:

Its still mindblowing to compare his two careers. Completely different player from one team to the next

Bill james made a comment recently how pujols is like the only guy w a .300 average so late in his career whos retiring below .300

Pujols had a career .328 batting average after 6,312 at-bats at the end of the 2011 regular season. He's currently a career .298 hitter at the Major League level. I remember posting something similar to how I have never seen a hitter with that high of a batting average on that many at-bats to go under .300. So it seems like he's the only guy to have that high of a batting average in that many at-bats to fall under .300. The later part of his career came at a tough time for hitters. Pitchers were back to dominating and saving the upper hand on hitters for the first time since the early 1990s (1990, 1991, and 1992). Pujols also had the deal with the marine layer at Angel Stadium. So many outs for him would have been hits without the coldness. 

[Angelsjunky]

 

50 minutes ago, ten ocho recon scout said:

Its still mindblowing to compare his two careers. Completely different player from one team to the next

Bill james made a comment recently how pujols is like the only guy w a .300 average so late in his career whos retiring below .300

As I said, he went from being modern day Lou Gehrig to Tony Armas in the span of just a couple years (2010 being his last "Gehrigian" year, 2012 being peak Armas, 2013 on being typical Armas).

Several years ago, sometime in 2014-15 I think, when it was clear that Pujols would never bounce back, I wrote a post or two comparing him to the declines of other, similarly great players. I came to two conclusions:

1) He had one of the worst collapses in baseball history for a player as good as he was, with only Griffey being comparable.

2) His decline starting in 2011 (not 2012) makes a lot more sense if he is 2-3 years older. Still bad, but not quite as far out of the box. 2010 was his last truly peak year; he's listed as 30, but if he was 32-33, then it kind of makes sense, with 2011-12--or adjusted age 33-35ish--being a big drop but still good, and 2013-16 (age 35-39ish) being more what you'd expect from a former star on his last legs. 2017 and on really shouldn't have happened, and probably wouldn't if the Angels had known his actual age.

[ten ocho recon scout]

42 minutes ago, Angelsjunky said:

It was a little bit more than "marred with injuries." I mean, I'm not saying that his rapid decline wasn't largely because of injuries--it was--but I think it is more a matter that it accelerated and steepened it. 

And Albert had his own injuries that impacted his last ten years. That's just the nature of a player's 30s. It is rare that a player will go deep into his 30s without some sort of nagging injuries to deal with.

I remember reading some article years ago, where young Reds players were complaining about griffey not really caring anymore, and how he was just about home runs.

Ill try to find it, but sounds familiar

[Angelsjunky]

20 minutes ago, ten ocho recon scout said:

I remember reading some article years ago, where young Reds players were complaining about griffey not really caring anymore, and how he was just about home runs.

Ill try to find it, but sounds familiar

It would be interesting to look into the factors that allow players to age gracefully and decline slowly. Guys like Musial, Williams, Mays, and Aaron come to mind. More recently, David Ortiz and Nelson Cruz (look what he's doing at age 40). And then compare them to guys that collapse earlier: Pujols, Cabrera, Griffey, or, going back some years, Mantle and Foxx.

Most good players start declining around age 32-33 and then more steeply after age 35. But occasionally someone is able to push all of that back by a few years, like the guys mentioned above. I imagine a lot of it has to do with health. Evidently hand-eye coordination doesn't start declining until after 40, so there's no reason that a baseball player shouldn't be able to still hit until around 40 or so. But I think what happens is the little injuries and overall wear and tear starts adding up.

Whenever my daughters get hurt I'm always amazed with how quickly they heal. I also remember how, almost overnight around age 25-26, hangovers started really sucking.

Hank Aaron was a lesser talent than the very best of the best. Don't get me wrong, he was awesome, but he was an inferior player to his contemporaries Mays and Mantle, as well as other innermost circle Hall of Fame outfielders like Cobb, Ruth, and Williams, but ahead of guys like Robinson and Clemente. I kind of put him in the same category as Stan Musial or Tris Speaker: truly great players, but played alongside even better guys (for Stan, it was Williams, for Speaker, it was Cobb, for Aaron, Mays and Mantle).

But few players aged as well as he did. He was still in prime form as late as 1971 (age 37), his last of 11 seasons of 7+ WAR, and he was still one of the better hitters in the majors in 1973, his age 39 season. But you can also see in his last decade how players often age: his defense went first, with decline starting around age 33, and then his speed around age 35. But his bat didn't really go until the end, with him putting up a 177 wRC+ at age 39, which is the third highest of his career, but diminished speed, defense, and playing time (only 120 games) led to "only" a 5.2 WAR, compared to his typical prime 7-9 WAR . But he just fell off the next year, with a 125 wRC+and 2.1 WAR in 112 games at age 40. 

The point being, again, defense and speed go first, then the bat. Statistically speaking, Albert's baserunning and defense started faltering in 2007-08 at ages "27-28" (or 29-31), with his offense falling a big step in 2011 at age "30" (32-33).

Of course my assessment of Aaron and Pujols is based mostly on stats (entirely for Aaron), which works OK for defense but isn't as clear about speed (we don't have data on that for older players, as far as I know, just as it is reflected in their SB and BsR). But it does make me keep an eye on Trout, for those factors. His Def has fluctuated year to year with no real downward trend and while his SB have dropped off, I don't think he's really any slower than he ever was (except for maybe a half step slower from his first couple years). So no worries yet.

When it is clear that he's slowing a bit and/or his Def starts a consistent downward trend, then we can guess that his hitting will start falling off 2-3 years later. The good news is that, given no sign of decline in speed and defense, he should remain in peak hitting for at least another few years, maybe longer. But as soon as the defense and speed start going, the hour glass has turned, so to speak.

Edited May 9, 2021 by Angelsjunky