"He will be a Hall of Famer someday..."

[1andonly]

Re: "He will be a Hall of Famer someday..."

Ok what do you guys think about this then.

Barry Bonds is the greatest HITTER of all time.

[55]

Re: "He will be a Hall of Famer someday..."

Pujols is probably the best hitter (not player) of all time.

Barry Bonds is the greatest HITTER of all time.

Well, which is it?

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: "He will be a Hall of Famer someday..."

Babe Ruth NEVER saw the kind of pitching in today's world. Think about it. There were no African Americans, no people from other countries.

Babe Ruth would not be able to hit people in today's game.

He also had to face spitballs, raised mounds, and looser baseballs. Adding in minorities does not necessarily change the quality and difficulty of pitchers he faced, it just adds more people to pick from. And there were less teams so they were less watered down and had more talent through the league. And I would think that worse methods of transportation could potentially add fatigue (not sure just a possibility).

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: "He will be a Hall of Famer someday..."

You act like I started a thread about it or something, I made one post and people wanna tell me my opinion is wrong.

If telling people their opinion is "wrong" is acceptable here then idk what to say.

And it's only an opinion to a degree. What I mean by that is, if you say that Albert Pujols is the greatest hitter, but it can be proven with facts and statistics that there are better hitters, then your opinion is actually wrong. It's not completely subjective like your favorite food. You can't just name anyone and be right because it's an "opinion".

[1andonly]

Re: "He will be a Hall of Famer someday..."

Well, which is it?

Trying to troll <<<<<

He also had to face spitballs, raised mounds, and looser baseballs. Adding in minorities does not necessarily change the quality and difficulty of pitchers he faced, it just adds more people to pick from. And there were less teams so they were less watered down and had more talent through the league. And I would think that worse methods of transportation could potentially add fatigue (not sure just a possibility).

Come on, you can't really try to justify better pitching by raised mounds...

The pitching was trash, there were good pitchers, but they were not common. By good, I mean not just good stats, good PITCHERS. All pitchers were pretty much American, there was no minorities. The quality of pitching has been drastically increased over the last few decades and it's not even close.

And it's only an opinion to a degree. What I mean by that is, if you say that Albert Pujols is the greatest hitter, but it can be proven with facts and statistics that there are better hitters, then your opinion is actually wrong. It's not completely subjective like your favorite food. You can't just name anyone and be right because it's an "opinion".

So because someone has better stats that automatically means they are better? Throw all the stats out you want, I think Pujols is the better hitter to ever play the game. Your opinion that he isn't is justified by your facts.

You can't use facts to say someone's opinion is wrong.

For example, obviously African Americans have a higher crime rate. Since that is a fact, is is then true that everyone who thinks African Americans are not criminals is wrong? No.

[SoxFan01605]

Re: &quot;He will be a Hall of Famer someday...&quot;

So because someone has better stats that automatically means they are better? Throw all the stats out you want, I think Pujols is the better hitter to ever play the game. Your opinion that he isn't is justified by your facts.

You can't use facts to say someone's opinion is wrong.

For example, obviously African Americans have a higher crime rate. Since that is a fact, is is then true that everyone who thinks African Americans are not criminals is wrong? No.

[1andonly]

Re: &quot;He will be a Hall of Famer someday...&quot;

This is the kind of response i'm starting to expect to see from people on this site.

[TheNumber35]

Re: &quot;He will be a Hall of Famer someday...&quot;

I still don't understand this "the pitchers were trash" argument. Even if the pitchers weren't as physically gifted, the game was heavily skewed towards their advantage (the mound being 5 inches higher, the ball being looser and harder to hit long distances, the strike zone being about a foot bigger, plus the allowance of spitballs and other junk balling until the late 20s.)

There's a reason the early part of baseball's history is referred to as "The Dead Ball Era" It's because offenses were non-existent.

If the pitchers were so bad, that would mean that every hitter would be able to kill the ball, hit tons of homers, and bat for a high average? I want to look at this more in depth, because it honestly made me a little curious. I chose to look at Ruth and the MLB in 1920 and 1921 for a two year sample.


In 1920:
Ruth led baseball in HRs with 54, the next closest hitter to that had 19
Batting Average leader was George Sisler with a .407, and the 10th hitter had a .339 http://www.baseball-reference.com/le...-leaders.shtml


In 1921:
Ruth led baseball in HR with 59, next closest had...24.
Batting average leader was Rogers Hornsby with a .397, 10th best in baseball was .350. http://www.baseball-reference.com/le...-leaders.shtml

EDIT: Ruth also was in the top 10 for average in both of those years. Finishing 4th in 1920 with a .376 and 4th in 1921 with a .378.


So lets recap, everybody WASN'T having the same success that Ruth was, and I didn't feel like posting out every stat from the pitchers back then, but if you click on pitching leaders under the leaders tab on the pages I posted you can see them. The pitching leaders had good numbers and all looked to be dominating, based on the low WHIP and ERA numbers, while putting the ridiculously low K/9 numbers into heavy consideration. Lower K's means more balls in play, which means more opportunity to give up hits and runs for everyone.

Point being, don't come onto a message board and post an opinion without expecting it to be questioned, especially when you come out and say something that you should realize many will not agree with. Nobody has called you dumb based on your opinion (perhaps on your chest bumping, flip-flopping, "I'm better than you" responses.) All people have been doing is offering LEGITIMATE INFORMATION and statistics to counter your argument. Which isn't a crime, and should be expected on a message board for discussion.

[CMH]

Trying to troll <<<<<



Come on, you can't really try to justify better pitching by raised mounds...

The pitching was trash, there were good pitchers, but they were not common. By good, I mean not just good stats, good PITCHERS. All pitchers were pretty much American, there was no minorities. The quality of pitching has been drastically increased over the last few decades and it's not even close.




So because someone has better stats that automatically means they are better? Throw all the stats out you want, I think Pujols is the better hitter to ever play the game. Your opinion that he isn't is justified by your facts.

You can't use facts to say someone's opinion is wrong.

For example, obviously African Americans have a higher crime rate. Since that is a fact, is is then true that everyone who thinks African Americans are not criminals is wrong? No.

Don't bring race into the discussion. I know it's a tough thing to not bring up when discussing different eras in baseball but the topic is off limits on OS, and as much as I don't agree with you on this topic, I don't want to see you get banned for something like that.


Sent from my mobile device.

[CMH]

So because someone has better stats that automatically means they are better?

I don't know if anyone made the strong opinion that Player A is better than Pujols.

Remember that you are the only one to make the bold statement that one player is the greatest in baseball history, even going so far as saying no one has done what he's done. Ever.

All people have been doing is showing you that it has been done and done better. No one said Ruth is better than Pujols. Perhaps it is implied, but the statement hasn't been proposed.

You keep going on about Pujols doing what no one has done and we keep going on about how it's not true.

We have facts to disprove your opinion which in turn makes your continued stance ignorance.


Sent from my mobile device.

[Blzer]

Re: &quot;He will be a Hall of Famer someday...&quot;

CMH, for as long as you had that avatar, I never knew that it moved until now. It freaked me out when it did.

Even though the topic has shifted more toward Pujols' place in history than the criteria for predicting HOF status for players reaching the back nine of their careers, I actually did want to delve into it briefly by throwing one thing out there and seeing what people thought about it: modern day scouting tools.

Do you think that pitchers, catchers, and entire defenses benefit more from whatever scouting tools they have available than hitters and baserunners? In other words, if we were to put Babe Ruth in today's game, was there any sort of weakness that could be more easily exploited because of advanced scouting and computer technology? Or do you think that Ruth would simply be an even smarter hitter against his opponents and fare better in that regard?

I always felt pitchers had the edge in an uneven count, because hitters don't have as much time to have to think ahead of the pitcher behind in the count, and they might as well predict locations/pitch types when ahead in the count. Aside from that, even counts are up in the air where hitters can play an educated guessing game based on scouting, but I think tendencies lay more towards hitters in general, making them more exploitable.

[NYJets]

Re: &quot;He will be a Hall of Famer someday...&quot;

This is the kind of response i'm starting to expect to see from people on this site.

Well people respond with stats and you complain about that, and people respond with a picture and you complain about that so I don't know what you want.

And that was an appropriate response for that example you gave, which was ridiculous and not even close to the same thing.

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: &quot;He will be a Hall of Famer someday...&quot;

Trying to troll <<<<<



Come on, you can't really try to justify better pitching by raised mounds...

The pitching was trash, there were good pitchers, but they were not common. By good, I mean not just good stats, good PITCHERS. All pitchers were pretty much American, there was no minorities. The quality of pitching has been drastically increased over the last few decades and it's not even close.




So because someone has better stats that automatically means they are better? Throw all the stats out you want, I think Pujols is the better hitter to ever play the game. Your opinion that he isn't is justified by your facts.

You can't use facts to say someone's opinion is wrong.

For example, obviously African Americans have a higher crime rate. Since that is a fact, is is then true that everyone who thinks African Americans are not criminals is wrong? No.

You can easily use facts to prove an opinion wrong if the topic at hand is not really one of opinion. Using your logic against you, I could just say Mike Stanton is the greatest hitter of all time. That's just not true. It's not your favorite hitter, it's the best. If you can prove that someone is better, then he is not the best. And that example, I don't even know how to respond to that. I honestly don't see a correlation between the two instances.

[CMH]

Re: &quot;He will be a Hall of Famer someday...&quot;

In other words, if we were to put Babe Ruth in today's game, was there any sort of weakness that could be more easily exploited because of advanced scouting and computer technology? Or do you think that Ruth would simply be an even smarter hitter against his opponents and fare better in that regard?

I think anytime you take these things into consideration (which are legitimate questions) you have to take the reverse of that. Would Ruth benefit from better exercise habits, advanced training methods, video to dissect the pitchers he bats against? (Which is the point you're making).

My opinion is it doesn't matter. Both sides are improving. Maybe they don't improve in unison, but they always catch up to one another no matter how often one jumps in front of the other for a period of time.

We've had a Dead Ball Era and a Live Ball Era. Currently, offense is down, but is it really down or is it just back to normal after the previous era of high offense? Things find a way of balancing out.

Ruth was a goliath during his era for reasons beyond anyone's opinion on how talented the pool of players were or the pitchers he faced. I think at times people assume Babe Ruth wouldn't know what to do in this era while Albert Pujols would be built like a linebacker in the 1920s, having all the video and information he has now to be as good as he is.

They have both taken advantage of what was given to them, and if their lives were switched, they would have the same advantages and challenges as the other.

[snepp]

Re: &quot;He will be a Hall of Famer someday...&quot;

Bat handles half the thickness, a tightly wound baseball, and a lower pitching mound are a few of the advantages that hitters today have over those from the past.

Oh yeah, and hitting a baseball is really, really hard to do. Someone that could hit a ball with that level of skill would be able to do it against anybody, regardless of era.