Trivia time ?
 

The decades old question.....who was a better Centerfielder ?

Willie, Mickey, or the Duke (Snider) ?

In my opinion, since in during my youth I saw all three of them play, they were all great.

Duke Snider was one of the most gracious ballplayers that I ever met. And, you have to check-out the story Pete Rozelle tells about the Duke (when
they were classmates at Compton High (California) in the 1940's.

Willie, unfortunately is not the nicest guy you want to meet, nowadays. And, this is a shame to his many fans who have idolized him for many years.

And, Mickey....GOD Bless his soul.


OK, here is the quiz.....what is remarkable about Mickey which sets him apart from Willie and the Duke in terms of achievement ? ?


TED Z

T206 Reference
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Williams did poorly in his one World Series. I think he was an amazing player, but Id have to accept that he wasn't exactly "clutch" at times.


Mantle had a few good series, and a number of really poor ones. 1961, 62, 63 he batted under .200 and a few of the earlier ones weren't great either. Overall, he batted 40 points under his career average in the series.

That's not exacly "clutch" either.


Aaron in the WS batted 59 points above his lifetime average, and to eliminate the complaint that the lifetime average is reduced by the later part of his career, in 57 he was .393, 71 points above his average that year. in 58, .333 was only 7 points above that years average.


So yes Aaron was more clutch than Mantle.

He was playing injured; the week before the series started, he was hit in the elbow during an exhibition game. Besides, he crash landed a jet that the North Koreans put 250 holes in and walked away from it. I’d say that is far more “clutch” than anything that has ever happened on a ball field.

Ok then, in 6 of his 12 World Series Mantle batted under .250. In two others he batted .250.

Those are the facts.

I would say that in those 8 series his performance wasn't helping the team.

in 1962,3 and 4 Tom Tresh outperformed him in the series.

1941 All Star Game. Two out, two on, down by a run, bottom of the ninth. Not only does Williams end the game with a home run, he absolutely crushes it off the facing of the upper deck in Detroit.

1941 September 28. With a chance to sit out the double-header and finish with a .400 average (which hasn't been done in the 77 years since,) Ted earns it, going 4-5 in the first game and 2-3 in the second game to finish at .406.

1960, also September 28, in his final at-bat, Ted does what he so very much wanted to do - he ends his career with a home run.

Williams was injured in the 1946 Series, but too much of a man to alibi about it. It isn't fair to say that because he had one poor Series he wasn't "clutch."

I knew about the plane, not about the injury.


Williams was certainly among the greatest. And did have a number of clutch moments. Batting for the title instead of sitting, Hr in his last AB....

Well, if there was ever a player (and there was!) that could get from home plate to first base in 3.1 seconds and also hit a homer 565 feet, that would be the guy.


If not him, I'd go with the greatest athlete ever to play MLB, a healthy Bo Jackson.

Those two, when healthy, were the most exciting players ever IMO.

=

Since the original question was about who we'd pick starting a team today.

I'd go with Trout.

I have doubts about Willie and Mickey standing up to the sort of access and scrutiny the players today have to deal with. Aaron was maybe just a bit too reserved, but would be in the running. Griffey maybe just a tiny bit behind.


A big piece of todays game like it or not is PR and image, and so far Trout has got it just about right.

We can splice and crunch numbers on and on about how a player did in a season, and especially a World Series. It's important, but it will not likely change anyone's mind about how they feel about how great or crummy their hero was at a given time.

You bring up Ted Williams getting hit by a pitch in a stupid exhibition game to keep the Sox sharp, while an NL playoff was being fought. That was most unfortunate, since it would be his only World Series. Then again, in '48-'49 Ted had terrific years, but failed at the crucial last game / games, respectively.

Stan Musial did not tear up the pea patch in the Series; neither did Ty Cobb or Jackie Robinson.

Mickey, as you said, had some sour World Series performances. He was injured in '55 and '61 going into the World Series. He injured himself playing golf with Tom Sturdevant in '57, when he was at his baseball peak. Mick hurt his shin badly during that golf match; I won't go into a lot of details, but Sturdevant's high-pitched laugh afterwards made Mick lose his temper on a branch in his way. The branch was actually dead, and swinging his putter at it with all his might and anger, the putter went clean through the branch and into his shin. OUCH times ten to the third power! Then, a month and a half later in World Series game 1 I believe, Red Schoendienst fell on Mickey's shoulder in a close play at second. The pain from that hit was horrible, and Mickey said as a result, he was in pain until the beginning of 1961.

Yep, Mickey had a lot of great-to-good players around him during his hey day, as did Babe and Lou. Isn't that just too bad, for you who dislike him. Or you, who constantly shame him for not taking better care of himself, even though the man literally thought he'd only live to be as old as his dad that died at 39.

I go back to what former teammate Hank Bauer said, that the man did awfully good even with all the injuries he had. He was the man. He was the big guy. He was the warrior to be feared. Almost all eyes were on Mickey Mantle at the ball game.

You're right about Tom Tresh--he was the only Yank who got to Sandy Koufax in game 1 of the '63 Series. He got to Gibby in '64, and he was the hero of '62 indeed! 'Course, none of the Yanks did well at the bat in '63, though Mr. Koufax threw one that Mickey liked in game 4 that he crushed into Chavez Ravine.

In the end, Mickey won a whole lot of bling, and he earned them all, whether carrying the Bombers to get to the big show, or coming up with the big play, or a crucial hit to break the opposing teams' backs. Which, he did so again, and again, and again, and again, and .....

Furthermore, HE MADE HIMSELF PLAY HURT MANY GAMES IN WHICH HE SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN IN THE LINE-UP.

Why would he do that? I read about this. I teared up good. 'Cause he knew there'd be a bunch of kids in the stands that were attending what might be their only game of the season to see the Yanks. And, they wanted to see one player more than any other----Mickey Mantle. Mickey did not want to disappoint a kid, and let him down. Regardless, he played. He had the trainer wrap him up like a mummy as he had to do for a decade or more, and played anyway, and gave it his best anyway. Then, when number 7 walked out of the dugout with a bat to go to the on-deck circle, everybody got excited. The excitement and anticipation grew and grew, and then, when he stepped in the batter's box, just about everybody's eyes were glued on Mickey Mantle. What was he going to do?

In a few days, another anniversary will go by of a significant event that occurred April 17, 1953 at Griffith Stadium in Washington, DC. Up in the stands were a father and his 20-year-old-son, plus just a few thousand other fans. Guess the home-town Washington Senator fans figured the Yanks would beat their team, and they guessed right.

But they missed it. Boy, did they ever miss it---Mickey slugging a Chuck Stobbs fastball 565 feet!!!! Made a huge impression on every player, fan, and pressman who was there, including the young man and his dad. That young guy thought an awful lot of Mickey, and one day became famous himself, as a country and western singer and guitar player---Roy Clark. The two later connected, and Mickey had asked Roy to play his signature song at his funeral, "Yesterday When I Was Young".

Mickey Mantle must be special to me. I put a 3-card spread of him on the cover of my E-book on a CD, Never Cheaper By the Dozen.

Yep, I'll take Mickey Mantle----EVERY TIME!!! ---- Brian Powell

Out of all the players I`ve ever seen, let`s say 1966 and on, would start my team with Johnny Bench. From the original list toss up.

Ummm...he drank more beer than Willie and Duke put together??

1. He was a switch-hitter. Besides Eddie Murray, the best switch-hitting power hitter in baseball history.
2. He was the best bunter, and could drop one down for an infield hit almost whenever he wanted.
3. As good as he was on the field, his best work was done after he retired, with his honesty about his bad habits, addictions, and poor choices. He really turned the negatives in his life into teachable moments for millions of people.
4. His quick thinking while at first base, avoiding being doubled-up in the ninth inning of Game 7 of the 1960 World Series was the single best instantaneous reaction to an unusual situation ever seen on a ball field.
5. His baseball card prices almost single-handedly lifted the value of all baseball cards, and gave birth to the idea that a players' "rookie" card should have inordinate value.

Hi Mark17

Thanks for all your answers.

However, the answer I'm looking for is much "deeper" than the usual stats, BB card factors, etc.

I'll continue this subject tomorrow evening.


TED Z

T206 Reference
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The Duke on TV
 

Watching a rerun of The Rifleman the other day and The Duke was one of the bad guys! Even had a few lines..... but like all the others who come up against Lucas McCain he bit the dust by the end of the half hour.

Mick
 

Well, Mickey of course. He did it all.

If I'm starting a team today to play today, I'm picking Trout every time. We discuss the modern game and who would be a star in it all the time. Why would you pick anyone other than the best player in the modern game, if not the best player of all time. Nobody pitching to Mickey had anything to go on other than anecdotes. Hard to say what effect modern analytics would have had one him or Ted or anyone else. But we know what Trout can do.

There are all those world serieses!!

He has gone largely unappreciated but IMO the best catcher of all time. I once saw him throw three straight times to first and on the third picked off the baserunner. Remarkable arm.

As an outsider on the baseball side, its interesting to me that I haven't noticed a single argument that used sabermetrics. My understanding is that field devalues most traditional statistical measures like RBI in favor of new ones like WAR. Philosophically, I've even heard it argued that there is no such thing as clutch. I would have thought there would be some crossover between collecting and sabermetrics especially among those posting in this thread on a non-collecting topic.

I try it from time to time, but it never seems to change anyone's mind. The paper that debunked the hot-hand phenomenon in basketball applies to baseball as well. The other interesting thing that becomes clear from the data is that baseball is only a team sport in the trivial sense. The game within the game is almost all there is to the game in terms of predicting victories. And I have written a bit about the "clutch" phenomenon, more as a theory paper than with sabermetrics. Most people here didn't like what I had to say on the matter, but maybe you would, and I stick by it. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/b...e-and-more?amp

Thanks Glenn - good article - so which player would you take? A quick Google search told me Ruth had the highest WAR. Wouldn't he be the player I want assuming the goal of the team would be to win as many games as possible i.e. the sabermetric approach rather than citing "clutch performance" and "best I ever saw" type arguments to chose a player?

The OP didn't offer Ruth as a choice, so I went with Mays, but if I could take any player from the history of the game, yes, Ruth is the one.

It really depends how this counterfactual is spelled out. Let me make it a bit more specific and then offer an answer.

I'm going to assume:

(1) We've got the player starting their rookie year.
(2) We don't know what their career is going to be like in our imaginary world, but:
(3) we do know what their career was like in the real world.

Without (3) you're really asking about which player had the best tools - you're looking for scouting reports on these guys as 20 year olds. But given that we do know what their careers were like in the real world, I think my first cuts to the list will be Griffey and Mantle. Both were injury prone, and Mantle had problems with alcohol. In real life, both were great players. But the probability that if Mantle played his career out again his knees would give out before they did, or his alcoholism would get severe enough that he couldn't play at a top level, are too high for me to be comfortable picking him. (Ditto for Griffey wrt to the injuries. He also just wasn't as great of a player as the others.)

That leaves Aaron, Mays, and Trout. Now, let's assume (as seems reasonable) that a player's possible performances form a normal distribution, with the mean determined by their talent level. That is: if they each replayed their career a zillion times, of the outcomes they generate, 66% of them will fall within one standard deviation of the average outcome, a further 33% will fall within an additional standard deviation of the average, and then there are a few outliers. We are, in effect, being asked to take a chance on one of those zillion possible careers, it's just that we don't know which one.

Now, we do know that in the actual world Aaron and Mays put together superlative careers. That is, we've already picked one possible outcome out of the bag, and it turned out to be a good one. Given that these outcomes form a normal distribution, it is extremely likely that their actual career was relatively close to the expected outcome. (99% probable that it's within two standard deviations, 66% within one.) It's possible, but not terrifically likely, that their actual career was one of the extreme outliers. So we can be reasonably confident that if we picked Aaron or Mays, we'll again get something reasonably close to the career that they actually produced. Now, this still involves quite a bit of uncertainty - that 99% confidence interval covers four standard deviations after all - but it's pretty good.*

Trout, despite being both my favorite Angel and my favorite fish, doesn't allow this kind of confidence because we haven't seen the rest of his career yet. He certainly could end up beating Mays or Aaron, but he hasn't done it yet. Which means that, given our information, the range of possible outcomes on Trout's career is greater than it is for the other two. One way to think about this is that the bell curve of possible careers for Trout is flatter than it is for Mays or Aaron. So, given the additional risk involved in picking him, my second cut would be to eliminate Trout.

It then comes down to which player you think had the better career: Mays or Aaron. I'll pick Mays, but if you want to go with Aaron I'm not going to argue too much.



* Can we be 99% confident that their actual careers are within two standard deviations of their mean career, given that we know that they had great careers? Maybe not. If not, let me given an additional argument. Given that they actually had great careers, their mean performance, whatever it is, has got to be pretty high. And so even if their actual careers were unlikely outliers, their expected career is still going to be good. And, more to the point for this exercise, if we have grounds to think that Aaron's or Mays' career was actually an outlier, we have the same grounds for thinking that Trout's career (so far) is as well. And, given that we know more about Aaron's career than about Trout's, we can still infer that the distribution of possible careers for Trout is flatter than it is for Aaron and Mays.

Good stuff, but in a normal distribution over 4% (not just 1%) of outcomes deviate from the mean by more than two standard deviations. What I would focus on though are the standard errors of the means, which become tiny with all of the data in a 20-25 year career.

Naturally there's going to be some regression toward the mean, as you allude to in your footnote, but that doesn't have any impact on the rank ordering of where you expect the players' careers to end up if you replayed them under slightly different circumstances. Sure, it's possible that Don Mattingly would end up having the best career in MLB history, but it's more likely that Griffey would, more likely still that it would be Mantle, and even more likely that it's Mays.

Mays.

I would say it's equally possible that Griffey never becomes Griffey because he sustains an injury earlier in his career.

I am probably just not well-versed enough in statistics etc. to understand this fully, but it seems like a somewhat inconsistent mix of ex ante and ex post. If you were analyzing it purely ex ante you would have absolutely no idea beyond speculation about how any of their talents would ultimately translate into a career, no? History is full of guys with enormous talent who go bust.

There are lots of ways the counterfactual situation of picking a young player to start a team could be spelled out. You could go just from scouting reports of the guys when they were 20 (this is the first possibility that I mentioned).

But the assumption that I made for the exercise was that we know how their careers actually turned out. Since it's all counterfactual anyway, we can give ourselves that knowledge if we want. And why not? We do, in fact, know how they turned out. Now, given that their careers turned out one way, it doesn't guarantee that they will turn out that way again - which is why this question isn't just "which player in fact had the greatest career". But it does give us some indication of how we should expect them to turn out if they played their careers again, and what my post was doing was trying to figure out what we should expect from them if they went back in time and played their career out again.

Think about it this way: imagine that we have exact replicas of Mays, Mantle, Trout, etc. as young men. Up until the age of 20 (or whatever) both nature and nurture have, for these clones, been exactly the same as they were for the real Mays, Mantle, etc. We don't know what they're going to do with their respective careers. But we do know what their exact duplicates did with their careers, and that should tell us something about what to expect from the young ball players that we have to choose between.

It's beyond me why, if we know how they turned out, we would even ask how would they turn out if they started again. As I said, this seems an odd mix of ex ante and ex post, why not just do one or the other?

I agree with your point but Ford could not have started game seven because he pitched a complete game in a must win the day before. Stengel's mistakes re: Ford, IMO were:
1) Not starting him until game three in favor of Ditmar & Turley.
2) Keeping him in the entire sixth game which should have been handed over to the bullpen as it was a blowout.
3) As you noted not using Ford in game seven even with the game six CG under his belt.

Other debatable pitching moves in game seven were not using Ryne Duren, who had a poor season but an excellent WS up to that point, at all & leaving Bobby Shantz in for five innings after an entire season in short relief.

I've seen sources give Stengel a lot of credit for the way he used platooning which he apparently learned under McGraw.

"why not just do one or the other?"


Pure ex post is boring. Just get a list of players, order it by your favorite measure of value, and then give Trout a bonus of however much your favorite projection system puts him at. (With some tweaks for possible ranges of outcome, but whatever tweaks you put on it, Trout + projection-for-the-rest-of-his-career isn't going to be a contender here.)

Pure ex ante is hard to do (since we don't, that I know of, have scouting reports for a young Hank Aaron), but also unnecessarily restrictive. We know that Hank Aaron is capable of having the career that he, in fact, had. Why discard that information?

But perhaps more to the point: it's just a game, and you can play it however you want. If you want to project players just based on their amateur scouting reports, fine, that's one way to play the game. The OP didn't give us much guidance on how this game was to be played, so I picked one way to play it that sounded like fun to me. There are lots of other ways to do it too.

OK fair enough I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something. I am guessing the OP was just asking who do you think the best player was in so many words, which sounds ex post. Thanks for clarifying.

I'm just waiting for someone to start regurgitating Gordon Wood, talking about ya know, the Pre-Revolutionary utopia and the capital forming effects of military mobilization.