Posted By:
Tim NewcombAn awesome season.
Again, I'm not claiming Cobb was an inferior hitter to Wagner.
But the fact that Cobb never won a batting title after 1919 is hardly a good argument that he DIDN'T benefit from the lively ball.
I mean, he clearly benefitted from the lively ball of the 1920s-- every batter in the league had to benefit to some extent.
True, he still hit close to .400 a couple of years in the 1920s, but this was no longer an average that could win the batting title. This means that while he was obviously still a superior hitter, he was somewhat closer to the rest of the pack than he had been before 1919.
Hence I conclude that in Cobb's case, what the introduction of the lively ball and high batting averages did was to disguise the gradually declining skills in the later years of his career. Wagner's "decline years" after 1912 may seem steeper than Cobb's, but this was because he was in a very low-offense era for the last few years of his career.
The argument is really splitting hairs-- both were among the greatest ever, clearly. But Wagner can't hold Cobb's strap???? That's a little extreme, don't you think?
Cheers,
Tim