Quote:
Originally Posted by EvilKing00
just to get back to the war argument
heres a link to the all time war stats:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/le...R_career.shtml
according to WAR:
1 - Rickey Henderson (who was great) - is better than Mickey Mantle
2 - Phil Niekro - better than pedro martinez? nolan ryan? bob gibson?
3 - Carl Yastrzemski was better than Ken griffey jr???
i can go on and on but i just took a few from the top 70 on the list there.
Its a flawed stat, if you even call it a stat, as there are 2 Different WARS made by 2 different places both calculated differently |
See, I think you are misunderstanding the stat here. "better?" Not necessarily, you have to put it in context. Rickey had more WAR than Mickey mostly because of career longevity. (but also because of defense and baserunning, which are important) Rickey wasn't as good of a hitter as the Mick, but he might have been a more complete player over his entire career.
Yaz and Neikro both had very long careers and neither were hampered by injuries the way Griffey was...etc
Remember, WAR is a cumulative stat, so good players with long careers will have more WAR than better players with shorter careers often. That doesn't mean they were "better" just good for longer.