Poll - Greatest Living Player

[jayshum]

Originally Posted by G1911

I don't think they are treated different, I think it's just that Bonds is greater among hitters than Roger is among pitchers. The gap between Clemens and Maddux or Johnson is significant, but it's not nearly as big as the gap between Bonds and Rickey Henderson or Pete Rose (who for some reason is okay but the steroids guys are not) or whoever one picks. As great as Clemens' career was, Bonds was even better and so he gets the vast majority of the votes from the people who are relying on provable numbers.

As others have pointed out, Koufax getting as much support seems to be more about honoring the elder statesman than just looking at the numbers when it comes to people who selected pitchers. For hitters, there isn't a clear elder statesman so it looks like people are either going with the numbers (Bonds) or spreading the votes out amongst many others. It's also interesting to me that ARod so far has no votes while Bonds has so many. Again, I guess if you are going to vote and disregard PEDs, Bonds is considered better than ARod.

As for Rose, it doesn't surprise me that for something like this, people would be ok voting for him but not a PED user. I don't think there was ever any evidence that Rose's career stats were effected by his gambling.