Barely OT: ESPN Ranking Greatest Players

[packs]

Frank Thomas is a guy I think is criminally overlooked. He was incredible in his peak years.

[Gecklund311]

Originally Posted by michael3322

Chipper Jones is better than Jackie Robinson? Really?

Yes

Chipper Jones was a heck of a hitter for a very long time - after his rookie season, he drove in 100 runs or more the next 8 years in a row. As the capsule on the list says, he is one of only 14 players to ever have a career .300 Avg/.400 Obp/.500 Slg - he's right there with Eddie Murray as the best switch hitter not named Mickey Mantle.

[EvilKing00]

Originally Posted by Gecklund311

Yes

Chipper Jones was a heck of a hitter for a very long time - after his rookie season, he drove in 100 runs or more the next 8 years in a row. As the capsule on the list says, he is one of only 14 players to ever have a career .300 Avg/.400 Obp/.500 Slg - he's right there with Eddie Murray as the best switch hitter not named Mickey Mantle.

As a met fan - and someone who hated chipper his whole career, he was an awesome ball player and a 1st ballot HOF, and IMO better than jackie

[Peter_Spaeth]

This may be the first list I have ever seen that did not rank Johnson as the best pitcher. As great as Mantle was I would not put him as high as 9th, ahead of Gehrig and well ahead of DiMaggio.

[tbob]

Nolan Ryan better than Bob Gibson??? Steve Carlton, Pedro Martinez, Greg Maddux better than Christy Mathewson??? Phil Niekro better than Eddie Plank, Carl Hubbell and Rube Waddell??? Roger Clemens the greatest pitcher of all time???
What a joke....

[WWGjohn]

Not to belabor the point on the "roids & HGH" players but when comparing the effect of amphetamines to roids and HGH there is no comparison. Amphetamines are antifatigue agents but do not enhance strength, promote tissue growth, or accelerate healing. HGH especially can increase the amount of fast twitch muscle fiber which in turn would translate into faster bat speed. It's a serious step up in artificially boosting your performance.

[Gecklund311]

Originally Posted by tbob

Nolan Ryan better than Bob Gibson??? Steve Carlton, Pedro Martinez, Greg Maddux better than Christy Mathewson??? Phil Niekro better than Eddie Plank, Carl Hubbell and Rube Waddell??? Roger Clemens the greatest pitcher of all time???
What a joke....

Agree on almost every count - Ryan couldn't carry Gibson's jock. If my life was riding on a baseball game, I'd probably choose Gibson in his prime to pitch it - he was a money pitcher of the highest order.

I would argue the Maddux point though - he was pretty much the modern day Matty in that he played for a relatively dominant team of his time and was noted as much for pitching with his brain as much as his stuff. The difference is that Maddux pitched a large part of his career in an era that was a hitter's paradise, making his numbers even more impressive.

[cyseymour]

What a baffling list. Clemens over Cy Young? I will defend the Pedro Martinez ranking, though. I saw him in his prime and he was absolutely sensational. It was fireworks. Pretty much all the guys in Boston who've seen him will defend him. There will never be another one in our lifetime like that.

[z28jd]

Originally Posted by WWGjohn

Not to belabor the point on the "roids & HGH" players but when comparing the effect of amphetamines to roids and HGH there is no comparison. Amphetamines are antifatigue agents but do not enhance strength, promote tissue growth, or accelerate healing. HGH especially can increase the amount of fast twitch muscle fiber which in turn would translate into faster bat speed. It's a serious step up in artificially boosting your performance.

Doesn't matter, they're all against the rules. If those players from the 60's had the same rules in place as they do now, the numbers would've diminished. If they had HGH available, you can guarantee the numbers would've went up. They had amphetamines, and they used them freely from what we have heard. You want to hold the players from the "steroid" era to high standards when no rules were in place, then you have to hold the older players to the same standards because both groups were breaking later rules.

What you have to do is be able to compare the players to their own generation, and that is how you figure out who is the best. Steroids don't make you an all-time great, in some cases they can hurt. Rondell White, Ruben Sierra and Carlos Baerga all bulked up a lot over one off-season and all of them slumped badly because they were too bulky.

No one here knows who was actually clean during the steroid era, so how do you rate any of them high? If you want to eliminate a few, aka the usual suspects, then you have to eliminate them all.

Since I can't positively name one clean person from the 60's on, and unless there is a clean baseball player on this board we don't know about, no one else here can either. So I go back to the method of weighing the players against players from their own time period. The early 2000's had big stats all around, so a 50 home run season doesn't hold as much weight as a 50 homer season from the 1930's, etc

It's amazing that in hindsight, the steroid era was actually 4-5 bad guys beating up on all the clean guys, or at least that is what the story has been changed to...

[cyseymour]

One thing to remember about Pedro, Maddux and Randy Johnson is that they were going up against all those juicers. The league ERA's were astronomical, and they were still putting up incredible numbers.

[Gecklund311]

Originally Posted by cyseymour

One thing to remember about Pedro, Maddux and Randy Johnson is that they were going up against all those juicers. The league ERA's were astronomical, and they were still putting up incredible numbers.

Agreed - that same kind of context also makes Lefty Grove and Carl Hubbell look even better than they were at first glance. Pitching in an era where a .300 batting average wasn't particularly impressive can put a big hurting on a pitcher's numbers.

[michael3322]

Originally Posted by Gecklund311

Yes

Chipper Jones was a heck of a hitter for a very long time - after his rookie season, he drove in 100 runs or more the next 8 years in a row. As the capsule on the list says, he is one of only 14 players to ever have a career .300 Avg/.400 Obp/.500 Slg - he's right there with Eddie Murray as the best switch hitter not named Mickey Mantle.

You make a good case. I guess I was looking more broadly at what Jackie did for baseball and the country.

From his Wikipedia page...

"In 1999, he was named by Time on its list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. Also in 1999, he ranked number 44 on the Sporting News list of Baseball's 100 Greatest Players and was elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team as the top vote-getter among second basemen. Baseball writer Bill James, in The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, ranked Robinson as the 32nd greatest player of all time strictly on the basis of his performance on the field, noting that he was one of the top players in the league throughout his career"

[Gecklund311]

That is where people usually differ when it comes to Robinson's place on these kind of lists - some want to give him extra points for historical impact while others like myself will ignore it. To me, his legacy is best seen by looking at the list itself, and seeing Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Bob Gibson, Frank Robinson, etc - players who may not have been on there if not for Jackie Robinson's courage.

I don't know enough about the exact methods James uses to rebut him in an informed way, but if I'm making the list Robinson probably comes in fifth at his position and likely between 60 and 70 overall. Hornsby, Collins, Joe Morgan, and Lajoie would be ahead of him in that order, with Robinson next just ahead of Gehringer and Biggio. Longevity was really Robinson's huge issue, through no fault of his own as he got started late, but he only had a five year stretch where you could call him great.

[glynparson]

10 Mike Schmidt
9 Hank Aaron
8 Lou Gehrig
7 Stan Musial
6 Ted Williams
5 Honus Wagner
4 Willie Mays
3 Ty Cobb
2 Barry Bonds
1 Babe Ruth


I made list based on how they were against contemporaries in my opinion. I dont know what the espn criteria was. If it was who would be thebest in todays game list would be different and i filed to include a single pitcher.PS I actually hated Schmidt growing up but he was a true force for a decade+. And an amazing defensive player as well.

[prewarsports]

Before Griffey got traded to Cincinnati, Sports Illustrated did a similar type thing and Griffey was ranked number 3 best player EVER (around 2000 so not a rookie year thing) and I dont think anyone at that time disagreed. He was as much of a Baseball phenomenon as anyone since Willie Mays and his impact on the game is the reason half the guys my age started to collect Baseball Cards etc. I think he should still be in the top 10 for sure. He gets hammered because his numbers were constantly overshadowed by the roid guys because he was putting up 56-58 home runs when guys like Bonds, McGwire and Sosa were jacking 70. His name has never been linked to roids ever and he gets the shaft (in my opinion).

Rhys

[brob28]

Originally Posted by packs

Frank Thomas is a guy I think is criminally overlooked. He was incredible in his peak years.

I would agree, I think the years/partial seasons he lost to injuries hurt his legacy quite a bit. The only offensive player who was anywhere near him in the 90's was Griffey.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Even with lots of extra points for being a third baseman, I can't see Schmidt -- a .267 lifetime hitter -- in the top ten of all time. Our lists are very similar other than my having Dimaggio at 10 though.

[EvilKing00]

Originally Posted by Gecklund311

Agreed - that same kind of context also makes Lefty Grove and Carl Hubbell look even better than they were at first glance. Pitching in an era where a .300 batting average wasn't particularly impressive can put a big hurting on a pitcher's numbers.

soooo u dont think Johnson was on the juice??? or hgh?? come on man - piazza was too, so were most of them, its all good

[Gecklund311]

Originally Posted by EvilKing00

soooo u dont think Johnson was on the juice??? or hgh?? come on man - piazza was too, so were most of them, its all good

My point was that Maddux, Pedro, and Randy Johnson look more impressive given that they pitched in an era that favored hitters, in the same way that Hubbell and Grove did. Pitching under those circumstances was harder than it was to pitch in the early 1900s or the 1960s, and should be taken into account when ranking them.

I have no idea whether Randy Johnson was on steroids/HGH or not - I did see him pitch against the Cubs when he just came up with the Expos, and he had great stuff right from the start, it was just a matter of him learning how to pitch rather than trying to overpower everyone. No doubts at all that Piazza was on it though.