When I do it I sometimes break it up a little more. I have an era called "the Obama 2nd term era". The list goes Mike Trout. Runner-up Everyone else
I think the easiest votes will be 3rd (whomever is left between Ruth/Mays/Bonds) and 4th (Williams). 5th should be fun. That is where you start looking at Rickey, Frank, Schmidt, Musial, Cobb, etc.
Domonic Brown wins May 2013
Actually the more I look at it, it's gotta be Mays and Aaron 1 and 2 for the 1960's era. Mays ruled the first half of the decade. He fell off a little at the end but overall it's either him or Aaron, who was great throughout the decade but most seasons not quite as great as Mays.
Id imagine at a macro level it might look like that. This isnt really something I think about too often but something like:
Only one of those players played in an era where every team had a hard throwing lefty reliever in the bullpen whose sole purpose was to come in in the late innings to face a lefty power hitter. The rest of them, more than likely, faced a tired starter who had alreaady thrown 100+ pitches or a washed up guy out of the bullpen. Guess who the one guy was?
I actually dont like ranking positions at all but I do agree that the hold of nostalgia on baseball is somewhat frustrating. Its just that if you buy into the co-evolution argument then all of the best players are playing today. So going by dominance over the game is the best way and that leads to the older players mostly.
Everything changes when you put someone on base, right? Thats probably the big argument for Ted Williams being super high other than him missing likely MVP level seasons in his prime.
True but not just OBP, OPS. I believe Williams was second all time in OPS and OPS+ to Babe Ruth.
Obviously there is difference of opinion. Lots of fun votes coming up.
This is why I like to at least look at WAR and OPS+ as standards of measurement. They are supposed to look at the production on average and determine how well that player did against the field (especially OPS+). Both have their holes but may be the best we have (although I'm sure that some have their ultra advanced stats that they feel do a better job. If there are any on this board who feel that have a better way to measure how good a player was compared to the rest of his MLBers then please speak up).
I don't have a better way. But I'd like to know if WAR factors in defense and quality outs (hitting a ground ball between first and second to advance a runner from second to third, with less than two outs). I know that OPS+ doesn't. Does WAR? There is a player's oWAR, dWAR, and WAR. But when you add his oWAR and dWAR, the sum usually does not equal his WAR.
There are different WARs out there that calculate differently. But my understanding (likely wrong) is that every time a player does something, they accumulate a WAR value which is based on their teams percentage chance to win that game.
