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Total Members Voted: 3

Voting closed: February 13, 2022, 10:41:25 PM

[kiidcarter8]

How hard is it raining?

[kiidcarter8]

Yeah, we did pay for Sale.  Hope we get a title out of it

https://twitter.com/PitchingNinja/status/1035695202789453824

[bankshot1]

How hard is it raining?

hard enough-

another 45+ minutes of rain
resumes around 11:30?

Ys CFBwin on controversial 8th inning rally

Donaldson traded to Tribe

[Yankguy1]

I'm in Chicago. Rain is stopping

[josh]

Greatest player was Ruth and I don't understand why it is even a discussion.

Ruth would have been a Hall of Fame pitcher, had he not been shifted away from the mound. 17th in career ERA. Top 10 for wins before age 25.

Ruth was not the focus of the discussion.

But I generally agree with your post.

I wasn't wasting my breath arguing with Utley. He knows better, but it doesn't matter - he came here for an argument. Or just a contradiction of anything you say (almost). Or abuse.

I was belatedly disagreeing with Mays, which both of you (whomever the other one was).

[bankshot1]

yank

Nice.

Long family week-end?

My internet "sources" are saying its still raining and Sox² might resume 11:30-midnight

[bankshot1]

Greatest player was Ruth and I don't understand why it is even a discussion.

Ruth would have been a Hall of Fame pitcher, had he not been shifted away from the mound. 17th in career ERA. Top 10 for wins before age 25.

Ruth was not the focus of the discussion.

But I generally agree with your post.

I wasn't wasting my breath arguing with Utley. He knows better, but it doesn't matter - he came here for an argument. Or just a contradiction of anything you say (almost). Or abuse.

I was belatedly disagreeing with Mays, which both of you (whomever the other one was).

Ruth was a freak and not easily comped. But he and Williams comp as hitters.

IMO Mays may have been the greatest traditional 5-tool positional player.

Utley-- he enjoys the attention, abuse and losing arguments

[Hamilton Samuels]

Chi-Phi great game. The way baseball was meant to be.

[Hamilton Samuels]

Ruth never had to hit Koufax or Gibson or Drysdale. Aaron.

You lose again.

[bankshot1]

Walter Johnson and Lefty Grove chuckle at the troll's ignorance.

[josh]

Ruth never had to hit Koufax or Gibson or Drysdale. Aaron.

You lose again.

Such a bullshit argument. Hard to believe you are even bothering.

Aaron never had to pitch to anybody. He didn't have to pitch to players in Ruth's day. He didn't have to pitch to players in his own day.

Aaron's highest slugging average, as has already been pointed out to you, is lower than Ruth's career slugging average. And before you tell me about those pitchers that Aaron had to face, Aaron was only the highest in his own time in four years.

Mantle outslugged him over their careers.
Mays outslugged him over their careers.
Musial outslugged him over their careers.

Taking Aaron's best years from 1955 through 1973:
Year           BA   OBP   SLG   OPS   
1955-1973   .312   .380   .574   .955

Mantle:

Year           BA   OBP   SLG   OPS
1952-1966   .307   .428   .580   1.008   

There is no 6 or longer year period in which Aaron matches those numbers and even the two 5 year periods only match them in one of the four categories.

Mays led the league in SLG and OBA more often than Aaron did. So did Musial. (Aaron never led the league in OBA. Mays did twice. Musial did six times.

Musial hit over .350 five times. Aaron once.

Aaron? Feh.

Aaron wasn't as good against the folks he faced as his own peers. And he never pitched.

[luee]

Mays was the best 5 tool and also a defensive beast. His numbers are somewhat hurt playing in Candlestick. But he checked all the boxes.

[Hamilton Samuels]

Figures the Boston Cartel would work this hard to defend the Whites Only Era of baseball.

Aaron. Better hitter than Williams. Played in tougher league, tougher era. Third in all-time hits, Williams 77th. First in all-time Homers presteroid and body armor era.

The best hitters hit. Aaron had the most hits of anyone you've mentioned

You lose, again.

[bankshot1]

poor troll

He loses an argument in every way possible and fully exposes not only his inferiority complex (well-earned) and his obssession with Boston, but his deep ignorance about the game, its history, the stats, everything.

Yet despite his thrashing he comes back for more.

the troll is scrappy.

As posted before the troll decided to dumb down this discussion, I think Aaron was a great player, among the greatest, but he's not really in the debate for the greatest hitter.

That debate has generally been reserved for Ruth or Williams.

I think a case can be made for either, and there are additional extenuating arguments that have to be made for both, though I tilt slightly for Ruth.

"As to the best hitters hit", yes, and thats why OPS, as already pointed out to the troll, is the best indicator, as it combines the several elements  critical to a hitters success, show patience, a good eye, an ability to hit, and get on base and ultimately score.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/onbase_plus_slugging_career.shtml

it captures the real goal of a hitter to put your team in the best position to score runs.

the troll does not understand this about a game so driven by stats.


Interestingly enough, on this leaders list, "Most Outs Made", neither Ruth nor Williams are on it, but lots of very good and some greats are on it.

Rose and Aaron then Yaz top it.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/outs_made_career.shtml

but you have to play a long time to fail so often.

The troll in that regard is the exception to the rule, he fails all the time.

[bankshot1]

As we say goodbye and God bless you to Sen McCain, an American hero, here's a story about McCain and Ted Williams, a fellow Marine, fighter pilot and veteran.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-08-30/john-mccain-loved-to-tell-this-ted-williams-story

My favorite McCain story involved a tale he once told me about Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox.

We were flying back to Washington on a small plane on May 20, 2002, from a commencement address he’d given at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. We hit some scary turbulence.

McCain saw the panicked look on my face and asked what was wrong. I confessed to being a nervous flier.

“I’ve crashed four of these,” he cracked. It didn’t put me at ease.

Then the celebrated former naval aviator, who acquired a reputation as a daredevil years before he was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967 and then spent five and a half years as a prisoner of war, recalled that whenever jet jockeys got together they would share old war stories.

The best one was about Ted Williams.

Williams, a Marine aviator during World War II, was called back into military service during the Korean War at the peak of his baseball career. He usually flew in formation with John Glenn, the future astronaut and senator. On one of his initial solo flights, Williams’s plane caught fire. He approached the airbase and crash landed, then jumped out just before the plane exploded.

For years, McCain had heard this story and wanted to ask Williams why he didn’t parachute out of the burning plane. When he finally met the baseball great, Williams explained that he was then 34 years old and figured that if he bailed out, he might break his knees and never play baseball again.

On that bumpy flight from North Carolina all those years later, McCain gleefully remembered Williams’s typically foul-mouthed answer:

“So I said, screw it, let's bring it in.” (Except that he didn’t exactly say “screw it.