The Baseball Book Club discussion
note: This topic has been closed to new comments.
Book Suggestions
>
Suggestions for October
date
newest »
newest »
Deal me in as always & thanksMike Linn
And then I read your review & I`m more interested....nice Lance as usual
Lance wrote: "While October might not be a great month for reading as most of us will be watching the postseason, I will toss this one out....it's one I read recently and the publisher inquired if we could make ..." Nicely written. You changed your format-much more professional. Sounds like a good read.
Mod
Harold wrote: "When are we doing Jay Jaffe"s book?"I just ordered the Jaffe book so if you guys make it after the post season, sounds like we could ALL participate thoroughly. I`ve got a couple of cents to contribute. Mike Linn
Mod
Michael wrote: "Harold wrote: "When are we doing Jay Jaffe"s book?"I just ordered the Jaffe book so if you guys make it after the post season, sounds like we could ALL participate thoroughly. I`ve got a couple o..."That's a good debate waiting to happen. But I already know the answer to one question. Who is the first player to be ejected from the HOF? Answer Bill Mazerowski.
Mod
It should be a juicy topic, at least it seems to be around here. A few years back, just out of curiosity I took the list of just players & conservatively started slashing. Out of the 200 plus I got rid of about 1/4 of the list almost immediately. I did it again 2 years ago & this time wasn`t so kind & I got about HALF the suckers while they weren`t looking. Right up one of my alleysMike Linn
Did you get rid of Catfish Hunter Mike? lol
What do you think ? The plan was to have ONLY the great, was he great or just pretty darn good? LOLouderMike Linn
Mod
Mod
Lance wrote: "As long as you kept Carew and Killebrew in, I'm good. Love it if you spared Blyleven,but I doubt it." Bill James makes a compelling case for Blyleven-not so much for Harmon.
Mod
This entry falls under the heading of "bathroom break" or what the hell am I doing up at 2;30 a.m. before Mike asks me what the hell I`m doing up.Way back when, 3,000 hits , 500 homers & 300 wins were a lock for the hall, I still think save the 500 homers that those #`s are &should be a lock. Where I have a problem with just voting someone who hit the 500 in, is I keep seeing Canseco & Kingman with 40 or 50 more lifetime homers as being considered hall worthy. The other huge dilemma for me is to quantify & separate pitchers of any era. I have found that the rules & comparisons are hard because the period of greatness in lots of great pitchers vary in length. I think when we dissect them individually & start jabbing at the Jaffe`s & Bill James`s, maybe we can make sense of what is & what should be. Heading back to the pillows, see you after java
Mike Linn
Speaking of the hall, im going to have to learn the formula for figuring out WAR. The stat guys I've been following brought up an interesting one tonight. Cole Hamels has a higher career War then Jack Morris and hes pitched 1500 less innings then Morris.
So what does that tell you about WAR ? Pretty much what we have been saying here about any one numberMike Linn
Agreed Mike, my concern is that everything is heading the new stats way vs. old numbers. Its like you wont have to see a guy play in the future. Youll just wait till his careers over and down load the numbers and presto hes in or hes out.
Mike wrote: "Speaking of the hall, im going to have to learn the formula for figuring out WAR. The stat guys I've been following brought up an interesting one tonight. Cole Hamels has a higher career War then J..." Cole gets a lot more credit via WAR than he deserves in my opinion. Some think he is close to HOF worthy. I just don't see it. Morris had a much higher ERA and that hurts his WAR. Bill James also adds points for awards-like MVP in NLCS and WS, Cy Young awards, rookie of the year etc. It also considers the defense of the team behind the pitcher. To me, it's all very subjective despite the claim that it's an objective analysis. Jay Jaffee has Robin Roberts 24th all time for pitchers. He has Catfish Hunter near the bottom, and Roberts ahead of Nolan Ryan and Tom Glavine. So, a lot depends on era and peak war years.
i think thats where some of these people go off the road. They have Oswalt and Cliff Lee going in. Peak years are great but they need to ficus more on the whole career. Plenty of guys have strung together a few great seasons that aren't hall worthy.
I've been playing around with something I found on Baseball-Reference. If you add the "Hall of Fame Statistics" as listed toward the bottom of a player's page, and then rank the players by how many of the seven metrics they achieve, the worthiness of HOF designation becomes a little clearer. Oswalt & Hamels are right smack in the middle of HOF starting pitchers when ranking by ERA+, but are a little short on WAR and haven't yet/didn't reach any of the Hall of Fame statistics. The only starting pitchers in the Hall with ZERO Hall of Fame Statistics are Addie Joss & Waite Hoyt (both Veteran's Committee selections) and Bruce Sutter, whom I believe is in for the split-finger fastball creation credit as much as anything else. Current pitchers who have passed the mark for some of the HOF Statistics - Kershaw (2), Verlander (2), CC Sabathia (1) & Max Scherzer (1.)
I don't comprehend the black ink, gray ink metrics. I get Laws and Bill James' Hall of Fame Monitors. So, I'm a bit confused with that reference. But for me, Hamels was a good pitcher. A #2 or #3 on a great team but not a true ace. Certainly not worthy of the HOF IMO.
Black Ink: The essential point is to measure how often a player led the league in a variety of "important" stats. Gray Ink: Essentially the same as the Black-Ink, but it counts appearances in the top ten of the league.
This is the basis of certain players like Jim Rice, who led the league (or was close to it) in a number of offensive categories, while still being weaker elsewhere with things like OBP, Defense, hitting into DPs, etc.
Ok thanks Dave-that helps make it much clearer. That's like Bill James' Hall of Fame Monitor which includes awards, points for MVP etc,
Dave wrote: "I've been playing around with something I found on Baseball-Reference. If you add the "Hall of Fame Statistics" as listed toward the bottom of a player's page, and then rank the players by how many..."Sutter doesn`t get close on any of the 5 qualifiers, Hoyt at least is close on 3 of the 5, but Joss has an excuse. He pitched only 8 full seasons & got sick after about 1/3 through his 9th. He then died of spinal meningitis before he could get that qualifying 10th season in. MLB waived it because he surely would have been in serious contention based on his darn good record
Mike Linn
Lance wrote: "Current stats are not kind to the Killer...bad OBP for starters, and wasn't good in the field no matter what position. But oh, those homers..."
Actually, he had a pretty good OBP, especially in the late '60s when I think he may have walked around a hundred times some years (looked it up--145 in '69).
Yes he was a liability in the field at first, third, left field and even at second where he started. But no one hit more home runs in the decade of the '60s and he was second in RBIs in that notoriously pitcher's decade.
He is a case where I think the stat-nerds vastly underestimate him because they weren't there. He was nowhere near a homer-or-else Adam Dunn. His two top strike out years were 142 and 135 and often he was around 100-110.
I will grab a musket, stand guard over his plaque and fight to the death.
Actually, he had a pretty good OBP, especially in the late '60s when I think he may have walked around a hundred times some years (looked it up--145 in '69).
Yes he was a liability in the field at first, third, left field and even at second where he started. But no one hit more home runs in the decade of the '60s and he was second in RBIs in that notoriously pitcher's decade.
He is a case where I think the stat-nerds vastly underestimate him because they weren't there. He was nowhere near a homer-or-else Adam Dunn. His two top strike out years were 142 and 135 and often he was around 100-110.
I will grab a musket, stand guard over his plaque and fight to the death.
Mike wrote: "Agreed Mike, my concern is that everything is heading the new stats way vs. old numbers. Its like you wont have to see a guy play in the future. Youll just wait till his careers over and down load ..."
I mentioned earlier, I almost fell out of my chair when I read that Jaffe's numbers tell this generation that Gene Tenace was much better than Roy Campanella. You've got to be freaking kidding me!!!!! That alone should tell you something is very wrong with the numbers.
I mentioned earlier, I almost fell out of my chair when I read that Jaffe's numbers tell this generation that Gene Tenace was much better than Roy Campanella. You've got to be freaking kidding me!!!!! That alone should tell you something is very wrong with the numbers.
With the 21st-century training, diet & technology, Harmon Kilebrew is basically Jim Thome, though his HRs are probably north of 650, even allowing for watered-down pitching to be cancelled out by stacked bullpens.
Doug wrote: "Mike wrote: "Agreed Mike, my concern is that everything is heading the new stats way vs. old numbers. Its like you wont have to see a guy play in the future. Youll just wait till his careers over a..." Yep, some things just don't pass the eye test.
This, courtesy of Mike Reuther. I never read the book. What do you think?https://consequenceofsound.net/2016/0...
Mod
Good article Harold and Mike. He touches on some great points.
I just finished rereading The Natural last week (it is going to be the main literary work on my baseball talk next month at my college).
We have done a good job of getting to most of the classics here this year and I think we should knock this one off as well. It is probably the most respected literary baseball book of all time.
He makes a great point about contrasting the book and the movie: if the movie had been like the book, no one would have gone to see it; if the book had been like the movie, it would have been a Matt Christopher/John Tunis book and no one would have considered it literature. They both were in the right form for the venue.
I am planning on rewatching the movie this weekend (had to butter my wife up first by having an Indiana Jones week).
I think everyone in this group needs to read the book and watch the movie at least once.
I just finished rereading The Natural last week (it is going to be the main literary work on my baseball talk next month at my college).
We have done a good job of getting to most of the classics here this year and I think we should knock this one off as well. It is probably the most respected literary baseball book of all time.
He makes a great point about contrasting the book and the movie: if the movie had been like the book, no one would have gone to see it; if the book had been like the movie, it would have been a Matt Christopher/John Tunis book and no one would have considered it literature. They both were in the right form for the venue.
I am planning on rewatching the movie this weekend (had to butter my wife up first by having an Indiana Jones week).
I think everyone in this group needs to read the book and watch the movie at least once.
Good, I'll ge it from the library. The movie, I think I memorized.
This topic has been frozen by the moderator. No new comments can be posted.
http://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/201...