Measuring a players greatness?

I am curious what others think as to how much weight should be used to define someone's greatness?
Knowing that many players tail off and put up piss poor numbers in their declining years.
Knowing that some players can play strong for 10+ years
Knowing that some records are not set until players play deep in their careers.
COnsidering longevity to some degree should be used in defining one's greatness....

What do you personally think is important?

Would you think the best 5 years, best 7 years, best 10 years, career numbers?
Do you think the best 5 or best 7 years should carry more weight than career numbers?

What are your thoughts in what is most important in defining how great a player is?

Per-162 games stats make the most sense to me to gauge a players greatness.

Define 'greatness' first.

trouser size

As strange as it may sound, defining 'greatness' is like trying to define the word 'obscene'. You just know when a player is great but can't specifically define the word in a specific context here.

I think greatness is tough to define. I happen to believe that there are only a few truly great players per generation. Players that truly dominated their generations. Cobb, Wagner, Ruth, Gehrig, DDiMaggio, Williams, Mays, Aaron, Bonds, Clemens, Koufax, Seaver, guys like that.

smapdi said:

Define 'greatness' first.

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Use whatever definition you want.

The question is, should they need great numbers for 5 years, 7, years, 10 years, to be considered great?
Is 5 super years then nohting afterwards greater than 10 years of almost as super years?
or is 5 great years, and 5 very good years better than 20 very good years?
Is ripken great because of his his consecutive game streak? would he even be remembered without it?
or how about rickey henderson's stolen base records?

Looking at numbers it looks like Carlton was every bit as much of a pitcher is Koufax, but he pitched 8 declining years which why people just don't think of him as great. If he quit after his prime, his numbers would look as good as Koufax. Koufax only played 5 great seasons, yet many consider him up their with the greats?

Sure, maybe if koufax kept pitching, he may have duplicated his prime years, or maybe he could have declined as Carlton did....IF...who knows.

THe question isn't about Koufax though...

I guess what i am getting at is, do you think an entire players career should be looked at, or just their best 5, 7 or 10 years? or maybe a combination of both? What about records, are they important? Is longevity important?

As far as what is great, use your own definition...I am just curious if you think a players peak years should weigh as much or more than their entire career.

EXAMPLE - For me personally, I liked the results i see by giving twice as much weight to a players best 7 years as their career numbers (e.g. 2x7pwar+cwar)....
if no one understands what i am asking, no biggee.

I would say 5 to 7 years of greatness are more important. Again, I consider greatness to be dominance. There are guys who dominated there eras but dont necessarily have the career numbers that other players have. I'll put it this way, there are guys who have great lifetime stats who werent dominant players.

I am a huge proponent of WAR.

As for 'great' I look at MVP-type seasons as a measure of greatness.

It has been found, using Rally WAR, that a season with a WAR of 6.0+ is "above" MVP level.

Then it's just a matter of deciding how many of those seasons is required to achieve greatness. 10 is a number I hear thrown around often.

These players are truely 'great' by that standards, though it is not necessarily my standard.

Bonds, Barry (16)
Young, Cy (16)
Aaron, Hank (15)
Cobb, Ty (15)
Mays, Willie (15)
Ruth, Babe (15)
Speaker, Tris (13)
Wagner, Honus (13)
Schmidt, Mike (12)
Gehrig, Lou (11)
Grove, Lefty (11)
Hornsby, Rogers (11)
Mathewson, Christy (11)
Musial, Stan (11)
Nichols, Kid (11)
Williams, Ted (11)
Clemens, Roger (10)
Johnson, Walter (10)
Mantle, Mickey (10)
Mathews, Eddie (10)
Ott, Mel (10)

elmalo said:

I would say 5 to 7 years of greatness are more important. Again, I consider greatness to be dominance. There are guys who dominated there eras but dont necessarily have the career numbers that other players have. I'll put it this way, there are guys who have great lifetime stats who werent dominant players.

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I agree, i think that is about the way I feel. That 5-7 years of dominance are more important than career numbers but that career numbers and longevity should weigh in. I used 2 different formulas in my other "greatest pitchers thread", which both netted about the same results (both gave prime years about double the weight of their career numbers, and I am quite pleased with the results.

Chris Levy said:

As for 'great' I look at MVP-type seasons as a measure of greatness.

It has been found, using Rally WAR, that a season with a WAR of 6.0+ is "above" MVP level.

Then it's just a matter of deciding how many of those seasons is required to achieve greatness. 10 is a number I hear thrown around often.

These players are truely 'great' by that standards, though it is not necessarily my standard.

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I would agree that everyone on that list is indeed great. You previously suggested 5 WAR of 8.0+ is great. I like the 10 year model better than the 5 year model, but still the line is drawn too sharply, but i won't get into that now.

I am curious though before you referred to as WAR 8.0 as MVP now you are saying 6.0?

To better clarify my question, consider this chart.

You could very easily flip the rankings of any of these four pitchers depending on what you thought was more important, best 5 years, best 7 years, best 10 years, best career numbers or combination of all.

Niekro is best if you consider the best 10 years
Maddux is best (tied with Niekro) if you consider career numbers, or best if you give more weight to best 7 years and career numbers (2*pWAR7+cwar)
Pedro is best if you consider the best 5 years or best 7 years
Carlton is better than Maddux and Niekro if you consider just the best 5 years (e.g. koufax).

Or you could just not worry about stats and say they were all great, none being "greater than the other".
Or you could say none were great, and cut it off at johnson or above.

sportscardtheory said:

Per-162 games stats make the most sense to me to gauge a players greatness.

Click to expand...

+1. look at Juan Gonzalez's Per-162 games stat>WOW!
P.S. his Offensive WAR is 239th all time

hofautos said:

I would agree that everyone on that list is indeed great. You previously suggested 5 WAR of 8.0+ is great. I like the 10 year model better than the 5 year model, but still the line is drawn too sharply, but i won't get into that now.

I am curious though before you referred to as WAR 8.0 as MVP now you are saying 6.0?

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Using rallyWAR if you average the WAR seasons of every NL and AL MVP you get a result of 'about' 7. That means that half the MVPs had a WAR over 'about' 7, and half the MVPs had a WAR below 'about' 7.

WAR 8.0+ is used by baseball-reference.com based on rallyWAR to define an MVP season.

Rally himself developed WAM (Wins Above MVP) to measure a player's performance above 6.0 WAR. So if a player's single-season WAR was 9.0 he'd have a WAM of 3.0.

hofautos said:

I am curious what others think as to how much weight should be used to define someone's greatness?
Knowing that many players tail off and put up piss poor numbers in their declining years.
Knowing that some players can play strong for 10+ years
Knowing that some records are not set until players play deep in their careers.
COnsidering longevity to some degree should be used in defining one's greatness....

What do you personally think is important?

Would you think the best 5 years, best 7 years, best 10 years, career numbers?
Do you think the best 5 or best 7 years should carry more weight than career numbers?

What are your thoughts in what is most important in defining how great a player is?

Click to expand...

Great question! I usually take the players worst 3 seasons off, whether they are partial seasons or not. Take their best 3 season off, and then work with the rest. If you don't have 5 GREAT seasons left after taking those 6 away, then no Hall of Fame.

bodiaz said:

hofautos said:

I am curious what others think as to how much weight should be used to define someone's greatness?
Knowing that many players tail off and put up piss poor numbers in their declining years.
Knowing that some players can play strong for 10+ years
Knowing that some records are not set until players play deep in their careers.
COnsidering longevity to some degree should be used in defining one's greatness....

What do you personally think is important?

Would you think the best 5 years, best 7 years, best 10 years, career numbers?
Do you think the best 5 or best 7 years should carry more weight than career numbers?

What are your thoughts in what is most important in defining how great a player is?

Click to expand...

Great question! I usually take the players worst 3 seasons off, whether they are partial seasons or not. Take their best 3 season off, and then work with the rest. If you don't have 5 GREAT seasons left after taking those 6 away, then no Hall of Fame.

Click to expand...

I agree, I actually have looked at "mean averages", and believe there is a place for it, especially in rating 19th century pitchers.
I think you would need to work with mean averages for "PEAK" years only though.

Consider this fictitious players WAR figures
His peak 8 years would be sufficient to consider him near great, but because he had MANY declining years, by clipping off just the bottom 3, you wouldn't really be able to identify his greatness. Now if you took just there top 10 years, and took the mean, dropping off 2 highest and 2 lowest, that would be a better indication of his greatness. (10,8,8,8,8,8)

16
10
10
8
8
8
8
8
4
4
4
2
2
2
1
1
1

bodiaz said:

hofautos said:

I am curious what others think as to how much weight should be used to define someone's greatness?
Knowing that many players tail off and put up piss poor numbers in their declining years.
Knowing that some players can play strong for 10+ years
Knowing that some records are not set until players play deep in their careers.
COnsidering longevity to some degree should be used in defining one's greatness....

What do you personally think is important?

Would you think the best 5 years, best 7 years, best 10 years, career numbers?
Do you think the best 5 or best 7 years should carry more weight than career numbers?

What are your thoughts in what is most important in defining how great a player is?

Click to expand...

Great question! I usually take the players worst 3 seasons off, whether they are partial seasons or not. Take their best 3 season off, and then work with the rest. If you don't have 5 GREAT seasons left after taking those 6 away, then no Hall of Fame.

Click to expand...

I have a WAR database at my disposal, so I suppose this is kind of cheating. But, if you concede that a 'great' season is a WAR of 6.0+ then here are the players who fit your criteria. These are actual counted seasons, not averages over a span.

P
Alexander, Pete
Clemens, Roger
Grove, Lefty
Johnson, Randy
Johnson, Walter
Maddux, Greg
Mathewson, Christy
Nichols, Kid
Niekro, Phil
Seaver, Tom
Young, Cy

1B
Connor, Roger
Foxx, Jimmie
Gehrig, Lou
Pujols, Albert

2B
Collins, Eddie
Hornsby, Rogers

3B
Mathews, Eddie
Schmidt, Mike

SS
Rodriguez, Alex
Wagner, Honus

LF
Bonds, Barry
Delahanty, Ed
Musial, Stan
Williams, Ted

CF
Cobb, Ty
Mantle, Mickey
Mays, Willie
Speaker, Tris

RF
Aaron, Hank
Ott, Mel
Robinson, Frank
Ruth, Babe

nosterbor said:

sportscardtheory said:

Per-162 games stats make the most sense to me to gauge a players greatness.

Click to expand...

+1. look at Juan Gonzalez's Per-162 games stat>WOW!
P.S. his Offensive WAR is 239th all time

Click to expand...

soooooo lets talk great! Juan Gonzalez's Per-162 game stat is better than these players
greats of the 90's
Ken Griffey JR
Frank Thomas
Sammy Sosa
Jeff Bagwell
Rafael Palmeiro
Albert Belle
Gary Sheffield
Jim Thome

Greats
Willie Mays
Hank Aaron
Mike Schmidt
Reggie Jackson
Mickey Mantle


very close to
Barry Bonds
Mark McGwire
Manny Ramirez
Alex Rodriguez
i could go on and on and on. Now thats a BIG EYE opener!!! i would say STUFF THAT WAR STAT!

nosterbor said:

nosterbor said:

sportscardtheory said:

Per-162 games stats make the most sense to me to gauge a players greatness.

Click to expand...

+1. look at Juan Gonzalez's Per-162 games stat>WOW!
P.S. his Offensive WAR is 239th all time

Click to expand...

soooooo lets talk great!

i could go on and on and on. Now thats a BIG EYE opener!!! i would say STUFF THAT WAR STAT!

Click to expand...

^^ to be honest, i am not sure why his war is so low...of particular notice is that his 1996 mvp season his war value was only 2.8 where most mvps have a war value around 8....was his defense really sucky??

Chris Levy said:

bodiaz said:

hofautos said:

I am curious what others think as to how much weight should be used to define someone's greatness?
Knowing that many players tail off and put up piss poor numbers in their declining years.
Knowing that some players can play strong for 10+ years
Knowing that some records are not set until players play deep in their careers.
COnsidering longevity to some degree should be used in defining one's greatness....

What do you personally think is important?

Would you think the best 5 years, best 7 years, best 10 years, career numbers?
Do you think the best 5 or best 7 years should carry more weight than career numbers?

What are your thoughts in what is most important in defining how great a player is?

Click to expand...

Great question! I usually take the players worst 3 seasons off, whether they are partial seasons or not. Take their best 3 season off, and then work with the rest. If you don't have 5 GREAT seasons left after taking those 6 away, then no Hall of Fame.

Click to expand...

I have a WAR database at my disposal, so I suppose this is kind of cheating. But, if you concede that a 'great' season is a WAR of 6.0+ then here are the players who fit your criteria. These are actual counted seasons, not averages over a span.

P
Alexander, Pete
Clemens, Roger
Grove, Lefty
Johnson, Randy
Johnson, Walter
Maddux, Greg
Mathewson, Christy
Nichols, Kid
Niekro, Phil
Seaver, Tom
Young, Cy

1B
Connor, Roger
Foxx, Jimmie
Gehrig, Lou
Pujols, Albert

2B
Collins, Eddie
Hornsby, Rogers

3B
Mathews, Eddie
Schmidt, Mike

SS
Rodriguez, Alex
Wagner, Honus

LF
Bonds, Barry
Delahanty, Ed
Musial, Stan
Williams, Ted

CF
Cobb, Ty
Mantle, Mickey
Mays, Willie
Speaker, Tris

RF
Aaron, Hank
Ott, Mel
Robinson, Frank
Ruth, Babe

Click to expand...

where are the catchers stats?