Bonds begins HOF campaign

This isn't a bias thing. Genuinely didn't know how old you are and wanted to know if you actually saw Carew play or had a sense of how he looked on a field relative to other players in the 70s. I suspected from your posts here you might be a bit younger than Carew's era, but was asking. As I said in my post, you can't go wrong in a debate like this. Any opinion has merit.

It's a huge difference, but it's meaningless to me. As are most of sabremetrics' attempts to go apples to apples in simple ways. Jack Clark (since we are qualifying Carew as a first baseman), 137 career OPS+. He wasn't better than Carew. And he's not a Hall of Famer. Hell, Ichiro, 113 career OPS+. That would suggest, he was a relative scrub. I can roll off right fielders from his era with a better OPS + number. For example, Brian Giles, 136 career OPS+. I'm not putting him in the Hall of Fame either, or making an argument that he was a better player than Ichiro.

That stat, whatever it is meant to do, obviously doesn't tell a very complete picture of anything. And I suspect it is skewed by era, namely after Carew's era when power hitting offensive stats became inflated.

No arguments with any of this. Again, this is all opinion. You are not going to go wrong arguing the merits of either Rod Carew or Jeff Bagwell. I will go with Carew as better relative to the time he played in. Just because of his swing. He had no holes. He was the best pure hitter there was. I think he was perceived to be better, as you said, because he really was a better player relative to his era. It's really all just opinion, though.

Not much to add. I qualified what I said. All Star game appearances are not scientific proof of anything. Carew made the game 18 years in a row. Bagwell made it 4 times. I simply was suggesting that in a HOF discussion, especially when you are talking about different eras, while it doesn't give you something conclusive, it does give you at least some idea of how the player was perceived during his time.

I wasn't suggesting that Carew played more games at second than at first. Obviously, my saying that I think of him more as a second baseman makes some sense, because he roughly split his career between the two positions, and he wasn't in the mold of the power-hitting, first baseman (carew was what, 170 pounds?). Put it this way. Stan Musial played more games at first base than he did in left field. He actually just played all over the field. My dad still thinks of him as a left fielder. Was Ernie Banks a shortstop or a first baseman? You could argue he was a first baseman because he played more games there. But how many people who grew up in that era think of him as a shortstop? That was the point. It goes more to the "type" of player Carew was. Carew was not a prototypical power hitting first baseman, which is how you will shoehorn him if you just say, "first baseman; he played a few more career games there than at second." It makes Jack Clark a better player than Carew was, though. They were both first basemen and then you throw in your OPS+ number. And that ignores any reality of having watched him play, rather than shoehorning him that way. As a second baseman Carew was pretty weak, which was why to get his bat (which is ALL Carew is about) in the lineup and keep any of those DH types the Angels always had at DH, they buried him at first base. I still think of him more as a second baseman, the way he came up.

 

Actually, knew what I wanted to say. Guessed at some players that would make the point. Hit baseballreference.com. The time spent on it was with the formatting. I hate trying to do that, "quote part of a post. ... respond. Rinse. Repeat." I can never get it right.

 

I need to correct myself on one thing. OPS+ is meant to adjust for league average and ballpark factors. Not sure how it does it. I really can't afford the headache of trying to read what it does right now. It's early Sunday morning!

What I do know is when I take a sampling of players and look at their OPS+ numbers, it doesn't tell me much of anything. I know Ichiro is a Hall of Famer and Brian Giles is not, as I said, even there is a huge difference in their OPS+ numbers that suggests Ichiro wasn't nearly as a productive an offensive player as Giles was.

 

You said put them in the same era, and only one can get in and it is Bagwell easily.

Thing is -- and I have no way to quantify this, any more than anyone can quantify players from two different eras -- if you put Bagwell in the 1970s, I feel pretty certain he wouldn't have had the numbers he had in the 2000s. Same way that I feel pretty certain that if you put, say, Eddie Murray into the 2000s, he would have had Jeff Bagwell HR, RBI, batting average numbers, and then some for at least a stretch of his prime. He never did, because nobody put up those 2000s numbers in the 1970s. So yeah, in a vacuum, Bagwell put up all those big numbers you are pointing to. I can make the case that lots of players from the 2000s are better on the all-time great list than Carew doing it that way. How about Paul Konerko? Better OPS number. Tino Martinez is in Carew's league as a player when you make that kind of comparison between the two eras. Derek Lee was a better player. Higher OPS number. Lance Berkman is twice the player that Rod Carew was when you start playing that game.

I know none of that is true. I know those guys played in an era of inflated numbers. So where I am coming from is comparing each to the years they played. I am not doing it with OPS+ numbers or junk statistics, though, that don't really make things apples to apples. And I am not taking stats from the 2000s and comparing them to the stats of a guy who played in the 60s and 70s, and really was dynamic for ONE reason -- he was the toughest out in baseball.

Which kind of brings this back in the same circle. Nobody, in my opinion, can go wrong arguing the merits of Jeff Bagwell or Rod Carew. But this somehow turned into a "where do they fall on the all-time great list." And for me, I see Rod Carew, who was the best pure hitter in his time (and among the top of all time) vs. Jeff Bagwell, who was a great all around player, but is in the mold of A LOT of other great all around players throughout time. My opinion is really based on a "Well, Rod Carew was was the toughest out there was in the late 60s and 70s. He was a star among stars." I think of the 1970s and Rod Carew stood out because of that; it made him dynamic on a baseball field. Best pure hitter there was.

I think of the 2000s. What is the defining quality of Jeff Bagwell that makes him dynamic -- or the best at anything in his time? He played in an era of inflated numbers, put up great all around numbers, but was never considered by anyone to be the best at anything relative to the players around him. Barry Bonds. Ken Griffey Jr. Jim Thome. Gary Sheffield. Sammy Sosa. Jeff Kent. Albert Pujols. Ryan Howard. Ichiro. Or any other number of players from Bagwell's era had as much, or really more star power. You start lining up those players and their stats and Bagwell looks really good, but was he THAT special when lots of players slung those kinds of numbers? Cause in the late 1960s and late 1970s, NOBODY was hitting for average, or was a tougher out, than Rod Carew was.

If your opinion is that he is so well rounded that his greatness exceeds Rod Carew's, fine. It would be great to see what Jeff Bagwell would have been in the 1970s. My guess is Steve Garvey. And Garvey was not a better all-time player than Rod Carew.