MLB 2014 season thread

Yes, I said I was a Yankees fan to say that I watch them way more than KC or anyone. I know you are less of a baseball fan than football, but thought you still were a Pirates fan. My fault. Not sure how many Yankees games you've seen but Betances has been great. He also comes in when they're down by 1, so know chance for a hold there. Anyone wants to give Davis the edge OK, but it's nowhere near an even comparison since Betances has pitched a lot more.

 

I'm a fan of both sports. It just shows differently because I have a strong loyalty to an NFL team, but no such allegiance in baseball. That gets into the finances and nobody wants me to go there again.

I'll take the guy with an ERA a half run lower over the guy with 17 more innings pitched any time, but I can see the opposite argument and simply agree to disagree. I just think that perhaps your inner fan is influencing you a tad on this subject and the "more dominant" assertion doesn't really hold up.

 

But if the guy with the half run better ERA never has to pitch more than 1 inning, it's not a fair comparison. Look at Rivera, many years he didn't have the best ERA or most saves among closers. Some of those years, guys just had career years, but many years he had way more 5 or more out saves, which makes it an uneven comparison.

 

On the subject of setup relievers, I would suggest that O'Day's unreal season doesn't get the credit it deserves because the guy throws about 54 mph.

That happens.

 

Why didn't Maddux get the gift-basket-in-every-city sendoff Jeter is getting?
I read something last week dude went 72-plus innings without walking anyone.
At some point he was the greatest of all time, Jeter not even being the best of his era.

 

Speaking of unfair comparisons, you just made one by drawing Rivera in. There were years other relievers had better seasons. Rivera was still considered the best based not on what he did just that year, but due to his history of doing it so consistently for so many years. It was his consistency, not the four and five-out saves, that made the biggest difference.

That isn't the case here. Davis and Betances don't have track records of pitching at this level and I said all along that I was only comparing what they have done this season.

I agree that innings pitched is a factor, but the quality of the innings is more important unless the difference is extreme.

 

There are different factors that get smeared together and confused in the LQ debate. There is league depth of talent-was it hard for the best to stand out? There is the trained physiology of the athlete. There is the equipped performance of the athlete. Sometimes training and equipment make it harder to separate as well by neutralizing certain factors among players.

I don't seek to set a Wagner and Jeter side by side, but I don't think that the raw physiology of athletes has improved since 1900. I believe training has helped make it harder to separate, as has equipment, as has involvement. At his best, Jeter was in a group of 4-6 players at the top of his league (a couple or 3 times). Wagner was THE BEST probably 6-8 times. You would have to believe that there are 4-6 guys at least for every 1 player from Wagner's time who were comparably elite. If someone was the best in 1900, then maybe they would be top 3-5 today but if Wagner were top 3-5 for 7-8 years he'd blow Jeter out of the water. If we raise the replacement level by 50%! from about 3.5 wins to about 5.2 wins, Wagner loses about 28 WAR. That is by raising the level of everyone in baseball by an average of 50%.

 

Over his career it was the consistency, but when he started out he pitched more innings than others. Even when he was the setup guy for Wetteland he would often pitch part of the 7th and the 8th and Wetteland just the 9th. That also is similar to Betances and Robertson. Wouldn't be surprised to see Betances become the closer and Robertson leave, depending on how much he asks for.

 

If the average size of a man has increased over the years wouldn't you say the raw physiology of athletes has improved since 1900?

 

Then you are so astonishingly ignorant on the subject that perhaps you should go away until you've become less so.

 

No. That is due to nutrition. But nutrition IS a factor that raises the baseline and LQ. Someone who ate well growing up in 1900 would have had a more significant advantage on a league of players that grew up with a hard time getting enough to eat.

But there is not any reason to believe that Wagner for example would not be at the top of the league today as he was the best, and the best raw athlete in 1900 in my view would match the best raw athlete in 2014. It is just that Wagner's margin on the league was increased by there being fewer well developed physical specimens. So my view is that the best in 1900 should be on par with the best in 2014, its just that they would not dominate as much.

 

I am a chemist, genenticist and exercise physiologist. Very detailed analyses for example have shown that Jesse Owens would have beaten everyone in the last olympics in the 100 meters except for Bolt given the same equipment and running surface. And that is without modern strength building techniques and modern atlhetic nutrition which is way ahead. And he won the long jump too. Owens was a comparable, or better "raw" athlete than Bolt. By raw, I mean that if you take an average man out of 1900, but instead have him born and raised today he will be physiologically indistinguishable from an average man today. Among potential athletes that is also the same.

The trained physiology of athletes has improved, but 90% of the improvements in absolute performance are in equipment and game environment. Paul Anderson bench pressed 620 pounds in the 50s even though he did not train the bench press and squatted over 1000. There are guys today who BENCH 1000, but the unequipped world record is 715, and there are all kinds of powerful PEDs assisting lifters today. No one has matched his squat without a supportive squat suit. That's 60 years. 70 years since Owens and with the same surface he's projected to run a 9.8 100 meters again without modern training-just analysis of limb speed and frequency and elasticity coefficients.

So we probably are defining raw physiology differently. There is every reason to believe that some man born around the time that Wagner was, had he grown up and developed and trained today would be right with the elite players today. He just would not dominate as much.