Yeah, in quality, just probably not in longevity without his circumstances. I guess Puckett might be a decent comparison on a purely baseball level. Maybe Dizzy Dean.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

My argument is that the numbers you told me to look up indicate JR is better. That's it.

You're embarassing yourself with how you are arguing this. RBI is a useless stat that gets even more useless when you try to apply it across eras.

Number of years above ____ is uniquely useless when comparing a guy who played 10 years to guys who played 20.

I said he was the second best ever. Bill James says he's fourth. You say he's pretty much Jeff Cirillo or Joe Randa.

Which one of those assessments is ridiculous?

Rich Aurellia had 7 seasons with over 19 homeruns.

He's better than Jackie

Bret Boone, by virtue of having 3 100+RBI seasons, is also better

Come on.

But I'm sure we can find some brilliant short career guys that aren't in the Hall based upon their small body of work. You can't separate Jackie from his circumstances. Monte Irvin and Satchel aren't in the Hall based on their big league careers. Neither is Robinson. Even if he hit .225 he'd be a Hall of Famer.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Im just pointing out how silly it is to try and compare exact numbers across different times

He was an all star 6 times in 10 years and won an MVP.

There probably arent too many guys who made 6 all star game in a row who arent in the hall

You must be confused. I said originally that he was not in the same class as other Negro League players like Banks, Aaron, Frank Robinson and Willie Mays. If you looked up their stats (and I posted the top 5 seasons for all ofthem except Mays -as you later conceded him to be superior) and think Jackie Robinson was better, you are a moron, blinded by a desire to overrate a player that was clearly inferior. Those were the only numbers I told you to look up and I later supplied them myself. If you want to look up guys like Cirillo and Martinez who are listed by Baseball reference as being closest in stats to Robinson, you feel free. If you want to debate Baseball Reference, go ahead. Your assessment of the RBI stats as useless is laughable. It is a statistic that has been used along with batting average (much more useless, since when a guy gets hits-with men on base-is far more crucial than just how many hits he gets) and Homers, to gauge where players rank amongst their peers. Turn on any baseball game and the player's BA, HR and RBI totals will be displayed. Robinson was a good player, he just wasn't in the class of Banks, Aaron, Frank Robinson, Mays and other truely exceptional stars that were plucked from the Negro Leagues after Robinson broke the barrier. Had Larry Doby came up to the big leagues 8 days earlier (he came up 7 days after Robinson) it would be his number that was retired for every team and people would be overrating his career instead.

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Go Cubs!!!!

You avoid logic like Neo in the Matrix.

Batting Average and RBI are the past. Dont quote Baseball reference in the same post as extolling the virtues of Batting Average and Runs Batted in.

It makes you appear even sillier.


The Platoon Advantage
What We Mean By Worthless
by Bill Parker


I’ve spent a lot of time recently, much more than I care to admit, discussing the end-of-season awards with casual fans. I don’t know why, but it’s something I do. I think that baseball fans becoming generally more informed is a good thing for all concerned. I have no illusions that my ranting and raving actually accomplishes that, but I keep chasing that carrot (often in blatantly unproductive ways). Anyway, something good came out of it, because I’ve had an idea about how to improve this sort of discourse, from our sabermetrically-inclined end. It’s not an entirely new idea—Bill James, for one, has talked about things like this quite a bit over the years—but it’s one I think it’s worth calling back to mind now and then, and I hope I might have a slightly different way of framing it.

You know what the big debate going on right now is—and, no worries, this post won’t actually touch on that whole thing at all—and you can imagine that certain issues are coming up a lot. Things like the value of RBI and batting average. Elsewhere—in discussing David Price vs. Justin Verlander for the Cy Young Award, for instance—pitcher wins come up quite a bit.

The most common words statheads use when those types of statistics come up all end in “less”: meaningless, useless, worthless. I’ve used them. It’s easy. And in a way, I think it’s totally right.

It’s also terribly confusing to the uninitiated, though, and seems to create an extra barrier that really doesn’t need to be there. The natural response to that sort of language, of course, is defensive and incredulous: “You’re telling me a guy who drove in 120 runs didn’t have a great season? Scoring runs is the whole point!” “When’s the last time a bad pitcher won 20 games?” And that’s understandable. It’s not as though these stats don’t tell you anything; if you see that a hitter has 100 RBI, odds are he’s probably pretty good. The same is true for a pitcher with 17 or 18 wins. Besides, no one wants to hear that the things they’ve grown up paying attention to and caring about are “meaningless.” The average fan, hearing that language, shuts down. Wants to fight back. I would, too, probably.

Yet, in a very real sense, those numbers (just to take the two most obvious examples) are totally meaningless. A VCR in good condition will still allow you to watch a tape; a floppy disk will presumably still keep copies of your Word documents or other small files (if you can find a device to read it). These things technically have a use, but are more or less worthless now. We’ve got other things that do their jobs better, and do more besides.

It’s the same way with RBI and wins (and the like); these are “meaningless” and/or “worthless” only because we have other tools that do their jobs better, and more. A hundred-plus RBI might tell you that the hitter was probably good that year (not always), but also gives you a bunch of other information—opportunities with runners on, most obviously—and it’s impossible to separate the two. It’s like static or tracking problems on a VHS tape (to stretch that analogy to its very limits). We have many other ways of tracking things hitters do that lead to producing runs—ISO, TAv, and so forth—that also keep track of the good things, but that weed most of that other junk out. The same is true with wins; a lot of wins probably means a good pitcher, but also probably means a good team (or at least a good offense). Other stats do that better. None of them is perfect, of course, but better.





http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=18528

Elmhurst Hawk Harrelson.

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This is my signature...

Shocking.

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@audioidkid

On April 15, 1947, Hank Aaron was 13, Frank Robinson was 11, Willie Mays was 15 and Ernie Banks was 16. It's hard to believe that they were all even playing professional baseball at the time, much less widely regarded as better players than Jackie Robinson.

Yeah, I discovered that yesterday while looking up stats for each player. But I wasn't gonna let facts get in the way. Hell, this is the only thread other than the one concerning the Boston bomb incident that has any interest. I was wondering if/when anyone might catch it. It's about time.....Oh, but I noticed you left campanella out of it, and he was already an established player in the Negro Leagues at the time Robinson was signed.

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Go Cubs!!!!

For the reaction of those on this board alone, it would have been priceless. Besides that, it was a great role. One that was pivital in the movie really.

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Go Cubs!!!!

Anyone ever see the first movie where Jackie played himself?

In your mind only.

(pivotal) I think the Jackie Robinson story was the critical part to the movie.

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@audioidkid

bad...

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This is my signature...

If you don't see that scene as pivital, you are ignorant. It's where Jackie is pushed to the brink. It's where he very nearly loses his cool and goes after the opposing Manager. Had he done that, it would have had dramatic consequences. People would have said that the Negro was too ill tempered to be allowed to participate in Baseball. Robinson's career may well have ended. It would have set the further integration of Baseball back. That was an important part of the story and scene in the movie....which I am betting you have not even seen yet.

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Go Cubs!!!!

For me, part of Steve's unintentional comedy is that he continuously uses 'big word' yet constantly spells them wrong.

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I think you need to look up the spelling and definition of pivotal....and IF I am ignorant, I suppose you would be the one to know.

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@audioidkid

That makes sense....focus on a typo, rather than the position you took on the scene. To focus on the scene and try to defend your position would be a lot tougher. If you think that moment in Robinson's career and the scene in which it was portrayed in the movie wasn't crucial, you are indeed ignorant. No....actually you are stupid. Ignorance is actually an absence of knowledge. You know the facts, yet take a position that is in opposition to logical thought. You are just stupid.


Sorry, I can't continue this. The golf course awaits.

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Go Cubs!!!!

Oh Steve....you really are a special guy.

Wanting to play the role of a racist manager, calling someone ignorant and stupid for a differential opinion. I'm surprised you didn't try to find some stats to back up your opinion. You know what I think was critical in his career? Being the first black man in MLB, not what the screen-writers portrayed in the movie. That was a focused highlight of abuse. I'm sure there were many more that were not presented in the movie. So, no...I don't think it was pivitil, pivotal, crucial, or critical, and certainly not vital to the the Jackie Robinson story.

You are a pit less peach.

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@audioidkid

#42 sucks

These pretzels are makin' me thirsty.

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you have three choices:

stop eating them.
drink more beer.

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@audioidkid

Well, I mentioned it a couple pages back. Do you still think Cobb abd Robinson plsyed in the same era or did you look that up too?

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I don't know if anyone mentioned it in this thread but the woman who played robinson's wife is beautiful. I chubbed up a little when she put on his baseball hat and was giving him hitting instructions.

The scene with the boy and his son in Cincinnati really struck me about the effect of parental language and attitudes on kids. I really need to watch myself when something happens while driving, watching a game, etc. It doesn't even have to deal with racial/ethnic slurs, just the general anger.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Downloaded this and watched it on my 12 hour plane trip and was underwhelmed. I heard it was great so I was expecting a lot, but I thought it was an average movie at best.

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Yeah, I don't know if I've ever seen her in anything else. But I mentioned to my wife as we watched the movie that as hot as she is, she may not have been as beautiful as the real Rachel Robinson. Hell, she's got to be about 90 years old and she stills looks pretty good.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

NSFW

http://shesocrazy.com/images/content/Shame_07.jpg