Yeah, Pete Rose was a great player. Just not as great as some people make him out to be. You'll often see him mentioned in conversations of the best ten or twenty players of all time. He's definitely not that. He fits with guys like Roberto Clemente or Paul Molitor.

And whether you like it or not, there's the racial angle. Pete Rose was a "hustling white guy" in a time when baseball, particularly the National League, was being dominated by blacks and Latinos. If you don't believe that has anything to do with why he has so many apologists even to this day when he has proven beyond all doubt that he is a scumbag, you're kidding yourself. If Reggie Jackson or Garry Templeton had sprinted full tilt to first on a walk they would likely have been accused of showing up the pitcher and hot-dogging. That's showboating and nothing more. False hustle.

_________________
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 think you'd have to say that you are simple. Was Mark Grace a leadoff hitter?

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Just did this as a rough measure:
1) Looked at the players mentioned in this thread.
2) Took their Wins Above Replacement (WAR) from http://www.baseball-reference.com (This includes hitting and fielding, and includes penalties/bonuses based on position.)
3) I included each full season from their "prime," with prime defined as the span from their first full season with an OPS+ over 100 until their last such full season. (Full seasons arbitrarily 100+ games)
4) Averaged their WAR-per-season throughout their prime

Rose 4.09 (19 seasons)
Santo 5.18 (13 seasons)
Grace 3.36 (14 seasons)
Ichiro 5.52 (10 seasons)
Dawson 3.75 (16 seasons)

and for comparison:

Babe Ruth 10.49 (15 seasons)

Neifi Perez 0.00 (doesn't have a "prime" per se, so I just averaged his whole career)

So Santo was more valuable than Rose. Got it.

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Yeah, and Darrell Evans was more valuable than Tony Perez.

_________________
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

+1

This is the fundamental flaw in Sabremetrics.

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The modern fan who has grown up with SABRmetrics is going to mock us as old dopes who are stuck in the past. They will ridicule Jim Rice's induction into the Hall of Fame. I've even heard arguments that Dewey Evans was a better player than Rice. I know how absurd that is to guys who were around when they actually played in the same outfield. Rice was the centerpiece of the Red Sox batting order and Evans was a guy who played a nice right field and hit okay. There is no comparison. But history is being rewritten.

_________________
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

To give you my demographic, I am the modern fan (31). I fucking hate Sabremetrics (and yes, I misspell it on purpose). VORP is one of the stupidest fucking stats I have ever seen.

To me, the stats that matter are OBP, BA, Fielding % for defensive players, and Slugging %. Strikeouts are up there too. I want to watch a player to try and figure out if they are good or not. Comparing Pete Rose to Ichiro is like trying to compare Yaz to DiMaggio. Different eras. Can't really be done. Too many different factors that can't be taken into account (just like the BCS). I have said my piece. I am done now.

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I don't hate SABRmetrics and there is a lot of interesting stuff because of the easy access to computers and stats that people didn't think of before. But to me the main problem with the "SABRmetric view" of the game is that all events are seen as situation-neutral. It's popular to suggest that "clutch" doesn't exist. But in baseball, probably more than in any other sport, the "when" of things matters. Tuffy Rhodes' three home runs are not the same as Reggie Jackson's. The fact is that Joe Carter got all those RBI. You can't simply assume that a guy who hit higher than Carter with runners in scoring position would have had more RBI than Carter if he would have batted with more men on base. Maybe he would have and maybe he wouldn't. The fact is he didn't.

_________________
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

But for this one line, I agree wholeheartedly. Clemente did virtually everything well & was a legitimate five tool player. Maybe the greatest RF of all time.

I still occasionally wonder which outfielders were left on the bench in the 14 inning All-Star game where for all but 1-2 innings had an outfield of Aaron, Mays & Clemente(who unfortunately K'd 4x IIRC)

Rose was "just" one of the all time grinder greats. An all time 2nd spot hitter and utility player on the all-time team.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

I'll grant most of what you said with the exception of him being "maybe the greatest RF of all time", by which I assume you mean defensively. While perhaps flashier, I don't think he was any greater than his contemporary Al Kaline. I'm not sure he was better out there than guys like Dwight Evans, Dave Parker, or Andre Dawson either. His legend is far greater than he was. Yes, he had that great arm, but he was often out of position and made ill-advised throws in futile attempts to throw out runners that even a man with his fantastic arm could not possibly have achieved.

Anyway, while Clemente was clearly a superior defender to Rose, the difference between the best corner outfielder and the worst is negligible. And Rose was at least adequate at many positions and excellent at a couple. We're discussing these guys because of their offense which was relatively similar.

_________________
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 smell bullshit. How old are you? His defensive stats are terrific.

_________________
Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

I'm 46. And which stats are you talking about? His fielding percentage was lower than the average rightfielder during the time he played.

_________________
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

_________________
Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

So your argument against SABRmetrics is that, years before anyone knew about these measurements, the Red Sox misevaluated their players' values?

"SABRmetrics is wrong about this player because back then, people thought he was great."
"Back when?"
"Back before anyone used accurate numbers to measure players."
"Oh."


And I didn't say that Santo was necessarily better than Rose. That's why I started off my post with "as a rough estimate". Of course Pete Rose was great - he had ~19 all-star level seasons. But a lot of them were borderline all-star, and he didn't have many elite seasons. His defense was apparently right around average. I don't know if you can argue that the number of positions he played were attempts to hide bad defense, or that the number of positions he played shows the flexibility that allowed the team to add different players each year. Santo had a stronger stretch of elite seasons, but then broke down sooner (possibly of his own poor diabetes maintenance). Santo also cashed it in with only 1 bad season at the end of his career; Rose had 5 bad ones, in which he padded 559 hits to his totals, but also dropped his BA, OBP, etc.

[quote="Joe Orr Road Rod"][quote="Hatchetman"][quote="Joe Orr Road Rod"] His legend is far greater than he was. Yes, he had that great arm, but he was often out of position and made ill-advised throws in futile attempts to throw out runners that even a man with his fantastic arm could not possibly have achieved.

I smell bullshit. How old are you? His defensive stats are terrific.


JORR: I'm 46. And which stats are you talking about? His fielding percentage was lower than the average rightfielder during the time he played.

You were 9 in his only MVP year and you weren't born when he was Rookie of the Year. I think it is safe to say you missed his prime.

Just for kicks, I'm not trying to back either opinion here, but I'll throw in my rough estimate again:

Clemente 4.95 (17 seasons)

Alternately,
5.84 (13 seasons)
if I break my stated assumptions and pick his more obvious prime.

I'm not making an argument against SABRmetrics. But your arrogance is typical of the modern fan. Adding OBP to SLG wasn't exactly inventing the wheel or discovering fire, you know. People did just fine evaluating players before anyone ever heard of VORP.

Jim Rice was a great player. He was more important to the Red Sox than Dewey Evans when they both played together. I'm sure Evans would tell you that himself. As would every other guy on those teams. That doesn't tell me SABRmetics are "wrong". What it tells me is that there's obviously some kind of hole in what's being measured that isn't giving you a completely accurate picture. That's all.

_________________
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

Yeah, that's true. But I saw him play at Wrigley on more than once occasion. I'm not going to sit here and tell you I was just waiting for him to come to bat or that I remember with great clarity that he doubled off the ivy or made a mighty throw to nail Jimmy Qualls at the plate. (I do, however, remember the smell of the grass and how everything was green and wonderful.)

Anyway, I didn't need to see Babe Ruth to have a pretty good idea of the player he was. And I've seen a lot of Clemente. Highlights of that 1971 World Series were often played during rain delays when I was growing up. But that's exactly what they were- highlights. And I believe the fact that they were played so much is a major part of the way Clemente is viewed by my generation.

He's somehow come to be seen as an equal of Willie, Mickey, or Hank and that obviously isn't true. I have stacks of magazines from when he actually played and he was never thought of that way. In fact, he was considered a whiner because he was always crying that people didn't give him the respect they gave Willie. Well, he wasn't as good. All the numbers will tell you that.

_________________
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

He was also on the Pirates. If Derek sanderson Jeter was on the Royals or Rockies, he'd be just another grindy guy.

If Clemente wason the Giants or Yankees, he might be considered one of the best OFs ever by a lot of people.

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Clemente always had some physical ailment bothering him when he stepped to the plate.
His neck hurt,his back hurt,this hurt,that hurt. I hated him & the rest of those Buc teams that killed the Cubs.

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favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."

Clemente's untimely death led to his legend growing waaay beyond what was reality.

He was also an Icon for the Puerto Rican people



Here are his Baseball Reference Similiar Batters FWIW

Zack Wheat (880) *
Goose Goslin (873) *
Vada Pinson (869)
Al Oliver (857)
Enos Slaughter (822) *
Tony Gwynn (821) *
Paul Waner (816) *
Steve Finley (812)
Dave Parker (811)
Steve Garvey (810)

Mercy.

Everybody has killed the Cubs for a century now, and thousands of MLB players have played thru pain and injuries.

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those are not era adjusted and he played in the mini-deadball era.

On-Base Plus Slugging
1960 NL .815 (10th)
1961 NL .949 (5th)
1964 NL .872 (9th)
1966 NL .896 (7th)
1967 NL .954 (2nd)
1968 NL .838 (7th)
1969 NL .955 (3rd)
1971 NL .871 (7th)

_________________
Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

It used to be said that most of his injuries were just in his head.

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favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."

You don't really believe that, do you, Frank?

_________________
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

To an extent. He's a great hitter, but he certainly wouldn't have won all those gold gloves if he didn't play in NY.

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I didn't know Mark Grace penciled himself into his spot in the order.

By the way, I'm not trying to suggest Grace was better than Ichiro, or even that Grace was a dominant player. I actually like Ichiro a lot as an overall player, but he - like Jeter and Rose - tends to be overrated to elite status. My point was that Grace's offensive stats are comparable to someone a lot of people claim is great.

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Have to agree with Frank on this one. Jeter has been good but the legend of the 'glorious' team makes him better than he really is.

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I wish there was one of those yellow faces that was flabbergasted, depressed and sighing while repeatedly shaking its head back and forth and mumbing "tsk, tsk, tsk" under its breath. I would definitely use that yellow face here.

The man has over 2,900 hits in the major leagues. I do not generally use the term "grindy" for members of the 3,000 hit club, but perhaps I am mistaken.

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