Graph of the Afternoon: Ruth, Gehrig, Williams, Aaron, Musial
by Jack Moore on Jul 6, 2009 3:56 PM EDT
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PrintI'm very, very excited by what we can do now with Sean Smith's updated WAR database. The top 300 player index hasn't been updated yet, but I don't need the index to know who 5 of the best players of all time were. For our first look into the golden age of baseball, I picked the top 5 players listed by the Society of American Baseball Research (more commonly known as SABR) from their 1999 top 100 list: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, Hank Aaron, and Stan Musial. Here are their careers by Wins Above Replacement.
Some notes:
- Babe Ruth's path includes his pitching numbers and hitting numbers. With his pitching included, he's clearly the best player of all time, at a whopping 190 wins above replacment. This total beats Barry Bonds's total by 16.1 wins.
- Hank Aaron may be the most consistently great player ever, aside from the Babe. Aaron posted 14 seasons at 7 wins or higher.
- Gehrig's career, cut short by ALS, was still historically incredible despite being easily the shortest, in terms of greatness and pure longevity, of the 5 shown here.
- Although I'm nowhere near the first or last to mention it, Ted Williams's career was one of the best in history despite losing peak years to fight in two separate wars.
- Stan Musial may not be as well known by the younger generations as he should be. Clearly, Musial was one of a group of legendary players.
- Look at that average HOF line! Gehrig's 14th worst season is the first one to even intersect with it! This is the kind of performance that lives on forever.
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Ruth's WAR include his pitching seasons?
Could those be highlighted?
OverTheMonster - ALLERGEN WARNING: May contain peanut butter.
Many of Ruth's first few seasons had major contributions from both pitching and hitting, so that would be difficult to do.
Here’s his full page: http://www.baseballprojection.com/war/r/ruthb101.htm
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Weird, Ruth was traded right when his pitching WAR got to below average, but at the same time his...
non-pitching WAR (?) was just starting to sky rocket…
Also, what the bloody hell happened in 1925?
OverTheMonster - ALLERGEN WARNING: May contain peanut butter.
I don't know my history
But looking at B-R and retrosheet, he missed the first ~2 months of the season. It looks like he struggled when he first got back, but as the year went on he was getting better. So, pure speculation, he got hurt and was rusty/still healing for a while when he got back.
Proud father of Juan Carlos Perez. Think Albert Pujols at second.
That's a hell of an injury if it affected him that much. Plus, it seemed to have no effect after that season.
OverTheMonster - ALLERGEN WARNING: May contain peanut butter.
Maybe it was a wrist injury, those have a tendency to linger and sap power. Maybe he came back to soon and just had to fight through it while healing. Or, instead of speculating, I should have just googled it:
During spring training in 1925, Ruth fell ill, and returned to New York for what was reported as stomach surgery. Ruth’s ailment was dubbed “the bellyache heard round the world,” when one writer wrote that Ruth’s illness was caused by binging on hot dogs and soda pop before a game. This was nothing new, as the gluttonous Ruth frequently binged on food before games. Venereal disease and alcohol poisoning (caused by tainted liquor, a major health problem during the Prohibition) have also been speculated to be the causes of his illness. However, the exact nature of his ailment has never been confirmed and remains a mystery. Playing just 98 games, Ruth had what would be his worst season as a Yankee as he finished the season with a .290 average and 25 home runs. The Yankees team finished next to last in the American League with a 69-85 mark. It would be 40 years before a Yankees team would again experience such a poor season.
1925: In Spring Training, Ruth fell victim to his own indulgences of eating and drinking. He was diagnosed with an intestinal abscess. Ruth missed much of the season with stomach surgery and serving out a fine from New York manager Miller Huggins for insubordination. Ruth only appeared in 98 games and the Yankees finished the season at 69-85. Ruth hit .290 that season with 25 home runs and 66 RBI.
Proud father of Juan Carlos Perez. Think Albert Pujols at second.
25 homers = worst season?
Sounds painful though. Wonder if any other player’s career suffered from prohibition…
OverTheMonster - ALLERGEN WARNING: May contain peanut butter.
It'll be easier if whoever does it is willing to pay for the .csv
I’ve been thinking about it, it’s for a good cause.
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I have an alternate way...
… of getting the WAR data in database form. Granted, if I was going to use the data for monetary gain, I’d surely pay the $25 for the rights, but for just my playing around, I can’t justify it [this is more an interest than a hobby :)]
Anyways, I wrote some VBA code to loop through the 25 pages of links, open each page and save the data into excel while doing some formating alog the way. The new formating means that I have to re-write a bit to make it work for the new data [work in progress].
And before anyone points out that I’m probably better off spending the $25 than the couple of hours spent writing and troubleshooting the code— vba automation is another ‘interest’ of mine. So, both ends of it are fun for me :):)
I have the original one.
I will have the lines out within a week or two. Got a three of items on the burners I want to get done first, but if anyone wants to do it I can email them the data I have so far.
Jeff Zimmerman - Protecting the world from RBI's and Wins from my mom's guest house.
by Jeff Zimmerman on Jul 6, 2009 4:24 PM EDT up reply actions
So....
If I were going to make a graph like this on my own, I could go to fan graphs and look up hte players i wanted to compare? Correct?
The reason I ask is that I wanted to compare Ryan Braun with guys like Ralph Kiner, Joe Dimaggio and Albert Pujols. And was a little surpised to see Braun’s WAR number at only about 3 for his first 3 years so far. Does this seem right?
the value around 3 is about right.
You could just do the WAR numbers of the others first 3 years and see how they compare.
Jeff Zimmerman - Protecting the world from RBI's and Wins from my mom's guest house.
by Jeff Zimmerman on Jul 6, 2009 4:55 PM EDT up reply actions
Ok
I get it now, the graphs you post here go from best WAR year on down throughout their career, not chronologically….
Yes.
And I would l would just look up everyone at Sean’s site if you’re going to use years before Fangraphs’ WAR started, just for consistency.
The reason Ryan Braun’s WAR will look pretty low two years ago is that his defense at third was absolute awful. That, and his OBP, while good, isn’t stellar.
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*Wasn't stellar.
.409 so far this year, and while I don’t expect it to stay there, I think something in the .375-.385 range is possible going forward (gonna be optimistic, ZiPS says .371)
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I stand corrected on 2009.
Does he get bonus point for trying to play GM, too?
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Nah, he just gets traded to Boston.
/thinking like a MFY fan
OverTheMonster - ALLERGEN WARNING: May contain peanut butter.
Graph
How do you make those graphs? I tried on Excel using 2 columns but the lines look all goofy. Any tips?
.
First column = number of season
second column = first player’s WAR
third column = second player’s WAR
etc.
Don’t repeat the season numbers. Graph type is XY Scatter with connecting lines, not the line type.
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Hmm... Scatter would've been so much easier for what I was trying to do earlier.
Oh well, lesson learned.
OverTheMonster - ALLERGEN WARNING: May contain peanut butter.
On Excel, put Season Numbers down first column, skipping the first row.
players go in first row. Rest is easy to figure out.
OverTheMonster - ALLERGEN WARNING: May contain peanut butter.
it took me a while to figure out
that the seasons line goes from best to worst
it’d be cool to see a graph where you can see how they compare throughout the course of their careers. rookie year being furthest to the left and so on and see how each compares to the average HOFer
Of course, hope means being cut down on some street corner, as you run like mad, by a random bullet.
Chronologically?
“N-th best season” used to be included on the X-axis label, but it’s become assumed because so many of these graphs have been made.
OverTheMonster - ALLERGEN WARNING: May contain peanut butter.
also,
i knew The Man was a top five hitter all-time, but it’s pretty cool that he is top five overall all-time
had no idea
Of course, hope means being cut down on some street corner, as you run like mad, by a random bullet.
Ruth with ten seasons above ten WAR.
Absolutely. Disgusting. I realize he wasn’t playing in an integrated baseball society, but holy CRAP. That is absolute insanity.
Also makes you wonder what Ted Williams would’ve ended up with considering he lost ’43 through ’45 to WW2, and posted 11 WAR seasons around that time.
twice(or more even) as valuable as the average HoFer
absolutely sick
Which means.
Ruth:Average HOFer::Average HOFer:Replacement Player
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His value is twice that of an average HoF.
Hence 2 * HoF.
If he were HoF^2, then his WAR would be (HoF-Replacement)^2, which, based on the graph, would be 84^2, or 7056 WAR.
OverTheMonster - ALLERGEN WARNING: May contain peanut butter.
Fair
I guess what I meant was that if HoF is a selection function, then Ruth would be HoF(HoF(x))—put another way, Ruth is a Hall of Famer among Hall of Famers.
by Tommy Bennett on Jul 7, 2009 12:25 PM EDT up reply actions
Lost a season to the Korean War, too, IIRC.
8th grade history project slipping from memory.
OverTheMonster - ALLERGEN WARNING: May contain peanut butter.
Funny - war cost him WAR.
And he had a shoulder injury from running into a wall one year, I think…
OverTheMonster - ALLERGEN WARNING: May contain peanut butter.
Try this one out
As a Cards fan, I was curious about Musial’s numbers with the update and Hornsby’s numbers. By WAR, it’s Musial by a nose — 127.9 to 127.7! I really was curious to see how Hornsby’s defensive numbers would affect his total since he had the reputation of being a terrible defensive player. According to the numbers, it’s not so, however which keeps his total WAR within 1 of Musial’s all-time!
Different way of gathering stats though.
So take it with a grain of salt I guess.
OverTheMonster - ALLERGEN WARNING: May contain peanut butter.
That's probably true
He was almost a right-handed Ruth for a while there.
Albert Pujols does not have "down" years. He has "~6 WAR" years.
I don't have time right now
but I’d like to see a comparison of The Man vs. El Hombre (although he might set a new career high for WAR this season).
The Man
Also missed a year while serving in the Navy in 1945 ~ and it woulda been another good one judging by the seasons between which it was sandwiched.
Other mysteries remain. TL
Musial lost a year to WWII as well...
… and coming up he was trying to be a pitcher before an injury tore his rotator cuff and forced him to switch to being a position player.
that’s the luckiest injury in the history of baseball.
rick ankiel disagrees!
the NEW Stan the Man? of course, he had a different “injury.”
by gingerbreadmann on Jul 7, 2009 2:34 AM EDT up reply actions
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