JohnF:
Quote:
|
the game has changed and evolved where you can't point out how many players all time have X home runs, or which players belong in that top percent statistically
|
Yet oddly enough, I did exactly that. That it may be refined, weighed, compared and so forth, does not have anything to do with the point I was trying to make. I had noticed that Baseball Reference.com had expanded their all time lists from the top 300, to the top 1000. I had never seen a top one thousand list before, and I found I was surprised by some of the numbers I encountered. For example, had I been guessing how many homeruns were needed to put one in the top ten percent of all time totals, I would have thought at least 100, perhaps 150. That you could have 71 homeruns and still make the list....I found interesting because it made me realize how much harder it is to hit homeruns than I had thought, how much more rare they have been in MLB history.
Sure, the numbers would be different if Tris Speaker and Honus Wagner had played in the modern period, but of course, they didn't. The numbers would also be different if Hank Aaron had played in the deadball era. But of course, he didn't. They would be different if every game in history had been played in the Baker Bowl.
So, forgive me for using figures based on what actually happened rather than on what might have happened if what happened hadn't happened and something else had happened instead.
If you and jtur wish to rework the numbers and make them reflective of your visions as to what should have happened in a better baseball world, you should. If on your new list, Kendall's 71 homeruns shoves him to 1500th place behind theoretical homeruns hit by deadball era players, then we will have an appreciation of what could have happened but didn't. My appreciation in this thread was limited to what could have happened and did.