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Posted By: jay behrens

You missed my point. Palmer and James use measures that penalize players like Pete Rose that hung around to break record or achieve milestones to the detriment of thier teams. I'm too lazy to dig out any of the books, but I remember one of them mentioning that if Rose had retired 3 years earlier he would have ranked among the top 25 players of all time, instead, because he hung around to break Cobb's record, he barely made the top 100.

A measure like that is good because it mitigates piling up numbers at the expense of the team. If a player can continue to play above the league average at age 40+, then he will be rewarded and not penalized.

Baseball's raw numbers and counting stats tend not to be a good way to compare player's careers.

Jay