[rats60]

Originally Posted by ls7plus

They care about analytics now, and have a great deal since Bill James began to publish his Baseball Abstract in the '80's. Come on in out of the 1950's--in addition to Mantle's superiority over Mays and Aaron during the time they were all active (which goes to quality, rather than quantity established through longevity), it certainly didn't hurt that Mantle's teams won the pennant in 12 of the first 14 years of his career, or that he averaged a home run every 12-point something times at bat FOR TEN, YES TEN, YEARS! And for educational purposes, Mantle's runs created are certainly not "hypothetical." James' arrived at a formula for predicting the number of runs a team would score by an extremely thorough mathematical consideration of both positive and negative events in relation to run scoring which was proven to be incredibly accurate. He then concluded that there was no reason the same formula could not be applied to individual players. wRC+ performs a similar function, while OBPS comes close to doing the same thing in a somewhat shorthand manner.

For your information, Eddie Mathews is ranked as the second greatest third baseman of all time (third by Bill James, behind Schimidt (#1) and Brett (#2)) and may well have become number one but for a significant shoulder injury he suffered in 1962. He had 370 HR's before he was 30, prior to that injury.

Study the game's history (reading about it should be enjoyable and not work), which becomes even richer as SABER and analytics advance with time, and learn something! You might even want to watch a little "MLB Now" on your cable network, a show which devotes quite a bit of time to baseball analytics. The latter will have an even greater, not lesser, impact over time.

Regards,

Larry

Again, no one cared about any of that garbage you posted. They cared about the Yankees winning 7 championships and 12 pennants plus Mantle hitting a bunch of home runs, including 18 in the world series. That is why the 1952 Topps Mantle was the most important post war card long before Bill James and Baseball Abstract. I have a master's degree in statistics so you don't need to lecture me.