Quote:
Originally Posted by BobC
Great point. Forget the numbers, would teammates, and many other players, and especially fans, ever consider someone as an all time great if they had turned ttheir backs on their teammates and fans to purposely lose for their own selfish purposes? i would think it could become a very serious negative part of such considerations. But don't tell that to someone who justs looks at numbers. They'll likely tell you it doesn't matter and ignore something like that because it doesn't fit their narrative or their definition of what the "greatest" should be.
Statistics often ignore the human element, like this would be. How would one ever even measure and quantify something like this from a statistical standpoint to reflect the obvious negative impact such an action by a player would bring to his perception by the public at large? Actually, I take that back. Now that I think about it, I can see some statistician quantify such actions. Upon hearing some player purposely threw some gains by performing poorly on purpose, I can see a statistician go back and remove the player's performance results from those thrown games from his overall stats, because those thrown games are not a true reflection of the players actual ability, and therefore taint his statistical database. But doing that actually helps make the player statistically better and more likely to be considered the "greatest", and not less likely as I would expect to be the case in the eyes of a majority of the public upon learning what the player had done.
And if such ever did occur, it would just reflect another disconnect between the real and statistical worlds.
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This is exactly what people do when they choose Hal Chase as the greatest dead ball first baseman.
One of the measures mentioned in this thread is "If you had one game to win, like a Game 7, who do you want?" I have often thought that the single guy I DO NOT want on my team, for a big game, would be Chase. I wouldn't want him within 20 miles of the ballpark. The bigger the game, the more lucrative it might be for Chase to throw.
So, there are some who call Chase the best first baseman of his day, while I'll call him the worst with Gandil not far behind.