Quote:
Originally Posted by HistoricNewspapers
I grasp and experience every single thing you said...and none of it refutes the facts and the basic common sense and reality.
First of all, I'm not sure you are aware of this, but John Rauch was six foot eleven, Eric Hillman six foot ten, Chris Young six foot ten. So Johnson is not a unique example in size and also being able to be a viable MLB pitcher. He just happens to be the best of them.
You are trying to hold onto a bias or legend of the bygone eras.
And again,you have still said nothing to refute the fact that size does matter(even though you say you are aware of that, but then later say it really doesn't matter).
As pointed out above, yes, the body make-up in a biomechanical nature does create a 95 MPH pitcher and many of those people are simply born with that ability. I have said that from the beginning, so why you keep trying to bring this to my attention is odd. In fact, it adds to what I am saying about the population. You know that it is a unique make up to throw 95, so...
When you have only 3 million people to choose from to find those 95 MPH players, and then another era has 67 million people to choose from to find those people, it becomes quite obvious that you will find many more among a larger pool of people. Then the chances also increase that you find a human that is six foot eleven AND have the ability to throw 100 MPH with control, becomes available. That is basic logic....and it actually happened, so there is it.
That does not mean that every player will eventually be six foot eleven throwing 100....but there will certainly be more that are closer to that standard, and indeed there are. Indeed there are. That is pure fact.
You ignored that when you made a false assumption that strength does not matter and that the optimal height for a pitcher was six feet tall(which is utterly false).
Then I pointed out all the guys that exist that show what I am talking about. They may not be six foot eleven, but six foot six, or six foot 8....are far different than the typical five ten or six foot pitcher of 1930, and the number of those very big and tall players has grown over time.
The bar has been raised and keeps rising. These six foot six giants throwing 98 MPH are indeed pushing out the six foot pitcher throwing 86 MPH, which were common in baseball at one time, but indeed are coming to extinction, if not already extinct.
Does that mean that everyone will be six eleven throwing 98?? No, but it keeps getting closer and closer to that number and farther and farthe away from the pre war era littered with five foot ten pitchers throwing 84 MPH. The population growth in the world will dictate that. Population is still growing as I type this, but it is slowing down...so I don't know what that future will be, or what the future of society will be in 200 years.
BTW, all this same stuff applies toward the hitters too.
PS: Snowman, I have read all your posts and have not responded because you have been nailing points without the need of further expounding. You have a strong grasp on the topic.
PS Bob C, its easier to pitch a complete game against hitters where the strike zone is bigger and 80% of the hitters pose no threat. Has nothing to do with size. Walter Johnson would not be pitching complete games at all against a lineup of modern hitters with modern umps. He would have to throw MORE pitches per batter and work harder on every batter because any mistake on a location or speed has a chance to be a home run at any given time. That simply was not the case. If Johnson was even good enough to be a starting pitcher on a modern staff.
And one of the reasons starters are not throwing complete game has to do with strategy and the fact that almost every pitcher in the bullpen is six foot four throwing 96 MPH+, so there is not a drop off in pitching ability compared to the starter, whereas in Lefty Grove era where the bullpen guy was garbage becasue the talent was not nearly as good, so it makes more sense strategically to let him pitch instead of a guy who would struggle to make a college team today.
BTW, Cy Young and WJ were big for their time. They were 'giants'. So back then some guy was probably saying "the optimal height for a pitcher is 5 foot 9 because that is the height of the best pitchers in 1867."
The bar keeps rising. How high it will rise we shall see.
PS Randy JOhnson, despite all the factors making it harder to throw a complete game in modern time, pitched just as many innings as Lefty Grove.
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I do not, and never had, an old time bias. I've never said that Grove or Spahn were the best lefthander of all time either. Myself, and others, keep getting accused of such bias for commenting against other's remarks that elite, older players like those two are automatically only going to be no better than average, or slightly above, if they pitched today. I keep pointing out that to simply pull a player from one era and drop them into another era is not a fair way to compare them. Doing so ignores the different factors, variables, and context of the different eras. If you really wanted to see how a Grove or Spahn would fare in the modern game, let them be born only 20 or so years ago so you can see how they'd turn out given the modern context of training, knowledge, equipment, nutrition, medicine, economics, and on and on. What I'm also looking at and considering when talking about the greatest of all time is the player himself. The human factor, which statistics tend to ignore because they deal only in numbers. What about an athlete's heart, determination, their competetive fire, and so on? Exactly how do statistics measure that? I'd go on, but I've stated this lack of recognition of the human element in various posts now, and all with pretty much no true rebuttal from statisticians. How do any of them know that Grove or Spahn, due to that human element, wouldn't be able to adjust to, and excel, if they were pitching today? I'm not saying now, and never have said, they would excel, but I also can't say for certain that they wouldn't. Yet to listen to statisticians and others touting the always bigger, better, stronger, faster modern athletes of today, they summarily put down everyone from these earlier eras as being lesser players and athletes, and that they have no chance in hell of ever excelling in today's game. And how do they prove it? They can point to all the numbers and stats they want, bottom line is they can't actually prove a damn thing, so they just keep saying how they're right, and how you're stupid and wrong for not just blindly believing everything they say. The problem is, I can't definitively prove them wrong either. And in truth, I'm not trying to prove them wrong, I'm trying to get them to honestly admit they aren't infallible and aren't always right. But it seems too many people have sidled up to the bar and are drinking their Kool-Aid.
You mention three other very tall pitchers who, quite frankly, I've never heard of. Let's come back to them in say 5-10 years and see how they're doing, and if they're even still pitching. Maybe they're increased height puts a greater strain on their arms and bodies so that injuries start to affect their ability and possibly drive them out of baseball. Strain that maybe if they were a few inches shorter wouldn't effect them as badly and allow them to maybe pitch much more and far longer in their careers. I don't know, we'll have to wait and see if that happens.
And many of the things you say make no sense. Like your comment that Randy Johnson pitched as many innings as Grove. You say that like it was some kind of put down or counter to a point or argument I have made. What point or argument? I came right out and said RJ was a great, elite pitcher who excelled and endured as an elite pitcher over a long period. I certainally never said Grove was better or worse than Johnson. So what dig were you trying to throw at me with your last PS statement?
You are great at twisting words and meanings and taking things out of context, just like a statistician will cherry pick data to prove the point THEY want to make, not necessarily what is correct or accurate. For example, you stated that I never said anything to refute that size matters, but that I go on to say that I then acknowledge it does matter, and then turn around to say it really doesn't matter. Its the 4th paragraph in your quote above. To address the first part of your statement, I never refuted size mattering because it does to some extent. I thought I went into pretty good detail in spelling out how a taller pitcher does have certain physical advantages because of their height. And I assume my saying that taller pitchers have these physical advantages is why you made the second part of your statement. No problem so far. Ahhh, but then we get to the third part of that statement where you said I finally say it really doesn't matter (with "it" being size). I felt I was fairly thorough trying to explain how the biomechanical human body appears to have some optimal body type when it comes to pitching which makes the extremes in height (tall or short) less likely to be the optimal size for elite pitchers. And I specifically said that the human biomechanical machine was the context in which I was referring to size not mattering that much, with size in this case again referring to height, and the argument that is always being made about how taller, bigger, stronger, faster athletes of today are ALWAYS going to better than athletes from long ago. So if it turns out there is some biomechanical sweet spot for pitchers when it comes to body size/height, then my reference to size not mattering so much was solely in regards to the physical advantages a pitcher's taller height gives them. In other words, being tall like Randy Johnson does not mean a pitcher his height will automatically be much better than shorter pitchers, for if that were the case you would expect there would have been more elite pitchers of Randy's height now to support the theory that bigger (ie: taller) will ultimately always be better.
I don't keep referring to a pitcher's biomechanical machine to be odd, it is because you still don't get the point that when it comes to some athletic endeavors, like pitching, maybe a taller body isn't always the optimum, despite the otherwise physical advantage a taller pitcher seems to have. And I brought the sprinter example up to demonstrate how again, height may not always matter in terms of a human biomechanical machine. The sprinter example involves a human endeavor that has far fewer variables, and a very measurable and objective measure as to who is the best, unlike pitching. But since both pitching and sprinting involve the human biomechanical machine, it would seem to make sense that if one endeavor shows what appears be a sweet spot/range of height for optimal performance, that the same could be true for the other endeavor as well. Especially when looking at the elite performers in that other endeavor and how the sweet spot/range for their heights may looks somewhat similar if shown as a bell curve. And my mention of Grove's and Spahn's heights was to show they may actually be in that optimal sweet spot/range for pitchers after all. And thus work to at last maybe cast some doubt on the statement that they couldn't be good today because again, they just aren't according to some. I thought it odd that you didn't even acknowledge my example of sprinters in relation to pitchers. Don't know if you simply ignored it because you can't really refute it, or if you still don't understand the relevance. And please don't try telling me it doesn't matter just because it isn't a purely statistical measure, that just supports your narrative and isn't necessarily correct either.
You pointed to the three tall pitchers you named as examples of how we will eventually get more and more MLB pitchers closer to a '6"11 heighth, throwing 100 MPH standard in the future. You even stated that indeed there already are more pitchers closer to this standard and that it is a pure fact. First off, I thought we were talking great, elite pitchers, yet I've not heard of these three guys at all. You even described them as "viable pitchers" (your words, not mine), which doesn't exactly sound too great or elite to me. So when exactly is that jump in a taller MLB pitching standard going to happen, 10 - 30 - 50 - 100 years down the road? I don't know every MLB pitcher's height, and certainly am not going to go looking them up to waste my time (I'll leave that to you), but if you can only name three other super tall MLB pitchers, and there's what, 300 - 400 MLB pitchers at any given time, that's less than 1% of the total pitching population. That certainly isn't a significant percentage to hang one's hat on as to where we're heading with pitchers, now is it? And yet you'll still likely fall back on the common sense, logic, and reality triumvirate to argue how you're still probably correct.
You can go on believing and arguing what you want, but every point I've made in this thread is pretty much as believable and valid as anything any statistician has claimed. Its their own ignorance, arrogance, hypocritical, and narcissistic attitudes that are keeping from them from admitting that statistics alone can't really prove that all they do is provide talking points in an argument about the greatest lefty of all time, that their statistics are very easily subject to manipulation, and that at the end of the day, their statistical interpretation in regards to answering such subjective questions nothing more than their opinion, period.
11-26-2021, 05:47 PM
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