Does WAR overate Babe Ruth?

[The_Hater]

I'm sure the '500 foot HR' references have more to do with word or mouth and unsubstantiated newspaper accounts, it's not like they had the proper equipment to measure them. But at the same time, maybe the balls were juiced? Along with the fences being brought in maybe that added to the surge in HR's that occured in the 1920's and 1930's?

He was so far ahead of his era in terms of hitting and WAR obviously reflects that. Add in the part where he was also a dominate pitcher and we're talking about a guy that was born with a huge gift for playing this sport so maybe even an aging, overweight Ruth just had a knack for tracking down flyballs too?

[rtcaino]

Here are some points that I found particularly interesting:

So +55.6 combined in those 2 departments that are significantly impacted by athletic ability. For reference sake, Roberto Alomar's fielding and baserunning totaled +27.8 in those 2 departments over his career.

As a 39 year old obese man in 1935 they have him as a +6 for fielding, and a -1.4 for baserunning (+4.6 total).

When I read those, I was like "sick post". Good analysis.

Who knows, maybe his D was just that good?

[J.Kim]

There were 19 players that averaged .900+ OPS and 5 that averaged 1.000 OPS but Babe Ruth was usually a full tenth better than most players. If you take a look at a summary from 1910-1920, Babe posted a OPS of 1.101 while his next closest contemporary (Ty Cobb) posted a .988 OPS. That's a HUGE gap. Even with ISO, in that same time period Babe posted an ISO of .322... The next closest contemporary? Gavvy Cravath at .198. Not even close.

There's no doubt he was the best hitter of his time. But, what I'm saying is a 0.100 gap in OPS combined with poor baserunning and fielding doesn't seem like pure and utter domination or anything. The best, sure. But, surely being poor in those other areas must have closed the gap a bit on that 0.100 ops advantage a bit, where he wasn't in a complete different league.

As for baserunning and fielding... I believe Babe Ruth was a below replacement base runner for most of his career. I don't think he had a positive BSR save for one year.

The give him a score of barely below average for base running though. -22 bsr over his career, or about -1 per year. It may be a negative, but surely that is still overating him. In his later years I'm picturing a guy that was more in the -5 to -10 range at best if using modern ways of evaluating baserunning.

However, his fielding value make up so little of his overall value that even if you regarded him as barely (or even below) replacement level, he'd probably still grade out as one of the highest WAR of all time.

I think if you adjusted the base running, and fielding it would knock him out of the top spot pretty easily.

Lets just for arguments sake say his fielding, if using modern uzr tracking, was -100 instead of +79, and lets say his baserunning, if using a mordern way of calculating it, was actually -100 instead of -22 (I'm assuming he's posting some -5 to -10 seasons in his later years, and wasn't all that great even earlier on). That is a 267 point difference in RAR, which would put him around 143 WAR, and bump him down to 4th.

I should've expaned out the years... 1910 - 1920 doesn't actually include some of Babe Ruth's best seasons...

The offensive parts, .100 points is a huge different for OPS . Pretty much the difference between someone like Ryan Braun vs. Aaron Hill last year. Sure Aaron Hill had a great offensive year but Ryan Braun far exceeded it. And you look at the ISO, wRC+ and etc. By weighted measures, compared against the norm he was usually a full tier higher than the next best player (e.g. 197 Career WRC+ and next closest in that era is 173... 1437.2 WRaa and next closest in that era is 1046.8). Makes up for just about any shortcoming... IMHO anyway.

For Base Running... I think it's a combination of things: Base Running wasn't as efficient back then so the bar was a lot lower for a player to be an 'average' base runner. In addition to that, compared to his contemporaries, Babe Ruth didn't run as much. Those two factors probably added up to the fact that most years he graded out as slightly below average as opposed to woefully below average. It is intuitive though in that... if he's standing still and not getting caught stealing, he's not exactly costing his team runs... so it does make sense that even though he was probably a poor base runner tools-wise, in a runs-added/lost basis, he graded out as slowly below average. It kind of like how Cecil Fielder only has a -2.9 BsR even though he had a 11-year career and could probably have been one of the slowest runners during his time.

This would actually make his slightly below average BsR spot on. If I'm to understand, all that calculation really does is measure stolen base and caught stealing numbers against the league average and calculate it in a runs format. -100 would probably be overkill. Someone THAT awful at stealing bases would probably stop trying to steal bases at some point in time. I mean... the worst base runner of all time according to BsR is Paul Konerko and even then he only has a BsR of -59.3.

Fielding is harder to ascertain though... Sure there's really no precendent for a chain-smoking, heavy-drinking 35+ year old could play defense that well in the outfield...

However, again, a lot of WAR is based on comparison to contemporaries. It's hard to say for sure that Babe Ruth would've been that awful of a defensive player against average. It's probably likely that a lot of players during his days weren't that great either. The Defensive ratings can be so subjective that it's hard to get a proper value without a wide variance range.

Depending on what you think about his defense he could either be the best player ever or swing the other way on his defense and probably bring him down to tied for being one of the best players ever with Barry Bonds...

[The_Hater]

How are the measuring WAR for the previous era's? They've only kept detailed defensive stats to measure range better for 20-25 years right? Or even less?

[Sifu]

One way to settle this. Build a time machine. Get Barry to play in Ruth's era. Watch Barry Bonds destroy baseball as he amasses god-like stats. 200 homeruns in a season...

[satyr9]

My totally uninformed two cents is that while the Babe would certainly deserve very large negatives in base-running and fielding if he played today and while I didn't watch Baseball back in his day (you know in my younger days) I'd imagine the bar for fielding would also be dramatically lower. A slow-poke fatso in the OF might be average or below average, but even if the counting stats over-value him, I doubt he should be re-adjusted to the point the negative are pronounced enough to knock him down the list.

I'm basically saying there'd be no such thing as a +2WAR defender 'cause they'd all be closer together. Even watching TV era games in any sport the athleticism is not the same. Full speed running leaping grabs over the wall, a staple of a modern elite OF were likely unheard of in the 10's and 20's (if there's someone with the history to say otherwise, so be it, I'm just guessing). If he could catch the balls he could get to and throw it back in with some accuracy and strength, I wouldn't be all that shocked if he were an averageish defender for his era, even being a chubby dude.

[Hendrix]

My totally uninformed two cents is that while the Babe would certainly deserve very large negatives in base-running and fielding if he played today and while I didn't watch Baseball back in his day (you know in my younger days) I'd imagine the bar for fielding would also be dramatically lower. A slow-poke fatso in the OF might be average or below average, but even if the counting stats over-value him, I doubt he should be re-adjusted to the point the negative are pronounced enough to knock him down the list.

I'm basically saying there'd be no such thing as a +2WAR defender 'cause they'd all be closer together. Even watching TV era games in any sport the athleticism is not the same. Full speed running leaping grabs over the wall, a staple of a modern elite OF were likely unheard of in the 10's and 20's (if there's someone with the history to say otherwise, so be it, I'm just guessing). If he could catch the balls he could get to and throw it back in with some accuracy and strength, I wouldn't be all that shocked if he were an averageish defender for his era, even being a chubby dude.

Humans haven't evolved that much in 90 years. Sure it's a more athletic game now, but these were still the best ball players in the world, and very good atheletes. A 39 year old, obese, chain smoking, drinker is going to be poor defensively for their position no matter what era you are talking about. If they were tracking uzr back then, there's no way his range would allow him to be a huge positive defensively imho.

I think you are also incorrect that simply catching balls you could get to, and throwing it back decently would make you a league average fielder. Again, these were the best players in the world at their time. It's not like they had problems simply catching a ball, and throwing it. The league average for fielding % was pretty close back then to what it is currently. .984% in 2012. .970% in 1935 (with smaller gloves). And, Babe didn't even have the best arm on his own team. Rather he got to play RF because he was a star, and liked the shade in RF in Yankee stadium.

[satyr9]

Long story deleted (like seriously, probably a sophomore college essay's worth).

Short story: Humans haven't evolved in 90 years (although in NA the physical attributes of the average male have certainly increased a lot), but the elite athlete has. Thanks to 90 years of development in technology related to training, technique, medicine, and pharmacology if Prince Fielder played in Babe's place, he'd play SS and CF, hit 2000 HRs in his career, and still hold the SB record.

Okay, not really, but watch even 50 year old footage in any major sport and compare it to today. Baseball's the least affected (and by least I really mean it, it's actually the same game. For the other three it's almost sad), but it's still pronounced IMO.

That aside, you're probably right that Babe's been given way too much credit for fielding/running, but 90 years from now even with 1000's of hours of video footage we'll still have to deal with the myth of Jeter's defensive prowess, so the more things change...

[Hendrix]

Just an aside. I saw this footage of Bill Russell a bit ago, and thought it was quite remarkable from a center. How many C's even today do you see sprint like this, handle the ball up the court like this, and jump over a guy taking off a couple feet inside the FT line?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6oE1AAIg-E[/youtube]

[The_Hater]

Just an aside. I saw this footage of Bill Russell a bit ago, and thought it was quite remarkable from a center. How many C's even today do you see sprint like this, handle the ball up the court like this, and jump over a guy taking off a couple feet inside the FT line?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6oE1AAIg-E[/youtube]

Bill Russell and Wilt were both incredible athletes for any era. Russell ran track in college and was a internationally ranked high-jumped.

With Wilt, I've heard story after story about how strong he was. Youtube has a bunch of them. Everyone that knew him says that he was much, much stronger than Shaq and the strongest man the NBA has ever seen.