Prince Albert Pujols, he reigneth

Albert Pujols did
not look like a "beast" back then;
a large human, yes.

ALLAHFROG, if you
do not trust baseball at all,
then why do you care?

Why should I not dismiss all pitching records before 1969 (before they lowered the mound)?

Why should I not dismiss the balk records set in 1988 (when it was widely known that the umps were going to call a lot of them, the rules were relaxed the very next season)?

Why should I not dismiss every home run record set after (or before, depending on your viewpoint) 1920, when the ball was known to be juiced? Or what about home runs hit in 1987 -- one of several years in which the ball was reportedly re-juiced?

Why should I not dismiss the HOF resumes of every hitter who reached his prime in the 1930's (a hitting era that puts the late 90's to shame)?

we tend to remember only doc gooden, the straw man and steve howe...maybe lamar hoyt, but the investigations and suspensions were pretty wide ranging. and i also remember a lot of guys being accused of using coke, though nothing was ever proven (eric davis is the biggest name i can think of).

I'd have to look through my books for the citation, but I read that with some interest just a couple of weeks ago. They did analyses of balls from both eras and found no real differences to account for the HR discrepancies. It comes down to hitting styles, park changes, the loss of specialty pitches (shineball, spitball, etc. being phased out as players retired) and on down the line.

But my main point still stands -- comparing post-1920 offense (particularly 1920-1940) with 1900-1920 offense is nearly impossible. There was an offensive explosion after 1920, but we don't view the live ball era as "tainted" in any way. It was just a different style of play.

But, yeah, your point is certainly correct - and that leaves out the biggest trump card of all time - Babe Ruth never had to play against Martin Dihigo or John Donaldson and without the color line we could very well be talking about Josh Gibson as the greatest hitter in baseball history.

Couldn't it just as easily have been someone from Japan or Cuba or wherever else? Babe Ruth is the greatest hitter in the history of Major League Baseball, whether you compare him to his era OR whether you take his stats alone. Josh Gibson never played Major League Baseball, and neither did, say, Saduhara Oh. Saduhara Oh played against allegedly watered down players, but so did Josh Gibson. If Gibson played in the major leagues, there's no way to know whether he would have hit 400 home runs for his career or 800.

The point is that Ruth PLAYED against watered-down players too though! And I find the argument that Gibson would have hit only 400 home runs in the ML pretty suspect esp. considering how a lot of the Negro Leaguers stars performed in the ML when they finally got there. Would Gibson have been as good as Babe Ruth in an integrated ML? Probably not. But would Ruth have been as good as Ruth in an integrated ML? Also probably not.

I don't know about that. I mean, to this day, there are very few good African American pitchers. I mean, who is to say that Barry Bonds would have 700+ hr if he had to hit against great pitchers such as, say, Donovan McNabb, Michael Jordan, or Jarome Iginla? While there were a core of excellent pitchers in the Negro Leagues, there were also a ton of guys who wouldn't have made a roster, and Ruth, Bonds, Gibson, et al. have always done most of their work against the worst pitchers in the league, not against the Satchel Paiges and Bob Gibsons of the world.

In fact, you could probably make the case that an integrated league would equate to lowered offensive production across the board.

(Yes, I know that I'm rambling and not really making a cohesive argument. I'm sick, give me a break.)

I think league wide the offense would probably have gone up though. Most of the most famous Negro Leaguers were hitters and I imagine the difference in their value over the players they were replacing would be higher than the pitchers (although who knows once you calculate defense blah blah.)

Also the reasons why there are so few African-American pitchers (and PLAYERS) now has a lot to do with a number of recent changes in the way youth talent is developed (and how that relates to race/economics) and most (if not all) of those changes are relatively recent.

xpost

The spread in ability between the best and worst players in baseball has decreased significantly since the days of Ruth and Cobb. In other words, the best players don't dominate the competition to the same degree that they did in the 1920's (Barry Bonds is a freakish exception, as you all know). I'm sure that the segregation of the game was a big reason for this ... larger pool of talent -> pitching AND hitting ability both increase -> less room for stragglers on the lower extreme of the talent distribution curve.

18/34.5*162 = 85

Krukow surmised that Ruth's lack of automatic doubles was because stadiums had not warning tracks; instead, the balls had to bounce off of grass. Then the play-by-play guy who went to Stanford (STATHEAD OMG) deep-sixed this theory, because plenty of other chumps were hitting ground-rule homers.

Couldn't it just as easily have been someone from Japan or Cuba or wherever else? Babe Ruth is the greatest hitter in the history of Major League Baseball, whether you compare him to his era OR whether you take his stats alone.
Yes, it was rhetorical. Martin Dihigo was a Cuban player who played all eight field positions at a high rate and was a slightly-below-great pitcher as well. Pop Lloyd, Oscar Charleston, etc. etc. etc. - there

Josh Gibson never played Major League Baseball, and neither did, say, Saduhara Oh. Saduhara Oh played against allegedly watered down players, but so did Josh Gibson. If Gibson played in the major leagues, there's no way to know whether he would have hit 400 home runs for his career or 800.
That's why I said we 'could be'. What we do know is that the talent pool for both players was more questionable than the one facing Pujols or Bonds (and, I mean, there are questions about whether the stars of the 1920s could even get on the field with modern athletes).

Another thing to remember is that Negro League players were often playing in leftover deadball era parks, and none of them played in parks that were tailor-made to their abilities (ala Ruth's porch in Yankee Stadium, the Red Sox pulling in left field 10-15 feet to benefit Ted Williams).

Japanese records are significantly more detailed than Negro League (or even older MLB) records, so we do have a fairly competent way to translate Sadahuru Oh and other players' stats. From what I've read, Oh would certainly be a Hall of Fame hitter, but nowhere near the greatest ever. Shigeo Nagashima is less famous but equally respected by Japanese players/fans/historians.

i mean sports are serious business now and conditioning is superior and just general societal lifestyle things make a difference, but wasn't baseball pretty much the only true major league sport in the days of the babe?

look at at all the competition baseball faces now from football, hoops, soccer and to some extent, hockey and lax (to the extent that there are thousands of kids who may never play baseball b/c lax season conflicts).

i'm not saying that the talent pool is weak now, but baseball had pretty free range over things for a while.

I will enthrall and delight all of you with my fascinating observations in a week or so. I am leaving the keys to the ILB office with Barry and Felicity. Be easy on them!

Steve Shasta
East Coast Wakeboarding Representative

1.	Albert Pujols	STL     .362	35.2
2.	Nick Johnson	WAS     .326	17.7
3.	Lance Berkman	HOU     .316	17.4
4.	Nomar Garciaparra  LAN	.337	16.7
5.	Carlos Delgado	NYN	.305	15.7

Okay, the title of the chart is "Projected All-time HR Leaders using Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA Forecasting Tool":

1. Barry Bonds - 765
2. Hank Aaron - 755
3. Babe Ruth - 714
4. Alex Rodriguez - 678
5. Willie Mays - 660
6. Adam Dunn - 638
7. Ken Griffey Jr. - 637
8. Albert Pujols - 620
9. Manny Ramirez - 589
10. Sammy Sosa - 588

Albert Pujols article: Albert is the new, clean face of baseball heroes. Albert upset about any steroid allegations, upset at his disputed age allegations. Meanwhile, he's on pace to shatter a record that only Evil, cheating steroid abusers (Bonds, McGwire, Sosa) have been able to accomplish!

Barry Bonds: Increasingly poor production (.971 OPS?), agonizing march to overtake Ruth (3 HRs in 4 weeks of April vs. 3 HRs in 3 weeks of May to date!?!?!?), more of Verducci's declining and agonizing analysis.

Justin Gaitlin: FASTEST MAN ON THE PLANET!!! Meet the brand new 100m world record holder!!! Never mind that he tested positive for PEDs 3 years ago and received and served a year suspension!!!! Nevermind that his trainer and coach is the man who first was caught with an HGH/BALCO affiliated designer steroid syringe, setting off a wave of baseball-centric federal drug investigation... Nevermind all that, boy is this guy fast!!!

Also Adam Dunn has got to be one of the greatest power hitters of all time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5VH7ZudR0c

pujols' last AB against the cubs is a pinch hit home run, a no doubter, #695, a 2-run shot putting them up 2-0 in the bottom of the 8th. he's had extra good final performances against the reds and cubs now. dang

#697 is a 2-run shot over the center field wall that puts the Cardinals up 3-2 in the top of the 9th, after being held to 2 hits for the rest of the game

that was classic

https://i.imgur.com/TBJ4SmA.png

bold of them to mention bonds

Matt and Samantha Brown caught Pujols’s 697th homer. Samantha’s
father passed away one year ago today. They met with Albert to give him the ball back — he told them to keep it and signed two more for them. Said it would mean more to her than to him. pic.twitter.com/FuXXFiYCIa

— Jeff Jones (@jmjones) September 11, 2022

albert "cool guy" pujols ftw

That is cool. That ball is probably worth a ton

#698, tied up the game.

699 and 700

congrats to Apple TV! and to Wayne randazzo of all people who got to call it live (he’s usually the Mets radio guy, he might actually be better as a tv play by play guy)

actually never saw him smile like that

Wonderful moment. And did I see Adrian Beltre and Dave Winfield in the crowd? (I watched the highlights from MLB's YouTube channel)

I have spent all night trying to figure out who that was. Was it David Winfield?

beltre was the guy he went over to

Like they haven't had enough good stuff happen in L.A. this year.

500 HRs against RHP, 200 HRs against LHP

the other way around surely?

nope!
for most of his career he was an equal-opportunity destroyer of right and left-handed pitching. but more importantly, most pitchers are right-handed so he had a lot more PAs against RHP then against LHP

9600 PAs against RHP
3418 PAs against LHP

He went over to Beltre after hitting the HR, but the other guy (Winfield) appeared on camera a couple of times.

I should say -- (Winfield?)

beltre i recognized, but winfield was driving me nuts because I also recognized him and just could not remember his name

after a 2-run double, pujols is now one RBI behind babe ruth for second place all-time. strangely, baseball reference has babe ruth with 2214 RBIs while fangraphs shows 2217 RBIs? albert has 2213.

he hits a HR, his 702nd, in his final game in St. Louis (three more follow in Pittsburgh), and ties Ruth with 2214 RBIs as well, behind only Hank Aaron.

what a moment

https://i.imgur.com/SVHsany.png

I was thinking the way he’s been hitting, he must’ve been having *some* decent success against right handed pitching, but wow those platoon splits are something else. Albert on the Cards playing at Coors Field 2006 vs Albert on the Angels 2020 basically.

check out the guy at the top falling over with a beer

https://i.imgur.com/By5XARC.png

#703 is in pittsburgh, a 2-run HR that barely cleared the wall in the left-field corner. it puts him ahead of Babe Ruth in RBIs with 2,216, second only to Hank Aaron.

Was surprised at first he didn't join Judge as player of the month, but yeah, Escobar was the better choice.