Thursday, December 25, 2008

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED IN A DISCUSSION OF "THE GREATEST RIGHT HAND HITTER OF ALL TIME"

As baseball discussions often will a discussion on the above topic veered off into the following subject "Is Manny Ramirez a better candidate for 'GRHHAT' than Albert Pujols?"

Holy Josh Gibson! Can it be?

What You think?

7 Comments:

At 9:00 AM, December 26, 2008, Anonymous Anonymous said...

While I am biased, Pujols has a 20 point batting average lead and a 30point slugging percentage lead over Manny so why is this even a debate?

 
At 9:01 AM, December 26, 2008, Anonymous Anonymous said...

By the way, Stltoday.com had a great question: If Tex is worth X, than Pujols is worth...?

Pujols has to retire a Cardinal, right?

 
At 9:22 AM, December 26, 2008, Blogger UMRBlog said...

My first thought exactly. When I went looking for comparables (hot starts and sustained success from RH hitters, Manny was not even on my list.) I looked at Aaron, DiMaggio (only true comparable, given age and sustained success)Frank Thomas and Double XX.

But if you look at cumulative totals for a career it becomes a debate. I stumbled upon the seeds of this debate at Dugout.com.

They were debating GRHHAT and used a cumulative list. Not surprisingly Aaron was first. This was based on voting by ten insider sabremetricians. What caught my eye is that Manny was two positions ahead of Albert, EVEN THOUGH ALBERT GOT TWO FIRST PLACE VOTES AND MANNY NONE.

Now, the voting took place in early December of this year with Manny's unbelievable rescue of the Dodgers still ringing in every propellerhead's ears. Still, when they were answering a different question, they were, by inference raising this one.

TYFCB--and yes, he must.

 
At 9:45 AM, December 26, 2008, Blogger Blogvine said...

Albert's first 8 years blow away Manny's first 8 years...

 
At 10:03 AM, December 26, 2008, Blogger UMRBlog said...

Absolutely correct.

That's why I didn't use Manny as a comp when I was doing "first four" "five" etc. Really only DiMaggio and Frank Thomas worked then. In Context, XX may have been cumulatively better if you go out 8 years, but some of that might be park effect. Albert's power in context is not so staggering in the early part of this decade (Until you learn he was a dogmeat flyer signee who was said to be too fat to play MLB).

No RHB, ever, matches up in absolute numbers to Albert. That doesn't resolve the Manny dispute over a career though. Look at Dugout.com December 16. Shocked Hell outta me but the list feeds the debate.

Operative words are "Hitter" and "All time". This ones not as easy as it first seems to those of us who see Albert do magic virtually every week.

TYFCB

 
At 2:01 PM, December 26, 2008, Blogger Joe "Truth 101" Kelly said...

We are fortunate to be able to witness the career of Albert Pujols and this is coming from a White Sox fan. He is my generation's Joe DiMaggio. But he still is a few seasons short of Aaaron and Mays.

 
At 7:44 AM, December 27, 2008, Blogger UMRBlog said...

And XX, but your point is well taken.

TYFCB

 

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