RIP Willie Mays

[roadman65]

https://apnews.com/article/willie-mays-dies-at-93-baseball-33b31cc2d6382676ed54517d20ea36a3

[gonealookin]

Willie was on the first Sports Illustrated wall poster my mom bought me for Christmas when I was 7 or 8.  I only saw him play at the tail end of his career.

Mays was #5 all-time in career WAR at 156.2.  On another site last night we were discussing who's the greatest ballplayer still alive.  Career WAR is a good measure, but the top 3 who are still alive are tainted by PEDs and not in the Hall of Fame.

Babe Ruth is #1 all-time at 182.6 WAR.  Those still alive with at least 100 WAR:

#4 Barry Bonds 162.8 WAR (PEDs, not in the HOF)
#8 Roger Clemens 139.2 WAR (PEDs, not in the HOF)
#16 Alex Rodriguez 117.6 WAR (PEDs, not in the HOF)
#19 Rickey Henderson 111.1 WAR (Hall of Famer)
#24 Mike Schmidt 106.9 WAR (Hall of Famer)
#28 Greg Maddux 106.6 WAR (Hall of Famer)
#29 Albert Pujols 101.4 WAR (eligible for the Hall of Fame in 2028)
#30 Randy Johnson 101.1 WAR (Hall of Famer)

[mgk920]

Willie was on the first Sports Illustrated wall poster my mom bought me for Christmas when I was 7 or 8.  I only saw him play at the tail end of his career.

Mays was #5 all-time in career WAR at 156.2.  On another site last night we were discussing who's the greatest ballplayer still alive.  Career WAR is a good measure, but the top 3 who are still alive are tainted by PEDs and not in the Hall of Fame.

Babe Ruth is #1 all-time at 182.6 WAR.  Those still alive with at least 100 WAR:

#4 Barry Bonds 162.8 WAR (PEDs, not in the HOF)
#8 Roger Clemens 139.2 WAR (PEDs, not in the HOF)
#16 Alex Rodriguez 117.6 WAR (PEDs, not in the HOF)
#19 Rickey Henderson 111.1 WAR (Hall of Famer)
#24 Mike Schmidt 106.9 WAR (Hall of Famer)
#28 Greg Maddux 106.6 WAR (Hall of Famer)
#29 Albert Pujols 101.4 WAR (eligible for the Hall of Fame in 2028)
#30 Randy Johnson 101.1 WAR (Hall of Famer)

( pardon my ignorance on the subject, but what is 'WAR'? )

Mike

[hotdogPi]

Wins above replacement

[mgk920]

What sould Mays' career home run total have likely been had he played those several seasons of home games at a more conventionally dimensioned ball park?  remember that the Polo Grounds had those verrrrry short fences down the foul lines and was very deep in center field.

Mike

[mgk920]

Wins above replacement

What does that stat measure?

Mike

[gonealookin]

Wins above replacement

What does that stat measure?

Mike

WAR takes a whole bunch of batting, fielding and pitching statistics and, using a formula, mashes them all together into one number to calculate a player's approximate overall value to the team.  Full explanation here, but the general notion is:

Wins Above Replacement (WAR) is an attempt by the sabermetric baseball community to summarize a player's total contributions to their team in one statistic....WAR offers an estimate to answer the question, "If this player got injured and their team had to replace them with a freely available minor leaguer or a AAAA player from their bench, how much value would the team be losing?"
...
WAR is not meant to be a perfectly precise indicator of a player's contribution, but rather an estimate of their value to date. Given the imperfections of some of the available data and the assumptions made to calculate other components, WAR works best as an approximation. A 6 WAR [per season] player might be worth between 5.0 and 7.0 WAR, but it is pretty safe to say they are at least an All-Star level player and potentially an MVP.

[mgk920]

Fair enough.

Mike

[wanderer2575]

[triplemultiplex]

What sould Mays' career home run total have likely been had he played those several seasons of home games at a more conventionally dimensioned ball park?  remember that the Polo Grounds had those verrrrry short fences down the foul lines and was very deep in center field.

Or if he didn't have to take two seasons off to be in the Army during the Korean War.

[gonealookin]

What sould Mays' career home run total have likely been had he played those several seasons of home games at a more conventionally dimensioned ball park?  remember that the Polo Grounds had those verrrrry short fences down the foul lines and was very deep in center field.

Or if he didn't have to take two seasons off to be in the Army during the Korean War.

The Korean War was what cost him his chance to pass Babe Ruth in career homers.  After a 20-HR rookie season in 1951, he played just 34 games in 1952 with 4 HR, didn't play at all in 1953, then returned and immediately smacked 41 HR in 1954 and 51 HR in 1955.

As to the ballparks, meh.  For the Polo Grounds years, through 1957, he hit 187 home runs, of which 99 were at home and 88 on the road.  Candlestick Park was generally better for pitchers than hitters but that didn't seem to affect him either; of his 660 home run career total, 335 were in home games and 325 in road games.

[Henry]

A player so good that Hollywood fictionalized him in the Major League movies:

[gonealookin]

A little chat between a couple legends.  The audio isn't perfectly clear but you get the idea.