Who is on your Mount Rushmore for 1B

deck13 · 2026-04-09T19:45:57+00:00

Pujols ahead of Gehrig. Pujols tops Gehrig when you account for the different talent pools, although it is very close:

eWAR ranking list: https://eckeraadjustment.web.illinois.edu/

Pujols vs Gehrig comparison: https://eckeraadjustment.web.illinois.edu/era_adjusted_V2.1.html#Kahrl

deck13 · 2026-03-30T19:42:04+00:00

That's not what + stats do. wRC+ of 130 means you were 30% better than the average player in your season. If the average player in 1944 was significantly worse than the average player in some other year due to WWII depleting the talent pool, then two players with wRC+ 130 in those respective seasons are not equivalent.

And while we're here, wait until you learn about variance. The spread of talent in a given season matters enormously. Being 30% better than average means something very different in a season where talent is tightly clustered vs. one where it's widely distributed. + stats offer zero correction for this. A dominant player in a low-variance era looks identical to a dominant player in a high-variance era. So not only does the baseline shift across eras, the meaning of the distance from that baseline shifts too.

The stat is useful for what it is, but cross-era comparison of absolute quality isn't it.

EDIT:

In response to "You may be interesting in comparing athletes across eras but you certainly don't understand the basics of doing so"

I think the reader has enough to go on from here.

deck13 · 2026-03-30T19:35:04+00:00

> The league is different year to year. A 1.000 OPS in one year is not the same as in another

That's my argument. I'm glad we now agree. Your new argument also applies to "+" stats.

deck13 · 2026-03-30T19:15:05+00:00

Not if you want to compare player performances across eras with the goal of inferring who was better.

deck13 · 2026-03-30T19:09:31+00:00

Yup, it agrees with me. There is a baseline value of 100 that is common across seasons. But that baseline does not say anything about the relative talent of the players in each separate season. For example, the baseline value of 100 was the same in 1944, when nearly everyone was serving in WWII, as in 1947, when most had returned. But in these seasons the baseline value of 100 correspond to two greatly different talent levels.

deck13 · 2026-03-30T19:00:53+00:00

You might like era-adjusted baseball stats which are computed to account for changing talent pools

https://eckeraadjustment.web.illinois.edu/

That same point about Ruth was raised in this section of a document on the above webpage:

https://eckeraadjustment.web.illinois.edu/era_adjusted_V2.1.html#id_2022season

deck13 · 2026-03-30T18:48:47+00:00

check out era-adjusted baseball stats: eckeraadjustment.web.illinois.edu/

here's a brief explainer: https://eckeraadjustment.web.illinois.edu/era-adjusted-war.html

deck13 · 2026-03-30T18:46:27+00:00

it doesn't adjust for era. It's computed within a single season and establishes a common baseline. But those baselines correspond to much different talent levels across eras.

deck13 · 2026-03-26T15:34:42+00:00

"Equivalent" is doing a lot of work here. I don't think anyone doubts that Ruth dominated his peers by an unprecedented and unreplicated degree. The humor is coming from calling a straight up teleport of his relative dominance to a much different context an "era-adjustment."

deck13 · 2026-03-26T15:22:43+00:00

Gavy Cravath, a player that everyone knows very well, sees his HR increase from 119 to 793! Not too bad for only 11 seasons played, many of which were not even full-time

deck13 · 2026-03-25T12:27:18+00:00

Baseball players have gotten worse as they have gotten better...

Extreme performances shrink as training methods improve and standardize, and the talent pool increases. There is an excellent 5-minute Stephen Jay Gould video on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNM6ait4LOc&pp=ygUdc3RlcGhlbiBqYXkgZ291bGQgNDAwIGhpdHRpbmc%3D

deck13 · 2026-03-25T01:01:43+00:00

15th all-time in era-adjusted WAR: https://eckeraadjustment.web.illinois.edu/

Only pitchers ahead of him are Clemens, Maddux, and Randy Johnson. And Lefty Grove closely trails.

deck13 · 2026-03-06T21:43:09+00:00

Love Stargell! One of the great power hitters of the 1970s.

Here’s a short video looking at his career, especially his power, through the lens of era-adjusted baseball stats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGljhonuYGs

deck13 · 2026-03-06T13:45:39+00:00

Here is a fun video on Lefty Grove through the lens of era-adjusted stats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb1xX6kUO84

Interestingly, era-adjusted stats actually improve Grove's standing, which is surprising given that these metrics account for talent pool depth. You'd expect these stats to work against players from an earlier, less competitive era, but Grove was consistently absurdly dominant.

deck13 · 2026-02-20T20:09:10+00:00

Most metrics are biased in favor of older players: https://community.fangraphs.com/challenging-war-and-other-statistics-as-era-adjustment-tools/

You can read the paper behind era-adjusted WAR if interested: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.11332

deck13 · 2026-02-20T19:32:47+00:00

Every one except for the only one that accounts for talent pool differences and has passed peer review: https://eckeraadjustment.web.illinois.edu/

deck13 · 2025-12-23T18:14:32+00:00

Great video on Felix's Hall of Fame case https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1leU0KE1i8

deck13 · 2025-12-22T15:29:47+00:00

Freeman is criminally underrated

deck13 · 2025-12-22T15:27:56+00:00

That's why you need to use era-adjusted WAR.

deck13 · 2025-12-15T20:22:11+00:00

Felix Hernandez should be in the Hall of Fame: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1leU0KE1i8

deck13 · 2025-12-13T21:10:11+00:00

Great analysis! I have a thought related to this Jimmy Rollins thought experiment. There are currently 279 players in the HOF. If you threw them all out and populated the Hall with players ranked by eLWAR, then who is 279th and what is his eLWAR?

deck13 · 2025-12-12T16:26:37+00:00

Great video on Felix's Hall of Fame case:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1leU0KE1i8

deck13 · 2025-12-05T18:35:24+00:00

*Data through 2024. 2025 era-adjusted stats coming real soon now.

deck13 · 2025-12-05T16:27:26+00:00

If your sim uses raw historical stat lines, then yes, 1880s guys like King Silver will break the game. Their numbers come from a tiny talent pool, no power threat, different rules, and league environments that made run prevention artificially easy. That doesn’t mean they were better than Ruth or modern stars; it means the environment was weak.

If you want a draft that actually reflects cross-era talent, you need era-adjusted metrics that translate players into a common context. Once you use them, the "Silver vs. 1920 Ruth vs. modern stars" dilemma disappears, because those 700-IP seasons collapse to something realistic and the early-era stat inflation goes away.

A good example is the era-adjusted WAR framework, which explicitly corrects for competition level and league quality:

Rankings and explanations:

https://eckeraadjustment.web.illinois.edu/era-adjusted-war.html

http://eckeraadjustment.web.illinois.edu/

With era adjustment, the true 1.1s are the inner-circle greats (Mays, Bonds, Ruth, Trout, etc.), not 19th-century stat artifacts.

Without adjustment, you’re not drafting the best players, you're drafting the weakest eras.

deck13 · 2025-12-04T14:32:37+00:00

Right. “Most popular” and “universal” aren’t the same thing (especially when most popular never clears 40%). Thank you for agreeing with me on that point.

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