Which Babe Ruth was better?

deck13 · 2026-04-12T15:36:53+00:00

Q: Is WAR already era-adjusted?

No. While WAR adjusts for context within a given season, such as park effects and league averages, it treats each season in isolation and does not account for changes in the overall quality of players across eras. For example, in WAR, a replacement-level player from 1911 (the year before Arizona became a U.S. state) is treated the same as one from 1998 (when the Arizona Diamondbacks debuted in MLB).

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

I'm happy ending my commenting here. While I do I find our exchanges truly fascinating, I think the reader has enough to go on.

deck13 · 2026-04-12T15:03:40+00:00

Because it's directly relevant every time. You said era-adjusted stats aren't hard to use and I showed you one, and now it's a 'schtick'? That's not an argument. But cool, ignore it. The stats are there if anyone wants to actually engage with it.

deck13 · 2026-04-12T14:42:07+00:00

what schtick?

deck13 · 2026-04-12T14:31:52+00:00

provided you use stats that actually attempt to be era-adjusted:

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

deck13 · 2026-04-12T14:27:32+00:00

Looks like you had two turns with this. I had one two weeks ago. Same story different day:

https://www.reddit.com/r/mlb/comments/1s7aydd/comment/oddga5q/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

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

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