Some folks just don’t think about what they’re doing.

(Sorry, been reading Vaughan Bode’s Deadbone Erotica compilation today.)

And he also played in an era where *everybody* struck out far less. For example, in 1941, a teams struck out a 3.6 batters per 9 innings, in 2010, teams struck out 6.8 batters per nine…nearly twice as much.

It’s still awesome, but we have there is some context here that seems to be lost when taking about players strikeouts in the 30s and 40s.

Well, this is basically true of an era in any sport. I mean, Jesse Owens may have been the greatest athlete of all time…but his best time wouldn’t have ranked him in the top 8 in the 2012 Olympics. This doesn’t mean he wasn’t amazing, it just means that you judge people by their competition they played against, not over the view of history.

I mean, saying players were better as an excuse to take DiMaggio….I could easily say that we should probably take Jim Edmonds since he was probably better than DiMaggio! I have little doubt that if you got a time machine, sent Joe DiMaggio to 2004 and put him in center field, he’d have a much harder time than Jim Edmonds would in 1941. DiMaggio was absolutely better than Edmonds compared to their competition and it’s not even close. But Edmonds came up in an era with much greater emphasis on conditioning, players were in better shape, he faced a much wider variety of pitches with more international competition, no segregation and 60 additional years of information that had been built up that DiMaggio wasn’t privy too.

But we would never say “Jim Edmonds” is better. Should Joe DiMaggio be punished in the eyes of history because he lacked 60 additional years of information that had been built up? No! Of course not! Because we compared DiMaggio with the players he played with…ergo, Joe DiMaggio is better than Jim Edmonds. And Tris Speaker was (possibly) better than Joe DiMaggio

You factor that in with the cup of coffee that dude could make and he’s on my “All-Whatever Team.” His career statistical output was like a video game. I think his celebrity over time has diminished how amazing he was as a player.

Was DiMaggio better than Speaker? Speaker ended his career with a higher OPS+, played until he was 40 (DiMaggio was out at 36), topped 8 WAR six times (DiMaggio did twice). I mean, I know DiMaggio lost prime years to WWII, but I doubt he had 4 8 WAR seasons in those three years!

It’s close, but certainly not obvious. In fact, I’d probably say Speaker was better.