baseball

This is my argument. Back in the first round, you wrote that the measuring stick for "best" was undefined. When I first heard this, I thought that we would dispute over what means "best". However, reviewing your words, it seems to me that you did not HOW to find out who was the best. Nevertheless, it made me realizie that I was not clear with the meaning of best. Right now I am saying that best could be two things: a) The player contributed the most to their team after taking away all of the negatives. b) This player shows an incredibly large amount of skill and talent. The first option is the team player. The second option shows the player is great but doesn't help his team win enough. A good example of this is strikeouts for pitchers. What is the largest advantage for a team with its pitchers having lots of strikeouts? The advantage is kinda small. In a ough situation, a strikeout is better than a ground out or fly out. However, during a time where the bases are empty and the team is down by ten runs, a strikeout is no different than any other out. But the reason why atrikeouts are imortant is because it takes skill. It is harder to strike somebody out than letting them put the ball in play. Now that is over, I will get back to Mantle vs. Cobb and Mays. 1) OPS+ OPS+ is a stat where it measures the player's ops against the league ops. It makes an automatic era change so we can directly compare players. The formula is (slg/lg slg) +(obp/lg obp) -1. The whole thing is multiplied by 100 to make it easier to understand. Mays's career OPS+ is 156. Dimaggio's career OPS+ is 155. Cobb's career OPS+ is 168. Mantle's career OPS+ is.... 172. Of course it doesn't factor in batting average but I will get back to it. Also, both Cobb and Mays have long careers. This doesn't work for Mays. But it does work for Cobb. At 1919, Cobb had an OPS+ of 177. So how is Mantle better? My opponent said earlier that Mantle's league slg was 54 points higher than Cobb's. Yet Mantle's slg is only 40 points higher than Cobb's. This is going to work in my favor. If Mantle's slg is actually far lower than Cobb's, why are there OPS+ so close? Becaus Cobb's era had a higher obp than Mantle's. If Cobb's slg is 12 points higher, than Mantle's is about seven point's higher. However, obp is MORE important than slg. Obp is 1.7 times more important. Because OPS+ doesn't make the distinction that obp is more importnat, Mantle's OPS+ is the same as Cobb's even if Cobb retired by 1920. 2) Runs Created Runs created is a stats which measures how many runs a player contributes to his team. In his career, Mantle created 2038 runs. Cobb created 2517 runs. When you measure how many runs by plate appearances, Mantle has .205 runs per plate appearance. Cobb is only at .192. Mays created about 2368 runs in 12496 plate appearances at a rate of .190 runs per plate appearance. So, in reality, Mantle was actually producing runs at a faster pace than both Mays and Cobb. 3) Secondary Average Secondary Average is a stat that takes into account power, the ability to get on base and stealing bases. It is more important than batting average because it measures more than just hits. Most of the time, the league secondary average us the same as batting average. A player's secondary average, though, can range from .100 to .500. Cobb's career secondary average is .333, which is pretty good. May's career secondary average is higher because he had more extra base hits. Mays is at .421. And Mantle's? Let just say it is very high. High, as in .491. So, actually Mantle was doing far more to put runs on the scoreboard. Mantle's secondary advantage basically wipes out Cobb's advantage in batting average. Even if people think batting average is say, twice as important, Mantle still wins. Mantle's secondary average is 158 points higher than Cobb's! This presents a huge advantage for Mantle. If you are still not convinced that Mantle is better, I got more. 4) Big Years Is it better to have 10 great years and 10 medicore years or 15 good seasons and 5 solid seasons? Is it better to be consistent or have ups and downs? Bill James, a very influential person in sports conducts a study to answer those questions. His results? It is better to have big years, it wins more pennants andis more helpful to the team. So, when comparing Mantle to Cobb and Mays, who has the best season? Using OPS+, Cobb's best season was 1917 when he hit .383 with an obp of .444 and slg of .570 and a OPS+ of 209. Cobb finshed with 148 runs created. In his career, he finshed three times with an OPS+ of at least 200. The most runs created by Cobb in a season was 169 where his OPS+ was 206. May's best season by OPS+ was in 1965 with 185. Mantle's best seasons were 1956 when he created 188 runs and had an OPS+ of 210. In 1957, he created 178 runs and had an OPS+ of 221. Along with 1961 when he created 174 runs with an OPS+ of 206, Mantle had 3 seasons when he created more runs than Cobb's high. Mantle had several seasons where he created more runs than May's high and several seasons where his OPS+ is higher than May's high. It seems that Mantle's best seasons are far better than Cobb's and May's. This all helps Mantle because big seasons help. 5) Defense Defense counts of course. If an average defender at center field saves his team 0 runs, how many runs does a great defender like Mays save each year? 15. Mays probablary saved 200-250 runs as a center fielder. Mantle is a good fielder even if he won only one gold glove. Gold gloves can't be trusted because the writers who award them figures out how good at defense a player is by judging how many diffucult plays that player makes. So gold gloves are a bit sketchy. Mantle probablary only saved 100-125 runs. Of course, I don't know, it is just a prediction. However, Bill James who I metioned earlier says that defense is only a fraction of inportance compared to offense. Cobb: -100 to -150 Mantle: 100 to 124 Mays: 200 to 250 These are estimates of runs saved. So defense is not as important as offense because Cobb, Mays and Mantle created over 2000 runs on offense and less than 300 runs on defense. 6) Long careers I feel that my opponent will try to argue that because Mays has a longer career, his career averages are going to be lower. Here are their averages at the end of the 1968 season when Mantle retired. I am going to list the averages in order of importance. Stat, May's Stat, Mantle's stat OPS+ 160 172 runs created 1999 2038 rc per pa .219 .205 Secondary average . 427 .491 Obp .384 .421 Slg .578 .557 batting average .308 .298 So, my opponent can say that May's last years ruined his averages. I don't approve this argument. It basiclly says "if" Mays retired when Mantle retired, Mays would be better. "If", though are never a good argument. What "if" Mantle was never injuried? Also, why choose 1968 as the time to compare? By choosing 1968, it will eliminate May's bad years and boost his career averages. At the very least Mickey the same favor. Why don't we compare the players at the end of the 1964 season? Here are the stats with Mays listed first. OPS+ Mays-161, Mantle-177 Runs created Mays- 1578, Mantle- RC per pa Mays-.197, Mantle- Secondary average Mays-.427 Mantle-.508 Obp Mays-.388, Mantle-.429 Slg Mays-.589, Mantle-.582 Batting average Mays-.313, Mantle-.309 As you can see, Mantle was far better before the bad years screwed up his averages. 7) Strikeouts Less strikeouts help advance runners up and create more runs. But if Mantle Ended up with more runs created, it isn't a valid argument. My opponent can argue that it takes more skill to not strikeout. And that is true, Cobb and Mays get a small advantage. But Cobb was very disruptive and hurt his team. So really, there is no advantage for Cobb. Summary: Mickey wins. Mantle has huge advantages in OPS+, secondary average and runs created. Mantle is gets on base, hits for power, create runs and win ball games. Thank you and vote for Mickey Mantle.