56 Responses to “If you haven’t read about today’s Luncheon already…”

1. Roy Stuckey Weaver on January 23rd, 2009 11:36 pm

   Let me hear that they’re trying to do a Beltre extension and it will be too much…

   …I think any discussions with Boras on a Beltre extension would be a waste of time. They can find better things to do with their time than that. It would only make sense for Beltre and Boras to let him hit Free Agency in 2010. If anything ‘let me hear that they’re trying to get more value for a 1 year rental of Beltre than the draft picks we’d get if he was a type A or B player and we couldn’t resign him once he goes to FA’

2. Jeff Nye on January 23rd, 2009 11:46 pm

   Beltre isn’t nearly as replaceable as you seem to think.

3. pebohead on January 24th, 2009 5:06 am

   Actually, Babe Ruth’s best season had him at 127 wRAA. Put him at DH for convience, and say we’re replacing a league-average hitter at DH (which, for the M’s, is just about true.) That’s +12.7 wins. That turns the M’s from a 78 win club into a 91 win club, which should be enough to win the division.

   Yes, Babe Ruth in his prime would turn the M’s into division champs. Or, at least, serious contenders.

   only problem with that is that Babe ruth played against about 2 minority players in his entire career. No Latinos, no African Americans, no Japanese or Koreans. You cant compare his stats to anything related to the modern day. 1920’s and ’30’s baseball was like AAA. Sure Ruth would still probaly be pretty good today, but not nearly as good as his past numbers would say. Hell, you put Branyan in the 1920’s and he’d have 400 homers.

4. joser on January 24th, 2009 12:42 pm

   Ruth hit home runs in a lot of stadiums that have fences a lot further away than most of the stadiums he would play in today. The just-closed Yankee Stadium may have been “the house that Ruth built” but it wasn’t the house that Ruth hit in: it had bigger outfield dimensions in his day. And Ruth drank too much, ate a lousy diet, and knew nothing of resistance training. Give him a dietitian, a personal trainer, and a modern gym, and who knows how well he would’ve hit at his peak. And while there may be pitches in use today that he never saw, he had to face spitballers and worse.

   My point being that as valid as your points are (and they are valid — how great would it have been to see Babe Ruth face a young Satchel Paige?) there’s a lot of factors to consider when judging across eras. So rather than picking one or two to use in isolation, I prefer to stick to the numbers and leave it at that.

5. pygmalion on January 24th, 2009 2:21 pm

   Hell, you put Branyan in the 1920’s and he’d have 400 homers.

   Actually Nate Silver calculated that based on the differences in the eras if you put Barry Bonds in the 1920’s he would have hit 444 home runs, but with a much higher batting average and on base percentage. And that Ruth in our era would have hit 913 of them. He also would have struck out a lot more.

6. pebohead on January 24th, 2009 8:44 pm

   put barry bonds in the 1920’s and he would of had a single at bat. There are many different factors about the eras, and yes technically it is much easier to hit home runs now than then, but the talent level back them was so incredibly tiny compared to toady. It would basically be if you kicked every minority player out of baseball and replaced them with replacement level willy boom booms. This is what the M’s starting roster would be

   C. Rob Johnson
   1B. Russel Branyan
   2B. Tug Hutlett
   SS. Chris Woodward
   3B. Matt Mangini
   LF. Mike Morse
   CF. Michael Saunders
   RF. Jon Nelson
   DH. Jeff Clement

   Awesome huh?

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