Major League Talent Level

Making sense of history

Major League Talent Level

This is the fourth part in a series. You can read the first three posts here:

Honestly, I can’t choose between the two opinions. On the one hand, there are excellent arguments out there that the players who play baseball today are more athletic and more skilled than they ever were before. On the other hand, there is another good argument that the players of today would likely crumble if faced with the difficulties and realities of major league baseball life a century ago.

This is an important argument, by the way. If we’re going to mess around with cross-era play, we need to figure this out. If we decide to go back and forth arguing with each other about height and weight and other useless stuff, we’ll never get to have any fun.

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Cross Era

My opinion?

My opinion is that we need to assume that there’s a basic level of major league talent that these players all have, and then move on from there.

This tweet (not from me) probably sums it up best:

My answer is “of course they get the benefit.”

We’ve got to use a baseline of some sort — call it an “era,” call it whatever you want.

You’ve got to assume that players playing against each other will use the same equipment, for example.

A fielder’s glove in 1900 looked like this:

From Reach’s Official Base Ball Guide For 1901, page 232

Alternatively, you could go for one of these mitts:

From Reach’s Official Base Ball Guide For 1901, page 230

Lave Cross committed 29 errors in 1900 for a .945 fielding percentage, which was actually better than the league average at third base. And he managed to do that using an oven mitt.

Here’s a modern major league fielder’s glove, for the sake of comparison:

Now, if we’re going to stick Brooks Robinson in today’s game, you’d better believe he’s going to have that net on his hand. And if we put him back in 1900, we’re going to have to assume that he’s going to be stuck with the Lave Cross model.

Bats are similar, by the way:

From Reach’s Official Base Ball Guide for 1900, page 245

Compare that hunk of wood with a modern bat, and you’ll see the difference right away:

Bats have evolved over time, with a special focus on the “sweet spot” and a handle that has become ever thinner.

Bill James put this better than I ever could in The New Historical Baseball Abstract:

Page 309

The Hall of Fame has a display on comparing bats across years. I don’t know if it’s the same these days, but when I last went in 2001 you could actually lift up bats from different eras and feel the difference. This is from Wikipedia:

Now, if we’re going to have fun with cross era play, at some point we’re going to have to assume that players are using the equipment for the era they played in. Take Sammy Sosa back to 1927, and he’s got to use Babe Ruth’s bat on the far left, along with everything that goes with it. Conversely, if Ruth is transported to 1998, he gets to use one of the two bats on the right.

Of course, we can keep going. We can use the same logic to talk about ballparks, about pitch types, about uniforms, about train travel, and so on and so forth. If you play in Brooklyn in 1908, you’ve got to deal with the effects of the smog and ash flying into your eyes. I could go on.

You’ve got to assume that players have the same innate skills for the comparison to make any sense. A lot of the differences we actually see come due to equipment, technology, training methods, ballparks, environmental changes, and so on.

Once you assume that the innate skills are the same, though, you can start having fun.

I’ll let Bill James have the final say. This is from chapter 18 of Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame:

In my opinion, even if we believe that the game may have improved somewhat, it doesn’t really matter. If we want to do cross era comparisons, we’ve got to assume that the baseline levels are the same, and that the concept of “era” covers everything else.