Comparing cards from different eras

rburgh makes a good point. Strats assignment of something like park metrics verses those used by the sabermetricians is going to influence things a bit. That is one reason I do not like all of the saber stats.

I am not necessarily defending Strat here. But OPS+ is a made up stat. It claims to make adjustments for park effects and other variables. The values assigned to those variables alter the result. If these variable assignments are incorrect then so is the result. And the more variables they put in to it the more margin of error there could be. Here is a fun exercise. Try to find a site that explicitly states how OPS+ is calculated such that you could plug it in to a spreadsheet and validate the results given by the various websites is accurate.

Let's say for example that the margin for error is +- 10%. That means Allen's 1972 value could be as low as 179. And Foster's 1977 value could be as high as 178. Now I just pulled 10% out of the air as an illustration. But hopefully you see my point.

Now I am not saying OPS+ has no meaning or value. I am only saying be careful in treating it as if it was a concrete stat that a simulation engine should target for reproduction. These things get put out there and then get treated as fact. Don't ignore them but don't lose the context of them either.

Thats a great observation. I checked and It seems that baseball reference just uses a park's runs versus the league average for its park factor. Strat might do something more subtle.

But its not just OPS+, that was just a shorthand example anyway. By any metric, in general, batters from pitching years and pitchers from hitting don't seem to be doing as well as expected.

Maybe if I want better cross era competition I should pull out my old cards and play basic. I dont mean that as a putdown - I LOVE basic. I didnt switch to advanced, let alone super advanced,into my late teens.

And treat ATG based on its own virtues - the salary cap, the wide range of abilities, and the chance to have a guy hit 50 HR's, a guy steal 100 bases and a guy strike out 300 batters all on the same team.

Although I still wish Vance could give Walter Johnson a run for his money.

But can it be as simple as batters from pitching years and pitchers from hitting years?
You can spin that easily as Allen hit in a year when there were not very many great hitters while Foster hit when there were a lot of great hitters. Does that make Allen better?

Or look at it from perspective of 1921. Ruth hit 59 HRs. That was more than twice anyone else and more than triple the 7th place Heilmann. If you statistically normalize that against the average pitcher that year and then assume that Ruth would be the same multiple better than the average pitcher today you would have Ruth hitting about 90 HRs (doubling second place Cabrera). Gets even worse if you use 1920. Ruth's 54 was almost triple second place Sisler. It was more than the next 3 combined. Does that mean he had the equivalent of triple Cabrera's? That comes to 132. Or the 2-4 ranked HR hitters today combined for 116. Would the 1920 Ruth hit that many if transported to today? Of course not.

And just a few years later in 1927 Ruth would hit 60 HRs, Gehrig 47, Williams and Wilson 30. Now does the fact that more hitters were beginning to hit more HRs mean Ruth was now less of a HR hitter? Of course not Whether you use some metric comparing Ruth's HRs compared with rest of league or OPS+ it has the same weakness. It makes for a nice conversation point but fails when comparing just a few years within a 7 year span or really even one year to the next.

I'm not sure it exactly is the same thing for counting stats, I think I read an analysis about that once. And Ruth doesn't have a 3x lead in slugging so it was just that other guys who were slugging well, like Speaker and Jackson, were just doing it thru other means.

BTW, it interesting that you don't see guys like Vance, Feller and Paige avg 11k/9 in ATG.

But just how does Ruth hit 54HRr's in a1920 recreation when the league doesn't have any pitching cards for him to face with significant HR chances?

And as far as Allen 72 and Foster 77 go, is it as simple as Reggies Jackson and Smith forgotting how to hit in 1972 and Foster and Reggie Smith (a fave player of mine!) remembering how in 77?

It just that conditions change, and in in the 70's and 80's weirdly and mysteriously so. .

70, 77, 80, 86-87 big hitting years.

71-72, 76, 78, 81, 88 big pitching years.

So if you are going to devise a card in which Tom Seaver has a great year in 77 and Dave Parker in 78 they just gotta have better card chances than than say, Greg Luzinski in 77 and Swan in 78 - otherwise they won't perform anywear near their real life numbers given the chances on the opposing hitting and pitching cards.

I think.

I'm getting dizzy from all this.

But my point remains the same - hitters from pitching years and pitchers from hitting years seem to under perform in ATG. And I think your argument about how the cards were devised over time is probably the answer.

Looks like I have a few minutes so as long as I am obsessed a few more points

This whole thing re: normalization to era doesn't apply as much for super incredible years like Ruth 20 or Koufax 65.

And it does seems as if some players, like Cedeno 72 have gotten an appropriate lift.

Cedeno was a great player, and he had a great year in 1972 (not $10,55 million worth, but that's another topic). He also had a great year in 1973, but the brickyard known as Astroturf destroyed his knees prematurely. And he put up those numbers in the Astrodome, where fly balls went to die. On the road for 1972-1973, his OPS was .982; his overall OPS's for those seasons were .921 and .913 respectively. So when he went somewhere where he had a chance to actually hit, he was a monster. But he only was able to play 139 games each year. And it just got worse for him.