Comments on: Best Tiger Offensive Seasons

By: The Detroit Tiger Weblog » Blog Archive » Best Tigers Pitching Seasons

The Detroit Tiger Weblog » Blog Archive » Best Tigers Pitching Seasons — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 01:47:14 +0000

[...] Worst Offensive Seasons Best Offensive Seasons Worst Pitching Seasons [...]

By: The Detroit Tiger Weblog » Blog Archive » Worst Tigers Pitching Seasons

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 03:07:37 +0000

[...] Following up on last weeks look at the best and worst offensive seasons, we’ll look at the pitchers now. [...]

By: Jojo SunDevil

Jojo SunDevil — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 19:10:24 +0000

Thanx for the research! Cobb was playin in the 1900s so if I had to pick the best season since I was alive, I would say Cecil’s year that he hit 51. It was only 51, but it felt like 90. And he had good bat speed then and I think he got a lot of RBIs.

By: BigMax

BigMax — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 22:52:32 +0000

jvwalt — it was from his historical encyclopedia — there were lots of factors, including integration and the creation of minor league systems that “matured” the major leagues and made it more difficult for a player to have a season like Nap Lajoie’s .424 average in the first season of the AL.

I’m paraphrasing, but his point was the truly eye-popping seasons usually occurred in marginal major leagues.

By: ozz

ozz — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 18:31:14 +0000

Thanks for doing all of this research. It’s been interesting to look over the numbers. I agree with the guy who asked if you’d be doing something similar for pitchers. That would be interesting too.

Cheers!

By: jvwalt

jvwalt — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 03:08:04 +0000

I haven’t committed the Collected Works of Bill James to memory yet, so I can’t offer a specific reference… but I believe he did a study that indicated a gradual decline in the difference between superstars and everyday players. If I can try to explain this simply, in the early days of baseball, a supremely gifted player had a huge edge over his more pedestrian counterparts. As coaching, training, diet and exercise have improved over the years, this “talent gap” has been shrinking. That would explain why Cobb so dominates this list — he towered over his contemporaries in a way that’s virtually impossible to do in today’s game. Yes, he’s a great player, but I think the “talent gap” skews this list in favor of the old-timers.

Clear as mud? Thought so.

By: billfer

billfer — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 01:57:41 +0000

Steve -

Here are the best seasons for 1950-2006 by OPS+. I didn’t calculate the awesome index for these, but it doesn’t really shuffle the results greatly.
Best Offensive Tigers Seasons 50-06

Greg – I’ll do the pitchers shortly. Once baseball-reference.com gets the pitcher data sortable in the same way I’ll tackle it.

By: Greg

Greg — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 18:49:10 +0000

And, while we’re doing this, can we do something similar for pitchers, both good and bad? This is a great topic. I’m anxious for spring training to start.

By: Steve "Just say no to Direct TV"

Steve "Just say no to Direct TV" — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 14:50:08 +0000

Hey Billfer,

Love the post, However is there a way to do something in the 50′s and up to last year, thats about as far back as anyone using the internet can remember.
While its nice to know where Ty Cobb was, I never saw him play and its hard to relate to players that long ago. Now Ed Brinkman, I had on my Strat o Matic team one year and your right, he was Bogus.

Steve

By: Andy in WB

Andy in WB — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 03:31:27 +0000

14 out of 16 seasons Cobb was made the top 50.
From 1907-1913, 1915-1919, 1921&22

1907-1909 & 1911-1913 Both Cobb and Crawford made the top 50.

Amazing.

By: Andy in WB

Andy in WB — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 03:17:27 +0000

One of the things I found interesting is that 3 players went back to back with one season being near the start of their career and the next towards the end.

Cobb 1922&1907 ranked 20,21
Kaline 1955&1967 ranked 22,23
Crawford 1903&1913 ranked 40,41