Awesome post and i grow up a Habs fan
- Jan 22, 2007
- 14,645
- 7,741
This is the biggest problem in the modern game. But I'm sure we'll tackle it in another thread.
Just to be clear here is that i believe that guys like Green, Markov, Enstrom, Letang, Boyle and Doughty are closer to Orr, in terms of offensive skill, than Orr's contemporaries were and none of those guys are in the top 20 in scoring this year.
Orr of course would top that list but the list of guys he topped in the late 60's and early 70's was pretty weak in comparison skill wise to the above group IMO.
And yes that includes Brad Park
.
some years this could happen but it's not a lock either IMO.
.
Well on pure offense terms the 2 comps are not that far off, remember Housley was a excellent offensive player
You mean the role he created
I'm talking more about the role of Dmen today, not sure any player could alter that in the same terms, ie. level of dominance that happened say in the late 60- late 80's
Of all of the top season statistically since 1967 for Dmen the 1st time anyone from the 21st century shows up is Nick Lidstrom from 06 at the 53rd position and only 4 seasons of the top 100 stat wise since 1967 Lidstrom and Green 2 times each and well Brian Leetch in 01 as well.
http://www.hockey-reference.com/pla...val=&c4stat=&c4comp=gt&c4val=&order_by=points
Live Balls may have influenced the Live Ball Era. Just sayin' is all.
I disagree. Reasons are below.
No. Maybe it's like a player getting all of his team's unassisted goals or something. But home runs are not the only way to score.
(Regardless how the rest of this post comes across, I would still like to say that Ruth was one of the best hitters, the most productive power hitter of his era, and he still makes many other HOFers look merely average.)
Baseball's dead ball era ends when Ruth started hitting home runs. There are numerous factors beyond just ballparks:
- You know how hockey coaches told their players not to use slap shots around the 1940-ish NHL? Same with baseball and fly balls. Because baseball teams were socialized to believe that there was a correct way to play baseball and that flyballs were outs, no one else really tried for them before Ruth.
Accordingly, most players in the league were contact hitters since there were no power hitters immediately before Ruth. That's how players were trained and how the teams were scouted and built.
Ruth won the league home run race 54-19 in 1920. By 1922 guys like Hornsby caught on (Hornsby led HRs that year) and by the end of Ruth's career homers were much more common. Jimmie Foxx hit 58 while Ruth was still a Yankee (Ruth's record was 60), and Lou Gehrig posted four seasons with 45+.
- I should point out that decades earlier, players couldn't try for the fences since fly balls were easy outs in the days when fielders could catch them on one bounce and still record the out. So that's why they were coached to avoid fly balls.
- Baseball parks weren't built with home runs in mind. Many were built when outs could be recorded on one bounce, and fields were very short at the edges of fair territory. While center field was very far (Rhiessan71 noted this) home runs of 280 feet had been possible in the Baker Bowl in Philadelphia since the 1800's. Old Yankee Stadium was the house that Ruth built, so it makes sense that 280 foot homers would be possible there, at least before the field was lengthened slightly to 301 feet in 1928 for the rest of his time in pinstripes.
- The pitches were easier to hit since pitcher tampering (spitballs et al.) was made illegal. Players started playing with fresh baseballs rather than the same ball all game (if it remained in play). An effort was made by the Commissioner's Office to make the baseballs more visible to batters around 1919-1920 after a batter died after being hit by a pitch.
- These highly visible baseballs now had corked centres, to make it possible to hit them farther. Three guesses as to what the Live(ly) Ball era is named after? That was not for safety, and was purely to encourage scoring.
- Pitchers were often tired by the end of games, as they were expected to pitch 9 innings. They didn't always make it, but that was the expectation. Bullpen specialists and closers were decades away. Since goalies can last all game, I'll say this is like having defencemen play all game (which they did ~100 years ago,) while the forwards take turns and get to take short naps in the dugout. (Long nap = skates on fire, bubble gum on visor.) Pitcher fatigue was less of a problem when pitchers could tamper with the ball to make their lives easier late in the game.
- As already noted, there were no black players, like Josh Gibson who hit even more home runs in the Negro Leagues than Ruth hit in the Majors. I think this has been covered elsewhere.
- No, Babe was an awesome hitter. Babe Ruth was a good pitcher. A good pitcher who had one excellent season, and many good ones. I can't say he was awesome. If you point to his win totals, I will have to start an equivalent to Brodeur Is A Fraud since other pitchers on the Red Sox had similar W-L totals and ERA. And because it's baseball and not hockey, it's not just one backup with a small sample set.
- I should also point out that Ruth stopped pitching when the rules changed for pitcher tampering. Call him Babe Cechmanek. Sure he went 4-0 as a Yankee, but with a 5.52 ERA in those games, Ruth got shelled. Those games were won because the Yankees scored enough runs to save Babe Fuhr's bacon.
- Another reason for success is that he played for the equivalents of the Canadiens. While Montreal had crafty Sam Pollock, the Yankees had the ability to buy the best players available. Imagine if Edmonton didn't need to lose Coffey, then Gretzky, and then everybody else, but got to keep their dynasty players AND comfortably buy Mario Lemieux when the small market Pens got in trouble.
How do you think the Yankees got Ruth in the first place?
I disagree. Reasons are below.
No. Maybe it's like a player getting all of his team's unassisted goals or something. But home runs are not the only way to score.
(Regardless how the rest of this post comes across, I would still like to say that Ruth was one of the best hitters, the most productive power hitter of his era, and he still makes many other HOFers look merely average.)
Baseball's dead ball era ends when Ruth started hitting home runs. There are numerous factors beyond just ballparks:
- You know how hockey coaches told their players not to use slap shots around the 1940-ish NHL? Same with baseball and fly balls. Because baseball teams were socialized to believe that there was a correct way to play baseball and that flyballs were outs, no one else really tried for them before Ruth.
Accordingly, most players in the league were contact hitters since there were no power hitters immediately before Ruth. That's how players were trained and how the teams were scouted and built.
Ruth won the league home run race 54-19 in 1920. By 1922 guys like Hornsby caught on (Hornsby led HRs that year) and by the end of Ruth's career homers were much more common. Jimmie Foxx hit 58 while Ruth was still a Yankee (Ruth's record was 60), and Lou Gehrig posted four seasons with 45+.
- I should point out that decades earlier, players couldn't try for the fences since fly balls were easy outs in the days when fielders could catch them on one bounce and still record the out. So that's why they were coached to avoid fly balls.
- Baseball parks weren't built with home runs in mind. Many were built when outs could be recorded on one bounce, and fields were very short at the edges of fair territory. While center field was very far (Rhiessan71 noted this) home runs of 280 feet had been possible in the Baker Bowl in Philadelphia since the 1800's. Old Yankee Stadium was the house that Ruth built, so it makes sense that 280 foot homers would be possible there, at least before the field was lengthened slightly to 301 feet in 1928 for the rest of his time in pinstripes.
- The pitches were easier to hit since pitcher tampering (spitballs et al.) was made illegal. Players started playing with fresh baseballs rather than the same ball all game (if it remained in play). An effort was made by the Commissioner's Office to make the baseballs more visible to batters around 1919-1920 after a batter died after being hit by a pitch.
- These highly visible baseballs now had corked centres, to make it possible to hit them farther. Three guesses as to what the Live(ly) Ball era is named after? That was not for safety, and was purely to encourage scoring.
- Pitchers were often tired by the end of games, as they were expected to pitch 9 innings. They didn't always make it, but that was the expectation. Bullpen specialists and closers were decades away. Since goalies can last all game, I'll say this is like having defencemen play all game (which they did ~100 years ago,) while the forwards take turns and get to take short naps in the dugout. (Long nap = skates on fire, bubble gum on visor.) Pitcher fatigue was less of a problem when pitchers could tamper with the ball to make their lives easier late in the game.
- As already noted, there were no black players, like Josh Gibson who hit even more home runs in the Negro Leagues than Ruth hit in the Majors. I think this has been covered elsewhere.
- No, Babe was an awesome hitter. Babe Ruth was a good pitcher. A good pitcher who had one excellent season, and many good ones. I can't say he was awesome. If you point to his win totals, I will have to start an equivalent to Brodeur Is A Fraud since other pitchers on the Red Sox had similar W-L totals and ERA. And because it's baseball and not hockey, it's not just one backup with a small sample set.
- I should also point out that Ruth stopped pitching when the rules changed for pitcher tampering. Call him Babe Cechmanek.
Sure he went 4-0 as a Yankee, but with a 5.52 ERA in those games, Ruth got shelled. Those games were won because the Yankees scored enough runs to save Babe Fuhr's bacon.- Another reason for success is that he played for the equivalents of the Canadiens. While Montreal had crafty Sam Pollock, the Yankees had the ability to buy the best players available. Imagine if Edmonton didn't need to lose Coffey, then Gretzky, and then everybody else, but got to keep their dynasty players AND comfortably buy Mario Lemieux when the small market Pens got in trouble.
How do you think the Yankees got Ruth in the first place?
I disagree. Reasons are below.
No. Maybe it's like a player getting all of his team's unassisted goals or something. But home runs are not the only way to score.
(Regardless how the rest of this post comes across, I would still like to say that Ruth was one of the best hitters, the most productive power hitter of his era, and he still makes many other HOFers look merely average.)
Baseball's dead ball era ends when Ruth started hitting home runs. There are numerous factors beyond just ballparks:
- You know how hockey coaches told their players not to use slap shots around the 1940-ish NHL? Same with baseball and fly balls. Because baseball teams were socialized to believe that there was a correct way to play baseball and that flyballs were outs, no one else really tried for them before Ruth.
Accordingly, most players in the league were contact hitters since there were no power hitters immediately before Ruth. That's how players were trained and how the teams were scouted and built.
Ruth won the league home run race 54-19 in 1920. By 1922 guys like Hornsby caught on (Hornsby led HRs that year) and by the end of Ruth's career homers were much more common. Jimmie Foxx hit 58 while Ruth was still a Yankee (Ruth's record was 60), and Lou Gehrig posted four seasons with 45+.
- I should point out that decades earlier, players couldn't try for the fences since fly balls were easy outs in the days when fielders could catch them on one bounce and still record the out. So that's why they were coached to avoid fly balls.
- Baseball parks weren't built with home runs in mind. Many were built when outs could be recorded on one bounce, and fields were very short at the edges of fair territory. While center field was very far (Rhiessan71 noted this) home runs of 280 feet had been possible in the Baker Bowl in Philadelphia since the 1800's. Old Yankee Stadium was the house that Ruth built, so it makes sense that 280 foot homers would be possible there, at least before the field was lengthened slightly to 301 feet in 1928 for the rest of his time in pinstripes.
- The pitches were easier to hit since pitcher tampering (spitballs et al.) was made illegal. Players started playing with fresh baseballs rather than the same ball all game (if it remained in play). An effort was made by the Commissioner's Office to make the baseballs more visible to batters around 1919-1920 after a batter died after being hit by a pitch.
- These highly visible baseballs now had corked centres, to make it possible to hit them farther. Three guesses as to what the Live(ly) Ball era is named after? That was not for safety, and was purely to encourage scoring.
- Pitchers were often tired by the end of games, as they were expected to pitch 9 innings. They didn't always make it, but that was the expectation. Bullpen specialists and closers were decades away. Since goalies can last all game, I'll say this is like having defencemen play all game (which they did ~100 years ago,) while the forwards take turns and get to take short naps in the dugout. (Long nap = skates on fire, bubble gum on visor.) Pitcher fatigue was less of a problem when pitchers could tamper with the ball to make their lives easier late in the game.
- As already noted, there were no black players, like Josh Gibson who hit even more home runs in the Negro Leagues than Ruth hit in the Majors. I think this has been covered elsewhere.
- No, Babe was an awesome hitter. Babe Ruth was a good pitcher. A good pitcher who had one excellent season, and many good ones. I can't say he was awesome. If you point to his win totals, I will have to start an equivalent to Brodeur Is A Fraud since other pitchers on the Red Sox had similar W-L totals and ERA. And because it's baseball and not hockey, it's not just one backup with a small sample set.
- I should also point out that Ruth stopped pitching when the rules changed for pitcher tampering. Call him Babe Cechmanek.
- Another reason for success is that he played for the equivalents of the Canadiens. While Montreal had crafty Sam Pollock, the Yankees had the ability to buy the best players available. Imagine if Edmonton didn't need to lose Coffey, then Gretzky, and then everybody else, but got to keep their dynasty players AND comfortably buy Mario Lemieux when the small market Pens got in trouble.
How do you think the Yankees got Ruth in the first place?
Good post. This sheds a lot of light on the fact that when there are statistical outliers in any sport, quite often there are many other factors at play rather than that player being simply that much better than everyone.
Rhiessan71
Just a Fool
Oh I know exactly what you believe and if you mean closer to Orr than Park, Potvin and Bourque....then I think you believe the sky is pink in your world too.
See IMO Orr winning the Art Ross could happen and the top 10 is beyond a lock.
C'mon dude, both Bourque and Lidstrom produced better and played the whole rink to boot.
Housley was all out offense and still couldn't keep up to either of them....close my ass.
Again, points fly right over your head.
First off, the role of D-men today is many times more offensively allowed than when Orr came into the league.
Every single D-man in the game today plays almost reckless compared to the way the position was played in the 60's.
Second, you keep bringing up other D-men to compare Orr to, that's your first and biggest mistake right there.
Orr blew away the very best forwards offensively(I don't know how many more times I'm going to have to repeat that for you), comparing him to other offensive D-men is almost insulting and surely imposes an unfair limit where one shouldn't exist.
I mean hell, Coffey playing in an even higher scoring league, with Gretzky and going all out offense couldn't even break his record.
Does the enormity and pure ridiculousness of that not sink in or what?
Unless of course you believe that beating the likes of Lafleur, Dionne and all 3 members of the French connection is something that any D-man in the league today could do
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VMBM
Hansel?!
Actually, Viktor Zhluktov won the scoring title (9 points like Orr [and Potvin], but had more goals and played less games), and USSR was the 3rd best team in the tournament after Canada and Czechoslovakia, with many of their stars missing - though I don't think that was the sole reason for their failure.
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But if you look at clips you cannot help but compare to modern games and that suddenly makes Orr look somewhat lame. It is mean to say but look at the shots for example, people would laugh at those these days.
And yes, if you gave a decent modern NHL player one of Orr's sticks he would still out shoot Orr easily, both in speed and precision.
- Jan 22, 2007
- 14,645
- 7,741
This argument is completely flawed. It's like saying Transformers III was a better movie than Star Wars because the modern special effects are better. Of course this is not taking into account that if the original Star Wars was made today, the special effects would destroy everything due to advances in film technology.
You can't compare a 1970 Bobby Orr to a 2010 Mike Green without factoring in that:
A. Orr dominated his era in a way that even the best offensive defensemen today (like Green) could NEVER think of doing.
and
B. Orr today would have benefitted from 40 years worth of advances in the game. That means better training, better equipment and the like.
It is purely absurd to think that a 1970s player would ever face a 2010 player head-to-head. BUT, even then, in the case of Orr, I would give the 1970 version the nod over a 2010 Mike Green. But a 2010 Orr would absolutely destroy a 2010 Mike Green. Like I said before: a 2010 version of Bobby Orr would be Lidstrom, Bouwmeester, Regehr, Crosby and Datsyuk rolled into one player. No one today would touch him, period.
Eisen
Registered User
Not sure about that one. I read sometime ago about another baseball great that didn't like Ruth and he said homeruns are not hard to do, he can do a lot too if he tried to but that is really not the proper way to play baseball. He then went on to have a lot of homeruns in the next two games and then went back to his normal hitting. Just to show that it is not hard but he chose not to do it.
2010 Orr is a figment of your imagination. He does not exist and it is impossible to know how good he would be in modern day hockey.
What you are essentially stating is that you can predict how a player would do in a completely different playing environment, with completely different training during all of his life and a completely different role on the team. If you really are that good you should probably be a scout.
For example, what do you base your conclusion that he would be even close to Datsyuk when it comes to stickhandling? Do you base it on any particular video clips that I can see? Because I have not found anything impressive at all.
Dennis Bonvie
Registered User
CarlWinslow
@hiphopsicles
Wasn't part of your previous post saying that if you gave a modern player Orr's stick, he would out shoot Orr?
And now putting Orr into the modern NHL is a figment of his imagination? Why can you do one and not the other?
Uncle Rotter
Registered User
It was 18 teams in his final full season (1974-75). That same year 25% of NHL players from the 1971-72 season were playing in the WHA.
Because I'm not changing the player. For Orr to dominate or even compete in the modern day NHL people need to imagine that Orr played differently, trained differently his whole life and managed to take in all new developments in the game better than anyone else.
I can take my old example again. WHY would Orr be better than Datsyuk when it comes to stick handling, what can one ever base that conclusion on?
Rhiessan71
Just a Fool
Well you see, there is this thing called natural talent.
No amount of training and practice is going to make you a great player if you don't have the talent to begin with.
There is no player in the league today that comes close to matching the natural talent level of Gretzky, Lemieux or Orr.
Especially Lemieux or Orr physically. Gretzky wasn't as physically talented as either of those two but his hockey sense and instincts were almost super human.
Sokil
Ukraine Specialitsky
Sokil
Ukraine Specialitsky
you're confusing orr's 'natural talent' for the lack of talent the rest of the league had back then
Rhiessan71
Just a Fool
Yeah, LaFleur, the members of the French Connection in Buffalo, Dionne, Hull, every player in the '76 Canada Cup...yep no talent to compare him to there
Ty Cobb was that player and ruth did his damage in an all white league.
In exhibiton games between major leaguers and Negro league teams (or all stars) the MLB guys won only something like 40% of the games as I recall so it's unclear how much of Ruth's stats would have fallen in a truly integrated MLB during his playign days.
Yeah, LaFleur, the members of the French Connection in Buffalo, Dionne, Hull, every player in the '76 Canada Cup...yep no talent to compare him to there
I must have missed something as there were around 240-320 players in the elague when Orr played not 20.
I had a typo there and I think adding Washington and KC to the competition actually furthers my point.
We all get the mancrush here but your last comment shows no respect for Lidstrom, crosby or Datsyuk.
Read my previous psot on why it's possible and heck even likely that Orr would be touchable.
Orr would still be a great player in the NHL in 2010 but he most likely would not be the dominant Orr of the late 60's and early 70's.
Rhiessan71
Just a Fool
There was a sight more than just 20 in the '76 Canada Cup Tournament and they were the world's best to boot....who won that MVP again?
Your whole argument for any of the past greats is to say they weren't that good, the league was that bad.
You continue to fly this argument in the face of the parade of cross-generational players presented that negate almost all doubt.
I'm sorry but until you can explain why Lidstrom, who is quite noticeably below the level he was 10 years, is still one of the top D-men in the league. How was Sakic able to considered one of the best in the league late in his career when in his prime he couldn't hold a candle to Gretz or Lemieux.
Jagr, there wasn't even a single player that could hold a candle to him just a few years ago and he was easily out shone by #99 and #66 before that.
There is only one explanation....the League is simply not as good or as talented as you believe it to be.
Faster for sure but not more talented, robots that can skate really fast.
Training level is variable, actual Talent level is not.
