Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="connie, post: 2732829, member: 7882"] Over the years many changes, including rule changes, have been implemented to foster a perceived balance between hitting and pitching. The success of the strategy is borne out by one of the most awe-inspiring statistics almost never cited in popular baseball discourse: since the inception of the live-ball era, the overall batting average for each year for [I]all [/I]players has remained around .260 to .265 (with some obvious slight variation above and below),while the standard deviation has [I]decreased [/I]rather steadily. What do we learn from this? Simple: the difference between the best and the worst has decreased. Meanwhile, the overall performance of all players has unquestionably increased. This is why it is quite arguably more impressive for a "good" player today to hit, say, .310 than it is for a "great" player from the 1930s to hit .350. Bob Gibson was surely one of the great pitchers of his era. And his 1968 season may have been his best. But people repeatedly misconceive the significance of his 1.12 ERA. As a raw number, the figure seems incomprehensible when compared to ERAs of other pitchers over the decades. But in the context of 1968 (and the few years leading up to it), it is only 1 of 7 ERAs among starters less than 2.00. (This lead to the lowering of the mound, as everyone knows, in order to tilt the advantage back in favor of hitters.) Compare with Pedro Martinez' year 2000 campaign. Pedro ended the year with a 1.74 ERA. The next closest starter in the AL was Clemens, with a 3.70 ERA. This means that Martinez allowed almost 2 fewer earned runs per 9 innings pitched than the next closest starter in the league--a figure that is far more impressive than Gibson's feat in 1968. People often speak of Martinez's year as among the best in baseball history, alongside Gibson's. I think there is a good argument that it isn't even close, particularly considering the fact that players were generally better in 2000 than 32 years earlier. Many, many other factors to consider, however. The point is that raw numbers and magical whole numbers ("30 wins"; ".400" BA; "300 KOs"; etc.) tell us little outside of context. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach