Update on the 50 Superstars Project

              I appreciate everybody’s interest/enthusiasm for the project.   Thank you all for your comments and participation.   Responding to a few comments posted on my earlier article:

1)  Responding to Evanecurb (first post).. .(a) I DID match Carl Yastrzemski against Frank Robinson.   (b) It’s not a hard and fast rule that there have to be a certain number of players from a certain decade.  You can’t make rules for the Almighty.   If there are 5 superstars in one decade and 1 in the next, you don’t make phony selections to create a balance.   (c) Many times you can’t REALLY say what decade a player belongs to.  (d)  The "decade" issue should not be given priority over similar problems.    I match players from the same time period when I can, but I also match catcher against catcher, pitcher against pitcher, Chicago player against Chicago player, San Diego outfielder against San Diego outfielder, and short-career player against short-career player.   It wouldn’t be right to ignore all of those and just make matchups on the timeline.

2)  Responding to Steven Goldleaf—It may well be true that the players of 1990 are a stronger group than those of 1900, but the purpose of creating the 50-superstar list was so that I could use to study another issue, which is the effect of having a superstar in his prime on the direction of the franchise.  To have a strong time-line bias in the group would interfere with that study.  RipCity’s comment on this was essentially right.

3)  Responding to Marisfan—40 names were easy because I was picking 50.   If I was only picking 40, then picking 40 would be extremely difficult, because there would be no tolerance for errors.  I left Albert Pujols, Christy Mathewson and Albert Pujols out of the original 40—an oversight, obviously, but it doesn’t matter because we can cover it in the final 10.   If I didn’t have the final 10, I couldn’t pick 40.

4)  Again Marisfan—It isn’t that studies have been unable to show that there is a meaningful effect for batting order.   It is, rather, that study after study has definitively shown that there is NOT a meaningful effect.   There is a big difference between "I don’t know how to measure that" and a good study that shows no effect.

5)   I don’t know and don’t really care at the moment whether it’s Alomar or Chipper.   Alomar had huge impact on pennant races.   I made up a method for that and studied it one time.   Alomar, like Koufax and Carl Hubbell, was a pivotal player in pennant battles.   Asking people what they think implies that you have to pay SOME attention to what they think. 

OK, let’s review the second-round results now and set up the third round.

1)  Christy Mathewson defeated George Sisler 91 to 9.  Sisler is out.

2)  Hank Greenberg defeated Joe Jackson 52 to 48, which was the closest vote of the second round.   We will move both players into the next round.

3)  Jackie Robinson defeated Ernie Banks 70 to 30.   Banks is out.

4)  Warren Spahn defeated Don Drysdale 83 to 17.   Drysdale is eliminated.

5)  Roberto Clemente defeated Al Kaline 87 to 13.   Again, I don’t necessarily agree with that.  I kind of think that Kaline may have been the greater player, but honestly, Clemente is more what I need for this study, anyway.    Clemente started slowly, had a clear peak period and then departed suddenly.   Kaline had great years at ages 20 and 21, may have been "actually" better years later, but not obviously better in any case.  Clemente is better for the study.  It’s sort of what I mean by a true superstar, as opposed to simply the quality of the player.   A superstar has a series of high-impact seasons. 

6)  Frank Robinson defeated Harmon Killebrew, 84 to 16.   Killebrew is eliminated.

7)  Dizzy Dean defeated Mickey Cochrane, 58 to 42.   Don’t necessarily agree, but it is what it is.   I already saved Cochrane from elimination once; I can’t save him twice.

8)  Pete Rose defeated Carl Yastrzemski, 56 to 44.   Well. . .OK.   I saved Yaz once; I can’t pull him out of the fire again. 

9)  Steve Carlton defeated Whitey Ford, 79 to 21.  Ford is out.

10)  Tony Gwynn defeated Dave Winfield by the surprising margin of 76 to 24.   OK.   Winfield is gone.

11)  Nolan Ryan defeated Rollie Fingers, 92 to 8.   Fingers is eliminated.

12)  Rickey Henderson defeated Andre Dawson, 92 to 8.   Dawson is gone.

13)  Cal Ripken defeated Jim Thome, 84 to 16.   Thome is eliminated.

14)  Ichiro defeated Mariano, 60 to 40.   I think the competitive performance by Mariano justifies my decision to keep him in the study after he was demolished in the voting in the first round (by Pedro Martinez), but I can’t save Mariano again.   He gone.

15)  Pedro Martinez defeated Buster Posey, 92 to 8.    No Posey.

16)  Albert Pujols is leading Chipper Jones, 83 to 17.   I think I’ll grant Chipper a reprieve, though.  Pujols should have been in the original 40, of course; losing to him is kind of like losing to Babe Ruth.   I’m going to keep Chipper around.

              OK, here’s what I’m going to do.   First of all, I’m going to move three players (Christy Mathewson, Rickey Henderson and Albert Pujols) into the "automatic" group, increasing the number of automatic players from 40 to 43.    That will leave us with 15 players in competition—13 winners from the previous round, plus Joe Jackson and Chipper Jones, who I am going to give another shot to because of special problems.  

              As it happens, just by chance I guess, the last fifteen break down as five pitchers, five infielders and five outfielders, if we count Pete Rose as an infielder, and he did play about 60% of his career games in the infield.   So let’s do this.   Let’s do five-candidate rounds for the next three spots, and that will give up 46 players chosen and 12 candidates for that last four spots.   Then we’ll sort that out and get the last four.   OK? 

              Yoseph. . . I’ll look forward to your 50 when you get it done.