Top 200 Baseball Players Ever - #175-173 BILL MAZEROSKI, JOE SEWELL, JOE GORDON

EDIT - YOU CAN FIND THE UPDATED RANKINGS UNDER THE LABEL BEST BASEBALL PLAYERS EVER

#175 BILL MAZEROSKI 2B Pirates

1956-72

OPS+ 84

BFW 35.2

WARP3 91

Worst bat in the list; only sub 100 OPS bats on the list - Concepcion, Bancroft, Maz, Dick Bartell, Ozzie Smith. Maz and Ozzie, without debate really, are considered the best gloves ever at their positions.

#174 JOE SEWELL SS Indians

1920-33

OPS+ 109

BFW 35.2

WARP3 91.5

Interesting is where the Pete Palmer metrics, BFW/PW, radically diverge from the BP metric WARP3. Also interesting are situations like Maz and Sewell, almost twins in their end product; that shows just how much value is ascribed to Maz's glove; Sewell's 109 OPS+ isn't special, but with a SS glove he makes the list solidly - but his glove isn't in the same universe as Mazeroski's, who lugs a bad bat, not an average bat - but with an OPS+ of 84, a bad bat, all the way to a BFW and WARP3 that reach Sewell's exactly.

Mazeroski had a great glove. That's the point.

#173 JOE GORDON 2B Yankees/Indians

1938-50

OPS+ 121

BFW 28.8

WARP3 94.2

Spoiler alert - Joe Gordon was not the greatest Yankee second baseman of all time.

Revelation 13 - Mike Myers Is Not Funny

From Tony Scott in today's NYT:

The word "unfunny" surely applies to Mr. Myers's obnoxious attempts to find
mirth in physical and cultural differences but does not quite capture the
strenuous unpleasantness of his performance. No, The Love Guru is downright
antifunny, an experience that makes you wonder if you will ever laugh
again.

The funny's a tenuous thing; you can lose it at any point and similar to one's virginity, once it's lost, it takes a helluva magic trick to get it back. It's as close to being an athlete as any other human endeavor in that quality; except athletes have predictable career arcs and a decline that usually occurs over a protacted period of time. The funny can leave anyone at anytime. I don't know that it happens to everyone; George Carlin, let me suggest, still has the funny, which is why, based on career value, were one doing a ranking of stand up comedians in the way that I'm currently ranking baseball players - you'd have to rank Carlin at #1 ahead of Pryor; you'd like Pryor for peak value, but Carlin runs over him in terms of longevity.

There's a more systematic way to approach this; really, what I should do is do some research and chart this more methodically, but I feel comfortable in saying that you've observed the same phenomenon ; The Case of the Disappearing Funny. Robin Williams, for example, once had funny and no longer does. Same with Billy Crystal. Makes you wonder about the funny sucking powers of Comic Relief; I wonder if you went back and looked at the tapes, could you see the precise moment when the funny left each of their bodies; in my mind, if you watched it frame by frame, it would look like when Buffy would stake the vamps - you could see their funny just turn to dust.

I'd throw Whoopi into that basket too, but she's never had the funny, let's be honest.

If you can't find all of those old Comic Reliefs on the youtubes or the whatnot, consider Bowfinger, a set on which both Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy clearly left their funny.

Top 200 Baseball Players Ever, #177-176, REGGIE SMITH and BOBBY ABREU

edit - you can find the updated rankings under the label - best baseball players ever

#177 REGGIE SMITH RF Red Sox/Dodgers

1966-82

OPS+ 136

BFW 31.5

WARP3 92.4

Not on the list - the Dodger infield from the 70s. Cey was very, very close. Garvey was not.

#176 BOBBY ABREU RF Phillies/Yankees

1996-

OPS+ 136

BFW 30.1

WARP3 88.6

Note that he and Smith have the same bat, adjusted for era. Abreu right now, this second, would be lower, he benefits from a nudge upward that active players are getting. It's a small nudge for Abreu. He and Andruw Jones, who has already appeared, are good examples of guys who have been in sharp decline since the heightened steroid scrutiny, but who haven't been tarred at all with the "cheater" brush. Abreu's power disappeared seemingly overnight, and Jones is in total freefall. This isn't to say they (1) used steroids or (2) gave up steroids or (3) that steroids are a significant factor in their declines even given (1) or (2). It's to say that even within baseball, the tarnishing of guy X as opposed to guy Y has been capricious. And considering the entire sports landscape - I heard Terry Bradshaw just this week talk about using steroids under a Dr. care - and why is it that Evander Holyfield gets to keep his reputation as a good guy; look at the evidence connecting him with steroids. One of the tests of any system, be it legal or ethical, is its ability to be applied consistently. The scarlet letters we've thrown onto certain baseball players of this era as opposed to other athletes serve as examples of how wrongheaded our approach to steroids has been; and while I'm largely wishcasting with this next part - I think history will not be kind to this period of sports commentary regarding PED use.

200 Greatest Major League Baseball Players Ever, #179-178 TIM KEEFE and BOB JOHNSON

EDIT - YOU CAN FIND THE UPDATED RANKINGS UNDER THE LABEL BEST BASEBALL PLAYERS EVER

#179 TIM KEEFE RHP Giants

1880-93

ERA+ 125

PW 35.6

WARP3 88.1

Another example of a pre 20th C player downgraded with the most recent adjustments. I recently read Bill James saying something to the effect that he regrets pushing the 19th century players as high up his rankings as he did, given the vastness in the differences between the game they played and the modern game. Worth noting here that this list is just for the top MLB players, there aren't the types of statistical adjustments that we've got for Negro league statistics, for example, that would put them on the list.

#178 BOB JOHNSON LF Athletics

1933-45

OPS+ 139

BFW 35.7

WARP3 89.8

Not on the list - the other Bob Johnson.

Beavers Were Once the Size of Bears - Part 2

(read part one first, please. it's right below. Thank you.)

Now I'm waking up - and I realize, unlike Dexter Manley, I can read. It’s a miracle! Kind of like Helen Keller, I place my face against the mighty, ravenous water heater, trying to find the rules, trying to look for lightning bolts or skulls and cross bones or some indicia that if I do X, that's the last thing I'll ever do.

I own this hot water heater.

That was my second fully formed thought this morning.

I own this hot water heater. I own this shit. Like my Joe Montana rookie card and my lucky pants. This hot water heater belongs to me.

And now it's going to kill me.

It didn't.

I was able to figure out how to turn it off; I cleaned up as much of the flooded area as was I capable, I made - and then pushed back a plumbing appointment, recognizing I had a 7 AM class that would last 5 hours and that if I wasn't there to tell the first quarter students about the tactile/kinesthetic style of learning - by god, they'd never learn to unlock their scholarly potential by doodling rainbows or swastikas or “Future Mrs. Timberlake” hearts during my lecture.

Got home at noon, still without sleep since 3 or a shower since...well, since Saturday.

Yes, it was Monday. Don’t judge me, people! I was depressed and lounging in my own funk and I am unashamed!

The plumber who I had already hired twice before to fix broken toilets remembered me and asked if I had a room in which he could stay permanently.

Funny. Hi-larious.

Also funny is that I have also hired two plumbers to fix my shower, one to fix my sink, and then another to fix yet another toilet problem.

I've owned my home for 6 years.

7 plumbers in 6 years.

Not to mention that I've had 3 roof leaks and 5 ceiling repairs. A new 14 hundred dollar AC compressor, a year and a half of power outages that led to my needing a new refrigerator and TV, a hurricane caused busted window, an attack of hundreds of bees. Hundreds of bees that I was able to fend off with a half bottle of Kaboom and my plucky spirit.

Oh - And my complex once tried to tow my car.

Total cost for the new water heater.

$949.70.

And ceiling repair.

$150

And I'm five pounds too heavy. Okay, 15 pounds.

But I’m still better off than Mike Vick.

Real quick – I have zero sympathy for Michael Vick, imprisoned for dog fighting. I’m just glad he’s not one of my guys.

Except…not for nothing, but I eat pork.

And in terms of measurable brain activity, the only difference between dogs and pigs is pigs are smarter.

So – we torture a dog and call it prison.

We torture a pig and call it breakfast.

(I don’t want to walk down the road with you regarding how pigs are raised and treated on their way to slaughter, but it’s bad, sister, b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-ad.)

Maybe there’s some small difference between the two things, some small difference that one could point to between torturing dogs and torturing pigs.

But probably not enough difference to justify the difference in treatment.

One is prison. One is breakfast.

Don’t misunderstand, I do it too. Not only wouldn’t I torture a dog, I’ve stopped kids from being cruel to animals in a way I’d never stop someone from being cruel to a, you know, person. If you were to tell me “yup, I regularly kill and eat kittens for the meat” there is literally zero chance I would ever speak civilly to you regardless of what level of beaver worship you promised me.

But I eat pork.

It’s delicious.

And I have no moral justification for it. None.

If it turns out that I’m wrong, and above us isn’t only sky, and someone is there at the pearly gates after I’m dead to say I’m not allowed in because I didn’t pray to Mecca five times a day or I didn’t confess my sins to a guy in a robe or I never had my head dunked in a lake to be born again –

Well, you know, okay.

That stuff is so antithetical to the way I view the world, that if the world actually works that way, it would seem incomprehensible to me that this was the result. I wouldn’t want to be a member of that club. I’ll go somewhere else, thanks.

But if St. Peter is actually a giant bear sized beaver, and he says I’m going to hell for all the bacon I ate.

I’d have absolutely no defense.

I’m guilty.

100% Guilty.

My only hope is I’m serving some purgatory time right now.

7 plumbers in 6 years.