ESPN.com has message boards. Sometimes, I browse through them to remind myself of how damned intelligent I am compared to the average sports fan. Yesterday, while sipping on a delicious wheat beer, I stumbled across
this thread.Here's the premise - a dude starts a topic, saying that if Jim Edmonds isn't worthy of being in the Hall of Fame, then neither is Kirby Puckett. Basically, Edmonds is better than Puckett. This is true. He was better. Edmonds is like, the most underrated player of the past decade or more. Puckett was excellent, but Edmonds was better. Have I said that enough? Let's review:
Jim Edmonds > Kirby Puckett
The idiots over at ESPN.com disagree. Let's see their arguments.
DaBizzle says:Big Deal Edmonds had 2 Good seasons in one of the biggest offensive eras in the history of baseball
2 good seasons? Horse shit. Jimmy's OPS+ from 2000-2005 (which takes into account how "big" the offensive eras are):
148, 150, 163, 161, 172, 136
Wow. That looks like...5 great seasons, and one very, very good season. DaBizzle has be debunked.
sayheykid_1 says: Again, Kirby played in a different offensive era, Edmonds put up theose numbers after he turned 30 and after MLB had the offensive explosion.
That's why we have statistics to account for differences in offensive eras. Jim Edmonds is a better hitter, no matter what.
julferts69 says: With all those HR's Edmond hit, you would think he would have more than 7 career RBI in 3 more seasons than Kirby.
Kirby Puckett had 7244 at-bats in his career. Edmonds has 6100 so far. So, shouldn't Puckett have more RsBI, given that he's had over 1100 more opportunities to drive in runs? It's not a good state to judge individual players, anyway. But still.
gunnarthor says: He more often finished in the top 10 of MVP voting then not. He made 10 all star teams and retired with more gold gloves and silver sluggers then any other outfielder (and since passed by Griffey and Bonds).
This is why judging players by "Top 10 MVP finishes," Gold Gloves, and Silver Sluggers is stupid - doing so by the latter two would tell you that Kirby Puckett was better than Ken Griffey Jr. and Barry Bonds (absurd!). And, in this case, Jimmy Edmonds.
DaBizzle says:
And we come back to the era in which Edmonds plays.... Kirby was consistently one of the best hitters in the league during his career. I've never heard that about Edmonds, and you can only make an argument really in 2 of his years
OR LIKE 5 OF HIS YEARS, WHERE HE WAS FUCKING AWESOME. HISTORICALLY AWESOME. AND GOD DAMNIT, THERE ARE STATISTICS TO COMPARE PLAYERS FROM DIFFERENT ERAS. EDMONDS IS STILL BETTER.
Phew. Kirby Puckett only had 2 years in which his OPS+ exceeded 140. Jim Edmonds had 5 of these, and in 3 of them, his OPS+ was over 160.
El dood says: If you were to poll the GMs -- from both Puckett's era and today -- the vast majority of them would take Puck as their CF'er over Jimmy.
A recent poll of general managers asked "If you had to choose one player to start a franchise with, who would it be? "
One GM selected Yadier Molina. Another, 8932 year old Takashi Saito. This is not a good litmus test.
Hossdriver says: Jim had more power, but Kirby struck out just over half as many times as Edmonds did, meaning he probably made more productive outs.
Jim has also walked 898 times in his career, compared to Puckett's 450...meaning that Jim had more productive plate appearances. Not probably. But definitely. Strikeouts, by the way, are outs...and usually a good indicator of isolated power. But since you look foolish striking out, it's held against players who do it a lot (even if they're still really fucking awesome).
ABs for the two are nearly identical with Kirby doing it in 3 less seasons
This is not true. 7300 and 6100 are not "nearly identical."
.156 in the WS for Edmonds is pretty lame...
In 32 at-bats. Given the small sample size, this is meaningless.
And oh my god, it gets really good here:
ThatsTheDagger says:
I'll end this argument with one name.
Sandy Koufax.
I just spit my delicious wheat beer all over my screen! Anyway, I predict this will make your side's argument weaker.
Koufax dominated his era for 6 years. Kirby Puckett, along with Junior, were basically considered the two best outfielders in the game for a stretch of 5 or 6 years, and Puckett was at or near the top for 10 of his 12 years. Dominating for a medium length is more important than being above average for a long period of time.
"Dominating for a medium length is more important than being above average for a long period of time." ?????????????????
That's exactly what Jim Edmonds did! He actually dominated. More than Kirby Puckett. With the bat, and in the field (check out their FRAA numbers). Wait, what the hell did that have to do with Sandy Koufax?
I would say that not even Edmonds would put himself in Puckett's class, but Jimmy Boy has the reputation as a jerk and the kind of guy that loves himself a little too much.
Jim Edmonds has the reputation of a really awesome baseball player who is really helpful to the younger guys in the clubhouse. You know, like a "veteran mentor." Not that it matters nearly as much as you think it should.
I'm not going to argue that Koufax in his prime was more dominating that Puckett in his, but in reality... they aren't that far apart.
You're a fucking stupid human being.
And then, someone suggests that "ThatsTheDagger" should read up on EqA, WARP, FRAR, FRAA, and so on (since Jim has better numbers for each), and the dude says this:
EqA is derived from Raw EqA, which is (H + TB + 1.5*(BB + HBP + SB) + SH + SF) divided by (AB + BB + HBP + SH + SF + CS + SB). REqA is then normalized to account for league difficulty and scale to create EqA.
Are you kidding me?? There is no way to know if that formula would rank players accurately. The more complicated the inputs of any function get, the more error and dillution there will be in the outputs. These stats try to get way too complex to answer questions that are obvious to the human eye.
Ah yes, the human eye. I remember when I was a little kid, Mark Whiten hit 4 home runs in a game for the Cardinals. My human eye would tell me that Mark Whiten was the best player in the history of the game. Actually, he kind of sucked. Statistics back me up on this.
Kirby Puckett was a better player than Jim Edmonds. Edmonds had his moments where he was a very good hitter, Puckett was a great hitter his entire career.
By "moments," I'm sure you mean "5 year stretches where he was one of the best centerfielders of all time. Much better than the very good Kirby Puckett."
Kirby's stats are not diminished by seasons of batting .250 or striking out as much as 167 times, his numbers are lifted by his amazing consistency and absolutely clutch World Series moments.
The year Jim Edmonds struck out 167 times, he had an OBP of .411 and an OPS+ of 148. Kirby only topped the latter once, and never came within 30 points of the former. Jim hit .250 in 1999, when he was so injured that he could only play in 55 games. This doesn't really hurt his career marks.
Let's brainstorm some players who have had "absolutely clutch World Series moments" and see if we want them in the HOF:
Joe Carter - no
Tino Martinez - no
Luis Gonzalez - no
Willie McGee - no
Jim Leyritz - no
See?
Here's some more from other posters:
when you think of great baseball players in the 90's, kirby puckett is probably one of the top 5 names that first comes out of your mouth.
Not exactly true, but still, this makes him better than Edmonds? Ah, the "quick, name 5 dudes off the top of your head" litmus test rating. Puckett rings in with a 44.9, and Jim's is a paltry 31.7. I see now.
Back to "ThatsTheDagger."
Albert Belle gets thrown into this discussion, because he, like Puckett, had his career cut short by injury. Here's what our boy Dagger has to say:
Puckett and Belle are different in one glaring area. Even if Puckett wasn't the greatest guy off the field, when he was at the park, playing the game, or doing anything associated with baseball, he did it with class and just exuberated joy. He was player and fan friendly and was a straight up winner. Belle was an a-hole off the field and made no effort to change that perception on the field.
I kind of liked Belle. He was a great player and fun to watch. I don't care if he's an asshole. That's Fernando Vina's problem. Still, are you saying this has anything to do with Hall worthiness?
Puckett's personal problems are just that, personal. If Albert Belle had a stroke today and was dying in the hospital, do you think players from all over the country would fly to his hospital to visit him. Doubt it. Do you think kids and young adults across the country (including myself) would get choked up hearing that he died and watching some of the memorial videos and tributes? Doubt it. Do you think the Indians would host a memorial service that attracted 40,000 fans in person? Doubt it.
This is the stupidest thing anyone has ever said, and really insulting to the family of Albert Belle - who by the way had a 192 OPS+ in 1994 with a .714 SLG% (!!!). That offsets any "chemistry issues" caused by Belle being any sort of a prick.
Edmonds is a lot closer to Belle than Puckett in this regard. Kirby had that affect on the game, to say that it did not play into his Hall of Fame induction is obviously wrong. But to say that those things should not have an affect of his induction is just idiotic.
Jim's career SIICOD (Sadness induced in case of death) rating: 65.4
Kirby's: 127.3 (third all time! whoa!)
Albert Belle's: 18.2 (gah!)
And that's it. The debate came to a screeching halt at this point, probably because everyone is taking some time to mourn the death of....wait, no. Uncontrollable laughter.
(By the way, remember that this is the impact that bad journalists and other bad deliverers of information have on the world. The Gregos, Joe Morgans, Bill Plaschkes, Anne Garcias, etc. They're making lots of people stupid.)
