Was Rose Really the 5th Best Player on The Team?

[solo-baric]

i'd never take morgan just because i listen to him now and he puts down the reds every chance he gets. you can put a crappy player in with a bunch of good players and they look great. That is how see joe morgan. Pete is on of the best players all time. He's in the top 10.

[Johnny Footstool]

Stats are used to support arguments. You can pick and choose and twist stats to make any argument you want. Thats just the way stats are, not only in baseball, but in everthing. As Mark Twain once said "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Nobody, no matter how indifferent they claim to be, uses stats to take a stance, they use them to affirm their stance. All seriousness aside though, my favorite quote about statistics is "The average human has one breast and one testicle." A deeper favorite of mine "Do not put your faith in what statistics say until you have carefully considered what they do not say." In case you couldn't tell, people using statistics excessively is a major pet peeve of mine. There is a point where people replace intellegent comments with Statistics so they can say, "here is proof you can't argue that" when in reality statistics at times are anything but solid proof.

Sorry, but that's just plain wrong.

Contrary to popular belief, many of us actually check stats before forming an opinion. Many of us modify our opinions based on what the stats tell us.

While I do acknowledge that some people cherry pick stats to support their own position, it's simply not true that people only use stats to affirm their stance.

[Johnny Footstool]

Stats dont show a whole player. HOF'ers should be judged by several factors including production, leadership, fundamentals and love of the game. When you read between the lines Pete should be there representing the team of the 70's and one of the best for all time.

"Love of the game"?

How in the world do you propose judging a player based on his love of the game?

[Wheelhouse]

1) Rose
2) Bench
3) Morgan
4) Perez
5) Concepcion

[CySeymour]

1) Morgan
2) Bench
3) Rose
4) Foster
5) Perez

[vic715]

It must show you what a great team the BRM was when on most of your top 5 picks you don't include Griffey and Concepcion.Those guys were damn good players themselves and if I'm not mistaken both were All-Star MVPS.How would you like to have Geronimo's defense in center right now.I still to this day don't believe the Reds have had an outfielder with an arm like that.

[justincredible]

you can put a crappy player in with a bunch of good players and they look great. That is how see joe morgan. Pete is on of the best players all time. He's in the top 10.

So you are saying Joe Morgan was a crappy player? Yeah I would probably say the same thing about the 2nd best Second Basemen of all-time.

[Always Red]

i'd never take morgan just because i listen to him now and he puts down the reds every chance he gets. you can put a crappy player in with a bunch of good players and they look great. That is how see joe morgan. Pete is on of the best players all time. He's in the top 10.

and so is Joe...they're both in my top ten.

Joe Morgan was a good 2nd baseman when he came to the Reds, and once he was exposed to how Rose (and Bench and Perez) approached the game, Morgan became a great player. Morgan has mentioned this many times publicly.

The synergy among that group of players was amazing, and kudos to those posters above who pointed out that together that group were better players than they were apart.

In terms of sheer talent, I think John Bench blew all the rest away. It's a credit to those BRM players that they knew they were the best, and their desire to be champions, competitiveness with each other, and constantly urging each other to be the best (and professional pride) lifted them to the pinnacle.

To answer the very first question- after thinking about it, I agree, Rose may have been the 5th best player on that team, in terms of baseball talent. But without his competitiveness, the Big Red Machine never happens.

Cincinnati fans instinctively know that, and we've been looking for Pete Rose ever since, which is why we embrace guys like Chris Sabo, Chris Stynes and now, Ryan Freel- we see traces of Pete Rose in all of those hard nosed types.

[EddieMilner]

Sorry, but that's just plain wrong.

Contrary to popular belief, many of us actually check stats before forming an opinion. Many of us modify our opinions based on what the stats tell us.

While I do acknowledge that some people cherry pick stats to support their own position, it's simply not true that people only use stats to affirm their stance.

While I do believe that stats can help you form an opinion. It is fairly obvious, to me at least, that the writer of the blog decided he wanted to prove that Rose was not one of the top 4 BRM members. He then found stats that showed he was right.

[westofyou]

you can put a crappy player in with a bunch of good players and they look great. That is how see joe morgan.

I'd get my sight checked if I was you then.

[princeton]

1) Morgan
2) Bench
3) Rose
4) Foster
5) Perez

pretty good, especially on Astroturf. I would think that a baseball exec from that era would go Bench/Morgan/Foster/Rose/Perez. But in today's era, with more HRs and fewer SBs, then maybe it's Foster/Bench/Morgan/Perez/Rose.

[dfs]

...I think the author has a point....He's misguided, but he has a point. If I have to chose and order the BRM players from the team in the mid-70's there simply isn't any way at all that Rose is in the top two. Morgan was godly and Bench was about as perfect as a catcher can be. That's two of the best players ever at the peak of their ability. I can understand arguements that other players were better than Pete during that stretch, but those miss the point.

There are too many internet writers out there who remember the aftershave ads or Pete as a bloated over-rated Phillies firstbasemen spiking the ball laughing into the dugout to watch Mike Schmitt hit another homer, but that was just a shell of the player he was. Notice the picture of Pete in the quoted article is indeed a Phillies picture.

Pete wasn't at his peak during the 1975-76 years with the BRM. Pete's peak was 8 years earlier. That's almost impossible for us to understand, because Pete was an effective (if overated) player for nearly 10 years after the BRM, but Pete's peak was certainly in 68 and 69. He was not just the best player on the team then, he was arguably the best player in the league.

His peak doesn't look like much because offense was seriously depressed in those years and his value was largely in the OPB portion of OPS instead of slugging, but once you adjust for era, Rose probably deserved the MVP in 1968, but well that Gibson fellow over there had a pitchers park and a pitchers era and he was pretty good too. Notice that the baseball guru doesn't include the 60's in his comparison. I'm sure he was daunted by the era adjustment. So, yeah, if you exclude Pete's peak he looks bad next to his younger team-mates. Well, there's a shocker.

You know how old junior looked last year? You know how you see his range vanishing and there are days when his bat looks slow and everything? Pete Rose in 1976 was as old as Junior was last year. Rose went on to play another 10 years. The breadth of Rose's career is just amazing.

Chris Sabo had a decent run. He was an allstar and an effective player. Make Sabo's peak twice as good as it was and then string THREE of his career's together and you have Pete Rose's career.

[Johnny Footstool]

While I do believe that stats can help you form an opinion. It is fairly obvious, to me at least, that the writer of the blog decided he wanted to prove that Rose was not one of the top 4 BRM members. He then found stats that showed he was right.

Sure, in this particular case, the writer took a stance, then cherry picked stats to back up that stance.

The quote I was addressing insisted that *everybody* uses stats only to affirm their position. That's just not true.

[Always Red]

...I think the author has a point....He's misguided, but he has a point. If I have to chose and order the BRM players from the team in the mid-70's there simply isn't any way at all that Rose is in the top two. Morgan was godly and Bench was about as perfect as a catcher can be. That's two of the best players ever at the peak of their ability. I can understand arguements that other players were better than Pete during that stretch, but those miss the point.

There are to many internet writers out there who remember the aftershave ads or Pete as a bloated over-rated Phillies firstbasemen spiking the ball laughing into the dugout to watch Mike Schmitt hit another homer, but that was just a shell of the player he was. Notice the picture of Pete in the quoted article is indeed a Phillies picture.

Pete wasn't at his peak during the 1975-76 years with the BRM. Pete's peak was 8 years earlier. That's almost impossible for us to understand, because Pete was an effective (if overated) player for nearly 10 years after the BRM, but Pete's peak was certainly in 68 and 69. He was not just the best player on the team then, he was arguably the best player in the league.

His peak doesn't look like much because offense was seriously depressed in those years and his value was largely in the OPB portion of OPS instead of slugging, but once you adjust for era, Rose probably deserved the MVP in 1968, but well that Gibson fellow over there had a pitchers park and a pitchers era and he was pretty good too. Notice that the baseball guru doesn't include the 60's in his comparison. I'm sure he was daunted by the era adjustment. So, yeah, if you exclude Pete's peak he looks bad next to his younger team-mates. Well, there's a shocker.

You know how old junior looked last year? You know how you see his range vanishing and there are days when his bat looks slow and everything? Pete Rose in 1976 was as old as Junior was last year. Rose went on to play another 10 years. The breadth of Rose's career is just amazing.

Chris Sabo had a decent run. He was an allstar and an effective player. Make Sabo's peak twice as good as it was and then string THREE of his career's together and you have Pete Rose's career.

great points, and a great post

[Sea Ray]

While I do acknowledge that some people cherry pick stats to support their own position, it's simply not true that people only use stats to affirm their stance.

I disagree. There are Redszoners who affirm their stance on players they've never seen play. This is particularly true of judging minor leaguers or draft picks. These "scouting reports" are put together purely by statistical analysis.