ESPN is mining old ground this week with its look at the top black athletes of all time. Not withstanding our bemusement at how utterly bereft of ideas they must be to spend five minutes on this subject -- I wonder if there will be any basketball players or boxers on the list -- it brings to mind their top 100 list of athletes of the 20th century.
Now, if you're 25, that was a lifetime ago. But I've spent most of my life in the 20th century and can't believe we're already more than a sixth of the way through the next one. So it astonishes me to consider again who wouldn't have made that list in 2000.
Before I lead you on a stroll down that list, a few definitions:
- Let's take a global view. Plenty of great athletes worth mentioning aren't American.
- That said, there are some sports you and I know nothing about. Sorry, world's greatest cricketers, badminton players and rugby athletes.
- This list is speciesist. No non-humans.
- Discounting athletes whose greatness was recognized before 2000. That eliminates Shaq, Brett Favre and Barry Bonds.
Now the list:
Michael Phelps -- Very possibly the greatest Olympic athlete of all time, and certainly the greatest swimmer of all time.
Usain Bolt -- Also could make a claim to greatest Olympic athlete of all time, and certainly the greatest sprinter of all time.
Tiger Woods -- Even though his career fell off a cliff, he's still one of the three greatest golfers of all time.
LeBron James -- the debate is whether he's the equal of Michael Jordan. Let's say he's not. Then he's the second greatest basketball player ever.
Tom Brady -- greatness plus longevity could make him the top quarterback of all time.
Serena Williams -- the best women's tennis player ever. The greatest tennis player relative to her competition ever.
Roger Federer -- the greatest tennis player in history.
Floyd Mayweather -- is he the best pound-for-pound boxer in history? Certainly in the discussion.
Lance Armstrong -- I don't know what you do with this guy -- probably eliminate him. But if you include him, then he's the greatest cyclist of all time.
Wow. What a list. Nine athletes who are on their sports' Mt. Rushmores. And it's not even complete. How about these down-ballot nominees:
Steph Curry, Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan
Peyton Manning and LaDanian Tomlinson
Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Albert Pujols
Rafael Nadal
Sidney Crosby and Jaromir Jagr
Lionel Messi, Ronaldo and Zinedine Zidane
Katie Ledecky -- maybe the greatest female swimmer ever
Allyson Felix -- maybe the greatest female sprinter ever
Who am I neglecting?
Three spectacular sports careers appear to have come to an end yesterday and it's not clear that people are much noticing. Two of those careers ended for all practical purposes years ago. In one case, the sporting public continued to fixate upon the athlete as if he were still at the top of his game. The other has been largely forgotten. And then the third has sprung news upon the world that might mean the denouement of her amazing career, though we can't be sure.
I'm referring, of course, to Tiger Woods, David Wright and Serena Williams. Woods and Williams are, or were once, considered the greatest athletes who ever played their sport. Wright might simply be the greatest Met ever, though that accolade depends largely upon Tom Seaver's 10 seasons elsewhere.
Serena, Greatest of All Time
Williams, the most decorated tennis player ever and at 35 still the best female tennis player in the world, announced yesterday that she is pregnant. The media reported this development in great detail, though it seemed to consider the identity of the father, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, to whom Williams became engaged in December, as an afterthought. Regardless, she says she expects to continue playing after giving birth, but she will be 36 and her attention will be attenuated. It is fair to assume that her dominance has ended as her morning sickness begins.
Tiger, Almost the Greatest of All Time
Serena and Tiger Woods share key attributes with regard to their sports, even beyond their transcendence. Both were racial trailblazers, dragging golf and tennis into the 20th century in their acceptance of black athletes. Both transformed the physique of the average athlete in their sport. Woods's influence appears ephemeral in the former; Williams's in the latter. Additionally, both athletes displayed emotion on the battlefield, something altogether novel on the links, if not on the court.
Unlike Serena, (each needs but a first name to be recognized) Tiger has been a has-been for years. He abdicated his golfing throne on Thanksgiving Day of 2009, when his marital issues spilled into the public consciousness. Knee and back injuries have derailed him since, with a yearlong hiatus from March 2013 to May 2014 when he briefly recaptured the world #1 ranking. But since back surgery that year, Tiger has hardly played, and hardly mattered to golf, except in his absence. News of a fourth back surgery at age 41 is likely the final nail in the coffin of his career on the links and also of the headlines about his absence.
Wright, Mr. Met
David Wright, 34, who from 2004-2010 hit .305 and averaged 24 home runs and five wins against replacement, and who was tabbed by Bill James after the 2008 season as the one ballplayer he'd start a team with, has been hampered by back issues for the better part of this decade. He's suited up for just 75 games since 2015 and requires hours of stretching and treatment just to get on the field of play. His return to the 60-day DL yesterday suggests that there really is no endgame here, except to hang around long enough to collect the last $67 million he is contractually owed over the next four years (2017 included.) At this point the Mets would be wise to work out a deal that pays him off and opens a roster spot for a third baseman who can actually play the position.
This triumvirate has earned something like half a billion dollars from their sports and many millions more in endorsements, so no one is crying for them. But every next tournament win for Serena would have been a new record; every Major for Tiger brought him closer to the mountaintop; and every game played, at bat, hit, run scored, RBI, and walk for Wright extended his career Met record. And now they probably won't happen.
It's a good reminder that young athletes who look like Mt. Rushmore material now can easily be derailed by injury or even by life. We very possibly said goodbye to three of the greatest in their sports all on the same day in April of 2017.
As you are no doubt aware, Albert Pujols entered the 500 HR club last week and then entered the 500+ HR club the next day. Prince Albert leads the AL in HR and slugging percentage at this very early stage, a welcome contrast to his last two seasons of decline and lost greatness.
Before that, of course, Pujols was a historically spectacular hitter for the first decade of his career, averaging .331/.426/.624 with 41 homers each year. Injuries and age have conspired to undermine him both at bat and afield just as he was inking a gargantuan new deal with Anaheim. Because he's been eclipsed by the likes of Cabrera, Trout and McCutchen, and because his team has sagged into mid-standings, we've been forgetting what an all-time great Pujols is even if he hangs up the uniform and forgoes the $189 million awaiting him through age 41.
In fact, when you start ranking first baseman, you get to Albert pretty fast. It's fair to say he is currently the third best cold cornerman of all time and might be second if he keeps this up.
The Iron Horse is in a class by himself, of course. In a career shortened by, well, death, Lou Gehrig added 112 wins against replacement, hit 79% better than average and finished in the top five in MVP voting eight times.
The careers of Jimmie Foxx and Johnny Mize overlapped with Gehrig's and they also towered over their contemporaries. Despite losing three prime seasons to WWII, likely worth about 20 WAR to his record, Mize piled up 71 WAR, hitting 58% above league average. You could make a good case fort Mize as fourth best all time.
Foxx, the quintessential slugger after Ruth and Gehrig, compiled 96 WAR and led the AL in OPS five times.
In fact, Foxx and Pujols are pretty good comparables:
Foxx -- .325/.428/.609
Pujols -- . 321/.409/.599 (so far)
Foxx -- OPS+ = 163; 96.4 WAR
Pujols -- OPS+ = 165; 94.2 WAR (so far)
Foxx -- MVPs - 3; MVP Top 5 - 4
Pujols -- MVPs - 3; MVP Top 5 - 10 (so far)
Best 10 Seasons
Foxx -- .335/.440/.635; 41 HR; 171 OPS+
Pujols -- .331/.426/.624; 41 HR; 172 OPS+
Pujols is a better fielder and baserunner but Foxx showed a glint of Ruthian pitching prowess. In 1939 he threw a hitless ninth in a game for the Red Sox, recording one strikeout. Then in 1945, the Phils let him pitch nine times. In 23 innings he limited batters to 13 hits and four earned runs for a 1.59 ERA. (Pay no attention to the 14 walks and 10 strikeouts.) Take your pick now but Albert has an opportunity to surpass Double-X in short order.
After them, it falls off quickly. Eddie Murray, Jeff Bagwell, Willie McCovery, Harmon Killebrew, Hank Greenberg, Frank Thomas and Mark McGwire are among the next group of greats, but Pujols has already eclipsed them all. Unless these few weeks have been the last embers of Phat Albert's fire and we're to be subjected to seven years of padding, he's entering the Hall of Fame as the second greatest first baseman ever.
New analytic tools have led us to understand baseball better and in new ways. They have magnified the under-appreciated and shined light on the game's nuances. They have helped clubs work more efficiently and provided their early adapters with an edge on the competition.
But they have largely failed one area of the game. And that area's name is Mariano Rivera.
There doesn't seem to be any debate today that Rivera is the greatest reliever of all time. He's the all-time saves leader and possesses the lowest ERA relative to the league ever. He's allowed the fewest baserunners per inning in history. He's been well-nigh unhittable in 96 post-season games. He's spun one pitch into 19 dominant seasons. His worst season, at age 37, was merely excellent.
And yet, the analytic tools don't believe he's a Hall of Famer.
When applied to closers, new analysis asks the following question: where ya been? Appearing for just three outs every other day limits the value of a closer, according to Wins Against Replacement and its ilk, even when his work comes in high-leverage situations. Despite pitching into his 40s, Rivera has just 1200 frames under his belt -- about seven good seasons for a starter. The result is that he has accumulated just 54 wins against replacement, well below the standard for a Hall of Fame pitcher. WAR (or WARP) matters because it's the statistic that comes closest to describing a player's overall value in a single number.
That 54 is from Baseball-Reference, which is the most credible of the three main Sabermetric sites with regard to relievers. Baseball Prospectus pegs it at 31.4 while Fangraphs is at the median of 38.7. The discrepancy has much to do with whether the measurements use underlying data as the true level of performance; i.e., whether Rivera is given the credit (as he should be) for a career-long outlier BABIP or whether that's dismissed as luck.
By comparison, Fangraphs credits Mark Buehrle with 45.7 wins against replacement.
The problem, of course, is that comparing a closer to a starter because they're both pitchers is like comparing the ACLU to the Teamsters because they're both unions.
Misused and under-utilized though they are, closers can still be fairly analyzed by comparing them to each other. That limits the sample more or less to Rivera's contemporaries, but that should be enough, given his dominance.
Rivera's lifetime ERA+ of 205 is about half-again beyond the next best closer in history, Trevor Hoffman. He has the lowest walk rate, by far the highest strikeout rate, by far the fewest blown saves and nearly double the Win Probability Added of any short reliever in history.
ERA+ measures a pitcher's ERA relative to the league at the time. Rivera has limited opponents to 2.22 earned runs per nine innings at a time when the American League is scoring 4.55 against non-Rivera pitchers.
The bottom line is that this is a SABR problem, not a Sandman problem. Clearly, WAR (or WARP) is not designed to handle closers, or at least to compare them to starters. Whatever number of wins Rivera allegedly added to the Yankees with his bat-breaking contributions, they are not being reflected in the sabermetric record.
