| 2010-03-10 18:00:00 (link to chat) | How easy is it for you to run queries? For instance, on how players who saw a dramatic drop in HRs after 3 good years fared in Year 5, and how young players who saw a dramatic drop in HRs after 2 years fared in Year 4?
(Richie from Washington) | Running an actual query takes no effort as it's a simple Ctrl+Enter or click of the Execute button, but deriving them can be time-consuming and frustrating. Then again, I'm self taught and haven't been an SQLer my entire life. As far as your question regarding other similar drops comparable to what was discussed in my David Wright article, look for a blog post this weekend from me that deals with this very subject. But, to get it out of the way here and now, no, I do not consider Gary Gaetti's TWO years and dropoff to be similar to Wright. A commenter brought up Bobby Murcer, which is a good comp, but the issue with that one is that Murcer fell to -0.11 SDs from the mean in his 5th year whereas Wright was -0.60 SDs; the raw tallies are similar but with context they are far apart. (Eric Seidman) |
| 2010-02-23 13:00:00 (link to chat) | After DiMaggio and Mantle (or Mantle and DiMaggio), who do you think was the THIRD best centerfielder in Yankee history?
My vote would go to the truncated CF career of Bobby Murcer, though I'm sure some younger fans might insist on listing Bernie Williams as the final member of the trinity.
Having witnessed both careers in their entirety, I think Murcer was foced to do some heavy lifting as THE MAN for some offensively challenged teams, while Bernie benefitted greatly from surrounding talent.
Would Meusel or Damon be in the discussion? If the Yanks hadn't whimped out on signing Beltran when they had the chance, the answer might have been differnt!
(BrettG from Leftfield) | No respect for Earle Combs... Not that Earle is the right answer, it was just fun saying that. Without stopping the chat to carefully research my answer, my gut feeling is that Bernie has to be the third. Murcer is definitely in the picture, especially because his 1971 and 1972 seasons, when viewed in context are just AMAZING, huge, huge seasons. Our translated stats have them at .370/.456/.624 and .334/.400/.671. No one noticed. Unfortunately, Murcer just couldn't maintain that level of production, in part because the Yankees had to move over to Shea Stadium. (Steven Goldman) |
| 2010-02-23 13:00:00 (link to chat) | I will be picking up my BP2010 at the Yogi this Sunday, so forgive this question. David Wright: back on the superstar track in 2010? He certainly looks like a Brick S. House in those NY Post photos.
(Tex Premium Lager from NJ) | Thanks for bringing up the Yogi! I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that our tour activities kick off this Sunday. Kevin, Christina, Jay Jaffe, a fat guy with a beard... Who could ask anything more? We're going to be video-ing the activities, too, so bring your best questions, wear funny hats, bring a friend... We'll be in Manhattan the following evening. Check the events page for specific details.
I expect a rebound from Wright, whose problems seemed kind of reminiscent of the aforementioned Bobby Murcer's problems at Shea Stadium -- the park effects got him to think too much, change his swing, with subpar results. Murcer never quite got over it, something he talked about for the rest of his life. Wright has some advantages that Murcer didn't, like easy access to video -- I think he'll bounce back. (Steven Goldman) |
| 2009-06-24 13:00:00 (link to chat) | I have a Mitchell & Ness 1969 Yankees road jersey #1 (Bobby Murcer). Very cool, but I bought three cars for less when I was younger.
(RHughes from nj) | Exactly... It's a lot of money these days.
I don't feel comfortable wearing a current player jersey or T-shirt as I feel like it would somehow compromise the appearance of objectivity, but if someone were to hand me a Roy Sievers #15 1949 Browns jersey I would wear it no problem... I miss Bobby Murcer. It's not like we were close. We were barely acquaintances who happened to work for the same people. But he was very nice to me personally in our few encounters, everyone I work with spoke incredibly highly of him, and the cancer thing strikes close to him. Also, just purely on a baseball basis, I wish his 1971-72 seasons got more appreciation. He towered, towered above the league in those years.
...And yes, Sievers really did wear #15 in 1949. (Steven Goldman) |
| 2009-02-06 13:00:00 (link to chat) | Steven,
Taken in context with the era he was playing in, where would you rank Bobby Murcer’s 1971 offensive season (.331/.427/.543) with those of other Yankee stars of the past 40 years? The numbers are gaudy enough by today’s standards, but given the norms of the early 70’s (1971 A.L. average .247/.317/364), that has to be considered a bona fide monster season.
Ironically, Murcer finished 7th in the MVP voting that year, while he finished 5th the following season after a somewhat inferior, if still impressive, performance (.292/.361/.537).
It’s been 34 years, but aside from rumored personality clashes with Gabe Paul and Bill Virdon, I still can’t figure out what the Yanks were thinking when they sent Murcer packing to S.F. in October, 1974. His disappointing showing at Shea that season (though he caught fire in September and carried the offense during the team’s ill-fated pennant drive) seemed to be insufficient reason to jettison the team’s best player; especially when they’d shortly be returning to Yankee Stadium’s short porch after one last season at Shea.
(Rich from NJ) | I know I've written about Murcer's 1971-72 before. He was crazy good in those years, a 10-win player in context. If you ranked all the big seasons by the Yankees, these would rank somewhere after all the big Ruth/Gehrig/DiMaggio/Mantle seasons, but still quite high up the list. I don't know what went wrong between Murcer and George Steinbrenner and I got the sense that neither did he, though it might just be that George's hair-trigger impatience got the better of him after Murcer's rough showing at Shea. You're right that those years deserve to be better remembered. Unfortunately, no one was thinking about offensive context in the early 70s. (Steven Goldman) |
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