Reading Material

I've flown cross-country twice in the past five days, so I've had plenty of glorious reading time. I'm catching up on Allen Barra's Clearing the Bases, a 2002 collection of essays that use statistics to take counter-intuitive positions in baseball's greatest debates.

Barra's statistical efforts are sometimes crude in light of the sabermetric explosion of the past few years -- he leans too heavily on winning percentage to argue Sandy Koufax's worth, for example -- but I especially appreciate a few nuggets among the 22 essays:

* Mike Schmidt might be the greatest player of all time. Barra makes a fairly persuasive argument that Schmidt beats out Babe Ruth, who had the huge advantage of the segregated era, as well as Mickey Mantle, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, and -- heresy! -- Willie Mays. "He had more players to compete against than Williams, Musial, Mantle, Mays and Aaron had to in most of their careers. Relief pitching evolved into an art during Schmidt's career. Mike Schmidt dominated batting statistics for a fourteen-year period like no player since Ted Williams in his prime, and he did it during a span when competition was keener than ever before."

There's more to his argument than that, like Schmidt's place on the league leaderboard in various offensive categories. He led his league in home runs eight times, OBA three times, slugging five times, and had three MVPs. I wonder if Barra would update the essay in light of Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez's careers, and how he would factor in their steroid use. (He doesn't mention performance enhancing drugs in Clearing the Bases.)

* The most overrated player of the final three decades of the 20th century? Pete Rose. The most underrated? Tim Raines. Especially when compared to one another. As Raines tried to extend his career in the early '00s, Barra was already arguing his Hall of Fame case, an argument that has gained a lot of mainstream traction lately.

* Speaking of Bonds: At the time Barra wrote this book Bonds and one other player were the only ones with at least four seasons of 30 HRs and 30 SBs. Can you guess the other? Left to my own devices I never would have guessed.  UPDATE: Technically, this is true. There were only two. But Barra has his facts wrong. See my note below in the comments.