Home / General / Clickbait snares target audience

Clickbait snares target audience

/
/
/
2211 Views

Top 100 of anything articles are almost always pretty silly, but they’re harmless Internet fun, and this ESPN list of the top 100 baseball players of all time is no exception.

Some comments, general and specific:

(1) These kinds of lists always have to strike some sort of balance between the view, well supported by all empirical observation, that in absolute terms athletic performance is constantly improving, and the annoying fact that this would suggest that any such list should be completely dominated by contemporary performers.

One way of dealing with this is to simply evaluate players in regard to how dominant they were in their own era, with no adjustment made for the gradually improving quality of overall competition over time. The ESPN list appears to follow this approach, but takes it to something of an extreme: the second-youngest player in the top ten was born in 1934, with Barry Bonds being the only player in this pantheon whose career took place in the last half century.

(2) Players being significantly overrated, assuming no adjustment for increasing quality of play over time:

#3 Hank Aaron: Aaron was probably the most consistent superstar ever, and of course achieved the most famous record-breaking feat in baseball history, but his best single season doesn’t rank among the top 200 best seasons in baseball history, so it’s something of a stretch to put him quite this high.

#13: Ken Griffey Jr. This ranking is purely a product of the extent to which Griffey reminded lots of sportswriters of Willie Mays. Griffey was on his way to justifying a top ten all-time ranking when he was 30, but the second half of his career was ruined by a combination of injuries and rapid aging.

#28: Yeah Jeets. This is LGM so no comment necessary

#34: Pete Rose. This isn’t a moralistic judgment: this ranking is simply way too high on pure performance terms. Another guy, like Griffey and Jeter, who sportswriters loved far beyond his actual level of accomplishment.

#42: Nolan Ryan. An amazing athlete and a unique player, but he’s not close to being one of the top 50 players of all time.

#63: David Ortiz (!): Pure recency effect bias. Not one of the top 200 players in MLB history by any possible metric, except maybe “Leading off SportsCenter highlights.”

(3) Under-rated players:

#8: Barry Bonds. Obviously being punished for the PED thing. No objective measure could keep him out of the top three.

#26: Alex Rodriguez. Same story. Easily in the top ten on performance grounds.

#54: Lefty Grove. One of the two or three most dominant pitchers in baseball history, he’s not in the top 15 pitchers on this list.

#65: Cal Ripken. Yeah the streak was kind of a bogus freak show, but this is definitely too low. His two best seasons are among the best ever and he was a very good player for basically forever.

You may now start your quibbiling.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Linkedin
This div height required for enabling the sticky sidebar
Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views :