great timekiller for baseball fans

At baseballreference.com there’s a project attempting to rank all baseball players all-time by having fans judge matchups between the players in massive numbers. Great way to kill time in situations such as an airport waiting gate.

HERE.

The career statistics for the players are there on the screen, in cases where you’ve never heard of a player from a very long time ago.

By now all the matchups are reasonably even, though only in a couple of cases was it a really tough call.

Some of the interesting ones I got:

*Albert Pujols vs. Mike Schmidt. Interesting, but I think Pujols is already ahead of Schmidt by now. Pujols is that good, and has been that good for long enough to convince any doubters.

*Harold Baines vs. Scott Rolen. I would have chosen Baines, off the top of my head, but after looking at the numbers I had to go with Rolen.

Interestingly, Barry Bonds ranks quite low among all-time hitters, around #63. That would never happen with a purely statistical treatment, so it’s obviously the subjective fan measurement of steroid significance that drags him down from where he probably belongs: #2, just behind Babe Ruth.

Which reminds me of one of The Onion’s better sports articles:

Barry Bonds Took Steroids, Reports Everyone Who Has Ever Watched Baseball

“I can see how some people might be shocked about Bonds’ doping, but this has been an open secret for years among the people in my industry,” said air-conditioner repairman Mike Damus. “I’m sure it’s an even more widely known fact in baseball.”