Ross Barnes

I haven't ready a whole lot about Ross Barnes. But I bet if he were alive and in his prime today I'd take him over Jed Gyrko at 2B.

But, he also wouldn't hit .429

Nobody, at least I think nobody, thinks Ross Barnes wasn't an athlete. It's just that the system he played in was much different than current baseball.

"But, he also wouldn't hit .42
Nobody, at least I think nobody, thinks Ross Barnes wasn't an athlete. It's just that the system he played in was much different than current baseball."

Right. The issue of whether (and how) pre-20th Century baseball players can be judged against their contemporary counterparts is a completely different issue than that of athleticism then vs. now.

As for the former issue, I don't think anyone will ever come up with a way to translate the performance of 19th C players into statistics that allow us to compare them alongside today's players.

But as for athleticism -- while there's no way to prove it -- I'll take the pre-19thC American male over his modern counterpart. Throwing tree stumps, bucking hay, and wrestling cattle created a lot of very strong and durable men. Better than the modern weight room. Give those guys modern equipment and teach them today's game and we'd have something worth watching. And that's just the white guys. Think of all the talent represented among the slave population.

Outta Leftfield, I have some correction for you re: balls and strikes in 1873. According to "Haney's Base Ball Book of Reference", which was published in 1867 and was the official rule book of that time, 3 "unfair pitches" constituted a walk after the umpire warned the pitcher to make fair pitches. The definition of an unfair pitch was one " that the striker was in the habit of being able to hit". Once the pitchers box was reduced to 6 ft sqare the batter no longer could request differing hights of pitches, it was the pitchers responsibility to deliver a pitch that was "strikeable". Plus I agree with tallguy, the people in the 1800's given todays equipment and rules would compete better than most.

Was not aware of that fair-foul hit thing which for me further makes stats during that time meaningless.
Can you imagine what guys like Ichiro could do with a rule like that?

And I wasn't aware of mykeedee's point that:

3 "unfair pitches" constituted a walk after the umpire warned the pitcher to make fair pitches. The definition of an unfair pitch was one " that the striker was in the habit of being able to hit".

A lot of players in later eras weren't in the habit of being able to hit Walter Johnson's fastball or Ed Walsh's spitter or Phil Niekro's knuckle-ball or Steve Carlton's slider or Mariano Rivera's cutter. But those pitches were called as strikes, not balls.

So in 1873 we've got:
1) fair-foul hits
2) "unfair pitches" are balls and 3 balls makes a walk
3) fielders have no gloves and league fielding average is .831
4) more unearned runs are scored than earned runs
5) balls caught on a bounce are outs
6) pitchers toss underhand from 50 feet

This sounds like a very difficult game to play in a lot of ways. And I'm sure you had to be a very good athlete to succeed at this game. But, to my way of thinking it is a fundamentally different game than baseball played 20+ years later, let alone the baseball of today. Baseball stats from John McGraw and Walter Johnson's eras bear a basic resemblance to the stats of the 1930s or the 1950s or the stats of today. But the stats of 1873 are tracking a fundamentally different game.

One thing that really gives me pause is that the catchers of 1873 had no gloves--let alone face masks or shin guards. Imagine trying to catch Randy Johnson or Nolan Ryan or Bob Feller or Lefty Grove or Walter Johnson without a glove. Scary thought! The pitchers of 1873, in order avoid actually killing their catchers from 50 feet away, had to deliver the ball very differently than do the pitchers of today, or the pitchers of 100 years ago.

So it just makes me queasy to include players cards from what we might call the Paleolithic Era of baseball. That doesn't necessarily mean we shouldn't do it, but it still makes me queasy.

Regarding "unfair pitches" it is my understanding that hitters could request the pitch be in a specific location. And the pitcher was required to attempt to deliver the pitch to that location. Imagine Harper or Stanton being able to tell the pitcher put the pitch right here ......

Actually this reminds me a little of when I was a kid and played pickup games in the neighborhood. We too had no catching equipment so even though we had a glove the pitcher throwing hard as he could was frowned upon. Of course we had no umpire so about anything the hitter did not like was summarily called a ball. Result all pitches had to be softly thrown so if you were pitching you had to be deceptive and somehow groove the ball down middle of plate belt high but moving so hitter would swing but not make solid contact. I developed a lot of bad mechanics trying to pull that off which later caused me issues in organized ball where catchers had full gear and umps were calling balls and strikes. I still remember my catcher calling nothing but 4 seamers and explaining he did so because he could not catch that other funky stuff I threw.

No matter what you think of the politics of it, Ross has a darned good strat card.
47 doubles, 19 triples, 40 stolen bases, over .390 obp, and not much of a dropoff between righties and lefties
http://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1471715

No matter what you think of the politics of it, Ross has a darned good strat card.
47 doubles, 19 triples, 40 stolen bases, over .390 obp, and not much of a dropoff between righties and lefties
http://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1471715

Very true! And for all of my fussing about Barnes, I'm using his card in a current 200M league. So I can't claim to be entirely consistent!