Debate No. 2: Who was the better player: Kirby Puckett or Joe Mauer? (Debate/poll concluded - thread open)

[h2oface]

Is this a debate between commenters with 3 and 5 previous posts? Am I reading that right? Pretty impressive debate, especially if that is the case.

[TopGunn#22]

I voted for Puckett.  And I have a picture of me and Joe Mauer in my sports den. Joe and my son are the same age and once played a High school baseball game against each other.  As I look at their career stats I was surprised how even they were.  Ultimately, what it came down to for me is that Puckett was an integral part of TWO World Series Championships.  Winning it all is primarily a TEAM accomplishment, but for what both players meant to their teams when they played (which was a LOT) I had to give Puckett the nod for the two rings.  I'll always believe that the Twins FO squandered at least one World Series Championship in the Mauer, Santana, Morneau years.  They just never made that bold trade deadline deal to push the Twins over the top.   

[Squirrel]

3 hours ago, h2oface said:

Is this a debate between commenters with 3 and 5 previous posts? Am I reading that right? Pretty impressive debate, especially if that is the case.

Yes. Between two posters. Each debater posts an opening statement that goes public simultaneously. Debater A gets the first rebuttal, then B, then A, then B. Then both submit closing statements that go public simultaneously. Debate over. So, basically, each has four posts to make their case. We post a pre- and post-debate poll for comparison and open the debate thread at the conclusion for public comment. This was the 2nd debate. The 3rd one starts today with opening statements on the topic ‘Building a strong lineup vs Building a string rotation -which is more important.’ And a 4th debate will begin Nov. 29. If you have topic ideas and/or want to participate, send a PM to @Squirrel and/or @Otto von Ballpark. Or, just check back and follow along!

Glad you enjoyed this. It’s a new thing we are trying. The posters involved have enjoyed the experience as well, I think. We will reveal identities soon, but wanted to get the poll and comments in first.

[Brock Beauchamp]

3 hours ago, h2oface said:

Is this a debate between commenters with 3 and 5 previous posts? Am I reading that right? Pretty impressive debate, especially if that is the case.

The posters’ names are obfuscated to avoid bias in reading and polling. 

[Platoon]

Both arguments were persuasive, and well articulated. My vote was more for the player than for the "arguer". Mauer. 
 

The "who had the most championships" theory falls somewhat flat when you consider that putting Babe Ruth on some of those Twins teams wouldn’t have moved the needle. 
 

Both players were excellent in their own ways. But Mauer played the second most important position in the game, and the most difficult with a talent very few have ever brought to that spot. And he did it for quite a few years. As for the injuries, well Puckett also suffered his own, simply later in his career. Neither were injured at a time of their choosing, and both got to play long enough to determine a fair assessment of their work. 
 

Finally, as far as pure physical baseball talent. Mauer could transition to an IF spot, it’s doubtful Kirby could have. While the Twins moved Mauer to 1B, I always thought his arm and glove would have played well at third also. And as for those who don’t think a good glove is important at first base, have you saw Sano play there? I rest my case! 

[Brock Beauchamp]

20 hours ago, Otto von Ballpark said:

The Mauer case brought up his relative standing among catchers, which is important to his value.

But that might be different than "best player" in absolute terms -- better players are often steered toward center field, rather than allowed to catch.

Looking at offense -- Rbat (hitting) + Rbaser (baserunning) + Rdp (double play avoidance):

Puckett career 255 runs above average in 7831 PA
Mauer career 242 runs above average in 7960 PA

That's razor-thin but does give Puckett a career edge of about 1.3 runs per 600 PA.

Mauer does have the best single-season value (2009), although Puckett holds spots 2-4. On a per-600 PA basis, Mauer's 2006 would jump up to 3rd.

But if we're going to discuss value versus true talent level (ie. "better player"), one can't ignore Puckett's home/road splits any more than we can ignore Trevor Story's home/road splits when evaluating how good he is at baseball (which is literally a $100m question around baseball right this moment). Story's splits are even more extreme than Puckett's but a .148 split is bigger than any I can recall seeing outside Coors so that must be factored into Puckett's evaluation.

Pure results don't tell us the complete story, which is why it's also important to try to compare players of different eras to their own peers. While it's obviously a more extreme era split, we can't compare someone like Carew to someone like Cobb without trying to put each of those players into context of their own era and peer performance.

[Squirrel]

54 minutes ago, TopGunn#22 said:

Winning it all is primarily a TEAM accomplishment, but for what both players meant to their teams when they played (which was a LOT) I had to give Puckett the nod for the two rings.  I'll always believe that the Twins FO squandered at least one World Series Championship in the Mauer, Santana, Morneau years.  They just never made that bold trade deadline deal to push the Twins over the top.   

You gave Puckett the nod because of the championships, then acknowledge that winning isn't a singular accomplishment and that the FO never helped Mauer, etc, to get there. I think from a pure baseball standard and argument, Mauer was the better player. But from a purely emotional, fan perspective, everyone LOVED Puckett. And never the 'tween shall meet. 

But ... whenever someone mentions how the FO didn't help Mauer and co. win ... I always, always, always go back to 2006. Damn it. That always hurts.

[Brock Beauchamp]

1 minute ago, Squirrel said:

But ... whenever someone mentions how the FO didn't help Mauer and co. win ... I always, always, always go back to 2006. Damn it. That always hurts.

And 2010. Liriano in 2006 and Morneau in 2010 make those rosters look WAY different going into the postseason.

Lots of teams are injured heading into the postseason but few win it all with one of their top 3-4 players off the roster.

[Squirrel]

1 minute ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

And 2010. Liriano in 2006 and Morneau in 2010 make those rosters look WAY different going into the postseason.

Lots of teams are injured heading into the postseason but few win it all with one of their top 3-4 players off the roster.

Quit reminding me a sad memories! Damn you!  

[Platoon]

5 minutes ago, Squirrel said:

……… But from a purely emotional, fan perspective, everyone LOVED Puckett. And never the 'tween shall meet. 

 

I don’t know if players care, or even should care about how they are perceived by fans. As you stated everyone LOVED Kirby. But for  some inexplicable reason many fans felt animosity towards Mauer. While many made his contract a point of contention, I also think his low key, and private nature also played into the equation. I have always thought that how an athlete spends his personal time is his own thing, and as for the contract, I couldn’t care less how much of the Pohlad fortune Mauer or anyone else manages to receive for their talents. 
 

Regardless of their talents during their careers Kirby seemed bigger than life, and in comparison it could be said Mauer was "smaller" than life. But in the end, it ended up exactly in reverse. 

[dex8425]

I didn't realize how good of a topic this was until pulling up their baseball reference pages. 55 WAR for Joe, 51 WAR for Puckett. Joe has 100 more games. Honestly, I was thinking the answer is Puckett before this debate, but I'm actually voting for Mauer now. I never saw Puck play. Too young. 

[USAFChief]

Great job by the debaters.

 

I voted for Puckett. Puckett impacted games, WANTED to impact games. Mauer was warm milk. Look at the postseason ... Mauer never won a game. Never impacted a game. Puckett won two WS. 

 

And then there's this...which player would you rather spend your hard earned money on to watch play baseball?

 

Would you rather watch Mauer, with the winning run on first, let 2 fastballs down the middle go by, and settle for a walk--leaving the job of driving in that run to a lesser player? Or watch Puckett go up there and do everything in his power to rope one in a gap somewhere?

 

 

 

[Brock Beauchamp]

15 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

And then there's this...which player would you rather spend your hard earned money on to watch play baseball?

Would you rather watch Mauer, with the winning run on first, let 2 fastballs down the middle go by, and settle for a walk--leaving the job of driving in that run to a lesser player? Or watch Puckett go up there and do everything in his power to rope one in a gap somewhere?

Sure, but this has no correlation to who is the better baseball player.

Eddie Rosario was an absolute riot to watch on the diamond but that doesn't mean he's a better player than Joe Mauer.

[Otto von Ballpark]

1 hour ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Pure results don't tell us the complete story, which is why it's also important to try to compare players of different eras to their own peers. While it's obviously a more extreme era split, we can't compare someone like Carew to someone like Cobb without trying to put each of those players into context of their own era and peer performance.

Adjusting to compare across eras makes sense -- otherwise it's virtually impossible to compare between them (deadball era, lively ball era, etc.).

But that's different than adjusting for position within an era. Joe Mauer being farther ahead of an average or replacement level catcher circa 2010 than Puckett being ahead of an average or replacement level CF circa 1990 doesn't necessarily make Mauer the better player. (Again, "better" is subjective so one could define it in terms of relative positional value, but many would define it otherwise.)

[Brock Beauchamp]

6 minutes ago, Otto von Ballpark said:

But that's different than adjusting for position within an era. Joe Mauer being farther ahead of an average or replacement level catcher circa 2010 than Puckett being ahead of an average or replacement level CF circa 1990 doesn't necessarily make Mauer the better player.

Except that wasn't done at all. The two were compared to the best players at the position, not replacement level or average.

If someone has three top ten seasons at the position over a two decade span, what a league-average position player does during that time is irrelevant. That player is being compared to perennial All-Stars and potential Hall of Famers with no reference made to the average player.

And Mauer shined in comparison to those players and bested them all, including a guy who is easily going to stroll into Cooperstown, Buster Posey.

[mikelink45]

When I want someone to step up and take over the game - it would have been Kirby.  Sorry Joe, you are mister steady and a great player, but I want that spark plug, igniter, whatever you want to label it and no one has stepped up more dramatically than Puckett.   I was at all the WS games and it was more than game six - he was everywhere and so exciting. 

[Otto von Ballpark]

Just now, Brock Beauchamp said:

Except that wasn't done at all. The two were compared to the best players at the position, not replacement level or average.

Same basic issue here. Era comparisons aren't perfect, but at least you're comparing them to a few hundred full-time peers every season -- it's a good sample. But a positional comparison -- whether best, or average, or replacement -- is looking at a tiny subset of only 30 players per season. Mauer's advantage there may be more about the variability within that small sample, rather than a reflection of greater absolute talent.

And of course, position groups aren't equivalent samples either. There may always be more big fish (baseball talents) in the center field pond as in the catcher pond. That's good to know in some contexts, but in others, it's less relevant.

[Brock Beauchamp]

15 minutes ago, Otto von Ballpark said:

Same basic issue here. Era comparisons aren't perfect, but at least you're comparing them to a few hundred full-time peers every season -- it's a good sample. But a positional comparison -- whether best, or average, or replacement -- is looking at a tiny subset of only 30 players per season. Mauer's advantage there may be more about the variability within that small sample, rather than a reflection of greater absolute talent.

And of course, position groups aren't equivalent samples either. There may always be more big fish (baseball talents) in the center field pond as in the catcher pond. That's good to know in some contexts, but in others, it's less relevant.

Then make the pool larger to compensate and the numbers are still striking. In the entire history of Major League Baseball, when compared to every. single. catcher. to ever play the game, here are some season numbers:

Joe Mauer had the eighth greatest season from a catcher ever.

Joe Mauer had five top 100 catcher seasons of all time.

A few comparisons to other catchers over the past 70 years:

Buster Posey had three top 100 catcher seasons of all time.

Pudge had four top 100 catcher seasons of all time.

Gary Carter had eight top 100 catcher seasons of all time.

Johnny Bench had six top 100 catcher seasons of all time.

Yogi Berra had three top 100 catcher seasons of all time.

Jorge Posada had three top 100 catcher seasons of all time.

Carlton Fisk had three top 100 catcher seasons of all time.

No matter how you shake out Mauer's catching career, it was simply incredible. I mean, look at those names. And Mauer beat all of them except Carter* and Bench.

*I'd like to take this moment to once again point out how wildly underrated Gary Carter is by the modern fan

[RonCoomersOPS]

It's not really fair to say "but their peers" though, is it? Puckett only had the greatest baseball player of all time in Ken Griffey Jr., among others, to compete with while Mauer's peers included the likes of Drew Butera (no disrespect to Drew Butera intended).

[Otto von Ballpark]

3 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Then make the pool larger to compensate and the numbers are still striking. In the entire history of Major League Baseball, when compared to every. single. catcher. to ever play the game, here are some season numbers:

But for all of baseball history, the most talented players generally aren't even allowed to play the position professionally. It's still an inequivalent pond in which to judge Mauer's fish relative to Puckett's, no matter if you are looking at one year or 100 years.

[Brock Beauchamp]

32 minutes ago, RonCoomersOPS said:

It's not really fair to say "but their peers" though, is it? Puckett only had the greatest baseball player of all time in Ken Griffey Jr., among others, to compete with while Mauer's peers included the likes of Drew Butera (no disrespect to Drew Butera intended).

Mauer’s career also lined up very closely with Buster Posey, the only other catcher of the past 40 years to win an MVP, so calling out Drew Butera is rather disingenuous. 

And Mauer doesn't compare that unfavorably to Griffey offensively. Both suffered serious injury concerns after turning 30 years old but up to that point, Griffey had a 148 OPS+ and Mauer had a 135 OPS+. That metric is not position adjusted.

Kirby Puckett's OPS+ through age 30 was just 122. A direct comparison to a similarly aged teammate is Kent Hrbek, who had a 132 OPS+ through age 30.

[Brock Beauchamp]

27 minutes ago, Otto von Ballpark said:

But for all of baseball history, the most talented players generally aren't even allowed to play the position professionally. It's still an inequivalent pond in which to judge Mauer's fish relative to Puckett's, no matter if you are looking at one year or 100 years.

Oh boy, I couldn't disagree with this more strongly. While I agree that up-the-middle positions are generally more athletic, there's a difference between "the most talented aren't allowed to play there" and "many of the most talented players don't have the necessary skillset to play the position".

You're seriously undervaluing the catcher position and the people who play it, Otto. Like, enormously undervaluing those athletes.

And even if you want to create such an unbalanced sliding scale, there's no debating that Mauer's 2009 showed that he was literally the best baseball player on the planet for a period of time, something Puckett never accomplished.

[Squirrel]

I think we may need to have a continuing debate .. who was better, part 2. This thread has generated some really good discussion and not the usual kind of nonsense we see when similar topics are introduced elsewhere.

[bean5302]

4 hours ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

But if we're going to discuss value versus true talent level (ie. "better player"), one can't ignore Puckett's home/road splits any more than we can ignore Trevor Story's home/road splits when evaluating how good he is at baseball (which is literally a $100m question around baseball right this moment). Story's splits are even more extreme than Puckett's but a .148 split is bigger than any I can recall seeing outside Coors so that must be factored into Puckett's evaluation.

Pure results don't tell us the complete story, which is why it's also important to try to compare players of different eras to their own peers. While it's obviously a more extreme era split, we can't compare someone like Carew to someone like Cobb without trying to put each of those players into context of their own era and peer performance.

I thought the splits argument was very powerful. I remembered how much superior the Twins played at the Metrodome than on the road, but I had honestly forgotten some of the arguments about how much of an advantage the 'Dome actually afforded Piranha teams. Balls had an almost spring-board effect bouncing off the infield as I recall now.

[Otto von Ballpark]

9 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Oh boy, I couldn't disagree with this more strongly. While I agree that up-the-middle positions are generally more athletic, there's a difference between "the most talented aren't allowed to play there" and "many of the most talented players don't have the necessary skillset to play the position".

You're seriously undervaluing the catcher position and the people who play it, Otto. Like, enormously undervaluing those athletes.

Don't take this like I am ragging on catchers or something -- that's not the case at all. They're valuable! I agree with you 100% that historically they aren't given enough credit for the Hall of Fame.

This is just a specific question about how much MLB catcher ranks can be relied upon, in cross-positional comparison, for something as general and subjective as "better player." If we cite how Mauer ranks among MLB catchers, we have to acknowledge that the line forming that group is drawn way, WAY earlier than any other position. Many top amateur players have had their catcher's mitt taken away (or are never given one in the first place), with no thought about what their skillset might be behind the plate. (And you yourself speculated in this very thread whether the Twins should have moved Mauer off the position in the minors.)

Doesn't mean Mauer wasn't great and enormously valuable, of course. Just that the same conditions that allow him to be among the very best catchers ever also allow Chris Hoiles to have a claim at an all-time top 5 season at the position.

[Otto von Ballpark]

1 hour ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

And even if you want to create such an unbalanced sliding scale, there's no debating that Mauer's 2009 showed that he was literally the best baseball player on the planet for a period of time, something Puckett never accomplished.

For Puckett, there was that weekend in 1987.

[bean5302]

1 hour ago, RonCoomersOPS said:

It's not really fair to say "but their peers" though, is it? Puckett only had the greatest baseball player of all time in Ken Griffey Jr., among others, to compete with while Mauer's peers included the likes of Drew Butera (no disrespect to Drew Butera intended).

Cabrera, Beltre, Pujols, Trout, A-Rod... those are some pretty good players. Mauer logged the 11th highest fWAR across his 2004-2018 career in MLB. If you go with just his 10 year peak 2005-2014, he ranks 6th in all of MLB behind Pujols, Cabrera, Utley, Wright, and Holliday.

[Otto von Ballpark]

On home/road splits, OPS+ and wRC+ already include park factors. (And to the extent that Puckett derived more benefit from the Metrodome than the park factor suggests, isn't that also a demonstrated skill above his peers?)

For their careers, Puckett and Mauer are practically even in both OPS+ and wRC+, although we know Mauer had a decline phase. For best single-season by those measurements, Mauer's 2009 has the advantage; his advantage narrows when looking at any 3+ year peak.

[Otto von Ballpark]

14 minutes ago, bean5302 said:

Cabrera, Beltre, Pujols, Trout, A-Rod... those are some pretty good players. Mauer logged the 11th highest fWAR across his 2004-2018 career in MLB. If you go with just his 10 year peak 2005-2014, he ranks 6th in all of MLB behind Pujols, Cabrera, Utley, Wright, and Holliday.

FYI, using Mauer's peak or even career to define this range can introduce a "selective endpoint" problem -- most other careers or peaks don't line up exactly with Mauer's timeline, and other players may have contributed value outside those years where Mauer generally didn't. (This is similar to the conditions that allow Jack Morris to be one of the best pitchers of the 1980s -- that is true, although many of the other best pitchers of the 1980s were also among the best pitchers of the 1970s or 1990s too!)

That said, unlike Morris, Mauer still ranks well by many other measurements, so this isn't a knock on him! Just a statistical thing to be aware of.

Edit to add: FWIW, Puckett ranks 11th in fWAR across his career too, and also 11th for his 10-year peak (1986-1995).

[Brock Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, bean5302 said:

I thought the splits argument was very powerful. I remembered how much superior the Twins played at the Metrodome than on the road, but I had honestly forgotten some of the arguments about how much of an advantage the 'Dome actually afforded Piranha teams. Balls had an almost spring-board effect bouncing off the infield as I recall now.

There were countless “doubles” that were outfield singles that literally bounced 25 ft in the air, allowing the runner to take a second base.

Or infield singles that were just a ball hammered into the turf so hard the runner could reach first before it came back down to the infielder.