re jack morris in c sfve aq murdoch acc virginia edu drw l delmarva evsc virginia edu david robert walker writes we cannot isolate completely roger but we can make a pretty good estimate i won t claim to split hairs and say that we can really measure who was better robby alomar or carlos baerga last year the difference is too close to call but larkin and lee clemens and morris the differences are too great there in your measure of the game why should a team that has just won it all ever replace a single player since they are now clearly best how can they do better yet every team can always find someplace where they beleive they can improve the team they can always find a player a little better than one they already have btw by my definitions the best player is the one who does the most things to help his team win i will allow that this could vary depending on who else is on the team by having aptitudes one team needs more than others well then given your definition of best is it not conceivable that alfredo griffin could bring something to a team that that team needs to win while larkin might not have that something the team needs would griffin then be better than larkin baseball is a team game but it is made of individual talents it is absurd to judge the success or failure of an individual by the success or failure of his teammates whom he did not choose at least in most cases morris won last year because he played on a team with joe carter robby alomar tom henke juan guzman john olerud et al clemens lost because he was surrounded by such lesser performers as herm winninham luis rivera and jeff reardon to define the quality of the team as a sum of its components as i do albeit imperfectly is a lesser error than defining the quality of an individual as the mean quality of the team as my reading of your arguments suggests you do no i am not trying to define the quality of an individual at least not for the purpose of ranking them toronto won with olerud they might have won with fielder they might not have won with thomas detroit might have won with thomas chicago might have won with fielder you can t rank these individuals you can only look at who might contribute more to the team effort which is winning the ws thomas could not have contributed to that goal any more than olerud so i cannot say that olerud is less of a player cordially as always maynard ramsey cs laurentian ca so many morons rm and so little time
