re jack morris in article apr ramsey cs laurentian ca maynard ramsey cs laurentian ca roger maynard writes we cannot isolate the total contribution that any player at any position makes to his team s victory and since we cannot make that measure with complete confidence of objectivity and since there is no absolutely necessary reason to make that kind of subjective measurement i submit to you that it is pointless if a gm is trying to put together a winning team he might consider era he might consider attitude he might consider past performance in key situations but what he is looking for is not the player that he considers the best the gm is looking for the player he thinks can help his team win 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 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 clay d
