Yes, Frank in my prime, I could patrol left field okay. By the way I did see and do remember Koufax in his prime and he was dominant, the best I ever saw. But it took five years to tame that feral left arm. Juan Marichal and Bob Gibson were in/on the upper echelon as well. For anyone really interested in this stuff, Bill James has written two historical abstracts, the second an update 15 or 20 years or so later, that among other things tries to rate the best players from the different generations. He developed statistics which more accurately gauged performance and also used statistical techniques to determine more clearly assets and their relative value and to rid measurements of bias (home field adjustments, dead ball, live ball era adjustments, etc).
Much like Andy Beyer popularized speed figures and introduced them to new generations so did Bill James popularize sabermetric tools to get an insightful, fact-based assessment of baseball players, their talents and the teams on which they played, taking into account where and when they played.
But both had their primogenitors. E.W. Donaldson among others was writing handicapping books in the 1930s looking at some of the factors we focus on here--the effect of weight, ground loss, wind and its influence. And while I\'m not as knowledgeable about the history of baseball stats, certainly there are contemporaries of Bill James not as well known, but adding insight into how to value baseball players and performance. Pete Palmer and John Thorn are just a couple.
