Plagirism - The Sincerest Form of Flattery

[MFS62]

Someone who reads this board but is not a member saw the rankings forum and ran a series of polls this past off season to see how the members of that board would vote the top 25 All-Time Mets.
Throughout the process, he paid full and respectful tribute to the CPF. The author provided UMDB Mets-only statistics for each of the new candidates each week.

The results were interesting.

Enjoy,
Later

This is the list of All-Time Mets from our MetsRant polls. We are updating this list after each poll for a new number. In parenthesis, I am showing the rank that the Crane Pool gave them for comparison purposes. 1. Tom Seaver (1) 2. Mike Piazza (9) 3. Darryl Strawberry (4) 4. Jerry Koosman (3) 5. Dwight Gooden (2) 6. Keith Hernandez (13) 7. Howard Johnson (7) 8. Cleon Jones ( 8 ) 9. Mookie Wilson (16) 10. Tug McGraw (15) 11. Gary Carter (28 ) 12. David Cone (21) 13. Rusty Staub (20) 14. Ron Darling (14) 15. John Franco (5) 16. Edgardo Alfonzo (6) 17. Jesse Orosco (23) 18. Sid Fernandez (10) 19. Al Leiter (12) 20. Jerry Grote (17) 21. John Olerud (35) 22. Tommy Agee (25) 23. Ed Kranepool (11) 24. Al Jackson (68) 25. Bud Harrelson (22) Twenty-Two of the Mets picked for the Mets Rant Top Twenty-Five are also on the Crane Pool Top Twenty-Five. The three not picked (## 18, 19, and 24 in the Crane Pool) were all on the ballot for Mets Rant All-Time #25 along with six additional nominees. And three Mets picked for the Mets Rant Top Twenty-Five are not the Crane Pool Top Twenty-Five: Gary Carter, John Olerud, and Al Jackson.

[Frayed Knot]

You might want to point out to your friends that the list of ours they saw was two years old but has now been updated to include the last two seasons. So there's been some movement, particularly among recent players like Piazza.

The differences between our list and theirs are fairly predictable and largely explainable through popularity & longevity.
When we first concocted this project, the idea was to get as close as we could to some kind of objective list of all time Mets instead of letting personal preferences creep into the outcomes. IOW, we looked at the individual years and then saw how they added up to the whole rather than attempting to judge the whole in retrospect. That sum-of-the-parts approach also rewards the longer lasting players via the cumulative result of all his years as a Met, while the top-down method is sometimes affected by the fact that familiarity often breeds a degree of contempt among fans.

Carter is one of the best examples. He was obviously popular as a result of being an '86-er, but was only here 5 seasons and was really only any good in 3 of them. It would be almost impossible for someone like him - or the even shorter lasting Olerud - to finish ahead of the likes of Franco or say Sid F. who combined for some 26 years in the uni.
Meanwhile a guy like Benitez was a polarizing figure during his time who will never win any popularity contests, but he was judged to be one of the top performers during 4 of his 5 Met seasons.

[Guest iramets]

Frayed Knot wrote: You might want to point out to your friends that the list of ours they saw was two years old but has now been updated to include the last two seasons. So there's been some movement, particularly among recent players like Piazza. The differences between our list and theirs are fairly predictable and largely explainable through popularity & longevity. When we first concocted this project, the idea was to get as close as we could to some kind of objective list of all time Mets instead of letting personal preferences creep into the outcomes. IOW, we looked at the individual years and then saw how they added up to the whole rather than attempting to judge the whole in retrospect. That sum-of-the-parts approach also rewards the longer lasting players via the cumulative result of all his years as a Met, while the top-down method is sometimes affected by the fact that familiarity often breeds a degree of contempt among fans. Carter is one of the best examples. He was obviously popular as a result of being an '86-er, but was only here 5 seasons and was really only any good in 3 of them. It would be almost impossible for someone like him - or the even shorter lasting Olerud - to finish ahead of the likes of Franco or say Sid F. who combined for some 26 years in the uni. Meanwhile a guy like Benitez was a polarizing figure during his time who will never win any popularity contests, but he was judged to be one of the top performers during 4 of his 5 Met seasons.

There's something vaguely instructive about the difference between the two lists. Ours tries to account for the actual contributions that various players have made, using stats as a basis and wins as a goal, while the other list is completely subjective (and if analyzed subject to all sorts of biases including rewarding most recent tenure, lightness of skin, fan friendliness, etc.)

[stevejrogers]

Which probably proves your point about my half-assed attempt at a Met HOF as voted by members of the internet community.

I went through some of my old (1999, 2000) vote totals of it when I did it back on the original MOFO and somehow Bruce Boisclair got a vote! Granted it probably was a cheeky vote ala the lone vote a guy with no hope of staying on a ballot past one year gets on the actual BBWAA HOF vote every year. I might take your suggestions and do something like that over this coming winter, just wipe the slate clean of that old project (and I think I may have found a "home" for it) and start anew.

[nymr83]

our list does have a built-in bias too: longevity. theres no reason that long-term averageness should be higher than short-term greatness.

[Edgy MD]

1) It isn't.

2) I'd rather see that argument made with data.