Ok, time to be sore a loser, but an extremely unpleasant one. By the way, I do admire, I do greatly admire, the two players that sit atop on the number of grand slam titles list.
For a long time my favorite player had more GS titles, and that was used as argument for GOATness, which I knew it was BS, but it was in favor of my favorite player, so why bother. Things have unfortunately changed, so I get a chance to annoy people. This is always fun.
Little mind experiment: assume that tomorrow some given player start winning all of his matches, all the sets that he plays, all the games that he plays. And it is all bagels. Once in a while someone can get to deuce, but that's all. Impossible, people will shout instantly. Yes, but it doesn't matter. It is a mind experiment, and its result will be regarded just as... a mind experiment, don't worry.
Ok, so this given imaginary player keeps winning matches for three years. He wins 12 majors in a row. All the masters, the WTF, etc. Then again, just out of the blue, he stops winning, and comes back to his previous level, around top 20. In the process he stays about 200 weeks as #1.
This guy, obviously, has played at the greatest level of all time. Nothing is even close to what he achieved, but still, by the numbers argument, he is out of the GOAT discussion. He is completely out, because, as people will quickly remember, 23 > 12. Also, in this period, he wins all his matches, but he does not meet some other players enough to reverse all H2H´s, so he is behind on that metric as well.
Oh, but this is impossible, this is not real. That is precisely the point: even an imaginary, impossible player that achieves an imaginary, impossible feat, is out of the GOAT conversation, if you only consider the numbers argument. So, if this imaginary player, that for three entire years could not lose a single game, this player that was imagined, tailored to be the GOAT, is so clearly not the GOAT (by the numbers based argument), then... the only possible conclusion is that the numbers based GOAT discussion is empty.
Is there a substitute for the numbers based GOAT argument? Of course not. This is our best shot at an objective argument. Problem is that it is not enough.
The (total) numbers based GOAT argument, in the end, privileges span of career and consistency over everything else. We could try to define "domination" statistics, but we would need to chose one (or a few) over the others, and this would be... subjective. So, no, the numbers based argument it is still our best shot, but still not sufficient.
When you look at the sky, you look at the brightest stars, not the ones which have stood there long enough. It is not the total, accumulated brightness that catches the eye. It is peak brightness that matters -- and only when you are looking, by the way.
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