Sparking a Debate: Who's the Best Hitter?
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by user Jeeves
First off I have to give thanks to Baseball-Reference.com for their bevy of stats and to DA Humber for inspiring me to do undertake this post. After DA invited me to participate in his Friday Five, I was inspired to take a more in depth look at who the best hitter in baseball history was. In my original analysis, I took a cursory view of 8 different players, but I clearly left out a number of the all-time greats.
So before I delve into all the stats and their explanations, I must first give a disclaimer. The table I created (below) is by no means supposed be an end-all type of thing. I'm not trying to prove that a certain player is in fact the greatest hitter of all time. I just wanted to look take a look at the stats and see if I could get a better idea of how some of the all-time greats stacked up when compared to one another. Considering the fact that I'm still in college, I have hardly seen any of the all-time greats in action. I think my exclusion of Lou Gehrig in my analysis in the Friday Five is evidence enough that I didn't have a full for the game's history. I feel now after compiling all this data that I have a clearer picture, but not necessarily a full picture.
Please note that this is purely an exercise in numbers. It does not take into account overall play or prowess in the field. Mays is considered by many (I was among the many for awhile) to be the best all-around player of all-time, the five-tool player, but since I'm only looking at hitting he doesn't come out of this looking as impressive.
Finally, I will be posting another article similar to this (probably on Tuesday) looking at the same players but using sabermetrics to get a different view on the situation.
So, without further ado, here is Table 1 followed by some observations. (Table 2 will follow in another post, most likely on Tuesday). To see a proper view of the table click on it.
Method to the Madness - I took the career stats of Gehrig, Ruth, Pujols, Teddy Ballgame, Rogers Honrnsby, Jimmie Foxx, Joe DiMaggio, Bonds, A-Rod, Cobb, Musial, Cap Anson, Hank Aaron, Mantle, Mel Ott, Willie Mays, Honus Wagner, Frank Robinson, Mike Schmidt, Roberto Clemente, Pete Rose, Yaz, and to get a White Sox feel, I added Frank Thomas and Shoeless Joe. I crunched the numbers and compared their per game averages for runs, hits, doubles, homers, and RBIs as well as their batting average, OBP, SLG and OPS. I ranked each player in each category, and then added up the points, with the lowest number being best.
My Thoughts
-I can't believe how terribly I underrated Lou Gehrig. He was among the leaders in each category, finishing no worse than 8th. The original Iron Man was an RBI machine, averaging relatively close to an RBI a game!
-I'm shocked to see how high Pujols is. I realize that when he gets toward the end of his career, he'll put up less impressive number which will subsequently lower his averages, but it's still damn impressive that he ended up ranking third.
-It's interesting seeing hitters from the earlier years compared to power hitters from more recent times. Hornsby more than holds his own, as do Cobb, Anson, and Shoeless Joe.
-A good number of people would put Hank Aaron and/or Willie Mays in their top-5, yet in this table, they rank 15th and 18th respectively. Both Hank and Willie were consistent over long careers, which allowed them to amass their ridiculous career totals.
-In my original analysis, I left out Bonds, because the steroid cloud surrounding him takes him out of the running for my top five, but there's no denying the impressiveness of his stats.
-Clemente was undoubtedly a good player (but unless I'm missing something here) he seems rather pedestrian compared against the others. Perhaps his tragic death increased his legend.
-Any and all discussion is welcome. Feel free to leave any postive or negative feedback. If you think I missed the boat completely let me know, or if this helped open you eyes to the merits of one player's career, tell me. I'd love to head your all-time top five or ten, or your ranking of all these players. I suppose my main objective outside of braddening my view on some of the all-time great players is to try and stimulate some discussion.
Coming Soon, part 2. A comparison of these players vs. their contemporaries.
