User Comments, Suggestions, or Complaints | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Advertising
Vivid Seats is a sports ticket broker, concert ticket broker and theater ticket broker offering the best baseball tickets like Yankees tickets, Cubs tickets, and Red Sox tickets, as well as Police reunion tour tickets and Jersey Boys tickets. |
We have baseball tickets, the NFL schedule, college football tickets and Cowboys tickets. We have NBA tickets like Celtics tickets and Lakers tickets. Plus, buy Giants tickets, Patriots tickets and Colts tickets. Also check out our MLB baseball schedule |
Concerts Theatre NFL Angels Dodgers MLB Celtics Theater NBA Tickets Venues NHL Lakers Tickets NFL Yankees NHL Phillies NBA Wicked Marlins MLB Concerts Cubs Mets Red Sox Wicked WWE Red Sox Mets Yankees Dodgers |
Page rendered in 0.8950 seconds
81 querie(s) executed
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
If you don't argue with Sparky Anderson, you must think that Torey Luvollo is a future Hall of Famer, and that Howard Johnson will never develop into a power hitter.
Based on what the term 'Greatest Living Hitter' has evolved to mean (greatest hitter who is also an elder statesman representing the game's history), Musial is correct.
Using the same definition, but calling it 'Greatest Living Player' (including fielding/baserunning), Mays is correct.
Unless everyone from his era is dead.
That's funny, I was about to edit my post to add that when I read this.
Bonds 164 OPS+
Thomas 167
Pujols (to age 28) 169
1. The greatest living hitter would have had to have hit against the greatest and toughest living pitcher.
2. The greatest pitcher alive today would have to be a member of the greatest generation.
3. Bob Feller was the greatest pitcher of the greatest generation (according to Feller).
4. Bob Feller pitched from 1936-1941 and from 1945-1956
5. Bob Feller's peak season was in 1946
6. The greatest hitter would have to have played in 1946
7. The greatest hitter would have been in the AL during the period referenced above
8. The greatest hitter could not have been on the Indians in 1946
9. Bob Feller would measure hitting prowess based on a hitter's Batting Average and a Hitter "knowing how to win"
10. The Boston Red Sox knew how to win more than any other AL team in 1946
11. Johnny Pesky was a member of the 1946 Boston Red Sox
12. Johnny Pesky is alive
13. No player that hit higher batting average than Johnny Pesky on the 1946 Red Sox can also claim to be alive at present
14. ipso facto, Johnny Pesky is the greatest living hitter
-pause-
"RATS!"
Musial won 3 times and was second 4 times. Bonds of course won 7 times. Brett probably did deserve the MVP in 1985 (him or Rickey), would have been defensible in 1976, but not 1979 (Lynn).
Musial was selected for 24 ASG's (20 different seasons), and started 14 times (14 seasons). Would have been 25 and 15 if not for the war. Bonds made 14 ASGs and started 12.
for some reason, i thought the article title meant greatest hitter playing today.
stan should get the 'greatest living hitter' title, but i'm biased.
seems like willie should get the informal title 'greatest living player' ... at least we don't have to be subjected to joe dimaggio being called that anymore. that always bugged me, specially after reading the cramer bio.
EDIT : I almost forgot Hank Aaron. He's way, way up there for best overall and best hitter. It's kinda funny how even as the former home run king, Hank Aaron doesn't come to mind for these sort of discussions quite as quickly as Musial, Mays, Bonds, or someday, Pujols.
Right. Musial was merely one of the best of his era. But DiMaggio, Williams, and Mantle are all dead. That said, Brett is a silly, idiosyncratic choice.
And the greatest living pitcher: Larry Yount. No major-leaguer ever came close to hitting one of his pitches!
We all know that Ted Williams was the last person to hit over .400 in a season and some of us know that Tony Gwynn and Wade Boggs both have managed to hit .400 over 162 team games but almost nobody knows that Stan Musial once hit .408 in 259 games!
Second bit of trivia, Ted Williams never managed to hit .400 or better in 154 games played in any stretch of his career. The closest he ever got to it is .3992
Care to elaborate?
Total it all up and it is a .408 batting average in 259 games, and obviously since it is a high .400 if we look past those 259 games we will find more games at either end that extends this streak.
1-Bonds
2-Musial
3-Aaron
4-Mays
5-Robinson
6-Thomas
7-McGwire
8-Ramirez
9-Schmidt
10-Pujols
Brett's top OPS+ was 203. Bonds had 2 seasons at that level (204, 205) and 4 seasons much better than that level.
Bonds's career OPS+ (182) is higher than Brett's second-best season (178).
In other words, what we've learned is that that "extreme Royal bias" is another way of saying "stupidity." Though I do like how he tried to justify the ludicrous selection of Brett by pretending that era adjustments make said selection reasonable.
I think it might be another way of saying "steroids". Just a guess, though.
Bonds had six seasons with a 170 OPS+ or better before any suspicions of steroids.
Edit - Agreed Gainsay
So it is 277 games at .400 for Stan Musial, 396 hits to 989 at bats. He also had 398 hits in 1000 at bats as well.
He died in 1999.
Of course Rogers Hornsby hit over .400 from 1921-1925 inclusive.
But he's not alive
But if we're disregarding Bonds, Brett is not close to #2 on the list.
He's a great, great hitter, no doubt, but depending on how fast guys die off, I don't know if he makes the list. He's seventh in OPS+ on the active list, and his incredible value is partly derived from providing that offense from what's essentially a middle infield position. He may rank as the top living player at some point, but will probably never be the greatest living hitter.
I knew he was dead, but good god, it's almost been a decade. Surprising to me.
I agree with this. ARod is obviously a great hitter, but he's generally been overrated as a hitter at the same time. He does appear to have raised his offense a tick since moving off SS, but you still have to go to #214 on the all-time single-season OPS+ list before ARod's best year shows up.
As to "greatest living hitter," if we list the best single-season OPS+s since 1968, ARod doesn't show up until 49th on the list. And everyone above him is still alive, except for Stargell, who has one year above him.
That's what I mean by overrated. Some in the New York media last year <cough, Mike Francesa, cough> seriously thought that ARod's 2007 was the greatest offensive season in 50 years.
Oh, agreed. It was just a justification I thought of. Another is that Brett was a simply phenomenal "pure" hitter, with tons of line drives and a strikeout rate. On that basis, I'd still rather have Musial, but Brett becomes much more defensible. On a slightly different note, who would you take as the greatest living "pure" hitter? Gwynn? Boggs? Musial? Brett?
Elijah Dukes
It's very hard to separate out a player's position from their "hitting" - it's so natural to do a semi-conscious mental adjustment that bumps up guys at tougher defensive positions - A-Rod, Brett, Willie Mays - and bump down defensive liabilities like Frank Thomas and Manny Ramirez.
Looking solely at hitting - no baserunning (except insofar as it translates into hits and extra-base hits), no fielding - depending on how you want to define your standard, if you exclude Bonds for the 'roid years, and use a reasonably long peak (say 6-8 years or so) as your measure of "greatness" (as opposed to career totals), I think Frank Thomas has a pretty decent case. Through age 29, he played 1,076 games over 8 seasons (7 full) and put up a line of .330/.452/.600, for an OPS+ of 182. Stan Musial, for example, had an OPS+ of 182 or higher in exactly 3 seasons, one of which was exactly 182 and one of which was 183 (he had a 200 in 1948).
Jesse Helms? Oh wait, nevermind...
Oh, agreed. It was just a justification I thought of. Another is that Brett was a simply phenomenal "pure" hitter, with tons of line drives and a strikeout rate. On that basis, I'd still rather have Musial, but Brett becomes much more defensible.
That was my take, too. It wasn't about simply looking at an OPS+ list. It included the aesthetics of Brett's swing (and his innumerable postseason clutch performances) along with his raw statistics. If you were going purely by the stat lines, it'd have to be Bonds, but with the other factors included, you shouldn't be ashamed to put Brett up there.
On a slightly different note, who would you take as the greatest living "pure" hitter? Gwynn? Boggs? Musial? Brett?
Musial, Brett, or Bonds, but not Gwynn or Boggs, since even if you limit your pick to players who don't have an inordinate strikeout rate, power is certainly an important part of "pure" hitting.
Feller would never exclude the All Star game, so that's another vote for Musial.
Eh, Musial went 0-for-2 against Feller in the 1946 All-Star Game, although he did reach on a error by Johnny Pesky. I'm sure Feller was unimpressed.
Well, the writer wrote six paragraphs defending his selection, and didn't once list "the aesthetics of Brett's swing." So I don't know why we're including that.
The writer simply looked over Brett's career and cherry picked and double-counted the things Brett did well. The writer provided no comparison of the things Brett did well to other living players. That's how the writer ended up with a ludicrous conclusion.
Well, that, and noticing that Sparky Anderson intentionally walked Brett a lot.
Bonds.
Or, to be more responsive: as far as I can tell, "pure hitter" means "hitter with the best batting average and least power who doesn't walk or strike out much." I guess if one is defining it that way the answer is Gwynn or Ichiro, but the question is completely uninteresting to me. It's simply a mechanism to pretend that a Tony Gwynn is better than he was.
Well, the writer wrote six paragraphs defending his selection, and didn't once list "the aesthetics of Brett's swing." So I don't know why we're including that.
OK, then, I guess it's my take on my position, and not my take on the writer's position. And no, even discounting his steroid years you can't put Brett above Bonds. I love Brett, and as a Yankee fan I've never seen a more frightening late inning sight, but there's just too wide a statistical discrepancy between the two of them to make that kind of a stretch.
as far as I can tell, "pure hitter" means "hitter with the best batting average and least power who doesn't walk or strike out much." I guess if one is defining it that way the answer is Gwynn or Ichiro, but the question is completely uninteresting to me. It's simply a mechanism to pretend that a Tony Gwynn is better than he was.
I'm not sure that this was the writer's conscious intention, but it does seem to have that result. And if you employ that power-free standard, you can probably add Carew to that short list of candidates for "greatest living 'pure hitter'" while you're at it. It's an interesting sub-question to the concept of "greatest living hitter," but I place the stress emphatically on the "sub-" part. You can't seriously equate a group of talented banjo hitters to the likes of Bonds, Brett, or Musial.
Hank Aaron is actually the first person I thought of. My list, with extremely minimal thought or research:
1. Bonds
2. Pujols
3. Aaron
4. Musial
5. Mays
6. F. Robby
7. ManRam
8. A-Hole
9. V. Guerrero
10. Big Hurt/Big Mac/Dick Allen
Yes, there's nothing more interesting than just looking at the BBRef leaderboard for career OPS+, then checking to see which one's still kicking, to determine the answer to the question.
I think there's a number of ways you can look at it, each interesting in its own way.
Historically, I think you can make a reasonable argument for three ways:
The best offensive player (aka Ray's way) The guy who was the most productive in all phrases of batting. Obviously Bonds is the choice.
The best hitter, power and average, disregarding walks. The idea behind this is that while walks are part of a player's offensive game, they're not "hitting." Brett might fall into this category, though he wouldn't trump Hank as the best still breathing.
The best "pure" hitter. As far as I understand it, this is meant to describe those guys who most consistently hit strikes hard. They don't swing and miss often (consequently, they don't walk). Tony Gwynn may be the best (though I didn't see enough of the older generation to tell whether he was actually better at this than Stan the Man, for example.)
And before Ray objects, I think a lot of ballplayers use this definition for this question. I imagine if you told Jim Thome he was a better hitter than Tony Gwynn, he'd laugh.
And two other possibilities...
The best hitter, anything goes division. The magicians with the bat, who can turn on a fastball, drop a bunt, bounce a chopper off astroturf, or inside-out a pitch to left. Ichiro and Carew come to mind.
The best hitter, strike zone be damned. Not just the guys who eschewed walks, but the guys who can hit any pitch, from the one in the dirt to the one at their eyes and everywhere in between, equally hard. Vlad is the obvious current choice, and I believe Clemente had a similar skill set.
If you want to stop after the first category, that's fine. Kind of makes for a boring exercise, in my view.
10. Big Hurt
I'd like to hear any remotely coherent argument in favor of this position.
I believe Tony McKnight has the most career plate appearances of any living player with zero career hits. But I could have searched for the wrong thing.
OK, I'll shut up now.
On the other hand, Randy Tate, whoever he is, could probably outhit Stan Musial right now, being only 55 years old.
It's so hard to establish consistent standards for this sort of thing.
How does Pujols, with 1150 games, and not having played through his decline phase yet, get listed ahead of the other players on the list? Thomas has a career twice as long, and loses nothing to Pujols at the front of it. McGwire had a higher peak, and was roughly the same hitter in a career 700 games longer. Mays and Aaron played 3,000 and 3200 games, respectively.
Barry Bonds .298/.607 vs park-adjusted league of .263/.410.
George Brett .385/.487 vs park-adjusted league of .364/.396.
If we calculate BAS+ (like OPS+ but with BA instead of OBP) we get:
Bonds - 161 BAS+
Aaron - 157 BAS+
Brett - 139 BAS+
It's still Bonds. Of course this is career not peak but Bonds's peak obviously puts him further ahead.
And, like a kid with a new toy, here's the numbers for the other worthies mentioned in this thread:
Musial - 159 BAS+
Thomas - 145 BAS+
Pujols - 168 BAS+
Mays - 153 BAS+
Vlad - 153 BAS+
Piazza - 146 BAS+
A-Rod - 146 BAS+
Pesky(!) - 109 BAS+
Ramirez - 148 BAS+
Belle - 144 BAS+
Bagwell - 139 BAS+
Frank Robinson - 148 BAS+
Sosa - 128 BAS+
Gwynn - 144 BAS+
McGwire - 144 BAS+
Schmidt - 134 BAS+
Boggs - 129 BAS+
Carew - 137 BAS+
Allen - 152 BAS+
Ichiro - 128 BAS+
Other notables:
Cabrera - 142 BAS+
Snider - 138 BAS+
Chipper - 141 BAS+
Pujols has his decline phase ahead of him (with old player skills that batting average will come far closer to league average). So the crown goes to Bonds, although Albert may take it from him depending on how he ages.By that definition, the answer is still Bonds.
Most every way you ask the question, you're going to get the same answer.
EDIT: All data I got from bb-ref.com. Any errors made are my fault.
Because I think Albert Pujols is the second best living hitter? I didn't try to come up with a list of the ten most accomplished living hitters. I could have easily played it safe and rounded up the usual suspects.
Frank Thomas is 40 years old, a career .302 hitter with 520 home runs. Let's say he finishes at 550 and .300. I'll be shocked if Pujols doesn't hit at least 600 HR and I bet he hits at least .310 for his career. Yes, you could have said the same thing about Frank Thomas when he was 28.
Other than Bonds, Albert Pujols is the best hitter I've seen in my life (I'm 36).
You're WAYYYYY under-estimating what a normal decline phase looks like. When Frank Thomas was Albert Pujols's current age (28), he had a career OPS+ of 182. Pujols has had one full season in his career so far with an OPS+ above 182 (2003, 187).
Actually, that wasn't my method at all. Number of games matters also; Bonds has 3,000 of them. Steals matter also; Bonds has 500 of them. Peak matters also; Bonds had the greatest peak of all time.
OPS+ is certainly a good place to start, though. If Brett isn't in the same galaxy as Bonds in terms of OPS+, then Brett needs to make up that difference in some other way. Does he make the difference up with steals? No. Games? No. Peak? No.
There's only one sane answer to the question, and that's Bonds. But even if one wants to disregard him, Brett is not a rational choice. "One of the best hitters of his era" -- that about sums Brett up. But if a player is only "one of the best hitters" of his era, it's going to be damned difficult to make a case for him as the best hitter of the last *three* eras. And as we saw, the author failed miserably at it, not even bothering to compare Brett to other candidates.
I was using value to gauge "best" or "greatest." I don't see any other reasonable way to answer the question.
But since walks certainly are part of "hitting" -- as I'm sure you agree -- this argument makes no sense.
And why would Brett trump Bonds by this definition?
And this isn't "hitting." It's "pure" hitting, whatever the hell that is.
Or maybe Thome would remember that he has 500 home runs and 1500 walks, and not laugh.
But I don't care whether Thome knows that he's a better hitter than Gwynn; I care whether a rational, objective way to measure offensive value tells me that Thome is a better hitter than Gwynn. You're making the same mistake the writer makes above, trying to answer the question by telling us what Sparky Anderson thinks about Brett. I don't care what Sparky Anderson thinks about Brett; I care what Brett did.
Well, since the question was who was the best ("greatest") living hitter, I think I'll stop there, yes. The above are simply different questions. It's like asking who the "best pitcher, groundball division" is; it's not the same question as "who is the best pitcher?". Chien Ming Wang is not as good as Johan Santana, no matter how many ground balls he gets.
I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to ask who the best player at "swinging the bat and hitting the ball" was. It's a very specific skill which is a subset of a baseball player's offensive skillset, and I think that could be what people are talking about when they say "hitting". Not "Who was the best at getting a positive result when standing at the plate", but "who was the best at actually hitting the ball".
I mean, the answer's still probably Barry Bonds, but walks are not a necessary part of the equation when you're talking about "hitting".
McGwire and Thomas say hello.
They most certainly are. Why are people hung up on labels? Walks are part of "hitting."
The goal of hitting is to produce a favorable result, as you note. That's what walks are. They're not as favorable as a single, double, triple, or home run, but they're still favorable, as everyone here agrees.
I don't know why you think I'm making a case for Brett under any of these definitions, or defending the author's position.
Actually, I think it depends on how you look at it (you've made it abundantly clear on numerous threads that you only look at things one way, and fail to see any sense in the way anybody else sees things.)
If you ask someone who the greatest "hitter" was, he's free to interpret that as the guy who is the most proficient at actually hitting the ball, not taking four balls. If you ask him who the greatest living "offensive player" was, he might give you a different answer. You choose not to, and that's OK too.
I ####### told you what it was. The guy who is the most proficient at hitting the ball hard, the greatest percentage of the time he swings the bat. Look at it as hitting as a technical skill, rather than as an end result.
Jim Thome swings and misses a lot. Since I don't think he's intending to do that, it's a failure on his part, something a guy like Tony Gwynn was much better at avoiding. It just so happens, Thome's swings and misses are actually beneficial to him in the context of offensive performance (he hits a lot of bombs with his full-throttle swing, and it gives him additional opportunities to pile up the walks that elude a guy like Gwynn). But it's still true that when it comes to taking one swing at a ball and hitting it hard someplace, Tony Gwynn was better at it than Jim Thome. When many people describe pure hitter, that's what they're talking about.
If you want to look at the question in a single way, go ahead, though I guess I find it somewhat strange that you would then include baserunning in a question of the greatest living hitter.
Frankly, I'm not advocating any of these positions (nor taking a hard stance on who would be the greatest in those categories). But I think it's a hell of a lot more interesting to consider the possibilities than your "only one sane answer" method.
Look, do you think its worthwhile to talk about who has the strongest throwing arm? Or are we only allowed to talk about Overall Defensive Value? So why can't we talk about who was best at hitting the ball without having to include walks and baserunning in it? The component skills are interesting to examine sometimes. And what would you suggest that skill would be called?
Best seasons since 1900:
+-----------+-----------+--------+---------+| namefirst | namelast | yearid | hitting |
+-----------+-----------+--------+---------+
| George | Sisler | 1922 | 0.3959 |
| George | Sisler | 1920 | 0.3772 |
| Lefty | O'Doul | 1929 | 0.3683 |
| Harry | Heilmann | 1927 | 0.3663 |
| Tris | Speaker | 1920 | 0.3641 |
| Rogers | Hornsby | 1924 | 0.3638 |
| Tris | Speaker | 1925 | 0.3613 |
| Joe | Jackson | 1920 | 0.3579 |
| Paul | Waner | 1927 | 0.3579 |
| Heinie | Manush | 1928 | 0.3558 |
| Ty | Cobb | 1922 | 0.3555 |
| Tris | Speaker | 1923 | 0.3537 |
| Tris | Speaker | 1922 | 0.3521 |
| Ty | Cobb | 1921 | 0.3511 |
| Tris | Speaker | 1916 | 0.3498 |
| Ty | Cobb | 1925 | 0.3494 |
| Bill | Terry | 1930 | 0.3491 |
| Arky | Vaughan | 1935 | 0.3487 |
| Tony | Gwynn | 1994 | 0.3484 |
| Ted | Williams | 1941 | 0.3465 |
| Harry | Heilmann | 1925 | 0.3455 |
| Eddie | Collins | 1923 | 0.3446 |
| Paul | Waner | 1928 | 0.3439 |
| Lefty | O'Doul | 1930 | 0.3428 |
| Zack | Wheat | 1924 | 0.3428 |
| Pie | Traynor | 1929 | 0.3426 |
| Zack | Wheat | 1923 | 0.3410 |
| George | Brett | 1980 | 0.3408 |
| Eddie | Collins | 1920 | 0.3405 |
| Luke | Appling | 1936 | 0.3403 |
| Tony | Gwynn | 1995 | 0.3402 |
| Ty | Cobb | 1919 | 0.3400 |
| Lou | Boudreau | 1948 | 0.3393 |
| Tommy | Holmes | 1945 | 0.3381 |
| Debs | Garms | 1940 | 0.3380 |
| Tris | Speaker | 1921 | 0.3379 |
| Paul | Waner | 1930 | 0.3379 |
| Joe | DiMaggio | 1939 | 0.3377 |
| Goose | Goslin | 1928 | 0.3377 |
| Smoky | Burgess | 1954 | 0.3362 |
| Lefty | O'Doul | 1932 | 0.3345 |
| Sam | Rice | 1925 | 0.3344 |
| Charlie | Gehringer | 1936 | 0.3339 |
| Charlie | Jamieson | 1924 | 0.3333 |
| Ty | Cobb | 1927 | 0.3327 |
| Joe | DiMaggio | 1941 | 0.3327 |
| Ty | Cobb | 1918 | 0.3325 |
| Edd | Roush | 1921 | 0.3325 |
| Harry | Heilmann | 1921 | 0.3322 |
| Joe | Jackson | 1919 | 0.3314 |
| Charlie | Hollocher | 1922 | 0.3311 |
| Joe | Sewell | 1923 | 0.3309 |
+-----------+-----------+--------+---------+
George Brett's 1980 comes in at second among living players.
I don't think Pujols will have a "normal" decline phase. He'll decline, obviously. But I expect him to produce well for many years. I freely admit that is an educated guess. And I actually think Frank Thomas had a somewhat abnormal decline phase. I think he started to drop off a few years before you would've expected and his 30s mixed some quite dreadful years with a couple of mini-renaissances. I still find his 30s quite odd looking when you look at his career numbers. I'll be very surprised if Pujols doesn't have a much more consistent and productive 30s than Thomas.
Barring injury, Pujols needs 300 dongs in the next 12 years to get 600. Hell, even Griffey got to 600. He's going to make it unless he has a career-ender.
If he gets 5,000 more official AB in his career (he currently has 4317), he'll need to hit .290 the rest of his career to finish up at .310. And even the pessimist has to figure he's got a real good chance to hit .320-.330 for the next 1,500 or 2,000 of them. What would he need from there out to hit .310? Maybe about .275 or something. Whatever it is, very doable. I don't know what the various prediction toys say for Albert, but I'm taking the over on 600 HR and a .310 career BA.
Apparently, I'm entitled to Ray DiPerna's opinion.
+-----------+------------+---------+------+| namefirst | namelast | hitting | hits |
+-----------+------------+---------+------+
| Tris | Speaker | 0.3294 | 1496 |
| Ty | Cobb | 0.3220 | 1476 |
| Eddie | Collins | 0.3204 | 1334 |
| Lefty | O'Doul | 0.3128 | 1136 |
| George | Sisler | 0.3089 | 2033 |
| Zack | Wheat | 0.3056 | 1337 |
| Sam | Rice | 0.2997 | 2561 |
| Edd | Roush | 0.2987 | 1581 |
| Joe | Sewell | 0.2961 | 2226 |
| Harry | Heilmann | 0.2959 | 2085 |
| Rogers | Hornsby | 0.2947 | 2310 |
| Lloyd | Waner | 0.2941 | 2459 |
| Jack | Tobin | 0.2935 | 1255 |
| Paul | Waner | 0.2935 | 3152 |
| Tony | Gwynn | 0.2915 | 3141 |
| Frankie | Frisch | 0.2891 | 2837 |
| Heinie | Manush | 0.2847 | 2524 |
| Pie | Traynor | 0.2828 | 2416 |
| Dale | Mitchell | 0.2824 | 1244 |
| Riggs | Stephenson | 0.2813 | 1515 |
| Charlie | Gehringer | 0.2784 | 2839 |
| Mickey | Cochrane | 0.2776 | 1652 |
| Tommy | Holmes | 0.2774 | 1507 |
| Earle | Combs | 0.2764 | 1866 |
| Rip | Radcliff | 0.2764 | 1267 |
| Arky | Vaughan | 0.2759 | 2103 |
+-----------+------------+---------+------+
Tony Gwynn: greatest living hitter!
If asked who I thought was the greatest living hitter, I'd say Bonds. But I see nothing wrong with approaching the question from a different angle, and arriving at a different answer to that question.
Danny Jackson
Mario Mendoza
Luis Pujols
Tony Pena Jr.
Rey Ordonez
Neifi Perez
Billy Ripken
Ozzie Guillen
Joey Gathright
Joe Giraldi
(wait, I might have the wrong list here)
I would see McGwire vs Pujols as pretty close, but I would probably take McGwire (although obviously Pujols is better overall).
Did Frank Thomas take steroids? Amphetamines? Any PED?
What's the question again?
No.
Frank Thomas risked his career for a more rigorous testing regime. I generally agree with the "why pick on him--everyone was using" argument, but this is taking one of the few people in the era who DID take a stand against steroids, ignoring that and then disparaging their name.
I mean, we don't KNOW that Dr. King didn't lynch people, but I think people would be understandably upset if you used that argument.
At any rate, the point stands: why would Bonds be disqualified - he's either the best hitter or he isn't. Why he is the best hitter dosn't seem relevant.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main