Quote:
Originally Posted by the 'stache
1. Ken Griffey Jr was clearly better than Jeter.
2. Barry Bonds, even before he bulked up, was clearly better than Jeter.
3. Rickey Henderson, greatest leadoff hitter in baseball history, I think he was clearly better than Jeter, also.
4. Tony Gwynn, highest career batting average since Ted Williams at .338. 8 batting titles, led the National League in hits seven times, five of which were over 200. And where Jeter's Gold Glove Awards were questionable, nobody questioned Tony Gwynn's defense. He won 5 Gold Gloves. In the first half of his career, before he added weight, he was a fantastic athlete.
5. Albert Pujols. .318 lifetime batting average, 514 home runs, 1,571 RBI in 14 seasons. His average season is .318, 40 HR, 123 RBI. He has 554 doubles, a total of 1,083 extra base hits in 14 seasons. He's also won multiple Gold Glove Awards. I'd take him over Jeter in a heartbeat.
6. Miguel Cabrera. Triple Crown winner. Has won the last three American League batting titles, and the last two MVP Awards. 12 seasons, lifetime .320 AVG, 382 home runs and 1,344 RBI. I would take him over Jeter, too.
Griffey Jr.
Bonds
Henderson
Gwynn
Pujols
Cabrera
There's no way that Jeter cracks the top 5 players in the last thirty years.
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That's a great list, but I disagree with some of the above.
Barry Bonds: Normally I exclude him entirely because of the steroids, but if you exclude his steroid years (most people start it around 1998, but some people think it even started when he was on the Pirates), his career numbers are impressive, but not even close to Jeter's. His season stats are out of this world though. You can pretty much take any one of Bond's season and extrapolate it across his entire career and he will be better than Jeter, but I always exclude him, because you honestly will never know what his career would have been. Honestly, if you don't care about steroids or whatever, Bonds was the best player in the history of baseball and it's not even close.
Henderson: I won't argue Henderson. I said before in this thread I thought he was better.
Gwynn: I won't argue Gwynn.
Pujols: I think it's too early in his career. Right now, he's a first ballot Hall of Fame baseball player. He had the best 10 year run out of any hitter ever IMO. But over the past couple years he seems more like a career .260, 20 home run guy. If Pujols keeps going with this downward trend, I would take Jeter's career over Pujols, but if Pujols turns things around, it'll clearly be Pujols 10 times out of 10. So it's too early. Also, hopefully he was clean throughout his career!
Cabrera: Same with Pujols, it's too early. I think Pujols and Cabrera deserve a spot on the top 20 all time list (assuming they can have above average finishes to their careers), but both players are years from retiring. Anything can happen.
Ken Griffey Jr: This is a lot closer than most people realize. Here are there 162 game average numbers:
G R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS OPS+
162 101 169 32 2 38 111 11 80 108 0.284 0.370 0.538 0.907 136
162 115 205 32 4 16 77 21 64 109 0.311 0.379 0.442 0.821 116
Griffey hit more home runs granted, but he had almost 30 points less in his career batting average and half as many stolen bases as Jeter did. Everything else; doubles, triples, walks, strike outs are about the same. The only thing Griffey did that Jeter didn't was hit home runs, but Griffey never had a 200 hit season, he only hit above .310 once in his career while Jeter averaged above .310 throughout the entirety of his career. Really, it would just be a preference argument at this point. Offensive WAR gives the edge to Jeter, OPS+ gives it to Griffey. Do you like home runs or hits? Otherwise they were very similar.
My list for the past 30 years would be:
1. Rickey Henderson
2. Tony Gwynn
3. Ken Griffey Jr.
4. Derek Jeter (very close)
5. Albert Pujols
I think when Miguel Cabrera retires he will knock Jeter off the list and Pujols will (hopefully) move up to third.
My list for the past 30 years including Steroid Users:
1. Barry Bonds
2. Alex Rodriguez
3. Rickey Henderson
4. Tony Gwynn
5. Ken Griffey Jr.