[Tabe]

Originally Posted by BobC

LOL

Touche' Scott. I can give you that, but in Rose's defense, he's also 14th on the all-time Walks list, and that definitely doesn't help his average.

Walks have no effect on his average.

Originally Posted by BobC

Also, most of those ahead of him on that all-time Walks list are considered HR hitters.

He's 14th on the walks list because he played for 500 years. He averaged 71 walks per 162 games, a very pedestrian amount, even moreso for a guy at the top of the lineup.

Originally Posted by BobC

Unfortunately, he is only 288th on the all-time OBP list, which doesn't seem to help him at all, but that is somewhat offset by him being 6th un the all-time Runs Scored list, which he wouldn't be if it wasn't for all his hits.

Well, yeah. He played 250 more games than anybody else while hitting at the top of the order. I would hope he'd be way up there in runs scored. To be fair, he did have some great seasons scoring runs, leading the league four times.

Originally Posted by BobC

Another thing to be considered regarding Rose's average is that he played in 24 seasons, the last 5 of which he wasn't even close to hitting .300 in any of them. Had he stopped at only 18 or 19 seasons, he'd be a bit higher on that all-time averages list.

If he quit after 1981, his last good season, he'd have a .310 career average. That would put him in a tie for 109th with Luke Appling, Jim O'Rourke, and Bob Meusel.

But he also would have been a couple hundred hits short of Ty Cobb and there's no way Pete was going to retire without passing Ty barring injury.

Originally Posted by BobC

Plus, don't forget that Rose primarily played during an era when the overall player averages were a lot less than many other eras.

A fair point.

Originally Posted by BobC

And as far as home run hitters being so much better

It's absolutely indisputable that it's better to be a home run hitter than a singles guy like Pete Rose. Rose and Hank Aaron had the same OBP (basically) but Hank did WAAAAAY more damage when he got on base. Aaron had more than 400 more extra base hits than Rose and all of those addition XBHs were home runs.

Put another way - every time somebody hits a homer, runs are scored. Not so much for singles.

Originally Posted by BobC

So he really isn't much different than Rose in this regard. Unless you honestly want to give full credit to the steroid and PED cheaters.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.

Originally Posted by BobC

So it seems to me that if you are going to disparage Rose, you're pretty much doing the same thing to Aaron.

This makes no sense. What are you trying to say?