[BobC]

Originally Posted by Tabe

Walks have no effect on his average.

They take away from times at bat where he could get a hit. I see your point though because he could not do as well with those extra at bats. Point taken!

Originally Posted by Tabe

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 more so for a guy at the top of the lineup.

Agreed and already acquiesced to you in your first point.

Originally Posted by Tabe

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.

Of course, that is a function of his playing for so long. But again, he wouldn't have played for so long if he wasn't able to still play.

Originally Posted by Tabe

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.

Agreed, but again, I said he'd move up a bit, not get into the top 10. Look at the major league averages over the time he was playing versus other eras in baseball.

Originally Posted by Tabe

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.

Don't disagree. But the argument about singles being nothing compared to home runs was being brought up in this thread as more of a way to dis Rose and further the argument against him being in the HOF. That is the main reason I'm using Rose's stats to try to discourage the concept of singles not really being that important versus home runs. So i was using him in my counter arguments. Doesn't mean he's the be-all, end-all player to refer to, just that he was the one being mentioned in regards to this HOF thread and singles not being so important. Also, even if he missed Cobb, he still would have had close to 4,000 hits which normally would have gotten him HOF status regardless of catching Cobb or not.

Originally Posted by Tabe

A fair point.

Thank you for that.

Originally Posted by Tabe

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.

Again, you're talking about Rose in this context, and now Rose versus Aaron. And I never said that hitting a home run wasn't better than hitting a single. This whole thing started because of my initial response to a post by cardsagain74 who said "Anything related to a home run is a more important record. At least I hope most see it that way. Glorifying base hits isn't much different than keeping track of just how many first downs a QB, RB, or WR produce." My response back didn't say yes or no, just maybe! And I put forth things in my response to him that were trying to show that maybe hits were a little more important to the game than he was letting on. I never even mentioned Rose in that response. It was then that Scott (Aquarian Sports Cards) made the funny post/response about Rose only being 179th on the career AVG. list, and the "luminaries" he was behind. I was just as jokingly coming back and basically agreeing with him, not defending Rose really, but pointing out some of his career stats overall to show he wasn't a complete schmuck!

Originally Posted by Tabe

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

Yes, but there are still way more singles hit than home runs, and they will always be a huge part of the game. And again, going back to the original context based on what the original poster I was initially responding to was saying about homers, it almost sounded as though he'd prefer we do away with anything but home runs entirely. If that is the case, it almost sounded like he'd rather we turn baseball into a home run derby contest and make it a pitcher versus batter duel where if it doesn't go over the fence, its an out! The Home Run Derby is super popular during the All-Star game break, and just think, you don't need to worry about position players in the field then. Just find as many big studs as you can to pound the ball over the fence. Still have a nine inning game with the pitchers able to strike out the batters, but no walks. (Lord help us, those are even more boring than singles, right?) And just think how much faster the games would go by then if we didn't bother with overly glorified singles and other hits that aren't home runs, which is another thing MLB and fans have been complaining about for a lot years now.

Originally Posted by Tabe

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

Really!?!?!? It is pretty obvious Bonds used PEDs to extend his career and become the all-time hone run leader, so if you properly don't count him, that leaves Hank Aaron as the true all-time home run leader. And Aaron got to that point by doing what Rose did, play for so many years to wrack up the numbers to finally pass Ruth. Again, how is it that the all-time (honest) home-run leader never once hit 50 in a single season? Remember, Aaron's most prolific home run season ever tied him for only 80th on the list of all time single season home run totals. Still, Aaron led the majors in home runs 4 times, runs scored 3 times, hits 2 times, and doubles 4 times. Rose led the majors in runs scored 4 times, hits 7 times, and doubles 5 times. Granted, Rose never led the majors in home runs or RBIs, whereas Aaron led in RBIs 4 times. But as previously mentioned, that RBI difference had a lot to do with Rose being primarily a lead-off hitter whereas Aaron was a middle-of-the-order guy with way more RBI opportunities. And to be fair, the most hits Rose ever had in a season only put him tied at 36th on the all-time single season hit list, whereas Aaron's best year had him tied for 71st most hits in a season on that same list. However, Aaron also only reached 200 hit seasons twice in his career, whereas Rose reached 200 hits 11 times. Bottom line is, the point you didn't get is that the (honest) all-time home run leader got his title the same way Rose got his all-time hits title, by hanging on and doing it over a very long period of time. Quite frankly, had Ichiro not spent so many years playing in Japan before coming to the majors, he likely would have easily eclipsed both Cobb and Rose as the all-time hits leader. And had Ruth not spent his first five years in the majors mostly just pitching for Boston, Aaron would have probably still been on a major league roster right up till the past season, still trying to catch Ruth. (And even better, we probably wouldn't have been concerned about Bonds and what he had done, as he likely wouldn't be the all-time home rune leader either!!!)

Originally Posted by Tabe

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

It's basically what I just got through saying. If you're disparaging Rose's all-time hits record because he batted more than anyone else, you basically have to say the same thing about Aaron. Ruth had his 715 home runs in 8,399 official plate appearances. It took Aaron 12,364 official plate appearances to get to 755 home runs. Rose had 14,053 plate appearances to get 4,256 hits lifetime, whereas Cobb had 11,440 plate appearances to get 4,189 hits. Aaron needed 3,363 more plate appearances to out homer Ruth by 40 dingers, and Rose needed 2,613 more plate appearances to get 67 more hits than Cobb.


Bottom line is, my posting was really about the disparagement of singles versus home runs and someone saying how unimportant they seemed to feel that singles were. I was merely trying to come back and argue that in the history of the game, and still today, regular hits, while maybe not always as important as home runs, are still pretty damned important as part of the game.

I'll leave you with this to think about. I remember hearing the story about how reporters and others used to bug Cobb about all the home runs being hit by Ruth and others, and how much better that was than all the singles that Cobb hit over his career, and so why didn't he hit more homers. So supposedly Cobb told some reporter one day he could hit homers if he wanted to, so watch him. And over the next two games he played on May 5th and May 6th of 1925, he preceded to hit a total of 5 home runs in those two games. He actually ended up going 9 for 12 over the two games, so hit for average as well. He then went back to his normal style of batting and ended up with 12 homers for the season, tying his all-time single season home run total from 1921. By the way, I believe he was 38 years old at the time, an age where many power hitters have already started to experience a severe decline in their ability to hit home runs. Oh, I forgot to add, that is still the major league record to this day for most homers ever in two back-to-back games. In fact, Kyle Schwarber just matched that record this past June 20, 1921. Now Cobb was not the first major league player to actually accomplish this feat, it was actually first set by Cap Anson back in 1884, but Cobb was the second ever to do it. But how about this, of the top ten all-time home run hitters in MLB, only Bonds and A-Rod have been able to match that record, and they are both known PED cheaters. McGwire at #11 on the all-time home run list actually matched the record twice, but again, a known PED user and cheater. Then you go all the way down to Manny Rameriz, #15 on the list, to possibly find a clean hitter that matched the record......oh wait, Manny was caught using PEDs as well. Finally you get down to Mike Schmidt at #16 on the all-time home run list before you finally find a known clean hitter that was able to match the same major league record that Cobb has held part of for almost 100 years now. Isn't that amazing?

So here's Cobb at 38 years of age in 1925 just turning on the home run hitting ability to shut up some reporter during the height of the initial home run craze in baseball, powered by Ruth no less. And then immediately after showing what he could do, Cobb goes right back to his normal batting style of getting hits and bats .378 for the season. He did lead the majors with a 1.066 OPS that year also. (Not too shabby, huh?) The whole story of what Cobb actually said, or didn't say, about suddenly hitting home runs can't be proven exactly, but the record is for real. Think about it, no one else in the 1920's could match this, not even Ruth or Gehrig. It wasn't till 1936 that Lazzeri was the next player to match the record, and after that it wasn't till 1947 when Kiner did it on two different occasion that one Summer.

So all you people talking about how home runs are so much more important than singles, I only wish Ty Cobb was still with us today to hear what he'd have to say to all of you about that!!! LOL Have a good 4th of July everybody..