Quote:
Originally Posted by cgjackson222
Bench and Berra have very similar career statistics in pretty much every hitting category. There are two main reasons why Bench is better. Berra literally never led the league in anything--no black ink (although, considering DiMaggio and Mantle were his teammates, this is not terribly surprising). Bench had some of the best years of any catcher ever, leading the league in multiple categories. Yes this also means that he had some comparatively down years, but even in those years he hit 25+ homers and managed to have a WAR of 4 or better for 12 straight years.
But the main reason Bench is better than Berra is fielding. Berra's career dWar is under 10, and Bench was close to 20. Bench was better at pretty much every facet of catching.
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I think Bench was better defensively, but I am not a fan of dWar; it makes a lot of assumptions and extrapolations off of less than perfect statistics, to say the least. I think the offense version is pretty good for direct contemporaries though it has faults, but dWar I don’t find swaying. This is not to say that defense is not important; it is just much harder to quantify by the nature of its structure and I don’t find dWar to have changed this.
I’d rather have consistency over the volatility of Bench. Berra won 3 MVP’s, he had great seasons as well, but he was excellent before, in between and after them. He doesn’t have prime years where he hits in the .230’s.
I think this one is more about what one values most than a clear victory. Bench is a fine pick, but I take Berra.