Quote:
Originally Posted by Aquarian Sports Cards
War is a useful tool, but just looking at raw WAR doesn't tell the whole story, especially in a career context. But if you look at OWAR/100 PA's I think that does a better job of telling us who the all time greatest hitters were. You could leave it just OWAR/PA but using 100 PA's gives a nicer number than .010 and a lot of us have an idea what one OWAR roughly means and basically if you're putting up 1 OWAR per 100 PA's you're a bona fide stud, so it's a convenient measuring stick. 0.5/100 is a little better than an average Major leaguer.
Here's some players I find interesting. Not a lot of surprise at the very top spot on the list however.
Babe Ruth - 1.45
Mike Trout - 1.30 (Didn't see that coming! Of course as injuries and age start to hamper him this number will likely drop fairly quickly)
Rogers Hornsby - 1.28 (a smidge ahead of Williams, this was a surprise)
Ted Williams - 1.28
Mickey Mantle - 1.20 (considering that he was a shell of himself for his last 5 years or so I'm surprised to see him ahead of Gehrig who didn't really have much of an end of career slide)
Lou Gehrig - 1.18
Ty Cobb - 1.16
Barry Bonds - 1.14
Rod Carew - 0.77
Wade Boggs - 0.76
Tony Gwynn - 0.66
Pete Rose - 0.52
Ichiro Suzuki - 0.44
I included the guys that are commonly considered the best contact guys of the modern game. I'm not saying Rose and Ichiro were bad (or more accurately only slightly above average) but rather they are massively overrated and also hurt their teams hugely by hanging on years past when they were effective.
I have always thought that Boggs was actually the best of these guys so I was surprised to see Carew edge him out.
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I would guess it is all of the bases Rod Carew stole as their other stats are very similar with the exact same lifetime batting average. Wade is my all-time favorite player so I would still pick Boggs as the better of the two.
