I like Bill James, but I really hope for his sake that he said this early in his sabremetrics career. Making an argument based against one statistic is something that is frowned upon by all sabremetricians so it is rather hypocritical of him to do so unless he had some other supporting evidence.
Furthermore, if he's using one statistic, OBP is inferior to wOBA. Hopefully he said this in the 80's or 90's.
Of the names you listed, here is how they rank according to career wOBA.
Kiner .428
McGwire .415
Sisler .396
Schmidt .395
McGriff .389
Clark .375
Torgeson .374
Tenace .371
Valo .371
Davis .365
wOBA is a much more all encompassing statistic in terms of offense. Defense, baserunning, and "intangibles" makes things a bit murkier. But when it comes to the stick, Sisler is not overrated. Unless you're saying he is a better first basemen then Pujols, Gehrig, Thomas, or a few other 1b's
Last edited by MooseWithFleas; 01-16-2011 at 10:17 PM.
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