WOW! 1960 Yaz rookie PSA 9

[Peter_Spaeth]

Babe Ruth
Home/Away--BA----Slg.--onbase---HR-----D-----T-----RBI------AB-----BB
Home:-----.347---.699---.482-----347---239---70------979---4,033---1,037
Away:-----.338----.681---.466-----367---267---66---1,004---4,388---1,019

Lou Gehrig
Home/Away--BA----Slg.----onbase---HR---D-------T-----RBI------AB------BB
Home:-----.329---.620-----.436----251---206-----83-----947-----3,861----713
Away:-----.351---.644----.458----242---329-----79---1,043-----4,140---795

[nat]

Is someone really trying to argue that Carl Yastrzemski doesn't belong in the hall of fame? If you're worried about park effects, look at OPS+, which normalizes for those. Yaz has a 130 OPS+ in about 14,000 PA. He's tied with Roberto Clemente, Mike Epstein, Greg Luzinski, Minnie Minoso, Hal Trosky, Dave Winfield, and Ross Youngs. And of course has more PA than any of them (he's second all-time).

He wound up with a (barely) positive dWAR, despite the fact that he played corner outfield and 1B, positions which start with a penalty in dWAR. By comparison, Winfield was at -23 dWAR and Clemente was at 12. Both in corner outfield spots. So what we've got is someone who was much better than Winfield as a fielder, and quite a bit worse than Clemente (which sounds about right). He was their equal as a batter, and had a much longer career than either. That's way way way over the line for the hall of fame.

(Just for fun, Luzinski was at -21 dWAR in a career much shorter than Winfield's.)