Better career Frankie Frisch or Mel Ott?

[ls7plus]

It's a non-starter--Ott in a landslide. As someone mentioned, OPS+ is park adjusted, and is a fairly good indicator of runs created versus league average runs created by any individual player. Ott was thus 55% better than an average offensive player of approximately the same era, while Frankie was just 10% better. Plus you can't blame Ott for taking advantage of the Polo Grounds friendly dimensions for pull hitters at home--that's what he's supposed to do, isn't it? In addition, Ott actually performed much better on the road in several important categories: batting average--.311 on the road vs .297 at home; doubles--306 on the road vs 182 at home; and triples--51 on the road vs 21 at home.

Bill James ranked Ott as the 4th best right fielder of all time, despite the home/road HR disparity, in part because of Ott's superior performance in the above categories on the road, and in part of because of his composite skills--Bill called him a cross between Reggie Jackson, Joe Morgan and Andre Dawson. Not bad company.

If Joe DiMaggio had taken it upon himself to take the middle-out pitch down the right field line, a la Miguel Cabrera and J. D. Martinez, instead of bitching about the lengthy distance to left center field in old Yankee Stadium, think how much better he would have been!

Happy collecting,

Larry