You won’t see many baseball posts from me in this space. In fact, I’ll be surprised if I ever do another for however long this lasts. And this will be short especially by my standards. Growing up in the early 80’s baseball was THE sport for boys my age relative to your attention to statistics for sure if not in all aspects. I barely pay attention to it now so this is perhaps outside my purview. But last night Shohei Ohtani set a historical standard of 50 HR’s and 50 SB’s in one season. And he did that while also having a historical single day at the plate with 17 total bases in one game. Only 6 other players have ever achieved that and all did it with the benefit of 4 HR’s as Ohtani had 3. This led to a predictable Twitter mob and elsewhere hell bent on anointing him the greatest player ever. Ohtani has a long way to go. Maybe he’ll reach the point it’s a conversation but his career has 5 to 10 years left. I would advise perspective.
For the purposes of this discussion we are only going to evaluate complete careers. And we are going to do it using WAR but in a different way—that is on a per season basis. Before listing numbers allow me these caveats: I am instinctively resistant to WAR as a statistic. When writers began using it extensively I ignored and was all but adversarial towards the whole idea. Really, WAR is not a statistic at all but a compilation of such. Beyond that we soon reached a point where no one wanted to do any nuanced evaluation. MVP and HOF voters began casting ballots seemingly based on nothing else, which is just counting. I think the very name—Wins Above Replacement—is a misnomer. You’ll never be able to convince me that having Joe Schmo in LF rather than a random Minor Leaguer means a given number of additional wins for a team. On MVP voting specifically, its a very lazy way to rank players. VALUABLE within any season takes on many parameters that aren’t always captured by WAR.
Having said all that, when doing comparisons within a certain position or especially between eras there is no better tool than WAR for CAREER evaluation. It takes the countless numbers in different categories compiled by a player, throws them in one bucket and presents them in an aggregate for simple sorting purposes. Most importantly this method allows for clean RELATIVITY for any 2 players or any 1000 players. Even with this, a limitation is that compilation over time favors the player who has the longer career. If Player A and Player B are of fairly equal ability but Player A has a 5 year longer career he will obviously accumulate a greater WAR. Yes, that can mean one player has a wider band of peak seasons but often it comes down to health if not luck. Longevity is tantamount to availability so I don’t mean to discount that in full. A player who is great for just three years can’t be considered an all timer regardless of what prevented extended excellence. So with those principles in place, I would ask you to consider the following:
Babe Ruth 182.6 WAR/22 seasons = 8.30 WAR per year
Walter Johnson 166.9 WAR/21 seasons = 7.95 WAR per year
Cy Young 163.6 WAR/22 seasons = 7.44 WAR per year
Barry Bonds 162.8 WAR/22 seasons = 7.40 WAR per year
Willie Mays 156.2 WAR/23 seasons = 6.79 WAR per year
Ty Cobb 151.5 WAR/24 seasons = 6.31 WAR per year
Hank Aaron 143.1 WAR/23 seasons = 6.22 WAR per year
Roger Clemens 139.2 WAR/24 seasons = 5.80 WAR per year
Tris Speaker 134.9 WAR/22 seasons = 6.13 WAR per year
Honus Wagner 131.0 WAR/21 seasons = 6.24 WAR per year
Stan Musial 128.5 WAR/22 seasons = 5.84 WAR per year
Rogers Hornsby 127 WAR/23 seasons = 5.52 WAR per year
Eddie Collins 124.3 WAR/25 seasons = 4.97 WAR per year
Ted Williams 121.8 WAR/19 seasons = 6.41 WAR per year
Grover Alexander 119.6 WAR/20 seasons = 5.98 WAR per year
Alex Rodriguez 117.6 WAR/22 seasons = 5.35 WAR per year
Kid Nichols 116.3 WAR/15 seasons = 7.75 WAR per year
Lou Gehrig 113.7 WAR/17 seasons = 6.69 WAR per year
Rickey Henderson 111.1 WAR/25 seasons = 4.44 WAR per year
Mel Ott 110.9 WAR/22 seasons = 5.04 WAR per year
Mickey Mantle 110.2 WAR/18 seasons = 6.12 per year
Joe Dimaggio 79.1 WAR/13 seasons = 6.08 per year
Resorted on a per year basis of those at least averaging 6 WAR per year excluding pitchers:
Ruth 8.30
Bonds 7.40
Mays 6.79
Gehrig 6.69
Williams 6.41
Cobb 6.31
Wagner 6.24
Aaron 6.22
Speaker 6.13
Mantle 6.12
Dimaggio 6.08
When viewed through a per year lens one can come to many different conclusions. The first of which I see is that Ruth stands alone and then Bonds in his own universe. As far as PED’s, I won’t relitigate that here. I will say I personally would exclude those players from any consideration at any level. I don’t know about Bonds but there is no way in the world Clemens pitches 24 seasons at a high level without “help”. He was completely cooked his last year in Boston at age 33 and had been average the three years prior besides. Quite the second wind he found in Toronto at 34.
Then you have what to do with Ted Williams and Joe Dimaggio. Rival contemporaries who each lost prime years to World War II. Williams missed his age 24, 25, and 26 years BUT also lost essentially the entirety of his age 33 and 34 years to more military duty in Korea. Considering he won the batting title twice at age 39 and 40 it’s impossible to overstate what might have been. If we stingily add his average WAR of 6.41 to those five years that would be 32 additional WAR totaling 154 which would be barely behind Mays for 5th best all time. That would mean he would have to pick up only 10 more in 5 career prime seasons to eclipse Bonds and trail only Ruth among non pitchers. Ted Williams was the truth folks.
Dimaggio was not on the level of Williams despite what pop culture and the New York City media onslaught would lead you to believe. He missed aged years of 28, 29, and 30 due to WWII, without a doubt right in the middle of his prime. The differentiator was Joltin’ Joe was washed at age 36, a relatively young age especially then, whereas Williams excelled into his late 30’s. If we play the same projection game as with Williams, Dimaggio could be added a conservative 18 WAR to his total from his 3 lost military years. That imputed total would still fall short of 100 WAR putting him in the class of those such as Albert Pujols and Joe Morgan.
So with Mantle the title of the post is more of a nod to my Dad and the other men who helped raise me. Those post WWII boys were convinced, almost 100% of them (at least those I was around), that Mantle was the man. Why not Mays would be a very reasonable question. I truly don’t know. I definitely can’t say race played no role. On the other hand the lure of Yankee pinstripes back then was overwhelming. Combine the mystique of the Cowboys and Lakers today and you might be a third of what the Yankees were in the 50’s. Mays pretty obviously had the greater career by any measure. The problem becomes the injuries to Mantle and how to account for what was lost statistically. The Mick didn’t miss really any significant time between age 20 to 29 and received a medical deferment for Korea. HOWEVER, in his very first season at age 19, Mantle tore his ACL in the World Series. He played the rest of his career with that injury unrepaired. There are no missing seasons in which to tack on an average year to the total. With Mantle you can’t be sure what he may have achieved in ANY season at his physical best. As it was Mantle still produced numbers on a per year basis on par with nearly anyone in baseball history on one leg.
You probably notice that a 22 season career appears over and over above. With rare exceptions, such as Henderson, that was the expiration date. Mantle played 18 years, retiring at 36 like Dimaggio. For a 22 year career at Dimaggio’s average of 6.08, you could project a career WAR of 133.76. Mantle in 22 years using his average on one leg of 6.12 would be 134.64. Razor close.
Food for thought.