Was the Late Stan Musial Baseball's Greatest Living Hitter? How About Barry Bonds?

If last Friday, someone asked “Who is baseball’s greatest living hitter?” odds are that even the game’s most rabid fans wouldn’t have immediately responded “Stan Musial.”

Musial, who died on Saturday at the age of 92, had a long and storied career, and was generally loved by friend and foe alike. But Stan the Man was famous, not for earning more than the President (like Babe Ruth), marrying Marilyn Monroe (like Joe DiMaggio), spitting on fans (like Ted Williams) or going on epic benders (like Mickey Mantle), but for hitting a baseball. And for better or for worse, that fame proved somewhat less enduring than those of the other denizens of baseball’s pantheon.

But let’s take a look at Musial’s statistical legacy.
Was Musial, when he was alive, baseball’s Greatest Living Player? No. That honor (probably) goes to Willie Mays. In the 2000 edition of Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, Mays ranks third all time, behind Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner, and just ahead of Negro League legend Oscar Charleston. James ranks Musial 10th, behind Ty Cobb, Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Walter Johnson and Josh Gibson. Good company, and a look at similar lists generally put Musial just at the bottom of the top 10.

Three further things to note. All the guys in the top 10 besides Mays are dead. And James ranks Musial ahead of Tris Speaker, Hank Aaron (who is alive), Joe DiMaggio, and Lou Gehrig. And James’ list dates back to 2000.

So how does Musial stack up to Mays? A quick glance at their bottom line batting numbers suggests that Musial was not only a great hitter, but a better hitter than Mays.

Mays had a substantial edge in home runs 660 to 475, and Musial had an edge, large or small, in almost everything else. Old school fans will point to Musial’s .331 career batting average, 29 points ahead of Mays .302.  Modern fans will find an equally big edge in on base percentage ( .417 to .384) and a small one in slugging percentage (.559 to .557)

A Sabremetric dive puts Musial ahead in OPS, which combines slugging and on base percentage, (.976 to .941) and in adjusted OPS, which takes into account the fact that Mays played longer into the offense-starved 1960s (159 to 156).  The bottom line: Stan Musial had been baseball’s Greatest LivingHitter. Maybe (More on this in a moment.)

If Musial was a better hitter than Mays, what makes Mays a greater playerthan Musial? Fielding and baserunning. The tools that we have to analyze these facets of the game are less precise than those we apply to hitting, but we’re not trying to parse a narrow gap. Stats that assign “runs” to fielding and baserunning give us a way to compare them. Mays was one of the best centerfielders of all time. Musial was an average left fielder. That’s reflected in their career fielding runs (185 for Mays, which puts him in the top 10 all time, versus 50 for Musial, which means he was a serviceable outfielder.)

As far as base running, Mays again has a big lead (77 runs to -2 for Musial.)

And if you add it up, the comparison looks like this: Musial has an 83-run edge in hitting, 885 to 802, while Mays has an edge in everything else that amounts to 214 runs. No amount of quibbling over the these metrics closes this gap enough to change the conclusion. Eagle-eyed fans will note that Hank Aaron slots between Mays and Musial in most hitting metrics and it’s likely that with Musial’s passing, he and not Mays becomes Baseball’s Greatest Hitter.

So far we’ve been spending our time on the bottom line career numbers for these guys, and came to the conclusion that Musial was, by a rather narrow margin, the better hitter.  Here’s where things get messy.

There’s another living hitter who has a .444 career on base percentage, a slugging average of .608 for an OPS of  1.051, 1129 batting runs, and a runs above replacement total of 1,508 that puts him well ahead of both Mays (1437) and Musial (1231).

His name is Barry Bonds.

We all understand the issues of taking Bonds’s statistics at face value. He played in an era in which many if not most of the top players have admitted to using performance enhancing drugs and there are reasonable suspicions, if not absolute proof, that he did so too. So it’s not unreasonable to put an asterisk next to those totals.

But what about Musial’s totals? If you scroll up to his seasonal notation, you’ll see that he broke into the majors in 1941. He lost a prime year, 1945, to military service. But he also posted a three-year stretch between 1943 and 1946 in which his lowest seasonal batting average was .347. What was special about those years?  As African-Americans, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron and, for that matter, Barry Bonds wouldn’t have been allowed to play.

because Jackie Robinson had not yet broken the color barrier and major league baseball was still segregated. And indeed, Musial played most of his prime seasons before 1952, winning six of his seven batting titles during an era in which baseball was not yet fully integrated.

Now, of course, there are fundamental differences between using performance-enhancing drugs and playing in pre-integration baseball. But those are questions of ethics, not analysis.

Putting morality aside, it’s clear, that for all his greatness, Stan Musial, like so many of baseball’s all-time greats, enjoyed a very real advantage in compiling those impressive numbers against less than the very best competition.

How much of an advantage? It’s difficult, if not impossible, to say, except to note that by Bill James’ analysis, two of the top 10 players of all time–Oscar Charleston and Josh Gibson–were barred from major league baseball during parts of Stan Musial’s career.

Was Stan Musial Baseball’s Greatest Living Hitter? Maybe, but perhaps he too merits an asterisk.

RIP, Donora Greyhound.*

*An asterisk of a different kind, and a true story:
A few years ago, a friend’s young son took a strange, sudden and unexpected interest in Stan Musial. Finally a grown-up asked him why.
“Because he’s Jewish like me,” the seven-year old exclaimed with pride.
“Stan Musial’s not Jewish,” the grown up said, puzzled.
To which the kid replied, “Then why would they call him the Menorah Greyhound?”

From: http://www.forbes.com