Well obviously being on the Yankees and winning all those titles don't hurt.
But, going off the idea he was just a big strong guy that hit a lot of homers kind of misses the point.
One quick look at his statistics and he was also a sabermetricians dream player.
Considering he played hurt most of his career and was a shadow of himself by his age 33 season, he sure has quite an accumulation of peripheral stats we didn't even take into account 20+ years ago. An "accumulator" he was not.
Just one example is WPA (Win Probability Added). He's #5 All-Time in this accumulated stat. Only guys ahead of him are Barry Bonds, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ted Williams. The only actual player with a comparable number of plate appearances on this list is Ted Williams. Everybody else around him has quite a few more.
It's up to everybody else to decide how much stock they put in this particular stat, but it's just one of many he rates very highly on.
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