Let the debate continue--Greatest Season Performance

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Posted By: Glenn

Gil,

I can understand the reason for your sarcasm, but I am trying to make what I consider to be a valid argument here, so I hope this clarifies things.

"Heck, to me batting average is a quantitative number, isn't it?"

This is my point. .400 is only quantitatively different from other batting averages, not qualitatively so.

"And I may be a bit simplistic, but the way I see it is ---> when you come up to bat, if you get a hit, you have been successful, if you don't, then maybe there is an alibi, such as a walk, got hit by the pitch, advanced a runner, or some other excuse, but you are supposed to get a hit."

A hit is great, but a double is better than a single, a triple better than a double, and a home run better than a triple. And getting on base by means other than a hit is better than not getting on base. More to the point, the object is to win games and in terms of offense that means generating runs. Having a high batting average is great; it's just not as beneficial to one's team as having a high OPS. Baseball writers haven't started evaluating players by OPS because they got bored with batting average; they just recognized that it's a better indicator of a player's net offensive output.

Tris Speaker, to take but one example, was a fine player, but he was not better than either Ted Williams or Lou Gehrig. He has a lower OPS than either, but a higher batting average.

"Now Hornsby did just that for years, and years, and years, etc. Way more than anyone else. Isn't that good?"

Yes, it's fantastic, but he didn't generate additional runs quite as well as Bonds did. I can assure you I have greater admiration for Hornsby as a person, but that isn't the issue. Neither am I making the argument in favor of Bonds because I enjoy being attacked by fans of the pre-war game (of which I am one).

"Anybody else ever do that? No. So who is the daddy?"

There are plenty of things that only one player has ever done. Only Ichiro was able to collect over 260 hits. If it's all about hits, he should be considered to have had just about the greatest season in history. At the very least he should have won the AL MVP. But the game is more nuanced than that. The reason we have all these debates is because there is no perfect measure of a player's offensive ability. But some measures are better than others. If "greatest [5] season performance" is taken to mean greatest percentage of at-bats ending in hits then there is no debate. Hornsby was the best at that. But I interpret the title of the thread more broadly, specifically as success in producing runs for one's team, and I'm willing to evaluate whatever evidence you have that Hornsby did this better than Bonds over each man's greatest five-year period, but the higher batting average does not make that point.

Glenn