The Man

I wrote this for some of my friends back in January when Stan Musial died but neglected to post it here. 

This is a link to a piece my favorite sports writer, Joe Posnanski, wrote about Stan Musial a couple of years ago that he reprinted on his blog on Musial’s birthday.  It’s a pretty awesome piece about a guy who is never in the conversation for best player ever, but has absurd lifetime stats.

http://joeposnanski.blogspot.com/2012/11/musial-redux.html#more

Check this out, and remember – there are a bunch of pre-1900 guys in some of these categories.  Stats are from baseball-reference site: 

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/musiast01.shtml

·         Batting Average 331, 30^th all time, led the league 7 times, 2^nd twice, 3^rd 5 times, 4^th twice and 5^th once.  He hit .330 at the age of 42 in 1962.

·         On base % .417, 22^nd all time, led the league 6 times, 2^nd 7 times
·         Slugging % .559, 19th all time, led the league 6 times
·         On-base plus slugging .976, 13^th all time, led the league 7 times, 2^nd 3 times
·         Runs scored 1949, 9^th all time, led the league 5 times, 2^nd 4 times
·         Hits 3630, 4^th all time, led the league 6 times, 2^nd 3 times
·         Total bases 6134, 2^nd all time behind Aaron, led the league 6 times, 13 times top 5
·         Doubles 725, 3^rd all time behind Tris Speaker and Pete Rose, led the league 8 times, 2^nd 3 times, 3^rd twice
·         Triples 177, 19^th all time, led the league 5 times (and he wasn’t fast).  Of the 18 guys ahead of him, the latest year anyone played a game was 1945, only 2 played a game after 1940, only about 4 played a game after 1930, and a bunch of the guys played in the 1800’s.  Willie Mays had only 140.  This is NOT a modern day statistic.
·         Homers 475, 28^th all time (lots of steroid guys passed him), never led the league, though he was top 10 12 times.
·         RBIs 1951, 6^th all time (behind Aaron, Ruth, Cap Anson, Bonds and Gehrig – A Rod is 1 behind him in 7th), led the league twice
·         Singles 2253, tied for 18^th all time, led the league the league once.  A surprising number of modern players passed him, including Rose (1), Jeter (6), Carew (8), Gwynn (10), Molitor (11), Aaron (13), Yaz (17), and Boggs is tied with him.  In addition, get this one - #16 – Omar Vizquel!
·         Extra Base Hits 1377, 3^rd all time behind only Aaron and Bonds.  He led the league 7 times.

Of course some of these lifetime records came from the fact that he played in the 6^th most games and had the 8^th most plate appearances. But the consistency and the averages are pretty unbelievable, a consistency only challenged in my mind by Lou Gehrig.

He won 3 MVP awards and finished 2^nd 4 times. 

 He never struck out more than 46 times.    He struck out 696 times in 12,717 plate appearances and 10,972 official at bats.  Compare that to Derek Jeter, with a lifetime average of .313.  Jeter has never had less than 81 strikeouts, and has a total of 1,743 for his career.  Other than stolen bases, Jeter leads Musial in NO categories, though if he can last long enough he might pass him in hits and runs.  And Jeter is a sure first ballot HOFer.

 Check out his 1948 season -  376/450/702, OPS 1.152, 230 hits, 46 doubles, 18 triples, 39 homers, 103 Extra Base Hits (6^th most all time), 131 RBIs, 135 runs, 7 steals (4 category player), total bases 429 (6^th most all time).  He led the league in batting and RBIs, and missed the triple crown by 1 homer.

When he came up for the hall of fame in 1969, 23 voters out of 340 left him off the ballot.  WTF????

Baseball Reference has comparable players for everyone, but nobody is quite like him.  The closest is Yaz, followed by Ott, Mays, Winfield, Murray, Gehrig, Frank Robinson, Foxx, Palmeiro and Aaron, but the similarity scores are very low.  I think it is Musial’s combination of extreme career numbers combined with the breadth of the categories he was to good at as well as the consistency in all of this from year to year. 

And his best sta, mentioned by Joe Pos - 3,026 games played, never thrown out of one.  As Posnanski's piece demonstrates, Stan Musial was way more than his stats.  It's hard to say that about guys like Bonds and Clemens, even by their fans.