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The Man

Stan Musial may be the most underrated Hall of Famer and deserves to be considered "The Greatest Living Ballplayer". This statement may seem odd to you because the conversation around the unofficial title of TGLB, ever since the passing of Ted Williams, has centered on two men: Willie Mays and Hank Aaron. While there can be no question that the "Say Hey Kid" and "Hammerin' Hank" are two of the greatest to play the game, "The Man" is at least their equal. Somehow this fact seems to have escaped the notice of the public at large. Let's try and change that, shall we.

Where does one start when trying to capture the greatness that was Stan Musial? How about we take a look at some of his statistical lines and see what they tell us? Let's start by looking at 1947. Stan posted a 312/398/504 (AVG/OBP/SLG) line that year with 30 doubles, 13 triples and 19 home runs. He scored 113 runs and drove in 95. By way of comparison, Joe DiMaggio was the AL MVP in 1947. He posted a line of 315/391/522. By any measure, Stan had a pretty good year in 1947...by any measure except the standard set by Stan Musial.

Stan Musial refers to 1947 as "that lousy year". He was diagnosed early in the year with appendicitis and tonsillitis. A double whammy of "-itis" that obviously affected his performance. The doctors kept him in the line-up by "freezing" his appendix. I have absolutely no medical training, and even the Internet appears to be silent on this procedure, but I have to assume it isn't good. Stan played on and posted numbers equal to Joe DiMaggio, but not equal to his expectations of himself.

If you look up Stan on baseball-reference.com you'll find a mind numbing succession of incredible statistical lines. Picking out his peak years isn't easy, but if forced to identify them I would choose the period from 1948 to 1952. His stats during this five year period look like this:

Year2B3BHRRunsRBIAVGOBPSLG19484618391351313764507021949411336128123338438624195041728105109346437596195130123212410835544961419524262110591336432538

Sadly, this list leaves out six or eight other years that wouldn't look out of place with those above. He was, simply put, one of the greatest hitters in baseball history. In the words of Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Carl Erskine "I've had pretty good success with Stan by throwing my best pitch and then backing up third".

Stan Musial led the league in batting average seven times. He led in on-base and slugging percentage six times each. He led the league in doubles eight times and triples five times. For the more sabermetrically inclined readers in the crowd, he led the league in Adjusted OPS+ six times and Runs Created an astounding NINE times. He won the NL MVP award three times, finished second four other times and trails only Barry Bonds in total MVP award shares, finishing in the top ten fourteen times. He played in twenty All-Star games.

Stan Musial ranks 32nd all-time in batting average, 23rd in OBP and 22nd in Slugging Percentage. He's 9th in runs scored, 4th in hits, 3rd in doubles, 28th in home runs and 6th in RBI. It may surprise you to know that he hit 177 triples in his career which is good for 19th. He is third all-time in Runs Created behind only Bonds and Ruth.

The question of whether all of this makes Stan Musial a greater baseball player than Willie Mays and Hank Aaron is a difficult one. There is no doubt that Mays and Aaron showed far more power than Musial who hit "only" 475 home runs in his career, but Stan more than makes up the gap by being a better all around hitter. In fact, although they are essentially even, Musial actually finished his career with a higher slugging percentage (559) than both Mays (557) and Aaron (555). Musial simply never adjusted his swing to incorporate the more uppercut approach that would have resulted in more home runs. He was satisfied to pepper the outfield with an endless stream of line drives.

If we use Win Shares to compare the three, a statistic that includes both offense and defense, Musial falls behind in overall career numbers. Mays and Aaron both accumulated 641 Win Shares and Musial had only 604. The question is does the accumulation of total career numbers define greatness? If we look at the individual seasons posted by these players we find that Musial had the two highest seasonal Win Shares totals. In 1948 he had 47 Win Shares and in 1946 he had 44 while Mays' highest total was 43 in 1965 and Aaron's was 41 in 1963. Musial still holds the lead if we look at the best five years of each player (Musial-208, Mays-203, Aaron-187). Mays finally inches ahead if we look at the players' best ten years and Aaron catches up to Mays because he was able to sustain his greatness a few years longer. In my mind, the fact that Musial's peak years are the highest of the three is more significant than the career numbers. Greatness is defined by the best years of a player not by how long they could sustain what for them was below average performance.

In the end, I don't know if I've even convinced myself that Stan Musial is "The Greatest Living Baseball Player". Three different people could write arguments in favor of each of the candidates and they would all be right. What bothers me is that Musial is rarely mentioned in the discussion and that's unfortunate. Stan Musial turned 87 years old last November and his time with us is growing short. Someday you'll turn on SportsCenter, see the grainy black and white highlights, hear someone talk about the numbers above and say to yourself "Man, I never knew he was that good". Do yourself a favor. Spend a little time with the Baseball Encyclopedia or read a little about the man who has been the face of the Cardinal franchise for 60 years. They didn't call him "The Man" for nothing.

By Steve Caimano of www.DugoutCentral.com