Willie McGee was the NL MVP. After comparing stats, I say that Mattingly was the better of the two league MVPs.

Mattingly Played more games, had more plate appearances, had more doubles, more HRs, more RBIs, more BBs, less SOs, higher OPS and SLG, more total bases, more Sac Flys, more IBBs, committed less errors, and had more put outs and assists.

but the context of this article is over 5-year spans. So jscape’s closing statement is really saying “Mattingly was never the best player in baseball over any 5-year span.”

I remember reading about Mattingly’a vs. Boggs’ approach at the plate. Boggs purposely cut down on his swing to raise his batting average. Mattingly was looking more for solid contact, line drives into the alleys, with one leaving the park every so often. He was virtually impossible to pitch to in those years in that he was patient at the plate, could pull a ball, could drive it the other way, could punch a single through a hole, could drive with power into the gaps. And he was particularly clutch. Then to top that all off, he was an asset in the field! Not the liability most first basemen tend to be. He sometimes took fielding practice at 2B or SS and by all accounts was surprisingly competent.

The desirability of high OBP brings with it the assumption that your entire team is built with excellent balance top to bottom, with similarly high OBP throughout. Walk one guy, the next is just as likely to hurt you, and so on. The premise breaks down when a batting order features a few hitters whose abilites are far above those of the rest of the lineup… and it’s that latter scenario that was the norm even for the Yankees in those years. We’ve been spoiled with lineups like we’ve had in recent seasons.

As for that infamous Rice “most feared hitter” mantra? With Mattingly the label really applied. No pitcher wanted him at the plate with the game on the line.

My personal take on those hitters during those years was that Mattingly > Boggs because he added power to the mix while still hitting for high average and showing excellent plate discipline. Defensively, Boggs was regarded as a mediocre 3B while Mattingly was the best 1B in the league and quite possibly in all of baseball… so I looked on Mattingly as at least Boggs’ equal there, too, possibly better. Henderson and Raines were great but not the kind of clutch hitter one would rely on with a game on the line. You wanted them ON BASE at those critical moments, but you wanted Mattingly at the plate. As for Gwynn, I regarded him as possibly the most gifted hitter of all in terms of batting average, but again, no power. Same applies there… no pitcher would be delighted to see Gwynn at the plate at a critical moment, but those critical moments would often be 1-run games… with Mattingly, a pitcher started sweating bullets in situations where he had even a 2-run or 3-run lead. Advantage Mattingly.

The other hitters you cite were largely leadoff-style hitters, and in that era those type hitters were looking to get on base, hence the walks and the higher OBP. Guys like Mattingly were expected to drive them in, not to walk. Doesn’t mean Boggs couldn’t hit with more power, or that Mattingly couldn’t have walked a bunch more times, but that’s not what they did given their roles… and now what they actually did is all we have to go by. That’s why looking back through the lens of 2010 is a tricky business.

… asked Mattingly to try to draw more walks. The managers were smart enough to let Mattingly be Mattingly. Mattingly wasn’t a player, when in his prime, to take a lot of walks. Without looking it up, and relying on my memory, his highest amount of walks in a season was 61, and that was late in his career, which is a time when many players see an increase in walks because, to compensate for a loss of bat speed, a player will become more selective. This is a change that doesn’t last very long, and the player will eventually not be able to fight off the deterioration of his skills.

The reason Mattingly didn’t draw a lot of walks is because he wasn’t the type of player to do so. In that three-year stretch of 1984-1986 his OBP was in the mid- to high-.380s. That is a great OBP.

There’s mean a lot of attention in recent years about the quality of the ground care at Fenway vs the rest of the league.
What that true then? That might explain Boggs’ change once he reached the Yankees.

Batting Average
Stolen Bases
On Base Percentage.

And please if a Gm was asked to build a team in 1985 I would be very surprised if anybody didn’t pick Cal Ripken Jr. first. I know I would and it wouldn’t even be close.

Ripken and Puckett were Gold Glovers at the two most important defensive positions on the diamond. Donnie was a better pure hitter but in terms of overall value they would be rated much much higher.

Look, I’m an engineer. My degree is in computer science. I like numbers as much as the next guy! They tell us a lot. But don’t be a slave to them as there are limits to what the numbers alone can tells us… especially when looking at only one aspect of the player. The numbers are a very important part of the equation, just not the only part. We all need to be a little humble in how much we think we know. (True of life in general.)

so is Ichiro the best hitter of our time? He leads the league in hits and AVG and scores tuns of runs every year. He even set the record for hits in a season. The answer: NO.

And that’s coming from an engineer. Which statistic is definitive? Who decided that? What’s the objective proof that a particular statistic trumps all, and where’s the objective proof that no as-yet-undiscovered statistical measure will render this year’s trendy statistics obsolete? Be a little careful what you consider objective because even what we think is objective, usually isn’t, and it’s hubris to insist otherwise.

Reminds me of something I uncovered in a book about music some time back. The book published critics’ ratings of the greatest classical music composer of all time. The results were tabulated by groupings of decades: 1940, 1950, 1960, etc. For a couple decades, all agreed Beethoven was the greatest composer ever. Then for a few decades, they all agreed it was Mozart. Then they all agreed it was Bach. And so on. Funny thing is that none of those composers have written anything in a very long time, say, hundreds of years. The source data never changed.

It’s also a big mistake to discount subective observations. Just because they don’t cleanly drop into a database doesn’t make them wrong. (And yes, I do know a thing or two about databases since I’ve made a career out of building them.) And just because some statistic is new doesn’t make it the best way to evaluate things. They’re highly useful tools! No argument there. But the last word they ain’t. Believe that at your peril.

Jeter is not awesome, he is the worst defensive SS in the game. Everybody that WATCHES baseball will tell you this is not true, that Jeter plays good defense. This is where these new stats fail, when Jeter is retired and a kid looks up his UZR, he will say Jeter was a great hitter but he was a terrible SS. This is the same as what you guys are doing with Mattingly. You didnt watch him in his prime, so you dont know how special he was. I’m sure if we worked at enough, we could come up with a stat that would make Cody Ransom the best player in baseball. Just remember stats never tell the whole story.

Your key is stuck. ;-)

I’d like to see Mattingly in the HOF. Don’t know what will happen of course, but I think there’s a good case to be made. I honestly don’t know why some people feel so compelled to slam him. He was a tremendous player and yes, at his peak he dominated the game.

they won’t enjoy watching a baseball game?

I’m gunna need an explanation here.

Good stuff. More comments over there.