I've generally been under the assumption that Stan is the better hitter and Mantle better all around. Musial used to be called the most underrated player of all time IIRC. I'm not going to cry foul if Mantle gets ahead of Musial but if there are more than 2 or 3 players inbetween I'll think people are voting on legend and not reality.
What would be your criteria of “top seasons”, if not using a WAR#? I agree that WAR is FAR from perfect, but it is pretty good, particularly a WAR#.
People ARE voting on legend. And I think that is somewhat valid. Numbers are not the entire story. If this lasted long enough to get to Jackie, he would be there almost entirely based on legend. Same with Clemente. Same with Josh Gibson or Satchel Paige or Oscar Charleston.
The argument for Mantle, removing my bias, would be the playoffs. IIRC he has 3 times as many plate appearances and 4 times the production. Its an argument Mantle has over most players
Bob Uecker did (RIP)
www.baseball-reference.com
But that is a Yankees thing. The Yankees always were able to surround their home grown players with stars from other teams, so of course Yankee players had more playoff appearances. Counting that as BIG plus is over rating it, imho. And counting it AGAINST non-Yankees is unfair as well.
Yeah. Its like comparing Gronk and Kelce to the other great TEs.
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If you are only looking at their SB statistics, yes.
Lots of playoff success. IIRC Mantle has the most PA of any Yankee. Unless thats changed recently
Not looking it up, but I suspect Jeter has more post season PAs. But that includes expanded playoffs. Milk probably knows this better than you or I.
Mantle got passed up by many modern Yankees, which makes sense because in his era there was only one post season series now there are like 15 or something
That makes sense. I remember seeing an interview with Mantle saying he had the most and that seemed wrong because of the era. It was obviously an old interview.
For context, Babe Ruth has fewer Yankees postseason at bats than Mickey Rivers
I think postseason boosts are overrated. Penalize a good player on a bad team? Dumb, in my opinion. Essentially, Mantle gets a boost merely because he was a good Yankee. Musial gets a knock because he was a good Cardinal (when they were in a good period). Post season should only count when comparing two similar players who spent a similar amount of time in the postseason.
