>>>>>I don't think I would go that far. Babe Ruth? Ted Williams?
>>>>
>>>>I said it before. Ted Williams was, hands down, the finest pure hitter ever to play the game. He left a little to be desired in the field (and most everywhere else), but once he stepped into the batters' box, he was the epiptome of what hitting a baseball is all about.
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>>>Great story about this: Quite a few years after Ted Williams retired (I think he was in his late fifties at the time), he made the claim that he could actually see the ball hit the bat. One of the pre-eminent baseball men of the day (some say it was Leo Durocher of the Cubs, others say it was Earl Weaver of the Orioles, still others say it was Bill Veeck, the owner of the White Sox) challenged him to prove it.
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>>>They covered a bat with pine tar and recruited a hard-throwing rookie to pitch. Ted rocketed the first fastball straight back over the rookie's head into center field and yelled "One (expletive deleted) seam" (if you knew Ted and Ted knew you, every fourth word out of his mouth was a cuss word). They retrieved the ball -- sure enough, one seam covered with pine tar. Second pitch, another smash -- "about a quarter-inch above the ******* seam". Right again.
>>>
>>>He called five out of seven perfectly.
>>>
>>>As good as Barry Bonds is at hitting home runs, naming the best pure hitters to ever play the game boils down to three players, in this order: Ted Williams, Rod Carew and Tony Gwynn. Everyone else is far, far behind, including Ruth (who, in all fairness, was the best of his time).
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>>That's pretty elite placement for a slap hitter like Carew. Sure, he had a great batting average, and I'm not saying he wasn't a great hitter, but top three ever? I think stats like slugging percentage and runs produced are much better indicators of overall hitting success.
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>>Ichiro reminds me of Carew, only faster. But I wouldn't put him in the top three of all time.
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>>Which reminds me, bases on balls should be factored in there somewhere. In fact I bet if you looked at the guys who had the highest average number of walks per season you would have a pretty impressive list of hitters.
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>Mike, I absolutely include Rod Carew, for the simplest of reasons: he could hit ANYBODY. Fastballs, curveballs, sliders, sinkers, splitters/forkballs, knucklers -- he hit for average against ALL of them, consistently, over an extended period of time. Nothing fazed him. Pitchers feared him -- if you talk to any of the players and baseball folks during his time, Carew was the one person they NEVER wanted to face in a tough situation. His off-the-field research was incredible -- he had a different stance for every pitcher (reasoning that you couldn't stand the same way in the box against Ryan's fastball, Blyleven's curve and Wilbur Wood's knuckler). Much like Earl Weaver, he kept index cards on everyone he ever faced, AB by AB and pitch by pitch, long before computers and the ESB did it for them. He walked quite a bit as well, as I remember -- many of them intentional, which would often come back to haunt the oppposition, as Carew was also feared as a base stealer for many years,
>regularly stealing not only second but third (and home plate more than any other player at the time). He had unbelievable bat control, and was the best bunter in the league for several years -- I think he once had twenty or so successful squeeze plays in a *single year*.
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>Slugging percentage is a misleading stat, IMHO -- I'd much rather look at RISP averages and on-base percentage. That's what tells me how dangerous a hitter *really* becomes. Lots of decent players with timing, some bat speed and a few guys around them in the lineup can have a good SP (Bonds, Manny Ramirez and A-Rod are excellent current examples, and I'd NEVER include them on a list of "pure hitters") -- but if I was managing a club, I'd much rather see a guy with a high RISP average who always seems to be able to get on base coming up in a clutch situation than somebody who could hit the ball out on any swing but who can't sacrifice worth a damn and strikes out 50 times a year with a runner on third and less than two out.
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>RISP and OBP numbers weren't kept in Carew's time (or Williams', for that matter) -- but I think that if somebody reran them for those two, they'd be at the top of the heap or VERY close to it.

When a guy finishes a season at .406, and posts a lifetime average of .344, you gotta figure his RISP and OBP are going to look pretty good.

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>Just my USD $0.02...